Author

Author "mikemoffit"

wrote in 979: More Uses for Time Machine, Malware on macOS .

With Apple’s Time Machine utility, backing up data is as easy as flipping a switch. When configured properly, Time Machine will perform automatic backups of a Mac to storage devices such as connected external hard drives or networked Apple Time Capsules and macOS servers. These backups can be extremely valuable in the event that a Mac’s internal hard drive fails. However, the Time Machine utility provides some great additional features other than just preventing data loss. The Time Machine utility also provides the ability to view and restore the contents of a Mac’s filesystem through Apple’s familiar Finder file management interface just as it was hours, days, weeks and months into the past.

By entering Time Machine through the Time Machine menu, one is able to navigate through snapshots of their Mac’s files with the timeline bar. While in Time Machine, specific files can be viewed and restored to the way they were at specific times in the past. This feature is particularly valuable for understanding how a specific file, or a Mac’s entire filesystem, has changed over time. For example, if one wanted to know how exactly they filled up their internal hard drive so fast and are now running out of storage space, the answer could be found with Time Machine by navigating the past of their Mac’s filesystem and viewing the files being added through time.

Time machine can also be utilized to restore specific files to the way that they were at precise times in the past that have since been edited. This could be extremely useful for the writer, musician, or filmmaker that wants to restore their project’s draft to an earlier working version. Because Time Machine is an automatic backup application that runs in the background, it is hard to know when it is operating correctly and backing up your data. By frequently using these additional features one can quickly verify if Time Machine is working correctly and better understand the evolution of their Mac’s filesystem as time progresses. 

Read More
wrote in 979: More Uses for Time Machine, Malware on macOS .

Summer’s peak is upon us, and as tradition dictates, our air conditioning is struggling to keep up! As many of you know, Macs are safer in cold climates than hot, so I’d like to remind you all that leaving your Mac in the car in July is never a good idea!

I had a customer recently ask me for scanner recommendation, and it reminded me of all the types of artists and professionals that rely on quality scanning tools. For me, scanning is a huge part of daily life. I use an Epson V800 for the specific purpose of converting film negatives into digital image files. Yes, that is right, film is still very much alive! While the industry has downsized, you still see a passionate and stable community of those who prefer the film look and process. As an inspiring contrast to my work here at Small Dog, I find my Hasselblad’s 100% mechanical operation fascinating and reliable. While road tripping across Ireland, that camera survived the cold and misty climate without any shutter lag or loss in optical excellence. The image you take home is unlike anything else, and with the right scanner, that can translate those negatives to something far superior to a digital camera in a similar price range. In a future article, I plan to compare scanners that range from basic document scanners, to flatbed scanners like mine. A past customer of mine requested a lesson in film scanning, and I was happy to host it here at the store. In fact, here at Small Dog, we do not restrict ourselves to Mac based topics. For example, if you want to learn about producing music in Ablelton, give James a call! We have all sorts of skills here that we’re happy to share with our community.

We’re staying busy in the South Burlington store this summer, but our techs are keeping up with the demand for Apple warranty service. Did you know that our average repair turnaround is currently 2.04 days? We generally quote about 3 business days from check in to check out, considering parts often need to be ordered, but our Adware removal service and iOS restore service are same day turnaround. 

If you’re in the neighborhood, make sure to stop by and see us! Hope everyone is having an awesome summer, and enjoy this edition of Tech Tails!

Patrick McCormack
“patrickm@smalldog.com”:mailto:patrickm@smalldog.com

Read More

wrote in 1045: BenQ Display With USB-C Hub Shines, Video Editing On iOS? .

I’ve been continuing to figure out how to get the most out of my new iPad. Ever since I realized how much faster it is than my MacBook Air, I decided to look into what kinds of tasks I could use it for. One of the most intensive things I do on my computer is video editing. I actually have a really long history with this going all the way back to Media 100 on a Power Mac G4. That was around 2003-2004. Eventually the TV PEG station where I was working at the time got new hardware including a Power Mac G5 and one of the last G5 iMacs. With the more powerful computers, and newer versions of OS X, we started using Final Cut Pro.

Personally, I’ve never had any Mac powerful enough to run something like Final Cut Pro, nor do I really need it for the projects I work on. However, having used Final Cut for so many years, and knowing how to do non-linear editing, I tend to have high expectations of video editing software. On the Mac, I was aways impressed with iMovie. Sure, it’s fairly simple, but it is capable of quite a bit for a free, included piece of software. I remember the first time I used it on iOS. I was impressed that they could get something that even resembled the desktop version running on my iPad.

However, the iOS version of iMovie leaves a lot to be desired, at least by me. I wish it had any kind of key framing, better title support and more tracks. I started looking online for solutions, but I didn’t really expect to find any. For as much as Tim Cook likes to spout that iOS devices can be desktop replacements, the software just never seems to be there to back up the capable hardware. It might be getting closer though. I found a piece of software called “**LumaFusion**”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lumafusion-pro-video-editing-and-effects/id1062022008?mt=8.

At first glance, the app doesn’t look as slick as some really nice looking apps like Procreate or even iMovie, but it’s incredibly capable. It has a robust key framing system and enough video filters and options to make your head spin. You can make text titles look exactly like you want and editing all different kinds of tracks including audio tracks is pretty easy once you know how to do it. My first task was creating a video intro for some other videos I plan on making. Check it out “**here**”:https://youtu.be/FotLonKRGGE. I made the same intro with iMovie on iOS and it came out like “**this**”:https://youtu.be/D8pUbIrvA-k. It’s short and it may not look like much, but it has a lot of pieces I don’t know how I’d do with iMovie on iOS. Most of the effects are keyframed and I was even able to control the frame rate of the exported product. (Hint: if you want to make your videos appear more cinematic, try a 24FPS frame rate.) There are even little things that go such a long way like being able to precisely control the drop shadow angle on title text. I personally prefer to interact with the interface using the Pencil, but they’ve designed it so that it can be used with touch alone easily.

However, all of this power comes at a price. It’s the most expensive app I’ve ever purchased for iOS. At $20USD you get this app as well as the LumaFX app which has additional video filter tools. I definitely prefer to purchase apps when I can because I feel you get a better product when you pay for it. Plus, as a developer myself, I know we need to eat too! That said, 20 dollars was a lot for a single app, but I do feel like it’s completely justified. I record a good number of videos and this app is going to help me make them look better.

A replacement for a desktop computer? It’s getting much closer, that’s for sure.

Read More

wrote in 1044: Expanding Your View, Are You Ready For iOS 11?, A Laptop Replacement .

I’m going to split from my usual articles this week so I can talk about another one of my passions. I recently decided it was time to retire my original iPad Air. It was actually the first Apple product I purchased myself. Someone gave me a Mac mini in 2009, but that doesn’t count. When I got it in June 2014, iOS 7 had just come out and I remember being totally sold on the new direction iOS was taking. I also liked the shift in form factor that came with the Air. It served me well over the years, went on many trips, watched hours of movies and TV shows. It’ll serve a good purpose as my new HomeKit base station. I have it set up in my living room next to my TV. I also use it to Airplay content to my TV.

So what did I replace it with? Well, much like in 2014, iOS 11 really sold me on the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro. I was also genuinely impressed with performance specs that actually rival some laptop computers. I actually confirmed this by running Geekbench on both my 10.5-inch iPad Pro and my MacBook Air (circa 2014). Generally, the iPad had higher scores across the board. Some scores were comparable, but where the iPad really shined was in multicore performance. My MacBook Air is a dual-core i5, while the iPad Pros use a 6-core A10X. More cores is obviously going to push that score up a lot for the iPad.

The 120Hz screen refresh rate is something you really have to see in person, and it affects every single thing you do on the device. That combined with what is otherwise a very nice display makes for a really nice user experience. For me, one of the other reasons I wanted this iPad was so that I could get the Apple Pencil and start doing some fashion design. I’m actually a terrible artist, but I wanted to give this a try. So far it’s gone very well. I can’t speak to how the Pencil worked on previous iPads without the 120Hz refresh, but I’ve found it to be actually very useable. Other pen inputs I’ve used in the past, even good ones, have had far too much lag. I’ve found that using the Pencil doesn’t get annoying over time, which I like.

There are actually a handful of apps out there specifically designed for fashion design. One that I really liked initially was Prêt à Template. It gives you all sorts of body form templates that you can draw your designs on top of. I liked this because I had no idea how to draw a body form that looked like an actual human. The problem with Prêt à Template is that instead of just being able to purchase the app, it has a weird subscription model that I did not want to do.

I can however recommend two other apps that have worked very well for me with my designs so far. The first I tried is free. Adobe Sketch is a powerful drawing app with great brush assortment and good layering. Obviously just sketching out fashion designs isn’t intensive digital art, but I love the ability to have such a wide variety of colors and textures available to me anywhere I am with my iPad. The ability to undo is also pretty handy.

The second app isn’t free, but it’s the one I’ve started using exclusively now. It’s called Procreate. It costs $6 in the App Store, but for such a powerful app, I think it’s totally worth it. I prefer Procreate because it has a bit better brush assortment, seems to be better tuned for the Apple Pencil than Adobe Sketch and the undo feature is a bit better. I felt there was a bit more of a learning curve on Procreate, but once I got the basics down for what I wanted to do, I definitely get the results I want.

It’s been a few weeks with the iPad Pro so far and I’m starting to think that once iOS 11 comes out, this device might genuinely be able to replace my MacBook Air in many ways. I’m also excited to see how well it can do with video editing and music creation, two other creative hobbies I enjoy.

Read More

wrote in 078: Too Many Passwords, Breathe Life Into Your Old Mac, Terminal TidBits .

**Warning this is permanent**

You CANNOT RECOVER FILES with method. So you have a file that you don’t want anymore, you can skip the steps in the GUI (graphic user interface). In terminal it is one command, but there is no “Trashcan” you can recover from.

To do this open up terminal and type:

rm {file path of file you want to delete}

Or is this is not enough you can remove entire directories. “rm-r” stands for remove directory and the syntax looks like this:

rmdir {the file path itself}

Now before you even just play with this command, make sure you have a Time Machine back up. It’s always just good to have a Time Machine back up, but if you make a mistake with this command, a backup may be your only way to recover data.

Read More

wrote in 078: Too Many Passwords, Breathe Life Into Your Old Mac, Terminal TidBits .

It’s always a sad day when you realize your older Mac isn’t quite performing how it used to. Perhaps it’s a bit sluggish to open certain applications. Perhaps the time it takes to boot seems to be getting longer and longer. And perhaps all that data you’ve accumulated over the years has almost filled up your storage space. It’s realizations like this that can sometimes push users to prematurely purchasing a more up to date model. Fortunately, there are a few ways to breathe a bit of “life” into your older machine.

First and foremost, performing backups is always recommended before making any significant changes to your machine. 

If your machine has accumulated some desktop or toolbar junk seemingly inexplicably, you may have unintentionally acquired some malware. Tracing back to the genesis of this malicious software can be difficult, especially with older Macs, but luckily there’s a free application out there called Malware Bytes that does the hard work for you. Malware Bytes scans your hard drive for any traces of this malicious software and walks you through the removal process step by step. After the removal process you may notice your computer runs much more smoothly than it did before. 

Having a lot of files on your desktop can be convenient, but when you boot your machine it can certainly bog down to the startup time, as your machine will have to load all of those items, one by one in order to complete the startup process. Instead of having a lot of files all neatly organized on your desktop, I recommend creating a folder called ‘Desktop’ and storing all your most frequently used or opened files there. 

And speaking of storing files…

Having your files just a few clicks away is great, but keeping too many files on your hard drive is a surefire way to keep your machine sluggish. In this case, an external hard drive is your best friend. I personally keep my Photos library and iTunes library on two separate external hard drives. Granted, doing this is also a bit of a process worthy of some research before deciding to do so, but it’s definitely kept my Mid-2012 MacBook Pro trucking right along in its oncoming golden years. 

Along those lines, a few times a year I’ll go delving into the contents of my hard drive and do some manual housekeeping to keep things tidy and running smoothly.

Read More

wrote in 078: Too Many Passwords, Breathe Life Into Your Old Mac, Terminal TidBits .

Most of us have been using the Internet for many years, and have created accounts with hundreds of different Internet services. After a certain point, one cannot reasonably be expected to remember the passwords to all of their different accounts, especially since many websites have different requirements for password complexity. Having to remember too many different passwords is a common frustration we see here at Small Dog.

This is a problem inherent in the username/password system. When the system was introduced decades ago, no one anticipated having to remember hundreds of different usernames and passwords. Other methods for authentication, like biometrics, have slowly become supported by more and more hardware and software developers, like Apple’s Touch ID, however there is still no viable system for authentication that can be used by virtually any device, so username/password has remained the most dominant method.

The best solution to the problem of having too many passwords is to install a password manager. A password manager is an application that securely stores a users passwords, so that only one password is required to access any of them.

The password manager I would recommend is LastPass. LastPass offers a desktop application, a browser extension, and a mobile app. A premium account is only $1 per month, and all of the core features are available with a free account. With LastPass, any time you see a password prompt, you only need to enter your LastPass password, and LastPass will find, decrypt, and enter your password to that service.

Read More