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Category: Tech Fixes

July 9, 2017

Two Devices Your New iMac Needs Now

If you’ve just purchased a new Mac, and you think you’re done… you’re not. Your computer needs some friends to play with!

So you just bought yourself a shiny new Mac to replace your old Apple machine. Congrats. Now for the bad news… You’re probably not done adding to your shopping cart. You’ve got a couple more important decisions to make…

Apple Refresh
I’ve just upgraded to a 2017 iMac and thought that as a veteran Mac owner I knew all of the ropes. Guess what? I don’t. If you’re like me and like to hold onto your Apple products for as many years as possible (versus always having the latest and greatest) you may not be entirely up to speed on current needs and best practices to properly get your new Mac up and running.

Here are a couple of items I had to consider after unboxing my new pride and joy:

New External Drive for Time Machine Back Up
Cost: $199.95

Eliminate the Weak Link
You might be wondering… “What about Barrett’s old backup drive? Can’t he use that with his new iMac?”

Well, sure I can. But the idea of a years-old drive working to back up all of your files worried me more than a little byte…
(Bad joke)

I say buy yourself a brand new backup drive, and get a good one.
I’m a big fan of G-Technology drives. They’re not the cheapest game in town, but the extra bucks are well spent when it comes to preserving your digital life.

I could have gone with either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt 3 drives (similar pricing) but figured on reserving my two iMac Thunderbolt 3 ports for faster needs than Time Machine backups.

You’ll Always Need More Storage
Now, you must be thinking, “Wait a minute! Why get a 6TB drive to back up a 3TB machine?!”

Good question.

The answer is if you’re like me… eternally generating lots of photos and videos and plan to move into the 4K video landscape… you’re going to need plenty of storage.

Yes, a Time Machine drive can do double duty and simply store files along with Time Machine backups.

I recommend always buying a bigger drive than you think you’ll need. Trust me.
It was only another thirty bucks for an extra 2TB.
(Isn’t that crazy cheap?)

External DVD/CD Drive
Cost: $79

How Old is Too Old?
Thinking about whether I need one of these gives away how ancient my old iMac is.
(If you’ve read this far, I hope you’re a friendly tech geek or a Luddite who’s turned over a new leaf. Either way, I’m hoping you’re not going to judge me when I admit my old iMac is from mid 2010.
(Be gentle.)

Can you believe it’s seven years old! And it’s still ticking. Yes, it’s slower and glitchier, but it’s doing okay. Still, sometimes you’ve just got to call it, before the circuits just don’t fire up anymore. So when Apple announced the 2017 iMac refresh, I knew my number had come up… before my iMac’s did. I think by all reasonable considerations it was time to do the upgrade.
(Agree?)

At Home with Discs
So my iMac slid out of its packaging looking lean and mean and without a slot for discs. Actually, Apple eliminated native optical drives in iMacs a long time ago.

Your choice is to buy an Apple USB SuperDrive to plug in or utilize “DVD or CD Sharing” from another Mac.
Apple explains how to do that here.

I appreciate the work-around option, but remember that CD transfer project you started but never finished? Yeah, I’ve got one of those too. I’m not quite ready to entirely eliminate discs from my life yet.
(Maybe I’ll be disc-free in time for my next iMac upgrade!)

  • Apple’s USB SuperDrive is only $79.
    Considering how much we’ve already spent on our new Mac, I think we can give ourselves permission to take this step.
    (However backwards-thinking it may seem)

And yes, there are cheaper third-party optical drives on the market, but if you’re buying a Mac, there’s probably a part of you that doesn’t want to immediately turn it into a ‘Franken-computer’ with some no-name drive attached to it.

I give you permission to keep it all-Apple.

Click.

Sticker Shock?
Spending an extra $280 to activate your new iMac is not insignificant. On the other hand, there are always add-on devices to any all-in-one solution. The iMac is no different.

The only choice here is whether to spend a little more on better quality.
When it comes to maintaining your digital harmony over the long term, that’s always money well spent!

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June 18, 2017

Why My iCloud Email Stopped Working in Outlook for Mac

When your email program suddenly chokes, it’s probably a good idea to first find out if your email provider has updated any of its policies that require you to take action.

Yes, my iCloud emails abruptly stopped showing up in my Microsoft Outlook for Mac program a few days ago. For the record, it was on June 15. My iMac presented a message warning me that something was very wrong and that it might be my password or user ID. But as far as I knew, nothing had changed.

Boy, was I wrong…

June 15 Can be Hazardous to Your Emails
And if you think you don’t need to worry about this particular tech glitch because you don’t use Outlook for Mac for email, be forewarned that this story affects all of your third-party apps that require a password to get to your iCloud email, calendar and contacts.

I scoured the web for possible solutions.
Hours later, I stumbled across this little detail:
(Thanks to 9to5Mac and Lifewire)

As of June 15, 2017, Apple changed its security policies for non-Apple apps. Now, you need to create app-specific passwords through Apple’s enhanced security protocols of “2-step verification” (older system) or “2-factor verification” (newer system).

What this means is you can’t sign into your non-Apple apps using your iCloud password. You’ve got to create app-specific passwords through Apple.

This is not at all a new process. But if you’ve been avoiding Apple’s verification protocols, now you have no choice but to comply or get kicked out of Apple’s ecosystem.

Give a Dad a Chance!
No doubt, better security bolted onto your iCloud account is wicked important. But it would have been nice to know that this was coming.
(Cough)

But as it turns out, Apple sent an email to me on May 16 explaining the change.
I didn’t see that one apparently…

And then I missed the friendly reminder that went out two days before the deadline.
Mea culpa.

So how hard is it to set it all up?
Not at all.

In fact, it’s easy via the Apple ID page, which houses all of your account details and where you can create these à la carte passwords.

Father’s Day Gift from Apple
Look, I know I wasn’t paying attention. And I was given fair warning… twice.

But Apple… did you have to make the deadline right before Father’s Day?!
I mean… chances are there are other dads out there who ran afoul of this change.
I can’t be the only one.
(Cough)

And wouldn’t it be safe to assume we’ve all got other plans on Father’s Day weekend beyond having to spend time trying to figure out how to get our emails working again?

Choosing a different week would have been better.
(Just a pedestrian point of view from one of your faithful users out there in the trenches)

And to all of you ‘IT Guy’ dads out there who dodged this particular bullet, please hear me: If you don’t have the spare time to make your tech updates in a timely manner and hope to keep the status quo going for as long as possible… you can only wait for so long!

And then it catches up with you.
That’s the reality.
Happy Father’s Day.

Now put away your new tie and get to work.
(And read all of your Apple emails!)

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June 11, 2017

The Power of a Video Freeze Frame

Today’s story spans generations and species. And it all begins with a faulty memory card in my camera as I record an important video moment that foretells the arrival of our new kitten.

The memory card in my Panasonic LX10 camera blew it big time. This kind of problem has only happened one other time for me, and that was many years ago. But sometimes memory cards go bad and don’t correctly record your photo or video file.

And of course, fate requires those exasperating moments to occur when something really special happens… yes, a magic moment.
(You know, like when aliens from Mars land in front of your house looking for directions.)

An 18-Frame Conundrum
I missed this particular magic moment recording a video, which ended up having an inexplicable visual glitch every second or so.
(Actually, every 18 frames)

Here’s an example of the glitch.

 

 

 

 

The videos and photos recorded immediately after were fine. So this appeared to be a one-off problem. Nevertheless, I retired the SDXC card the next day and popped in a new one.
(I didn’t even want to consider the possibility that the culprit
was my still new Panasonic camera.)

Welcome Home, Kitty
And what exactly was this particular event? It was when my wife and I revealed to our seven-year old son that we were getting a kitten, something he’d been wanting for quite some time.

We decided not to simply tell him or reveal the cat like in a magic act.
(No, we would go to the animal shelter together to adopt our kitten.)

Instead, we brought him into the room upstairs where she’d be hanging out during her early days with us. And I had staged that room with all of the cat paraphernalia you usually need… water and food bowls, litter box, cat toys, scratching post, and a cozy bed puff.
(Thank you, Petco.)

I hoped it would be one of those Aha moments where the realization bathed over our son. I wanted to capture that happiness for posterity.

And that’s exactly what happened. It was priceless. He was so psyched. The video was amazing. Except that it wasn’t…

Keep It in Perspective
You might be thinking that this isn’t such a big deal. It’s just one of many great “moments” in a child’s life. There are literally hundreds (thousands?) of others.
(It’s not like you’re recording your own “Truman Show.”)

As a parent, you’re going to miss some along the way. Sometimes due to user error… Other times because your technology fails you.

Years from now, I know not having this video isn’t going to matter.
…I’ve already got videos of the new team in action.
(A boy and his cat)

And you move on.

The 18-Frame Solution
But for some reason I couldn’t totally let go of this.

Was the faulty video file a total loss?
Well, not necessarily…

Sure, you could still make out what happens. But it’s jarring to watch. So it’s value is limited.

But if the video glitches every 18 frames, that means there are plenty of good frames of video remaining.

Frames that could make for a good photo.
Hmmmm…..

What about extracting some of those frames and using them as photos?

So I gave it a try…

How to Grab a Frame from Video
I had shot the video in 1080HD… not as high res as the photos my camera generates.
Maybe that’s another reason to start recording videos in 4K.
(Wasn’t that why I said I bought this camera over the Canon G7 X Mark II?)

There are a few ways to grab a frame off of your video file on your Mac.

  • You can do it with Final Cut Pro X or iMovie.
  • Or using QuickTime, first go to your desired frame and then to copy it… select the video window portion on your desktop with Apple/Shift/4. That creates a PNG file, which you can easily convert to a JPG or TIFF.

Q.E.D.
(Quite easily done)

Can Your Camera Do This?
Happily, my Panasonic LX10 and its new memory card have been doing fine over the past month. So I feel comfortable that the original phantom glitch is behind me, and I don’t have to worry about grabbing video frames as a back up plan.

That said, I’m not the first one to stumble upon this idea. In fact, some cameras (like my LX10) include the capability to natively generate frame grabs when you go back and review a video in-camera.

A Video Freeze Can Create a Great Portrait
Surprisingly, I’ve just realized that this technique can be quite useful when trying to capture a more natural portrait of someone who has a difficult time posing for the camera.

Sure, it’s hard to choose a frame when someone’s talking, but the trick is to grab a freeze immediately after a sentence. If it’s also at the end of a complete thought, there’s usually a second of a pause to select from.

Case in point… my eighty-four-year-old father.
He’s not one these days to happily pull off a Cary Grant smile.
(It’s usually more like a Clint Eastwood mug during his Dirty Harry days.)

So I put my new tech technique to work…
I pulled out a frame from a video I just shot of my father proudly talking about his 1962 Red MG.

 

 

 

 

I think he’s as proud of that car today as ever, and it shows!

Happy Twist of Fate
Isn’t it interesting to see how one frustrating moment of tech failure can open up a whole new world of opportunity?

Sometimes you’ve just got to go with it and see where it all takes you…
(Is there another choice?)

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