TakeControl Books Latest Issue

If you have purchased one of Apple’s new Macs with an M1 (Apple silicon) chip—or are considering doing so in the near future—our latest book will help you transition from your old Mac, take advantage of new features, and deal with a variety of limitations and surprises. Take Control of Your M-Series Mac by Glenn Fleishman tells you everything you need to know about this new type of Mac, and this compact (84-page) book is just $8.99.

Although M1 Macs mostly look and act like their Intel predecessors, they are significantly different when it comes to startup modes (including recovery mode), security, battery life, and bootable duplicates. You can run many iOS/iPadOS apps on your M1 Mac, and Apple’s Rosetta 2 technology lets you run most older Mac apps too. But Boot Camp is gone, and virtualization software has significant limits. The book walks you through all this and more, including a section with technical details of the new architecture, for those who are interested. And, since we know that the M1 chip is just the first in a series (with support for more powerful Macs coming soon), Glenn is planning to update the book to cover new Macs and new chips as they appear.

• Buy Take Control of Your M-Series Mac for just $8.99

or
• Learn more about this book

I’d also like to mention that Glenn has updated his book Take Control of Securing Your Mac. Version 1.1 adds more than 10 pages of details about security aspects of M-series Macs, plus additional information on passwords, FileVault, encrypting bootable duplicates, System Integrity Protection (SIP), and more.

Warm regards,

Joe Kissell
Publisher, Take Control Books

Apple Live Stream

If you have the Apple watch, here is an article from the Small Dog Electronics newsletter, "Kibble & Bytes", with some tips on how to improve the battery life of the watch...Jim

Jim Hamm

Seven Tips to Maximize Apple Watch Battery

One of my oldest friends, Larz Barber, who happens to be my financial guy, called me the other day to tell me that he solved his Apple Watch battery issue.  For weeks he was finding that even though he charged it up overnight it would not hold a charge all day.  His extreme solution, which definitely will work in many cases, was to go to the Watch app on your iPhone and unpair the Apple Watch and then re-pair it.   Too many people have sent their Apple Watches in for repair at Apple due to battery issues that might be solved by this or some other Apple Watch Battery tips. If you're having this issue, do try this resolution before anything else.

Apple Watches have a shorter battery life than many smart watches at about 18 hours of use but that is due to how much more sophisticated the Apple Watch is in comparison to others.  What others will allow you to answer your phone calls, send a text message, take an ECG and check your blood oxygen levels?  18 hours is actually a lot and will allow frequent time checks, app usage, music and phone calls. If you want to extend your battery life here are some tips:

  1. Turn off Display Always On

With the Apple Watch Series 5,  there is a feature which allows you to keep your screen always on. As you can imagine with Display Always On, your Apple Watch will eat up a lot more battery.

But older models of the Apple Watch also have extended screen on time functions.

To configure this setting:

1. Start the Watch app on your iPhone.

2. On the “My Watch” tab, tap “General.”

3. Tap “Wake Screen.”

4. Tap “Wake for 15 seconds.”

You can also turn off the Wake Screen on Wrist Rise feature. The screen automatically turns on any time it detects wrist movements such as typing on a keyboard. You can significantly improve it by turning this off.

2) Update to the latest Watch OS

Many times after an OS upgrade, people complain about battery life but in most cases that can be traced to some of the settings we are talking about here.  In general, updating to the latest Watch OS will improver your battery life.

  • To see if you need an update, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and go to My Watch > General > Software Update.

  • If an update is available, connect your iPhone to Wi-Fi, attach the charger to your Apple Watch (make sure it has at least 50% charge), and update wirelessly.

3) Watch BlueTooth, Wi-Fi and Cellular Useage

All Apple Watches have WiFI and Bluetooth connectivity. From the Apple Watch Series 3, you can also get cellular-enabled Apple Watches. All of these forms of connectivity use a lot of battery life, particularly cellular connections. If you are concerned about battery only turn on cellular when you need it (like when you do NOT have your iPhone in your pocket). Otherwise, continually dinging cell towers can quickly drain your battery. Likewise, you can save even more battery life by disabling the WiFI and Bluetooth connections through using Airplane Mode on your watch if you do not need those connections, or, if you are on a long plane flight (after the pandemic!).

4) Streaming Music on Your Apple Watch

It is probably a waste of valuable battery time to stream music from your watch when your iPhone is nearby!  Streaming music on your Apple Watch is a huge battery drain. The Apple Watch has 8-16 GB of storage, so download some music to it to save battery life and play those songs instead of going out to the net on Wi-Fi or cellular

  1. Open the Watch app on iPhone

  2. Tap the My Watch tab

  3. Tap Music

  4. Add Music from Playlists and Albums. You can also directly search through your library and tap to add songs.

5) Beware of Unnecessary Notifications

Getting notifications on your Apple Watch is one of its best features. Often times, it is how I first learn of an important text message or late breaking news. But remember, these notifications not only light up your screen, but also activate the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular functions on the Watch draining your battery.

In the  Apple Watch app on your iPhone turn off any notifications that you really do not need.

6) Stop Exercising :)

Okay, not really!

If you use your Apple Watch to exercise, Power Saving Mode is a great way to save battery life. If you are working out in a gym you can turn off the heart rate sensor while also not recording calories as accurately. Fortunately, most gyms have these metrics built-in to their cardio machines, and they’re nearly as accurate as the sensors in your Apple Watch.

To enable Power Saving Mode for the Workout app, go to the Settings app on your Apple Watch, tap General -> Workout, and turn on the switch next to Power Saving Mode.  Make sure you also end all workouts after you complete them. Your Apple Watch may still leave this feature on which will use additional battery life.

7) UnPair and Re-Pair the Apple Watch

IMG_4670-370x800-1.png

Getting back to Larz's issue.  None of the other suggestions made much headway in solving the battery issue so he went to a bigger hammer! One of  the most common causes of Apple Watch battery drain is OS update glitches. From connection disruption to rogue processes, un-pairing and unpairing your Apple Watch can get everything back to normal:

  1. Open the Watch app from your iPhone Home screen.

  2. Tap on your Apple Watch at the top of the screen.

  3. Tap the information button (looks like an “i” with a circle around it)

  4. Tap the Unpair Apple Watch.

  5. Tap Unpair Apple Watch to confirm.

You can also unpair directly on the Apple Watch:

  1. Press the Digital Crown to switch to the app launcher.

  2. Select the Settings app.

  3. Tap on General

  4. Tap on Reset at the bottom. Don’t worry you can reload all data from your last sync)

  5. Tap on Erase all contents and settings.

  6. Enter your Passcode to confirm.

Once you have unpaired your watch you can simply re-pair it like a new watch and then set-up your apps and settings to suit your lifestyle.

Dropbox Password Manager

I've been a fan and user of Dropbox for many years, and sure appreciate its storage features. Here's an article discussing a free password manager they soon will be offering. First off, I don't like the idea of storing my passwords on a server somewhere. Having said that, I like the feature that if Dropbox's servers should get hacked, the hackers still can't get into your stored passwords because your passwords are protected by your own, individual password.

Might be something to consider, if you are looking for a password manager -- and the price certainly is right.

Jim Hamm

Which Photo Editor?

I am promoting Affinity Photos now as the default editor to use for any serious photo editing. There’s an extension to Photos called External Editors For Photos ($1 in the App Store) that is needed if you open a photo in Photos and then want to edit it with Affinity Photos. The extension saves the edit back into Photos. Otherwise, you would have to save the edited image to a file and import it back into Photos. Affinity Photos is as complicated as Photoshop. There are dozens of free video tutorials both on the vendor’s website and in YouTube. The basics of photo editing in Photos is still quite useful, and just selecting the auto option for all tools might be sufficient. But to go beyond the basics, you need Affinity Photos that takes you into Layers and Masks. What’s handy about Affinity Photo is that you can configure the layout to look exactly like Photoshop. Affinity Photo works the same for both Mac and Windows. If you are into astrophotography, there are special tools built-in just for that with additional free macros available. The real advantage of Affinity Photo is editing in real time - to see the changes to the image as you make an adjustment. Affinity Photo also works on the iPad. The base price for Affinity Photo is $50.

Pixelmator Pro is another photo editor alternative and works quite well with Photos as an external editor without the need for the Photos extension “External Editors For Photos” to save the image back into Photos. Pixelmator Pro doesn’t have as many features as Affinity Photos. The layout for Pixelmator Pro is quite different than Photoshop, and for some it might actually be easier to adjust to. Some of the features in Pixelmator Pro might be easier to work with than similar features in Affinity Photo. Pixelmator Pro is designed exclusively for the Mac, and it also works on the iPad. The base price for Pixelmator Pro is $40.

Both of the above work with the new M1-powered Macs, and both are available in the App Store.


John R Carter Sr



How Real is the M1 mac SSD Excess Wear..Short Life Issue?

Macworld said it is not a serious problem but suggested doubling the base RAM and SSD as insurance.

Let me defer to a 2014 article on this subject (https://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-check-and-enable-trim-on-a-mac-ssd--mac-60738):

You may have noticed that even though you buy SSDs of a certain capacity, you have much less space actually available to use. A typical 256GB SSD will have only about 240GB available for use, for instance.

The reason is that SSD manufacturers set aside a percentage of the drive’s space for the firmware to use as a buffer for Garbage Collection and other maintenance tasks. This is called Over-Provisioning and it’s necessary for making sure that the drive’s performance doesn’t degrade significantly as it fills up.

As a general rule, the more free space there is on an SSD, the better it will perform.

It makes sense to me not to let the free space on an SSD get below 20% for a variety of reasons. Even accessing a spinning drive slows down a lot when the free space gets below 10GB. The drive is used for more than just storing your files. There is a a need for temporary cache, log files come and go, Time Machine needs space to store temporary backups of incremental changes made to anything, there is definitely a requirement for a dedicated swap space, and there is a need for a minimum amount of 20GB for any major OS upgrade. So yes, having a lot of free storage space is very important, and I think that less than 100GB of free space for any size SSD is pushing it.

Keep in mind that the SSD lifetime is marked by read/write cycles, not by how much you put on it or how long it is used.

How storage is accessed on an SSD is very different than how it is done on a spinning drive. Once you write on a cell, you can’t just write over it with new data, so deleting a file leaves a “hole” that can’t be written to until TRIM does its thing (see my NOTE below). This is also called garbage collection. TRIM periodically goes through the entire storage area reorganizing the entire block where there is a hole. This process uses read/write activity, which ultimately reduces the number of read/write cycles left. Finally, TRIM only works when the computer is idle, and that’s another reason to not turn off the computer when you’re not using it. Let the display go to sleep, but not the computer.

What the news isn’t talking about is how long you can leave your computer turned off before an SSD starts losing its data. In order to keep the data on the SSD, it needs power to refresh the state of every active cell (this is not a read/write cycle). Without refreshing, an active cell just might revert back to its steady state value.

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/simple-questions-what-trim-ssds-why-it-useful/

ssd_trim_2.png

My recommended settings for Energy Saver:

PastedGraphic-1.png

If you have external hard drives attached, allowing them to sleep reduces energy consumption, but it also means you have to wait for it to spin up before you can access it. So that’s a choice for the user. But not letting the computer go to sleep should not be an option.

Rebooting a computer probably needs to be done once a week.

Turning off a computer probably only needs to be done when you know you’re not going to be using it for more than a day.

A computer with an SSD placed in storage for months might not mean it will still have all files intact the next time you turn it on.

NOTE: TRIM used to be an application that had to be enabled in an OS if an SSD was installed. Most new SSD’s today have TRIM built in to the device making it unnecessary to enable TRIM in the OS. All SSD’s made by Crucial have TRIM built in. It would not be wise to enable the OS copy of TRIM if the SSD has TRIM built in.

I have not seen a case where TRIM is required to be installed and enabled on any Mac computer since as far back as 2014.

When I swap out a hard drive with an SSD or add an external SSD, I only use Crucial drives. Other vendors, such as Samsung and OWC, are known to have TRIM in the SSD. It may now be the case for all vendors, but I have not confirmed it.

One myth about preserving or “restoring” an SSD is to reformat it now and then. DON’T! This only subtracts from the available read/write cycles. If you need to “recycle” or repurpose an SSD, just delete what is on it. TRIM will take care of “wiping” the disk. Since there is no magnetic “residue” on an SSD like there is on a spinning drive, there is no chance of recovering “lost” data in an SSD once TRIM has done its job.

John R Carter Sr

VPN Vulnerability

This past year we haven't traveled or had the necessity of using a VPN on public wifi, but with the vaccine inoculating more people, that, hopefully, will soon change. In times past I've used a VPN often, and have purchased several. This article discusses a vulnerability in several VPNs, most of which are free. Should you have an interest in reading more about this, following are a couple of links to take a look at:

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/privacy/2021/03/21-million-free-vpn-users-data-exposed/

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/report-free-vpns-leak/#Timeline-of-Discovery-and-Owner-Reaction

I don't like the concept of using a free VPN -- or a free "anything", for that matter -- as how can one expect a company to provide an expensive service for 'free'? I purchase any VPN I use, and do not pick an obscure VPN, as most of the ones in the article are. I read reviews of any VPN I'm interested in.

Anyway, if you do use a VPN, be cautious in what you use.

Jim Hamm

Free Up Space in Gmail

If you use Gmail, it's amazing how quickly old emails can accumulate and take up storage space you might need for new emails. For your possible interest, here is an article discussing how to delete old emails you no longer need and free up space.

I've used this technique often, and it is nice how easily one can delete old emails and free up space.

Jim Hamm

Apple on Mars?

Apple on Mars? Well, somewhat. Read this article, "The CPU from Apple's iMac G3 is powering NASA's Perseverance rover." I once had a G3 and liked it. But it got too old and slow, and couldn't keep up with the times, so I had to move on. But, as the following article mentions, NASA is more interested in reliability than in speed, and this CPU apparently is quite reliable, especially for a technology that is 23 years old.

Can't imagine the technology it takes, though, to control and communicate with a mobile unit that is 139 million miles from earth.

Jim Hamm

https://www.engadget.com/nasa-perseverance-powerpc-750-171516292.html

Two-Factor Authentication


Two-factor authentication is a feature that secures your device from being accessed if it is lost or stolen. It is also a great hindrance for anyone with diminished mental acuity. So this should only be enabled if you still have a sharp mind and a good memory. If you don’t enable two-factor authentication, then you probably should chain your mobile device to your body, right?

Once two-factor authentication has been enabled and active for two weeks, it cannot be undone. Not even by Apple.

Wait! It can be undone. However, the only way to deactivate two-factor authentication is to deactivate the device. This means restoring it to its factory settings - and it wipes the device clean. When you turn it back on and set it up again, do not enable two-factor authentication.

John Carter Sr.

macOS Big Sur

I had an unusual experience last eve in doing an update to Big Sur, which I've had installed since it came out, with no issues. I clicked the update, and it said downloading Big Sur, at a 3.86 GB download! Hmmm? Then, at 400 MB down it stopped downloading. Wouldn't budge. So I closed the window, clicked update again, and the download started over. After about an hour I completed the installation, again, of macOS Big Sur on my 2019 MBA.

This morning, Big Sur opened up and works just fine again, as it did before the update. Just an 'interesting' experience, if that's the correct word.

Jim Hamm

Apple Safe Browsing

At some date in the future we will get to iOS 14.5, according to the following article:

https://the8-bit.com/apple-proxies-google-safe-browsing-privacy/#htg=1498271

What is really interesting in the article -- to me, anyway -- is the approach Apple will take to help us have a safer browsing experience. Take a look and see. Kinda neat! Of course, Google isn't too fond of this idea, as it would much prefer to follow what you're doing and showing you some ads.

Another approach to browsing the web is to use a search engine that doesn't track your browsing, such as DuckDuckGo. On the other hand, here is a contra thought: right now the web is free, and is paid for, I suppose, by ads directed to people. Block the ads, and revenue goes away. What might this mean to us long term, I wonder?.

Jim Hamm