Do you use Pandora, the music streaming service? To listen to Pandora do you open a web browser and visit the Pandora website? If so, consider using Hermes instead. Hermes is a free application which you would install on your Mac. Hermes works with both free and paid Pandora accounts. While Pandora offers their own Mac app, it only works if you have a paid Pandora account, called a Pandora One account. Additionally, the Pandora app relies on Adobe Air. This isn’t bad, but it makes it a bit tougher to get installed and working. Hermes currently requires OS X Mavericks (aka OS X 10.9). Hermes is not perfect, but it works very well in my experience. Download Hermes, login with your Pandora username and password and you are ready to use it. All of your Pandora stations will appear. Hermes has a small window that is easy to slide out of the way when you aren’t using it.
What is Xfinity Wifi And Why Does My Mac Always Connect To It?
Have you noticed wireless networks named XFINITY, xfinitywifi or CableWiFi? Does your Mac keep connecting to these networks? Here’s an explanation about what these wireless networks are as well as some information about when you might want your Mac to connect to these networks. Read More from “What is Xfinity Wifi And Why Does My Mac Always Connect To It?”
Apple Will Service Macs, iPhones and iPads For 5 Years
Did you know that Apple only services Macs, iPhones, iPad and iPod for 5 years? Apple uses the term vintage to describe products that have been discontinued for more than 5 years. An Apple support article states that “Vintage products are those that have not been manufactured for more than five years and less than seven years ago.” Once they hit the 7-year mark Apple refers to the product as obsolete. Read More from “Apple Will Service Macs, iPhones and iPads For 5 Years”
How To Hard Reset An iPhone Or iPad
Did your iPhone or iPad freeze and stop responding? If so, perform a hard reset. This procedure will fix many small issues. If your device continues to freeze then you may need to take more extensive measures, like performing a factory reset or taking it to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store.
Here are instructions on how to perform a hard reset if your device has a Home button. If your device doesn’t have a Home button then follow the instructions below.
- Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button on your device until your iPhone or iPad turns off and then displays the Apple logo as it starts up.
The Home button is the big round button on the front of your iPhone or iPad at the bottom of the display.
The Sleep/Wake button is located on the top edge of the most iPhones and iPads. However, starting with the iPhone 6, the button moved to the right edge of the iPhone.
Your iPhone or iPad should start up. Hopefully, it will work properly.
[Update early 2018: Apple introduced a new way to perform a hard reset, in 2017, with the introduction of the iPhone X since it was the first iPhone to not include a Home button.
Instead of holding down two buttons until the iPhone restarts, you now need to press two buttons quickly and then press and hold a third button. This takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it you’re good to go.
- Quickly press and release the Volume Up button
- Quickly press and release the Volume Down button
- Press and hold the side button (aka the Sleep/Wake button) until the Apple logo appears.
You must press the volume up then volume down pretty quickly, but not at the same time. The side button is what Apple calls the Sleep/Wake button. After a few seconds of holding the side button, the iPhone should restart.]
Use Your iPhone 6 With One Hand Using Reachability
Do you own an iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus or a 6S Plus? If so, use Reachability to make it easier to use the phone with only one hand. The iPhone 6 (or 6S) and iPhone 6 Plus (or 6S Plus) come with 4.7″ and 5.5″ screens, respectively. Apple added a feature named Reachability to make it easier to use these larger phones with only one hand. This feature is enabled by default, but it can be disabled. To invoke this feature double tap the Home button. Make sure you only use a gentle tap, don’t actually depress the Home button. When you invoke Reachability the entire screen shifts downward. The lower half disappears off-screen and the upper half is now within reach. How handy! Read More from “Use Your iPhone 6 With One Hand Using Reachability”
iPhone’s Control Center Let’s You Access The Flashlight, Calculator And More
Do you know you can access your iPhone or iPad’s Flashlight, Clock, Calculator, Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb feature and more with only two taps? All of these features are available via the iOS Control Center. In iOS 7 through iOS 11, you can to quickly access the Control Center, tap on the Home button on the face of the device, then slide your finger up from the very bottom of the glass. You’ll lift a curtain to reveal the Control Center. Use the image below as a guide.
If you have an iPhone without a there is a new Home button, such as the iPhone X, or if you’ve upgraded to iOS 12 then you need to know about the new way to access the Control Center. The new way is to swipe down from the upper right corner of your device. This works if the screen is locked or not.
Read More from “iPhone’s Control Center Let’s You Access The Flashlight, Calculator And More”
iPad Magician
I know you subscribe to my Tech Tips to get pearls of wisdom and nuggets of knowledge. Not this week. This Tech Tip is just for fun. Hope you enjoy it. Check out this iPad magician.
Quickly Access Your iPhone Camera
Will you be taking photos with your iPhone or iPad this holiday season? If so, here is the fastest way to access your device’s camera. Press the Home button on the face of the iPhone. Do you see the camera icon in the lower right corner? Press on this icon and simultaneously slide your finger towards the top of the screen. You will see a visual effect which makes it appear as though you are lifting a curtain to reveal the camera. Use the image below as a guide. Voilà, you’re able to use the camera. It’s that easy.
Enable Find My iPhone
If you own an iPhone make sure your Find My iPhone feature is enabled. Find My iPhone is one of the services offered by Apple’s iCloud service. The Find My iPhone feature helps you locate your iPhone, lock it and potentially erase it. Best of all, Find My iPhone is a theft deterrent since this feature makes your phone essentially useless to anybody else. Specifically, it enables a feature that Apple calls Activation Lock. However, all of these benefits require that you enable this feature before the iPhone gets misplaced or stolen. Read More from “Enable Find My iPhone”
How To Restore A Time Machine Backup On To A New Hard Drive
At some point, everyone will experience a hard drive failure. When this happens, a Time Machine backup can save your data. Here are instructions on how to restore all applications and personal files from a Time Machine backup onto a new hard drive. Time Machine is a backup application made by Apple. It comes bundled with every Mac that shipped with OS X 10.5 or higher. It can be used to backup the contents of your Mac’s internal hard drive to an external hard drive or to an Airport Time Capsule. I’ve written previously about the importance of backups and how to set up and monitor Time Machine. The restore process requires you to first install OS X onto the new hard drive and then restore everything from your most recent Time Machine backup.
(If you’re looking for instructions on how to restore an entire Time Machine backup on to a new Mac read this.)
Read More from “How To Restore A Time Machine Backup On To A New Hard Drive”
How To Identify Your iPhone or iPad Model
Have you ever wondered how to identify which iPhone or iPad model you have? While there are some physical characteristics that might help you generally differentiate one model from another, these differences are often subtle and aren’t always sufficient. Here are a two ways to definitively identify your iOS device. Read More from “How To Identify Your iPhone or iPad Model”
How To Set Up CrashPlan On Your Mac
CrashPlan is a backup application, made by Code42. I use it and recommend it to create off-site, cloud-based, backups. To backup to Code42’s servers, one needs a subsciption. Code42 used to offer both home and business plans, but they stopped selling home plans in August 2017.
A Business subscription costs $10 per computer per month and provides unlimited storage.
With a paid subscription to CrashPlan, CrashPlan runs every 15 minutes and creates multiple backup copies of your files. Every time you edit a file a new backup copy is made.
Consider Buying Your Cable Modem
If Comcast is your Internet Service Provider, you are likely renting your cable modem from them. In the Seattle area, the rental fee is currently about $10 per month. If you’re renting, you should consider buying your own cable modem. Here are the pros and cons of renting a cable modem, as I see them. Read More from “Consider Buying Your Cable Modem”
Clean Your ScanSnap
Do you use a Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner? Have you ever cleaned it? I recently cleaned my ScanSnap and it fixed a paper feed issue I was having. I’ve previously recommended Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners. I’ve owned my ScanSnap S500M since the beginning of 2007 and I’ve never cleaned it since it has performed nearly flawlessly. This summer, after racking up over 7000 scans, my ScanSnap started to have problems properly feeding documents, so I looked at the manual for recommended cleaning instructions. I learned that it’s recommended that you clean your ScanSnap every 1000 scans! Read More from “Clean Your ScanSnap”
How To Scan Using Image Capture
You should consider using Apple’s easy-to-use Image Capture. Image Capture can both copy photos off of digital cameras and control a scanner to scan paper documents. Today’s tech tip focuses only on scanning. Image Capture can control hundreds of scanners made by Brother, Canon, Epson, HP and other manufacturers. Image Capture is one of many free applications that comes bundled with every Mac computer. I typically prefer to use Image Capture instead of the scanning applications that come bundled with scanners. In other words, if you already have a scanner connected to your Mac, simply open Image Capture and see if it’s able to communicate with your scanner without doing any additional setup. [Note: Check out my Tech Tip about how to scan using your iPhone or iPad if you don’t have a scanner connected to your Mac.] Read More from “How To Scan Using Image Capture”
How To Recover Deleted iPhone Text Messages
Have you ever deleted a text message from your iPhone and then quickly regretted doing this? If so, here’s an overview of some options that might let you recover that text message. Unlike deleted voicemail messages or deleted email messages, there isn’t a Trash or Deleted Items folder for text messages. In other words, you can’t quickly recover your text message from your iPhone yourself. Instead, your can try to recover the text message from another device or to buy a product like Mac FoneLab or iExplorer, which currently cost $90 and $35, respectively. Read More from “How To Recover Deleted iPhone Text Messages”
Magnifying Glass With Light iPhone App
Do you ever need a magnifying glass or a bit of light to read a menu or medicine bottle? If so, check out Magnifying Glass With Light or Glasses. Both are free iOS apps for your iPhone. Both of these apps are easy to use, and you would be wise have one on your iPhone.
Glasses has an elegant design and no ads. Magnifying Glass With Light has banner ads across the bottom. If they bug you or if you want to get some advanced features then you could upgrade to Magnifying Glass With Light Pro, which is currently $1.99. Read about the additional features available in the Pro version.
How Often Should You Backup Your Mac?
Clients often ask me how often they should backup their Mac. They also ask me which files they should backup. My answer is short and sweet. Everybody should backup all files on their Mac’s hard drive every day. Why? Because you never knows when disaster will strike and you’ll need to rely on a recent backup to retrieve one or many files. Whether you use your Mac for business or personal purposes, increasingly most of us have sentimental or important files on our computers which need to be backed up so they can be recovered if a disaster occurs. Read More from “How Often Should You Backup Your Mac?”
Comcast Extends Low-Cost Internet Service to Low-Income Seniors
I recently learned that Comcast has offered a low-cost Internet service for low-income families since early 2014. Comcast calls this the Internet Essentials program. As of April 2015, Comcast indicates that they’ve enrolled 480,000 families across the country. In August, 2015, Comcast started a pilot program in San Francisco to extend this program to low-income seniors. I wasn’t able to find a list of requirements for low-income seniors, but the requirements for low-income families indicate the primary requirement is having a child who is eligible for the National School Lunch Program. The monthly Internet service costs $9.95 plus tax and provides speeds of 10 Megabits. If I learn that the low-income seniors service is extended to other cities, I’ll update this Tech Tip.
Taking the Giant iMac Wheel for a Spin
I know you subscribe to my Tech Tips to get pearls of wisdom and nuggets of knowledge. Not this week. This Tech Tip is just for fun. Hope you enjoy it.
If you’ve ever wondered what you could build with a big collection of iMac boxes then check out the Giant iMac Wheel in this YouTube video.