Need to Restart a Mac That Has Frozen? Here’s How

/in /by

It’s extremely uncommon for a Mac to freeze or crash these days, but it can happen. What should you do if your Mac locks up and becomes completely unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard? The trick is to press and hold the power button until the Mac turns off. Wait 5 or 10 seconds, and press it again to turn the Mac back on. You will lose any unsaved changes if you do this, so use it only as a last resort when you can’t restart normally. Look for the power button on the back of a desktop Mac, and at the top right of the keyboard on most laptop Macs. For a recent MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, press and hold the Touch ID button.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

What Can You Store in Apple’s Wallet App? Credit Cards, Boarding Passes, Tickets, and More!

/in /by

Have you wondered what you can do with the Wallet app on your iPhone? Although it started out life called Passbook, Apple soon realized that the only sensible name was Wallet. That’s because it stores digital versions of roughly the same sort of things you might put in a physical wallet: credit and debit cards, store cards, membership cards, and even cash (well, Apple Pay Cash, anyway).

Nearly all airlines can put your boarding passes in Wallet, too, and if you buy something like a concert ticket online, you may be able to add it to Wallet by tapping the “Add to Apple Wallet” button in the confirmation page or email. Having a boarding pass or ticket, which Apple calls a pass, in Wallet makes it easy to scan for a gate attendant.

Here’s how to use cards and passes in Wallet.

Display Your Cards and Passes

The main Wallet screen shows your cards and passes in a scrollable list, with credit/debit cards at the top. (If you’ve set up Apple Pay Cash, it’s treated as a debit card.)

To view more details about a card or pass, tap it.

In the case of a credit/debit card, you see the face of the card and a list of its recent Apple Pay transactions.

For boarding passes for multi-flight trips, you see a single pass in the main list, but after you tap it, you can swipe horizontally to display the pass for each leg of the trip.

Membership cards, such as the ChargePoint card, may work like credit/debit cards in that you need to hold them near a reader to sign in.

In each case, to access settings related to the card or pass, tap the black ••• button at the upper right.

Adding and Using Credit and Debit Cards

Adding a credit/debit card so it can work with Apple Pay starts with tapping the black + button at the upper right of the Wallet screen. From there, follow the prompts—you can scan your card with the camera instead of keying in the data.

If you add more than one card, you’ll want to specify which should be the default for Apple Pay. Go to Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay. Scroll down to Transaction Defaults, and tap Default Card. Tap the desired card. In Wallet, the default card appears with its full face showing, below your other credit/debit cards.

To pay for a purchase with a stored credit/debit card at a payment terminal, put your iPhone right next to the terminal. The iPhone may automatically prompt you to authenticate Apple Pay, but if not, double-click the Home button or, with the iPhone X, XR, XS, or XS Max, double-click the side button. Wallet displays your default card. To authenticate, rest your finger on the Home button or, with the iPhone X models, authenticate with Face ID. To use a non-default card, tap the card pile at the bottom of the screen and then tap the desired card.

Adding and Using Airplane Boarding Passes and Event Tickets

For flights, when you check in and get boarding passes using the airline’s iPhone app, you’ll be given the opportunity to tap an Add to Apple Wallet button. Do that and the boarding pass appears in Wallet, which will also display a notification for it on the Lock screen in the hours before your flight. When you need to show the boarding pass to security or the gate attendant, tap that notification to display the boarding pass with its QR code.

For events, the ticket-seller may display the Add to Apple Wallet button on the confirmation page of the checkout process or attach the tickets to your email receipt. In the latter case, open the message in Mail and tap the attachment to open it, and then tap Add to put it into Wallet. Later, when you arrive at the venue, open Wallet and display the ticket—again with a QR code—to gain entry.

Deleting Cards and Passes

Although you may want to keep some digital tickets for nostalgic reasons, it’s best to clean out old items:

  • To delete a credit/debit card, tap the card to view it and then tap the black ••• button. Scroll down and tap Remove This Card.
  • To remove a pass, go to the bottom of the main Wallet screen and tap Edit Passes. Tap the red delete button for that item, tap the next Delete or Delete All button, and then tap Done at the upper right.

Using Wallet makes it easier to keep your physical wallet slimmer. It can take a few minutes to add your cards and passes initially, but it’s worth the effort.

(Featured image by Two Paddles Axe and Leatherwork on Unsplash)

Social Media: Want to reduce the thickness of your wallet? Try offloading some cards to the Wallet app on your iPhone! Here are the basics:

Use macOS’s Guest Account to Protect Your Privacy from Temporary Users

/in , /by

We’ve all had it happen. “Can I use your Mac for a minute to check my email?” The answer can be “Yes,” but to keep people from poking around on your Mac, have your visitor log in as Guest. To enable the Guest account, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups. If the lock at the bottom left is closed, click it and enter your admin credentials. Then click Guest User in the list, and select “Allow guests to log in to this computer.” To switch to the Guest account, go to the Apple menu and choose Log Out YourAccountName to access the login screen. Your guest can then click the Guest User icon, at which point they’ll have a clean account to work in. When they log out, the account—including any files they created or downloaded—will be deleted, thus protecting their privacy as well.

(Featured image by Apple)

Never Send Someone a Password in Mail or Messages: Do This Instead!

/in /by

One of the big no-nos with passwords is sending them to other people as plain text in email or a text message conversation. You presumably trust your recipient with the password, but what if their email was hacked or phone stolen? Instead, always use a site like 1ty.me or One-Time Secret, which lets you turn a password into a Web link that can be opened only once. Send that link to the recipient, and when they get the password out, they can store it in a secure password manager like 1Password or LastPass.

(Featured image by Kristina Flour on Unsplash)

Here’s How to See Full URLs in Safari’s Smart Search Field

/in /by

By default, Safari on the Mac hides full Web addresses—technically known as URLs—from you, showing just the site name in the Smart Search field at the top of the window. If you click in the field or press Command-L, the full URL appears, which is good for checking that you’re really where you think you should be and not on some dodgy site. It’s also useful if you need to copy just a portion of the URL to share or otherwise work with. To make that check easier, go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and next to Smart Search Field, select “Show full website address.” Then you can verify that the URL looks right with a glance.

(Featured image by Matthew T Rader from Pexels)

The Secret Trick That Lets You Paste Phone Numbers into the Phone App

/in /by

Most iOS apps and many Web sites make phone numbers “hot” so you can tap them to call. But it’s not uncommon to run across a number that’s formatted oddly or broken across a line of text such that it can’t be recognized. Just because iOS can’t recognize it doesn’t mean you have to memorize the number temporarily or flip back and forth to the Phone app to type it in it. Here’s a workaround. Double-tap the start of the phone number to select it, and then drag the rightmost blue handle to extend the selection to the entire number. Tap Copy in the popover that appears to copy it. Then switch to the Phone app, tap Keypad at the bottom, and then tap in the blank white area at the top where typed numbers would appear. When a Paste button appears, tap it, and if the Phone app recognizes the number correctly, tap the green Call button to place the call.

(Featured image by Markus Spiske temporausch.com from Pexels)

Some May Like It Hot… But Your Technology Prefers to Stay Cool

/in /by

When summer brings sunny days and rising temperatures, you may have ditched your business suit for shorts or skirts to stay comfortable, but your technological gear can’t do the same. And keeping your tech cool is about more than comfort—as temperatures rise, performance can suffer, charging may get slower or stop, various components might be disabled, and devices can become unreliable.

How Hot Is Too Hot?

You might be surprised by the recommended operating temperatures for Apple gear—whether you’re talking about an iPhone X or a MacBook Pro, the company recommends staying under 95° F (35° C).

Such temperatures happen regularly throughout the summer. Even in cooler climes, the temperature in a parked car in the sunshine can easily hit 130º F (54º C) in an hour and rise higher as time passes. And no, cracking the windows a couple of inches won’t make a significant difference. We hope you’re already thinking about that with regard to children and pets, but as you can see, tech gear should also be protected. Apple says its products shouldn’t even be stored—turned off—at temperatures over 113º F (45º C).

It’s not just cars you have to think about. Temperatures in homes and offices without air conditioning can also rise higher than electronics would prefer, and that’s especially true for computers that stay on most of the time and aren’t located in well-ventilated areas.

What’s the Danger?

First off, remember that all electronic devices produce their own heat on top of the ambient heat in the environment, so the temperature inside a device can be much, much hotter than outside. The CPU in an iMac can hit 212º F (100º C) under heavy loads.

Temperatures higher than what components are designed for can have the following effects:

  • Chips of all types can behave unpredictably as increased thermal noise (electrons vibrating more) causes a higher bit error rate. Because electrical resistance increases with heat, timing errors can also occur.
  • Lithium-ion batteries discharge well in high temperatures, but the increased rate of chemical reactions within the battery will result in a shorter overall lifespan.
  • As devices heat and cool, the uneven thermal expansion of different materials can cause microscopic cracks that can lead to a variety of failures over time.

Some heat-related problems are temporary, so when the device or component cools down, it will resume working correctly. But others, particularly drops in battery life—are irreversible and particularly worth avoiding.

When a Mac gets too hot, it will spin up its fans in an attempt to keep its internal components cool. If your Mac’s fans are ever running at full tilt, first quit apps you aren’t using, particularly those that might be CPU-intensive and thus creating a lot of heat. If that doesn’t make a difference, restart it to make sure the problem isn’t some rogue process. If the fans come back on at full speed quickly, shut it down and let it cool off for a bit. In the worst case, an overheated Mac will start acting unpredictably or crash.

iOS devices don’t have fans, so they employ other coping mechanisms. If your iPhone or iPad gets too hot, the device will alert you.

Apple says you might notice some of the following behaviors:

  • Charging, including wireless charging, slows or stops.
  • The display dims or goes black.
  • Cellular radios enter a low-power state. The signal might weaken during this time.
  • The camera flash is temporarily disabled.
  • Performance slows with graphics-intensive apps or features.

If you’re using Maps on an overheating iPhone for GPS navigation in the car, it may show a “Temperature: iPhone needs to cool down.” screen instead of the map. You’ll still get audible turn-by-turn directions, and the screen will wake up to guide you through turns,

How to Keep Your Tech Cool

For the most part, keeping Apple devices cool just requires common sense, since you’d do the same things for yourself.

  • As Apple’s specifications recommend, avoid using devices when the temperature is over 95º F (35º C). If you can’t avoid it entirely, keep usage to a minimum.
  • Don’t leave devices in cars parked in the sun for long periods of time. If it happens accidentally, let the device cool before using it.
  • Provide good ventilation so air can cool the device. Don’t block ventilation ports in the back of desktop Macs, and don’t use Mac laptops in bed, propped on a pillow, or under the covers. It can be worth vacuuming dust out of ventilation ports every so often.
  • Never put anything on the keyboard of an open Mac laptop.
  • Avoid stacking things on top of a Mac mini.
  • Monitor the temperature of server closets. If they get too hot, keep the door open, add a fan, or run the air conditioning.

Luckily, the temperatures that cause problems for Apple hardware aren’t terribly comfortable for people either, so if you’re way too hot, that’s a good sign your gear is as well.

(Featured image by Alfonso Escalante from Pexels)

Social Media: How hot is too hot for your Apple devices? You may be surprised by the answer.

What If I Copy This Anyway?

What If I Copy This Anyway?

/in /by

You get it. Copying professional photos is illegal. So is speeding. But you do it anyway.

Fair point. And no one at our photo store will stop you from doing either. No really, we won’t stop you from making a copy of a copyrighted photo if you want to. You just can’t do it here. And we can’t do it for you. Doing so could be far more illegal than speeding. A ticket for doing 75 in a 65 will cost you about $225 in Texas. Copying a professional portrait without the photographer’s consent costs about the same, $200… at the least. The penalty can range all the way up to $150,000 per incident. That’s serious.

Copyright law

 

What if you tell us you took the photo or video? Still no. The original doesn’t even have to be marked with a copyright. The law states that any photo that appears to have been taken professionally is subject to copyright protection.

With such a wide net and stiff penalties, you should be hard pressed to find a business willing to risk infringement just to make a few bucks. So, what can you do?

  1. Check the status. Some of the largest creators of studio content, like church directories, school photography corporations, and tourism agencies like cruise lines and theme parks, have no interest in servicing orders after the event. Many offer blanket copyright releases on their websites.
  2. Contact the photographer. They’re the best source for a top-quality reproduction, especially if they still have original masters. If not, they can give us or another agency consent to make copies legally.
  3. Do it yourself. Provisions allow you to scan or duplicate professional photos and videos using your own methods for personal back up or forward compatibility, like transferring a video tape to MPEG so that you can still view it. Of course, you can’t sell or distribute your new copies. That would be trouble.

For more information, come see us. If we can’t make what you need, we usually know who can. On the way, don’t speed.

Apple Issues Voluntary Recall for Certain 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro Units

/in , /by

Heads up! If you’re using an older 15-inch MacBook Pro—the version with lots of ports that predates the current Thunderbolt 3 models—Apple has started a recall program to replace batteries that could explode and catch on fire. (We’re not kidding.) The affected MacBook Pro models were sold primarily between September 2015 and February 2017. To find out if your 15-inch MacBook Pro is affected, enter its serial number into Apple’s recall page. If it is included in the recall, shut it down and stop using it immediately! Contact Apple for a free battery replacement, and if you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

(Image courtesy of Apple)

Can I copy this?

Can I copy this?

/in /by

Copyright. It’s the reason you pay $1.95 for a 5×7 of your own snapshot but $19.50 for a 5×7 from the school portrait company. It exists because photographers, like artists, are heavily invested in the content they create and they have a right to recoup their investment and earn a living. How long they should, or even want to hold that right is debatable but here’s what you need to know about the portrait or professional video that you want duplicated.

First you need to acknowledge that the reason you want the thing (the photo, video, or copies of it) is because you like what someone else made. If you made it, you own it and you can do whatever you want with it. If someone else made it, for money, they own it. At least that’s true for everything made since 1978. Before that, YOU own what you paid someone to make, because you commissioned them to do so… if you were alive then. Anything made later is owned by the person who authored it for their entire life plus 70 years! What if they’re retired or dead? You have to prove, reasonably, that neither they, nor anyone else has interest in collecting money by making another copy for you, or that they can’t reasonably be found.

What’s protected?

Only everything. This is a bit of a sore spot because the law is written to be overly broad in favor of artists and content creators. They’re not required to label something as copyrighted in order for it to be copyrighted. It’s in their best interest to mark it, and most do, but the burden is on us, not them. You may know which of your photos were taken professionally but if you don’t, you have to assume that any photo that appears to have been taken professionally, was.

Studio

Are there exceptions?

Yes. And remember this blanket protection applies only to things created after 1978. Older photos are owned by whomever holds them right now. After that, you can still own the copyright if:

  1. The photographer has given you a written release, which covers a whole set of content, or a license, which details specific terms of use like which ones, what you can and can’t use them for, and for how long.
  2. You own the negatives or original files. In the case of digital photos, context is key. A large group of consecutive image files with similar sizes, subject matter, and metadata would constitute an original collection, whereas a few scanned images would not.
  3. The photographer was employed by you for a long term and compensated as such. For instance, if someone on your staff photographs products for marketing purposes. In this case content ownership should be covered in an employment contract. Unless otherwise stated, the company owns the work and the photographer can claim authorship for portfolio purposes.

Each case is different. We’re versed in copyright laws as they apply to images so bring yours in if we can help!