Have you recently unwrapped a new Mac from its beautiful Apple packaging? Check out the below list of articles published throughout December 2014 on the topic of 'Getting started on your Mac'. Hopefully you will find at least some of the information in these articles of use.
Need help to get started? iTandCoffee will soon be scheduling the next series of Getting to Know your Mac classes for early 2015. Register your interest here. Need help to get set up? Why not book an appointment with iTandCoffee.
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Why not also check out iTandCoffee's free videos and guide covering parental controls on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Please don't wait until something bad happens to your child to finally take an interest in what they do on their device. Every parent needs to read this article, then check their children's mobile devices to see if they are using the listed apps.
Alan H says: I have a problem with one of my apps – The Age digital – it has been working beautifully until now, but no more!
Answer
The Age iPad app experiencing problems 8/1/2015 0 Comments Our first Handy Hint for 2015 - a great guide to taking better photos with your iPhone or iPadiTandCoffee's first Handy Hint for 2015 is now available on the iTandCoffee website and will appear in this week's Handy Hint newsletter (due out Friday 9/1/15). (Are you a subscriber? Subscribe here!) This handy hint offers a fantastic, simple guide to how to take better photos on your iPad and iPhone - how to avoid those blurred and poorly focussed photos, and how to use some great features that you may not yet have discovered. Check it out now! Note. This hint is available to all iTandCoffee readers until Jan 23rd, after which it becomes a 'members-only' resource for iTandCoffee Club members. Find out more about The iTandCoffee Club here! 7/1/2015 1 Comment Ah, Telstra - big fail again.After months helping a client resolve drawn-out issues with their Telstra email and billing, after bringing in the Ombudsman, after Telstra confirms to us and the Ombudsman in mid-Dec 2014 that the problems are absolutely, definitely, completely, FULLY resolved, and we agree a final compensation amount for the client to 'close' the matter ... ... Telstra send yet another bill for the cable internet service that was terminated months ago. Groundhog day!
My head hurts from hitting it against the Telstra brick wall! I am still struggling to understand how, when I could look at the Bigpond website and see that the client's supposedly terminated account was still set up for billing, Telstra could not see the same thing - no matter how many times it was raised and they were asked to fix it. Even though, because of the Ombudsman's involvement, we has finally been escalated to a 'Complex Complaints' team here in Melbourne, we could still not get the Telstra representative from that team to accept that what we were seeing meant that the problem was not yet resolved. Even sending screen shots of their own Telstra website screens, showing the account billing details that were not supposed to exist, would not sway the representative from his adamant assertions that the account would no longer bill. Of course, it did - one full week after the Ombudsman send the final 'resolution of complaint' letter to us, and the matter was supposedly fully resolved and closed. And the response from the Telstra representative today nearly two weeks after we asked that the complaint be re-opened (and several months after the problem was first alerted to Telstra)? "Regarding being billed for the BigPond Cable service on account number nnnnnnn I have checked and have determined that when the email addresses were reconnected it unfortunately was reconnected as a full service and not just a email service." To use one of my kids' favourites terms, "No sh%t Sherlock." Why did have to take so many calls and emails to work this out when the evidence was there all along? And of course, we got no apology or acknowledgement that he had got it wrong. As a Telstra customer and shareholder, I am appalled by the money that was wasted on just this issue - the number of resource hours that were required and solve just this problem was so ridiculous and unnecessary. Multiply that by the number of others suffering the same torture at Telstra's hands! A problem shared by many In just the last couple of weeks, I have spoken to two local families whose main Telstra email accounts were just cut off by Telstra - with no explanation, and with no request from them as the customer to do so. In both cases, this caused ENORMOUS stress and resulted in hours and hours of frustrating calls to Telstra, and the loss of emails. Neither sought financial compensation from Telstra for the problems caused - something I would have insisted upon. I know so many of you reading this rant will have the same types of stories, of similar dealings with Telstra or another Telco. Please feel free to share your story in the comments below. I can't guarantee that 'a problem shared' will be 'a problem halved', but I would love to hear of your experiences. If you need some help with an existing Telstra (or another Telco) matter, iTandCoffee may be able to help. Just call 1300 885 420. Now, this post is about a topic that many of you would probably rather skim over (or ignore) whenever you come across it. But I implore you to read on, and make sure you do not end up in a similar situation to that which befell someone I know this week. Three years gone in a moment A very good friend called me this week about a family crisis. Her uni-aged son's 3-year-old MacBook Pro would not start up properly. He had lots of uni assignment work on it - in fact several years worth of all sorts of data that was very important to him. In particular, he desperately needed to access his almost-due assignments for his summer uni subjects. Unfortunately, something drastic had happened and had left all the data on his hard drive 'scrambled' ... ... and he did not have a backup! He took his Macbook to the Apple Genius Bar in the hope that at least some of his data could be rescued. Sadly, the only thing that could be done with the MacBook was to restore it to factory settings, with the loss of everything - the worst possible outcome for him. It is so devastating when this sort of thing happens to our kids (let alone to ourselves), potentially negatively impacting their studies and results. I have seen similar devastation far too often, when visiting clients who have lost years worth of precious family photos and family documents due to computer/device failure or theft. In too many cases, it takes a disastrous event like this one to highlight the value of the information and content that our computers contain, and that we perhaps have no 'insurance policy' covering our valuable and irreplaceable digital property. For our kids, it always seem to happen at the worst time - when they were just about to submit that assignment or project that they had been working on for weeks or months; or perhaps when they are in VCE, studying for their final exams. It has been an incredibly difficult lesson for my friend's son to have to learn: that all computers and mobile devices can fail, sustain damage, break, or be stolen. Content can even be accidentally deleted. In our family alone, we have had three computers suffer damage or hard drive issues in the past 2 years. Additionally, mobile devices have been dropped down the toilet and on the floor, resulting in the need for replacement. Luckily for us, the data from the destroyed/malfunctioning devices was able to be restored to new replacement devices from backups. An iTandCoffee plea to parents and students (and anyone else!) Please pass on this story and the following advice to your school and uni-aged children, as well as heeding it yourself ...
Backup Options Backups do not need to be a pain in the proverbial. Backups can set up to occur automatically over WIFi to a backup drive (such as Apple's Time Capsule), via USB to a external hard disk drive, or even using a cloud-based service such as Dropbox, iCloud, or Google Drive (just to name a few). All Mac computers have a Time Machine feature that allows you to easily set up a regular backup to a external device - a backup that can happen hourly, without you having to do anything. I recommend using more than one of these backup options for the really important digital content on your computer, such as your photos. Keep in mind that, should you be robbed or suffer a fire, you may lose BOTH your computer AND any backup drive that is attached to it. For my important digital content on my computer, I have three main backups - (1) to my Time Capsule hourly, (2) to a portable HDD monthly, which I then carry in my handbag and (3) to Dropbox for my important files (which also) then gives me access to all these file from all my computers and devices) On iPads and iPhones, iCloud backup can be used to automatically back up these devices on a daily basis - without having to plug in to any computer. This is more effective than iTunes backups to a computer, which tend to be done less regularly. Are you interested in attending a free session on this topic? Depending on the level if interest, iTandCoffee will look to run a free special information session for students and their parents early in the new school/uni year, covering backup and cloud storage options and how to set them up. Register interest by emailing backups@itandcoffee.com.au, providing a contact phone number and any preferences for day/date/time details in Feb/Mar. Need further help or advice? For help setting up backups or using/understanding cloud-based services, please don't hesitate to contact iTandCoffee on 1300 885 420 or email enquiry@itandcoffee.com.au. When spending time up in North-East Victoria this week as big winds hit on a very hot day, we noticed smoke in the direction that we were heading. So, I went straight to the FireReady App on my iPhone to check what fires were in the region. The FireReady App is a must-have app for everyone, regardless of where you live - especially on a day like today in Melbourne, where we have high winds and an expected top of 41°. You can set up 'Watch Zones' for particular areas, and receive updates (via a notification on your mobile device) of any fire activity in the area, choosing which types of events you wish to be notified of (i.e. bushfires, house fires, hazardous materials, planned burns). Get the iPhone/iPad version of the App here. Get the Android version of the App here. Something that has been on my 'to do' list for such a long time is to do a re-assessment of my contents insurance cover. In out past house moves, I have done this - but now that we have been in one place for a long time, our 'contents inventory' is nowhere near up to date! Well, over the Christmas break I found a FANTASTIC iPhone and iPad app that allows you to create a visual inventory of ANYTHING - including your home contents, things in storage, collections, work documents and files, or anything else for which you need an inventory! You can even add a $value to each item in your inventory and import or export lists of items. It allows you to set up 'sub-locations' within 'locations' (for example, to categorise your home contents on a per room basis). The App is called Sortly, and it is currently free in the App Store. Here is the description provided by its developer. Never lose anything again. Sortly is the ultimate things-organizer app that makes it fun and easy to keep track of all of your physical things. Never waste time searching for anything again. Access your inventory from anywhere with our cloud service. (I'm thinking this might be a great job to give my almost 16yo son to do over the holidays for some holiday spending money!!)
iTandCoffee has compiled a huge list of great articles about iPads, iPhones, Macs and other topics of interest to iTandCoffee clients and subscribers. These articles have been categorised by topic, so that they provide a great resource for those wishing to explore these areas further. Below are my particular favourites from the month's 'scooped' articles. Some of them reflect my 'geekiness', so may not be everyone's 'cup of tea'. But there are some really good tips about great apps and features in the full list - it's really worth checking out. If you are an iTandCoffee member, log in and check those that you are interested in. Not a member yet? Why not join today! Favourites for Dec 2015iPad and iPhone (click here to access these articles)
Mac (click here to access these articles)
All Articles Scooped December 2014 - topic links |
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