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Charles Clark is the President |
July/August 2009
Safari 4. The new Safari 4 browser for Mac and PC users has been released and it is fast, very fast. The download is free. Coming in September is OS 10.6 also known as Snow Leopard. The announced price is $29 or $49 for a family pack.
OS X v. 10.6 Snow Leopard. Coming in September is OS 10.6 also known as “Snow Leopard.” The announced price is $29 or $49 for a family pack.
New One-to-One Apple Training Rules. Apple has expanded their person-in-store One-To-One membership. First major change is One-To-One is offered only at the time of purchase of a new Mac at an Apple Store or Apple Online Store. You must choose One-To-One at the time of your new Mac purchase. Current One-To-One members can renew one more year without the purchase requirement. Lapsed member? Sorry, you have to buy a new Mac at Apple.
One-To-One offers overnight transfer of files from your old Mac or PC and installation of new Apple software, both in the right place. You still make one hour appointments for a training session. The requirement for one weekly session is replaced with unlimited appointments provided the new appointment made is after the current One-To-One session. So if you want, you can have hours of training in a day or week, depending on Apple’s available schedule, provided that the sessions are scheduled one at a time. New is “Personal Projects.” For example, if you need more than one hour to build your web site, make a Keynote presentation, or learn that Pro application, you can get a three hour training slot with a Apple Creative trainer. I envision that there will a group of attendees, each with their own project, and one roving trainer to guide you through your questions.
Finally, One-To-One members will have access to the One-To-One web site with many training videos and other aids as well as your scheduling portal.
June 2009
Welcome Kevin O'Connor. Kevin joined our club last year and has offered to help run the club. Therefore, I am pleased to announce Kevin is our latest Assistant Supervisor. He will fill in when a Supervisor is absent from the Learning Center. Kevin’s mother is a Laguna Woods Village resident and he is a resident of Laguna Hills. He recently retired as Director of the Downey Civic Theatre. Kevin has extensive Mac experience, starting with the first Macintosh. Over the years he has had a Mac Plus, LC III, and currently works on a MacBook Pro. Kevin grew up in the circus world where he learned, among other things, how to revive sick animals with a wee bit of brandy. He also attended the same high school that Shell did, Fairfax High, except Shell preceded Kevin by twenty-two years.
If you wish to help the Mac Club please come to Clubhouse 1 at 5:30 p.m. on monthly meeting nights and offer to help set up the projector and other equipment; visit the Learning Center often, and attend our monthly Board meetings. You are always welcome.
Web Browsers. I currently use Safari Version 4 Public Beta. This is the browser that will ship with the next Mac OS, Snow Leopard, hopefully without the ‘Beta’ handle. Being an Apple product, Safari should be a robust browser for you. Firefox 3.0.10 is the latest from the Mozilla Organization, and they have announced version 3.5 to be released soon. Firefox is good to have when your primary browser has an issue loading a particular web page. OmniWeb 5.9.2 and Opera 9 are also powerful browsers in their own right. If you want to try a different browser, please try my long-time favorite, Camino 1.6.7. It is finely tuned for the Mac. I find it worthwhile to have more than one browser handy in case something funny happens in your web browser.
May 2009
Unreliable Mac Fixed. Recently, one of our members confronted her ill-behaving eMac. Over several months the computer would not start up or, if it did, would display a blue screen with stripes of video patterns. When called in to assist, I performed the usual routines: check the power cable, repair disk permissions, reset the parameter random access memory or 'pram' to use the common vernacular. Pram manages the computer settings that must be kept active when the computer is shutdown. Apple lists nineteen settings that need to feed off the trickle charge your computer continues to consumes when it is powered off. Most important is the startup disk setting. I would revive the computer and wonder what processed the computer.
I took it home for further analysis but found nothing wrong. This was the pivotal clue. I remembered a story Murray Massin had told me years ago about his Mac. He had a similar problem but more subtle as I recall. Murray told me that his problem was solved when he replaced his old surge protector whose status light had been off or blinking.
When I checked with the owner of the eMac, I learned that she, too, was using an old surge protector. I suggested that she replace the surge protector with a new one. Voilą! I have not heard from her since. The lesson learned for you, gentle reader, is to look at your power strips or surge protectors and look for blinking or off power lights.
I was reminded of this lesson later when my radio could not tune in some rather powerful station signals. I removed the rather old surge protector and replaced it with a new one. The radio sounded a lot better.
April 2009
Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web. Twenty years ago Tim Berners-Lee, now Sir Timothy, invented the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) in his quest for a better method to link electronic documents between the numerous scientists at the rather large European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. The first Web server ran on a NeXT computer, a computer invented by Steve Jobs. Sir Timothy next envisions a world of linked data including data held in offline databases. Think of Google searching every bit of data in the world. An example is combining genomics data and protein data for an Alzheimer’s cure.
Obsolete iMacs. Three iMacs, G4 700 MHz flat-panel iMacs have been sent to the warehouse for sale. All are in good operating condition. Look for a sale notice in the Globe, in the Village web site or better yet, visit the warehouse on Via Campo Verde to learn about the bidding process. These are the white half-dome iMacs that are elegant looking.
Blogging 101. Last month Anne conducted a Saturday class on blogging. She demonstrated Google’s Blogger. I learned that the actual production of your blog is quite easy. You need a few photos to flatter your earnest remarks on subjects you care about. The cost is zero. The results exceeds expectations. I tried it and I like it.
However, I used Tumblr.com which was recommended by a web site I visit often. My blog can be found at
macmatters.tumblr.com. I thought I would publish hints to make your use of the Mac easier. However, I am currently more interested in the history and events taken that created our current financial upset. I added a short, pithy comment to each link. Try it, you may like it. Some day your data will be linked with other blogs in an meaningful way.
March 2009
2009 Membership. The 2009 membership renewal campaign is over. The club membership, as of mid-February is 361. Thank you for renewing your membership. Welcome to our new members. I urge all to participate in the club activities. You can become an instructor's assistant or an associate Supervisor. Last month I mentioned Margo McCartney, our new 'cookie mom' serving cookies at our general meetings. Another way you can help is to email your thoughts or suggestion to me or Anne. We recently had a member send us an email with a list of topics she would like to see taught in the Learning Center. The degree of difficulty in the list ranged from easy to challenging.
Volunteer. Ted Miller is our newest Associate Supervisor. Ted is a long time Mac user and is competent using the rather complex photo editing software, Photoshop. An associate supervisor is called upon to replace those Supervisors that are absent due to illness or vacation. Welcome Ted.
User Agent. If you are trying to access a bank, brokerage, or insurance website and you are not granted access because you are not using Windows Internet Explorer (and why should you), don't get mad, get even. Safari, Firefox, and Opera have a user agent feature that tells the website your browser application name, version, your operating system, and language that you are using. For example, you can select a user agent from your Mac browser to pretend that you are browsing with Windows Internet Explorer on a PC using Windows Vista. In Safari (v3.2.1), go to Preferences..., click on the Advanced tab, and check 'Show Develop menu in the menu bar.' Under your new Develop menu, select User Agent, roll down to Internet Explorer 6.0. Firefox has a different method of enabling its User Agent. Google search 'user agent.'
February 2009
Member Margot McCartney has taken it upon herself to bring cookies to our general meetings at her own expense. Members of the Village have a reputation for attending events that provide FREE food. This must be the reason for the good turnout at our January meeting. Thank you Margot for the cookies; you are appreciated.
Board members Faye Pearl and Metche Franke have taken over conducting the monthly Beginners Computer Information Session that Murray Massin conducted for several years. Faye and Metche will bring their own ideas to help new computer users have FUN with their Macs. The session is held early in each month. See the Newsletter or our website for future dates.
Anne Clark gave the first Saturday afternoon class on January 24, entitled "How to write a Blog." If there is interest in a Saturday class, different subjects may be offered in future months by different instructors. If you are interested in a Saturday class, and have a class idea, for example Basic Troubleshooting, File Maker Pro, TurboTax, Quicken, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iCalendar, iWeb, Printer Won't Print, Attachments, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, iPods, Google Docs, Blogging, Mail, Safari, WiFi, Skype, iChat, Time Machine - or any other topic - please let us know by sending an email to Anne (aclark@comline.com), subject Saturday Classes, who will share it with the board of directors and the other instructors.
Browser Choices. I use to be a primary user of the Camino browser. Camino is published by the Mozilla Foundation which also publishes Firefox. Camino is specially programmed to work seamlessly on the Mac and it is still a good browser. I then tried Firefox. Firefox is excellent and is gaining a reputation for strong, secure browsing. The current version, 3.05, requires Mac OS 10.4 or higher. The PC version is being adapted by more PC users as they find Internet Explorer is not secure. When Apple's browser Safari reached version 3, I tried that. Safari is excellent, and I now use Safari as my default browser.
January 2009
2009 New Year’s Greetings! Have you heard this, “Had I known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” If you share my sentient, may I suggest we work on a healthy fitness plan. Perhaps 30 minutes a day for three days a week at the Fitness Center followed by computer tasks at home or in the Mac Room. Working on a Mac increases brain function. Who knew? I wish all members a healthy new year. When one has health, the rest of life's vicissitudes will sort themselves out.
Goodbye Apple at Macworld Expo. Steve Jobs will not give the keynote speech at the Macworld Expo 2009, January 5-9, in San Francisco. This will also be the last MacWorld Expo Apple will attend. End of an era. The cancellation is a result of Apple’s getting more consumer exposure in their retail stores. Wim Vermolen will report on his Expo visit in January.
Sick Mac. On a home visit I witnessed a new iMac not working well: no Internet connection and some applications not opening. An inspection of the Desktop showed many individual applications had been moved out of the Application folder to the Desktop. Turned out the grand children were using granddad’s iMac. Moving Applications out of the Applications folder is very poor practice because applications use support files. These support files expect the application to be in the Application folder. When an application is moved, it may not work.
Standard Account. One way to protect your Mac is to create a Standard Account for each guest. Go to the Accounts System Preferences and click the “+” sign in the lower left pane. If you make the guest user a Standard User, their attempts to move application will be greeted by a warning that the user does not have the privilege to do that move. The new Standard user can “mess up” all they want and not affect your personal correspondence and emails. This is also good advice for couples who share a Mac.
December 2008
New Treasurer. Wim Vermolen is the club’s new Treasurer. Since Wim was our Vice-President before he assumed the Treasurer’s position, the Board elected John Hansen to be our new Vice-President.
Hard Drive Management. Some of our members are not using the Dick Utility application to maintain the fitness of their computer files. All members should know how to use First Aid features in Disk Utility: Repair Disk Permissions and Repair Disk. Repair Disk requires the user to reboot from the System CD and choose the Disk Utility application in the menu bar and then select Repair Disk.
Things can go wrong in your computer and you may not sense any problems for a while. Examples of problems are slow opening of files or unusual dialog messages. Last month a member downloaded an iTunes update from Software Update... and ended up losing most of his music files. I assisted him in a Repair Disk Permissions check. The report was long but repairs were successful. The Repair Disk task reported major disk errors. A second run of Repair Disk repaired the disk.
My hypotheses is that errors on the disk drive can result in unpredictable results such as losing files. There is an easier way to check your hard drive.
AppleJack AppleJack is an old friend but for a while there was not a version for the Intel Macs. Now there is. You can find the software at applejack.sourceforge.net. The Read Me is must reading for all users.
AppleJack allows you to check your disk with one command or you may choose an interactive method where you can repair your disk (without a separate System CD) and check each user's cache, preferences and permissions. Our web browsers generate countless cache files which over time will begin to fill the hard drive. A few minutes once a month will keep your Mac snappy.
November 2008
Board Matters. Metche Franke has been elected to our Board. Metche is a retired music teacher and holds a PhD degree. More importantly, she is an enthusiastic Mac owner. She also helps Anne as an teaching assistant when Anne teaches twice a month in our Learning Center.
New Treasurer. John Hansen is retiring as Treasurer effective November 15, 2008. John is a charter member of our Mac Club and has been Treasurer for fifteen years. He has fond memories of attending meetings when there was only one Computer Club which held meetings in a small room in Clubhouse 1. Usually these members owned a Mac or a PC or were wondering about the fuss was about these wonderful personal computers.
John also acted as Membership chair for our club for these many years. Recently, Carol Peterson has assumed this role. Meanwhile, I hope John can relax and enjoy his photography hobby and his extended family.
Wim Vermolen has accepted the Treasures position effective November 15. Until then, Wim is assisting John in processing the checks for members renewals.
Call for Volunteers. Several months ago I made an appeal in our general meeting for members to step up and become more active in our club. Metche showed up at our Board meetings and is now a Board member. Dennis McGovern has volunteered to create a database for our club that will aid our Treasurer, Membership, and Librarian. Dennis is using FileMaker Pro and the early efforts look impressive. Lee Wight, a newcomer, has volunteered to be our software reviewer. This can be a fun job.
If you think you can contribute to our club as an Assistant Supervisor, Librarian, or 'take the newsletters to the post office person,' for example. Our newsletter editor Gladys Greene would welcome an assistant. Perhaps you have a creative skill set that can be used to make our club better. Call me at 837-6080 or email me at cclark@comline.com.
October 2008
Dues are due. We have started accepting membership renewals for 2009. New resident members signing up this year will have memberships expiring 12-31-2009. The number of nonresident members are subject to a quota, maximum of 10% of total membership.
If you are a current nonresident member, applications will be processed only during October on a first come, first served basis until the quota is filled. Please renew during October or your membership may not be accepted due to a full quota.
If you are not a member and not a resident, membership applications will be accepted in November, also subject to our quota. Read the fine print under "Non Resident yearly Dues" in the enclosed membership form.
Your membership dues are important to the financial health of the club. For example,we spend money to keep the Learning Center up and running, pay rental for our Club House 1 meeting place, and purchase software.
New iMacs. We have received four new 24-inch 2.8 GHz iMacs to replace four older Macs. The new iMacs are up and running in the Learning Center. The retired Macs will be collected to the warehouse for sale under sealed bids to the public. The bidding notice will be given in The Globe newspaper at some future date.
Pages. Our dear old reliable AppleWorks software is no longer supported or sold by Apple. If your have it on your Mac, it will still work just fine. Apple now sells an office suite called iWork which contains three programs, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation, respectively). Shell Weinberg has added a class on Pages to his repertoire of monthly classes in the Learning Center. Check the Calendar on the back of each Apple Pealings newsletter for details. In addition, you can view the newsletter at our web site, themacclub.org.
September 2008
Oddball Internet Connection Problem. One fine Wednesday morning I was watching the morning news on TV. Suddenly the picture degraded to snow and the volume of static became very loud. The techies call this event loss of signal or LOS. I promptly turned off the power to the TV. Two hours later, Anne announced that she had lost the Internet connection to her iMac. My reaction was 'not to worry!’ The quick solution is to power cycle the cable modem and the router, if you have one. The power cycle procedure is easy. Unplug the power cable from the cable modem and wait about 30 seconds, then reconnect the power cable to the cable modem. Same procedure for the router. Ha! No Internet!
I called West Coast Internet and they confirmed that my cable modem was connected and working. I called Broadband Services and was told the same thing. I asked for their help to make a house call because my hypotheses was that the interruption to the TV and the lack of Internet connection were related.
John, the cable guy, showed up at the agreed time and looked things over. All was well from his perspective. I thanked him. The problem was up to me to solve. When trouble shooting, break down the pieces or steps to what you are trying to solve. I connected Anne’s iMac directly to the cable modem, bypassing the router. The Internet connection was up! The router became the focus of my attention. Although the router was showing green lights, nothing was happening. The next step was to do a hard reset to the router. A hard reset is not a power cycle. While the router is powered up, I inserted the open end of a paper clip and counted fifteen seconds, withdrew the paper clip, removed the power cord, counted fifteen seconds, reconnected the power cable. After a few seconds, the router's green lights came on and by golly, I had Internet connection. Finally!
July/August 2008
General meetings. There will be no general meetings in July and August. However, the Learning Center will be staffed with no change in hours, and most of the classes will continue. Check the newsletter and the club web site for more details.
Mac OS X 10.5.3 update. I had one problem with updating an old flat-panel iMac to the latest OS X update. The download and installation proceeded without problems. My problem began when the iMac restarted. The screen would not proceed from the revolving ’gear wheel’ officially known as the Indeterminate Progress Indicator. Many troubleshooting tips are available on the web to solve problems. One tip for software installations is to disconnect the USB or FireWire cables to your printer and/or external hard drive. My malcontent iMac was connected to a very complicated HP all-in-one printer. I disconnected the printer cable and proceeded to restart. The iMac completed the install process and displayed a normal Finder window. Finally!
Oddball email problem. A member complained that he could not receive email and requested I take a look at the problem. I opened Mail Preferences... and reviewed the Account Information data. All was well. I then opened the Advanced tab. There I found the checkbox was not checked for 'Remove copy from server after retrieving a message.’ What this meant was that all incoming email collected by his ISP, say West Coast Internet, would remain on their mail server until you remove it or ask them to remove it. If you do not remove the old mail, eventually the email storage space allocated to your account fills up. In this case, the mail server was full and could not function. I corrected the situation by adding the missing check mark and clicking the 'Remove know' button. Since there were over three megabytes of data on the mail server, the erasure took some time. West Coast Internet has pleaded to me that you set your Advanced with the 'Remove copy...' pop-up button to read 'Right away.’ No harm in that. All your email will be transferred to your Mac, and the mail server will have space to collect new mail.