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David McGavock

Installing Mavericks: What you need to know | Macworld - 0 views

  • Before proceeding, be sure to read my article on getting your Mac ready for Mavericks, which covers system requirements and recommendations, as well as a number of tasks you should perform before upgrading in order to help the process go smoothly.
  • If downtime isn’t an option for you, you might consider holding off for the inevitable OS X 10.9.1.
  • After you provide your Apple ID and password, Mavericks will begin downloading. Specifically, the 5.3GB installer application, called Install OS X Mavericks.app, will be saved to your main Applications folder
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  • Alternatively, once you’ve downloaded the Mavericks installer to one computer, you can copy it—over your local network or by using a flash drive, external hard drive, or other media—to your other Macs.
  • Keeping the installer on hand Before proceeding with installation, here’s an important tip: If you run the installer from its default location in the Applications folder, the installation process deletes the installer, presumably to free up the 5.3GB of drive space it occupies. So if, as explained above, you plan to use the installer on other Macs, if you want to create a bootable installer drive, or if you just want to keep the installer on hand, before installing, you should copy the installer to another drive—or at least move it out of the Applications folder.
  • Once you’ve downloaded the Mavericks installer, here are the simple steps involved in installing the new OS:
  • Your Mac will next go through the initial-setup process, and there are few tasks you’ll want to perform when you boot into Mavericks for the first time.
  • as with Mountain Lion and Lion, upgrading to OS X 10.9 presents challenges for a few groups of people.
  • Can you jump directly from 10.5 to 10.9? Apple’s official policy is that you need to purchase and install Snow Leopard (currently $20 for a single-user license or $30 for a family pack) and then upgrade to Mavericks.
  • the Mavericks installer is strict about requiring OS X 10.6.8:
  • If your Internet connection is slow, it will take a long time—perhaps days—to download the 5.3GB Mavericks installer.
  • Organizations will use the same purchasing procedure as always to buy OS X, but they’ll be given one Mavericks redemption code for each purchase contract. After using that code to download the Mavericks installer from the Mac App Store, that copy of the installer can be used on any and all Macs covered by the contract.
  • As with Mountain Lion and Lion, my experience has been that for the typical Mac user with a broadband connection, the process of purchasing, obtaining, and installing OS X continues to be easy and pain-free.
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    "Before Lion (OS X 10.7) debuted in 2011, installing the latest major version of Mac OS X meant buying a disc and slipping it into your Mac's optical drive. But Lion changed all that by making OS X available for direct download, and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) and Mavericks (OS X 10.9) have inherited this distribution method. More specifically, the latest version of OS X is available only as a download from Apple's Mac App Store-and this time around, it's free. This makes it easier and more convenient to upgrade your OS than having to buy and use a DVD or thumb drive, but it also raises a number of questions, and it presents upgrade obstacles for some users. As I've done the past few years, I've compiled this guide to getting and installing Apple's latest OS. Before proceeding, be sure to read my article on getting your Mac ready for Mavericks, which covers system requirements and recommendations, as well as a number of tasks you should perform before upgrading in order to help the process go smoothly. "
David McGavock

iTunes 101: Multiple Devices, One iTunes Account - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • iTunes is limited to authorizing only five computers with each iTunes account
  • if you have created five different user accounts on the same computer, and have authorized iTunes for each user account on that one computer with the same iTunes Account, then you have reached your maximum number of authorizations.
  • once you have iTunes configured with a single  iTunes Account, there does not appear to be a limit to the number of iPods, iPhones, and iPads one can sync to a single iTunes library.
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  • you may notice some strange behavior when you sync your iOS devices: apps seem to disappear and appear at random with each sync.
  • apps that were purchased on one device are being lost, while apps purchased on a different devices are being added.
  •  transferring purchases before each sync, and disabling the automatic synchronizing of new apps on each iOS device.
  • “Automatically Sync New Apps” option in the apps tab of your iOS device info screen in iTunes applies to any app in your  iTunes library that has been added to your iTunes library since your last sync. If you are managing several iOS devices from one account, it is a good idea to disable this feature
  • three layers of where the iTunes Account is configured.
  • first is the iTunes installation you use to sync your device.
  • second is the iTunes Account configured on the device itself.
  • Changing which iTunes Account is used on the device to be something other than the iTunes Account you sync with may cause problems when the sync operation transfers purchases from the device to the iTunes installation on your Mac
  • plan on using the same iTunes Account on both your computer and your device to avoid those problems.
  • You may even want to consider creating a separate playlist folder for each iOS device you sync to.
  • Another layer of iTunes media management has to do with remote playback of your iTunes library, which is accessible on multiple devices via Home Sharing.
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    Tips on managing your computers, iOS devices using a single Apple ID.
David McGavock

7 features Apple killed off in iTunes 11 | Apple - CNET News - 1 views

  • But some of that march towards simplicity has come at the expense of some old features. Few of the deep-sixed features seem like logical deletions, and others are already bringing ire from longtime users who expected to see them on the other side of the update.
  • Apple completely nixed Cover Flow in iTunes 11 in favor of its new album view, which will expand out an album to show you the songs within when you click on it.
  • In iTunes 10.7 and earlier, Apple offered a built-in tool that would sniff out duplicates and put them on a single page. It wasn't great, but it was something, and free. In iTunes 11, the feature is missing in action.
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  • iTunes DJ was a neat feature that would let you put together a never-ending playlist in a pinch.
  • 4. Gapless playback editor As the name suggests, the gapless playback feature plays songs back to back, without any break -- something that's useful for tracks meant to be in immediate succession. One of the best examples: Pink Floyd's "The Wall." Curiously enough, gapless playback in iTunes 11 still works just fine. You just can't tweak any of your existing music to make use of the feature from the options editor.
  • 5. Multiple windows In an effort to simplify iTunes' user interface, Apple also stripped out one of the features power users loved: the option to break out functions into their own windows.
  • 6. The other sidebar Apple merely hid the source list sidebar, but you can still get that one back. What we're talking about is the feature that would give you genius recommendations based on any song you were currently on, often polling the iTunes Store for music you might not even have.
  • 7. Quick volume control, song progress in mini player Apple's mini player now does quite a bit more than it used to, such as providing search and displaying album art. Even so, it's missing a few handy things such as the volume knob and progress indicator that would show you how far along in a song you were
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    But some of that march towards simplicity has come at the expense of some old features. Few of the deep-sixed features seem like logical deletions, and others are already bringing ire from longtime users who expected to see them on the other side of the update.
David McGavock

How Mac experts deal with their contacts | Macworld - 0 views

  • Each of the five experts I spoke to uses iCloud for contact syncing; I’m the lone outlier who relies on Google’s syncing instead.
  • For organizing their contacts, every Mac expert I spoke to relies on Apple’s own Contacts apps on the Mac and iOS.
  • Cobook, which I only looked at on Sparks’s recommendation, can merge contact data from various places, including—for free—Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
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  • Cobook definitely takes fewer steps than using the Contacts app, and the changes you make sync quickly via whichever service you rely on.
  • Mail’s data detectors to work well most of the time—they make adding new contacts fairly convenient, at least compared to doing so by hand.”
  • “Make sure you keep a contact for yourself, with all your current email, address, and phone coordinates handy, so that you can quickly share it with others
  • Sparks, however, offered up some tips on his approach for keeping contacts organized. Chief among them is to make good use of the Notes field (which you can access in both Cobook and Contacts).
  • For quick searching, Sparks also employs what he calls “rudimentary tags” in the Notes field, like #referral or #holidaycard.
  • Apple’s own apps—like many others—are pretty good at handling contact data from multiple sources; so even as a Google-based contact-syncer, I’m able to use Apple’s apps (and now Cobook!) to manage my address book.
  • To make your contacts appear predictably, you need to know where you’re storing them.
  • avoid adding contacts via the Mac’s Contacts app when possible; it just takes too many clicks
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    Helpful tips from some power users for managing contacts.
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