On this episode 429 of the Apple Context Machine podcast, Jeff Gamet and I talked at length about iOS 11, the new APFS file system change that’s already come to iOS and is coming to (some) Macs with High Sierra’s release, T-Mobile and LTE Band 71, backups and more. If you’re looking for an hour to fill with Apple nerdery, please tune in, or whatever the kids are doing with podcasts these days.
Apple’s iOS 11 is the newest latest major release of the operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad, and it’s a significant change. Here are a few tips to make that upgrade and transition as smooth as possible – what to do before you upgrade, when you upgrade, and what to do if things go wrong after the upgrade.
If you’re in the U.S., looking at a new iPhone 8 or iPhone X and you’re a T-Mobile customer, you may wonder if the new phone supports T-Mobile’s LTE Band 71, new 600 MHz spectrum the company is in the process of bringing online. The short answer is no. Apple’s new phones don’t support Band 71 and can’t be made to. You’ll have to wait until Apple’s next iPhone refresh to get that capability. The devil is in the details, so read on for more.
I finally got around to upgrading my 2014 Mac mini with a solid state drive (SSD). The difference is like night and day. If you’re using one of these models and you’re looking for a good way to bump up the performance, an SSD is, quite frankly, one of the only things you can do (unlike older Mac minis, Apple soldered the RAM in place). Regardless, I strongly recommend considering it – not just for a 2014 Mac mini, but for any older Mac you’d like to pep up.
Backing up your computer to the cloud is easy with a subscription to Backblaze, CrashPlan, Carbonite or another service. What happens when one of those services stops? For one thing, it’s a good time to stop and take stock of your backup strategy. Are you putting too much trust in it?
Very pleased to appear on Nerd Radio FM’s “Apple World News” podcast episode 6 with Brian Sutich. We talked about:
Lots of ground to cover!
Apple on Monday released macOS 10.12.4, the latest version of its Sierra operating system. Among the new features is Night Shift, the same screen-dimming technology that Apple has had in iOS for a while. They’ve buried the feature, though, so it can be a bit tough to find. Here’s how, and what it does.
Night Shift adjusts the color of your Mac’s display after sunset. According to some research, exposure to the bright blue light of computer displays in the evening can affect your ability to sleep. Night Shift mode – first introduced in iOS 9.3 – changes display colors to warmer tones with less blue. In the morning the Mac returns to its normal settings. If you’re working with graphics, art, photography, video or other content where color fidelity is of paramount importance, Night Shift is probably not the best thing to use. But for the rest of us, Night Shift can give your eyes – and your circadian rhythm – a bit of a break.
Night Shift is similar in concept to the third-party application f.lux. F.lux is still available if you’d prefer to use it or are not ready to upgrade yet to macOS 10.12.4.
How To Use Night Shift On The Mac
You can schedule Night Shift according to a custom schedule, determining what time to turn it on and off. You can also override the setting to turn it on until the next day. You can also adjust the intensity of the color shift.
Apple notes that this won’t affect the color balance of connected televisions or projectors – so Night Shift, at least for now, will only affect directly connected monitors.
It’s also worth noting that Night Shift imposes specific system requirements. Apple has outlined them in a tech note posted to its website.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) offer much better performance and reliability than the traditional spinning hard disk drive, which makes them an attractive option for computer users looking to get a bit more bang for the buck from their existing hardware. Got questions about SSDs? I’ve got answers.
SSDs work differently than hard drives – inside are memory chips instead of moving parts, which is why they work so much faster than conventional drives. Memory prices have dropped dramatically in the past few years, which has lowered the price of high-capacity SSDs, making them a more budget-friendly upgrade solution than ever.
Lots of us have questions about SSDs, however. To help answer them, I’ve written a series of posts over at Backblaze. If you’re thinking about upgrading your current hardware, having trouble with an SSD, or need to get rid of one, I’ve got you covered.
At some point, I realized the only copy of some photos I have are on Flickr, the popular photo blogging service owned by Yahoo. That made me nervous for two reasons: Flickr is a single point of failure, and Yahoo has problems including massive user ID and password security breaches. So I decided to back up my Flickr library to my Mac. I took what I learned and put it in a new blog post over at Backblaze. I’ve outlined three ways that you can download your pics quickly.
I’ve been using Flickr for nigh on 13 years now – since before Yahoo bought it in 2005, I know that much – so I have a lot of photos there. Over 8,000, in fact. Many of the earlier ones I don’t have on my Mac or my iPhone.
Now, I know better, I do. But it’s been almost a decade and a half, and in the intervening years I’ve bought hard drives which have died and migrated data to more than half a dozen new computers, so I guess it shouldn’t be a total surprise that I have stuff on Flickr I don’t have anywhere else. Makes me wonder what else I’ve lost over the years, frankly.
The first method to back up your Flickr photos is built right into Flickr. Flickr has a download tool that enables you to select individual photos or galleries for download to a handy ZIP file. It works, but it’s kludgy if you want to back up your entire library, as I did.
I also tested out two free-to-download third-party backup tools. The first is Bulkr, an Adobe AIR-dependent app that is available in “Pro” trim for $29. The second is Flickr Downloadr, which doesn’t cost a cent but is, quite frankly, a bit kludgy in the UI department. Still, they both work.
Anyway, read on and if you have any questions, let me know.
How To Back Up Your Flickr Library
Also, sorry for the nonexistent posting since December. It’s been a busy winter.
At the risk of making a mountain out of a molehill, I’d like to draw attention to an example of the media failing to do its job. I admit, the circumstances around this are completely trivial, but I think it’s important to recognize.
First, read this article in the Boston Globe, recounting the events of last week at the Middle East nightclub in Cambridge, Mass.:
Bouncer, singer almost got into a fight at Middle East because of a burger
Now compare it to an article posted on Vanyaland, a site that focuses on music:
Bela Lugosi’s Fed: Peter Murphy interrupts Cambridge gig as security guard eats dinner near stage
In broad strokes, the same story is told. The performer clearly wasn’t having a great night and stopped his performance to berate a staff member for eating his dinner close to the stage. Emotions escalated and the staff member was removed; the venue management ultimately fired the staff member for the infraction.
Vanyaland was able to provide additional detail which helps put this in context, however: The security guard at the center of this controversy used physically intimidating gestures and body language and attacked the performer’s expensive traveling gear in the process.
Let’s just stop there for a moment. That’s inexcusable for a security guard, and absolute cause for dismissal. I can’t think of any situation where I, as the owner or manager of a venue, would let someone work for me after that happened.
He escalated the situation dramatically and committed a cardinal sin for any security guard at any live music venue by jeopardizing the safety of the performer and the performer’s equipment. Regardless of what the singer said to him, that was unforgivable and should have been grounds for termination.
That and additional detail in Vanyaland’s article puts the event in a very different light than how the Globe chose to report this story. The Globe didn’t lie, didn’t distort, it just left out a lot of detail. I don’t get the print edition so I don’t know if this story even made it into the paper, but that could be one reason why it’s so heavily curtailed: A lack of column-inches. But for the web, which allows for longer-format content, there really isn’t a good reason why those details were cut.
There’s another element to the Globe’s reporting on this which really bothers me too. It’s how they used social media to get the story out. On Twitter, their headline read: “Former Bauhaus lead singer Peter Murphy got a bouncer at the Middle East nightclub fired — for eating a hamburger.” That’s just inaccurate. He got himself fired for being a jerk.
This isn’t just about the reportage, though, or lack thereof, or for ham-handed social media management. It’s about the public reaction to the story. If you check the comments to the Globe’s article, the absence of context has given many of the commenters the impression that the venue acted capriciously by giving the bouncer his walking papers. Vanyalnd’s comments are decided more balanced.
Bottom line, The Globe left out important details from its article on Peter Murphy acting like a prima donna which ended up misinforming its readers and guided them to draw wrong conclusions. Which leads me, in all seriousness, to wonder what other important details the Boston Globe has been leaving out from other stories that actually matter.