Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Spring 2024 Computer Recommendations

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At least once a year I like to give my opinion on what type of a computer someone should be looking for if they’re in the market to purchase a new machine. Many times, there are so many computers on the marketplace that it’s hard to make a decision based upon the functionality you’ll need to use. Basically I break these into two categories, a minimum performance machine and a high-performance machine. If you are a high-performance user, you already know that. If you’re not sure, a minimum performance device is probably where you need to be working.

Often times in the big box stores you find machines that have some of the specifications but not all of them. Big box machines are typically built, particularly on the PC side, with a price in mind. Often times, the machine has specifications that don’t meet current use specs. This also shows up on many Internet sites. Be sure to look into the specifications you’re selecting for the machine that you’re looking to purchase.

In my opinion, brands do matter.  Seeing many machines with problems, I can say that Macintosh computers are generally the most trouble free and will maintain good performance for a longer period.

But some people need Windows for specific applications.  When it comes to Windows computers, my experience says that I would look for these brands (in order):

  1. Dell
  2. HP
  3. Lenovo

All three of these vendors maintain good support websites and make updating hardware drivers easier.  That doesn’t mean much when the machine is new but as it ages, it means everything.

Windows Systems

Laptop, Minimum Performance

Memory: 16 GB
Processor: Intel Core i5 (with at least 4 cores)
Storage: 256 GB SSD minimum
Graphics: Integrated graphics
Networking: wireless
Operating System: Windows 11

Laptop, Higher Performance

Memory: 32-64 GB
Processor: Intel Core i7 or i9
Storage: 512 GB SSD minimum
Graphics: Integrated graphics or dedicated if available
Networking: wireless
Operating System: Windows 11

Foe Macintosh Systems, a MacBook Air is the correct machine for entry to mid stream users today.  For more professional uses and MacBook Pro is great.  If you want a desktop the new M3 iMac is great and either the Mac mini or Mac Studio on the higher end make great sense.  Avoid the Mac Pro desktop.  It’s price vs performance is low for nearly all users.

Macintosh Systems

Laptop, Minimum Performance

Memory: 8 GB
Processor: Apple M2 or M3
Storage: 256 GB SSD minimum
Graphics: Integrated graphics
Networking: wireless
Operating System: MacOS 14

Laptop, Higher Performance

Memory: 16-32 GB
Processor: Intel Core M2 Pro, M2 Max, or M3 series
Storage: 512 GB SSD minimum
Graphics: Integrated graphics or dedicated if available
Networking: wireless
Operating System: MacOS 14

Computer Recommendations 2023

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A couple times a year I like to give my opinion on what type of a computer someone should be looking for if they’re in the market to purchase a new machine. Many times, there are so many computers on the marketplace that it’s hard to make a decision based upon the functionality you’ll need to use. Basically I break these into two categories, a minimum performance machine and a high-performance machine. If you are a high-performance user, you already know that. If you’re not sure, a minimum performance device is probably where you need to be working.

Often times in the big box stores you find machines that have some of the specifications but not all of them. Big box machines are typically built, particularly on the PC side, with a price in mind. Often times, the machine has specifications that don’t meet current use specs. This also shows up on many Internet sites. Be sure to look into the specifications you’re selecting for the machine that you’re looking to purchase.

In my opinion, brands do matter.  Seeing many machines with problems, I can say that Macintosh computers are generally the most trouble free and will maintain good performance for a longer period.  

But some people need Windows for specific applications.  When it comes to Windows computers, my experience says that I would look for these brands (in order):  

  1. Dell
  2. HP
  3. Lenovo

All three of these vendors maintain good support websites and make updating hardware drivers easier.  That doesn’t mean much when the machine is new but as it ages, it means everything.

Creating a menu of Text items to Insert with Shortcuts on a Mac

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Start by Opening the Shortcuts application stored in the Applications folder

With the shortcuts application open, click on the + in the upper right corner of the window to create a new shortcut

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This process requires the adding of two steps to the shortcut. The first is a TEXT step to store the text you want to insert from the menu. The second step Copies the text to the clipboard.

Start by double clicking the Text step in the steps menu.

Now enter the text you want to insert such as your name and address.

Now add the Copy to Clipboard step to the Shortcut in the same way. This step requires no additional input.

Now in the File menu at the top of the screen select rename and type a descriptive name to describe the

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shortcut function. I used Name and Address.

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Finally Click the small circle with an i in it to show the Shortcut Details.

In this list click on the Show in Menu Bar option.

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Using the Shortcut menu.

In the menu bar of the Mac you will see a Shortcut Icon listing the shortcuts you made. Click the menu and select the item you want paste into your document.

Now click your cursor where you want the text inserted and Press Paste

Command-V

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I just want to print from my iPad

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These days printing has gotten much easier from an iPad or iPhone. Most printers that you would purchase today will support Apple Airprint. In the past, you had to be a little careful that you picked up AirPrint printer. Over the past few years, manufacturers have made the decision to add that as a standard feature. And most printers also are Wi-Fi compatible. They either have built-in Wi-Fi so that you can connect to your local network or they have ethernet connectivity that get you connected to the router. Either way, air print works just great once the printer is on the network.

Once you have the printer connected, and you have your iPad connected to your local network, how do I go about printing.

In the past, we’ve either used Mac or Windows computers. Fortunately both of those computers had a menu bar at the top of the screen with the file menu. In that file menu was always a print command. It really didn’t matter whether you were in photoshop or Safari, there was a file menu with a print command in it.  This made it extremely easy to figure out any applications printing capability. Unfortunately, Apple in iOS has not made it quite that simple. Nearly every application will provide you printing capability but how to get to it can often be different and somewhat confusing.

Let’s start off with Safari, Safari uses a small square box with an arrow pointing up at the top of the screen to get you to what they called the share sheet.

From that share sheet you can often send a link or a page to someone else by email or text but if you scroll down in that share sheet, you’ll find the print command. Once the print command is open, you will often have to find your printer for the first time but once that printer reset on your local network, it will typically come up and allow you to print. From there, you make typical setting changes such as color printing or black-and-white, number of copies, or some other specific command that might be related to printing in that application.

So obviously, Apple who strives to be so consistent with its applications would have that little square with the up arrow in every application to lead us to the share sheet and printing. But not so fast… Unfortunately Apple uses a few other things to define where you need to go to be able to find that print command. Once you’re in the print command, the settings are all consistent as you would expect but getting to that print command is not necessarily simple if you’re not looking in the right place. 

Apples on Mail application doesn’t follow that square with the up arrow consistent share sheet concept.

To be able to print and mail, you need to go to the curved arrow in the lower right corner of the email you’re looking at. This is the same location you would go to reply, or forward that email. Once they are, you’ll find the print command which one selected brings up the consistent print dialog box. But I cannot for the life of me understand why Apple used a curved arrow rather than the standard square with the arrow going up to denote the location to do sharing, or commands based upon the email that you’re in.

And to make it worse, Apple‘s other application such as Pages and Numbers and Keynote, all force you to go to a circle with three dots in the upper menu bar to find the print command. One would think, Apple, who forces uniformity and consistency would have thought enough to be able to use the same method to get people to be able to print their documents. But that’s not the case.

So the important thing to remember is often times printing is available in any application you want to find on the iPad or iPhone. You just have to look around to find where it is in that application, and then remember that’s the place to go to find that print command.

What to do when your Mac is Frozen….

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You know that frustrating, annoying, sometimes panicked feeling you get when your Mac isn’t doing what you expect? If an application freezes or your computer is generally misbehaving, here are a few things to try to get it working again.

Use Force Quit when an application is unresponsive. Choose Force Quit from the Apple menu.

Click the name of the deviant application (it probably has not responding next to its name). You typically won’t have to reboot.

Restart. If Force Quit doesn’t work or does not respond, try rebooting the computer. If a frozen Mac prevents you from clicking the Restart command on the Apple menu, hold down the power button for several until the screen goes black, then press the power button. If all else fails,  and the machine is a desktop, pull the plug, but remember that powering down without logging out should be used only as a last resort.

The power button is usually obvious on desktop machines but where is the power button on new MacBooks?

Look for the unmarked black square (Touch ID/power button) above the delete key
On older MacBooks you’ll see the power icon on the top right key

On the left: power button/Touch ID on 2016 and later MacBook Pro models. On the right: 2018 MacBook Air power button/Touch ID

On the left: power button/Touch ID on 2016 and later MacBook Pro models. On the right: 2018 MacBook Air power button/Touch ID

 

 

Have you ever wanted to Dictate to your Mac?

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Dictation is built into the Mac.

Go to System Preferences; Keyboard; and click the dictation tab.

Turn on Dictation.  Under the shortcut is where the trigger key is set.  In the example above tapping the left side command key twice with turn on dictation.

To use this, click the cursor in any application you want to dictate into and press the left command key twice.  After a second a little microphone will show up on the screen and you can start talking. Whatever you say, will get turned into text. I will warn you, I don’t believe the version of Dictation on the Mac is quite as good as that on the iPhone or iPad but it definitely works.

Here is the Apple Tutorial on making it work.

If you have a new Mac with a T2 security chip, you need to know this….

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Most all new Macs have an imbedded T2 chip that performs many useful functions. The Apple T2 Chip is Apple’s second-generation, custom silicon for Mac. Apple uses this chip to improve video processing, process audio input, and most of all control the security of the machine.

At this point in time,the Apple T2 Security Chip is included in these new Mac computers:

  • iMac Pro
  • Mac mini introduced in 2018
  • MacBook Air introduced in 2018 or later
  • MacBook Pro introduced in 2018 or later
  • MacPro when introduced in 2019

While we all have to applaud Apple for rating up security on the Mac from software only to a hardware/Software combination, we also need to understand the ramifications of doing just that.

On these new Macs, Apple includes a new firmware based utility called Startup Security Utility.  Startup Security Utility offers three features to help secure your Mac against unauthorized access: Firmware password protection, Secure Boot, and External Boot.

To open Startup Security Utility:

Turn on your Mac, then press and hold Command-R immediately after you see the Apple logo. Your Mac starts up from macOS Recovery.  When you see the macOS Utilities window, choose Utilities > Startup Security Utility from the menu bar.
When you’re asked to authenticate, click Enter macOS Password, then choose an administrator account and enter its password.

Here is some detail on the options:

Firmware password protection

Use a firmware password to prevent anyone who doesn’t have the password from starting up from a disk other than your designated startup disk. To set a firmware password, click Turn On Firmware Password, then follow the onscreen instructions. Learn more about firmware passwords.

You can also use External Boot to prevent even those who know the firmware password from starting up from external media.

Secure Boot

Use this feature to make sure that your Mac starts up only from a legitimate, trusted operating system.

And now for the most important thing you need to know: External Boot

Use this feature to control whether your Mac can start up from an external hard drive, thumb drive, or other external media. The default and most secure setting is Disallow booting from external media. When this setting is selected, your Mac can’t be made to start up from any external media:

Startup Disk preferences displays a message that your security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk.

Startup Manager allows you to select an external startup disk, but doing so causes your Mac to restart to a message that your security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk. You’ll then have the option to restart from your current startup disk or select another startup disk.

If you are a good Mac user and are using two backups for your Mac, the second backup should likely be of the disk image type. Utilities like Caron Copy Cloner from Bombich Software make this easy to do and give you the ability to just boot to the backup in case of a disaster.  Except if you are using a Mac with the T2 Chip.  On those machines you need to set them to allow this type of boot.

To allow your Mac to use an external startup disk:

  1. Open Startup Security Utility.Select Allow booting from external media.
  2. Your Mac doesn’t support booting from network volumes, whether or not you allow booting from external media.
  3. If you want to select an external startup disk before restarting your Mac, quit Startup Security Utility, then choose Apple menu > Startup Disk.
  4. One important note is that to make changes to these settings you need the machine password.

If for some reason, you have forgotten the machine password, you seem to be out of luck to make these changes. Don’t confuse the machine password with the setting to turn on a firmware password. That is an additional layer of security above and beyond the machine password and FileVault disk encryption that you may be using.

Information included from an Apple Tech Note on the Startup Security Utility,

 

Tips on Working with Images in WordPress

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I have been blogging off and on for quite a few years.  I was first encouraged to blog by a buddy of mine named Steve Mays. He worked for Learfield communication and was responsible for assisting clients to create blogs of their own mostly related to sports teams.  Steve got me involved in a product called TypePad and over the years I moved on and off of other blogging platforms that are mirror footnotes in blog history. Finally, Steve recommended that I move to WordPress and that seems to have been one of the best recommendations I’ve had in my blogging history. 

I was having coffee with Steve this week and talking about an individual I was working with to begin a new blog. After our talk, Steve wrote up some tips for me on about utilizing the WordPress Media Library.   As I read through the tips I knew I wanted to post them on my blog for others to be able to get the benefit of. Steve graciously allowed me to do so.

WordPress Media Library Tips

The WordPress Media Library is powerful but it takes some thought and discipline to get the most out of it. And the time to start is when you launch the blog. Or before. The following are some things I’ve done right — and wrong — with images (and video) on my blog.

Use a good file naming convention. IMG_0850.jpg is not a good file name. Before uploading, take the time to rename the file and there’s no compelling reason to keep the file name short. In the example below I named the file “exhaust pipe 2apr2019-A” but could have just as easily named it “Land Rover original exhaust pipe brazing April 2, 2019 – A”. The more descriptive the better. And be consistent. Use the same format on all images.

WordPress Media Library

The first field in the WordPress form below is “Alternative Text.” This is what one would see when they hovered their cursor over the image. Especially useful for those with vision problems. The link in the form has more on “alt text.”

Title. By default WordPress uses the file name but you can edit this to title the image as you choose. As far as I know this doesn’t appear anywhere on your blog post.

Caption. I tend not to use captions but this will depend a lot on how you display images in your post. I prefer to describe the image within the body of the post. I just don’t like the way way WP handles captions.

Description. I discovered this useful field relatively recently. I wish I had made better use of it from the first day I moved to WP. Again, as far I have been able to determine, the contents of this field does not appear with the image in the post. I started using this field when I discovered the text is searchable. So if you have 1,000 images in your library and would like to search for all with the phrase “Lake of the Ozarks” in the Description field, make sure you include that phrase. There’s no real tagging feature for images but you can use this field for that. For example, you might include the word *gear* for any photo of equipment; *John and Jane Doe* for each photo of John and Jane; *fall foliage* for… you get the idea.

The trick is to spend some time thinking about this at the very beginning because it’s a pain to go back and do this after you have hundreds of photos and videos. And you’ll be surprised how fast your media library grows. And how often you want to reuse an image you you posted months or years earlier.