Watch Out for Fake Emails from Associations or groups you may know or be members of

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Be aware that scammers or hackers are sending fake emails supposedly from Associations or groups you may know or be members of.  In the event that you get an email asking if you have an Amazon account or asking you to buy money cards, delete it immediately. No reputable group or association will ever send a email request for you to put money into an account, buy gift cards or any other personal request of that nature.

For general reference, opening an email does not put you at risk. Clicking on links or opening attachments etc can cause issues.

Opening EMAIL is Generally Harmless

In the past, just opening an email could allow it to run harmful code and infect your computer with a virus or other unwanted program. You’ll be happy to hear that just opening an email is unlikely to expose you to anything nefarious or open the door to any unwanted computer infiltrators. No matter what program you use (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook Apple Mail, or any other standard web-based or desktop email client), just opening an email should be safe.

Unfortunately, some emails may try to cause harm to or access your system once they are open. Again, you hold the key to preventing them from succeeding. This is because the attachments or links in the emails that lead to harmful websites or programs can’t open and work their evil magic unless you click on them! It’s a good rule of thumb to only open attachments that you are expecting and know are safe, from verified senders whom you know to be safe. Error on the side of even more caution if the attachment is a file a unless you are absolutely sure it is safe. As with everything on the web, you shouldn’t run programs that try to automatically download onto your computer after you click a link. If you have any doubts about an attachment to or a link in an email, contact an IT professional before taking any action.

Use ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS on Windows, and good sense

It’s important to keep your software up-to-date, including your mail client, browser, browser plugins, and operating system. Most importantly, if you run a Windows PC, make sure you install and run a quality antivirus program—and keep it up to date. An antivirus program scans your computer and removes malware that has made it onto your computer; it can also monitor your internet connection and block virus attacks and websites known for distributing viruses before they even make it on to your computer. So, if you do accidentally click a link inside an email, it provides another layer of protection against harm.

If you’re running a Mac, Apple takes care of much of this for you. There are still issues with spyware or malware, but viruses are typically not a problem.

Your email program likely also has filters that help sort out “junk” email before it hits your inbox. You can help these filters work better by marking email messages as unwanted instead of opening them; click the checkbox next to the message and then select “mark as junk” or “report as spam” (or whatever similar option your email program has). This helps your email service keep similar messages and messages from the same sender out of your inbox completely.

Here is a perfect example.  This email says its from Apple Support.  But when you hover over the link to login to the support site to fix the issue they say you have, not the location where the link is going.

That location definitely is not an Apple sSupport site.  Don’t click it.  Its a scam.

Use MALWAREBYTES to Scan Your Computer for Malware

Even if you don’t have a virus, your computer or browser may be infected with Malware.  Malware usually gets installed from browsing to a hosting website or seeing an ad on the internet.  We could talk for quite a while about how or why this gets created but suffice it to say that it is very prevalent on Windows PC’s, Mac’s or Android Phones.  Thus far, Apple has been successful in keeping malware off of iOS devices like iPhones and iPads.

Regardless, of how you get it, if you suspect something on your computer or Android Phone is not quite right, download Malware Bytes from www.malwarebytes.com.  The free version is all you need.  Run the software once installed and allow it to quarantine anything it finds.  Then restart your machine and run it a second time. If the second scan comes back clean, you have likely gotten rid of it.

Finally, use good common sense when you receive an email that seems unusual or “too good to be true,” and, in general, avoid clicking through links in emails. One common fraud scheme, called “phishing,” employs authentic-looking emails from real companies to entice recipients to click links or visit sites and turn over personal information. Many times you can hover your cursor over the link in the email and see where it takes you.  If it looks odd, don’t click on it.

If you receive an email from a company you do business with—for example, Amazon.com—purporting to give you information about your account or order, it’s a better practice to navigate directly to the website by typing its address in the URL bar and review your information within the authentic site.

As always, think before you click.  Call someone and describe the issue to them.  If you see a screen on your device telling you to call a phone number, never do it.  It is always a scam.

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.

Apple reportedly disabling flash in updated version of Mac Safari

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Well it’s about time, Apple. Flash is been dead for a long time. Even adobe, the creator of flash, as stated that flash will no longer be supported. I’ve written many times in my blog about the evils of updating flash. I hope this will be the last time I write about it.

Flash player updates continue to be the number one method of infecting a Mac. Fake reports that your flash needs to be updated, still these days, caused many people to press that update button and go through the process of infecting them selves. Apple for quite a while, has had the ability to block these but hasn’t done so. It certainly is time that Adobe and Apple both deal with this problem. 

But the press continues to say there are sites out there that use flash that are valuable for people to use. In reality, these are often low hanging fruit sites that get pushed high in search ratings.   None of these sites provide any additional value to the user that you can’t find in other legitimate webpages. sites. 

I’m glad to see Apple stepping up and disabling flash internally in the browser. That will make a lot of difference but it still won’t keep sites from popping up the your flash player is out of date updates.

Whether you run a Mac, or a PC, just keep in mind the flash is dead and there is absolutely no reason to update your flash player and risk any kind of infection on your computer. I suspect, I go out on at least two calls every week that are all related to self infections of peoples on computers. I certainly hope this change from Apple reduces that number on the Mac side. Now we need Microsoft and Google to step up and do the same thing.

If you’re looking for an Android phone here’s the one to buy

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As most of you know, I carry an iPhone. I like the simplicity and the consistency that Apple has put in to the iOS interface but I would be the first to tell you, being in the Apple universe is not for everyone. Many people don’t want to spend the money to purchase an Apple phone but still want a full feature device that gives them the ability to run apps and perform their normal work functions.

In today’s world, if you’re not Apple, your Google.  There are really just two choices when it comes to phone operating systems these days. Now that would be hard to tell if you went out to Best Buy and looked at phones. While Apple is the only maker of an iOS phone, google has a licensed the android operating system to many developers. If each of these developers had used the base Google operating system, the android phone universe would be the same as Apple‘s. All the android phones would look very similar, have the same apps, and operate the same way. But vendors of android phones tend to all believe that they can do it better. They think the operating system from Google is boring and they can put their touch and flair to applications, cloud functionality, and just the general look and feel.  When you walk into the Best Buy store and you look at android phones from Samsung, LG, Google, and others, you believe you’re looking at completely different devices. They work differently, they act differently, and more importantly, they look differently.

Some of these interface improvements that phone vendors make on the android side are in my opinion not improvements. Somethings are intended to push you into using their services, many of them at an extra cost.  One vendor in particular, Samsung, does a lot of advertising to make it look like their phones are much better than any other android phone. But the reality is all android phones run the same apps that you can download from the Google store just like you would download apps from Apple’s App Store.  

One other big reason that people look to android phones is cost. You can get an android phone at your carrier for just a few dollars a month or buy it outright for $150. Now obviously this isn’t the best phone in the world and in many ways it may be four-year-old technology but it will still make calls, get texts, and let you run many apps. So I tend to look at the choice of an android phone differently.  If you want the top-of-the-line feature phone for an android you can get that, from all of the manufactures. For most people the middle of the road, maybe even an upper middle device is really the one to choose.

I’ve taken a look at the phones that are available out there and in my opinion it’s an easy choice. If you’re going to run android, I truly believe you should run android and the only native android phones in the marketplace are made by the company that creates the android operating system, Google. Google has a series of feature pones  called the Pixel that are quite expensiveIn the, but they also have one phone model  it fits nicely in the upper middle with great features and reasonable price. That phone is the pixel 3a. 

The features of the Google Pixel 3a include:

  • 8MP Front Facing Camera
  • 12.2MP Dual-Pixel Rear Facing Camera
  • 32 Hours talk time
  • 13 Days standby time
  • 5.6″ FHD+ OLED
  • 2220 x 1080 pixels
  • Google Assistant
  • 3 Years of Security and OS Updates
  • Bluetooth 5.0

It has an extraordinary camera with features like Night Sight, Portrait Mode, and unlimited storage at high quality with Google Photos. Pixel 3a has a fast-charging Adaptive Battery that learns your favorite apps and reduces power to the ones you rarely use. When you need a little extra help, just ask your Google Assistant to help you find directions, answer questions, send texts, and more. Plus, ease your mind about keeping your data safe with the custom-built Titan M security chip and automatic security updates. It’s everything you love about Google–in a phone.

Best part about the Google pixel 3a is that it starts at $399. If you want large screen phone they also have a larger screen available at a higher price.

Now don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. There are many reasons that an iPhone in my opinion is just better than any of the android phones available. But if you’re looking for an android phone these days, take a close look at the Pixel 3a.  

When should I update to iOS 13?

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Apple has released IOS 13 to the public, and we all are looking forward to the great features that they have included.  But when should the average person update their phoned and iPads to this latest and greatest next release.

A wise and longtime Apple tech support individual once told me that it is always best for a general user that does not want their device to be affected by the latest release, to wait until Apple releases the first full point release of the software.  For iOS 13, that would be the release of iOS 13.1.

But this year is vastly different.  Apple announced the release of 13.1 at the same time it released 13.0 to be a year 11 days later.  Then as the release of 13.0 came out, apple moved the 13.1 release up 5 days effectively making the 13.1 release just 5 days after the 13.0 release.

SO what is a person to do and what does this mean.  I, being an Engineer, like to look at the data.

If we look at past years, the average number of days from the .0 to the .1 release has been about 41.  This years quick release of the 13.1 ( and the subsequent 13.1.1 and 13.1.2) releases tells me that iOS13 is not quite to the standards that Apple would like it to be.  SO my recommendation is to wait about the same amount of time before you update to iOS 13 and iPadOS 13.  If you look about 40 days after the 13.0 release you will roughly be at about November 1, 2019.

But it is your choice!  You can wait till the release is very stable, likely around the first of November of throw caution to the wind and go ahead and do the update now.  What ever you choose, be sure you have a backup before you do the update, just in case….

Thank you Apple for saving me $400

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I watched with great interest Apple’s latest announcements on new iPhones. In the work I do I feel like I need to stay fairly current with new phone technology so I typically plan on replacing my phone every couple of years. It also helps that I have a daughter who still loves to have my leftovers and I’m always happy to help her out.

Apples this year announced three new phones. The iPhone 11, the iPhone 11 Pro, and the iPhone 11 Pro max. I am typically one that doesn’t like to carry a really large phone so I typically am not interested in the max version of the phone. Just a few years ago Apple would reduce the technology level in the non-Max version of their phone and that was really in my opinion a poor idea. I’m glad they’ve gotten over that and made both of the pro phones pretty much exactly the same with the exception of the screen size and battery.

Beginning last year, Apple inserted a new phone in the lineup just below the two top-of-the-line phones for people who are a little more cost conscious. Last year‘s phone, the iPhone XR, was a terrific phone that I had the opportunity to set up and make adjustments to over the last year while working with a number of different people. But generally, I have been one that wanted the highest end, top-of-the-line device. Until this year…

If you look at the announcements closely, it’s pretty easy to see Apple inserted a lot of filler material in between the true new features of the devices they were set to announce. This showed both in the phones and in the Apple Watch 5 announcement.  The long discussion of the processor describing the architecture of the cores struck me as filler particularly considering the fact that this type of announcement and presentation is truly intended for the masses who don’t care or know what a processor core is. The filler material at the end talking about the Apple Store also had me wondering if they just had a few extra minutes to kill.

In the end, after further analyzing the new announcements this year it seems to me that was exactly the case. Either some of the flagship features of the new phone design did not make the final cut or perhaps they did not work to Apple’s high standards.  If you look at the new phones, and you make the general assumption that there’s going to be a new faster processor every year, the additions in this year‘s phones seem to be a little thin.

So what’s new in the new iPhone 11 Pro? As I look at the announcement, you can basically say there are three major things but the Pro brings to the table. First off the processor is faster, significantly faster if you believe the pre-delivery reports. That additional performance will definitely allow for better Augmented Reality performance and less general phone lag. The second major thing was of course the camera pack. The addition of a wide angle lens to the standard and telephoto lens the previous version had. This three camera configuration is certainly state of the art and will definitely add the ability for people to take better photographs and more creative photographs. Couple that with the software magic apple can perform and it’s clear the point and shoot stand alone camera is definitely dead.  The third thing that could be considered major is battery life. If your phone is going dead in a normal workday, this phone may be the one for you. Four or five hours better battery life is a big deal and this phone can provide it. There are a number of other minor additional features such as support for new Wi-Fi speed, the addition of Dolby Atmos, and Apples new U1 chip (which they didn’t really talk about use cases) but by and large, that’s pretty much what you see in the new pro phones. And just as a note, those minor features are in the iPhone 11 also.  The case design is basically the same although they may have improved the materials to make the phone a little more impervious to breakage and I have to admit that Jade Green color looks stunning.  But again those are pretty minor things to the average user and not really compelling for the high end user.

That brings me to the third phone announced that day, the iPhone 11. This phone uses the same processor, has the same Wi-Fi, sound, and chip enhancements, has a one hour battery life extension from last years iPhone XR, and now has two cameras. Apple chose to remove the telephoto camera from the traditional two camera pack and add the wide-angle lens. So this camera has both the standard and wide-angle lens allowing for some of the new features to work from Apple‘s new camera app. The other thing Apple did with this phone was drop the price by $50. That’s pretty amazing considering the tariff situation going on right now. That Apple would actually reduce the price is actually pretty much unheard of. The new iPhone 11 also comes in a number of colors as the iPhone XR did.

So hows a person to choose. Well honestly I’d love to experiment with the new three camera pack in the pro phone but that said, when I look at my standard use case, it just seems to me it’s hard to justify the price of that phone for so little improvement. The pro phones definitely have a better screen, but all of the phones are retina and if you believe Apple’s hype from just a few years ago, beyond retina really doesn’t make a lot of difference. My last phone, and iPhone X, has 256 GB of storage of which I’m using 87 gig. But in the pro phones, you either get 64 gig or 256 gig. Bumping up that storage is $150 additional cost. Now I truly suspect the amount of ram in the phones may be different too. It wouldn’t surprise me to see 4 GB of RAM in the pro phones and only 3 GB of RAM in the iPhone 11 and that will certainly make the speed slightly different, but I don’t believe that’s different enough to cause me to change my analysis.

So here’s my analysis…

iPhone 11 Pro, 256 GB – $1149
(Telephoto camera, better brighter screen, possibly slightly faster)

iPhone 11, 128 GB Dash $749
(Same processor, retina display, white angle camera, and money in my pocket)

Cost difference is $400 for basically an additional camera lens.

So thank you Apple for convincing me that I can spend $400 less on an iPhone this year. The minor improvements, coupled with how similar the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro are make me less able to justify that higher cost.

Now my biggest problem is trying to decide which color iPhone 11 I want to get.

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,