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Approve App Authentication Requests with Your Apple Watch in Catalina
July 2, 2020

You Can Approve App Authentication Requests with Your Apple Watch in Catalina

Tired of typing your admin account password whenever you try to install software or change security settings on your Mac? A new feature in macOS 10.15 Catalina removes that requirement for Apple Watch owners. In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, select the checkbox for “Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac.” Then, whenever an app asks for your account credentials, you can instead just double-press the side button on your Apple Watch. Of course, if you forgot to wear it or its battery has died, you can always fall back on entering your password.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

We’ve got more links on Apple Watch

And more on Catalina

July 2, 2020
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What We Can Expect from macOS 11.0 Big Sur, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7

At its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple showed off the next versions of its major operating systems: macOS 11.0 Big Sur, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7. Here’s what you can expect this fall.
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June 23, 2020
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Macs Switching from Intel Chips to Apple Silicon—Answers to Your Questions
June 23, 2020

Macs Switching from Intel Chips to Apple Silicon—Answers to Your Questions

Apple announced that future Macs will run on Apple-designed chips rather than processors from Intel. Got questions? We’ve got answers!
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June 23, 2020
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findbyscope
June 12, 2020

Find Files in the Finder Better by Specifying a Search Scope

This isn’t about periscopes or mouthwash—when it comes to searching, a scope is the area in which a search takes place. When you use the Search field in a Finder window to look for files and folders, you have the choice of two scopes: This Mac or the current folder.
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June 12, 2020
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bounce
June 9, 2020

Stop Group FaceTime Video Tiles from Bouncing with Recent Apple OS Updates

Group FaceTime has a feature that some find obnoxious: automatic speaking prominence that causes the video tile for the speaker to grow and move around.
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June 9, 2020
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Forrester Research and IBM Studies Show Macs Are Cheaper than PCs

It’s taken as gospel that Macs are more expensive than PCs. A quick look at the Dell Web site reveals laptops for as low as $300. Sure, we can say that the configurations aren’t comparable, that macOS is better than Windows, or that Apple’s hardware quality is superior. Still, our friendly local bean counters have trouble getting past those low upfront prices.

However, unless you’re Rancho Gordo, the goal isn’t to count beans, it’s to get work done, and that’s a different scenario. Let’s look at a few ways that Macs are not just worth the money but can also be cheaper than comparable systems. We’ll start with a Forrester Research study commissioned by Apple that compared the total economic impact of Macs and PCs in large companies with employee-choice programs. In such programs, every employee gets to choose between a Mac and a PC, providing a sizable group across which to compare numbers, but the conclusions apply to large and small organizations alike.

Deeper Cost Analysis

Although the Forrester Research study found that the upfront acquisition cost of Macs was indeed $500 higher than comparable PCs, when additional factors were taken into account, Macs ended up costing about $50 less.

That’s in part because Macs have a higher residual value after 3 years, meaning that you can resell a 3-year-old Mac for more than a 3-year-old PC. Pay more up front, but get more back later on.

Macs also don’t need operating system licenses, and the Mac’s better security eliminates the need for additional licenses for security software.

Reduced IT Support Costs

It has long been thought that Macs required less support than PCs, but only in the past few years have there been organizations with enough Macs and PCs to compare. At IBM, one of the largest Apple-using companies with 290,000 Apple devices, a 2016 study found that the company was saving up to $543 per Mac compared to PCs over a 4-year lifespan. Forrester Research came up with an even higher number, showing that Macs cost $628 less over a 3-year lifespan.

What accounts for these reduced support costs? It takes less time to set up a new Mac, Macs are easier to manage, Macs users open fewer service tickets, and many fewer IT staff are needed. All that adds up to paying for fewer support resources. In another 2018 study, IBM found that it needed just 7 support engineers per 200,000 Macs, compared to 20 support engineers per 200,000 Windows machines.

Improved Employee Productivity and Engagement

Beyond reduced support costs, Mac users turn out to be more productive, more engaged, and more likely to stay with the company than PC users. Forrester Research found that over 3 years, Mac-using employees posted 48 hours more productivity (in part due to reduced downtime). That’s likely thousands of dollars more benefit to the company, per employee.

Even still, it can be hard to quantify that benefit, which is why Forrester Research compared users in sales positions. In its study, Forrester found that Mac-using employees showed a 5% increase in sales performance. That’s nothing compared to IBM, which found that its Mac-based salespeople closed deals worth 16% more than their Windows-using counterparts.

Finally, both Forrester Research and IBM discovered that Mac users were less likely to leave the company—20% less likely in Forrester’s study and 17% less likely in IBM’s research. That’s not just an indication of loyalty. There are significant costs to replacing employees who leave, so the higher the retention rate, the better it is for the bottom line.

Improved Overall Security

Few would argue with the belief that Macs are more secure than PCs. In Forrester’s research, the interviewed organizations said that the Mac has a fundamentally more secure architecture than Windows. In today’s world, criminals employ malware to steal information. Data breaches are costly, with a 2019 study by IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute pegging the average cost of a data breach at $3.9 million. The amounts vary by industry and the size of the breach, of course, but the average cost per data record was nearly $150.

Security breaches can have other costs as well. With a compromised account, attackers have often been able to pose as executives and get accounting departments to wire money to offshore accounts. Plus, when news of a data breach hits, it can result in the loss of customers. In the IBM Security study, healthcare companies suffered from a 7% customer turnover after a breach.

So yes, Macs do have higher upfront costs than PCs. But savvy managers know to look past such simplistic comparisons to the bigger picture, where equipping employees with Macs both saves far more than the difference in cost between a Mac and a PC and enables employees to produce more for the organization.

(Featured image by freestocks on Unsplash)

Social Media: Research shows that Macs are cheaper than PCs! Not upfront, but when you look at the Mac’s reduced need for software licenses, higher residual value, lower support costs, and better security, the numbers show the Mac coming out ahead. Details at:

May 28, 2020
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Do You Know Who Can Track Your Location? It’s Worth Checking Periodically
May 27, 2020

Do You Know Who Can Track Your Location? It’s Worth Checking Periodically

Sharing your location works well when you’re out with friends or family and want everyone to be able to see where everyone else is. It’s easy to enable in various spots in iOS 13—in Messages, in Contacts, in the Find My app, and so on. You can share your location for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely, but beware of this final option. If you’re with a group for a weeklong trip, for instance, sharing indefinitely makes sense, but it’s easy to forget to turn it off, at which point those people can see where you are at all times. We recommend that you periodically audit the list of people with whom you’ve shared your location. To do so in iOS 13, open the Find My app, tap the People button in the bottom toolbar, and look through the list. For anyone you want to delete, swipe left on their name and tap the trash button.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

May 27, 2020
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Ever Wondered Which Words to Capitalize in a Title? Use Capitalize My Title!
May 11, 2020

Ever Wondered Which Words to Capitalize in a Title? Use Capitalize My Title!

When you’re writing a blog post or email newsletter, you’ll eventually hit the question of how to capitalize words in a title. There is no one right way, but just as with poor spelling and grammar, randomly capitalized titles can reduce reader trust in your knowledge, competence, and expertise. The trick is to pick a capitalization form and style guide to follow. There are two capitalization forms: title case (where important words are capitalized) and sentence case (which is capitalized like a normal sentence). Then there are a handful of major style guides, including the Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, and The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. It’s never a bad idea to pick one and learn its rules, but for a quick shortcut, turn to the Capitalize My Title Web site. Click a style guide tab at the top, select a capitalization form, and paste or type your title. The site automatically applies the appropriate rules to your title. Press Return to copy it to the clipboard for pasting into your document.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

May 11, 2020
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Apple Updates 13-inch MacBook Pro with Magic Keyboard and Twice the Storage
May 5, 2020

Apple Updates 13-inch MacBook Pro with Magic Keyboard and Twice the Storage

In a move that completes the transition of the MacBook line from the troubled butterfly keyboard to the Magic Keyboard, Apple has released a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. The company also doubled the amount of storage in each of the standard configurations while keeping prices the same, and it ramped up the specs in the model with four Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Like the MacBook Air that Apple released several months ago, the most notable change in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is the replacement of the butterfly keyboard with the new scissor-key Magic Keyboard introduced last year in the 16-inch MacBook Pro. So far, that keyboard has been well-regarded. Unlike the MacBook Air, however, the 13-inch MacBook Pro continues to include Apple’s Touch Bar, though now with a physical Escape key and a separate Touch ID sensor.

Apple doubled the onboard storage across all base configurations, so the 13-inch MacBook Pro now starts at 256 GB, and you can choose from configs that include 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, and even a whopping 4 TB.

As in the past, there are two models of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, one with two Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left side and another with four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two on each side. The two-port model receives the Magic Keyboard and additional storage, but is otherwise unchanged from last year’s model. It still features 8th-generation quad-core Intel Core i5 and i7 processors running at 1.4 GHz and 1.7 GHz, respectively (the faster processor is a $300 option), and 8 GB of RAM, upgradeable to 16 GB for $100.

However, Apple beefed up the four-port model with faster 10th-generation processors, either a 2.0 GHz quad-core Core i5 or, for $200 more, a 2.3 GHz quad-core Core i7 that should provide even better performance.

These new processors also feature updated Intel Iris Plus Graphics that Apple claims improve graphics performance by up to 80% and can drive the company’s 6K Pro Display XDR screen.

Finally, the four-port model now starts at 16 GB of RAM (up from 8 GB) for the same price, uses faster memory than before, and can be upgraded to 32 GB of RAM for an additional $400.

The two-port model of the 13-inch MacBook continues to start at $1299, and the price of the four-port model still starts at $1799. Both are available now in silver or space gray.

If you’re looking for a new laptop, which should you choose? With its new processors, more and faster RAM, and improved graphics performance, the four-port model provides a particularly attractive package for the price.

For those who would prefer something less expensive, however, the new MacBook Air may be more compelling than the two-port model of the MacBook Pro—it largely comes down to whether you would prefer the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar or the MacBook Air’s function keys. Contact us for help choosing the right Mac for your needs!

(Featured image by Apple)

May 5, 2020
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Create Your Own Chat Group Via Slack
April 27, 2020

Create Your Own Chat Group Via Slack

Whether you’re working from home or just stuck at home, it can be tough to communicate with colleagues, friends, or family. Sure, there’s email, but that gets hard to manage quickly, and it can be difficult to stay focused with so much news rolling in. For friends and family, Facebook might seem to be the digital town square. However, many people avoid Facebook due to its impressive record of abusing its users’ privacy, failure to protect that user data from hackers, and exploitation by foreign governments. And it’s wildly inappropriate for most business communications.

For an alternative that doesn’t involve relying on overloaded email inboxes or handing everything about your online life over to a corporate Big Brother, consider the group messaging tool Slack, which has become popular with small and large firms, non-profits, academic departments, student project teams, and government agencies. Although it’s aimed at organizations that pay a monthly fee for every active user, Slack offers a free tier with all the features you would need to create your own online community for your workgroup, family, or friends. Everyone can join in since Slack has apps for macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android, and it can be used in any desktop Web browser.

Conceptually, Slack is similar to Apple’s Messages, in that you can communicate with others by typing short messages and sharing graphics and other files. You can even have one-on-one voice calls (group calls, screen sharing, and videoconferencing are limited to the paid plans).

What sets Slack apart from Messages, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, and the like is that it lets you segment discussions into “channels,” which can either be public, such that everyone in the group can see them, or private, so only invitees can participate. Plus, you can have “direct message” conversations with one or more individuals.

The beauty of Slack channels is that they’re easy to create, and they bring together all communications relevant to a particular group, project, client, or topic. Channels help focus discussions, so those who are interested in only certain channels aren’t overwhelmed by irrelevant chatter.

For an extended family, you might create channels by branch (so your brother can ignore your in-laws’ conversations), parts of the country (so relatives who live elsewhere don’t have to see the local family members’ dinner plans), and events (like Hanukkah or a family reunion). Or, in a design team’s Slack group, you might want channels for each major client or project, along with channels for financial or human resources topics. There’s no one right answer—the goal is merely to keep discussions relevant and focused.

How do you keep up on discussions? Slack has flexible notifications, letting you choose at the top level to be notified about everything; just direct messages, mentions, and keywords; or nothing—at which point you can check in manually. You can also choose to be notified of replies to threads you’re in. Then you can override those defaults for any channel or conversation, which lets you ensure you’re notified only by people or topics that interest you. Plus, if you leave your Mac, Slack can repoint notifications to your iPhone automatically, with separate settings to make sure you aren’t overly nagged while at your kid’s track meet.

Slack provides tons of other features that can prove useful in groups of any size. You can share and comment on files of any type, which is far more effective than sending attachments around in email. You can create “posts” and get others to edit them collaboratively—a boon when trying to craft the perfect bit of text for some purpose. And you can integrate hundreds of Internet services into Slack so it can act as a single dashboard for many other apps, including the likes of the videoconferencing tool Zoom.

Getting started with Slack is fairly easy, and we recommend the following basic steps.

  • Create a Slack workspace. Slack provides instructions for basic setup.
  • Set up channels. Create a few channels to help people feel like they’re in the right place. You can always make more channels later.
  • Invite people in. You can invite users to your Slack during setup, but it’s better to wait until you’ve set up your channels. Make sure to use everyone’s preferred email address when inviting them.
  • Help people install Slack apps. For those who are tech-savvy, installing Slack’s client apps isn’t hard, but you might need to provide support for those who are less experienced.
  • Provide name advice. Slack lets each user set a full name and a display name, and you might want to recommend a particular format (first name only, or first name and last initial) that makes display names unique and easily understood and typed.
  • Help people configure notifications. Perhaps the hardest part of using Slack is getting notifications adjusted right for each person. Slack offers guides for desktop, email, and mobile notifications, along with additional help.

For additional advice on setting up and using Slack, consider Glenn Fleishman’s book Take Control of Slack, which goes beyond Slack’s help to provide real-world setup and configuration advice. We’re also happy to help provide setup and configuration advice—just get in touch.

(Featured image by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash)

Social Media: Whether you’re trying to maintain communications within a small firm, a workgroup, or a family, the group messaging tool Slack is a compelling solution.

April 27, 2020
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