Ivan’s Expert Blog

Rebecca Kraemer wrote a really great post at Small Dog’s Apple blog called Backup of your Backup, on why it’s important to back up your backup. (This was part 1 of a 3-part backup article.)

It’s not a situation that occurs too often, but it can happen: Your computer hard drive and your backup drive both die at the same time. Or more frequently, some sort of corruption or virus hits your computer and then gets transmitted to your automatic backup (for example your Time Machine drive).

I’m paranoid about losing my data, so I have multiple backups going. I have a Time Machine drive attached to my computer. Then I have SugarSync which syncs my work files on my work computer to my home computer–and my home computer is also backed up using Time Machine. So now I’ve got a backup “in the cloud” (offsite) as well as in different physical locations. Last, every 6 months or so, I do a full backup to another external hard drive and put that drive in a separate location.

Is this overkill? My motto is: You can’t have too many backups. It’s worth the extra time, to be insured in the event of an emergency. Your data–your emails, your company financial data, your photos–is impossible to recreate, isn’t it?

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5 Tips on Backing Up Your Mac

CreativeTechs, a Mac support company in Seattle, has created a downloadable PDF that they call a “PocketMod” because it can be folded up into a pocket-size guide. The contents of the PDF are “My Mac Won’t Start: A Tiny Troubleshooting Guide.”

I highly recommend having a copy of this guide on hand, already printed out, for when you can’t get your Mac to start. (Because by then it will be too late to print it!) It offers 4 different fixes, and helps you decide which fix to use based on the symptoms your Mac is exhibiting.

It’s interesting that in this day and age a tech company is offering something that is intended to be used as a hard copy only. So while more and more data is in the “cloud” these days, at times there is still a purpose for a physical object you can hold in your hand.

What other Mac or tech topics would be relevant for a PocketMod?

Photo courtesy BildSpracheundCo.de, from Flickr Creative Commons.

The less you need to grab for your mouse while at the Mac, the faster you can get stuff done. I use lots of key commands, also known as keyboard shortcuts, which replace the need for going to the dropdown menus using the mouse. Increase your productivity by learning these keyboard shortcuts.

Note: The Command key is also known as the Apple key.

1. Command-S for save
This has become habit to me, whenever I’m in Word or Excel (or TextEdit or almost any other application). Hitting command-S ensures I won’t accidentally lose what I’ve worked on.

2. Command-Q for quit
Quick way to quit out of any application.

3. Command-tab for moving between open applications
Instead of mousing down to the Dock to go from, say, Word to Safari, I use command-tab to jump from one application to another. Keep holding down command, and hit the tab key until you get to the application you want.

4. Command-C for copy and command-v for paste
So much faster and easier than going to the menu. Also don’t forget command-X for cut, if you want to do this instead of copying.

5. Command-A for select all

6. Command-click for selecting multiple items in a list
Okay, this one does use the mouse. But it’s still a huge timesaver. If I want to select five files, I select the first one, and then I press and hold the Command key before selecting the other 4.

7. Command-delete for moving items to the trash

8. Command-Shift-3 for taking a screenshot
A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Sometimes the easiest way to show somebody a problem is to send them a screenshot. This keyboard shortcut takes a picture of your whole screen, and saves the file to your desktop.

9. Command-[ to to the previous page, in a web browser
How often do you go to a page on the internet, and you realize it's not what you wanted, so you need to go back? Instead of using the mouse to click the back button, hit command-[ (that's a square bracket). And of course command-] is the forward button in the web browser.

10. Command-Z for undo
We all do stuff on the computer that we didn’t mean to do. Command-Z undoes the last thing you did. Doesn’t work for everything, some things can’t be undone.

Photo by permanently scatterbrained, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

David Pogue wrote a piece in last week’s New York Times on some good ideas for iPhone and iPad apps that his readers have sent in. Sometimes it feels like all the good app ideas have been done before, but obviously that’s not actually the case!

In general the apps that resonated the most for me are ones that handle issues of waiting or saving time. For example one of my favorite suggestions in Pogue’s piece is the baseball app that allows you to see how long the line is at each bathroom and concession stand. Unfortunately that’s an idea that needs the coordination of Major League Baseball to work.

Here are a few app ideas that came to me after reading Pogue’s article:

An app that tells you how long the line is at Trader Joe’s at Union Square would be useful. Except that it would always tell you it’s too crowded to shop…

How about an app that tells you if there are any rental cars still available at the rental agency you’re going to? Or even better, an app for actually checking out a car, so you don’t have to wait in those endless rental car lines.

Is there an app that suggests interesting travel destinations? You could put in some parameters (weather, distance from your home, types of activities) and the app could provide a list of great places to go. Kind of like UrbanSpoon but for vacation spots.

Do you have any ideas for apps that we can help you create?

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How to find a cab in NYC? Use your iPhone!

In the June 2010 issue of Juiced.GS, I argue that Apple’s mobile products could not be any more different in spirit than their original consumer computer, the Apple II, with regard to application development. The manual of every Apple II product, including the last Apple IIe sold in 1993, encouraged every user to write their own programs to make their computer do exactly what they need it to. By contrast, Apple not only shields their mobile users from how to make an app, but controls their developers by deciding which apps they want users to even see. In that article, I write, “How great would it be if Apple put as much thought into making it easy for users to develop their own iPhone applications — giving everyone the possibility of making it do truly new things for their needs — as they do into the iPhone UI itself?”

Well, someome at Google gets it (or reads Juiced.GS); they’ve done exactly that for their Android mobile device platform, with App Inventor. It’s app development for everybody, no programming required. I haven’t checked it out yet, and have no idea if it’s any good or lives up to its promise, but I already love it on principle alone.

If there’s one thing you can count on with Apple, it’s that the next Mac you buy probably has a different display connector than the one you have now. Apple has utilized an utterly ridiculous number of different kinds of ports for attaching displays. Let’s take a look.

These are the normal ones:
DVI– common digital video standard found on many Mac laptops and towers; adaptable to HDMI*, ADC, and VGA
HDMI — common digital video+audio standard, found on the new Mac Mini only; adaptable to DVI*
VGA — common analog video standard found on older PowerBooks and desktops; adaptable to DA-15

And these are the crazy Apple ones:
Mini DisplayPort — found on all current Mac products; adaptable to DVI, HDMI*, and VGA
Mini-DVI — found on many laptops, iMacs and Mac minis; adaptable to DVI, VGA, and S-Video/composite
Micro-DVI — on first generation MacBook Air only; adaptable to DVI, VGA, and S-Video/composite
ADC — DVI, USB, and power in one connector, found on some PowerPC Mac towers; adaptable to DVI* and VGA*
Mini-VGA — iBooks and first 12″ PowerBook G4; adaptable to VGA and S-Video/composite
HDI-45 — found on first-generation Power Macintoshes only; adaptable to DB-15
DA-15 — very old desktops; adaptable to VGA*
mini-15 — very old PowerBooks; adaptable to DA-15

* adapter is made by third-party, not Apple

Note that while the various styles of built-in DVI ports can be adapted to VGA, you can’t use the DVI port on an adapter for this.

And several machines also included S-Video or composite out as well as the higher resolution outputs above . Thanks to this Wikipedia article for filling in the holes in my memory.

That is an absurd number of connectors!

For those of you with an iPhone 3G, early iPhone 3GS, or early iPod Touch 2nd generation, you can now update to iOS 4 and still jailbreak your mobile. Why jailbreak? For one, it will enable wallpaper and multitasking on these devices, which normally is disabled. It also gives you the possibility of unlocking your phone for use with another carrier (but not Verizon or Sprint, due to incompatibilities in phone hardware). Jailbreaking also lets you run software not available in the app store (e.g. Veency, a VNC server which lets you display and control iPhone on another computer, which is great for presentations, or MAME, a vintage arcade game emulator).

Keep in mind that jailbreaking and/or unlocking your mobile phone is completely disapproved of and not in any way supported by Apple, is a violation of your end user license agreement, and is likely to void your warranty. It is also not supported by IvanExpert, Inc and is not a service we will perform for clients.

Is here. It’s long, but you could skip to the Conclusions section at the bottom. Summary: it’s an excellent phone with a beautiful screen, with a few flaws. Also, the reception problems when gripped a certain way are real, though solveable by not holding it in such a way that you’re touching the bottom and left edges, or by installing one of Apple’s colorful “bumper cases” which is probably a good idea for protection anyway.

Apple recently updated the design of their Mac Mini desktop computer for the first time, well, ever. It is now all aluminum, and much shorter, with a somewhat larger footprint. It is finally easy to get to the RAM — no more paint spreader — though still difficult to get to the hard drive.

It’s available in two configurations, a user desktop for $699 (higher than I’d like to see it) and a server at $999. The server is the overwhelmingly better value; it has a faster CPU, more RAM, and two hard drives, each of which is larger and faster. And, it comes with Apple’s Mac OS X Server software, which normally costs $499; but if you want the regular desktop version, you can buy Snow Leopard for $29. What the server version doesn’t have is an optical (DVD) drive; that can be rectified by adding the external SuperDrive for MacBook Air.

So if you need Mac OS X Server, it’s a great value, and there are lots of possibilities for this machine (either version) as an entertainment center, as it is the first Mac to feature HDMI out, for direct attachment to a television (it comes with an adapter for DVI), and it also has a Mini DisplayPort.

Even as a desktop machine, I would rather get the server version and replace the installed Mac OS X Server with the standard desktop Snow Leopard. That would be a pretty cool little Mac.

Display on iPhone 4 vs iPhone 3G. Copyright Yutaka Tsutano from Flickr Creative Commons.

Early reviews say the Retina display, as Apple calls it, is a wonder to behold, displaying text with print-like quality. Apple claims it is the highest resolution display on a phone. Is it true?

Let’s get our terms straight — while “display resolution” sounds like it should describe how sharp an image is, it doesn’t. It actually has come to mean the total number of pixels on the screen, expressed as horizontal by vertical, regardless of the screen size. For example, the screen on the iPhone 3G has a display resolution of 480×320, my MacBook’s is 1280×800, and my TV’s is 1920×1080.

Sharpness is measured by “pixel density,” measured by pixels per inch (ppi). Computer displays are typically around 100 ppi, while phones come in a huge range.

Finally, “screen size” is the diagonal measurement from one corner of a screen to its opposite. This is annoying, because you can’t reliably compare two measurements, because the ratio of the short side to the long side varies between models and manufacturers. What you really want to know is the long side by the short side, as with resolution.

Anyway, the iPhone 4’s sharpness comes from Apple having packed a lot of pixels into a very small space. Its resolution is 960×640 on a 3.5″ screen, yielding a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch — slightly more than the first laser printers, and double the iPhone 3GS.

But then I was thinking: the BlackBerry Curve 8900, which I am still using despite being incredibly bored with it, must also have a very high pixel density, because it has a few more pixels than the iPhone 3GS does, but on a much smaller screen. And the the display really is incredibly sharp. So I brushed up on the Pythagorean Theorem, and calculated that its screen is 246 ppi — falling right in between the iPhone 3GS (163 ppi) and 4G. But, of course, the screen is smaller.

What about other phones? A cursory survey suggests the iPhone 4G is the king of the roost for both resolution and pixel density, for the moment. The next highest resolution phone is the new Motorola Droid X, at 854×480; but, with its 4.3″ screen, it is notably less sharp at 217 ppi. As far as pixel density goes, the Sony Ericsson X1 is close to the 4G at 312 ppi, with a 800×480 display on a 3.0″ screen. (Whether a smaller, sharper screen is better than a larger one with a similar number of pixels is surely a matter of preference.)

Relevant Wikipedia article: List of Displays by Pixel Density