Digital Chaos Control

Tag: macintosh

  • What You Need to Know About the New Apple Photos

    What You Need to Know About the New Apple Photos

    Did you know that Apple has replaced their both their iPhoto and Aperture applications with a single new application called just “Photos”?

    Apple released Photos with the latest Mac OS X Yosemite update (OS X 10.10.3). To upgrade, just go to Software Update on your Mac and choose the OS update. Once the update is installed, then Photos will automatically import your iPhoto or Aperture library.

    Photos works a lot like your iOS 8 iPad or iPhone photo app. You’ll see your photos organized into thumbnails by date, you can save photos into photo albums, and you can share on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

    iCloud Photo LibraryThe update includes support for iCloud Photo Library. If you enable this option in Preferences, then all of your photos (it’s all or none) will be stored in iCloud and synced to any of your devices that have the option enabled under iCloud settings. That means that you can access your entire photo library on your mobile devices, and that any photo edits get synced as well. And the good news is that your mobile device will store only the thumbnail, not the full photo unless you choose to download it.

    “But I’ve always had my photos in the iCloud”, you say? Well, no you haven’t. If you had Photos enabled in your iCloud settings, then your photos were going to Apple’s Photostream, which is not the iCloud.

    Photostream is a mechanism for syncing your photos to your Mac over the Internet. Your photos were stored in Photostream for only 30 days (or the last 1000 photos). Photostream didn’t count toward your iCloud storage space, but iCloud Photo Library does. So if you plan on taking advantage of iCloud Photo Library, you’ll need to look at how much space your photos take up, and upgrade your iCloud plan accordingly.

    FlickrAn alternative to iCloud Photo Library is Flickr. Flickr is not a cloud sync system, so photos saved to Flickr are copies in the cloud. If you delete a photo in your iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone, for example, then the photo will be deleted everywhere – in the cloud, on your Mac, etc. But since photos on Flickr are copies, they will be stored on Flickr until they’re deleted from Flickr. Flickr offers a whopping 1TB of free photo storage, and it has both iOS and Android apps.

     

    Did you find this post useful? The way that we work with information is changing and you can help spread the word by sharing with your social media. Do you have questions? Share them by commenting below or contact Patricia at pat@digitalchaoscontrol.com for a complimentary consultation.

  • The Secret to Keeping Your Computer Speedy

    The Secret to Keeping Your Computer Speedy

    Slow Computer

    All computers slow down over time. As the months or years go by, and as more & more applications are installed and data fills the hard drive, you may find yourself looking at a spinning wheel more often than you’d like.

    If you’re running a software program such as Norton Utilities, or if you have a vendor-installed maintenance program, then you have a built-in, automated tool to keep your computer “tuned up”. But if you’re not running one of these software programs, then you need to have a regular maintenance routine for your computer. I suggest putting it on your calendar as a monthly task.

    Here are the steps to follow:

      1. Memory Usage: If you have less than 2GB of memory installed on your PC, then you don’t have enough. You need to see a computer repair technician to install more memory.

    Applications use memory to store data and run faster. When you install new applications, sometimes they are configured to run in the background every time that you re-start your computer. You can check this by doing the following:

        • Windows 7: You can look at which programs automatically run by typing “System Configuration” in the search bar from your Start Menu, and then clicking on the “Startup” tab. You will see a lot of applications that are associated with your computer hardware, but you may also see recently installed applications. You can uncheck the checkboxes beside those applications to stop them from running automatically.
        • Mac OS X: Go to “System Preferences” and select “User & Groups”. Click on “Login Items”. You can unselect installed applications here.
      1. Disk Usage: Your computer will slow down as your hard disc fills up with data. If your disc is more than 50% full, then you may want to look at data that you can delete or move to external storage. (Just make sure that you still maintain at least two, and preferably three, copies of your data on different media, for back-up.) Also be sure that you empty Trash regularly.

    Windows 7 has a utility called “Disk Cleanup” that you should run regularly.

    1. Disk Fragmentation: Your hard disk drive becomes “fragmented” over time. This means that files get broken up because of the way that they’re stored by the file system. It slows down your system to have to search for all of the pieces of a file.
      • On Windows 7, type “Disk Defragmenter” in the search bar and set up a regular schedule for the program to run.
      • On the Macintosh, open the “Disk Utilities” application, select “First Aid”, then “Verify Disk”, and follow the instructions if needed.
    2. Finally, make sure that you have a anti-virus program running.