Storing Files - Part 2

Initial Conclusion

The initial conclusion I reach is that most consumers have no need for all of the storage capacity of the hard drives and the larger SSDs they get when they buy a Mac. So most consumers will continue to have their storage on local hard drives or SSDs with more capacity than they need, no transition to online primary storage, and limited transition to online backup. Within five years, I think that consumer level personal computers will all have SSDs, not hard drives. You can already purchase a MacBook Air with 256 GB SSD or a MacBook Pro with a 512 GB SSD. They are still a bit expensive, but based on Moore's Law, we can expect that within two years 512 GB SSDs at reasonable prices will be a standard offering of PC manufacturers.

Note - One benefit of larger drives is that we will need fewer drives if we have really substantial storage needs and that will simplify the storage process.

Businesses, on the other hand, will probably transition to online primary and backup storage. This may well push personal computer manufacturers to offer personal computers with less storage, leading to cheaper units entering the consumer marketplace.

Multiple Device Users

All that is fine and dandy, but there is another trend which cuts across the first two. Many of us are multiple device users - desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones - and we want to have access to our files from all our "computers". Therefore, we need to figure out how and where we are going to store those files.

As discussed in my column entitled "Integrating Mac and iPad," published in the September 2012 Newsletter, I decided to store in Evernote all new files relating to computer usage, politics, current events, Mac groups, and a weekly discussion group in which I participate. Evernote is an app that stores all files in the cloud and locally on whatever devices run the app if you are a Premium user ($45 a year). I run Evernote on my iMac and my iPad.

There are other applications, such as Dropbox, GoodReader, Notability, Simplenote, SoundNote, etc., which can perform storage functions similar to Evernote, but they don't do it as well as Evernote and don't have as powerful a search capability.

It seems we are now entering what I call the age of concurrent storage, i.e., storing files almost simultaneously both locally and online. Whether that service will be provided by businesses whose primary purpose is online storage or by businesses which offer a specialized service with synchronization as a key feature is yet to be determined.

You cannot currently do an iPad-wide search on the iPad so, to the extent that you can concentrate your files in one app, there is less searching to do on the iPad. Files on the iPad are stored with the app used to create them.

My next step is to move most of the relevant files indicated above into Evernote. Once that is done (if ever), I can then consider moving other files into Evernote. Logically that would mean that all data files, even photos, videos and music, could end up in Evernote. I doubt I will go that far, but the implication is that Evernote can become a giant database with powerful search capabilities. One might begin to think of it as a sort of an operating system. Perhaps.

Evernote does not limit the total size of storage you can have. It has folders (which are called notebooks) and tags. A Premium user is limited to 250 notebooks, 10,000 tags and 100,000 files. Premium users can upload 50 GB per month and maximum file size is 100 MB. Thus, Evernote currently cannot hold all your files, but it certainly can hold a substantial quantity of them. Mail, photos and music-type files can be held in the specialized Apple applications - Mail, iPhoto and iTunes - all of which can hold in one way or another all these files online and available to your devices, but not taking up storage capacity in Evernote.

Conclusion

I think consumers will continue to store all their files locally rather than online for perhaps the next 5 or 10 years, but the growing recognition of the need to access files from multiple devices should mean that there will be a gradual growth, perhaps plodding, of concurrent storage, i.e., synchronized local and online storage.

Mark Bazrod, MLMUG Newsletter Editor and President

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Storing Files - Part 1

Do you know the best place to store your computer files? More precisely, will the files be stored locally, on a hard drive or a solid state drive (SSD), or online. How about two years from now? Five years?

There are two conflicting trends in the arena of computer storage. The first relates to the capacity of hard drives which has increased almost exponentially over the past several years. We now have internal storage capacity on our Macs that was unimaginable a mere five years ago. Similarly, the capacity of solid state drives is rapidly increasing while the cost continues to decrease.

On the other hand, online storage is more available and somewhat more affordable. In addition, the Internet has become more reliable and download and upload speeds have increased so that the cloud can be used not only as a backup mechanism, but more often as a primary or secondary storage mechanism (e.g., Evernote).

A third trend which undercuts the importance of the first two is the displacement of personal computers by tablets. Many tablet users have comparatively simple computing needs, primarily email and web surfing; they don't need much local storage and certainly not cloud storage.

Let's examine the first two trends in a bit more detail.

Hard Drive Storage

The minimum capacity of the hard drive or SSD that comes with an iMac is 1 TB for a hard drive and 768 GB for an SSD; with the 2 models of the MacBook Air, a 64 or 128 GB SSD; and with the 3 models of the MacBook Pro, 128, 256, or 512 GB of SSDs. 2 and 3 TB drives are now available at relatively reasonable prices and some 4 TB drives are now available. 256, 512 and 768 SSDs are available, although expensive.

Unless you're deep into video processing or storing thousands of images or hundreds of movies, it's unlikely that you will come close to needing 1 TB of storage.

For example, at 2 MB per photo, 1 TB will store 500,000 photos; at 4 MB per MP3, more than 250,000 songs; at 2 GB per movie, 500 movies; and at 1,200 characters per page, more than 800 million pages of text.

Online Backup and Storage

Online backup has become an accepted procedure for many businesses, particularly larger ones. Online storage is considered reliable and the Internet is, with rare exceptions, always accessible. Transmissions can be encrypted, as can stored files. Many businesses have found that online storage is no more costly than maintaining data centers. In addition, companies which specialize in providing online storage often have more technological expertise than a business in which data processing and storage are not the primary focus. Protecting storage against intrusion requires highly specialized skills which are not economical for most businesses to provide for themselves.

As online backup becomes more accepted, online storage is also beginning to be accepted by business. After all, if a business data center is not located on the premises, which is often the case, especially if the business has multiple locations, then the argument against off-site storage doesn't have much traction.

For individual consumers, however, it doesn't make economic sense to backup online, let alone to go online for primary storage. This becomes obvious when you compare the cost of a hard drive with the cost of online storage for a five-year period. Of course, many online storage providers provide as much as 5 GB of free storage. If you want to divide your storage among several online storage providers, it's not going to cost you much money, but I doubt that many users will go to that effort.

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Can't live without

29 Web Apps We Can't Live Without

http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/29_web_apps_we_cant_live_without

 

 

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Apple expands

Apple expands Mac accessory line to over 4,700 US Radio Shacks

http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/20/apple-expands-mac-accessory-line-to-over-4700-us-radio-shacks/

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Are subscriptions going to be the new service plan?

Something to think about....

Evernote for Mac Updated with “Quick Note”

http://www.macstories.net/news/evernote-for-mac-updated-with-quick-note/

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Flipboard's new tools

 

Welcome to the Next Generation of Flipboard

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Inside Flipboard

What’s the only thing better than Flipboard? Flipboard 2.0! It’s a major new edition, with treats for everyone from the casual reader to the power user. There’s more content than ever to enjoy, including a new partnership with Etsy. When you search, we instantly create a magazine out of your results. It’s faster, more visual, and easier to navigate.

And, for the first time, you can collect and save articles, photos, audio and video by organizing them into beautiful magazines. These can be private, or if you want to connect with like-minded enthusiasts, you can make them public and share them on Flipboard and beyond. Now everyone can be a reader and an editor.

 

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Subject: "Take Control of iCloud" ebook updated to cover Apple's many changes

Time for a pop quiz! 

Is iCloud (a) packed with useful features, (b) more complex than Apple lets on, (c) almost essential for Mac and iOS use, (d) thoroughly documented by Joe Kissell in "Take Control of iCloud," or (e) all of the above? 

The answer, as you veteran quiz takers know when faced with an "all of the above" option, is (e). iCloud really is helpful, deceptively complicated, integrated deeply into the Mac and iOS experience, and, frankly, sometimes a royal pain in the posterior. But no one does a better job of explaining iCloud's features and quirks than Joe Kissell, and you can come up to speed with everything iCloud can do for only $10.50 with the 30% MUG discount:

http://tid.bl.it/icloud-mug-discount  

If you're pulling out your hair in frustration as you try to connect your Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Windows PC to the many digital pipes that iCloud offers, Joe's 155-page "Take Control of iCloud" will answer your questions and preserve your hairstyle. And, if you're trying to help your mother, sister, uncle, co-worker, fellow Rotarian, or Game Center buddy sync contacts between devices, create a shared calendar, filter email before it hits the iPhone, and so forth, Joe has ferreted out the details you need to solve their problems.

iCloud is no longer new, and the dreaded transition from MobileMe is long past, but updates and ongoing issues have made "Take Control of iCloud" our top-selling book of the past few years. Keeping it fresh and accurate - this is our fourth free update! - is like playing Whack-a-Mole. Sometimes it seemed that nearly every page had some detail that needed checking and tweaking. Even though Apple doesn't share inside information with us about what's happening in iCloud's troposphere, things Joe has had to track down and explain since just the last version of this book include iOS 6, iTunes 11, the Notes and Reminders Web apps, Shared Photo Streams, numerous tiny changes to iCloud's Web interface, and more. 

As always, thank you for supporting the Take Control series!

cheers... -Adam & Tonya Engst, Take Control publishers

Mac troubleshooting: How to handle freezes & crashes

Joe Kissell@joekissell

• Feb 13, 2013 3:30 AM
• print

Crashes and freezes in OS X are mercifully rare, but they do occur. Fortunately, most of them can be resolved readily; and even though a crash or freeze may have any of numerous causes or symptoms, the same procedure works for troubleshooting most of them.

Crashing apps

Your first step should be to determine the scope of a problem. Is just one application having difficulties, or is the whole system affected?

Send a report, or not: If an app quits unexpectedly, you know that it's at least part of the problem. App crashes are usually accompanied by an error message. If you see one of these, click Reopen to send Apple a report with details about your system configuration and what went wrong, and then relaunch the app. Or clickOK to send the report without relaunching the app.

With OS X's default settings, a dialog box like this appears after most app crashes. Click Reopen to send a report to Apple and relaunch the app.

If you don’t want to send Apple information about crashes automatically, go to theSecurity & Privacy pane of System Preferences, click the lock icon, and enter your username and password to unlock it. Then click Privacy, select Diagnostics & Usage, and uncheck Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple. After you do that, the options in the crash dialog box change to Ignore, Report, and Reopen; only if you click Report is information sent to Apple.

If you change your preferences to prevent crash reports being sent to Apple automatically, a dialog box like this appears when an app crashes.

Skip reopening windows: If the app crashes again after you relaunch it, you’ll see a message asking whether you want to reopen the windows that were open the last time. I suggest clicking Don’t Reopen, on the theory that something in one of the open windows may have caused the crash. Either way, as long as the app functions correctly from then on, you can go about your business. (If it continues to crash, follow the steps below, beginning with “Restart.”)

When an application crashes a second time after you relaunch it, OS X asks if you want to reopen its windows. Most likely you don't.

Spinning beach balls and other bad signs

Sometimes, however, an app freezes but doesn’t quit. If your symptom is an unresponsive Mac—perhaps featuring the dreaded spinning wait cursor, sometimes refered to as the "spinning beach ball" or as I like to call it, the “spinning pizza of death” (SPOD)—you’ll need to narrow down the cause.

Switch to another app: Try switching to another app—for example, by clicking its Dock icon or pressing Command-Tab. If other apps respond, and especially if the SPOD appears only when you hover the pointer over a window or menu belonging to the app that was in the foreground when your Mac stopped responding, try force-quitting that app. One way to do this is to press Command-Option-Esc, select the app in the list that appears, and then click Force Quit. (Sometimes you may need to repeat this once or twice to get the app to quit.) If this force-quitting succeeds, try relaunching the app. More often than not, that will be enough to bring the app back to life.

If relaunching (or force-quitting and then relaunching) an app doesn’t do the trick, if none of your apps respond, or if your mouse pointer is frozen, move on to the following steps—try each one, in order, until the problem goes away.

Restart: If you can choose Restart from the Apple menu, do so. If not, press Command-Control-Eject (the Eject key looks like an upwards-pointing arrow with a line underneath it) to force an immediate restart. If even that doesn’t work, press and hold the Power button until your Mac shuts down, then press the Power button again to turn your Mac back on.

Check disk space: A startup disk that’s extremely low on disk space (10GB or less) can lead to slowdowns and worse. Delete some files (or move them to another disk) to make more space. For help, see “Seven ways to free up drive space.”

Try another document: If an app always misbehaves when a particular document is open, try closing it and opening a different document. A damaged or corrupted file could be the source of the problem.

Update your software: Make sure OS X itself, and any apps you use regularly, are up to date, because a software update may have fixed a crash-producing bug. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to update Apple software and anything downloaded from the Mac App Store; for anything else, use the app’s built-in software update feature or download the latest version.

Disconnect peripherals: If you attached any new devices recently—especially USB devices—try disconnecting them. Restart and see if the problem recurs. If not, the device may be faulty or, more likely, it may require updated software or firmware. Contact the device’s manufacturer for assistance.

Disable plug-ins: If the app that’s crashing includes any extensions, plug-ins, or other extras, try disabling or removing them to rule out the possibility that the add-on software is the culprit.

Try a safe boot: To disable certain software that loads at startup and to run cleanup processes that may resolve random gremlins in your system, try a safe boot: Restart your Mac, and, immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key until the gray Apple logo appears on the screen. If the problem goes away, restart again normally and try again.

Repair your disk: Disk errors can lead to all sorts of problems, crashes included. Try using OS X Recovery and using Disk Utility’s Repair Disk feature to look for and fix common disk errors.

Run Apple Hardware Test: Apple Hardware Test is a special utility you can run to test your Mac’s logic board, RAM, graphics board, and other components for errors that could lead to crashes and worse. Apple’s support site has complete instructions for using this tool.

Add RAM: If your Mac has a small amount of RAM (say, 4GB or less) and has available slots to add more, try increasing your RAM. Extra RAM can speed up many operations on your Mac and can reduce the likelihood of crashes and hangs related to running out of memory.

If you try all those things and continue to have crashes or freezes, contact the app’s developer (if it’s a single app) or Apple (if the problem is system-wide) for further advice and assistance.

Where's Hold

If you're using an iPhone 4 or 4S, you’ve probably noticed that when making a call, the hold button has been replaced by the FaceTime button. You can still place a call on hold though.

To do so, tap and hold the mute button until it turns into hold. To resume the call, tap the hold button again.

WHEN TYPING YOU MAY FIND THAT YOU ENTER A WORD INCORRECTLY OR THAT AUTO-CORRECT CHANGES IT WHEN YOU TAP THE SPACE BAR. INSTEAD OF DELETING THE WHOLE WORD JUST TAP THE BACKSPACE KEY ONCE TO SEE THE REPLACEMENT OPTIONS, THEN SELECT THE WORD YOU WANT TO CHANGE IT TO.