SMUG meeting, August 16, 2022
Meeting notes by Kathleen Charters
This month’s topic was iCloud, Apple’s suite of cloud-based services. “Cloud-based services” both correctly describe the services, and cloud understanding of those services, since many people don’t understand what a computer “cloud” means.
As a quick summary: iCloud provides email (Apple Mail), contacts (Apple Contacts), calendar (Apple Calendar), photos (Apple Photos), file storage (iCloud Drive), notes (Apple Notes), reminders and lists (Apple Reminders), word processing (Apple Pages), spreadsheets (Apple Numbers), slides (Apple Keynote), news (Apple News), and location services (Find iPhone) across all your Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and the web, via almost any web browser on almost any device.
Assuming you have everything properly set up, these services allow you to view photos, send email, create word-processing documents, and sync passwords from almost any Apple device to any other Apple device. You can also combine family member iCloud accounts into a Family Plan, expand the storage used by iCloud, and generally make life easier with iCloud services.
Q&A
Mac OS12 – security features for Apple silicon machines, interface looks the same but underneath is different and faster, people doing YouTube video bottleneck is Internet speed, still photography not noticeable change; screen drawing issues addressed, open folder of images quickly or 20 tabs open on the browser, speed up routine activity; MacBook Air running Apple Silicon and MacOS 12.5 can do production work
iPhoto on iPhone go to desktop automatically, the link between phone and desktop is through iCloud; if do not want on iPhone use iCloud to manage photos, may allow Mac to control photos on all devices; free iCloud is only 5 GB, may have to pay for more space, Lawrence has 2 TB on iCloud and uses this for iPhone photos on a family plan for spouse and daughter in U.K.
Note: SLR camera photo is 44 MB per photo; these are not on iCloud
If iPhone full can upgrade to a new iPhone with higher capacity; to get rid of things manage and delete from desktop and tell to delete from all devices; if want to keep on desktop and not iPhone, go to iPhoto, select all, export to a folder, put on a USB drive or SD card, then delete out of iPhoto and manage the photos in another program; e.g., Adobe Lightroom
iPhoto works for most people for most purposes
Do not put quarters into the machine even if there is an instruction to do so – this is a joke
Music does not work the same as photos, which used to sync with iTunes, but not anymore
Difference between a dynamic database of photos and an archive of photos to hold somewhere else, e.g., a safe deposit box
iPhoto is an organizing system, not an archive system
Example of having an external hard drive hooked up, but not telling the computer to back up to it
If you get a new Mac computer, Migration Assistant will copy files, documents, and accounts from your old machine to your new machine, unless the program is incompatible
Time Machine for backup – attach to the current machine, use Migration Assistant to copy from the current machine to Time Machine storage, external drive
Apple Gatekeeper on recent Mac OS 11-12 update set up (mark checkbox) to install automatically for automatic update; Apple updates software with the most recent code; run the update for increased security; can check Automatically keep this machine up-to-date to protect from malware
Business meeting
President – welcome to Audrey, issue resolved
Treasurer – 1 new membership; balance is $1633.63
VP Programs – Basic computer Literacy program for the community, bandwidth challenges: CenturyLink, Wave Cable, Cox; encouraged to change to a global e-mail account, e.g., Gmail, so they still have access to e-mail when there is a local outage
Port Angeles space is available for free if open to the community
What topic for September?
October Community Computer Literacy event on a Saturday?
iCloud – what is it?
Apple ID – List of services available, ability to delete accounts from here; if you have a basic account, turn on all services except iCloud Photos and Drive
Hover the mouse over individual sections of the iCloud Storage graph to see which services are using your iCloud space.
You have access to iCloud from other devices, and you can even use a machine that isn’t yours to access iCloud via the web:
This is what Apple Mail looks like as seen from a web browser. It looks and acts pretty much as it does on a Mac or iPad or iPhone.
If you are away from your computer, or your computer has died, you can look up your Contacts in iCloud by using any computer and logging in.
Apple Photos, as seen via a web browser in iCloud:
iCloud Drive tries to organize files by type, though you can just drop things at random.
In System Preferences, while looking at iCloud service, you can select “Manage” to add storage: 5 GB free, $1/month 50 GB, up to 2TB drive space
Apple One service, Apple bundle in family version, so everyone has the same set of services
iPhoto stores photos in iCloud, so multiple locations have copies of the data
Keychain allows the sync of passwords across devices, securely and invisibly
Hide what is on the Web or hide e-mail to give a different e-mail address
People use iCloud Mail and Contacts. If updated on one device, all updated
Calendars, Reminders – can set to location; sync Notes, Safari for bookmarks
Find My Mac to track down the location of the device
Home for Home Pod so you can access from anywhere and can speak to a person at home
Siri – synchronize
All devices have the same access to everything
Photos by media types, panorama examples, create a catalog of people and objects, e.g., airplanes and ships
Tools in iPhoto to adjust exposure
iCloud.com, log on, look at photos there, cannot edit photos there, but can access from anywhere you have Internet access
Have a menu to go to other services, e.g., Mail, fully functional; Contacts – can store information on anything and search on it, e.g., list of devices, part of the database of people on the Web as an iCloud service
Calendar – can be shared, can set preferences for reminders so only the person with the calendar gets them and not the person who subscribes to that calendar; Lawrence and Kathleen use Google Calendar for sharing
Password length is the thing that makes password safe, government guidelines are not necessary
Can share documents, PowerPoint presentations, and synchronize notes
iCloud drive – store files
Reminders – create date time or location triggered reminders (tied to Apple Maps); phone will remind when arrive at that address; Web version harder than iPhone or Desktop to set up
Pages saved to iCloud go into the Pages directory; same for Notes
Find My… iPhone
Cloud Services – must be aware of use of space, if needed more than what is free, the cost of storage is reasonable, do not have to think about how to integrate with devices; if needed to store photos, triple that for a year
If the Directory shows half a TB in use, then pay for 2 TB so you do not have to delete things
Information about the account
Q&A
Go to your iCloud account
To find your things, can sort same way as in Finder; you can create folders to organize files
From the desktop can search in iPhoto by media type, e.g., screenshots or .jpg
Things in iCloud viewed on the desktop
Can use a browser to view Apple iCloud
Comparison with Google services
Google has search capabilities, but integration is manual
Google Drive is not integrated with the desktop; you can do this manually
Things may not work as well
Notes drawing function on iPad but not on desktop, strengths, and weaknesses, Adobe application on iPad to show on desktop
Safety of Cloud Services – once every 6-8 months see story about iCloud hacked, no one has hacked by using normal hacking tools, celebrity stories usually about having password guessed; items are encrypted in transit, messages encrypted Apple to Apple but third party may not be encrypted, Google campaign asking Apple to fix messaging since Android phone shows up green (unencrypted) on iPhone but Apple to Apple messages are blue (encrypted); same for mail systems – Apple mail is encrypted but other mail systems are not
Have a choice in how to send, if going Mac to Mac will be encrypted, Mac to anything not Mac will not be encrypted
Use both iCloud, Google Services, Microsoft OneDrive and Outlook, Gmail, and authentication services
Notification of meeting – e-mail not received by one member, NextDoor notifications coming out 8-12 hours after posted
My 2017 machine died, spoke to Apple, took it into the store, not able to access how to clear nonvolatile RAM? What is there is encrypted; see Apple’s list of steps to take before giving away/selling a Mac; remove from the machine, then smash the hard drive, hard to drill since solid; Disk Utility admin User can erase the drive the number of times you specify, takes a long time; drive gets hot
How to Sanitize Equipment – put this information on SMUG Website; especially old devices no longer supported; graceful migration and erase the machine; iCloud makes migration easy
Need help with terminology used; have on Mac the application “Dictionary” which is a full version of the Oxford Dictionary; Apple dictionary for Apple-specific terms; in applications folder under “Dictionary”; can search Wikipedia
Demonstrate things that can be done in the terminal, the built-in mail server on Mac comes with a manual, UNIX was designed by Martians since the list command is ls and more detail is ls -al; invented by people ages 15-25; spelling variations: disc vs. disk
Meeting topic suggestions
September – How to use Numbers, Pages, Keynote; Excel macros with Visual Basic and use for log files to audit, basic stats; 3D printing and creations;
October – basic computer literacy
November – new OS? Cost of Monterey estimated at $10B; Lawrence will install the Beta when available
Later:
Diagnostics – in-person
Accessibility features