HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

How do you move things between your Mac computer & iOS devices?

I was just talking to someone about what she's going to do because her Mac is too old to be updated to Lion and use the iCloud.  The iCloud will make sharing between all your Apple devices [computer, iPad, iPhone, AppleTV] much easier, the idea being that the information/material is in the 'cloud' and resourced by the devices when needed/wanted.  [n.b., nothing is totally safe, so you're wise to have backup copies of your most important and irreplaceable things, whether they're in the cloud or not = Murphy's Law].

Thinking a bit, I realized that I'm doing this myself now [I don't yet have iCloud].  I'm not sure about music [but since they're digital files they can be copied elsewhere, I think].  I have the following Cloud accounts, all free:  3GB at Dropbox, 5GB at SugarSync and 5GB at Evernote.  With each, but particularly with dropbox and Evernote you can email things to your account and they will be there for you.  Then you go to your desktop or iPad or iPhone apps [all free] and access the document or item you need.  Remember that anything you take out of the Dropbox on the Cloud or computer/pad etc. is removed, not copied and moved.

So, go to Dropbox or Evernote or SugarSync [I'm sure there are others!] and read the explanations for what you get.  You can run some tests [after all, they're free] and see which you like.  At least til you join the iCloud, this might be sufficient.

 

[I'm researching cloud computing as backup storage and hope to write about that in the near term.]

Rules for Clarity

"To be understood, the writing must be clear and organized. To be clear, it must be as simple as possible. To be simple, it must be focused. To be persuasive, it must be clear, simple and focused." former Justice Mark McCormick (in today's seminar materials)

A note to a Windows user moving to a Mac

About a year ago, I prepared a short memo to a family member who has always used Windows computers and was moving to a Mac [she inherited Ryan's MacBookPro].  Some of the points are standard suggestions from me and I thought worthy of a blog post:

1. At Apple.com/Support there are loads of materials, written and video, to help ‘switchers’ or Windows users trying Mac for the first time, get comfortable.  There is a bit of a difference, but I’m not certain it’s all that important.            
2. I suggest that the first thing you do before you try anything at all is go to the Apple Menu [upper L corner] and drop down to System Preferences.  Go thru them one by one and set them to your liking or at least get some familiarity.    
3. Word Processing:  there are two [or maybe 3?] excellent FREE WP programs that convert and work with Word docs on the Mac - NeoOffice and OpenOffice.  You can find them online.  Might as well get them and use them.    
4. I always suggest some regular cleanup and maintenance.  Two excellent resources for this topic, among others, are:  the Missing Manual series [http://oreilly.com/] and the Take Control series [www.takecontrolbooks.com]
5. I always suggest backing up.  Get an external hard drive that is about 1.5 x the internal startup drive so you have plenty of room.  Then set up TimeMachine [it's part of the OS X operating system and operates automatically in the background] to back it up.  There are other free or shareware backup programs as well.  The topic of Backing Up is amply covered in the resources in ¶ 4, above.  Just remember - it is not IF you will experience a disaster, it is WHEN - always have a backup and, if possible, an off-site/cloud copy of the most important items.  Think Katrina.