Friday, November 30, 2012

Mac Security...

Many of my clients ask, "What kind of anti-virus software do you use?". They are inevitably surprised when I say, "I don't use any". This does not mean I don't take precautions to protect myself online, on the road and at home. I back up 3 ways: Time Machine, a cloned back up and with an online back up service.

Here is an excellent article on TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) on the subject by T J Luoma:

Securing Your Mac - A Guide for Reasonable People, Version 1.0

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Mail offline problem, continued...

As a follow up to my post about Mail going offline, you can try the following.
Go to System Preferences>Network, select your WiFi in the left column, then click on Advanced in the lower right hand corner. Then highlight each of the wireless networks you have joined, and remove them by selecting the minus sign under the list of network names. Then turn WiFi off. Then go into keychain access and remove all of the keychain entries for each of those networks. Then turn WiFi back on, and rejoin your network from scratch. 

This has worked for me, although the results for this have been mixed among users.

Logitech Alert Commander now available for Mac

Mac users have had ways to use their macs as video surveillance for awhile. Earlier in this blog, I reviewed Orbicle's WITNESS, which turns your Mac's iSight camera into a home alarm system. I have had this installed on my last two systems, and it works really well. But my Logitech Alert outdoor surveillance system required Windows for set up and management. So I installed a Windows partition just to manage my front and rear camera. 


But today, Engadget announced that Logitech has a Mac version of the Alert software. I didn't even finish reading the announcement before I hopped into the App Store and downloaded it. It works like a charm! So now I can leave my Windows partition until I need to update my kid's government FAFSA forms (a whole NOTHER story).




Sunday, November 4, 2012

Mail Keeps Going Offline

Many users are experiencing problems with Apple Mail since installing Mountain Lion (I noticed it on my Mac since installing the 10.8.2 update.). The problem often appears upon waking, after your Mac has been asleep (of course, when else would it wake up?!) All of your IMAP mail accounts will be offline, with the dreaded circle of evil, as I call it. Although I cannot be sure that it is an IMAP issue, my Comcast account, which is POP, is not having the same issue.



The quickest solution for now is to quit Mail, and re-open it. Then all of the connections are reset, and your email is back to normal. This seems to be a bonified bug. Here is a discussion about it:


I'll let you know when there is a fix...