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Opening
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Opening Music
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Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles
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Mandaandthemarbles.com
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Sponsor: Circus Ponies
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Notebook
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Circus Ponies Notebook is a great application for almost any Mac user
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I've told you a lot about cool features like it's drawing tools, flags and sticky notes, integration with calendar, to-dos, and contacts, and the Multi-dex indexing.
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But it's also just a really darn good note taking app
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You can just type straight in say if you were writing a paper, short story, or novel.
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It also is really good for outlining with support for multiple styles and indent levels. And even has support the Cornell note taking system
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Then there is the fun stuff, like being able to style your notebook with different types of paper (legal, college ruled, graph). You can even mix and match.
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It's really simple, yet powerful and versatile.
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Get yourself a copy today and if you're even a bit curious you can download the free 30-day trial.
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News
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Schiller allegedly denies cheaper iPhone
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Reportedly in an interview with Shanghai evening news Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller is said to have shot down recent rumors that Apple would be bringing out a lower cost version of the iPhone.
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I say allegedly because Reuters withdrew it's original report later in the day after it made the blog rounds because supposdely after they filed the report the source, Shanghai evening news, made significant changes to the original report.
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It's unclear if the report was inaccurate because the changes didn't change what Schiller reportedly said and the Next Web did conform with Apple that the interview did take place.
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Apparently Schiller explained that it simply isn't how Apple does things. Citing the fact that Apple's focus is bringing out products with the best design, materials, and customer experience as a driving focus, not price points
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There had been recent reports from the Wall Street Journal that Apple would debut a low cost iPhone in 2013 to try and possibly woo consumers who are looking at lower cost Android phones.
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Another potential driver would be gaining ground in emerging markets like China where many consumers simply can't afford premium priced products.
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As a matter of fact Apple CEO Tim Cook was in China last week meeting with the chairman of China Mobile, China's largest mobile carrier and the only national carrier in China not carrying the iPhone.
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Apple has a long history of saying one thing and then doing that exact thing only months later. And remember there is a difference between selling a "cheap" smartphone and a "cheaper", i.e. lower cost, iPhone.
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And if you think I'm splitting hairs, remember Tim Cook would still have you believe that Apple isn't selling a 7" iPad.
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Apple also tends to start to diversify product designs and price points as they move from market leaders to staple products. And the iPhone has for sure reached that level of maturity.
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While in China Cook did announce that the cellular enabled versions of the iPad mini would start shipping in China later this month.
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iMac availability should improve
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According to Digitimes LG, a display vendor for Apple's new iMac's has been having yield issues which is responsible for the long wait times on new iMac shipments.
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The issues seems to be lamination issues with the new panels that use a fused LED and glass layer to gain thickness and achieve better clarity
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The 21.5" model shipments have begun to improve however and the report says that LG is now shipping 300,000-400,000 units a month
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They say the supplier is also getting a handle on the larger displays and they expect that we'll see shorter ship times on those models as well over the next month.
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Tunderbolt cable price drop
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Apple recently reduced the price of it's 2 meter Thunderbolt cable by 10 bucks from $49.99 to $39.99 USD
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They also introduced a shorter 0.5-meter version for $29.99
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Both cables are available on the Apple on-line store and probably at an Apple Store near you.
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Intel was also prepping the fiber optic version of Thunderbolt cables at CES. The optical version will brig more speed with throughput up to 100Gbps.
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Optical cabling will allow cabling runs as long as "tens of meters"
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Intel hasn't given firm pricing or availability beyond saying it will be here this year.
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Optical cables will likely be very expensive, but should be optical c abling will be backwards compatible due to a design that includes a transceiver at each end of a Thunderbolt cable.
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Optical cables while being faster and longer will not support power however because impedance issues over longer distances make sending up to 10W impractical.
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MacBook Air, EFI Firmware Update 2.6
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For mid-2012 Macbook Air
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Addresses a color issue when connecting to HDMi displays
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Fixes a problem that occurred when booting into Windows
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And an issue where disconnecting a Thunderbolt cable before waking the computer from standby could cause the system to freeze.
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The update is available now from Software Update or Apple's support site and requires Mac OS X 10.8.2
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Predictions on Apple's Q1
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The analysts are getting busy with their forecasts in advance of Apple's Q1/2013 earnings report which will happen on January 23rd.
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It's predicted the iPhone will come with record shattering number of unit sales in the area of 50 million. Actually the range is 43 to 63 million, but even on the low end that beats the previous record of 37 million.
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KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo put his estimate at 52 million units, up 41% year-over-year.
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And while iPhone sales are expected to have been good for Q1 Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has cut component orders in half for its iPhone 5 moving forward due to “weaker-than-expected-demand.”
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This report quickly came under dispute with NPD DisplaySearch analyst saying those number weren't accurate. He claims the cuts are severe, with Apple reducing iPhone 5 display orders for January from 19 million to between 11 million and 14 million. Something the NPD says is still a sign that iPhone 5 demand is lower than Apple had hoped.
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Apple stock dipped below 500 for the first time in a year on the Wall Street Journal component news.
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Also rumors of Apple bowing to competitive pressure to compress update cycles and compete on price, reducing margins and thus earning per share, supposedly have investors spooked.
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Some are saying the WSJ piece is misinterpreting the numbers. Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu told his investors that iPhone demand “remains robust” and that the reduction in component orders is due to improved yields. His sentiments reflected similar ones made by Wells Fargo’s Maynard Um who said in addition that investors had set unrealistic estimates on Apple shipments and have given too much significance to supplier shifts and more rapid product release cycles.
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iPads are also predicted to have done well with shipments around 23 million units up about 49% from a year ago.
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On the Mac side expect Apple's numbers to be near if not slightly lower than last year
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IDC expects Apple's December quarter Mac numbers to be around 2.03 million units, just about 300,000 shy of last year
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That's actually a 0.2% decline year over year, but should beat the PC industry as a whole which say an average decline of about 4.5%
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Gartner is a bit more positive on December quarter PC sales. They say Apple's U.S.-based shipments were up 5.4 percent while the overall PC market slid just 2.1 percent.
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They think Apple will have shipped 2.1 million Macs in the quarter.
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The trend of reduced PC and MAc is not surprising though. NPD display research is already predicting that, just like Steve and Tim have said, 2013 will be the year that tablet shipments overtook PC shipments.
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More reports of March iPad updates
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I told you last time that the Japanese blog Macotakara claimed Apple would push out an updated 5th gen iPad in March and that other sources claimed the iPad min i might get a rev as well.
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This week Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White and RBC analyst Doug Freedman are also saying their checks show that is exactly what Apple plans to do.
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White used checks at CES to support predictions that Apple would put out a lighter and thinner iPad and new iPad mini
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Freedman doesn't give many details, but says Apple may be moving up introduction of the next iPad Mini to March
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Most believe that if Apple does rev the mini so soon it would be mainly to give it a Retina display update.
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There have also been rumors of a Spring iPhone update, the 5S being out earlier than normal.
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Jeffries analyst Peter Misek claims their supply check show Apple moving into production around March with an expected June or July launch date.
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He claims seeing 2 different prototypes in testing, one which may be the rumored cheaper iPhone.
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The cheaper iPhone has been rumored to be using a plastic body more reminiscent of the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Also it would have a 4" non-retina display, have a lightning connector, and likely be 3G only.
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And we are also getting reports that 3rd party resellers might be showing stock outs of Apple Thunderbolt Displays, possibly signaling a refresh on the way.
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If they do it's likely we'll see a new 27" model that is thinner, like the iMac
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wonder if it could coincide with that new Pro Machine Tim Cook promised in 2013.
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Feedback, Comments and Commentary
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Feedback on App Store pricing
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Play comment from Gary
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Adding events to right calendar in iCal
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Play question from Gary
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I was confused by this at first because in the event entry window in Calendars on both Mac and iOS you get options to select the Calendar you want to add the event to.
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On the Mac though, when you use the 'Create Quick Event' button, little "+" icon at the top of the window, you just enter the event and it goes to the default Calendar you have set in settings.
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You can change it after the fact, but that requires extra clicks.
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So is there a way to save extra clicks? It turns out that there is
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If you click and hold on the "+" icon when using the 'Create Quick Event' button you should get a drop down showing your calendar list
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Select the calendar you want to add to and the Create Quick Event dialog will appear as normal
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Enter your event and and hit 'Enter' and the event will be added with the Calendar already set to the calendar you selected regardless of what you have your default calendar set to.
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Another handy tip, if you find that you often add multiple events to the same calendar at the same time, is to adjust the default calendar setting to always default to the last calendar selected.
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Calendar > Preferences… > General
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Change the 'Default Calendar' option to 'Last selected calendar' (at the bottom).
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Now when you add new events they will always be assigned to the last calendar you had added an event to by default.
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What is this "Other" stuff
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I think we've cover this in the past, but I can never remember for sure and it has come up again with a couple people in the past few weeks
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If you connect your iOS device to iTunes and then access the device screen at the bottom you'll see a graph of the storage broken out into several categories
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Audio, Video, Photos, Apps, Books, Other, and Free
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Most are self explanatory, but the "Other" can be confusing
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What's most interesting about "Other" is that it often has data in it that would fit the "Other" categories. For example music or application data.
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Basically "Other" is the place for the OS and other apps to use for data storage. Things like documents, settings, caches, etc.
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Examples would be offline data for Apps like Instapaper or Pocket, downloaded podcast files for Instacast or Downcast, local PDFs in GoodReader or PDFPen, local iWork docs, etc.
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To see which apps are the biggest "Other" hogs to can go to Settings > General > Usage on your device and then click 'Show all Apps' under the 'Storage section.
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In this section you'll see the total storage used by apps and their data
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Click on any App to see it's details
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Under the title you'll see the version and the App size, that is the storage accounted for under the "applications" section in iTunes. the actual size of the app
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It's "data", the part in "Other", is listed here as "Documents & Data"
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What's you'll notice is even if an App is larger in it's total storage that App my not be using up the most "data" (other) storage.
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Games for example tend to be large in Application size, but use little data to store setting and game progress
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Document based apps, like Pages, are smaller but use up more data.
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Some of Apple's apps, like Video and Music, will actually let you delete their data from the usage settings by swiping over it and pressing 'Delete'
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Music is actually a big "Other" hog especially if you use Music Match. It's caches the music you stream as downloads in the "other" category.
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To get the data purged from 3rd party apps there are generally two methods
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Go into the app itself and delete or remove the content, purge it's cached files, etc.
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Uninstall the app.
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Sometimes things can go awry and the "Other" category will get stuck or worse growing rapidly
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This is usually a bug or corruption in the data.
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One recommended fix is to connect your device to iTunes, then restart by holding sleep+wake until you see the Apple logo and restarting the device. (careful not to hold too long or your device will go into "recovery" mode forcing a reinstall, if it happens, just disconnect from iTunes and restart the device).
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The better and more reliable method is to dock, do a backup, and then do a restore.
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Securing Java, what you need to know
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Last week when the US Department of homeland security announced a serious security flaw in Java 7 and recommended all users turn it off until it was patched I took notice
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I use Crash Plan, as you know, for my backups and it uses Java to run.
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Luckily it turned out that Crash Plan was/is not impacted by the vulnerability because the exploit was only for java running in the browser and only if you are running Java 7. Crash Plan uses version 6.
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But I did have to do a lot of digging to figure all this out and I wanted to share what I learned with you so you don't have to dig too.
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Luckily for me though I have friends to help out. Check out John Martellaro's awesome post at the Mac Observer for all the details
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Here are the facts you need to know
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Up until 2012 Apple integrated Java into OS X. That was up through Java version 6
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Mountain Lion does not come with Java installed by default, so unless you installed it you won't have it.
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Starting with version 7 Oracle is maintaining the OS X versions of Java
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You can check which version of Java you have installed by Opening Applications > Utilities > Terminal and typing 'java -version'
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If it's installed you'll likely see something like "java version "1.6.0_37""
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Java versions are numbered based on the number after the one dot (1.N), so 1.6 is version 6
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If you type that command and OS X prompts you to install Java you probably don't to, although it will install Apple's Java 6, not Java 7
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The exploit is on the Java plug-in only
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On the 10th Apple used their mechanism to disable the Java plug-in on Mac's and stop it from working
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They likely didn't need to since the exploit only impacted 1.7, but better safe than sorry.
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Again, stand alone apps that use Java are not impacted by the exploit.
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Stand alone apps use the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) of the system and at this point most Mac apps, like Crash Plan, are written for Java 6.
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In order to get Java 7 now a days you'll have to go specifically to Oracle's site.
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There is a test page that will load an Applet and test your Java and get the update
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If you update from that page you will be updating just the Java plug-in which get's installed at ' /Library/Internet Plug-ins'
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The plug-in is now stand alone because it has it's own JRE version 1.7.0_11-b21 (the patched build). 1.7.0_10 was the exploited version
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And most Mac users only want to update their plug-in, NOT the JRE proper.
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The update will also install a Java Preference pane you can use to check your version of the plug-in and it's JRE.
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What most Mac users want to avoid doing is installing the Java Development Kit (JDK). As the name would imply this is really for developers only.
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It would install version 1.7.0_11 of the JRE at the OS level blowing away 1.6.0_38 which most OS X Java applications (like Crash Plan) need.
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Interestingly Oracle did patch the 1.6.0 JRE to 1.6.0_39, but there isn't a build for OS X
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Using Dictation
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One of the features of iOS and now OS X that I find myself using more and more is Dictation
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I'm using it mostly for texts and email, especially on my iPhone.
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Here are some helpful tips that I've been using
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On iOS it helps to use the "raise to speak" feature. Settings > General > Siri. Turn on 'Raise to Speak'
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It will always work better if you enunciate clearly, but talk normally and at normal volume. You don't need to should or to talk like a robot
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Don't freak out about accuracy at firs, although in my experience it was good out of the box. Just use the keyboard and auto-correct 'suggest' (double tap a misspelled word) to correct. Much faster. Plus the more you dictate the more accurate it seems to get,
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Can only dictate in 30-second chunks, but that actually longer than you might think. You'll be surprised.
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Lean to speak punctuation, you'll feel silly at first, and learn commands
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Apple has a support article that lists out all the commands
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Obvious ones, like period, comma, question mark, exclamation point.
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open and close for braces and brackets. i.e. open parenthesis, close parenthesis
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on and off. All caps on and all caps off.
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new line and new paragraph. space bar
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numeral for typing numbers. i.e. numeral two = 2
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add "sign" for many symbols, i.e. copyright sign
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emoticons, smiley face, frowny face, winky face
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Closing
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Podcast Marketplace
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Thanks to my sponsors
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Circus Ponies
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Smile
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Gazelle
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What’s your iPhone or iPad worth? Take a minute, and go to gazelle.com to find out.
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Squarespace
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Build a great looking and maintainable web site in minutesmints, not hours or days with Squarespace. Try it free. Go to squarespace.com/maccast to sign up now.
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And when you sign up, you'll get 10% off when you enter the offer code: 'maccast1'
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Sharefile by Citrix
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Take all the hassle out of sharing and sending your business files via old methods like email attachments and FTP with by using Sharefile
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Try it risk free for 30-days. Go to ShareFile.com, click on the radio microphone and enter my offer code MACCAST
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Maccast Live at Macworld/iWorld
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Macworld is coming up January 31st to February 2nd, 2013 in San Francisco at Moscone Center
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I'll be recording a live Maccast from the show floor on Friday February 1st from 2:30 to 3:30
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I want to interview Macworld attendees and Maccast fans about why they come to the show and the kinds of things they are seeing and doing at the show. Email me if you'll be at Macworld and if you're interested in being on the air.
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If you need them I have free Expo Hall passes, details on the Facebook page and Google+ community. Or email me.
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Free Macworld/iWorld 2013 Expo Hall Pass here
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Mac Geek Disneyland Day
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If you watch my Instagram you likely know I'm a bit of a Disneyland fan and as it turns out so are a lot of Mac Geeks it seems.
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David Sparks (MacSparky) is too and he and I thought it would be fun to have Mac and Disneyland fans get together and do an informal meet-up
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We set a date of Saturday January 26th, which is the weekend before Macworld.
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Basically it's just a chance for a bunch of us to be in the same general area at the same time.
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Go to the website for details
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Keep emails coming. Audio comments.
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281-622-4269 or 281-Mac-I-Am-9
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PLEASE LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
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MacCast Forum
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Follow me on Twitter
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Checkout the page on Facebook
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