Hello Friends,

Monday we honor a true American patriot, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was a man that believed in fighting for human rights and dedicated his life to the American idea that "all men are created equal..."     Grace and I were fortunate enough to have marched with Dr. King in Chicago in the 60's when she was 8 months pregnant with our first child.  We were handing out anti-war leaflets on Wacker Drive when we had a chance encounter with another famous man, Dr.  Benjamin Spock, happened to walk by and stopped to talk with us and together we went down for the speech by Dr. King.  Dr. King is an inspiration to generations past and generations to come.

I actually did a little better in my predictions than I reported as a customer did point out that a Russian space tourist did catch a ride on a Russian rocket and, I discovered Hapy actually reads Kibbles because he reminded me that he placed second at Quechee and took first place at the Capital District Scottish games in Albany,NY in 2019.  I guess my cataracts clouded the crystal ball just a bit. 

iCloud Photos as a Life Saver!

Data loss is a horrible thing and while you might be working on the top secret formula for time travel or fountain of youth the most common cause for tears and anxiety is losing a lifetime of precious photos.  It used to be that we would store these photos in boxes in a closet or slides in trays hidden away.  But now most photos are digital and my darkroom at my home in Prickly is just a dark storage room.   

When Grace and I went on our trip of a lifetime in 2000, riding our motorcycles across the US and Canada, we took hundreds of pictures that we stored on the Powerbook that I carried in my saddlebag.   I guess the jostling didn't sit well with the Powerbook and I ended up having to pay a bunch of money to recover my photos from a crashed drive.

But wait, there is a better way!  iCloud Photos works with your Photos app to keep your photos and videos securely stored in iCloud and up to date on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple TV and at iCloud.com.   It doesn't matter if you drop your iPhone into the ocean or if you accidentally erase your Mac, your photos and videos are in the cloud!

iCloud Photos automatically keeps every photo and video you take in iCloud, giving you access from any device, anytime.  Any changes you make to your library on one device will change on your other devices, too.   These changes happen when you are connected to Wi-Fi and you have sufficient battery. 

How to get started
1) Update your device to the latest OS
2) Set up iCloud on all devices
3) Make sure that you are signed into iCloud using THE SAME Apple ID on all devices (this is the most common error)
4) If you for some weird reason have a Windows PC, update to Windows 7 or later and download iCloud for Windows
5) Turn on iCloud Photos on each device:
     a) On iPhone, iPad or iPod touch go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos, then turn on iCloud Photos.
    b) On your Mac, go to System Preferences > Apple ID. Click iCloud in the sidebar, then select Photos. If you have an earlier version of macOS, go to System Preferences > iCloud. Click Options next to Photos, then select iCloud Photos.
    c) On Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD, go to Settings > Users and Accounts > iCloud. Then turn on iCloud Photos.
    d) If you are a Windows dude or dudess follow these instructions.

iCloud will store your photos and videos in the original formats and supports HEIF, JPEG, RAW, PNG, GIF, TIFF, HEVC, and MP4 — as well as special formats you capture with your iPhone, like slo-mo, time-lapse, 4K videos, and Live Photos.

May you have 10,000 backups and never use one -- that was the signature of a colleague in the industry and it is so true so you still want a backup. When you use iCloud Photos your photos and videos are NOT duplicated in your iCloud backup so it is a good idea to keep at least one backup copy of your library.  You can download them to your Mac and store them in a separate library or dedicate a thumb drive to be the Photo backup. 

On iCloud.com, click Photos and then select those you want to download.  Click and hold the download button  in the upper right corner and click download.  On iOS and iPadOS you can use AirDrop and on a Mac you can just select and drag the photos.

iCloud Photos is an awesome tool, and, if you are like me and have a lot of photos, music and files that you store in iCloud you should consider paying the very reasonable cost to Apple to expand the amount of storage allocated to you.

Use Your Apple Watch to Unlock Your Mac, and Apps in Catalina

If you’ve resisted requiring a password on your Mac after it wakes up or comes out of the screen saver because it’s too much work to enter repeatedly, an Apple Watch can make authentication much easier. In previous versions of macOS, just wearing an unlocked Apple Watch is enough to enter your Mac’s password; in Catalina, the Apple Watch can also enter your password when prompted by apps. First, make sure your Apple Watch has a passcode (in Watch > Passcode), is on your wrist, and is unlocked. Then, in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, select “Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac.” From then on, most of the time your Mac or an app wants your password, your Apple Watch will provide it automatically. (This feature requires that the Mac dates from mid-2013 or later, that all devices use the same iCloud account, and that the Apple ID uses two-factor authentication instead of two-step verification.)

(Featured image based on an original by Christin Hume on Unsplash)

Grace and I got to walk a couple blocks down the road and attend a concert by Grace Potter who is from the Mad River Valley and it was an awesome concert, right in our backyard.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than just a Nobel Prize winning advocate for civil rights, he was a vehement proponent of non-violent civil disobedience.  a strong voice against the war in Vietnam and an advocate for economic equality, too.   I hope you will join us in celebrating this uniquely American hero!

Your Kibbles & Team,
Don and Emily