Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Parents often come into our retail stores with questions about their children and internet safety. We always do our best to provide the most current and relevant information on this topic, but with technology advancing so quickly, it’s often a tough task.

A few weeks ago, I attended a local discussion on this topic and–as with so much in the world of computers–the suggestions and options seemed to vary significantly. Often times, parents are looking for a device or software that controls what their child can and cannot see online. Schools and other public locations often have a filter system in place which goes between the incoming internet connection and the computers. This filter blocks unwanted access to thousands of websites, preventing everything from inappropriate content, to simply stopping kids from spending school time on Facebook. This type of system is often kept up to date by the filter’s service provider and is easily updated when new sites and searches need to be blocked. While this type of service is highly effective, it tends to be impractical at home for a variety of reasons. The good news, however, is that your Mac is already largely equipped to handle this kind of filtering.

OS X has a number of parental controls that can be easily configured to keep your children safe online. Using these built-in controls, you can limit your child’s access in a number of ways. You can control what hours of the day or days of the week your child can use the computer, limit who they can email or chat with–and vice versa–or only allow access to websites on an approved list. To enable these features, a parent must first have administrative access to their child’s account. From the administrator account, simply open System Preferences and select Parental Controls. From here, you can customize the available options to your content. However, it’s important to consider that no amount of safeguarding is going to protect your child from every possible website, game or application you and your family would prefer they not have access to.

As a parent, knowing where and how your child is using the internet is, in my opinion, the best defense in making sure your kids are safe on the computer. Luckily, OS X makes it a little easier to relax on this issue when you know your computer has an abundance of parental controls to help!

Click “*here*”:http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/ to read more about parental controls.

Click “*here*”:http://www.safekids.com/child-safety-on-the-information-highway/ to read more tips on kids and internet safety.

Much has been made of the features in Apple’s upcoming release of OS 10.7, Lion. There are over 250 new features (which, if I recall correctly, is over 20% more features than Apple usually brags they’re including…), and I’m pretty excited for things like “*Full-Screen Apps*”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/full-screen.html and “*Resume,*”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/ to name a few.

So, to expand upon what Ben noted above, here’s a handy list (with screenshots) to help you get your Mac ready that our friends over at Cult of Mac have compiled.

“*Read the list on Cult of Mac here.*”:http://www.cultofmac.com/how-to-prepare-your-mac-for-lion-the-right-way/103130
“*Check out Lion’s new features here.*”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/

With Mac OS X Lion slated for release this month, it’s important to make sure your Mac is ready if you’re planning a day one upgrade. With some Mac users predicting the operating system’s release as soon as next week, there are several easy steps to verify your Mac’s compatibility for when Lion roars to life.

The first step to ensure a smooth install is to verify that your Mac is actually compatible with Lion. Like Snow Leopard, Lion is an Intel exclusive release meaning any older PowerPC machines (G4, G5, etc.) are incompatible. If you’re using a PowerPC machine, you’ve likely already identified that it is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.6 and consequently will not work with Lion either.

Unlike Snow Leopard, however, Lion marks the first recent release of OS X not fully compatible with all of Apple’s Intel based machines. In order to run Lion, your Mac must have at minimum an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This means Lion is unfortunately incompatible with the first generation of Intel Macs dating from mid-2006 and earlier. It’s important to double check your Mac’s processor–especially if you fall into the early 2006 Intel crowd–as Intel’s early nomenclature can be deceiving at first glance.

The first generation of Intel machines sported Core Duo processors, but lacked the all important “2” signifying two processor cores on a single chip. To verify your Mac’s processor, click the Apple logo in the top left of your screen, and select About This Mac. In the resulting dialog box, your Mac’s operating system, processor and memory will be prominently displayed.

Once you’ve verified your machine’s processor has the brawn to boast Lion, the next step is to run Software Update. Apple released Mac OS X v10.6.8–likely the last version of Snow Leopard–late last month. The main purpose of this update was to prepare compatible Macs for the upgrade to Lion. In fact, following the update’s release users verified the update is mandatory for a successful 10.7 install.

To bring your software up-to-date, revisit the Apple logo in the left corner of the screen select Software Update (if you verified your Mac is already running v10.6.8 while checking its processor skip this step.) Software Update will launch and scan for newer versions of OS X and other applications.

Though you can always be selective about which updates you install, when prepping your machine for Lion it’s a smart idea to install all relevant updates in addition to Mac OS X v10.6.8. For instance, Apple recently updated several of its iLife ’11 applications for enhanced Lion compatibility. When performing any software update, we always recommend running a full Time Machine back-up prior to installing–just in case.

After you’ve updated to Mac OS X v10.6.8, you will want to consider freeing up space for Lion. Like its real life big cat counterpart, Lion requires a fair amount of space to roam–about 4GB. While it’s advisable to leave 10% of your start-up disk free at all times, you’ll want to confirm you have at least 10GB of available space. If you’re seriously cramped, consider moving seldom accessed files to an external hard drive or even deleting them all together. Also, that Miley Cyrus album you inexplicably downloaded after the company holiday party last year? Yep, time to go. If you’re unsure as to what’s clogging your Mac’s hard drive, try an inventory app such as “*Disk Inventory X*”:http://www.derlien.com/index.html for a helpful visual aid.

Once you’ve given your machine’s hard drive an overdue spring cleaning, it’s time to consider whether you are personally prepared for Lion. A huge step forward for OS X on nearly all fronts, it is hard not to be excited for the new OS. However, it is important to consider–especially if you rely on your Mac for business–some of the old features Lion does away with to make room for the new.

The most notable omission for legacy Mac users is undoubtably Rosetta. Previously enabling native PowerPC software to run on Intel based machines, this technology has officially been dropped from Lion–effectively rendering it incompatible with all PowerPC software. If you’re not in a position to upgrade aging versions of Quicken or other pricey creative apps, you will almost certainly want to hold off on upgrading.

While Apple has afforded its developers ample time to ensure their apps run flawlessly on Lion, not all third party software manufacturers have made their software Lion compatible. “*RoaringApps*”:http://roaringapps.com/ is a community based repository of Lion compatible software listings. Though not every Mac application is indexed, the compatibility status of many major apps are listed. It’s a great idea to cruise through the site and check it against your Applications folder before you install Lion.

After you and your Mac are ready to upgrade, it’s wise to perform one final Snow Leopard Time Machine back-up. While the Lion installation process is toted as the easiest OS X install ever, there’s always the remote chance of failure. For your data and sanity’s sake, take the time to run a full back-up to restore from, in the event something goes awry.

If you have a spare external drive and want to keep those Snow Leopard memories alive, apps like “*SuperDuper*”:http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html can create a bootable replica of your internal drive. This process also effectively preserves Rosetta support for those needing a PowerPC app every so often. Simply plug in the external drive and boot from it to use your machine in its exact state prior to upgrading.

Upon completing these steps, you and your Mac will be ready to upgrade to Lion once its released. Follow us on “*Twitter*”:http://twitter.com/#!/hellosmalldog and we’ll let you know the moment it hits the Mac App Store. For more information on Lion click “*here.*”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/

_Dear Friends,_

There simply is nothing quite like summer in Vermont. It is the season for fresh garden produce, swimming holes, late evenings and well, mosquitos. The wet spring and early summer has resulted in a bumper crop of the little blood suckers this year. Nevertheless, we usually have a nice breeze at our home on Prickly Mountain so, except for dusk, we have been able to enjoy the sunny weather and mild temperatures.  

I am very pleased to announce that long-time Apple employee, Ted Moorman, has joined Small Dog Electronics as our sales manager for our wholesale division. It is a bit of a small world story with Ted. Several years ago, I was attending a talk by Steve Jobs and was lined up with hundreds of other Apple resellers to check-in. As I signed in, some tall dude that seemed vaguely familiar said: “Don? Don Mayer?” Well, it turns out that Ted and I knew each other from the University of Illinois in the 60’s when we were both about 19. We got to talking and caught up on about 25 years of lost time, and ran into each other several more times in the ensuing years. I was able to convince Ted to leave the mothership and join our Hammerhead team and he came out for a few days last week. Grace and Ted also knew each other, and it was as if no time had passed as we all renewed a friendship. We welcome Ted to our team and I look forward to working with him!

Check out all the iPad and iPad 2 cases from “*Hammerhead.*”:http://hammerheadcase.com/  I think you will see why we are so excited by these new products.