Kibbles & Bytes Blog
Apple news, tech tips, and more…
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The Swipes You Need To Know
With iOS 11, the iPhone and iPad interfaces continue to diverge, which makes sense, since the iPad is not merely an overgrown iPhone. Particularly when you pair an iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, you can now get real work done on an iPad more fluidly than ever before. The “hard” part is learning how you switch between apps, display the second app in a Slide Over panel that floats on top of another app, or make two apps share the screen in Split View.
Switch Between Apps
Moving between apps is a key aspect of using the iPad. Apple has provided multiple ways to switch so you can pick those that best fit your style:
• Press the Home button, and on the Home screen, tap another app’s icon.
• On the Home screen, swipe down to show Siri app suggestions and search for another app.
• Within an app, swipe right or left with four fingers.
• Within an app, swipe up from below the bottom of the screen to reveal the new Dock, and then tap an icon on it. Note that the three rightmost icons are the most recently used apps.
• After revealing the Dock, keep swiping up to reveal the new app switching screen, then tap an app thumbnail to switch to it. Swipe right to see less recently used apps.
• From a Smart Keyboard or other keyboard, press Command-Tab to bring up a Mac-like app switcher. Release both keys quickly to switch to the previous app instantly, or keep Command down while you press Tab repeatedly to move sequentially among the shown apps, letting up on Command to switch. While the app switcher is shown, you can also tap an icon in it.
Display an App in Slide Over
Say you’re having a sporadic conversation in Messages while browsing the Web in Safari. You don’t need to see both apps all the time, but you also don’t want to have to switch back and forth. With Slide Over, you can put Messages in a panel that floats over Safari and then hide and show it.
The easiest way to put an app in a Slide Over panel is to use the Dock, so this technique works if the app’s icon is already on the Dock. For instance, while you’re in Safari, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to display the Dock. Then touch and hold the Messages app’s icon until it dims slightly. Keeping your finger down, drag the icon over Safari until it becomes a vertical lozenge. Lift your finger, and Messages appears in Slide Over.If the app you want to put in Slide Over isn’t on your Dock, you can use a two-handed procedure to get it from another location and drop it onto another app. For instance, you can start dragging an app icon from any place where app icons appear, including the Home screen or Siri search screen. Once you’ve started dragging it, use your other hand to switch to the other app (perhaps via the Dock or pressing Command-Tab on an external keyboard) and then drop it over the other app. Don’t worry if you find this approach confusing at first—it takes some time to become accustomed to two-handed usage.
Once an app is in Slide Over on the right side of the screen, you can swipe right on its left edge to hide it, or swipe left on its right edge to move it to the other side of the screen.
Put an App in Split View
Displaying two apps side-by-side in Split View is almost the same action as Slide Over. The only difference is that, instead of dropping the app lozenge on top of the current app, you drag it to the far left or right of the screen, and drop it once the screen shows a 90/10 split—after you drop, the split changes to 70/30.
Drag the handle between the apps to switch to a 50/50 split or a 30/70 split; if you drag the handle all the way to one side of the screen, the app that’s shrinking in size disappears entirely. One of the two apps in Split View will have a handle on its top as well, and dragging it down slightly converts that app into a Slide Over panel. (You can also drag a Slide Over panel’s handle down slightly to switch to Split View.)
Take a few minutes and try putting apps in Slide Over and Split View in different ways, since some of the actions require practice before they feel natural. Finally, if combining two particular apps don’t seem to work, don’t fret. Apps must specifically support both Slide Over and Split View, and not all do.
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This past Sunday Vermont saw hurricane force winds in some parts of the state and as I write this there are still a few thousand Vermonters still without power. I do not know how strong the winds were at my house, but the sound of my broken storm door slamming against the side of my house woke me up in the night and around 3am our power went out. Fortunately, we are fairly prepared for power outages at my house. The cooktop of our kitchen stove is propane, we have a woodstove for backup heat, a supply of bottled water, lanterns and some easy stovetop meals on hand. Aside from the occasional need to truck in water for the horses during extended outages we are fairly well prepared. My area was fortunate because the extent of the storm damage was minimal by comparison to other parts of the stay and the power outages we did experience didn’t last more than 8-12 hours.
The events from this past weekend have inspired me to create the ultimate survival kit for your favorite techie. This could be a great gift for the coming holidays and the best part is these are items you can probably use every day regardless of the weather and power conditions. I’ve bundled together with the Tivoli Pal radio, the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro and the Just Mobile Gum++ portable power pack for iPod,iPad, and iPhone. Having a portable radio with its own built-in battery, a light source and portable power source are essential items when our communications and power sources are limited. This bundle normally would sell for $339.97 and for our Kibbles & Bytes readers I am offering it for $279.99
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Apps to Pay Friends
There are a lot of different apps out there to pay friends. Some are neat and trendy, like SnapCash, that allows you to pay a friend through Snapchat by just sending a few keystrokes and the money is taken out securely through a Square account. Facebook has another method, and there’s Venmo that you can link directly to a checking account. I’ve experimented with PayPal to send money to a friend, it took it from a credit card, charged a percentage fee, but was pretty slick in how fast it worked. All these methods are going to go down a notch in a little while though; Apple is coming out with their own method for friends to electronically move money between each other.
ApplePay has been around since the iPhone 6, announced in late 2014. ApplePay is a contact-free payment method where you have a card linked to your iPhone and at participating retailers, you pull out your properly configured iPhone, double-click your touchID with a registered fingerprint and the payment terminal beeps and it’s just like swiping your card. ApplePay has all sorts of security built in to make it more protected than a normal credit or debit card. That same level of protection will be applied to the new feature of ApplePay that will allow friends to transfer money between each other.
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Do Not Pay The Ransom
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed a few months ago and saw a post from a friend. Her iPhone appeared to be frozen, she was locked out of it and there was a message that she needed to pay a $50 fee in order to regain access to her iPhone. Over the years I have seen several similar instances. I remember seeing once on my own iOS device a message in Safari that took over my screen and told me to contact Apple because I had a virus on my iPad. Knowing that Apple would never send me an alert about needing to call them I simply ignored it. I tried to close out of Safari by hitting the home button, that worked, but when I opened Safari again the message was still there. Ultimately I had to power down my iPad and upon restart, it was gone, I never saw the message again. I had a few friends send me some panicked messages with screenshots of this same message on their device, I let them know to just turn off the iPad or iPhone. Historically, that is all you needed to do to avoid a scam about a virus or hack. This particular message was not isolated to an iOS device, it could happen on a desktop as well. However, all this was, was a scam to get some money out of a concerned user and nothing more.
Fast forward a few years and now we are seeing reports of Mac computers or iOS devices locked and messages demanding a ransom be paid to regain access to your device. Unlike the Safari messages from a few years ago, just powering down your device or clearing your browsing history is not going to fix this problem. These new Bitcoin or PayPal ransomware are locking users out of their devices. Victims can not use them and are stuck with often one question running through their minds, do I really have to pay a ransom?
Do not pay the ransom! But how do you regain access, and, more importantly, how did you get locked out in the first place. As hackers have gotten more sophisticated, so has their ability to scam you. In almost all of the reported cases we have seen or heard about, users have been locked out via find my iPhone/iPad or find my Mac. Unfortunately, their iCloud account was accessed by the scammers who have locked users out of their devices by initiating the lost mode feature. Sometimes you might simply be locked out with a message that says the device is in lost mode and requires a code ( a code you don’t have access to ) or it’s asking for the ransom.
Thankfully all is not lost, but it does require a bit of work. Regaining access to your device will mean a trip to your local Apple Authorized Repair location or calling and talking to Apple directly. You will need to provide the service location or Apple a proof of purchase to prove you are the owner of the device and you will be able to regain access and most likely without losing your information. You can also follow some troubleshooting tips online from Apple, potentially if you are not being asked for a ransom these steps might help.
But how did this happen? As I mentioned earlier, this is through your iCloud account, which was compromised. You will want to take immediate action and change your iCloud password as soon as you regain access. If you do not have two-factor authentication enabled on your device you will want to do so. Setting up two-factor authentication and ideally setting a stronger password for your account will prevent these kinds of breaches. I always recommend passwords with a combination of letters, numbers and even special characters, and your password selection should be somewhat random. Hopefully, with these tips you can avoid being locked out of your device!
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The Crypto Craze Part One: Overview
Between work, band practice, recording, and going on those gorgeous autumn hikes, I’ve been spending a solid chunk of time familiarizing myself and delving into the science and application behind the digital currency craze known as Cryptocurrency. Unless you haven’t been on the internet in the last 5 years, you’ve no doubt heard of Bitcoin, the first and still most important cryptocurrency out there. But while a lot of us have heard of it, some may find themselves asking…
What is Cryptocurrency?
You’ll get a different answer from each person you ask, and some may give a lengthy response that still leaves you scratching your head. But the simplest definition of cryptocurrency is that it’s a form of digital money that is designed to be secure and anonymous.
Full disclosure: the theories, protocols, applications, and sciences behind cryptocurrencies vary between the various types of cryptocurrency (Last documented number of cryptocurrencies was clocked at over 900 and still growing!). For the sake of these guides, I’ll be referring specifically to Bitcoin. And another warning: this stuff is dense, but throughout this series, I’ll do my best to make it palatable.
While the boom of cryptocurrency (henceforth called simply ‘crypto’ in these guides) is not new, it only truly took off within the last ten years. Throughout the early 2000’s, there were a number of attempts to create a digital currency system (see: Digicash) that ultimately failed. It wasn’t until late 2008 that the concept of crypto became more than just a failed pipe-dream.
In October 2008, an individual, (or individuals, the identity is still debated) using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on a cryptography mailing list titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. This has come to be known as the Bitcoin “White Paper”. Within the white paper, Nakamoto describes and details the methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”. By the following January, Nakamoto implemented the Bitcoin software as open source code and released it to the public. The Bitcoin network was born after Nakamoto ‘mined’ the first ever ‘block’ on the ‘chain’, known as the “genesis block”, for a reward of 50 Bitcoin***. Embedded in this first block was the following text:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of the second bailout for banks.”
But wait, block? Mine? Chain? What do these mean, you may be asking yourself? And we will certainly go down that rabbit hole! But I think it’s better left for The Crypto Craze Part Two: Party On The Blockchain.
Fun fact: 50 Bitcoin would be worth $275,497.50 at the time of this writing.
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Hello and welcome to another fall edition of Tech Tails!
Temperatures are starting to drop around here and the crazy October weather continues! On Sunday night, we had an epic wind storm here in Vermont and ended up with dozens of customers seeking backup battery packs for their Apple devices. I’m sure a lot of you have considered what to do in a power outage, but for some younger homeowners, forming a backup plan is a great idea. We lost power about ten times in the night, only in short bursts. Nevertheless, I was thankful for the APC battery backup unit that my iMac is connected to. Without it, I’m not sure how the surges may have affected my computer, scanner, and audio interface. At Small Dog, we carry portable battery chargers by Outdoor Tech, which have a little flashlight attached. I usually recommend these for your toolbox, as they serve two purposes and you’ll never know when you’ll need reserve power.
Moving on to what has been on my mind this week: Sony dropped the new A7RIII and the DSLR community is going crazy. As a Canon shooter, I have to say, Sony is like the Sirens calling from the rocky coast. I have always looked at the A7 line with envy, but fear that switching will result in a few lost features I’m not sure I could part with. On one hand, Sony has more autofocus points, megapixels, and frames per second than the latest 5D by Canon. But numbers like this can be a false flag, depending on your actual needs. I would encourage anyone in the market for a DSLR to speak to a photographer and figure out what they use their system for. As far as I can tell, Canon still has Sony beat for battery life, and weather resistance. If you’re photographing icebergs, those things might come in handy! Especially since cold climates deplete lithium batteries much faster! Sony does have some alluring video features that should not be overlooked. At this point, I would say independent filmmakers should be legitimately considering a Sony rig, but leave extra budget for spare batteries. They’ve introduced image stabilization into their sensors, whereas Canon makes you buy that in every lens. Things like that, or adding higher frame rates to their video format options are what make Canon look a bit old school. That said, Canon is known for reliability, and I’ll take that over flashy new features any day.
Despite my allegiance to Canon, I am in fact in the market for a new DSLR. As I primarily shoot film, I find the digital market overwhelming, but there are lots of in-depth reviews out there to help navigate the options. For now, I am reading deeply into the 5D Mark IV, A7SII, and A7RIII. All fantastic cameras and I hope if any Small Dog customers out there are looking for DSLR support, we have a couple folks at the store that can help. Just about everything I know about digital camera operation, I learned from our consultant, Nate Poirier. Make sure to stop in some time and talk cameras with us!
That is all for now, we’ve got computers to diagnose and Apple Watches to sell, so I’ll get back to work, please enjoy this edition of Tech Tails!
Patrick McCormack
patrickm@smalldog.com -
Snowbirds fly south. We have been seeing the flocks of geese heading south even though the weather seems to be staying warm. While we are not flying, we will be driving the Volt with the pups to our home in Key West next week. Packing up our house here is always interesting. I think I have too much stuff. The first year we hauled multiple boxes downstairs to stash in the cellar. It has gotten to be less and less as we decide not to bring things like our winter clothes back upstairs.
Nevertheless, we will be making a pile for our trip to Key West, another pile to be stashed and of course, the suitcase of winter clothes to be at Small Dog for my visits. I have to put gas stabilizer in the motorcycles, plug them into chargers and put baggies on the exhaust to keep out the mice. Change the batteries in the cameras, smoke detector, and locks and we might be ready to hit the road.
Meanwhile, it is likely to be in the 60s this weekend and that will mean one last ride in the Green Mountains for me!
Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!
Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
Don & Emily
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Do Not Pay The Ransom!
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed a few months ago and saw a post from a friend. Her iPhone appeared to be frozen, she was locked out of it and there was a message that she needed to pay a $50 fee in order to regain access to her iPhone. Over the years I have seen several similar instances. I remember seeing once on my own iOS device a message in Safari that took over my screen and told me to contact Apple because I had a virus on my iPad. Knowing that Apple would never send me an alert about needing to call them I simply ignored it. I tried to close out of Safari by hitting the home button, that worked, but when I opened Safari again the message was still there. Ultimately I had to power down my iPad and upon restart, it was gone, I never saw the message again. I had a few friends send me some panicked messages with screenshots of this same message on their device, I let them know to just turn off the iPad or iPhone. Historically, that is all you needed to do to avoid a scam about a virus or hack. This particular message was not isolated to an iOS device, it could happen on a desktop as well. However, all this was, was a scam to get some money out of a concerned user and nothing more.
Fast forward a few years and now we are seeing reports of Mac computers or iOS devices locked and messages demanding a ransom be paid to regain access to your device. Unlike the Safari messages from a few years ago, just powering down your device or clearing your browsing history is not going to fix this problem. These new Bitcoin or PayPal ransomware are locking users out of their devices. Victims can not use them and are stuck with often one question running through their minds, do I really have to pay a ransom?
Do not pay the ransom! But how do you regain access, and, more importantly, how did you get locked out in the first place. As hackers have gotten more sophisticated, so has their ability to scam you. In almost all of the reported cases we have seen or heard about, users have been locked out via find my iPhone/iPad or find my Mac. Unfortunately, their iCloud account was accessed by the scammers who have locked users out of their devices by initiating the lost mode feature. Sometimes you might simply be locked out with a message that says the device is in lost mode and requires a code ( a code you don’t have access to ) or it’s asking for the ransom.
Thankfully all is not lost, but it does require a bit of work. Regaining access to your device will mean a trip to your local Apple Authorized Repair location or calling and talking to Apple directly. You will need to provide the service location or Apple a proof of purchase to prove you are the owner of the device and you will be able to regain access and most likely without losing your information. You can also follow some troubleshooting “tips online“https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306 from Apple, potentially if you are not being asked for a ransom these steps might help.
But how did this happen? As I mentioned earlier, this is through your iCloud account, which was compromised. You will want to take immediate action and change your iCloud password as soon as you regain access. If you do not have two-factor authentication enabled on your device you will want to do so. Setting up two-factor authentication and ideally setting a stronger password for your account will prevent these kinds of breaches. I always recommend passwords with a combination of letters, numbers and even special characters, and your password selection should be somewhat random. Hopefully, with these tips you can avoid being locked out of your device!