What a long title! You’d be surprised to know that even the website url is just as long as that. Well let’s not bother about that shall we? With the holiday season, Apple gets lot of switchers buying Macs. A lot of these switchers are too afraid to touch anything that doesn’t look like a bright green Start button. I’m sure you know someone who fits this profile. 

Scouring around the net I came across this little video tutorial which boldly advertises its contents. A 300MB download later, I launched the application. Based around a flash interface, Switch to Mac is an absolute beginners guide to help new users to get familiar with the OS. 

The UI of the app is well done, and simple enough for anyone to understand. The host of the tutorial, Saied, is a gentle guy and speaks in a clear and concise way. The best part of this tutorial is it’s non-linear way of learning. The flash based UI allows you to choose what you want to learn. So clicking the Finder icon (suggested by Saied in the introduction) launches the Finder tutorial from where he tells you all kinds of things about the Finder. He also switches back and forth between a Windows PC and a Mac to show key differences in ways of working. Saied covers all the key applications that ship with Mac OS X, spotlight, Dashboard, Spaces, and even Stacks. After looking watching the tutorial, you get to interact with the virtual flash based Mac OS X and perform the steps that Saied just showed you (with a helpful notes panel at the top). 

I’d say UI wise this is a perfect way for a beginner to learn about the Mac. The app loads in full screen so you don’t have to worry about distractions, and the level of learning has been brought down to basic levels. They have obviously taken a lot of time to make this package (I noticed that the Stocks widget showed AAPL at 175!) which is basic, concise, and will help out a switcher. 

Of course, I have some issues. First, I noticed that the app is sometimes a bit buggy. Maybe it’s just my Mac, but sometimes it would refuse to act the way it should, which would end up confusing a new user. I’ll be testing the package on a MacBook to see whether that bugginess is just my Mac and report back on that front. Second, it can be a bit too short. I would have preferred the lessons to be a little longer, offering a few more tips on how to work things.  

This is not recommended for those who know their way around a computer, nor for those who are already using a Mac for a while. At $29.95 for a shipped box pack, I’d say it should be a helpful Christmas gift for your friend who has just switched to a Mac. Those who prefer to download, it’s a cool $25.

As Mac users we’ve always been so proud to point out the lack of malicious software to worry about. Sure there were some “concept” viruses but they required administrator access and pretty much a complete idiot to do even the slightest amount of damage. We can thank the incredible UNIX system in which OSX is built off of. It may also help the fact that we are in the minority.

Virus authors really don’t want to concentrate on attacking the Mac family since therea is a much bigger market out there. Until recently, we’ve been seeing only two Mac viruses come out into the open, and both of them require your admin/password to break through the rock solid UNIX core of Mac OS X. And even then, they just changed some DNS setting which pointed your Mac to a hacked site, the damage which could be reversed by manually changing your network settings.

First let me say this, you really have nothing to fear if you’re smart. Now I want to go through a few things about what exactly viruses intend to do, what these viruses are, and how to protect yourself.

The Objective of a Virus

Wikipedia defines a computer virus as being:

A computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.

In the early days of virus’ most of the programmers really just wanted to show off their stuff. They used to first only say “Hey look at me! I got on your system without you knowing”, then they progressed to actually harming your files and now days they are used to either steal from you are steal from others. Viruses have become a money maker for their authors and it’s also become a business.

You don’t need Anti-virus software!

It’s true! Did you know that the majority of security experts on Windows really don’t need to run anti-virus software? They know how you can get viruses on their system so they just avoid doing those things. Consumers (like you and me) are not quite as knowledgeable and will click something they shouldn’t have. Anti-virus software doesn’t keep viruses away 100%. It’s only a second line of defense, a moat surrounding your fortress. Enemies can still get smart enough to vault over that moat and get in your castle.

The first line of defense is yourself! You just need to be smart when you’re on the internet. Unfortunately Mac users have become so lax in what they do because they don’t have to worry about viruses. This might our downfall because we are quite a few years behind in thinking securely (as a whole) than Windows users.

You are the first line of defense

Mac users have really nothing to worry about if we play it smart when it comes to viruses. OSX is still inherently more secure than Windows and Apple has included some fairly nice security features in it. Leo Laporte of the TWiT network has some pretty good advice that I think can be applied to Mac users:

• Don’t click unknown links in emails This is basically how phfishing works. People get an email from their banks saying they need to come and confirm their account. Someone clicks the link, enters their account info and bam! The scammer has your bank info. The safest way to deal with email links is just to copy and paste the link or enter in the URL yourself and navigate to the desired address.
• Don’t open unknown email attachments For Mac users this isn’t quite so bad because if anything wants to run it needs administrator access. On Windows you typically want to verify that you were expecting the attachment and then just run it through a scanner. Eventually Mac virus authors will find a way to circumvent the Administrator install feature.
• Run Windows update automatically Well obviously Mac doesn’t have Windows update but you should still run Software Update regularly. Usually though you’ll find out about a security patch because it’s been blogged thousands of times.
• Don’t go to sites you can’t trust Pretty much the same thing for email links/attachments. If your not sure about the legitimacy of a website get out of there right away. Of course, Safari 3.2 now features phishing and malware protection so you will be mostly safe from this.

Unlike on Windows, the standard Mac keyboard does a lot more than just type your regular alphabets, numbers, and special characters. Hidden underneath those ordinarily labeled keys is an extraordinary powerhouse of special special symbols that one requires every now and then. Characters like ‘µ’ and ‘©’, which are so difficult to type on Windows, can easily be typed on Mac OS X, provided you know which keys to hit.

In the five years I suffered through Windows before switching to the Mac (and no, I’m not biased at all), I was never able to figure out how to type the ‘µ’ when writing ‘µTorrent’. Sure, all I needed to do was Google it up and the information would be there for me, but hey, Googling is so out of fashion anyway. Plus, it wasn’t very often that I needed to type special characters like that one and therefore I always shunted Windows’ inadequacy in this, yet another, field to the background. Continue Reading »

Apple products, both software and hardware, are known for their high quality. Sure, some people end up with defective products every once in a while, which results in a lot of noise about the same on Internet forums, but generally speaking, Apple makes good quality products. This doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t fail. They are, after all, hardware products made by man (and machine).

“I thought Macs were never supposed to give problems”, is a quote I’m very familiar with. Well, let’s set the record straight—Macs do have problems, both in the hardware as well as the software. And when that happens, AppleCare kicks in. 

What is AppleCare and why should I care?
Every Mac, iPod, and iPhone comes with a one year standard warranty, commonly known as AppleCare. This includes 90 days of telephone support and a full year replacement warranty for any hardware defects. Apple offers an additional two years extended warranty for Macs, dubbed AppleCare Protection Plan (APP), which extends that to 3 years of full telephone support and hardware replacement warranty. The same policy applies for iPods and iPhones as well, except that the warranty can only be extended to a maximum of two years in their case. This is global, labour-free warranty on hardware, onsite in case of the desktops, and includes web and telephone support. APP, however, excludes any battery repairs after the complementary one year. Continue Reading »