Updating My iPhone Software

Apple sent me a request on Friday asking me to update the operating system on my iPhone. It said before doing the update I would need to make more room on the device as I didn't have enough free space. That surprised me as I had over 10 GB available. Fortunately it brought up a utility to help me remove large files from the phone.

I take a lot of pictures and movies with my phone that I use on my YouTube channel. That requires me to copy the files from my phone to my desktop computer. I don't need the copy on my phone and so I spent some time making sure I had copies on my computer before deleting them from my phone. I did keep several photos on my phone as sometimes I like to show some of my pictures to friends and family. There is a balance though as keeping too many pictures makes them difficult to find and deleting to many means I can't share some of my adventures.

I went through my phone and freed up quite a bit of space. Apple's utility then showed me my largest text message attachments. My daughter-in-law often sends me large videos of my grandchildren being cute. I made sure I had copies and then deleted the ones on my phone. That freed up even more space to the point I felt I could install the operating system update.

I made sure to plug my phone into a stable power source and started the update. It ran smoothly and half an hour later, I had a phone with the latest operating system. My hope is that Apple doesn't continue to make more large updates. If they do, then I may need to upgrade my phone simply to have more memory so I don't have to worry about these updates in the future.

My Mac Not Recognizing my Password

Earlier this week I tried to log into my personal desktop computer, which is a Mac Mini from a few years ago. The machine is connected to the Internet but impossible to reach from outside my office, thanks to how I have set it up. As the only way to get on the computer is by being in my physical office in my house, I have a relatively easy password that I always remember. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that the password is "password" even though it is something different.

I went to log in and the computer didn't recognize my password. I thought I may have mistyped it so I tried again only to be denied access to my computer. I tried again making sure the caps-lock key didn't get inadvertently pressed. That didn't work either. I started to panic thinking that someone had hacked into my system. Then other equally problematic scenarios started running through my head. Fortunately I knew I didn't have to worry about my computer locking me out if I tried too many times. I took a deep breath and started applying my troubleshooting skills to the problem.

I looked carefully at the password field and started typing my password and it showed me the usual dots for each character. I typed "pass" but only saw 3 dots instead of the 4 I expected. I cleared the field and tried again watching the same result. For some reason, the first character I typed was not recognized and so I tried typing the first character twice. I entered "ppassword" and my computer let me in. I felt a huge wave of relief.

Eventually I stopped using my computer and the next time I came back to it, I had to enter my password to unlock it again. Fortunately the problem with the first character not being recognized did not happen. I counted the dots on the screen and they matched each key click I entered. I have not had the problem since that one time.

Should you find yourself trying to log into a Mac unsuccessfully, I suggest counting the dots and making sure all the characters are being recognized. If not, do what I did and double up on the first one. It may save you an anxious moment or two like I had.

Using Google Calendar

I spend a fair amount of time working as an executive secretary for a volunteer organization. This is not something I aspired to do. Instead someone asked me to do it and I said I would. As an executive secretary I basically set appointments for people to meet with the leadership of the organization. Sometimes people ask to meet with the leaders and other times leaders ask to meet with specific people. Google's calendar, which can be found at https://calendar.google.com, does an amazing job and makes things very easy.

Before networked computers became commonplace, someone in my position had to keep paper calendars and have a lot of coordination meetings to make sure not to double-schedule someone. Now it is as simple as providing a scheduler like me with access to your calendar. Most of the leaders of the volunteer organization I associate with have e-mail addresses separate from their regular work or personal e-mail. Then they just log into Google Calendar with it and make sure to give me access to their calendar so I can set appointments for them.

The organization leadership changed significantly last week as nobody is expected to be a volunteer forever. We met as a new group on Wednesday evening and I deleted my access to the old leadership's calendars. The new leadership then shared their newly created e-mail addresses and gave me proper access. The next evening I then went through and created calendar entries for all of the regular meetings. We also had a number of requests for people to meet with the new leadership and I entered those. Fortunately I had lots of experience using Google Calendar in the past and did not have much of a learning curve.

I keep my personal calendar on my iPhone. I can access it from my Mac computer. It is great as I keep all sorts of appointment information up-to-date using both devices without having to worry about which one has the most correct information. They both do as an update on one pushes the change to the other. This would also be a great solution for the volunteer association I work with. The only downside is that everyone is required to use Apple products. Google Calendar doesn't care what phone you use. While you can access it with your phone's browser, there is also an application you can put on your phone. I just always use a web interface and it works great.

Are there problems with Google Calendar? Of course but they are minor. It has all of the features I need it for and appreciate the free price tag. If you are looking for a calendaring tool that makes it easy to share people's schedules, you might want to give it a look. It may also work for you.

Getting Old Printers to Work on New Macs

The saga that has become getting my wife's new computer working is finally over. Yesterday I sat down and figured out how to get all of our printers usable on her new MacBook air. It involved countless Internet searches, none of which helped solve the problem. In fact, one post that I followed created more issues that I had to work around. For anyone who has upgraded from an Intel-based Mac to one of the new Apple silicon Macs, there is one little step that I discovered on my own should you want to use any of your existing printers.

Apple's Migration Assistant did a great job of moving all of my wife's files from her old computer to her new one. It even copied over non-approved programs like printer drivers engineered for the Intel CPUs. The problem surfaces when you try to run them but let's not jump ahead of the story.

My wife needed to print something up last Friday and could not. I did not have time to help her solve the issue at the time and finally got around to looking at it earlier this week. We have 3 printers in the house and she really only uses 2 of them. Neither of them would connect to her new computer. I looked up a number of forums and the best information I had told me to delete the files out of a printer directory. DO NOT DO THAT. I won't repeat where that directory is as that caused an issue I had to remedy, which I will explain at the end of the post.

Nowhere did I find the correct instructions and so I am posting them here. All I needed to do was install Apple's Rosetta 2 software. It allows programs created for the Intel Macs to run on the new Apple M-series CPUs. I discovered this solution when I tried to install printer-driver software. It asked if I wanted to install Rosetta. The first time I said, No. The second time, I gave it a shot. That allowed my Samsung color laser printer to work with my wife's laptop.

Most people will not have a problem with printers unless they are really old like mine. Apple has come up with an all-encompassing printing system packaged with MacOS called AirPrint. There are a huge number of printers supported already. Just not really old ones. Fortunately one of my printers that my wife never uses is on the list and is my Cannon. I connected her computer directly to the printer through a USB cable and it printed without issue.

The last printer I needed to get running is my wife's HP Deskjet 1000 - J110. Apple's Migration Assistant copied over all of the correct driver files but I mistakenly blew them away at the advice of a post I read. Once I figured out I needed to reinstall all the driver files, I looked for them directly from HP. None of the programs I tried worked. I still have the old Mac and so I located all of the files and copied them to the new computer. I used the command-line interface or terminal to do all of the copying and will spare you the details. It involved the "tar" command to create single file that had all of the driver files in their correct directories. Once I copied that single file to the new computer, I used the "tar" command again to install the files in the correct place.

At this point in the process I had to go somewhere and didn't get back to it until yesterday. I thought I had done everything correctly and tried to print something. I immediately got an error message telling me that the MacOS refused to run a program because it couldn't trust the source. I had to use the administrator password to force the computer to run the program. The same thing happened 3 or 4 more times with different programs. Finally I stopped getting error messages but the printer refused to print. At this point I did the only thing that made sense: I rebooted the computer. When the computer came back up, I tried to print a page and it worked. I can now say that my wife's new computer is as usable as the old one before it died.

Should you get a new M-series Mac computer from Apple and want it to work with your old printer, don't do anything other than install Rosetta 2. Your computer will ask if you want to install it and just say, Yes. You don't have to go look for it or do anything special. Then things should work well. If they don't, try a reboot before doing anything else. If that still doesn't work, throw away your old printer and go buy a new one.

Its the Little Things

I am always excited to get a new computer but also dread moving from my old one. Why? It is the little things that get forgotten. The Migration Assistant from Apple did a great job copying all of the files from my wife's old computer to her new one. Unfortunately that is not the only thing that needs to be done when setting up a new computer.

Yesterday morning my wife needed to print something. She discovered that while she had all of her files, she did not have access to either of her two printers. Unfortunately I had a lot to get done and couldn't help her out. Due to time constraints, we couldn't print what my wife needed and had to due without. In hindsight we should have tried to print the night before.

There are probably one or two more little things that need to be set up on my wife's computer. Right now we don't know what they are and won't until we need them. Hopefully we won't be under a time constraint and can get them configured correctly when that happens.

The MacBook Air Data Transfer Worked as Expected

My wife's new MacBook Air arrived today as promised. I immediately opened the box and started setting up the computer for my wife. After asking for my preferred language (English) and geographical area (United States) it asked if I wanted to transfer data from an old computer, iCloud, or a Time Machine backup. I selected the old computer. It then told me to start the "Migration Assistant" on the original computer. It also told me I could find it in the "Applications" folder in the "Utilities" folder. I navigated to the right place, started the app, and selected the 3rd option which indicated it would be sending data to a new computer. Then I just sat back and let the computers do their thing.

I started the data transfer in the kitchen with only a single machine plugged into power and the other running on the battery. It suggested I apply power to both computers and I did. Then I decided with it being Christmas Eve and knowing we had a lot of food to prepare I should move the computers to a less busy area of the house. I unplugged both machines and found 2 new outlets in my bedroom. I let the process continue and it did so without interruption. My wife has a lot of photos and so it took about an hour to complete.

Once the data transferr finished, I had one or two more questions to answer. My wife had to log into her apple ID and then the setup finished. She is now ready to use her new computer. Apple has done a great job making the process of upgrading to a new computer as painless as possible. The only downside is that users get used to the ease and it is almost impossible to change platforms later.

Pulling Data Off a Dead Computer

My wife's new MacBook Air will arrive tomorrow and so I started the process of pulling data, files, and pictures off her old one. So how do you do that when the computer won't even boot? Today I worked to figure that out and had great success with the help of my oldest son.

The key to the process is that my son has a MacBook Air that is the same era as my wife's old one. He doesn't use it any more and loaned it to us. Having recently replaced the battery in the laptop, I have all the tools necessary to unscrew the screws for the case and access the internals. So after skiing this morning, I put both laptops on the kitchen table and removed the bottom panel for each computer. Then I gently removed the solid-state drive from my wife's and swapped it with my sons. The hard drives on MacBook Air laptops look more like a couple of chips on a printed circuit board (PCB) and could easily be mistaken for memory chips, which is exactly what they are, just a different kind of memory.

I screwed the back onto my son's laptop, flipped it over, and pressed the power button. The computer booted right up and I logged in. I made sure I could access all her files and then closed the lid, putting the computer into sleep mode. Then I put my son's solid-state drive into my wife's old computer, screwed the back panel back on, and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened which is what I expected. I really did this just to make sure I didn't lose any screws or parts.

My hope is that the new computer will work similarly to when I replaced my iPhone. All I had to do was put my old phone next to my new one and the initialization process for the new one automatically copied over everything from the old one. If it doesn't work that smoothly then I have a USB drive I can copy all of the important files to and then copy them to the new computer.

Not everyone has easy access to a second laptop and you may wonder what I might have done without it. There are devices you can get that are meant to access solid-state drives and my son also has one of those. Then of course, there is the option of going to the local thrift store like my 8-year-old neighbor and finding a cheap laptop similar to my wife's. Fortunately my first solution worked.

Best Buy For the Win

After careful consideration and thorough research I selected a new computer for my wife. I decided to get her a 13-inch MacBook air with 16 GB of RAM, the M3 processor, and 256 GB of solid-state storage. The next thing I needed to decide is where to buy it from.

Working for Sony, I have a number of fellow employees that have left and gone to work for Apple. I have helped a number of them pick up Sony products for a discount and they are willing to do the same for me. They receive a 15% discount on Apple products and so I used that as my base comparison price. If I couldn't find the computer cheaper somewhere else, I would call in a favor. That price came to $934.15 plus tax.

I keep getting daily e-mails for Costco and Best Buy, so I checked them first. Costco had the exact model I wanted for $899.99, which is cheaper than the Apple employee discount. Best Buy came in for a dollar less at an even $899.00. That became my new standard. My wife told me Amazon had a great price and so I looked there. They matched Best Buy at $899.00. I also looked at one of my favorite online stores: B&H Photo. They usually have great deals on Apple products and they didn't disappoint, or so I thought. They had the computer for $50 less. Then I carefully looked at the specs and saw that it was for the 8GB of RAM version. I'm glad I double checked all the specs. I came very close to making a big mistake.

Ultimately it came down to Amazon or Best Buy as the place to purchase the computer. How to decide? I looked at who could get it to me fastest as they both have free shipping. It turns out Best Buy beat Amazon by 2 days. That is where I made my purchase and I didn't have to call in a favor from a friend.

MacBook Air or iPad Air

My wife recently went on a trip and brought her MacBook Air so she could do some work during her downtime. She used it for about 10 minutes and then shut it off to go play with grandkids. When she tried to turn it back on, nothing. We played with it a bit but decided to wait until we got home to really troubleshoot the problem. We got home and discovered she needs a new laptop. For the moment, she is making due with my old Chromebook I got for free but I have been wanting to replace it for the past 6 months. I figure I have a week before my wife will demand a replacement laptop.

Having used my Chromebook for around 6 years, it is a great device and will do everything my wife needs a computer to do. I thought about replacing her laptop with one and threw the idea out to my son, who works in technology. He suggested getting an iPad with a keyboard instead. This has brought on a research project over the past several days trying to figure out which device would be the best replacement.

Several months ago kids headed back to school or off to college and a number of articles appeared on the Internet as to which device parents should get for students. While my wife is not a student, she will use it like one and I found the articles very useful. I listed out what my wife uses a computer for and realized that a MacBook Air, an iPad Air, and a Chromebook would all work well. I could also throw a Windows laptop into the mix as my wife often uses Windows at work. Then I priced everything and discovered that if I get a keyboard for the iPad Air, the total price comes within $40 of the MacBook Air. Now I am shortcutting a lot of the technical details as you can find an older generation iPad for around $200, but I question the longevity of the device. When comparing computers, it is best to try and make the comparison as equal as possible with regards to CPU, RAM, and storage space. That is pretty easy with the Apple products, less clear-cut between them and Windows or Chromebook machines.

Right now I am leaning towards the Apple MacBook Air as it represents the least amount of a learning curve for my wife. It comes close to the same price as the iPad with keyboard but weighs significantly less. No it is not as versatile as you can separate the iPad from the keyboard, but knowing how my wife will use the computer, I think it to be the best choice. The only thing that can throw a wrench into those plans is that Costco has a Dell laptop that competes with the Apple one for about half the price. Ultimately I will leave it up to my wife to decide.

Not All Smartwatches Are Created Equal

My wife and I are training to climb Mt. Rainier this summer and that means we are exercising daily. I am using my smartwatch to help with my training and the more I use it, the more I like it. There are specific features I didn't know about but have now discovered and really facilitate my training. At Christmas I got my wife a smartwatch and we are discovering that not all smartwatches are created equal. Once you become accustomed to certain features, it is tough to go without them.

My smartwatch is the Suunto Baro 9 and came with a rather expensive price tag. Fortunately I could use my significant discount and I didn't have to pay the list price. I let my wife pick out her smartwatch but probably should have helped her more than I did. She decided on the Garmin Lily 2. As a sailor, I am a huge fan of Garmin products. Their GPS devices are second to none in accuracy. Unfortunately the Lily 2 smartwatch does not have a built-in GPS and relies on the Bluetooth pairing with your smartphone to get position information. While it sounds good in practice, it doesn't work very well. My wife is constantly not getting correct exercise information and is frustrated to the point she wants a new watch for Mother's Day.

This has me looking at the features of all the different smartwatches available. I know a lot of people swear by their Apple smartwatch but they lack a lot of the features that are necessary for an exercise aid, primarily battery life. They are also really expensive for what you get. Naturally I started listing out the features my wife wants in a smartwatch:

• Built-in GPS
• Built-in altimeter (not the same thing as a GPS)
• Heart-rate Monitor
• Heart-rate shown while exercising (a Garmin software update turned this off on the Lily 2 and my wife spent a lot of time with Garmin customer support turning it back on)
• Don't cost as much as a new smartphone
  
• Small watch face

The small watch face is what drew me to the Lily 2 and pretty much eliminates most of the smartwatches on the market. When you are buying a watch specifically for exercise, I think manufactures assume you won't mind the extra weight on your wrist and make watches very large. I love mine but it still won't fit under any of my long-sleeved-dress shirts.

I've searched a number of sites that claim to have reviewed all available smartwatches only to find some of the reviews are out-of-date. There is also the problem of trying to cater to everyone. If you live in Kansas, you don't need an altimeter. When you are climbing mountains, it is a critical piece of your gear. I don't know how many times I have found a watch that should work only to have my wife remind me that it doesn't include the altimeter.

Ultimately I think we have decided on the Garmin Venu 3s. The "s" means small as it has a smaller watch face than the regular Venu 3. Fortunately there is a sale for Mother's day and it is $50 less than usual. It is still an expensive watch at $400, especially since I can't return her old one I got at Christmas.

 

Mac: App is Damaged and How to Fix

It has been a long time since I have updated the software on my Suunto Baro 9 watch and so I figured I would do it last night. Something that should have taken only a minute or two took over an hour of troubleshooting thanks to lies my Mac told me. Fortunately I figured out what I needed to do. Hopefully this post helps someone else. More than likely I will use it myself for a similar problem or the next time I need to update my watch.

Suunto created a software application that you can run on either your Mac or Windows computer. Rather than go through the hoops Apple requires to put it on their App Store, you can download it from Suunto's own website. The downside to that is Apple wants to protect you from malicious software and doesn't want you to run any software they have not reviewed. Instead of telling you that, you get an error when you try to run any program not downloaded from the App Store. The error says:

Suuntolink is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash. 

That is an outright lie and Apple should be ashamed of themselves for such a poor indication of what is wrong. Instead it should read:

Suuntolink was downloaded from the Internet and we don't trust that it doesn't have a virus so we are not going to let you run it.

At least then the user would know what the real problem is and be able to find a solution. Then to compound problems, the solution provided on Apple's support site does not provide correct instructions on how to run the program. Should you run into this problem or a similar one on your Mac computer, here are the instructions on how to get it working.

First you will need to open a terminal. You would think you could find a program called "Terminal" in the Applications directory but it is found in the Utilities directory that sits in the Applications directory. If you are not used to the command-line interface (CLI) on the Mac, this is where you find it.

Next you will need to go to the Applications directory in the Terminal program. This is as easy as running the following command:

cd /Applications

Next you will need to run the "xattr" command to clear all of the extra attributes that the MacOS assigns to programs and files on your computer. When you downloaded the Suuntolink application, the operating system decided it didn't like it and assigned certain attributes to keep you from running it. To clear all of those extra attributes run the following command:

xattr -c Suuntolink.app

Now if you are using the latest version of MacOS, which is Sonoma as of the time of this post, you may get an error saying "Operation not permitted: 'Suuntolink.app'." You will also see a dialog appear on the upper right of your screen saying something along the lines of "Terminal is trying to change the attributes of an application and doesn't have permissions to do so." Fortunately there will be a drop-down list that will allow you to change that. It will open the Privacy and Security control panel and allow you to change permissions for the Terminal program. You will have to run the previous command again and it should work fine with no acknowledgement that it worked other than not printing an error message.

You should now be able to double-click on the Suuntolink program in your Applications directory and run it without any difficulty. If it still doesn't run without giving you an error message, right-click on the Suuntolink icon and select the "Open" option. If your mouse only has a single button, then just hold down the Control (often abbreviated as CTRL) key and click on the icon.

It took me an hour to figure this all out last night and so I hope these instructions help you should you run into a similar problem. While I am tempted to say that Apple is to blame, the reality is that they have your best interest at heart. They really don't want you running a program that contains a Trojan Horse or Virus and so this is a safety feature. I would not use these steps on any program you do not trust absolutely. Otherwise you could really screw up your Mac.

A Great Story About Apple

I spent the day in a special meeting where we had a former Apple employee share a very interesting story about the development of the original iPhone. It isn't protected by any confidentiality agreements and so I thought I would share it in my blog to help illustrate the point of making proper technology decisions.

Many years ago Apple decided to create a new product called the iPhone. They didn't make phones at the time but had an idea of what smartphones should look like. They had a hardware division that would create the physical device. They also had a software division that needed to build software for this new piece of hardware. The software team had to decide the basic operating system that they would use. One group felt they should take the existing operating system running on their computers and modify it so it would run on the much less powerful hardware. Another group wanted to start with a different operating system that could already run on it.

If you take the short-term approach, there is a lot less work involved in using an operating system that could already run on the planned hardware. The downside is that Apple would then have to maintain separate operating systems for their computer and mobile devices. Taking the long-term approach meant doing more work in the beginning but simplifying maintenance and code updates in the future.

Ultimately the long-term approach won out and proved to be the better decision. This made it much easier for Apple to switch their computers from the Intel platform to the same ARM platform they run in their phones. It also shows that taking a long-term approach opens up more possibilities for future product development.

The Smartwatch Saga Continues

Yesterday I wrote about my temporary smartwatch while I wait for my Suunto 9 Baro to be repaired. Before posting to my blog, I checked the status on the Suunto customer service website and could see that they had received the watch but had not done anything with it. They publish they have several statuses but the fact that mine continued to say "Received" led me to believe they had not yet looked at it.

This morning I woke up to a text from DHL saying they had a package for me arriving on Monday. That's nice but I don't have any orders I am expecting and so I didn't click on the link in case it was a phishing attempt or worse. I went down to my computer and had two more messages from DHL. They also had a lot more information and so I knew they really did have a package for me. My inbox also contained a message from Suunto with an update about my watch.

It is important to note that my Suunto watch was well past the one-year warranty and so their message surprised me. They told me that they couldn't fix my watch and were sending me a new one free of charge. They also explained that they removed the band from my original watch and were sending it with the new one. I am pleased that Suunto stands behind their products and is replacing my watch at their expense. I am also confused.

The text and e-mail from DHL now made sense combined with the knowledge from Suunto so my package on Monday would be my replacement watch. What confuses me is that the replacement watch is coming from Hong Kong and my watch band is in Ogden, Utah. I would have expected some sort of an update from the service center saying they were working on the watch, couldn't repair it, and were sending it overseas for further evaluation. That would explain how my new watch is getting my old band. Maybe I will be getting 2 packages in the near future and one will contain the replacement with the other my old band. Ultimately I am happy to know I am getting a new watch and I didn't have to pay for it. I also didn't have to pay for shipping.

This experience reinforces my idea that you want to go with name brand smart devices. I am sure Apple would have done something similar. As for my inexpensive no-name temporary replacement. I'm sure I would be out the $49.99 I paid for it.

I Miss My Smartwatch

A few weeks ago I noticed that my watch was having difficulty holding a charge for any length of time. A quick Internet search revealed that the rechargeable battery probably needed to be replaced. I boxed it up and sent it to the Suunto service center in Ogden, Utah. Suunto even provided me with a UPS label so I didn't have to pay for shipping. At least not yet.

The service center has had my watch for 3 weeks now and probably will for a few more as they have a large backlog of devices to fix. I really miss my watch. While it is helpful for telling time, it actually does so much more and so I eagerly await its return.

A lot of millennials don't wear watches because they just look at the time on their smartphones. I figured I would give that a try until my watch is sent back. All I can say is that pulling my phone out to check the time is kind of a hassle compared to looking at my wrist. I don't check it enough and find myself being late to quite a few appointments. For this reason alone, I am thinking of picking up a cheap watch to use until my Suunto 9 is returned. Fortunately a lot of the millennials that have refused to wear a watch have fallen in love with Apple's Smartwatch and have started wearing them. This doesn't explain why they are still always late but let's hope that gets better.

The second thing I have noticed is that I am not exercising as much as I did when I had my Smartwatch. I still try to get out for my daily bike ride but I have stopped taking as many evening walks. The exercise feature of most Smartwatches allows you to track distance walked, steps taken, and pulse. These are all great indicators of how much exercise I am getting and something I track daily. I really miss this information and am thinking about getting a cheap Smartwatch with these features until my primary one is returned.

I used to constantly check my sleep quality when I first started wearing my Suunto 9. Fortunately I have learned what habits contribute to good sleep and don't check it nearly as often as I am sleeping very well. When I don't have quality sleep at night, I know it and adjust my habits to fix it. I guess that is something I don't need in a temporary replacement watch.

My wife is probably tired of listening to me complain about my missing watch. Last night she suggested that I find a temporary replacement until mine is returned. I guess I had better set a budget and minimum features I can't do without. If I use the health features on my phone, I can probably just get a simple watch that is waterproof and tells time. Time to go do some research.

New Laptop Battery

A week or so ago, my wife seemed rather distraught. We have a number of projects going on in the house and I worried that maybe we had a plumbing leak. For some reason, plumbing problems appear most in my adult nightmares. She said that wasn't the issue but that her laptop computer wasn't holding a charge. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. She changed out chargers as we have a number of different chargers for various Mac computers and that fixed the problem temporarily. Once she pulled her laptop off the charger, she only had about an hour before the battery drained completely. I immediately knew the problem: she needed a new laptop battery.

My wife has a MacBook Air that I picked up about 7 years ago. Knowing that she is reaching the end of life for her computer, I asked if she wants a new one but she doesn't see the point. Her current computer is working flawlessly for her and so I went to the website IFixIt and did a search for "MacBook Air Battery." I found the information for an Early 2015 with a 13-inch monitor and looked at ordering a new battery. I also reviewed the instructional video to see what tools I would need.

Replacing a MacBook Air battery is a simple task that anyone who has ever used a screwdriver can accomplish. You just have to have the right screwdrivers. My wife's required a Pentalobe 5, which looks like a 5-pointed star to remove the case and a Torx 5, which looks like a 6-pointed star to remove the battery. I made sure to order the screwdrivers from IFixIt as they were only $6 each. Interestingly I did not need to order the high-quality ones as I was sent the screwdriver bits with a universal handle because of my battery order. Now I have 2 of each.

I placed my order and it arrived the next day. I had a break in my work schedule and asked my wife to bring me her laptop. I grabbed some reading glasses and went to work. The first thing I noticed is how tiny those laptop screws really are. I carefully placed them nearby for when it came time to reassemble everything. The old battery came out quickly and the new one went in just as fast.

Any time you replace a laptop battery, you also want to calibrate the battery. Instructions came in the package and so we charged the battery to full and then kept it on the charger for a few hours. Then my wife started using the laptop running only on battery power until the computer turned itself off. After using it for about a week, today the MacBook Air finally shut down. I asked my wife how much time she actually got out of the battery and she estimates about 7 hours of real use. She is happy with that.

Apple makes a great computer that lasts for many years. My wife is gentle with her laptop and so I expect it to continue working for several more years before needing to be replaced. That makes replacing a battery much more cost effective than getting a new machine. It wouldn't surprise me if we get a total of 10 years out of it now.

Apple's Numbers vs. Microsoft's Excel

For the past several months I have been using Apple's Numbers spreadsheet program since I had to give up my work laptop. On my work laptop, I used Microsoft's Excel and even after almost half a year I have to say that I prefer Excel. I'm sure part of that is because I have years of experience with one versus a few months with the other.

I would have to say that my biggest complaint with Numbers is that a new document with a fixed-size spreadsheet. The default is a table with only 7 columns and 22 rows. Sure you can add columns or rows but each addition requires the click of an on-screen button. There also is a button that allows you to grab the lower right corner of the spreadsheet and drag it to as large as you think you will need. I actually prefer Excel's way of allowing you to scroll right or down and having new columns and rows appear.

Another thing that takes a bit of getting used to in Numbers is the right-side format bar. I feel like this should give me greater control of how the spreadsheet is formatted. Unfortunately it feels more like wasted space. I like how Excel puts all the format control at the top of the spreadsheet allowing for more visible columns.

Where the two spreadsheet products are similar is with a lot of the calculations and functions. The formula "=sum(B2:B14)" works equally well in both programs and that is important. I would hate to have to learn a new way of entering formulas.

I moved a lot of my personal spreadsheets from my work laptop to my personal computer and Numbers does a pretty good job of reading them. There are some missing fonts that I keep getting errors about but I can deal with that problem easily. The error I get is "This spreadsheet has missing fonts." I think a bigger problem would be functions that are not supported and I haven't seen any of those.

I will continue to use Numbers as I like the price: FREE. It is included with the MacOS and updated regularly. Perhaps I will learn to embrace the differences in the future but right now I see them as annoyances.

Don't Forget Your Laptop Charger

My oldest son is visiting my youngest son in Ohio for the remainder of the week. I got a text from him this morning that he forgot to bring his laptop charger for his MacBook Pro. He has one of the latest models that still uses an Intel chip. That means he has pretty good battery life but not as good as the recent models that use the M1 chips. It also means that his laptop uses a USB-C connection to charge the battery.

I am not a fan of Apple constantly changing how to charge their devices. It doesn't matter if it is an iPhone, iPad, or a laptop; the charger used today will be changed on newer releases of the hardware. I did like the change to USB-C for their laptops though as it does offer alternatives to using Apple-specific chargers. Hopefully they stick with it for awhile.

When my son mentioned that he left his laptop charger at home, I suggested he try connecting his phone charger to his computer to see if that will work for the week. I know that USB chargers have some intelligence. They will start charging at the lowest specified power and then negotiate to charge at the highest power possible. The Apple-brand charger for their laptops are rated at 96 watts where a phone charger is rated to only a few watts. My son tried that and an hour later after not using the laptop at all, his battery power increased from 16% to 17%. That wasn't going to work.

Ultimately my son had to run into town and get a charger from Walmart. They had one for $40 instead of the usual Apple price of $70 so he could save himself some money. Having left my laptop charger at home on more than one occasion, I could feel my son's pain. Fortunately he came up with a relatively inexpensive solution.

Ideas for Investing $2000

Recently I opened a Webull trading account and started playing around in the stock market. It has been less than 3 weeks and I have increased my investment by 30%. Part of that is because the overall market is up and part of it is because I guessed and purchased an undervalued stock that is going through the roof right now. The exercise has got me thinking about other investments one could make and that is the inspiration behind today's post.

I chose the amount of $2000 because it is a sum of money that a lot of people can easily raise, especially with a potential new round of stimulus checks. It is also a number that lends itself to smaller investments and not enough for a larger investment such as a home.

I also want to think outside the box. When most people think of investments, they picture the stock market and I want to go beyond that. Yes, it is one option but what other options exist. I doubt I will create an exhaustive list but it should give you some ideas of what will work for you. You may even come up with some better ideas on your own.

The Stock Market - Yes you could do as I have done and invest in the stock market. The problem is that there are thousands of stocks to choose from. What do you invest in? Many investment advisors suggest companies whose brands you use. This is why a lot of people invest in Apple (APPL) and have done quite well over the past years. I saw the run on toilet paper since COVID-19 began and invested in a toilet paper company. Unfortunately that stock has lost value for me. It is only down $2.50 and so I am not too concerned, but it does highlight the fact that you can lose money in the stock market. Let's look at some other ideas that many will find more appealing.

Invest in Yourself - A long time ago I used to work for Oracle Corporation. I had a fair number of shares of stock in them (ORCL) and sold that stock to pay for my college education as I received the stock while I was in high school. I don't regret that choice at all. You could do the same thing with the suggested $2000 and invest it in your own personal learning. It won't come close to paying for a college degree but it may allow you to take the continuing education course that gets you that better paying job. Perhaps there is a skill that you want to learn simply to improve your own quality of life. While it may not reward you monetarily, it will pay you back in other ways.

This brings up investing in your self image. You have to be careful with this one as some people tend to go overboard but it is something to consider. If you work in an office where people dress up, it makes sense to invest in nice clothes. Perhaps your teeth are a bit crooked and you are very self conscious about it. Just be sure that the investment you are making will truly pay you back in some form. Don't use it as an excuse to buy something you don't really need.

I think you are the first area you should look at before other investment opportunities. If you are satisfied with who you are and what you have become, then you can look at other investments.

Invest in Tools - Before you can build a house, you better own a hammer. Not everyone wants to go into construction and there are other tools you may need for your interests. If you want to become a YouTube star, you might need a camera or a computer. You might even be able to get started with a good smartphone. $2000 is a start to help you get going. Just be forewarned that YouTube sensations don't happen overnight and it may be a year or more before you see any repayment of that investment. This is where my 30% in 3 weeks starts to look good.

There are plenty of other examples of purchasing tools that will help you earn money. Right now there are several car manufacturers that are offering 0% loans on new cars. $2000 would be a great down payment that could get you a rental car that you can make available on Turo. I skied with a guy who has a small fleet of Hondas and renting them on Turo is his full-time job. Perhaps you don't like the idea of letting someone drive your car and you dream of becoming a Lyft or Uber driver. A new car would definitely help out especially since both companies have minimum standards for the quality of cars they allow you to drive.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of tools purchases but I don't want to go on too long and will leave other ideas up to you.

Hopefully this has given you some new ideas on what to do with your investment money. Just remember that an investment takes time to mature. Stocks may be down or your YouTube channel may not have the 1000 subscribers to allow you to monetize your content. Hold tight, keep at it, and don't panic. Remember that investment money should not be needed for a year or two. If it is needed before then, don't invest it.

Change Is Not Always Good

Working in technology I see a lot of companies changing user interfaces simply to differentiate them from older versions. Apple is famous for eliminating features available in previous versions of their software much to the disappointment of their users. More often than not though companies will change colors (Microsoft Windows serves as a great example of this) or where certain features are located with no additional benefits and I have to question why they do it.

Technology is not the only area where this happens. Today I got bit by a fashion change that had the potential to really embarrass me. Every year I look at early ski season sales for discounts on gear. I ski enough that my gear often wears out and needs replacing. This year I found too good deal on some ski pants and now know why. When I first bought the pants, I tried them on and noticed that the front zipper is operated using the left hand instead of the right. While I am fairly ambidextrous, I have been trained to zip and unzip pants with my right hand throughout my entire life. I didn't think it would be too much of a change until I skied up to the lodge this afternoon in a semi-panicked state as I headed to the restroom. When I bought my ski pants, my wife told me they were European. What she meant was You-re-a-pee-in as in You-re-a-pee-in-in-your-pants-in-an-emergency. That almost came true today. This is one of those cases where changing something just to be different can actually be a bad thing.

Should you happen to be working in software and think it would help to differentiate your product by changing a feature's location just to differentiate it from a previous version, remember that it could be confusing to some of your long-time users. They may not appreciate your stylistic updates. Now I need to go practice zipping and unzipping my pants with my left hand so I don't have an accident in the future.

Another Hiccup with Apple's MacOS Big Sur

A week or so ago, I posted about an issue I have with Apple's update to Mac OS X with Big Sur. Today I ran into another issue that caused a problem. I will admit it is a small problem but one I am sure others may have. In my case, it arose because of a seldom used piece of software.

This all came about because of a problem with Microsoft Teams on the Mac. You used to be able to share your system audio on a video conference call and then the feature disappeared. It still exists on the Windows version and so I thought I might try using Windows running within VirtualBox on my Mac. It is something I set up a few months ago but never really use and so I tried firing it up. I was immediately halted by an error.

The first message I got told me to update to a later version of VirtualBox and so I installed the newer version. That didn't help as the error persisted and so I did a quick Internet search. I copied the entire error into my usual search engine needed to update a preference to allow VirtualBox to run. No it didn't take a lot of effort but annoyed me anyways. It doesn't take too many annoyances to really start hating a product.

With the problem fixed, I started VirtualBox and then loaded my Windows 10 virtual machine. Unfortunately I ran into a completely set of new problems related to Windows and so I will save that for another posting. Ultimately I discovered that I need to be careful before upgrading my computer to the next major version of Apple's new operating system. I won't know how much work it will take to fix little issues like this.