Preparing for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra - Part 3
by Guest columnist August Flassig

Last time we did a brief overview of Siri for the Mac and new and exclusive things she can do. Today, I want to talk about an App that many people have a love-hate relationship with and that is Maps.

Before we get into some new features, we should have a brief history lesson on Maps. It released on iOS 6 in 2012 to a wave a criticism and bugs, having a senior Vice President be “let go.” So after four years, has Apple stepped up their game with Maps? I think so and I’m confident in some new features it offers. Some people still use Google Maps, and while it recommends the lane to be in (a feature we have yet to see) we have other features that I find handy that you will enjoy.

The first thing you will notice about Maps is the redesign. It changes from the traditional top to bottom with bottom to top where the information and search function slides up. This makes entering directions easier, especially on the “Plus” versions of the iPhone.

Updated Search and Information Field

As you pan around and tap on points of interests they are large and easy to see. You can see the results field come from below revealing new information as you slide it up.

An updated feature is “Useful to Know” which replaces the individual sections of “Reservations, kids, and etc.”

Parked Car

When I travel to a city with friends like Wilmington, for example, we leave the car and I’ll drop a pin to remember where we parked. If we are in a hurry and I forget to drop a pin, then we hope someone remembers. in iOS 10, I don't have to drop a pin because Map’s will do it automatically! When you exit a car with CarPlay or Bluetooth, Maps automatically will remember where you parked. But that is just the beginning. You notice that I can add notes and a personal photo to help me remember. Maybe you flying out for the week and leave your car in the parking garage at the airport. Now you can add a note and a photo to help you remember where you left it.

Updated Real Time Directions

When using the iPhone as a GPS, it will only show you the distance around you in mile increments and in iOS 9, what you see on screen is what you get. Not anymore with iOS 10 with the ability to pan and zoom during real time directions! Included with those directions is traffic conditions as seen in our route to 1 Infinite Loop. The orange bar above I-280 shows traffic at the time is congested, a feature only available before starting directions.

This is only a taste of what is to come in Maps and iOS 10 as a whole. Transit directions, lock screen widgets, and weather information are additional features to look out for with Maps. The look and function of these features can change up until the final release. We want to give you a heads up on what is to come later this year so you can be ready for all the changes in store.

Please consider dropping me a line if this article helps you by filling out the form here. Thanks!

Tags: Sierra, 10.12, iOS 10

Preparing for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra - Part 2
by Guest columnist August Flassig

Last time we talked about how iOS 10 removed slide to unlock and changed how we interact with iPhone on the home screen. Today, let’s talk about a feature Apple is adding to macOS Sierra, and that is Siri. The voice assistant you use to compose text messages and set timers comes to the Mac. But she does more than that, much more.

Siri can be activated by a dock icon or in the menu bar at the top of the screen. She offers up the usual suggestions like stock quotes and creating calendar entries. What makes Siri unique on the Mac is the searches are interactive. If I’m writing a document (much like this one) and I want an image from the internet, I can ask Siri “Show me Siri icons on the web.” A grid of images will appear and I can drag and drop that image into my document from Siri.

Siri also works with the redone notification center by pinning results from searches (much like widgets from iOS 10 which we will cover at a later time). If I ask when the Cubs play next she will give me who they play against and when. Other things Siri can do is pin Finder search results to Notification Center. 

This is a small look at what Siri can do in macOS Sierra that I think will become useful for many people. From composing a message, playing a song, or looking for the right files, Siri does it all. Remember, this update will be released later this year and this is pre release information. The look and function of these features can change up until the final release. We want to give you a heads up on what is to come later this year so you can be ready for all the changes in store.

Please consider dropping me a line if this article helps you by filling out the form here. Thanks!

Tags: Sierra, 10.12, iOS 10

Preparing for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra - Part 1
by Guest columnist August Flassig

Apple's new mobile operating system, iOS 10, was announced last month at WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) and released yesterday. With that announcement comes a bunch of new changes to how you use your iPhone. At Tech Me Back, we want you to be ready for the major changes ahead. This week we will be talking about a feature that's going away with the new update that has been around since the first iPhone, and that is "slide to unlock."

Touted as being a feature that prevents your phone from accidentally turning on, slide to unlock is going away and being replaced with "Press home to open."

So what happens when you attempt to slide to unlock? Sliding from left to right shows the widgets/today view. Sliding right to left instantly activates the camera. This new view is available on the lock screen giving you an overview of important information. Widgets like stocks, upcoming destinations using calendar entries, transit maps, news headlines, and more.

What does this mean? Big changes in how you get into your iPhone that will be frustrating for the first few days. You will have to break a habit you have been using since learning how to use an iPhone. This change is happening because more people are using Touch ID to access their iOS devices with the increased use of a passcode. A new feature "raise to wake" (iPhone 6S, 6S+, and SE only) will have the phone screen turn on when it detects it being picked up. This will show you notifications at a glance without pressing a button. We will continue you show new features up until the release of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra.

Please consider dropping me a line if this article helps you by filling out the form here. Thanks!

Tags: Sierra, 10.12, iOS 10

UPDATED: 1 May 2021

At the time of the original blog entry (29 June 2016), it was expected that Apple would roll out the Health app to the iPad after first rolling it out to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately, this didn’t come to pass. Believe it or not, there isn’t an “official” way to look up emergency contact information on the iPad yet!

What I would suggest is to type up your emergency contact information and print it out in landscape mode. Next, take a photo of that printed sheet with the iPad. Lastly, set that photo as your wallpaper (Settings ➞ Wallpaper). It works albeit a bit “low tech” though. The wallpaper will be completely visible even if first-responders cannot get into the iPad because it’s locked.

ICE or Emergency Contacts on iPhone or iPad

Emergency contact information is important for everyone. The good news is that with the built-in Health app, adding emergency medical contact information to your iPhone or iPad is as simple as a few taps.

This is a powerful and potentially life-saving tip! Most EMTs know where to look on an iPhone for emergency contacts but many folks don't have even set up. If you're not using Health for at least this feature, I encourage you to take a few minutes to change that. Emergency Health ID allows anyone to access basic and potentially life-saving health information from your iPhone’s lock screen. To set up Emergency Health ID:

• Open the Health app (white square with red heart in upper right-hand corner).

• Tap Medical ID on the bottom right.

• Add as much or as little information as you feel comfortable sharing during time of emergency. Some of the things you can enter include allergies & reactions, medications being taken, people that should be contacted in case of an emergency, blood type, whether or not you're an organ donor, height, and weight. *** Make sure to turn on "Show When Locked" to ensure your Medical ID can be viewed when iPhone is locked by tapping Emergency, then Medical ID. ***

• Now when you or others touch "Emergency" in the lower left corner of your lock screen, your medical details and emergency contact numbers appear as well even though the actual phone contents are locked with a passcode. If the EMT is trying to save your life, he doesn't need access to your email or photos, just your emergency contact & health information!

Please consider dropping me a line if this article helps you by filling out the form here. Thanks!

Tags: ICE, emergency, emergency contacts

• Attach the Zebra ZP 505 printer to your Mac using a USB cable.
• Click on the Apple at the top-left of your screen and choose System Preferences.
• When the System Preferences pane appears, click on Printers & Scanners in the second row from the top. The Printers & Scanners pane will open and you will see any currently configured printers in the left column.
• Click on the plus sign (+) in the lower-left of the left-hand column and you should see your Zebra label printer there and click once on it. Normally, the Mac operating system will automatically pick the driver you should use but Zebra doesn’t make Mac-specific printer drivers currently but some users have created CUPS compatible printer drivers for it. CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for OS X® and other UNIX®-like operating systems. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) to support printing to local and network printers.
• Click on the “Use:” dropdown box and go all the way to the bottom. Choose the Zebra EPL2 Label Printer driver (see screenshot below). If I chose any other Zebra printer driver, such as the Zebra ZPL Label Printer (which I chose first as it made the most sense given the name of the actual printer itself!), it would result in blank labels being printed.

• Log into ShipStation, and follow the instructions to download and install ShipStation Connect for Mac. According to ShipStation, “We developed ShipStation Connect to bridge our web-based application to your printers or scales. If you're running Mac OSX 10.7 or higher, you'll be able to install and run the ShipStation Connect application. The application is free!”
• After that, you should be able to print labels to your Zebra ZP 505 label printer from SendStation directly by choosing the “Print via ShipStation Connect” option. For more information, please refer to this ShipStation Support Article.

Tags: Zebra ZP 505, ShipStation, 10.11, FedEx, Zebra, Label printer, Thermal

Encrypting a USB Drive on a Mac Made Easy
Mac OS 10.11.x “El Capitan” Edition

(NOTE: This was written for OS X 10.11.5 “El Capitan.” If you’re looking for the later entry for macOS 10.12.x “Sierra,” click here. For the YouTube video for Sierra edition, click here. The original blog entry written for OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” can be found here)

Like many of my clients and friends, I use a flash drive (also known as a “USB drive” or “Pen drive” or “Thumb drive” etc.), for backing up important files. One of the things I’ve noticed, though, is how many people put sensitive and personal data on these flash drives but don’t even bother to encrypt them. The reason it’s important to encrypt these flash drives is because these flash drives are usually physically small and can be easily misplaced, lost or stolen. If they are encrypted, you don’t have to worry about the data on them being accessible to someone that may have stolen your flash drive or happened to have found it lying around somewhere.

Apple’s Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” and later operating systems make it easy to do a full disk encryption of these flash drives. You can also easily encrypt Secure Digital “SD” cards and Micro-SD cards too! SD cards are typically what is used in digital cameras to record the images taken with the camera. Most Macs have built-in SD card slots so Apple has made SD cards very easy and convenient to use.

In order to encrypt a flash drive or SD card (we’ll call them “media” collectively from this point onward), you should either start with brand new media or prepare to reformat the media that you may already have. If your Mac has USB 3.0 ports (most Macs since 2012), you should use USB 3.0 compatible media for this project as on-the-fly encryption can slow down reading and writing to an external drive. Please note that when you reformat this media, you are effectively erasing it so any existing data (e.g. files, folders, programs, etc.) will be lost! If you’re using existing media, you should consider copying or backing up the data on that media to another media first so that you can then copy it back to the encrypted media later. All media seem to come from the factory formatted as FAT32 (a holdover from the old MS-DOS & Windows ’95 era) as this is a disk format that nearly all personal computers, whether they be Mac, Windows, or Linux, can read and write. To encrypt your media, however, you’ll need to format it in a Mac specific format called, “GUID Partition Map.” In other words, you cannot easily create an encrypted disk on the Mac without first having changing the format of the drive from FAT32 to GUID.

The first thing you need to do is insert the media into your Mac. Afterwards, go to your Mac’s Applications folder and locate the Utilities folder. Inside the Utilities folder, you’ll find the Disk Utility application. Double-click on its icon to launch it. Disk Utility will show you a list of all internal and external drives connected to your Mac.

In the screenshot above, I’ve selected my flash drive by clicking on it once in Disk Utility (in my example, it’s called, “Lexar USB Flash Drive” in the left-hand column under the “External” column heading. Once selected, I then clicked on the Erase tab. I then changed the format type to “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” using the drop down box as shown in screenshot. At this point, you can type in a name for your media (where it says, “Give Drive a Name” ). Naming your media can help you keep your media organized. After all, most of us have several of media, right? Giving them names helps us keep them straight! Once the formatting process is complete, your screen should look like the screenshot below:

Next, you want to find your media on your Mac’s Desktop and right-click it (or hold down and click on it) and choose “Encrypt [your media’s name here].”

Next, the Mac will prompt you to enter an encryption password before it begins the process of encrypting your media. Please remember to use a password that is not only hard for someone to figure out but one that you can easily remember. Please also note that if you cannot remember the password you used when formatting and encrypting the media, then you will not be able to access the data contained on that media. You will also be given the opportunity to give yourself a “hint” on what the password is. I’d recommend writing a hint that you can figure out but would be meaningless to someone who doesn’t know you.

In a minute or two, you’ll have an encrypted flash drive or SD card ready for you to use! Remember to always drag your media off your Mac’s Desktop to your Trash to eject it properly. This step helps to prevent data loss that can result by simply pulling the media out of your Mac.

When encrypted media is plugged into your Mac, you will be prompted to enter the password you selected in order to access the data on that media. If you cannot remember your password, you can click on “Show Hint” and any hint you may have established while setting up the encrypted media will be displayed to assist you in remembering what the password is. Personally, I’d recommend that you not have the password remembered in the keychain (call/email/text me as to why!).

While Apple’s Disk Utility program is easy to use, there are a few drawbacks to using it to create encrypted media:

• The encrypted media can only be accessed with a Mac running Mac OS X “Lion” or later. Provided you know the password, you will be able to access the media and the data on it with any Mac running Mac OS X “Lion” (10.7), “Mountain Lion” (10.8) and “Mavericks” (10.9), “Yosemite” (10.10), and “El Capitán (10.11).”
• The media is not compatible with Windows or any other operating system (i.e. Windows or other operating systems will not be able to access the data contained on the media). Most flash media come pre-formatted for use with PCs running Windows but your Mac can also access them. This process will make your media Mac only. It’s not a big deal unless you live or work in a mixed computing environment containing Macs and PCs.
• As mentioned above, you’ll need the password you selected in Disk Utility to mount and use the media on your Mac. Without it, the data on the media cannot be accessed.

Tags: encrypt drive pen flash thumb , mac, 10.11, el capitan