1

The

GABer

The Newsletter of the Greater Albany Apple Byters

Apples Worldwide Developers

Conference Kicks Off June 8

Apple announced that it will hold its 26th annual Worldwide

Developers Conference (WWDC) June 8 through June 12
at San Franciscos Moscone West, with more sessions than
ever before streamed to developers. At WWDC, Apples
renowned developer community will come together to
learn about the future of iOS and OS X, helping them
continue to create the most innovative apps in the world.
WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions, over
1,000 Apple engineers, hands-on labs to help developers
integrate new technologies and fine tune their apps, as well
as the Apple DesignAwards which showcase the best new
apps in the last year.
Select Worldwide Developers Conference sessions will be
live streamed throughout the week via the WWDC website
and the WWDC app, giving more developers around the
world access to the latest information in real time. Videos
from all technical sessions will also be available by the
endof each day.

Next GAAB Meeting

May 12, 2015
7:00 p.m.

Panera Bread
Crossgates Common, Albany

Volume 31, Number 9 - May 2015

May 2015 GAAB Meeting

There will be no April 205 GAAB Meeting becasue of the

Spring Break and the Holidays. The next GAAB meeting
will be Tuesday, May 12, 2015.

Meeting: May 12, 2015

7:00 PM
Panera Bread
161 Washington Ave Ext, Albany, NY

A map can be found at the GAAB website at

http://applebyters.com/index.php/meeting-information/
meeting_map/
GAAB Meeting Agenda:
Discussion of June 20215 Dinner Meeting
Apple Changes and Updates
Member Topics

Featured in this Issue

WWDC 2015............................................................................. 1
Apple Ambassador..................................................................... 2
Internet SIG................................................................................ 3
Education SIG............................................................................ 4
Make Your Mac More Efficient................................................. 9
GAAB Internet Addresses........................................................ 11
The

May 2015 Serving the Apple ComputerGABer

User Community Since May 1984

Apple
Ambassador

The Greater Albany Apple Byters is an Apple Computer User Group.

Membership privileges include this newsletter, access
to a large public domain software and video/audio
tape library, local vendor discounts, special interest
groups, and other special offers.

by John Buckley

Contents of The GABer are copywriten, all rights

reserved. Original articles may be reprinted by notfor-profit organizations, provided that proper credit
is given to the author, The GABer, and a copy of the
publication sent to The GABer editor.
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility
of each author, and do not necessarily represent the
views of the Greater Albany Apple Byters.
Note: Trademarks used in this newsletter are recognized as trademarks of the representative companies.

Everything You Need to

Know About Apples New
Photos App for Mac

by Josh Lowensohn and Nathan Ingraham

Apples new photo-syncing setup is a huge
improvement but the devil is in the details

One of the biggest problems

right now is what to do with
all our photos. Taking them
is easier than ever. So is
sharing them. But storing
and organizing them all in
different places still manages
to be an experience filled with
gotchas, and one that varies wildly depending on what
companies youve sworn allegiance to with your phone
and computer. And if that companys been Apple, youve
basically been a guinea pig in a good idea that was hastily
(and poorly) executed.

Officers & Special Interest Group Leaders

Program Coordinator
John Buckley
272-7128
Membership Director
Cecilia MacDonald
872-0823

Apple might have just fixed that for Mac users with the new
Photos app. Its the final piece in a plan that Apple unveiled
last June, and one that both fixes and unifies a patchwork
system it rolled out in 2011. Its a rethink of how people
manage their photo library on a Mac, something thats
been iPhotos home turf for more than a decade. Apples
discontinuing that software along with Aperture (which is
aimed at pro photographers), in favor bringing the tools
people have on their iPhones and iPads to the Mac. Its
also been built with Apples iCloud in mind instead of an
afterthought, which feels years overdue.

Treasurer
Cecilia MacDonald
872-0823
Public Domain Librarian
Bill Shuff
393-9753
Newsletter Editor
Roger Mazula
466-7492
Education SIG
John Buckley
272-7128

At a high level heres three things that anyone thinking of

using Photos for OS X should know:
You should probably use the iCloud Photo Library
feature, which syncs all your photos across all your
devices but youll almost certainly need to buy
more iCloud storage to take advantage of it.
Everything you shoot with your iPhone or import into
the new Photos app is backed up to iCloud and shared
Continued on page 6.

Internet SIG
Lou Wozniak
465-2873

The

GABer

May 2015

Internet SIG
5 Great Uses for an
Old Phone or Tablet
by Kim Komando

1. Security Camera

3. Universal Controller

You dont need a complete security

system just to watch a single room,
closet, drawer or jewelry box. A single
Internet-connected security camera can
do the job, but why spend the money?

Tired of juggling remotes for your TV, streaming box, Bluray player and more? You can turn your old gadget into a
universal remote control for your entire home entertainment
system.

With a simple free app, you can transform your Android

or Apple gadget into a motion-activated security camera
that records images and alerts you when someone comes
snooping. Check out Salient Eye (Android; Free) or
Manything (Apple; Free). Then, click here to learn how to
make them work and what to do if you need more security
in your home.
2. Digital Photo Frame
If you want to frame a digital picture to hang on the wall,
you have to print it out. Of course, thanks to easy digital
photography, you probably have hundreds or thousands of
great pictures to choose from.
Instead of trying to choose, turn an old tablet into a digital
picture frame. It can sit on a table or counter and display
hundreds of great photos in row.
For an Android tablet, grab the Dayframe app (Free). Not
only does it let you set up photo slideshows from local
photos, it can pull images from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
and other major photo and social media sites. Plus, if you
have a Google Chromecast, you can easily stream photos to
your TV and turn it into a giant digital photo frame.
For an iPad, Digital Photo Frame (Free) and Picmatic (Free)
are two good apps. Digital Photo Frame lets you pull images
from online sources while Picmatic lets you add filters and
create interesting layouts.

Most new Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and

streaming video boxes have remote apps. Simply load the
app on your gadget and you have complete control over WiFi. For older gadgets, you can get an IR transmitter adapter
like the Zmart Remote PRO or a Wireless-to-IR base station
like the Logitech Harmony Hub.
If you have other Wi-Fi enabled appliances in the house,
like smart light bulbs or thermostats, you can control those
as well. And you dont have to stop at your entertainment
system and appliances. An app like Remote Mouse (Android,
Apple; Free) lets you control your computer using your
smartphone or tablet over your network.
4. For the Kids
If your children are clamoring for a gadget of their own, an
old one is perfect for watching videos, reading eBooks or
playing games. You can set it up so they stay safe. And if
they destroy it, it isnt a real loss.
On Android tablets with version 4.3 and up, you can create
Restricted Profiles under Settings>>Devices>>Users so
you have complete control over what your kids are doing.
Apple lets you enable restrictions on in-app purchases and
some apps.
You can also install a third-party app like Famigo(Android,
Apple; Free) that locks the gadget into a kid-friendly mode.
Click here to learn more about sharing tablets with people
and still keeping your privacy.

Continued on page 8.

GABer

The

May 2015

Education SIG
The 20 Digital Skills Every
21st Century Teacher Should Have

by EdTech Team, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

The original list that was created in 2011 comprised 33 skills, after reviewing it we decided to do some merging and
finally ended up with the 20 skills below.
The 21st century teacher should be able to:
1- Create and edit digital audio
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Free Audio Tools for Teachers
2- Use Social bookmarking to share resources with and between learners
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
A List of Best Bookmarking Websites for Teachers
3- Use blogs and wikis to create online platforms for students
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Great Tools to Create Protected Blogs and Webpages for your Class
4- Exploit digital images for classroom use
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Web Tools to Edit Pictures without Installing any software Tools to Convert Photos into Cartoons
5- Use video content to engage students
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Web Tools to Create Videos without Installing Any Software
6- Use infographics to visuallystimulatestudents
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Tools for Creating Educational Posters and Infographics
7- Use Social networking sites to connect with colleagues and grow professionally
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
23 Excellent Tools for Teachers Professional Development
5 Ways to Use Twitter for Professional Development
20 tips for Teachers Professional Development
8- Create and deliver asynchronous presentations and training sessions
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Presentation Creation Tools for Teachers
9- Compile a digital e-portfolio for their own development
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Great Tools to Create Digital Portfolios

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May 2015

5
10- be able to detect plagiarized works in studentsassignments
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Plagiarism Detector Tools for Teachers and Educators
11- Create screen capture videos and tutorials
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Some Very Good Screen Capture Tools for Teachers
12- Curate web content for classroom learning
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Great Tools for Web Curation
13- Use and provide students with task management tools to organize their work and plan their learning
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
A List of Great Task Management Tools for Educators
14- Use polling software to create a real-time survey in class
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
15 Free and Easy Poll/ Survey Tools for Teachers
15- Understand issues related to copyright and fair use of onlinematerials
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Great Resources for Learning More about Copyright Issues
16- Use digital assessment tools to create quizzes
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Free Tools to Create and Administer Quizzes
17- Find and evaluate authentic web based content
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
A Great Rubric for Evaluating Web Content
18- Use digital tools for time management purposes
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Some Very Good Tools for Better Time Management
19- Use note taking tools to share interesting content with your students
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Good Apps for Note Taking
20- Use of online sticky notes to captureinterestingideas
Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill:
Sticky Notes Apps for Teachers and Students

GABer

The

May 2015

Apple Ambassador

Youre still free to choose the optimized setting on your

iOS devices to save space there.

Continued from page 2.

Photos will happily import both JPG and RAW files

seamlessly across your devices. Using it is a pretty

great experience.
If you dont want to try iCloud Photo Library, you
can keep using the new Photos app as an iPhoto
replacement, but youll be stuck with the old My Photo
Stream feature (and itsodd restrictions) for syncing
photos across your devices.
As simple as Photos is, the devil is in the details, and there
are quite a few details here. Familiar features have moved
or changed, and in classic Apple fashion, some have also
been quietly removed. Here are some things you should
be aware of now that the softwares available to everyone.
How it works

If youre a photographer who shoots with a standalone

digital camera, Photos will happily import both JPG and
RAW files and treat them much like the photos you shoot
on an iPhone. If you have Photos set to upload everything
to iCloud, itll store the original, full-size images in the
cloud and sync them across your devices. Its worth noting
that Photos for OS X obfuscates the file system even more
than iPhoto or Aperture do once you import photos from
your camera, it seems to be impossible to locate the original
file in the Finder, even if you have Photos set to store the
original, full-size images on your computer rather than
only keep them in iCloud. Those who want to maintain
absolute control over their images will probably want to
save original files in Finder and then import the best shots
into Photos for further work and sharing.

If youve been using the iCloud Photo Library beta for

iOS 8, youll be pretty familiar with how Photos for
OS X works. Rather than the old My Photo Stream
feature, which pushed 1,000 photos (or 30 days worth of
photos) across your Mac and iOS devices, everything you
shoot on your iPhone will automatically get uploaded to
iCloud. When you open up Photos on your Mac, youll
see everything you shot in a view thats nearly identical to
what you see in iOS all your photos are organized by
date and location. You can zoom out to a year overview or
zoom in and see any particular photo or video. Apples also
included the see-every-photo-as-a-microscopic-thumbnail
view to navigate several hundred photos at a time.

Beyond simply providing a much better way of organizing

your photos and videos across multiple devices, the new
Photos app for OS X does much of what its predecessor
did you can make a wide variety of edits (more on
this later), create calendars and books, use face detection
to sort photos by the people that are in them, share them
with iCloud or across some third-party services, and more.
Nearly every feature included in iPhoto is present here in
Photos, and Apple has finally fixed its confusing cloudsyncing solutions in favor of something much simpler
and smarter.

Every image in the cloud, if you want

It really depends on how you were using those two apps.

This is eminently more lightweight than either of those
two, and more familiar to iOS. You basically get the same
set of filters, controls, and effects youll find on iOS, and
everything gets synced up the second its done. Also, the
photos you have stored in your iCloud Photo Library no
longer feel tacked on the way the My Photo Stream feature
did in iPhoto and Aperture.

What is probably most noteworthy about the new app is

that Apple is no longer simply using iCloud to share your
photos across devices if you choose, you can now store
every image and video you shoot on your iPhone in iCloud.
To help make this work without taking up a ton of storage,
Apple is also giving users the option to optimize storage
on their devices. Instead of locally storing every image in
full resolution, you can opt to have the full images live in
iCloud; smaller, optimized images that take up much less
storage space will instead be displayed on your mobile
devices and even on your Mac. At any time, you can choose
to download the full-size image if youre so inclined. Of
course, if you buy into this setup, youll be trusting Apple
to keep all the originals safe in iCloud. Fortunately, you can
set it up so that the Photos app on your Mac keeps all the
original, full-size images stored locally if you so choose.

Is this better than iPhoto or Aperture?

This isnt an Aperture replacement

Now, if you were one of the people who loved Aperture
because you like adjusting every possible little setting, and
having things like a loupe for pixel-peeping, adjustment
brushes for fixing dust spots or blown highlights, and plugins to add extra features, heres some bad news: none of
these things are present in Photos. Dedicated iPhoto users
should find plenty to like about the new OS X Photos app,
though.

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For more details on this, see our in-depth preview.
Whats new?
As mentioned before, this is a completely new app with
changes to both its look and feel, and how you edit photos.
But there are a few new features.
If youre an iPhone or iPad shooter, theres now a
way to sort between specialty photos and videos
from Apples newer devices. That includes things like
panoramics, burst shots, slow motion, and timelapse
video. This is basically the same thing you can do on
iOS, now on Mac.
Apples changed up its shared Activity View to look
less like albums, and more of a running update log
just like it does on iOS. The big difference here is
that any shared albums you have with friends show
up in the main source list instead of hidden away
within the app.
A new auto-crop tool that looks at your photo to figure
out where the horizon is, then adjusts it according to
the rule of thirds.
A new zoomed out view for collections and years that
makes thumbnails absolutely tiny. You can see what
pictures are by clicking and scrubbing, just like how
it works on iOS.
New square book formats if youre printing photos
through Apple.
Whats missing?
Pretty much everything that is in iPhoto can be found in
Photos, but some things did not make the cut. Its worth
noting we were using a pre-release version of the software,
and things could be added in future releases.
The long-running star rating system has given way
to favoriting photos with hearts, though existing
star ratings are preserved from your old photos and
accessible through search.
iPhotos odd built-in mail tool is also gone, and has
been replaced with kicking photos out to Yosemites
Mail app. Thats an extra thing to have set up outside
of Photos, but on the plus side it means that those
messages will actually show up in your sent folder
instead of into the ether of Apples internet as they
did before.
The syncing tools for Flickr and Facebook, which
let you set up an album to automatically post to either
of those places, are gone. Theyve been replaced with
Apples system-wide sharing tools, which means a
little more legwork is required if youre relying on
iPhoto for keeping online albums up to date.
You cannot geotag photos, though you can see, sort,
and search by where photos were taken.

How does this handle storing photos on my Mac versus

iCloud Photo Library?
Either you keep everything on your Mac, or sync up
everything in your Photos library with your iCloud Photo
Library. That means no selecting certain photos of events
to sync up. Power users might hate that, but the features
been designed so you dont have to remember to flag
items something thats tedious with larger libraries. Its
worth noting that even if you choose to sync your photos
with iCloud Photo Library, you can still keep the original
files stored locally on your Mac while having your library
mirrored across multiple devices.
Do I need to buy iCloud storage now?
Photos can be used without iCloud Photo Library, and thus
your iCloud storage. You can keep both photos and videos
in the Photos app, just like you could with iPhoto and
Aperture. You can also keep using iClouds Photo Stream
feature, though it does not store full quality versions of
your photos and wont even transfer videos. Once youve
upgraded to iCloud Photo Library, Photo Stream as weve
known it is replaced by All Photos.
If you do want to flip on iCloud Photo Library, Photos
provides an estimation of how much storage it will take.
If that goes over the free amount you have from Apple,
you can subscribe to one of its various storage tiers, just
like you can from iOS devices. Apple gives you 5GB for
free, but keep in mind that youre also sharing that space
with things like iCloud backups, as well as files you have
stored in iCloud Drive. Photos youve taken on your iPhone
count separately from those backups, but can eat into that
space quickly. Apple Photos wont make this worse if
youre just snapping shots with your iPhone or iPad, but
it definitely will if you plan to store RAW photos from a
DSLR and 1080p videos.
Currently, Apple offers four different tiers of extra iCloud
storage, which have varying costs depending on what
country youre in. In the US, at least, its 99 cents a month
for 20GB, $3.99 a month for 200GB, $9.99 a month for
500GB, and $19.99 a month to jump to 1TB.
Whats happening to iPhoto and Aperture?
Both pieces of software will live on, for now, though
are no longer being developed by Apple. Photos is the

GABer

The

May 2015

Editing and color correction tools for photos on

your videos, thats still iMovies territory; you cant
even trim a video thats stored in your library without
jumping out to another app.

Internet SIG

new iPhoto, basically, so your library is transferred over.

Aperture users, however, can continue to use Aperture if
they want to make more advanced edits. But those edits
made in Aperture wont sync over to Photos and vice versa.
Do I need to do anything to my photo library on iOS,
iPhoto, or Aperture?
No. Apple will let you move your iPhoto or Aperture
library into Photos and preserve your edits. However,
because Apple changed some of its organizational tools,
some things do get lost or changed in translation from
an iPhoto or Aperture library. Star ratings get turned into
hearts (or favorites), and projects are turned into albums.
Other metadata is retained but will only show up in search.
You need to search for things like color labels and flags.
Also, if youve added custom metadata fields to any photos
in Aperture, those fields do not carry over.
For iOS users, theres nothing to do. If youve turned on
iCloud Photo Library, all your photos and albums will
show up in Photos.
For iOS users, theres nothing to do
How do I get this?
Apple has built it into OS X 10.10.3, which was released
today. Once youve updated (through the Mac App Store),
the app will be automatically installed.
This all sounds really complicated, can I just use
something else?
On the Mac? Of course. The same thing goes with your
iPhone or iPad. Pretty much every company now, including
Amazon, Box, Dropbox, Google, Flickr, and Microsoft
have apps that will perfectly and seamlessly sync your
camera roll to their servers. The key reason to use this
is if youre the kind of person who does not want to deal
with setting up another service, and both likes and wants
to use Apples tools.
Casey Newton contributed to this report.
Update April 8th, 12:30PM: This post was originally
published February 5th, 2015 and has been updated to
reflect that the Photos app has been released as part of
OS X 10.10.3.

Continued from page 3.

Youll also want to install an app like DinnerTime (Android,

Apple; Free) that lets you shut down the gadget when the
kids start misbehaving or its time for family dinner.
5. Ebook Reader
A good use for an old tablet is a dedicated eBook reader.
You can install the free Kindle app (Android, Apple; Free)
to read any of your Amazon eBooks, or buy new ones from
Google Play or iTunes Books.
You can also rent eBooks from your local library through
the OverDrive app (Android, Apple; Free). Or download
free ones online from Project Gutenberg or other online
eBook collections.
6. Alarm Clock
I know a lot of people use their smartphones as their alarm
clock. While this gives you more alarm options than your
typical clock radio, it can disturb your rest if you get texts
or other notifications pop up during the night.
Using an old smartphone (or tablet) means you can turn off
any distractions and just use the gadget as an alarm. Apple
and Android both have good built-in alarm functions, but
you can do more.
Grab an app like Sleep Cycle Alarm (Apple; $1), Sleep
As Android (Android; Free) or Sleepbot (Android, Apple;
Free). These track your sleeping patterns and wake you up
at exactly the right moment so youre refreshed.
7. Dedicated Car Player
Tired of getting in the car and taking spending a minute or
two plugging in your phone so you can listen to your music?
Load your music library on your old phone and stick it in
your car permanently. Click here to learn how you can turn
an ordinary binder clip into a smartphone holder for your car.
Turn on the Wi-Fi so it connects to your network while the
car is parked at home to grab new music or your favorite
podcasts. You can also grab an app like MAPS.ME (Android,
Apple; Free) that gives you navigation without a cellular
connection.
Bonus tip: If you are going to sell your gadget, or give it away,
make sure you completely wipe your personal information
off of it first. Click here for step-by-step instructions to keep
snoops from getting their hands on your information.

The

GABer

May 2015

8 Tips to Help Your Mac Run More Efficiently

by Kraig Becker, AppleGazette.com

Todays Macintosh computers are unquestionably the very

best that Apple has ever made, combining elegant design
with impressive technology under the hood. When paired
with the latest version of OS X, a Mac is not only easy to
use, but extremely powerful and productive too. But from
time to time, even the best computers can become slow
and unresponsive. Here are 8 tips for helping your Mac
run more efficiently.

Sluggish Safari
Is Safari starting upslowly? Does it take too long to switch
between tabs? Is it feeling a bit unresponsive at times?
Then perhaps it is time to clear the history and website
data. Youll find that very option under the Safari menu
when the browser is running. Itll give you the choice to
clear that information from the last hour, today, today
and yesterday, or all history. Ifthe sluggish behavior
is a recent thing, than perhaps clearing the data from the
day will solve the problem, otherwise it is probably a good
idea to purge all of the history. This will eliminate some
temporary files that Safari creates over time, which can
help the software to run better.

Restarting
It may seem like a no-brainer, but restarting your computer
on a regular basis can do wonders for how well it
performs.Sure, the modern Mac hardware and operating
system are designed to run for long periods of time without
a restart, but the longer you go between shut-downs,
the more likely the computers memory is to become
fragmented or other issues can arise. An occasional restart
not only clears up these issues but allows the operating
system to install any pending updates as well. A restart
can cure any number of strange behaviors, and is always
the first thing a Mac owner should try when his or her
computer is behaving strangely.
Slow App Switching
OS X is capable of handling multitasking very well,
allowing users to have numerous programs open at the
same time. But sometimes switching between those
applications can seem ponderous and slow. This is usually
due to the fact that your Macs RAM is full and the
computer must swap information from virtual memory
instead. Virtual memory is actually a temporary file that is
created on your hard drive and reading that file is slower
than accessing it directly from RAM. To solve this problem,
close any open programs that you arent actively using.
This will free up memory and allow your Mac to respond
more quickly in general.

If you find that there is a bit of delay when connecting to

the Internet and loading webpages, it could be because
your Mac needs to locate a DNS server each time it looks
up the IP address for a site. You can make things a bit
more efficientby manually adding a DNS server to your
Network Preferences. Launch System Preferences, click
on the Network pane, and select your Internet connection
type (ethernet or wireless). In the Advanced settings
click on the DNS tab and hit the + button to type in an
address. Your Internet Service Provider may be running
their own DNS, and you can type in the address to that
server that they have provided. Alternatively, Google
also offers public DNS servers which can be found at the
following addresses: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Performance on
those servers is generally quite reliable and they are open
to anyone to use.
Repair Disk Permissions
Every file saved on your hard drive has a set of permissions
that are associated with it. Those permissions indicate
which users, software processes, and applications have
access to those files. With literally thousands of files

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May 2015

Speedier Internet

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on your computer, it is not surprising that sometimes
those permissions can get messed up. This can lead to
inefficiencies that slow down your computer. To fix this
problem launch Disk Utility (found in the Applications
folder > Utilities folder) and select your boot drive from
the list of available disks on the left side of the screen. With
the proper drive selected, click on the option to Repair
Disk Permissions. The software will then go through all
of your files and adjust their permissions to their proper
settings automatically. Additionally, it is often a good idea
to repair disk permissions after installing new software or
an OS update.

Full Hard Drive

As mentioned above, when your computer starts to run out
of RAM for running applications it will use virtual memory
instead. This process involves saving information to a
temporary file on the hard drive that is accessed as needed.
But if the hard drive is starting to get full, there will be less
room available to create this temp file, which can in turn
lead to the Mac having to work extra hard to manage its
memory requirements. That of coursecan result in slower
performance overall as the computer struggles to keep up.
To avoid this try to keep at least 10% of your HDD free at
all times. That means clearing up free space by deleting
unnecessary files, moving photos, video, and music to an
external drive, uninstalling software you dont need, and
so on. This extra space can then be put to good use by
OS X, helping the computer to run much more smoothly.

Verify Disk Too

Repairing disk permissions can solve a lot of small,
nagging performance issues that can add up over time. But
sometimes there can be other things going on with your
hard drive that need to be fixed as well. Running Disk
Utility and selecting the Verify Disk option will give
your drive a thorough going over to look for any major
errors that may be occurring. Provided that those issues
arent mechanical in nature, or severely catastrophic, Disk
Utility can usually repair them as well. Unfortunately it
cant perform its magic on the active boot drive, so youll
need to boot into Recovery Mode instead. To do that, restart
your Mac while holding the Command and R keys down.
Once the computer has finished starting up youll be able to
run Disk Utility again and have it repair any issues that it
finds. This can truly help solve some serious performance
issues, and Mac users should run these tests every few
months just to be on the safe side.

Too Many Fonts

Everyone loves having a large selection of fonts to choose
from when they are carefully crafting their holiday letter
to the family or creating signs for that upcoming garage
sale. But too many fonts can be a very bad thing, as OS
X must load them all, and make them available to the
appropriate applications, at all times. Users who have
hundreds, if not thousands, of fonts will certainly see a
drop in performance out of their computers. Disable or
remove fonts using the Font Book app in the Applications
folder. This will limit the amount of memory dedicated to
fonts, and help keep your Mac running as efficiently as
possible. If you absolutely must have thousands of fonts
on your computer for whatever reason, use Font Book to
create various groups, and switch between those active
groups as needed.

The

GABer

May 2015

11

GAAB Internet Addresses

Names

E-Mail Addresses

Aaron Ambrosino........ aambrosi@mac.com

Gary Blizzard.............. gmblizzard@aol.com
Mark Bogossian........... mark@castlecomp.com
Steve Bradley.............. ssbradley@adelphia.net
John Buckley............... jbuckley@nycap.rr.com
Sheldon Carnes............ sheldoncarnes@hotmail.com
Tina Cook.................... twonotrump@nycap.rr.com
Anthony Eldering........ tonye11@verizon.net
Trudy Ellis................... TE52@earthlink.net
Lilajane Frascarelli...... afrascar@nycap.rr.com
Les Goldstein............... lgoldst1@nycap.rr.com
Richard Hester............. hesterfp@capital.net
Ottmar Klaas................ ottmar.klaas@gmail.com
Michael LaFrank......... mglafrank@gmail.com
Thomas Levanduski.... msglevnduski@aol.com
Cecilia MacDonald...... cecilia@midtel.net
Mike Mannarino.......... rfd230@nycap.rr.com
Roger Mazula.............. aluzam@aol.com
Brendan OHara.......... bohara1@nycap.rr.com
Eric/Lee Rieker............ Erieker@aol.com
AbdurRahman Rozell.. aryr100@gmail.com
Judith Schwartz........... jfschwartz2@earthlink.net
Saul Seinberg............... saul.seinberg@gmail.com
Bill Shuff..................... wjshuff@earthlink.net
Shelly Weiner.............. olliedawg@yahoo.com
Lou Wozniak............... louw@nycap.rr.com

To start or renew your GAAB

membership, see Cecilia MacDonald
or send your fees payable to her at
the following address:
Cecilia MacDonald
260 Sever Road
Delanson, NY 12053

Visit GAAB on the Internet at http://www.applebyters.com

GABer

The

May 2015