Meeting Report

Backing Up with Time Machine and Tips

The August meeting was held on Friday the 12th. Robert talked about backup, emphasising the importance of protecting files by backing up your Mac and showed how easy it is to do so using the built-in Time Machine. DavidK then gave us some interesting tips covering the iPhone and privacy.

Backing Up with Time Machine

Robert talked about backing up your Mac to protect important files from hard drive failure, accidents and mistakes. He recommended using Apple’s built-in Time Machine feature that makes backups easy and requires minimal setup.

The main part of the presentation concentrated on showing members how to retrieve files from a Time Machine backup in different scenarios. For example, retrieving an older version of a file if you’ve accidentally overwritten it or how to find a file in your backup when you don’t know the location.

Apple has a support document covering setting up and using Time Machine.

He also showed a third party utility BackupLoupe which allows you to get more information about your Time Machine backups such as exactly what files are in each backup and when your Time Machine disk is likely to fill up. It also has a powerful find feature. Backup Loupe is unlimited Shareware (you can try it for as long as you need to before deciding to buy) and costs about £10 including VAT.

Tips

DavidK shared some tips:

  • Ways to find the IMEI number of your iPhone, this is a unique identifier for the phone that can be used if it’s ever lost or stolen. Apple has a page explaining the various methods Dave showed to find your IMEI, (some are still possible even if the phone is not available).
  • How to check the frequent locations that are stored on your iPhone or iPad and how to turn off the feature if you don’t want them recorded. SEAL member DavidB has also made a video showing this feature, this was made for iOS 7 and there might be slight changes for later versions.
  • Dave pointed out that Google has a My Activity feature which summarises the data Google records about your searches and other uses of their services when you’re signed in. From the My Activity page you can delete records and also access Activity Controls to change what they record.
  • Simple Wikipedia - this is a version of Wikipedia that uses only basic English words. Dave pointed out that it can be useful to get a simple explanation of complex concepts.
  • You can create custom vibrations for contacts on you iPhone so you know who calls even when it’s on silent!

News

We discussed: