Aric Pedersen explains how to prepare for and upgrade to a new iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, or AppleTV box. He also discusses Apple’s new Apple Creator Studio subscription and what that means for people using the iWork suite of free apps.
Automatically Generated Transcript:
Aric
00:00
It’s the PMUG podcast for February 2026. Tonight’s meeting is all about upgrading your Apple device to a newer device. Let’s get into it. Okay. Again, this is PMUG’s February meeting. Take it away, Mike.
Michael
00:21
Okay. Hello, everyone. You know me as PMUG’s webmaster and the one who updates PMUG social media accounts. My day job is a website designer for a small website design firm in Princeton. Unfortunately for me at work, business has been down and my boss can only afford to have me working part-time, so I’m looking for a new job. If you know of any business or organization that needs a webmaster, website designer, graphics designer, or social media manager, could you please get in touch with me? Even remote work is fine. Here’s my contact information and I’ll put my information also into the chat.
Aric
01:00
Since this is audio and you can’t see, Michael’s email address is michaelb.tfm at gmail.com. That’s m-i-c-h-a-e-l-b dot t-f-m at gmail.com.
Michael
01:16
Thank you. And back over to you, Aric.
Aric
01:19
Okay. Just as a reminder, if you’d like to ask a question, go ahead and unmute yourself. But if you’re not asking a question, please do me a favor and keep yourself muted. I will stop periodically throughout tonight’s presentation in case there are questions. But, of course, if you have something more immediate, feel free to ask. And, Michael, if you could just keep an eye on the chat because it’s hard for me when I’m doing a presentation to keep on top of that, too. So today we’re going to talk about upgrading Apple devices. It’s a bit of a process depending on the devices that you get. And it’s not always immediately obvious the best way to handle, you know, moving from one device to a new device. So this should hopefully clear that up. And tonight’s agenda is going to be we’re going to talk first about the iPhone and iPad. They have a very similar process, so we’ll talk about them together. Then we’ll talk about the Apple Watch, and then we’ll talk about upgrading your Mac and or doing a deep cleaning of your existing Macintosh. And then finally we’ll talk about Apple TV hardware and upgrading to a new version of that. What we’re not covering today is Apple Vision Pro, primarily because I don’t have that product, and two, there has been an update to Apple Vision Pro newer processor but i doubt very many people uh have spent three thousand more dollars uh just to get the slightly faster processor so there’s not a lot to talk about there um we won’t be talking about airpods either because there’s nothing special to do you just pair the new ones and you remove your old ones in the bluetooth settings if you no longer want to use uh and then finally uh home pods we won’t be talking about those either because there haven’t been any really truly new HomePod since they were first launched. So there’s nothing to replace. Okay, so let’s talk about the iPhone and iPad upgrades. As I said, even though they’re different products, the process to handle them is basically exactly the same. So I’m going to cover them together. So these steps should be done before you have your new device and should be completed long before you start the upgrade. So when you know maybe your device is on its way, but before it actually gets there, these are the steps that you should follow. The first thing you want to do is make sure that you upgrade the OS on your device to the latest version that it supports, preferably the same one that your new device is going to have if that has been released yet. If it hasn’t, you might have to wait for the upgrade until, you know, like a week before the device actually ships. They usually do release the OS upgrades before the, like the new iPads or iPhones come out. So worth doing though, because if your device is on an older OS, there can be sometimes issues, particularly if it’s way behind, there can be issues transferring over some of the data from your old device to your new device. So getting it on the latest operating system that it will support is ideal. But in theory, you can upgrade any OS to any other OS. It should generally work, though some features like Quick Start may not. Another thing you’re going to want to do is to review app usage. That is basically like take a look around on your existing device, see what you actually use. And maybe it makes sense to get rid of stuff that you haven’t used in a while. Why transfer over data for apps that you’re not really using? Then you can do a manual app cleanup once you understand what you’re using. And then you should ensure that backups are getting made of your device and then you have to decide whether you plan to sell your old device or not okay so in terms of upgrading your os um like i said it’s ideal to make sure that you’re matching your your new devices os’s so they’re exactly the same uh it is possible that you will upgrade to a slightly newer point release than ships on your device because you know they they They load them up with the current version of the OS at the time they box them up. But it may or may not be a point version behind, though the standard upgrade process does handle that. And then, of course, you know, just make sure that you’re as close as you can be to the same OS. And after you make the upgrade to your current device, to whatever the latest OS is, make sure you make at least one backup so that you have it for use. That’s important because restoring old backups can occasionally be problematic. Okay, so the next step is reviewing your app usage. So there are a few ways you can do that. It’ll be easier for you to get up and running if you’re not running all this old stuff. So there are three automated ways to do that. You can go look at battery usage, which you go into settings on your device, and then you go to battery. And the pros of this particular method is that it’s always enabled on all battery-powered devices, so it’s not something you have to remember to turn on. It keeps 7 to 10 days of data concerning your actual app usage, even while it’s running in the background. and the cons are there’s no more than 7 to 10 business 7 to 10 days of data regardless of how much you’d rather it keep that’s not something you can change so you get 7 to 10 days and that’s it background usage doesn’t always mean that you’ve used the app actively just that it happened to use some of your battery while it was in the background and high battery usage in this display doesn’t necessarily mean that you you know the app has been used a ton so it’s just something you have to keep in mind then um we have screen time which is another way to look at your usage and screen time can be turned on or off by going into settings and then going to screen time the pros to this particular uh automated method are you can get an up to a month of actual app usage as long as screen time is turned on and you can see precise app usage time not just when it was using battery the cons to this particular method is you have to manually enable it in order for it to be used so if you forget then this may not be particularly useful it also only keeps up to a month of usage data which is a fair amount but if you’re hoping to see more than that this method can’t. Also if it’s enabled it tracks all app usage across all devices. There’s a there’s a basically a setting to turn that on or off but it will look at like all of your app usage including on your Mac’s your iPads your iPhones etc which may or may not be what you’re looking for maybe you only want to know how much you use on your iPhone or just the iPad. And then the third and final automated method for checking on what you actually use is the offload unused apps option which can be found in settings then you go to general then iPhone or iPad storage usage and then to offload unused apps and you turn that on the pros to this method is that it automatically removes apps that you have infrequently used it automatically removes the apps and the data when you’re getting low on disk space. You don’t even have to worry about it, just happens in the background. Now the cons to this particular method is, one, it’s got to be manually enabled. Two, it only removes items when your storage is getting low. So if you have tons of storage, it’s likely that nothing will get removed no matter how long you haven’t used it. It also doesn’t remove the app’s icon, it just marks it with a cloud icon, which means if you want to use it, if you tap on it, it’s got to be downloaded again, which it does automatically if you tap on it. Also, it doesn’t report anything to you. It just does stuff in the background. It’s worth noting also that you can see how much storage space your apps are using here as well, which might affect which apps you consider manually removing. Obviously ones that take up a lot of space, maybe ones that you are more likely to want to remove, depending on how much storage you have on your new device. Okay, so if the automated methods aren’t quite doing it for you, you can always do the manual method. And that’s obviously the best way to clean up, even if you’ve used the automated methods shown earlier, you know, is basically for you to go through all your apps and just see what you wanna keep and what you are sure you don’t need. Of course, you gotta keep in mind that any app that you delete will have its data completely removed from your device. And that may not be a problem, but it’s important to understand that. So when in doubt, it’s probably best to leave the app in place if you think there’s a chance you might need the data that’s associated with it. Of course, if you have an older backup, you can restore from your older backup, but that’s a pain. So it’s better to err on the side of caution for these manual backups. So once you’ve gone through and cleaned out device, you’ll definitely want to make sure that you have enabled all of your backups and that they are done regularly. So the most common type of backup for iPhones and iPads is going to be iCloud. Apple automatically backs up all devices that are logged into an Apple account using an Apple ID. But what happens if you don’t have enough storage to back up your iPhone or iPad because the default free amount of storage is a paltry five gigabytes. They still haven’t changed that after all these years. Of course, getting a fair amount of extra backup space is fairly cheap. It’s like 99 cents a month for several hundred gigabytes of storage. But you don’t necessarily have to worry about that. If you’re buying a new iPhone or iPad, Apple will automatically grant you free iCloud storage for up to 21 days around the time you get your new device to help facilitate the transfer of your data from the old device to the new device. That link there is their policy on this. So essentially, they will make sure that around that time after you’ve ordered a device, you will be able to back up your entire device, your old device, to iCloud, even if you normally don’t have the storage for it. And then you’ll have up to 21 days to restore that to your new device before they will force you to clear out the old backup.
Jim
13:11
Aric, I think the 99 cent pricing is still for only 50 gigabytes.
Aric
13:17
Is it 50? I thought it went up to 100.
Jim
13:19
And then there’s a 200 gigabytes at 299, which I don’t think used to exist.
Aric
13:24
Okay. Okay. Fair enough. So 50 gigabytes then. Which if you have a terabyte device could be a bit problematic. But in any case, Apple does have your back there. So you do get some free storage automatically when you buy a new device.
Michael
13:40
Excuse me, Aric. Gordon has a question. He wants to know if that policy includes MacBooks.
Aric
13:44
I don’t. I don’t know. Let me, hold on. Let me see if it says at the support link. Let me just check there. I honestly thought it was just iPads and iPhones. Yeah. At least according to this, it’s just iPads and iPhones. It’s not Macs. So I guess if you buy a Mac, it’s up to you to buy enough storage if you need it. Probably because iCloud doesn’t automatically back up your entire Mac to iCloud like it does for the iPhone or iPad. So I’m assuming that’s why.
Jim
14:25
They have some tools to help you out. For example, I didn’t realize I could only download a Dropbox contents in whole if I wasn’t paying for it. And I didn’t realize Apple had set the default for downloading to iCloud. So I downloaded 35 gigabytes all at one swoop. And Apple said, don’t worry about it. We’ve got an easy plan. We saved that for right now. And all you have to do is upgrade to the next plan where you’ll have enough capacity.
Aric
14:55
Yeah, yeah. Since I didn’t do that. Of course, as long as you give them money, you’re still going to have to give them money. But at least you don’t have to do that whole process again. Right.
Jim
15:06
Or as I tried to say, well, that was a one-time only and I learned from. And still over two years later, I haven’t recovered from that mistake. Oh, okay. At this point, it probably would have been worth over $100 a year to take the easy way out of that problem.
Aric
15:23
Right, probably. But, you know, you can’t always afford to give Apple all the dollars, even though they would very much like that.
Jim
15:36
And now that they’ve got the lower price level, it would have been even less. Yeah. At least they were somewhat friendly. And if you went over the limit, they let you hang around until you bought your upgrade.
Aric
15:50
Right. Yeah. I mean, that is nice because I know a lot of services just will tell you like, nope, I’m sorry, you can’t put data there. You’re out of space.
Jim
15:59
The worst case would be if they said, oh, well, if you wanted the new data there, we’ll get rid of the old data you had there before. Yeah, that would be even worse.
Aric
16:08
Yeah, that’s like when your bank helps you out by allowing you to overdraw your account and then charging you, you know, $45 every time that somebody requests money that you don’t have. Right. So, yeah. Okay, so yeah, this is just iPhone and iPad, unfortunately, but at least it’s an option for those. So even if you don’t plan to restore your data from an iCloud backup, it’s usually a good idea to make one anyway, just in case one of your other restore methods has a problem or it doesn’t work. It’s better to have too many backups than not enough, particularly if it’s going to be free for 21 days, it’s worth doing. So to make sure that you’re regularly backing up to iCloud or to force an immediate backup, even if you’re not regularly doing it, you can go into settings on your device, then tap your iCloud account name that appears next to your avatar. Then you tap on iCloud, then iCloud backup, and then backup this iPhone or iPad or backup now. There’s like a button that you tap and you can force it to backup right this very moment. and it will do that in the background once you tap that. So the next fully supported backup method, if you happen to have the room, is to make an encrypted backup to a Mac that you own. This used to be the gold standard backup and restore or upgrade option for iPhones in particular. It isn’t any longer. Direct phone-to-phone or iPad-to-iPad upgrades are best. However, this method is still very good and will result in a more complete restore or upgrade than the much faster iCloud restore method. So if you have the space on your Mac, you can back up there. You just attach your device, which you’re going to need, for example, on a more modern device. You’ll need to get a USB-C to USB-C cable that supports data transfer. So not every USB-C cable that you buy will support data. But if you buy one from Apple, it will definitely support data as well as charging. You don’t have to buy an Apple cable. You can buy something else, but just make sure it says that it supports data transfer. Very cheap USB-C cables often do not. And then you plug in your phone or your iPad directly to your USB-C enabled Mac. And the first time you do this, you’re probably going to get prompted both on your Mac and your iPhone or your iPad to do something, usually to like approve, like, do you want to trust this device? And then you may be also asked to install some additional software on your Mac. Again, only the first time that this happens. After the first time, it’ll just appear in the finder. But that software that it’s downloading will allow your Mac to communicate directly to your iPhone or iPad and let you transfer data. On your mobile device, you’re probably going to be asked if you want to trust the Mac that you just connected to. You’re going to need to trust it. If you accidentally say no, you’re going to have to basically try again. So don’t make that mistake. And obviously, do back up to a Mac that you or your family personally control. Because even though the data can be encrypted on the local Mac, why would you give that data to anybody other than yourself? Okay, so once everything’s installed or approved, then you need to wait a few seconds for your attached mobile device to appear in the sidebar of any open Finder window. And then you just click on your phone in the sidebar. And then when you click on that, the window will basically look like if you remember what iPhone backups used to look like when you connected to iTunes to do that. It sort of looks like that, but it’s in the Finder instead. It has a lot of the same features and functionality as the old iTunes backups used to have as well. So if you’re going to back up to a Mac, you need to make sure that under the backup sections that you check the encrypt local backup. Because if you don’t, there’s a lot of data that will not get backed up to this Mac, including like your health data and that sort of thing. So you need to specify encryption. Then it will ask you for a password. type in the password and do not forget that password because if you forget the password, your encrypted backups are as good as useless. So you’re going to need to remember that password
Michael
21:06
in the future. Excuse me, Aric. Go ahead. Jim Thursby has a quick question. You may have just answered it. Does making an encrypted backup to a Mac also synchronize your device to your Mac as in iTunes days?
Aric
21:22
It can, okay? The backup itself isn’t a sync like you’re thinking of from the iTunes days, but there is a sync button. So yes, you can use the finder just as if it were the old iTunes days. So you can sync your data.
Jim
21:41
I’m afraid of it synchronizing when I don’t want it to sync.
Aric
21:45
Right. No, the create backup, there’s like a separate button for that. And that has nothing to do with synchronizing. So it doesn’t change anything about your phone unless you click sync.
Jim
22:00
And it doesn’t remove data from like podcasts on your Mac if you’re not in synchronization between the Mac and the iPhone.
Aric
22:10
Right, right.
Jim
22:11
Okay, thanks.
Aric
22:12
Okay. Okay, so the first backup, unfortunately, is going to take a lot longer. than future backups will. That’s because basically all of the data that’s on your phone needs to get backed up. And it takes a while for that to happen. After the first backup, only the things that have changed since the last time you made a backup will get backed up. So it’s a little faster on second, third, fourth backups, etc. And even if you back up to your Mac, you can still back up to iCloud. They’re not mutually exclusive. So you can do both if you want. And then another option for local backups is using a third-party tool like iMazing. I’ve talked about this app before. You can find it iMazing.com. And basically it allows you to make local backups or even remote backups of your phone, even wirelessly on your network. So your phone doesn’t need to be tethered to your Mac to make the backup. You can just be on your home network and you can schedule the backup to happen automatically. When that happens though, for security reasons, your phone will ask you to enter your phone’s password on the phone to basically say that like, yeah, it’s okay to make a backup through this third-party tool. And the only thing that you need to remember if you’re gonna use something like iMazing is you have to do the initial full backup of your device via a wire directly connected to the Mac that is running iMazing. But after that, you can do your backups wirelessly, as I mentioned. It’s just the first full backup does take a while, and so backing up your data over a wire is much faster. So they enforce that. Okay, so iMazing can back up to any attached storage. So like if you have an external hard drive, or if you happen to have a network attached storage on your network somewhere, iMazing can back up to that. That’s what I usually have it do. And again, this doesn’t preclude the other methods of backing up so you can use it in addition to the others. Okay, so now that you’ve got your backups straight, you need to consider if you plan to sell your current, what will be your old device. And if you’re going to sell your old device, it’s ideal to start shopping around a couple weeks before your new device arrives, if possible. Most services, particularly when new iPhones or iPads come out, will give you like an extended period of time where you can get a quote for selling your old device and lock in a higher price because generally the price for sold devices goes down over time, not up. So you can usually lock it in a little bit before you get your new device and then give yourself enough time that you can upgrade to your new device and get your data off the old device and clear it out so that you can sell it. But it does require you to do a little bit of planning in advance. But the sooner you get a quote for selling your device, the better. You will lose your quoted price though if you don’t send your device in within a certain period of time. So make sure you don’t go past whatever that cutoff is for the service you plan to sell through. Okay, so just prior to upgrade, you should do the following when you have your new device, but before you initiate the actual upgrade process. So the first thing you should do is make a final set of backups of your old device. The fresher the backup, the better. And this is just to make absolutely certain that you have all of the latest data from your old device. You definitely should initiate one final backup. You can use multiple backup methods if you want, but make sure you back up to at least whatever backup service you’re going to use to restore your data. So whether that’s iCloud or, you know, your local Mac or a third party tool, make sure you back up there, whatever you’re going to use. Okay, so when you’re actually ready to start the upgrade, you have both devices. You got to get both devices, you know, get them ready. Make sure the old device is still logged into your iCloud account. Make sure all the data is still on it. Make sure they’re both connected to your home network. And make sure you have some time to set aside to do the upgrade because it’s going to take a bit. And in a number of cases, you may need to intervene or at least check on the device while the upgrade is happening. So make sure you have some time. Don’t try to do it like, you know, 10 minutes before you’re scheduled to go somewhere because you’re going to be sad. Because I guarantee you, no matter how smoothly your upgrade processes usually go, if you’re in a rush, something’s going to go wrong. That’s just the way of the world. So the upgrade to a new device can take anywhere from 30 minutes to multiple hours, depending on the process that you decide to use. And during that time, you’re going to be unlikely to have full access to either device, but it depends on what kind of backup and restore method you’re using. In addition, the after the upgrade process can take 30 minutes to an hour on average as well. So, again, plan to have some time available.
Jim
28:10
Might I suggest trying to set it up so you’ve got power, external power going to your devices, not rely on battery power for any of them during that process?
Aric
28:24
And that’s the third point down there. Basically, keep both devices nearby. Keep them online and powered. You know, you can do upgrades without having them connected to power, but it just is a good idea, if you can, to make sure they’re both plugged in. The last thing you want to have happen is one of the devices to die sort of mid-process. It can be problematic. So better safe than sorry. Okay, so here are your upgrade methods. You need to decide which one you’re going to use. Each has pros and cons. So the one I think most people use is upgrade using your old device and your recently taken iCloud backup. So the pros for this particular method is this is probably the quickest method to get your new device up and running, physically functional in your hands, though it can take an hour or more for all of the apps to get downloaded onto the new device. The nice thing is, though, both your new and old devices will be usable during that particular time period when it’s restoring apps. There just may be apps you won’t be able to access during that time. Also, if you have a recent backup in iCloud of your old device, this process requires the least amount of effort on your part. You know, Apple tries to make this process as seamless as possible. By default, Apple tries to backup your phone at least once a night when it’s locked and plugged into power, usually overnight. So it probably will have made a recent backup even if you forgot to. And you don’t need anything other than access to both devices and the internet itself. You don’t require a Mac for this particular restore method. The cons to this method are apps won’t be usable on the new device until all of the data is downloaded from iCloud and the App Store. You’re also going to need to re-log into every one of your apps, though the old data will be on the new device. So once you re-log into the app, your data will probably still be there, but you still have to do logins or whatever may be required for that particular app. Any apps that are no longer available for download from the Apple App Store in your region will not get restored. You will see an icon on your device that will show you that like, hey, this app was here, but you’ll notice that there’s a little cloud icon underneath it because it’s not actually on your device. And if you tap on it, it will try to download it from the app store, but then you’ll get a warning that like, hey, this app is not available from the iTunes store in your region, and you will not be able to use that app, period. If you have an older app or something that is not available in the app store you’d like to try to restore to your new device, then you don’t want to use the iCloud method of restoring your apps.
Jim
31:42
I’ve seen something kind of related to that with updating an app where the app can download and run, like for my broker, but it won’t connect to the broker if the iPhone is on too old of an iOS system. Yeah, that is a slightly different issue.
Aric
32:02
That’s usually whoever developed the app says, like, here are the acceptable versions of the OS that this app can run on. And even if you have it installed, it may refuse to run unless you update it to a newer version, which, if there isn’t one for some reason, can be problematic. But hopefully there’s a newer version of the app available that you can download and use on the new device
Jim
32:30
Yeah, so again, that’s what if you you might find your old iPhone that it upgrades your old iPhone And to a version that can’t run on that old iPhone now There might be no version that can run but it looks like it’s doing something I don’t know. There’s never been an issue where the new iPhone would get something that oh, we can’t run on this yet
Aric
32:52
Yeah, yeah, like I said, there may be some older apps that no longer run in the newer OS. So particularly if you’re upgrading from an older phone that has an older OS to a new one, there’s possibility that apps you were successfully running on your old device will not work on the new one because the app hasn’t been updated or whatever. But hopefully, if it’s something that is regularly getting used, then usually the developers update them eventually. But you can’t be sure of that. And then the other con is that you need to make sure that you have reliable access to the internet for both devices basically the entire time. So if you have a squirrely internet that drops out at the, you know, at any, well, like when the wind blows, then you might want to consider using a different method of restoring rather than using your iCloud backups.
Jim
33:50
Would that apply to device-to-device migration, though, too, if they’re both talking to each other through the internet?
Aric
33:58
If you’re using the direct device-to-device method of transferring data, then no. I mean, you will need internet access for some features, but in terms of restoring your data, no. It comes basically directly from device-to-device. So all you need is a functioning local network for them to be able to talk over. So the internet itself doesn’t need to work.
Jim
34:24
Great, great.
Aric
34:27
Okay, so another option would be upgrading using the old device and backups taken on your Mac. So the pros to this particular method are this method restores more apps and data than you’d get from restoring from an iCloud backup, so long as you’re using encrypted backups on your Mac. The initial process does require access to the Internet when you first get the process started, but restoring data from your Mac does not. So as long as you had it originally enough for the data to get there, then you’re okay. In addition, if something goes seriously wrong, you can put your new device into forced recovery mode, which is a special method to basically force it to restore from a recent backup and or from a clean copy of the OS that you can get directly from your Mac. so that’s not possible you know via iCloud the cons to this particular method are this type of backup takes longer to get a usable new device than the iCloud restoration method because the process has to transfer data from your Mac to the to the phone and everything needs to be done before you can pick up the new device and start using it so you have to like leave it tethered to your Mac until the process is complete. And, you know, as I just said, it has to stay tethered to your Mac so you can’t decide, oh, I need to take it somewhere else. Because if you unplug it for some reason, the backup restore will quit and then you’ll have to start again. So make sure you have some time for that. And you’re going to need a fairly recent Mac for this process to work. Very old Macs may not be able to communicate to your new device, depending on how old they are. Another option would be upgrade using iMazing or a similar third-party tool. The pros to this are you technically don’t even need your old device for most of this process, as long as you have a recent backup in this third-party tool. This sort of restore gives you more fine-grained control over specifically what you can restore to your new device. Like iMazing, you can pick, like, only restore the following applications and their data, not everything that you have in the backup, which is not something you can typically do with Apple’s standard backups.
Michael
37:05
Excuse me, Aric. Go ahead. Excuse me. Gordon has another question that mentions iMazing. Doesn’t a backup get made when you do a sync? iMazing worked really well for me to save out text messages, especially if it’s an older device.
Aric
37:20
Yes. So iMazing basically stores all of the data, and it can read the backup and pull information out of the backup and display it to you so you can see things like, oh, show me my text messages from a month or two ago or whatever. or show me the app data for this particular app. iMazing gives you a lot of fine-grained control that you don’t get under Apple’s situations. So it can be rather nice if that is a thing you need. And especially like if you lose your old device, as long as the backup is in iMazing, you can still restore from there to a new device. Of course, the backup is going to be frozen in time, but at least it’s available. Okay, and another pro to this particular method is your local backups can be stored on an external hard drive or network-attached storage instead of taking up space on your main boot drive, which is not something that you can do if you’re backing up in the Finder. But there are some cons to this particular method of backing up. Since it’s a third-party tool that’s involved, if you run into problems upgrading your new device, getting help might be tricky. I mean, you can reach out to iMazing to see if they can help you figure out whatever the problem is. But at the end of the day, like if you contact Apple, they’re just going to tell you like, hey, make a backup in iCloud and restore it that way. Or, you know, something that they are more familiar with. They’re not going to help you with your third-party backups. And also, you’re going to need direct access to a Mac. And for restores, you’re going to need to have it plugged in directly to a Mac with iMazing for this to work. It can’t restore wirelessly. And then another method would be upgrading directly using your old and new devices without any intermediaries. So the two devices talk directly to one another to transfer data. So this method does not require backups or a Mac, and you can migrate your data either wired or wirelessly directly from the old device to the new one. The pros, obviously, are this method transfers most of your settings and data more than the other options do. So if you want as little work to do as possible after the upgrade is complete, then this process might be for you. And all you need is the two devices and access to the Internet in some way because initial setups need to be done. Some work on the original phone that will require some Internet access. But once the actual restoration process begins, as long as the two devices are wired together, that’s all you need. You don’t need internet access for that. The cons to this particular method, and the first one is a pretty big one, this process can take a very long time. Generally far longer than the other possible methods you can use. My experience is it takes a minimum of 4 to 5 hours in some cases, depending on the size of your device. If you have very little data on the two devices, then it’s not going to take this long. But I think I did it on one that had 256 gigabytes worth of data on it, and it took close to 4 hours to complete. So, you know, you’re going to be waiting. And the thing is, you will not be able to use either device in any way whatsoever while the migration is underway. So they’re essentially bricks until this process is complete. You’re just going to have to wait until it’s done. And you’re also going to need to keep the two devices reasonably close to one another the entire time. Also, both devices need to be on reasonably new or at least a fairly recent OS for this to work reliably. So like iPhone 14 or later or an iPad of similar age or newer, Apple says this process works on older devices. Though I’ve seen a lot of people report issues if the device is too much older than, you know, iPhone, iOS 14, or iPad OS of a similar age. So I wouldn’t try to do it on anything older than that because you could potentially run into problems. Okay, so now you’ve picked a method of transferring your stuff. And now you can start the process. Well, if you are going to do work, if you’re going to use iCloud to do the restorations, you do have an option for a quick start method. And when you set up a new device and you have another similar device nearby, whether it’s an iPad or an iPhone, Apple is going to give you the option to use quick start. And Quick Start copies over some basic information and data from your existing device to the new one to make the process of getting started faster and easier. So this is not the same as device-to-device migration that I talked about earlier. This only copies over some data from the other device, not all of the data. So basically it copies over things like your Wi-Fi passwords and some basic settings that you have that are similar between the two. It doesn’t copy over any apps or data. And there are some requirements to use Quick Start. So Quick Start only works with iCloud backups or direct device-to-device migration methods. Local or third-party backups can’t use the Quick Start feature. And both devices need iOS 11 or iPadOS 13 or later for this to work. Both should ideally be plugged into power and charging in order to be safe. I have got Quickstart to work without doing this, but there’s some risks. So keep them both plugged in just to be safe, and you need to make sure that both have ample power. So the current device has to be backed up to iCloud. Even if that’s not your primary backup method, it has to be backed up there recently. It can be backed up in other ways as well, but there has to be a recent one in iCloud for Quickstart to work because a lot of the data apparently comes from that. The devices need to have a similar or the same OSs for the best possible experience. The more similar the OSs, the more quick start data will come over both quickly and will cover more of your commonly used data. The current device that you have needs to be connected to whatever Wi-Fi network you want your new device to use. So if you have multiple different Wi-Fi networks at home, make sure that you, even if you normally don’t keep that current device on that network, make sure you switch so it’s connected to whatever network you want the new device to use by default. And also your new device needs to have Bluetooth enabled and also your old device. It doesn’t have to be connected to anything via Bluetooth, but Bluetooth needs to be enabled on both because that’s part of how the Quick Start feature, like the two phones find, or the two iPads find one another. They use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to do that. The devices need to have functioning cameras because one of the devices will need to scan a special Quick Start code that gets displayed on the other device. to set up your new device via Quick Start and iCloud or device-to-device transfers. The link there basically explains this process for anyone who is interested in using Quick Start. If you’re going to use a wired transfer and Quick Start, you want to plug in a USB-C cable into your new device and then plug the other end into your other device that you want to transfer from. Then you power on your new device if needed, follow the prompts to pick your language, etc until you get to the quick start screen. You start the quick start process by following the prompts that will get displayed, and you’ll likely be asked to scan a specially displayed code with your device to link the two devices together and to start the quick start data transfer process. This process of transferring the data, usually it takes a couple of minutes, Sometimes only 30 or 40 seconds. Depends on how fast your network is and how much data needs to be transferred over. And then you’re going to be asked how you want to migrate your data to the new device once the quick start is done. Do you want to use iCloud backups or direct device to device transfers? So you have to pick one, and then the migration of data will begin once the quick start process is complete. Though it is possible if iOS or iPadOS on your new device doesn’t match whatever backups you have made, it may ask you to upgrade the version of iOS or iPadOS on the new device first, and then basically continue the process after the upgrade is complete. It’s going to take some time to complete, especially if you’re doing a device-to-device transfer. But if you’re not using a device-to-device transfer, if you’re using iCloud, you should be able to start using your new device more quickly. But like I said, most of the apps will not be functional right away. You’re just going to have to wait until your favorite app gets downloaded and the data restored. And again, if it’s device to device, you have to keep the two devices near one another until you’re told the process is complete, and it’s going to take a while. And then after this, you would skip to the sort of post-migration steps we’ll talk about in a bit. Okay, so if you’re not using Quick Start for whatever reason, you can use the tethered method, you know, of transferring between devices or transferring from a Mac to your device. So if you’re going to do a wired transfer, Then you want to plug in a USB-C cable into your new device and plug the other end into your Mac or your other device or wherever you want to transfer from. Those two links there explain how to do this process. One on your iPhone and one on your iPad. They’re basically the same, but this way it gives you more specific instructions. On your new device, answer the questions that will get displayed. So you choose to set up your language. You set up your Wi-Fi manually because you didn’t do the quick start, etc. and then you’re going to be asked to set up face id or touch id if your new device has it go ahead and do that if you want to use those things you know do it right then and there both devices will then detect that they are connected to one another and then you can choose to migrate data directly from the old device or the mac directly to the new device this works a bit faster over high-speed USB-C connection or Thunderbolt cable if both devices support it, though keep in mind that most older devices with Lightning ports only support USB 2 speeds and not even USB 3 or 4 transfer speeds, so older devices can be rather slow. You’ll need to leave both devices tethered to one another until the transfer is complete, and this can sometimes take hours. When it is done, you can skip to the post-migration steps that we’ll talk about in a bit. Okay, so when the migration is done, whatever method you’ve chosen, there’s still work to be done before you’re really ready to use your new or your upgraded device. So after migration, what you’re going to want to do is if you had any stored credit cards in your wallet app, you will be prompted to add those back to the new device. So go ahead and do that, particularly if you like to use Apple Pay, etc. it’s good to set that up while you’re thinking of it. With iCloud Restores, your data will be migrated, but you’re going to have to likely re-log into all of your apps. Like your financial institutions, you’re going to have to log into those. Some communication apps like Signal, WhatApp, etc, you’re going to have to log into those. Your data will be there once you do log in, but until then, you won’t be able to use the app until you log in. With device-to-device transfers, you’ll have to log back into much fewer of your apps, and more of your data will be migrated over. But there is a possibility that you might still need to log into some of the apps, because some apps, for security reasons, will detect that, oh, I’m running on a new device. And so even if the data for the old session was brought over, the app itself might be like, nope, that’s not good enough. we got to log back in again. There might be a few you still need to log into, but it won’t be as many. In addition, there’s a possibility that some apps or data may not have gotten migrated over to your new device. For example, you have an app on your old device that’s no longer available in the App Store or that no longer works on whatever current version of iOS or iPadOS is on your new device. In cases like this, there might be a placeholder icon for that app. But as I mentioned, it’ll probably have a little cloud icon next to it. When you tap it to try to download it, it’ll be like, hey, this isn’t available in the app store or, you know, it’s not functional or whatever. In which case, you may want to just delete the app from your new device because it’s not likely to ever work. If it’s not available in the app store, it’ll usually prompt you to like, hey, you want to get rid of the icon? You might as well just do it. And then you may want to now check some of the new features and some of the new settings on your new device to see if you want to adjust anything, maybe some settings that weren’t on your old device. Assuming all went well, you’re now done. You can now prep your old device for sale if you don’t plan to keep it. So any questions about that process before we move on to the Apple Watch?
Jim
52:44
I’ve got a few kind of, if we’ve got time at the end issues. Okay, all right, yeah.
Aric
52:50
Just, yeah, when we get to the end, we’ll talk more about that stuff. Okay, so let’s switch gears and talk about upgrading your Apple Watch. An Apple Watch is typically paired to a user’s own iPhone, though it is possible to set up a watch for someone else who doesn’t have an iPhone or who doesn’t want to go through the hassle of the pairing process. However, if you do that where you’re setting up the device for somebody else, there are some features that will not work on the Apple Watch, And that’s for security reasons. Most of them are going to work fine. So it’s generally not going to be a big problem. But there are some things that you need to be aware of. And when you go through that process of setting it up for another user, it will sort of tell you, hey, here are the things that are probably not going to work for reasons. So it is ideal to pair your Apple Watch with whoever the user’s iPhone happens to be to get the full feature set. But upgrading to a new watch is a bit different of a process than other devices It’s not hard, but it will seem a bit counterintuitive particularly if you’re not familiar with it because you first have to remove the existing watch from its currently paired iPhone when you get with the new watch you then pair the new watch to that same phone and What will happen when that process is done is a backup will automatically get made that Apple doesn’t even tell you is happening It just makes a backup of your watch onto the iPhone when you remove the old Watch and then when you set up the new Watch it will say hey, do you want to restore from that backup? We just made And so basically it’ll set up your new watch just like the old one was So fairly simple. It’s actually easier than upgrading an iPhone or an iPad in a lot of ways, but it just feels a little weird if you’ve never done it before. So you’re going to need the iPhone that the watch was paired to or that it was set up on originally, and you’re also going to need both the old and the new watch and at least one charging cable to be safe. So before upgrading, make sure you charge your existing, your old Apple Watch before attempting to upgrade. Usually the Apple Watch will be shipped with more than 50% battery life in my experience. So it should be okay, more or less, out of the box. But not a bad idea to necessarily plug it into power too if you have the ability. So, like I said, the first thing you’re going to want to do when you want to upgrade your Apple Watch is unpair the Apple Watch from the iPhone that it’s currently paired on or that it was originally set up on. In the Watch app on the phone, you tap on All Watches. There’s a button near the top of the screen. And then you will see a list of any paired Apple Watches that are paired with this particular phone. You find the little eye with a circle around it to the right of the paired watch that you want to replace. You tap it. Then in the screen that appears, you tap unpair Apple Watch. And then keep the iPhone and old watch near one another until the unpairing process is complete. Because even though it doesn’t tell you, it’s backing up all the data on the watch before it wipes it. So it will take a little bit. Apple watches don’t have a ton of storage so it’s not going to be forever but it does take a while particularly if it’s an older watch because the older watches are a bit slower okay when you’re ready to pair your new Apple watch on the iPhone that the old watch was paired to or that was originally set up on you need to go to the watch app again tap all watches and then click add half an hour. Okay, then when that process is complete, you should wear the new watch and check your settings. Check the watch face, make sure that it’s set up properly. You may want to re-add any credit cards or passes that were in your watch’s wallet. Don’t forget to charge your new watch up to at least 80%, but preferably the first time you get it, it’s usually they recommend charging all the way up to 100%. That’s up to you, but get it up to at least 80%. And then you can get the old watch ready to re-gift or sell for whatever purposes you want to use. Of course, you can keep it around in case you want to have an old watch to fall back on in case there’s a problem with the new watch. But yeah, I will say that the resale value for watches is not nearly as good as it is for iPhones or iPads. So you’re probably not going to get a ton of money if you resell your watch, except maybe if you sell it on eBay, you might get a little bit more there. Okay, before we switch to the Macintosh, are there any questions about the Apple Watch process? Okay, we’re now going to talk about the Mac. So if you get a new Mac, there’s a strong likelihood that you will want to set it up with data from one of your other Macs, if you happen to have one, perhaps completely replacing that old Mac in the process. But even if you don’t have a new Mac yet, it can be a really good idea to do a real deep cleaning at least once a year to clean out the cruft and keep your Mac running well and securely. And surprisingly, the process for handling both of these situations is remarkably similar. So I’m going to be covering both of them. I will be referring to, you know, basically upgrading your existing Mac with a clean copy of the OS. I’ll be referring to that as deep cleaning and then, you know, upgrading for getting a new Mac. So what are you going to need for the process? Well, you’re going to need at least one functioning Mac, plus a new Mac if you’re planning to upgrade. You’re going to need an external hard drive and the appropriate cables, which you will use for backups, especially if you’re just doing a deep clean on your existing Mac rather than an upgrade. It really is a good idea to have an external hard drive for time machine backups. You’re also going to need appropriate cables because if you want to transfer data from one Mac to another, You know, cabling them up will speed up the process in most cases, rather than trying to do it over Wi-Fi or your local network. It can be done wirelessly, but it takes a lot longer. So buy the fastest cable that both Macs support. So if both Macs are relatively recent and they support Thunderbolt, make sure you bite the bullet and buy a Thunderbolt cable, like a good one. quality one from either apple or owc and what do i remember mention those two because those specifically have been tested by i i fix it and they both are extremely high quality cables they cost more because they’re essentially computers inside a cable so it’s really not worth buying cheap thunderbolt cables you’re going to be sad but thunderbolt cables will transfer data at top speed particularly if you’re transferring a lot of data from one Mac to another it can really speed up that process and you’re also going to need functioning internet access and Wi-Fi for some functions though if you’re what if you’re doing a wired migration between two Macs you don’t need it for that also if you happen to have any software that can’t be reinstalled easily over the internet make sure that you have the disks or whatever you need the installers you need and if if there are actual disks make sure you have an external drive needed to be able to read those discs because you know most modern Macs do not ship with them any kind of you know basically input physical input so okay so if you’re going to prepare for either upgrades or deep cleans there’s a few things you’re going to do before you start the process we’re going to talk more about these in depth in a moment but I’ll just mention what they are. You’re going to check your Mac for hardware or serious software issues. You’re going to remove or archive stuff you know you don’t need or don’t want. You’re going to back up your Mac and back it up again and back it up again. And then you’re going to check to see what software you have installed that has a per-seat license or a per-Mac restriction. That means you may need to remove the existing license from the existing Mac before upgrading or deep cleaning your Mac. And then you’re also going to need to see, need to check to see if you need any new or different cables to connect any external hardware that you might have, like maybe a scanner or a printer or whatever. Maybe there’s some new cables you might need there. Or if you have a cable that’s been kind of wonky this entire time, well, now’s a good time to buy a new one that works well. So the first thing you want to do is check for major issues. Make sure your existing Mac is running as well as it can before trying to upgrade or deep clean it. If your hard drive is failing on your existing Mac, back up that Mac immediately. Don’t wait. Use a time machine or whatever you need to do to back up your data and get it off that hard drive. because if the hard drive is not behaving well, it’s probably going to just die at some point and not work at all. So you want to make sure you get your data off that Mac as quickly as you can. If something else is wrong, and you’re having problems getting your Mac to boot, let’s say, it could be if there are software issues, like a deep clean might get it working again, because the deep clean will reinstall all the software from clean copies, and it might get things working again, you know, in ways that you haven’t been able to thus far. Otherwise, you may have to backup and restore as much as you can to your new Mac. Sometimes there’s not much you can do. You know, if the drive is dead and the machine won’t boot, well, you’re stuck with whatever backups you happen to have at the moment. Then you’re going to want to go through and remove software and other stuff you don’t need. So remove or archive that stuff if you’re sure you’re not going to need it. Why? Well, why would you take time migrating over a bunch of data to a new or to your clean Mac when you don’t have to? Why would you waste the time? Plus, the more old stuff that you migrate over from your old machine, there’s always a possibility that you could copy over like a poorly formatted, you know, preference file or something that was causing issues on your old Mac. and you don’t want to have your new Mac or your newly cleaned Mac inherit that problem. So backup everything, but only keep the stuff that you know that you’re going to need. So long as you have backups of everything, you can just migrate or restore the data and apps that you know you absolutely must have, and you can leave the rest off of your Mac until you actually discover a real need for the thing that you didn’t restore. So as a personal example, my work primarily uses Office from Microsoft, so Word, Excel, etc. But in my specific job, I don’t really need to use them because I rarely have to share files that I can’t export in the appropriate format for my colleagues. So the last time that I did deep clean, I didn’t bother to reinstall Office. And so far, I’ve not really missed it. I usually use the iWork suite and then export to Excel or Word for the few times that’s necessary, and it’s worked reasonably well in my case. Maybe not for you, but, you know, that’s one example. Again, I don’t need Office on there. I don’t need all that cruft. And Office takes up a lot of space. And the other thing is, if you’re going to do this process, be ruthless. Install only the things you’re certain that you use all the time or can’t live without. Remove or archive everything else. Honestly, you can reinstall stuff later if you realize like, oh, you know, I do kind of need that. But you will be shocked at how much stuff is on your current Mac that you don’t actually regularly use. And you may never use again. So why put it on there? Put it on there when you need it and not before. Over time, your new Mac’s going to, you know, acquire new cruft anyway. So you might as well start off with a nice clean slate. Okay, backups. Take preferably several backups. The general rule is 3-2-1, which is take three backups. At least two of those should be in different formats. And at least one of those backups should be remote, i.e. not stored locally in your house. So using an external drive that is devoted to Time Machine is a really good start because this can be used both by migration assistant to get data onto your new Mac or to restore data after a clean install from the recovery partition on your Mac if you’re doing a deep clean. You can also consider using a third-party tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to create a potentially bootable backup to another location, a different external hard drive, network-attached storage, or disk-attached storage on your home network. I have the links there for Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper if you’re interested. They’re not terribly expensive, and they are very useful. Always backup at least some of your data off-site, particularly the really, really important stuff. You can use iCloud, Dropbox, Backblaze, etc. I’ve used Backblaze for years. It’s relatively inexpensive. It backs up your entire Mac and any attached disks to the internet without you even having to think about it. So it’s a good service to use.
Jim
01:08:17
If we’ve got time, we may be tight on time already. I was going to ask for more information on the current ideas behind what is a 3-2-1. We’re probably tight on time. Maybe we can–
Aric
01:08:29
Yeah, so it’s just basically make sure that you like– again, if you back up to Time Machine, don’t make two different Time Machine backups and say, well, I made two backups. I’m done. Because if Time Machine fails for some reason, both of those backups could be compromised. So you want to do one to Time Machine, say, for example, another one via Carbon Copy Cloner to maybe network attached storage in your house or maybe to a different Mac if another Mac has a bunch of storage space you know just basically to give yourself a different option and then at least one of those backups should be off-site just because again if you’re you know god forbid you know something happens and your house burns down or you know your time machine backups get stolen or deleted or whatever you have something off-site that you can restore from what
Jim
01:09:26
needed. And are the metal safe deposit boxes, if your bank still has that, protected from EFT issues so that you could put an old drive in your safe deposit box? Right. So you’ll have to check
Aric
01:09:39
with your bank. The last time I got one, they did tell me that it was fine. Yeah. I mean, the entire vault was basically protected against that. But check with your bank for making that assumption. But yeah, it should be fine to store it there. Next thing is to check your software licenses. For the software you’ve decided that you must keep on your Mac, it’s best for you to gather all of the serial numbers or activation codes needed for all of it. So when you need to restore it, it’s all there in one place. It’s easy to get to and put in. It has also become more common for software to be locked to a certain number of active installs, sometimes referred to is seats. These often activate over the internet and must be deactivated before you can activate them somewhere else. So if you have software like that, make sure that you deactivate them before you, you know, migrate to the new Mac. Because these licenses often consider reinstalling even on the same Mac as using another seat, unless you deregister the old install. If you forget to do that, then you’re probably going to have to reach out to the developer and beg them to reset the count for your license. So better to deactivate or unregister before doing that if you have the chance. Don’t assume that the migration assistant or other tools will correctly copy over whatever files are needed for the software to act like it is still installed on the same Mac. Because some of them intentionally hide how they keep track of whether, you know, is this a new seat or not. And so you can’t guarantee that when you wipe the computer and reinstall everything that it’s going to be like, oh, this is the same machine. it might act like it’s a completely new machine. Here’s a personal example. Parallels and Set app are both per seat. However, I have the ability to deregister both of them within the software before I migrate to a new machine. So as long as I do that, then I’m good to go and I can reactivate them on the new machine or after doing a deep cleaning when I am done. And then if you have any older software that still works and that you still need, make sure that you gather the installation disks or the installers, and that you have a drive capable of accessing those disks if that’s what you need. Okay, if you have external hardware connected to your Mac, like a scanner or, you know, an external hard drive or a printer, you know, do you need new cables or will the ones that you have work okay? So if you have an older Mac with USB-A, maybe you need to buy a USB-C cable to connect it to your new Mac. And so make sure you buy that before you do this process, because otherwise you can run into problems later. Does that hardware that you are using work with whatever OS you plan to migrate it to? You know, for hard disks, etc., that’s not going to be a problem. But you know it’s possible that some older printers or older scanners stuff like that Might not work properly on the new OS So you may have to do some searching to figure that out Does your current Mac have an optical drive and do you need an external optical drive for your new Mac? And if you do get one will you need new software to make your hardware work? For example, if you get an external blu-ray optical drive, I have one. How do you plan to burn disks or Play movies on your Mac. There’s software for that, but you’re gonna need to go find it Now we can talk about the actual upgrade and deep clean process. So anyway at upgrade time for for your Mac what you’re gonna want to do is you’re going to Either use the migration assistant or time machine to do most of that work for deep cleaning What you’re gonna do is boot your Mac into recovery mode so that you can wipe the hard drive and then reinstall the OS. That’s usually by either pressing and holding the power button or starting up your older Mac and then pressing Command-R until the Apple logo appears. Once you’re on that sort of menu where you can pick the recovery mode, do so. Don’t start up from your existing, your normal partition. and then it will boot into recovery mode and then there’ll be a list of options that you can choose. One of the first things that you should choose is disk utility. And disk utility will do two things. It will check your disk to make sure there’s no problems with it. That’s first aid. And that’s the first thing you should run on your existing boot drive to make sure that the drive itself is okay. If everything comes back okay there and you’re doing a deep clean, then you want to format the hard drive in disk utility, the boot drive, the stuff that has your existing data on it. Again, make sure you have good backups before you do this process because there’s no going back after this is done. Once you format the partition as APFS, particularly on newer Macs that is required. On older Macs, you may be using HFS+. Then you’re good to go. To go back, you quit the disk utility, go back to the menu for recovery mode, and then reinstall the operating system on the boot drive. And that works just like installing an OS on any other Mac that you ever used. So you basically select which partition you want to install it on, which will be your boot drive. And then it will do most of the work for you. It takes usually half an hour or 45 minutes to complete that process. And then when it’s done, it will boot back up into the new OS where you will go through the setup assistant.
Michael
01:16:12
Excuse me, Aric. It looks like Gordon has his hand raised.
Gordon
01:16:16
Ah, Gordon. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. I had a question about, because you were talking about the, I was kind of wondering what the cutoff date for old Mac, new Mac is.
Aric
01:16:28
So consider any Apple Silicon Mac to be new. Any, except the very, very recently acquired, say like a Mac Pro that’s Intel. Everything else is old.
Gordon
01:16:43
If it doesn’t run Tahoe, it’s old. Okay, it doesn’t run Tahoe. I think it tops out at, what’s after Catalina?
Aric
01:16:50
Sonoma?
Gordon
01:16:51
Yeah, I think, yeah, Sonoma is the top end of it.
Aric
01:16:54
Right, yeah. It wouldn’t go any further than that. Yeah, your Mac is probably considered, I think, vintage at this point. Yeah, it goes through several processes. There’s, like, vintage and then, like, I forget what the other one is. It’s, like, classic. I forget. There’s like another level of like, wow, this sucker is really old and should be in a museum. But yeah, so that would be considered an older Mac. So Intel, you would basically start that up and, you know, command R to do this work. But the basic process is the same whether you’re using Apple modern silicon Mac or whether you’re using Intel otherwise. Okay, so once you have reinstalled your OS, then you can choose to do the migration assistant if you like. The migration assistant is installed by default on all new on all Macs right from the get-go. So there’s literally if you go into your applications folder in the utilities folder there’s a migration assistant right there. You double click on it and it’s basically going to put your Mac in a special mode so it gets ready for migrating data. You run the migration assistant both on the older Mac and the new one, and you can either connect them via Wi-Fi as long as they’re relatively new. If they’re really old, then Wi-Fi transfers will not work. But it is better where possible to use tethered. plug a cable into both Macs and transfer stuff that way. It’s a little faster.
Gordon
01:18:42
I’m not actually doing a migration. I’ve already done a migration to the new Mac. I’m actually looking at you on the new Mac. Okay. This older one, I need to do the deep cleaning. And so if I clear the drive, then where is it going to go get that older OS? Is that going to come from
Aric
01:19:02
the backup? So when you’re in the recovery partition, your old Mac will say, here’s the operating system I have. And that’s going to be the one that works with your older Mac. Likely whatever it had installed up to that point. So you will reinstall that version of that OS, so it’s guaranteed to work. Okay, great. And then from there, you can migrate your data from backups from other Macs or whatever you want to do. The migration assistant has been around for a very long time. So this works on basically any Mac you can name. So if you’re doing Mac to Mac transfers, then you obviously connect them up, put them both into the migration assistant. They will see one another and you can choose that as an option. The other option is if you’ve done like a time machine backup, You just plug in the time machine drive into your new Mac. It will see the time machine backup and be like, you want me to use that? And you’d be like, yes, please. And it can restore all of your data from the time machine backup or your old machine. And when I say restore everything, I mean everything, including stuff that is broken. So the migration assistant will make some attempt to be like, hey, this isn’t going to work on your new Mac. I’m not going to move this over. I’ll put the data into a special folder for you, but I don’t recommend that you do anything with it. Just like if you need it for your records, it’s there, but don’t touch it. But it’s not perfect. So you can end up copying over a problem that you had on the old machine or before you did the clean backup if you do it this way. Now, it’s easy to use, but it may not be the best choice that you have. So in that case, I recommend a manual migration from the old Mac to the new Mac or if you’re going to do a deep clean that you do most of the work yourself. You still need backups. So if you’re going to do a manual migration on a new Mac, you basically start fresh. You go through the setup process. This is going to take longer, but you’re going to copy over less data, and you’re going to have a lot fewer problems. So once you set up your administrator account, you just basically set up your finder settings first, so the finder looks and works the way you want it to. Next, you right-click on the desktop and click Show View Options so that your desktop looks and works the way you want it to. Then you can go to System Settings on your Mac and change the settings there to whatever changes you need to make so that it works the way you expect. Don’t forget your iCloud settings to make sure that, you know, it’s backing up the stuff that it needs to back up, that it is syncing the stuff that it needs to sync and all that other stuff. And then you can start installing the needed software. Now, in the deep clean process, when you’re going to restore your software, you want to be careful. You want to prioritize the software that you install. So if you end up getting interrupted while you’re doing this process, you want to make sure that the software you have installed is the most critical stuff that you absolutely need to use right away or that you use every day, and you can’t imagine being without. Then you can sort of branch out to the stuff that you use less often. Where possible, download clean copies of the latest installer over the Internet, if it’s available there, so that in case the installer that you happen to have is damaged or whatever, you don’t run into that problem. Make sure that you enter any needed serial numbers or activation codes before you move on to installing other software, because it’s easy to forget to do, and then suddenly you need that app right now, and it’s like, but first you have to activate the software, and it’s like, great, more time that I don’t have. then you can continue with clean installs as needed. So just, again, be ruthless. Only install the stuff you know you need right now. And if you’re not sure, hold off. Don’t do anything with that software. Wait and see if you’re like, oh, I really do need that software. I’m going to go ahead and reinstall it. You’ll be surprised at how much you end up not using some of that software that you thought was indispensable. But I will say this, do not forget about email. If you use Apple’s Mail app and iCloud, Apple will automatically set up your iCloud email account, but you’re still going to need to manually set up your other accounts and details if they’re not stored in iCloud. And Apple Mail knows how to connect to Gmail or Yahoo Mail or Outlook.com. You just need the logins for that. But make sure that you, you know, wrote down all of your settings for all of your other email accounts that you use and add them to your mail client of choice.
Jim
01:24:30
I had to do something special with Comcast and I called Apple support. So if somebody is using Comcast email, they might want to be prepared that there was like Comcast redid their settings. And if you didn’t tell them you were using a newer Mac, they wouldn’t support it. Or a new iPhone, they wouldn’t support it.
Aric
01:24:48
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and that can happen, particularly if you don’t control your own mail server, which, let’s face it, most people don’t. You know, you don’t have control over, like, if they make a change, then you’ve got to change with it. So, yeah, that’s always a good idea. But chances are, if the settings that you had on your old Mac were working, copying them over to the new Mac will probably work as well most of the time.
Jim
01:25:18
This was the first time I’d had that happen to me.
Aric
01:25:20
Yep. Yep. And then one of the last things you want to do is copy over any documents from your recent backups that you may need. So if you have any spreadsheets or video files or anything like that, be sure to copy those over if they’re not already in iCloud, etc. And then, you know, once you’re sure that you’ve gotten everything you absolutely need, you can install more software later as things come up. Now, in terms of post-install or migration steps, do not delete your old backups. You may need that data at some point, and you may not realize it for a month or more after setting up your new Mac or doing your deep cleaning. So don’t be like, you know, I did that last week. I’m good because I guarantee you once you get rid of that backup, you’re going to wish you had it. So hold on to it for a while. Use your critical software. Make sure that it’s actually functioning and that all needed documents are in place and that everything works the way you need it to before you log in for work the next day or whatever. Then basically just enjoy your new speed and power because I’ll tell you, even if you haven’t gotten a new Mac, doing a deep clean like that and reinstalling everything fresh, my goodness, it really does make a big difference in how quickly your Mac works and runs. So any questions about that? Go ahead. I’ll get back to that as an extra. All right. Okay. So I just want to quickly touch on if you get a new Apple TV box and you want to upgrade to that, or if you get a new TV, for example, if you get a 4K TV and your old Apple TV was not 4K and you bought a new Apple TV 4K. There are rumors that there are going to be a new Apple TV hardware box at some point. And I know it sounds confusing because Apple has changed the branding for everything. So basically everything’s referred to as Apple TV. So, you know, basically we’re referring to the hardware box that attaches to your regular TV that allows you to stream Apple TV from your Apple TV to your TV. Got it? Super clear, right?
Jim
01:27:39
And then there’s some, I thought I’d heard that some TVs have licensed Apple TV from Apple so that you can have Apple TV installed on your TV.
Aric
01:27:48
Yes, yeah, and that Apple TV is the Apple TV streaming service, not the actual hardware box. I like Apple TV’s hardware because they don’t treat you like you’re a product to be sold, whereas, like, for example, Roku, everything you do gets reported back to them. Everything you watch gets reported back to them and gets sold to the highest bidder. So I like boxes that don’t do that. And so while there isn’t a migration assistant for the Apple TV hardware, there are some settings that will make the process of upgrading to a new box easier. So before you upgrade, check these settings. On your existing Apple TV box, go to settings, go into your profiles and accounts, then look at your default user, and then there’s a feature called one home screen. And if that is turned on, that will make the home screen that’s on this Apple TV the default home screen on all of your Apple TV boxes, including your new one. So if you only have one, turning this on will make sure that your new Apple TV box automatically gets all the same apps installed in all the same locations so that it’s all sort of ready to go. It just automatically connects to the Internet and pulls all that stuff down. You won’t have to manually set all that stuff up. Now, it won’t necessarily log you in to all of those apps, but it will put them on the Apple TV box. If you have a TV provider, I think Comcast is one of them, and your TV provider supports it, you can log in using your TV provider, i.e. Comcast or whoever you have. And once you log in to your account on the Apple TV, the Apple TV will automatically download and install all of the streaming apps that you have access to as part of your TV service. And will automatically log in to all of those services so that you don’t have to. It’s nice when it works. There are very few TV providers that support it. Unfortunately, like I have Fios, which is a great TV service, but they don’t support this particular feature. But if they do, it can save you a bunch of time because you won’t have to log into all of those streaming apps that you use, or at least many of them anyway. So at upgrade time on your new Apple TV box, basically all you need is an iPad or an iPhone. because there’s a quick start method that uses one of those devices to help you set up your new Apple TV, you know, get it connected to Wi-Fi and get it working with your iCloud account, all that stuff. So, you know, once that is done, it’ll boot up into the Apple TV, you know, mode and then you’ll be able to if you have home one home screen on you’ll see it start to download all the various apps and set up your device the way you had it installed on the other Apple TV box if not you can go into the store and download the the streaming apps you want to appear on your box so that should get you up and running actually quite quickly and you can just enjoy your new Apple TV box with a minimum of logins. However, a lot of services, you know, they log you out if you haven’t used the service in 30 days, and then you have to log back in again. So it’s a bit of a pain, but that’s not an Apple thing. That’s a streaming provider situation. I will open up for other questions. I do have one other thing I would like to talk about because there’s three people who asked me this but it has nothing to do specifically about upgrades so let’s let’s deal with those questions first so Jim you asked aren’t there license limitations for devices other than the Mac well it really depends on your software some software does have a sort of per seat license restriction and then And yes, it does matter how often you’ve installed it. And the really annoying ones have a limitation that is hard-coded and that you cannot reset. So in other words, they’ll give you five installs total over the lifetime of the software. And once you hit five, you’re done. You’ve got to go buy it again, which is really annoying. But most of the services that have restrictions like that at least let you uninstall the license. And some of them that are nice, you don’t even have to have access to the device anymore. You can just log in on their website, deactivate the old device, then activate the license on a new.
Jim
01:32:58
I brought that up because you didn’t bring up licensing and disabling them until you got to the Mac. and it might apply to like your old iPhone you want to uh generally not and the reason for that
Aric
01:33:11
is because almost everything you buy for your iPhone or iPad comes through the um the Apple App Store right and the Apple App Store doesn’t allow for that kind of limitation uh if you buy an app on the App Store, it follows Apple’s rules for how many devices it can be installed on.
Jim
01:33:36
I may be confused because Microsoft Office had combined a Mac and the apps on the devices, and maybe they have unlimited installs on devices, but they have a total number of seats to use it on the Mac. So that I think their seats actually work by active seats. So if you lost old devices, as long as they’re not logged in by somebody who stole it or something. Yeah.
Aric
01:34:05
Yeah, if they’re not actively being used at the same time. Yeah, I think that’s how it works for Microsoft. But yeah, for the most part, you’re not going to run into that problem on the iPhone or iPad. You almost certainly will run into it on the Mac, though. Because like I said, like Parallels I have that does that, Setapp does that. But at least for both of those apps, I can log in on the website and deactivate the license. I don’t actually need to deactivate it locally. So if I forget for some reason, I can just log into the website, deactivate it there, and then reactivate it on the new device. Okay. Which is the nice thing to do, but not everybody allows it.
Jim
01:34:47
I’ll add my other questions after you get to the question three people brought up.
Aric
01:34:53
Oh, okay. So, okay, are there any questions about upgrades or anything before I move on to that? Because it is a little bit of a shift. It’s not a very long discussion, but a lot of people were interested, so I do want to bring it up. Okay, so I want to talk about the Apple Creator Studio Suite, because my goodness has this gotten some people all riled up. So I’m going to put some links here in the chat in case you are not familiar with what I am referring to. And here, the second link is the actual, if you want to purchase it, you go here and you can purchase it. So what is the Apple Creator Studio suite? It is a bunch of Apple’s pro apps all sort of put together and now sold as a bundle for a subscription price. But it’s a little bit more complicated than that. So what are the apps that are included? Well, Final Cut Pro, which is for video. Logic, which is for audio. Pixelmator Pro, which is an app that Apple bought some time ago. It’s a very good program. It’s sort of like Photoshop in that it works with, you know, pictures. There’s Compressor that compresses video and pictures and things. Motion, Main Stage, which is for live presentations. And it also includes the iWork suite of Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform. Now, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform were all free. What is this subscription garbage to which they are now referring? I will get to that in a moment. But let me put this into perspective. So the price per year for the subscription for people who are not in the education market is $129. And you may remember that that is what we used to pay every time we upgraded the Mac OS. You went and bought a disc at the store. It cost $129 every single year. So that stopped, and now they’ve replaced it with this instead. If you don’t already own Final Cut Pro or Logic, it’s an insane deal. Like, it’s really, really a good price. If those are apps you’re going to use and you don’t own them already, well worth it. Each one of those was sold standalone for $300 a piece. And I believe you can even still download the standalone versions for $300 if you want. And those two apps will continue to get updates and new features for that one-time charge. So if you bought either one of those apps for $300, you’ll continue to get new updates for at least the time being. I don’t know how long that will last, but they have said that you will continue to get updates. And on top of that, all of these apps, if you buy them via the subscription, the family sharing plan works. So you can share all of those apps with up to six people that are in your family. Given that Adobe Creative Cloud is $70 a month now, $129 a year is a heck of a deal. You can also spend $13 a month if that’s more your speed. It’s $26 cheaper about if you get the annual plan. but hey, this is still a subscription, and it can be a little bit of a pain. If you already own Pixelmator Pro, if you bought it before they were purchased by Apple, you can continue to use that version, but you will not get updates. So you get what you get, and as long as it works, cool. As I said, Final Cut and Logic do get updates if you happen to already own them, at least for now. For those with a recent iPad, many of these apps are now available on the iPad as full versions that work just like they do on the Mac. Of course, they’re optimized for touch, including, for the first time ever, a full version of Pixelmator Pro that has full Apple Pencil support. So that was never a thing. There was a version of Pixelmator for the iPad, but it was sort of a dumbed down version that they made for the iPad. This is the actual full version with the full feature set. So now, what about all those free iWork apps that you currently own? Well, they’re still free, but some templates and other content is only available if you have the Creator Studio subscription. So some Apple intelligence features that they are adding and have already added in the case of like, for example, Keynote are only available that use third-party models are only available if you use the Creator Studio versions and you have the subscription. However, you won’t lose any functionality right now. All of those apps have all the same features that they’ve always had, except ads. There’s now ads for Apple’s own Creator Studio plastered in several key places in the Creator Studio versions of those apps. So you can run them, you can use them for free, but you will see the, “Hey, you really wanna upgrade to the suite. “Wouldn’t it be cool?” There are ways to hide some of that. For example, one of the biggest ads is in the template chooser in pages, keynotes, and numbers. So when you go to open a new document, you know how it normally shows you like, hey, you can open a blank document or you can do like one of these like templates that we have pre-done. So all of the ones that are pre-done prior to this, they’re all still free and you can use those templates. But there’s a bunch of templates now that will have stars next to each one of them. And those are premium templates. If you attempt to use one, it’ll be like, hey, you don’t have the Creator Studio suite. You want to upgrade? In addition, if you already have the older non-Creator Studio versions of those apps on your Mac, even if you download the Creator Studio versions, the one with the darker icons, The old version will still remain on your Mac, and you will still be able to use the old non-ad jammed version of pages, keynotes, numbers, etc.
Michael
01:41:52
That brings me to a question that Gordon has. If you have a perpetual license for some of the softwares, is there a discount?
Aric
01:42:01
So, no, there is not a discount. But if you purchased any of those pro apps, you can continue to use them. And you’ll get updates. I don’t know for how long. Apple has not said. But they sort of just left it open. Like, don’t worry, you’ll get updates. So, I don’t know, maybe forever. But maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t answer that. Apple hasn’t said. So, I don’t really know. So, no, you don’t get a discount. But if you buy a new Mac or you buy a new iPad or iPhone, They give you a three-month trial of Creator Studio for free. If you don’t have that and you want to try it, you get one month for free. So if you sign up for the Creator Studio, you get one month for free before you have to start paying. So you can decide if it’s for you or not. Right now, there are Creator Studio versions of everything except Freeform. I don’t know why, but there’s no Freeform. Like there’s an icon for it on Apple’s website that shows that it’s coming, but it’s not a thing yet. So eventually that will come, but it’s not here now. But you can use those new versions of the apps. You’ll get the new sort of like Tahoe liquid glass look, and you will get some new functionality in the newer version. But, of course, you do have to put up with the occasional ad. Like it’s not video ads or anything like that. It’s just when you go to open a template, for example, it shows you like that you should probably upgrade. And also if you select one of the features, for example, Keynote has a build a slide deck for me based on my notes. So if you write down a bunch of notes and you want to turn that into a slide deck, you can press a button and Keynote will create a slide deck based on your notes. It works moderately well, but it’s not ready to go out of the box. I would say it’s a good start. It will save you some time, but you’re going to have to make some edits for sure. There is a feature in most of these new apps called Creative Hub that includes mostly premium subscription-only content like extra backgrounds and maybe audio clips and pictures and other little things that you can use in the various apps. There’s not a ton of stuff in there right now, but it is all designed for premium use, etc. But in the Creative Hub, there’s a section called Shapes, and all of the shapes are for free. You can use all of the shapes that are listed there without needing a subscription. There are more shapes than there used to be in the older versions of Keynote numbers and pages. I would say right now there isn’t really a compelling reason to upgrade to the subscription if you’re only interested in the iWork apps. because you’re only going to get some new templates and a couple of little AI features. I don’t know that they’re worth $129 by themselves. But if you’re at all interested in any of the pro apps and you don’t own them, then this is really a good deal, and it’s probably worth spending the money. And if you have more than one person in your family who might use them, for example, it’s a great thing that, like, if you have someone going to college who is going to a creative field like film or maybe music, those apps are going to be super useful. So I would say the ads in iWork apps are annoying, but it’s not the end of the world. Since we’re running late, I’m not really going to demo any of this stuff, but I will point out that in all of the Creator Suite apps, if a feature is subscription only, in the buttons in the toolbar, if one of those features appears there, they will be colored differently. They’re usually, that particular icon will be colored purple. And if it’s purple, that means that’s a premium feature. And so it’s not going to work if you don’t have that feature. But you can also edit your toolbar to remove the premium features so you don’t have to see them if you don’t want to. So it’s entirely up to you.
Michael
01:46:41
Excuse me, Aric. Jim Thursby has a few questions.
Jim
01:46:44
I’m guessing that my answer to that should be, let me send you an offline, out of the meeting email with that and some other things that we can refer to next meeting if it’s important rather than waste the time now.
Aric
01:46:59
Let’s see if there’s anything of particular interest to the entire group here.
Jim
01:47:04
In the meantime, does anybody enjoy sports with Comcast cable service? I learned something new by surprise and I was going to share it, but it sounds like I’m the only one, so I can share it with myself.
Aric
01:47:17
That’s fine. Okay, so let’s see. If your old device is broken or lost, well then hopefully you have a backup of it somewhere if you want to migrate that data over to a new device.
Jim
01:47:30
You were saying you needed the old device in some cases to be connected to the internet to do some upgrades, like from iCloud. Right, yeah.
Aric
01:47:38
So if you’re going to do a device-to-device transfer, obviously you need the device to be able to do that.
Jim
01:47:44
Right. But if you’re doing an iCloud, you need the old device.
Aric
01:47:47
Right. Well, no. You need access to your iCloud account.
Jim
01:47:51
Okay.
Aric
01:47:52
As long as the backup is in, you know, it has been made of the old device, you can use that for restore to a new device.
Jim
01:47:59
Okay.
Aric
01:48:00
Of course, if the iCloud backup’s really old, then you get what you have backed up, you know, whatever that is. Okay, so backing up iPhone via the Mac can use an external. Okay, so backing up the iPhone via the Mac, the only place that it will let you store that data is on your boot drive.
Jim
01:48:20
Okay, so the Mac tool is on your boot drive.
Aric
01:48:23
Right. If you have a pretty cool, like, iMazing, then you can store it wherever you want.
Jim
01:48:29
Okay, thanks.
Aric
01:48:30
Yep. And then what changes if I want to retain or what changes if I want to retain on my old device the ability to run no longer supported application? Well, I mean, if you’re going to keep your old device, then you can keep running the old software just as you always have. There’s no, you know, there’s no caveats to that. The old device will work as well as it does. The only thing I would say is the older the device, the more likelihood that there are serious security issues. So you may want to keep that device off the Internet and just use it locally at home just for safety’s sake. But outside of that, yeah, it doesn’t really matter.
Jim
01:49:14
You just won’t have as good a chance at a top-quality upgrade as if you had updated your software and abandoned that.
Aric
01:49:24
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can still migrate your data over. Of course, the old software that doesn’t work on the new OS is still not going to work on the new device. But, you know, at least most of your data will have made it over, you know, from one to the other. And you can keep the old one online. You know, it’s not like it disappears once you do that. So, it’s up to you. Okay. Are there any tools to compare settings between two devices in case you only copied core settings in your migration? So not really. I will say that the migration assistant is pretty smart. So it will look at both devices and it will only offer to copy over stuff that looks different between the two. So you can rerun the migration assistant if you need to and say, only copy over my network settings or only copy over this. So you don’t have to do it. It doesn’t have to be a complete copy of all the data from one to another. It can only be individual pieces of information that you want to bring over. Okay. And then any issues to worry about concerning synchronization, passwords between old and new devices, especially if I’ve forgotten the old password, or to create a new password or even username. So most of the time, what happens when you’re copying over user accounts from an old device to a new device via the migration assistant is it will offer to either manually set a new password for the device because it generally doesn’t copy over the old password to the new device. So it can either create a new password that you can then give the person or it can create a thing whereby it gives you a one-time use code that lets you into the account. Then you change the password as the user to whatever it is that you want it to be. So yeah, that’s not really a problem. And at the end of the day, any account that is an administrator can reset the password for any other account that’s on that Mac. So even if you forget the password to another one of the accounts that’s on the machine, as long as you have access to at least one full administrator account on that machine, you can reset the password. Does that also work for renaming the device? Yeah, so you can just go into the settings and rename your device to whatever you want. You can do that at any time. The only time you run into some issues is if you have two devices with the exact same name. Sometimes what the Mac will do is like, oh, hey, I see this Mac has the same name on the network as this other device. So it will rather helpfully add a number to the end of your current device. So it’ll become like, you know, Gordon’s iPhone number two, you know, or something like that.
Jim
01:52:34
And anything that was using security settings to identify all of a sudden says, oh, that’s a new device. I don’t know what Gordon’s number two is.
Aric
01:52:42
Yeah, well, to be fair, most of the time when you’re talking about security, they’re probably using like the Mac address or something like that to identify the device. which can change, but yeah, that’s the whole thing about Mac addresses, because they used to be permanent, like, once you had that, that device had that Mac address, and it was the only one that had that, but now it’s a bit different, but yeah, so. Okay, well, it’ll be really interesting,
Gordon
01:53:10
because the Mac I had, the Mac, old Mac that I’m talking about, is, it used to be my work Mac, And it was originally managed by the company, the school. Now, when I let, when I retired, they gave it to me. But, and it’s great because it was really powerful at the time.
Aric
01:53:34
Right.
Gordon
01:53:35
Now, but now, you know, I need to clean it out. And it still keeps asking me for my old email address at the college. And that doesn’t even exist anymore. And yada, yada, yada, yada.
Aric
01:53:46
That definitely sounds like it’s a good candidate for a deep clean. Because if you wipe the hard drive, all of that stuff goes away. Then you put all of your stuff on there, and it’s all good to go. As long as you have a good backup, it’s a solid plan.
Gordon
01:54:01
Okay, that’s what I have. I have those.
Aric
01:54:03
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You’re welcome.
Jim
01:54:05
Thank you for taking the time to make sure this was prepared, and you were mentally prepared to share so much with us today.
Aric
01:54:13
Yeah, I don’t know what happened to my – Maybe I got off onto a different screen for the presentation. But anyway, it worked out well enough. Given that my dog just recently got better, like literally a couple days ago, the fact that I’m here at all is great. I’m happy to return to normal, you know.
Jim
01:54:37
And hopefully return to normal enough for four weeks from now.
Aric
01:54:41
Right, exactly. So yeah, but everything should be good. So any other questions before we call it a night?
Frank
01:54:50
Yeah, I have a question. Oh, okay. On my, I use an external drive to keep a copy as well as iCloud. Okay. When I go to it and I try to back it up, I get this, it keeps eliminating it. It says this not ejected properly. And I never ejected. It was copying it over and it was doing it.
Aric
01:55:11
and then it just ejected itself. Okay so here’s why that can happen. Okay so first off is the
Frank
01:55:19
disc connected to like a USB hub? I think it’s directly into the into the computer itself. Okay
Aric
01:55:27
so there’s two things that can be wrong and hopefully it’s the one and not the other. The cable that you’re using to connect the hard drive to your Mac may be bad and that used to
Frank
01:55:40
work always but I guess I understand it used to work but they can go bad fast
Aric
01:55:45
and that the problem that you described can be an indication that the cable itself is bad now if you have another type of that cable that you know is good that works with another external hard drive you can just swap it out and try it and see if it works but honestly for the most part those cables are pretty cheap you can probably get one on Amazon you know and try it out it’s certainly worthwhile to try that because the other potential option is either there’s a problem with the the disk hardware itself so the disk is dropping offline because there’s like a little like sort of mini computer that handles communication between the drive and your Mac. And if that’s malfunctioning, sometimes you’ll see stuff like that where it just drops offline. The other possibility is that there is a problem with the format of the drive. Some bad data got written somewhere, and every time that the drive accesses that data, it drops offline because it runs into a problem. That is fixable if you go into disk utility, if you go into applications and then utilities, then go to disk utility. While that disk is connected, you can run disk first aid, and it will check to see if there’s any obvious problems. If it finds problems, it’ll try to fix them. And maybe that’ll solve the problem. If that doesn’t solve the problem, though, it’s probably either hardware or the cable. All right. Hopefully it’s the cable because the cable is cheap. If it’s the hardware, then you’ve got to buy a new drive.
Frank
01:57:35
I have a second question. I get, when I look at my calendar, I get a lot of times where I get duplication, the same thing over 10 times in a row. I don’t know why. On my iPad, I don’t see it. On my Mac, I don’t see it. But on my phone, I do.
Aric
01:57:53
Okay. And you see all the duplicates on your phone?
Frank
01:57:57
Yeah, I see like 10 recycling, recycling, recycling, you know, for the recycling.
Aric
01:58:02
Okay. So here’s the question. Are all of the devices that you’re using to access the calendar, are they all fairly recent or are they old? Are some of them old?
Frank
01:58:12
No, they’re pretty new. The oldest would be a 14, iPhone 14.
Aric
01:58:19
Okay. But it’s running like a recent copy of the last? Yeah, whatever the latest is, you know. Okay. Okay. Because usually when I see duplication like that, it means that there’s one device or multiple devices that are running old versions of operating systems. And the thing is, is that sometimes when new operating systems come around, new features get added to things like the calendar. But these old operating systems don’t know how to handle those new features. And so they don’t know what to do with the data that they see. And so sometimes you can get things like duplication or like, for example, I had one situation where I had a reminder. And it would periodically tell me that like, you know, you have the same reminder today and then again later today and then again later today and then tomorrow five times. And it was an older device that was causing that. What you might be able to do to sort of get things, if they’re all fairly recent devices, go on the device where you see all the duplicates and remove them all. Like, get rid of all the duplicates, including the one. Get rid of that item on your calendar completely. And wait for it to sync over so that that particular item disappears everywhere. If it doesn’t disappear everywhere, that might be an indication that, like, oh, this device is doing something weird, you know.
Frank
01:59:58
I tried to delete it, and they wouldn’t delete. Huh. Those whole, you know, like six of them in a row I tried to delete, and it just said recycling calendar or whatever.
Aric
02:00:08
And that was on?
Frank
02:00:10
That’s on the phone.
Aric
02:00:11
On the phone. Okay. So, all right. Well, here’s what I would do then. Is this like an iCloud calendar or are you using like Outlook or?
Frank
02:00:22
No, iCloud.
Aric
02:00:23
Okay. So what I would do is I would turn off the calendar on that phone. Like turn off iCloud calendar completely. And when it asks you, do you want to save the data that’s on this phone locally? Say no. No, I do not want to do that. Okay. and then let it get rid of all that iCloud data on your calendar. Then when that’s done, restart the phone. So shut it down and start it back up again. Then wait a few moments after it starts up because it does a bunch of stuff when it first starts up. Then after, say, five minutes after it’s restarted, Then go back into iCloud and re-enable the calendar and see if that fixes it. Because sometimes doing that can cause the problem to go away. Like there’s something wonky on the phone where it’s got, it just got like multiple versions of the same thing stored locally. So it keeps showing them to you, even though they’re not really on the calendar that way. So clearing it out like that forces your phone to like delete everything from that calendar. So all of the extras and all that stuff should go away. Then restarting will make sure that like all that stuff’s gone. And then doing it again, like re-enabling it after you’ve given it some time to start up, might get it working properly again.
Frank
02:02:00
That’s right.
Aric
02:02:01
Worth a shot.
Frank
02:02:02
Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? Well, while I have you here, one more. When I look at some calendars, when I listed a different calendar, it causes a lot of them null, N-U-L-L calendars. What’s a null calendar?
Aric
02:02:15
Well, that is probably some local data that got corrupted or whatever, because like null just means like your phone or whatever device that is, is looking at the calendar data and there’s no information in that field to tell it what’s the name of that particular calendar or, you know, particular entry on the calendar, if that’s the case.
Jim
02:02:45
My typical names might have been home and work, and these were ones that don’t have anything like home or work to replace it.
Aric
02:02:54
Yeah, so in other words, like the underlying data that’s stored on the phone, there’s just a blank there. And so your phone doesn’t know what to do because it’s not supposed to have blank entries. So it shows the word null, meaning there’s no data here, but I can’t show nothing. So I’m going to show you the word null instead. So again, clearing out the old calendars or old reminders or whatever’s causing the problem, restarting the phone, then re-adding it should do the trick.
Frank
02:03:27
All right. We’ll try.
Aric
02:03:29
Thank you. You’re welcome. All right. Anything else? Otherwise, I think we’re going to call it a night.
Frank
02:03:34
Yeah. Another night.
Aric
02:03:36
Okay. Well, thanks for coming, everybody. Sorry that we had to cancel last month, but things were absolutely nuts. I appreciate your understanding. And so hopefully from now on, everything’s good. That concludes tonight’s podcast. See you next month. ♪ ♪