Helping Mac users upgrade their machines, doing data transfers, backing up data – that’s all part of a typical day’s work at NeedMacHelp. When a new client contacts us to book an appointment for data migration or help with backing up, I always ask how much data he/she has on the old machine.  For some users, this question causes some confusion so I thought I would do a quick “how to find out info about your Mac” post.

1.  To find out what version of OS X (the Mac operating system) your machine is running:

• From the Apple menu located in the upper left hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac.

• The window that opens will show your OS X version.  In the example below, the version is 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

2.  To find out what processor your machine has and how much memory (RAM) it has:

• From the Apple menu located in the upper left hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac.

• The window that opens will show Processor and Memory.  In the example below, the Processor is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and it has 2 GB of RAM.

3.  To find out how big your hard drive is, and how much data is on your Mac:

• Select Finder by clicking on your Desktop or on the Finder icon located in your Dock (the Dock is the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of your screen).

• The window that opens will show a list on the left hand side that includes a section called “DEVICES.” Under devices, there will be a hard drive icon that looks like the one in the example below.

• Make sure you are still in the Finder and select “File” in the upper left hand corner of your screen, and then select “Get Info.” A window will open that lists the following:

* Version (the version of the operating system)

* Format (the format of your hard drive)

* Capacity (the size of your hard drive)

* Available (how much space is currently available on your hard drive)

* Used (how much data is currently on your hard drive)

In the example above, the size of the machine’s hard drive is 158.86 GB, of which 43.07 GB of data has been used.

We mentioned the announcement of Elgato’s portable Thunderbolt SSD last week, and since then it appears as though more and more Thunderbolt devices are being announced, as more and more users are looking for high speed storage solutions.

ars technica has a good preview of the Thunderbolt devices on display at the 2012 International CES, which is currently underway in Las Vegas.

Our head tech James recently implemented Promise’s Pegasus RAID with Thunderbolt at one client site, and reported that the transfer speeds EXCEEDED his expectations. With the Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID + Mac mini server, reads over AFP / the network were clocking in at 100MB/s (or, 800Mbps, which would be the theoretical FireWire max).  Some site examples: 8GB upload over the network in under 2 minutes (i.e., much faster than a direct FireWire connection), and a 100GB download in around 10 minutes.

So iTunes Match came out last week and I’m going to use my mother’s favorite euphemism to describe the feedback I’ve been getting from techs and users: “interesting.”

Plenty of grumbles about the 25,000 song limit.  There’s a way around this, but it’s a bit complicated so you might want to consult with one of our brilliant, Apple certified techs.

As our tech James pointed out, iTunes Match also fails to recognize the most popular song in a lot of albums.  And there’s no AC/DC in iTunes!

You can use iTunes Match on multiple machines to match and upload songs to the same iCloud account, which is really handy. You can merge songs from your different libraries into the same library within iCloud, and then you can download those songs to other machines or get them on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad.

So is it worth $24.99 a year? If you have a lot of non-iTunes purchased music, then $24.99 a year might be worth the ability to upload un-matched songs to iTunes Match cloud storage for playback later. Also, your matched music will play back from the cloud in 256-Kps quality even if your original files were poor quality.

For more info on iTunes Match, visit Apple’s site here.

I know a lot of our clients are writing up end-of-year purchase lists for much needed upgrades, so I thought I would mention this promotion that is being offered by FileMaker.

If you buy a Retail or Education version of FileMaker Pro 11 from the FileMaker Store,  you will get a bonus FileMaker Pro 11 license free.  The offer ends December 15, 2011.

Also! For our Bento users, FileMaker has released the Bento Holiday Kit, which includes 3 pre-designed library templates that help organize holiday greeting cards, print labels, plan parties and track gift lists.  And it’s absolutely free for Bento 4 for Mac users!

As of today, you can update your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by connecting your device to your machine.  Onscreen instructions in iTunes will tell you how to proceed.

Among the over 200 new features are iMessage, Twitter, Notification Center, Reminders, and PC Free.  With PC Free you no longer need to own a computer in order to have an iPhone, iPad, or iPad Touch.  The app allows you to set up your device wirelessly, and you can back it up automatically to iCloud, which is also out of beta today and available for use.

For more on iOS5 click here.

The new iPhone 4S was officially announced today, and pre-orders will be taken as of this Friday, October 7. The iPhone 4S comes in black or white, and is $199 for the 16GB, $299 for the 32GB, and $399 for the 64GB (with contract). But!  Users now have the choice between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as far as carriers are concerned.

The latest and greatest version of the iPhone includes an amazing 8-megapixel camera that can record 1080p video AND has a new image signal processor for image stabilization (which brings it up to par with most point-and-shoot cameras on the market).

The processor is a zippy Dual-core Apple A5, which makes apps launch faster and increases the speediness of all the functions of the phone.  Battery life is also much improved over the iPhone 4, with up to 8 hours of talk time on 3G.

The iPhone 4S is also a proper “World Phone” – Hybrid GSM / CDMA and Bluetooth 4.0.

But really the most exciting part of the new phone is Siri, the “Assistant” or live AI.  Siri lets you use your voice to send text messages, schedule appointments, make phones calls, find restaurants… just about anything you would normally do with your iPhone.  Check out the video of how Siri works here.

We get this question quite often… sometimes after the damage has already been done.  For example, one user thought it was ok to spray Windex directly on his iPhone.  Definitely a no-no!

Apple has a comprehensive list of cleaning procedures for all of its products — from iPods to iMacs to MacBook Pros.

We use iKlear products to clean our Apple devices.

For more information or recommendations on how to clean your Apple devices, please contact us and we can arrange for an appointment with one of our Mac support specialists.

Mayor Bloomberg just announced a mandatory evacuation for New York City residents living in Zone A.  Low-lying Zone A areas include Battery Park City, some areas in Manhattan along the Hudson River and East River, Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, Far Rockaway, Broad Channel, South Beach and Midland Beach.

For a full map of Hurricane Evacuation Zones A – C, click here.  NYC.gov’s “Ready New York: Hurricane Guide” can be downloaded here.

The MTA is shutting down tomorrow, Saturday, August 27  at Noon.

Charge your devices in advance, make sure you have flashlights, and be safe, New York!

Apple hails 10.7 Lion as the “best version of OS X yet,” with over 250 new features and a revolutionary new installation process.

During this summer, NeedMacHelp will be offering our Upgrade to Lion Special.  We will upgrade your computer to Lion* and bring you up to speed on all the new features. No DVDs or a trip to the store necessary. For users not running at least Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard (the minimum requirement to run Lion), we will help advise you on updating or upgrading your system.

Best of all, the whole appointment is 10% off.

Call 646-924-2727 now to schedule an appointment with one of our Apple Certified Macintosh Specialists!

*OS X Lion is $29.99, payable directly to Apple.

Actually, Apple released Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 yesterday.  From Apple’s site:

About Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

This update addresses an issue with the Migration Assistant application in Mac OS X Snow Leopard that prevents transfer of your personal data, settings, and compatible applications from a Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard to a new Mac running Mac OS X Lion.

So!  Be sure to update before you install Lion 10.7! Either update via Software Update under the Apple Menu on your machine, or download from Apple’s site.