Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's Part 16 of my course The Practical Guide to Mac Security.
This is brought to you thanks to my great Patreon supporters. To join us go to MacMost.com/patreon.
Let's talk about one of the best tools that you can get for security for your Mac. It's not what
you would typically think of as security because it's not protecting you from malware or scams.
But it will protect you from something that's far more likely to cause a problem. A power outage. So
to get something to protect you from that you're looking for an Uninterruptible Power Supply also
called a UPS. So here's a look at what a UPS will look like. Here's one from a company called APC.
Here's another one from a company called Tripp Lite and another one from a company called
CyberPower. Those are the big brands. You're going to see lots of those if you do a search on a site
like Amazon for a UPS. You can see they are all devices that basically can sit under your desk
and there are boxes that house a battery. The front looks like this and usually has a readout
to tell you how the battery is doing and the back looks like this. It looks kind of like a power
strip. This will replace any power strip that you've got. If you already have a power strip
under your desk to plug your iMac or MacMini into, this will replace it and it does the same function
except it will also have a battery in it so if the power goes out you will have some time to shutdown
your computer or maybe continue working if the power outage is short enough using that battery.
Notice the back here two sides. They all work like this. There's a battery backup
and a side that is basically not battery backup.
So if power goes out then the battery will continue to provide power to anything plugged
into the battery backup side but not the other side. So if you have say a MacMini and a screen
and a printer on your desk you would typically plug the MacMini, the screen into the battery
backup but the printer might be plugged into the other side. So the printer would go off during
a power outage and the computer and screen would remain on so that you could continue to use them.
So an uninterruptible power supply does several things for you. First, and mainly,
it gives you time to shutdown your Mac if there is a power failure. So the battery isn't going
to last forever. The more things you have plugged into it the more power you're using depending upon
what you're doing with your Mac the shorter the amount of time you're going to have. It could be
as short as just a few minutes. But a few minutes is all you need to gracefully shutdown your Mac.
So the difference is that if you lose power, even for a second, your Mac flashes off. Anything you
were in the middle of doing is interrupted. If your Mac happened to be saving a file at
the time that happened it could actually corrupt the file. So you could be in a lot of trouble.
But if you have a few minutes and you see the lights have gone out you could Save, Quit your
apps, Shutdown your Mac. If you live in an area where you typically get large power outages that
last for a long time then you can just run through this and know that everything is fine and safe and
you are protected now that you've shut everything down and you could wait out the power outage.
Also, I'll show you how uninterrupted power supply's can do this automatically. So if you're
even not sitting at your desk and this happens it can actually trigger your Mac to gracefully
shutdown. If you live in an area where there are short outages, sometimes as short as a second
you know when the lights blink off and then on again, or maybe you just get power outages that
last 30 seconds or a minute here and there then you can ride those out using a good UPS. Continue
to work with your Mac during that time and if the lights come back on then you can continue
as if nothing happened. Also if you're using the power strip as a surge protector a UPS will take
its place. A UPS is typically a very good surge protector so things that are plugged into it
aren't going to be damaged by power surges if you're in an area where you get those.
So when you get a UPS typically it comes with some software. Typically that software is useless
for Mac users. This is very confusing because you get the software and it will claim to do
all these extra things and then you'll see that the disk that comes with it or the download URL,
it's all for Windows. You'll be disappointed thinking, well I wish I could do those things with
my Mac but this only works for Windows. It only seems to be compatible with Windows. But here's
the thing. One of the reasons that you don't get the software for the Mac is because it's already
built into macOS. You don't need to do anything extra or install anything. So, for instance,
I have connected using the cable, the UPS I have, to my Mac. It just connects into the USB port
on my Mac. Now if I look in System Preferences and go to Energy Saver
I have a Power side, which was there before, but I also have a UPS side.
This only appears when I've connected a UPS to my Mac. So until the point where I actually plug it
into the back of my Mac this wasn't even here. Also at the top here I get this status. You can
see here there's a checkbox. Turn it On and Off. This actually looks a lot like what you would
see if you had a MacBook that had a battery in it. You would see this kind of thing. It tells
you you're using significant energy and it gives you the battery amount. But this is for the UPS.
In this System Preferences area you can set it to turn the display off after a
certain period of time. If the UPS has been engaged you can set Shutdown Options here.
So you can have the computer shutdown if the UPS battery is in use. So you can say, okay if the UPS
has been activated because I've lost power after five minutes automatically shutdown. You can also
have it shutdown when there's a remaining amount of time left on the battery or when the battery
is below a certain percentage. The things you see here are going to change depending upon what your
UPS can do. So if you buy a different model than what I have you may see different settings here
and here. But this is basically the equivalent to what you would see if you would install that
software on a Windows machine. You just don't need to do that on a Mac. It's built into macOS.
So when shopping for a UPS you want to look for the battery size. So you can see this
particular model comes with different battery sizes and the actual shape and features will
change a little bit as well. But the larger the battery the more time you're going to have.
Typically this isn't a big problem but if you are in an area where you get power outages all
the time and its critical that you keep working you're going to want to get the biggest battery
you can. If you don't mind shutting down pretty much immediately if there is a rare
power outage in your area, then you can go with a much smaller battery. All of them
have different variations on the battery sizes that you can get.
So you just basically want to spend the amount of money that's appropriate for your use. You could
find UPS's for as little as say $50 if you really just wanted something very basic and simple.
They can go up to several hundred dollars if you want a real pro model, something that
may work with say a MacPro that's going to use a lot of power and several screens and things
like that. So you're going to buy based on battery size and the brand. Reviews are all over the place
for each one of these. You'll always find a few people that have problems with every single
brand. There's no perfect one. I've had every single brand at one point or another and I've
had problems here and there. But it's way better to have one than not. So another thing to note is
that sometimes the batteries can be removed from these. There's a way to get into them and remove
them and replace the battery. The battery won't last forever. They will eventually wear out. It's
great if you can have one where you can replace the battery rather than replacing the entire unit.
So this is pretty straight forward. If you want to go to your local electronic store and buy one
you can get one there. You can find one online and order it. You should definitely get one if
you have an iMac, a MacMini, or a MacPro. However if you have a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air then
it's really not necessary because your Mac already has a battery built into it and it's using a power
adapter that's not directly hooked into AC power so it's not as necessary to have a surge protector
either. So typically if you're just using a MacBook as opposed to an iMac it's not a problem.