Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's look at nine Mac myths.
A lot of questions I get asked actually come from misconceptions that people have about
Macs or computers in general.
Or a lot of time when people ask questions I notice that they are doing things that they
don't need to do.
Like for instance the first one is that people quit apps far too often I find.
When you are using a Mac you can run apps, especially ones you are using all the time,
like Safari or say if you are a writer using Pages or Word, whatever apps you are using
and you can leave them running.
You don't have to quit one app to start another.
Some people do this or they try to kind of manage their apps, quitting one if they don't
think they are going to use it for a time.
I actually leave just about all of my apps running unless it is something I rarely use.
I use it just once and then I quit when I am done using it.
But I usually have image editing tool, word processor, Safari of course, a FTP tool, all
sorts of things always running even if I don't have a document open with them at the time.
They don't actually use up very much memory or resources if you are not using them at
that moment so it is okay to leave them running.
As a matter of fact it is common that I have ten or more apps running on either my MacPro
or my MacBook Air at any given time.
I simply don't bother to quit them.
You don't really need to.
Similar to that I find that a lot of people shut their computers down at the end of the
day.
Something I haven't done for years.
Maybe it was true say in the early nineties it was a good idea that when you were done
using the computer to quit everything and shut it down.
But with today's modern computers they use very little power when they go to sleep.
You should let them go to sleep.
You don't necessarily have to shut them down at the end of every day.
Similar to that I find people have a little bit of confusion using the new wireless peripherals
like keyboards and mice.
They are not sure whether they should shut them down when they are finished using their
Mac at the end of the day or whether to just leave them on.
I just leave them on.
I've never shutdown my keyboard or my trackpad even though both just use batteries.
They both kind of go into a sleep mode.
They are not using very much power if you are not typing on them or using the trackpad
so it is not really going to effect the battery life too much and of course it is a lot easier
if you don't have to wait for them to reconnect over bluetooth when you start work again the
next day.
Another thing I hear a lot are the people who have MacBooks shut them down before moving
them.
In other words they have them on their desk at home and when they want to go to work or
school they shut them down so they are not actually transporting a MacBook that is on,
even if it is sleeping.
Now this comes from the early days of laptops.
The early days laptops used standard hard drives.
Standard hard drives didn't work well if they were being moved at the time because there
is things in motion there.
There is the spinning disk and there is a reading head that moves across the surface
and the really early drives weren't made to be used while they were in motion.
So sometimes you would have problems with that.
As soon as laptops became popular drives were developed that not only would work well while
being moved but also would be smart about it.
Like for instance in today's MacBooks if you were to actually drop your MacBook while you
were doing something the hard drive detects that it is falling and will stop doing anything
for the duration of the fall.
So it won't damage itself.
But in general you just don't have to shut down your MacBook while moving it at all.
I just simply put mine to sleep and carry it with me.
But I've even walked around with it on, doing things as I am moving and it is perfectly
fine.
It won't harm it.
As a matter of fact the latest MacBooks don't even use hard drives like that.
They use solid state drives so it is completely a non-issue.
That brings me to the next myth which is I hear a lot of people saying that they heard
that you are not supposed to use a MacBook while it is plugged in.
I'm not really sure where this comes from.
I think some of the early battery type devices, maybe even before computers, had the issue
where you would want to charge them fully up and you wouldn't want to overcharge them.
But this certainly isn't true of laptop computers.
I don't think it ever has been.
So you have no danger of overcharging your MacBook and certainly if you have power available
and have your power adapter have your MacBook plugged in.
There is no reason to drain the battery if you don't need to.
So certainly keep your MacBook plugged in when you can.
Use the battery when you have to or it is more convenient and don't worry about overcharging
because that is not something that happens.
So let's get away from power and on and off and talk about iTunes.
Originally when iTunes started selling music it was copy protected.
There was digital rights management on it and you had to basically authenticate yourself
on your copy of iTunes to make sure you could play the music that you purchased.
When you synced your iPod there was stuff that went back and forth to authenticate that
it was your iPod and it was your music and it was all okay.
But Apple did away with this years and years ago.
The music now doesn't have this kind of copy protection.
When you buy it from iTunes you can put it on any other MP3 device you want.
iTunes even lets you convert it from the AAC format to MP3 if you have an old player that
only plays MP3 music.
You can use it wherever you want on any of your devices.
It does actually put your ID in the songs so it is not like you can just do whatever
you want with the song and give it away to people but you do have freedom to basically
use it outside of iTunes on your Mac and your iPhone, iPod, iPad.
Now if I had to pick a #1 myth.
A myth that appears the most in comments and questions I get it's about Microsoft Office.
For some reason people don't realize that there is Office for Windows and there is also
Office for Mac.
Now it is Office 365 and you can get it for either Mac and Windows.
It pretty much has always been Office for Mac.
So if you need to open some old Microsoft Office documents or you are communicating
with people that use Microsoft Office on Windows just get Office for your Mac.
It is available.
The same price and it can open the same files.
Maybe the second most popular myth I hear all the time concerns Apple's wifi devices,
the AirPort Express, the AirPort Extreme and TimeCapsule.
People that don't have one think that maybe they only work with Macs and iPhones and iPads.
That is not true at all.
Wifi devices are across platform.
You can get an AirPort Extreme base station and you can certainly use that with your PC
that has wifi.
As a matter of fact you can use it with just about anything that has wifi.
There is a modern wifi connection in it like a cable set top box for instance.
A wireless camera.
Game consoles.
All sorts of things.
AirPort base station is really no different than a base station from another brand.
It is just that it has more of the Apple flavor to it.
Its got an Apple control panel that you can use, an iOS device on your Mac.
But it can still communicate with all of the other wifi devices in your house.
The last myth that I want to talk about today has to do with Macs having only one mouse
button.
Originally Macs did have only one mouse button.
This differed from Windows that had a second mouse button that was the right mouse button
that you could right click.
But even back in those days when Macs had one mouse button you could hold down the control
key and click on your mouse and you would get the same effect.
You would get a contextual menu just like right clicking.
Starting years and years ago some Mac mice came with the second mouse button.
It didn't look like it did.
It was just that you clicked on the left side versus of the right side.
Surely enough the current Mac mouse that you get does that.
But you can also do that with any other device like say the trackpads on MacBooks or using
the magic trackpad.
As a matter of fact you have control over how the secondary click works.
You go right in here into System Preferences into trackpad in this case or you can go into
the mouse settings there.
On the trackpad I've got secondary click.
I can say I want to do it when I click with two fingers or I can do the bottom right corner
or the bottom left corner there.
So I get to actually determine how the secondary click is activated on my trackpad.
Most people stick with clicking with two fingers.
So there are nine Mac myths and misconceptions for you.
I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.