Which Yosemite Will It Be For You?

As soon as tomorrow, Apple could be releasing it's next generation operating system, Mac OS 10.10. If past performance can be an indicator of future results, then we can expect a few things:

• It will be free
• It will have amazing new features that make life easier and richer in oh-so-many ways:
• Notification center is improved and more like the iOS version
• The new dock and window translucency is beautiful
• Spotlight searching will search your computer and the Internet simultaneously
• iCloud Drive will change the way you use, store and share documents
• Mail will let you mark up PDFs and send huge files without clogging your recipients' mailboxes
• "Continuity" is going to make moving between your iPhone, iPad and Mac incredibly simple.
• You'll be able to make and take phone calls on your iPad and Mac
• Most people will love it and it will work flawlessly

And, kind of like a prescription drug, you need to consider the "side effects, some serious" of upgrading your OS to a .0 release:

Installing 10.0.0? Say your prayers, varmint…

• It will take a long time to download.
• Some people will not be able to download it.
• Some people will not be able to install it.
• Some people's computers will stop running.
• Some people will not be able to print.
• Some people will lose wi-fi connectivity.
• Some people's favorite application will not run.
• Some people's data may be lost.
• Some people's blood pressure may rise.
• Some people will experience dizziness and headaches and heart arrhythmia.

Unless you like to live dangerously, why not wait on the upgrade?

In the meantime, make sure you have a good solid backup of at least the things you hold dear: photos, music, documents. Better yet, make a bootable backup of your entire hard drive. And watch here, and around the web as reports on how the move to Yosemite go.

There's no doubt that OS 10.10.1 will be released in the next few weeks and that it will solve most of the problems that people will find in 10.10.0.

If you would like your Yosemite to be more rainbows and waterfalls and less rootin' and tootin' my advice is to make some popcorn, sit back, and see what happens. You'll able to join the party soon enough.

iOS 8 is coming. Maybe Wait?

Tomorrow, iOS 8 comes as a free update for all iPhones 4S and newer, all iPads 2 and newer, and the 5th generation iPod touch. As always, my advice is wait and see how others do.

For most of us, it will be fine. But, you never know. Is your phone OK right now? So maybe wait and see what happens to battery life,
Internet connectivity, email and critical apps for the brave ones who "just do it" tomorrow. What do you lose by waiting until those reports are in, versus what could you lose if your perfectly working iPhone stopped working perfectly?

If you are traveling, it's always a good idea to wait until you are back at home. If your phone is one of the rare few that brick, and a few always do, would you rather be home, yelling at your local Apple Genius, or sleepless and phoneless in Seattle, or Austin, or Cleveland (God forbid.)

In law school, my torts professor tried to explain the idea of a "slight risk of grave danger," by pointing to a giant fish bowl full of jelly beans. "Here," he said, "I have a few thousand jelly beans. They are delicious. One of them is made of cyanide, and will kill you quickly. Who would like to try one jelly bean?"

Most people will get grape, or cherry, or lime, or that weird white one… but someone's gonna get the poison one. Back up your phone and be at home before you take that chance.

50 Million Elvis Fans Can't be Wrong, But 5 Million Might Want to Change Their Gmail Passwords

In the wake of the latest hacker activity (which revealed 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords) perhaps you should check your email addresses at the world's greatest database of compromised accounts. I found that both my Adobe and Forbes accounts had been part of major breaches.

Have I Been pwned is safe, reliable and very useful.

And by the way, if you don't want youngsters snickering at you, please know that the word is pronounced "Owned."

The Argument for Phony Security Question Answers (Again)

A seventeen year old kid in Australia recently bypassed Paypal's two factor authentication. This should be troubling news to anyone who engages in financial transactions on the Internet. I've written a thing or two about password management and security on line and have been a strong advocate of two-factor authentication, hailing it as "state of the art" consumer level security.

Two-factor authentication is supposed to mean that "even if someone succeeds in hacking your
password, they won't be able to log in to your account from a device that you haven’t already approved. The log in won’t be allowed until after you receive a text message on your cellphone with a code, which must then be entered in addition to the password." But, not so at Paypal, according to our junior jackaroo.

What happened at PayPal?

As many are aware, PayPal is owned by eBay. As a convenience for their users (i.e., to encourage their users to use PayPal for everything) eBay provides their users with a direct link to their PayPal accounts. Here's the fly in that ointment: apparently eBay does not check to see whether two-factor authentication is enabled before allowing anyone who manages to log in to eBay to shoot right into the linked PayPal account with just a username/password combo.

That may not seem like such a big security hole, since it requires the crook to have your username/password combination at two sites, but that's really not that far fetched if a hacker has been able to gain access to the victim's computer.

It gets worse. According to PCWorld, "The payment processor’s two-factor authentication could potentially be defeated in other ways. For example, if a user doesn’t have a way to receive the six-digit code, PayPal allows them to skip it and instead answer two security questions." Given that most security questions involve questions like "Where were you born?" and "Where did you go to high school?" the illusion of two-factor authentication becomes more and more mirage-like.

I've shared the answer before, but it's time to share it again: How about using your random password generator to come up with a short but random string of characters, and saving it in your password management app?

Mother's maiden name? oL-eF-yeph

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iOS 7.1.2 Update for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch Now Available

According to Apple, latest iOS update includes the following changes:

• Improves iBeacon connectivity and stability
• Fixes a bug with data transfer for some 3rd party accessories, including bar code scanners
• Corrects an issue with data protection class designations of Mail attachments

It also contains "miscellaneous bug fixes and security updates."

You can download the update over-the-air via Settings > General > Software Update or install it via iTunes by connecting your phone to computer using a USB cable. Even though you can update/upgrade directly over the air on your phone, don't. Although it's only a 23.1-megabyte delta update (just the changes, not a whole system file) user experiences with over-the-air upgrades vary, while those who use the tried and trusted USB method seem to be unanimous in their success stories. And, I always like to make a fresh backup to my hard drive first.

Here's the safest way to upgrade/update:

• Attach the iPhone to your computer.
• Open iTunes.
• Click on "Back Up Now."
• Wait for the backup to finish
• Click on "Check for update" and then do update to 7.1.2

Because it's a delta update, you shouldn't have to wait to long to get back on the device, with all your data and settings intact.

As always, unless you are absolutely dying to have the listed issues fixed, maybe wait a couple days. You never know what might be broken, diminished or deleted in an update. You won't get any prizes for updating first, but you might get some surprises.

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