Macs have a long life-span—even a 10 year-old Mac can be secure and productive—but Apple doesn’t offer hardware support for Mac models beyond 7 years past their discontinuance date. That means if the sale of a particular Mac model ceased on January 1, 2010 then Apple offers limited support in the 5-6 years range (2015-2016) and discontinues hardware coverage altogether on January 1, 2017.

Some notes from Apple’s Vintage and Obsolete Products page:

• Vintage products are those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.
•  With limited exceptions—like you live in California, Turkey, or France—Vintage products are not eligible for hardware support from Apple
• Obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than 7 years ago.
• Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.

Generally speaking, MacAtoZ supports both Vintage and Obsolete models, but frequently our advice is to not spend money on such old technology. A 2006 iMac, for example, is a perfectly good Mac but it isn’t capable of running a modern operating system (meaning a secure operating system) so we would advise an owner to buy a new Mac rather than upgrade or fix that particular model.

Once you find your Mac on the Vintage list, you should start budgeting for a replacement. We tell clients that Macs come with a one year warranty, you can extend that to three years by buying AppleCare, and you can have every reasonable expectation that your new Mac will last five years. After 5 years—what Apple considers “Vintage”—we start to see an increase in component failures in the Mac. The hard drive crashes, the screen backlight goes out, etc. It’s not a wave of failure by any means, but we do notice an increase. By Year 7, “Obsolete” in Apple terms, a lot of Macs either can’t run a secure operating system or, even more likely, are so slow that owners desperately want a new Mac anyway.

Is your Mac on the Vintage or Obsolete list? MacAtoZ can help advise you on the options you have both in terms of upgrading what you have (if appropriate) or buying something new. Call us at 503-507-0410 or email [email protected].

Apple often adjusts its iPad and iPhone lineup in March, and this year’s changes make the selection more attractive and affordable while adding a new way to support the (RED) international charity.

New iPad replaces iPad Air 2
The most significant of Apple’s changes is the replacement of the iPad Air 2 with a new 9.7-inch iPad model called simply “iPad.” As if that won’t be confusing. (Internally, this new “iPad” is known the iPad 5th Generation.) Very similar to the iPad Air 2, this latest iPad cuts a few features to reduce the price to the lowest ever for a 9.7-inch iPad.

Physically, the new iPad is almost identical to the iPad Air 2, apart from being 1.4 mm thicker (which might cause problems for some existing cases). Inside, Apple swapped the iPad Air 2’s A8X processor for the faster A9 chip, which should improve performance. The cameras remain mostly the same, though photos taken with the rear-facing camera should be somewhat better, thanks to two improvements: auto image stabilization to help avoid blurry images and a hybrid infrared filter to improve color accuracy and sharpness.

On the downside, the new iPad lacks the iPad Air 2’s laminated display and anti-reflective coating, which combined to increase screen clarity, particularly in bright light. You’d have to compare the new iPad against the more expensive iPad mini 4 or the much more expensive 9.7-inch iPad Pro to see if the screen change is a major problem for you.

The big win with the new iPad is price, which has dropped $70: it’s now only $329 for the Wi-Fi–only 32 GB model or $429 for 128 GB. The cellular models cost $459 for 32 GB and $559 for 128 GB. It’s now the least expensive iPad and what Apple expects most new buyers to purchase.

Apple reduces iPad mini 4 price, drops iPad mini 2
The new iPad takes over the entry-level iPad spot from the iPad mini because Apple simultaneously dropped both the iPad mini 2, which had been priced at $269, and the 32 GB model of the iPad mini 4, which previously sold for $399. That leaves just the 128 GB iPad mini 4, and Apple slashed $100 off its price to bring it down to $399. Despite the price drop, unless you especially want the iPad mini’s smaller size or better screen, it’s probably worth $30 to move up to the new 128 GB iPad.

Paint the town (RED) with new iPhone 7 models
For more than 10 years, Apple has partnered with the international (RED) charity to raise money for the Global Fund to combat AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. By offering products in the licensed PRODUCT(RED) color and donating a portion of the proceeds, Apple has raised over $130 million for (RED), making it the charity’s largest corporate donor.

On March 24th, Apple began selling the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus PRODUCT(RED) Special Edition models in 128 GB and 256 GB capacities. They’re functionally identical to the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus models, and are priced the same too, but they come in what Apple calls “a vibrant red aluminum finish.” It’s a strong color that’s a far cry from Apple’s almost pastel rose gold color choice, and frankly, I think it’s one of the most gorgeous iPhone colors ever.

And if you’d like a PRODUCT(RED) iPhone, but have a perfectly serviceable iPhone right now that you don’t want to replace, Apple now has silicone and leather cases in the (RED) color—they’re not quite as snazzy as the red aluminum finish, but they’re similarly bright.

iPhone SE now holds twice as much

Do websites that auto-play ads or videos drive you mad? (They should.) Especially when you reopen Safari and several of them in remembered tabs start playing simultaneously? Crazy-making.

Since OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Safari can put an end to that cacophony on your Mac. Whenever audio is playing in a tab, an audio icon appears next to the name of the tab and at the right of Safari’s Smart Search field. Click either one to mute the tab.

If you’ve ended up with multiple tabs playing, you can mute all those except the current tab by Option-clicking either of those audio icons. And, finally, click and hold the audio icon in the Smart Search field for a menu with Mute and Unmute commands, and a list of all tabs that contain audio.

Better? Yes!

There are oodles of ways to launch Mac apps. You can double-click an app in the Applications folder, click an app icon in the Dock, invoke Launchpad and click the desired app, or choose an app from the Apple menu’s Recent Items > Applications submenu. You can even add commonly used apps to the toolbar of Finder windows by Command-dragging them up there.

But what if you don’t want to take your hands off the keyboard? Is there any way to open an app without touching the mouse or trackpad? Indeed there is, courtesy of Spotlight. No longer must we live like savages.

You’re probably familiar with Spotlight as a search tool, both for finding files and folders on your Mac, and for ferreting out information on the Internet, including weather forecasts, sports scores, and stock prices. But what you may not realize is that among the files that Spotlight can find are all the apps on your Mac, and you can launch them with just a few keys. Follow these steps:

1. Press Command-Space to display the Spotlight window.
2. Begin typing an app’s name, such as “ac” for Activity Monitor. For apps whose names have multiple words, you can type the first letter of each, as in “ic” for Image Capture. And if an app name is a single InterCapped word, it’s fine to enter just the capitalized letters, as in “ft” for FaceTime. Spotlight searches, and while it should be nearly instantaneous, if it doesn’t show the app you want at first, give it a few seconds.
3. If Spotlight highlights the app you want to launch as the top hit, press Return to open it. If it’s not the top hit, you can either continue typing to narrow the search or arrow down to it in the list and then press Return.

That’s all there is to it! As you might guess, you can use the same technique to open documents or even system preferences panes.

Cleverly, Spotlight is adaptive, so if the first time you type “ac” it suggests Adobe Content Viewer, once you select Activity Monitor instead, it will know that “ac” should open Activity Monitor in the future.

On the downside, Spotlight isn’t always as fast as you might like, and while it guesses relatively well, you may find that its conception of what an app is called doesn’t always match with what you want to type.

Give Spotlight a try!

There’s nothing worse than your iPhone running out of juice at an inopportune time. Well, double-faulting in tennis is also pretty vexing. But I can’t help you there. With your iPhone, on the other hand….

Starting in iOS 9, there’s a Low Power Mode that’s offered to you when the remaining battery charge drops below 20%, and it’s automatically disabled once the charge rises to 80%.

You can also enable Low Power Mode manually in Settings > Battery if you anticipate a day when you might run out of power. When you’re in Low Power Mode, certain features are disabled, including automatic app downloads, background app refreshing, email fetching, iCloud syncing, and some visual effects. It also reduces display brightness and optimizes device performance to conserve as much power as possible. When Low Power Mode is on, the battery icon at the top of the screen turns yellow.

If you have additional questions about your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, feel free to give us a call 503-507-0410 or email us at [email protected] to set up an appointment. We’d be delighted to help.

The caveats first: It was a holiday quarter and had 14 weeks rather than the standard 13. Still $78.4 billion in revenue with $17.9 billion profit both set records for Apple, so caveats or not, I think that’s the sound of champaign glasses clinking at the company headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Apple sold 78.3 million iPhones—the iPhone 7+ was the most popular—in the biggest iPhone sales quarter ever. The iPhone now represents 69% of the company’s revenue, so there’s little doubt that Apple will continue to pour its resources into keeping the iPhone the best phone in the world.

There was great news on the Mac front as well with 5.4 million Macs sold, representing 9% of the company’s revenue. iPad sales continued to slide—13.1 million and 7% of revenue—despite stellar reviews and very high customer satisfaction. One hopes that Apple will take this revenue numbers to heart and commit more long-overdue resources to the Mac, because excepting the MacBook Pro line, everything else could use an update.

Services includes iCloud storage, App sales, iTunes Music, Movies, TV Shows, ApplePay, and more. It saw 18% growth and accounted for 9% of revenue. It is likely to be the biggest revenue driver after iPhone within a year. Apple’s stated goal is to double service revenue within 4 years, and we think they’re aiming too low.

Because of the outrageous success of the iPhone, Apple remains in many ways a company whose future is tied to one product. That said, even without the iPhone Apple would be an amazing success story, and I dare say, I think the best, financial and otherwise, is still yet to come.

As long-time readers know usually it’s the “.3” update to a major operating system that gets to the point of recommending it to everyone. With Sierra, we’re not quite there yet.

We’re still experiencing some unexplained slow-downs and freezes with things from time to time that are making us a bit gun shy. So if you’re on Yosemite (10.10.5) or El Capitan (10.11.6) our advice continues to be to wait.

As we’ve said previously, if you’re on an earlier operating system—anything before Yosemite—you should upgrade to Sierra for security reasons and deal with the inconvenience you might encounter as this thing or that doesn’t work or works slower than it should. Cyberspace is full of bad guys nowadays, and you simply must run a secure operating system on your Mac.

If you’re on a new Mac that has Sierra or if you’ve ignored our advice entirely and upgraded to 10.12 anyway (you wild one, you), we  definitely recommend that you update to 10.12.3. It fixes a lot of problems from the earlier versions.