How to Back Up Your Mac Using Time Machine
Finding a reliable backup solution for the Mac that runs in the background and isn’t a drain on system resources was once considered a challenging prospect.
With the arrival of OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple changed that preconception by introducing its native backup solution, called Time Machine. This article explains the benefits of using Time Machine and runs you through the setup and restore process.
Benefits of Using Time Machine
Time Machine has won over many Mac users due to its automated scheduling and intuitive recovery process, along with its ability to run in the background without affecting overall system performance.
The application achieves this by making an initial full backup of your Mac’s system disk and then stacking subsequent changes to the volume in a chronological hierarchy. Hourly backups, daily backups and weekly backups occur automatically, while the oldest backups are overwritten with new ones as the external backup disk reaches full capacity.
This creates a layered snapshot system that’s reflected in Time Machine’s navigable timeline and makes the recovery of individual files and folders a simple affair.
Apple Watch 2 Said to Enter Mass Production in Mid 2016
Quanta will be the sole manufacturer of the second-generation Apple Watch, according to a few sources out of the China supply chain (via DigiTimes). The same sources believe that the manufacturing company will ramp up mass production on the “Apple Watch 2” sometime in the second quarter of 2016, following reports that it began a trial production on the smartwatch this month.
The reason for Quanta’s status as the only Apple Watch 2 manufacturer stems from rumors surrounding Apple’s predicted low-volume production output for the second-generation wearable device. Citing “weaker than expected shipments” of the first Apple Watch, the supply chain sources point to the company’s tempered production forecast for its next version of the wrist-worn device.
Apple originally considered shifting some second-generation Apple Watch orders to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), but decided to keep all the orders with Quanta as volumes will not be high, the sources noted. Because of Apple Watch’s weaker than expected shipments, Apple recently reduced the device’s shipment forecast for 2016 down further from its estimate in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Although Apple has remained quiet on specific sales numbers for the Apple Watch, estimates put the wearable as a consistent rival to similar products, including Fitbit, with numbers only growing in the lead-up to the holiday season last year. Recent rumors point to the possibility of an interim update for the Apple Watch in March, including only one or two new features (like a FaceTime camera), and with a proper full 2.0 model released later in the year.
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Barclays Confirms it Will Launch Apple Pay by Late March
Barclays has confirmed that it will launch Apple Pay within the next 45 to 60 days, based on a two-week-old email dated January 12, suggesting the large British bank will support the iPhone-based mobile payments service by no later than March 28.
The launch date was provided by Barclays CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking Ashok Vaswani in what appears to be a legitimate email sent to customer Oli Foster-Burnell, and later reported by Engadget. We can verify the executive has emailed customers about Apple Pay in the past.
Barclays is the only financial institution among the “Big Four” banks in the U.K. that has yet to adopt Apple Pay. The country’s participating issuers include the Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Tesco Bank, TSB and Ulster Bank.
Barclays Executive confirms #applepay launch date. At last! pic.twitter.com/5wuzMoGs4V
— Oli Foster-Burnell (@orfoster) January 25, 2016
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsApple Pay launched in the U.K. in July 2015 at more than 250,000 locations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Barclays is perhaps the most notable holdout from the group of banks supporting the mobile payments service. The bank serves over 48 million customers.
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Barclays confirms it’ll support Apple Pay by April
Since it came to Britain in July 2015, Apple Pay has made slow and steady progress, with 15 banks or credit card issuers now supporting the service. However, in that time, Barclays has done nothing but flip-flop over its decision to link its cards with Apple’s NFC payment platform.
After first declining to comment at launch, the bank quickly changed its mind and voiced support for the service. It then made customers wait months before offering an “early 2016” launch date at the end of last year. Following another few months of silence and hundreds of irate customer tweets, Barclays CEO Ashok Vaswani has finally offered to clear things up, confirming that Apple Pay support will roll out by April at the very latest.
In an emailed statement sent to Barclays customer Oli Foster-Burnell on January 12th, Vaswani said the service will go live “within the next 60 to 75 days.” Depending on the company’s plans, card support could be enabled between March 12th and March 27th. That’s stretching the “early 2016” launch touted last year, but it may be enough to stop some disappointed Barclays customers from switching to another bank.
The reasons behind Barclays’ decision to delay its Apple Pay rollout haven’t been made clear, but the bank has been working on a few contactless payment services of its own. There’s bPay, which relaunched in June 2015, upcoming products from its partnership with mobile payment provider Zapp and, of course, its own NFC payment service that was just made available to Barclaycard customers.
Barclays Executive confirms #applepay launch date. At last! pic.twitter.com/5wuzMoGs4V
— Oli Foster-Burnell (@orfoster) January 25, 2016
Source: Oli Foster-Burnell (Twitter)
Refurbished Apple TV 4 Now Available on Apple Online Store
Apple has added refurbished Apple TV 4 models to its online store for refurbished products, less than a week after refurbished 12-inch Retina MacBook models became available.
The base model with 32GB storage is available for $129, compared to its regular $149 price, while the 64GB model costs $169, down from $199. The total savings are between $20 and $30.
While these are Apple’s best prices for the new Apple TV, RadioShack is currently selling brand new 32GB and 64GB models bundled with an HDMI cable online for only $119.98 and $169.98 respectively. There is a $5.95 shipping fee on all orders.
The fourth-generation Apple TV was released in October 2015, and features an App Store, Siri and tvOS software. Earlier today, Apple seeded the second beta of tvOS 9.2, which introduces support for Bluetooth keyboards, app folders, a new look for the App Switcher interface, MapKit, additional Siri languages and more.
(Thanks, Jeremy!)
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VirnetX Asking For $532 Million From Apple in Patent Retrial
VirnetX Holding Corporation is asking for $532 million from Apple for using patented technology for communication services like FaceTime, iMessage and more, the firm told a federal jury today, according to Bloomberg.
“Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission,” VirnetX lawyer Brad Caldwell of Caldwell Cassady told the jury in Tyler, Texas.
Greg Arovas, Apple’s lawyer, said that Apple believes in “fairness and protecting intellectual property,” noting that VirnetX “keeps moving the boundary” and asking for “more and more and more” money. In 2012, the firm was awarded $368 million in a jury trial. However, the decision was thrown out in 2014 as the verdict was influenced by the instructions given to the jury during the trial.
The patent suit can be traced back to 2010 over a pair of patents related to virtual private networking (VPN) connectivity. This retrial, which will last through next week, will largely focus on whether any VirnetX patents are infringed in either FaceTime or iMessage. Apple was already found to be infringing the patents with its VPN On Demand service. Apple cannot make the same arguments they made in the first trial, however.
VirnetX makes a majority of its revenue on patent licensing. Arovas said that, on a per-unit basis, VirnetX’s $200 million settlement with Microsoft over similar violations is less than a tenth of what its currently seeking against Apple.
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Microsoft to Bring Windows Phone Keyboard to iOS With Unique One-Handed Mode
Microsoft is working on bringing its Word Flow Windows Phone keyboard to iOS devices and new images shared by The Verge offer a look at some of the included features, such as a one-handed mode for larger phones like the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.
To enable one-handed typing, the keyboard has an arc-like design with letters radiating out from the iPhone’s display to be reached with just a thumb. The keyboard can be used this way on either the left or right side of the device, so it works for both right-handed and left-handed users. Microsoft’s own devices have a one-handed mode, but it shrinks the letters down to one side rather than rearranging the keys.
Microsoft’s upcoming iOS keyboard also has a standard view like any other third-party keyboard, and it’s said to be similar in design to the Word Flow keyboard used on Windows 10 Mobile devices. The Word Flow keyboard, first introduced with Windows Phone 8.1, is seen as a defining feature of the mobile Windows experience.
It features swipe-based typing like the third-party Swype keyboard on iOS, and it also features a built-in word prediction engine, automatic word corrections and shortcuts, multi-language support, emoji recommendations when typing, and more.
News of Microsoft’s work on a third-party iOS keyboard first surfaced earlier this month after Microsoft began sending out beta invites to select people for testing purposes. It is not known when the keyboard might be ready to launch to the public, but The Verge says it will be available “in the coming months.”
Third-party keyboards have not yet been widely adopted on iOS devices due to ongoing issues with slowness, crashing, and other bugs, so it remains to be seen if Microsoft’s one-handed mode will win over iOS users.
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Seeing Samsung apps on iOS might be a reality in the near future
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It’s no secret that there is no love lost between Samsung and Apple – their long-running, bitter patent infringement lawsuit is probably the best example of this. Despite this bad blood, it sounds like Samsung is looking beyond its hate to do something a little uncharacteristic for them – putting Samsung apps on iOS. We know that Samsung has already committed to iOS support for the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch, but this latest report appears to suggest that there is a lot more coming from Samsung to Apple’s devices.
According to SamMobile, Samsung is considering porting its Gear Fit Manager, S Health, Level, and Smart Camera apps to iOS as alternatives to what already exists on iOS and allows for the Gear Fit wearable to be paired with the platform. Perhaps the most surprising news among all of this is that Samsung is working on a way to add iOS support for the gigantic Galaxy View – the idea is to allow an iOS device stream its material to a Galaxy View tablet, not unlike how a Chromecast streams to a TV. Overall, it might seem like an unusual move from Samsung given how closed Samsung has kept their ecosystem in the past, but it might turn out to be a stroke of genius – only time will tell.
What do you think about Samsung putting Samsung apps on iOS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: SamMobile
The post Seeing Samsung apps on iOS might be a reality in the near future appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Apple Seeds Second OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan Beta to Developers
Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.4 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after seeding the first OS X 10.11.4 beta and a week after releasing OS X 10.11.3.
The second OS X 10.11.4 beta can be downloaded through the Apple Developer Center or via the Software Update Mechanism in the Mac App Store.
OS X 10.11.4 includes a couple of new features, such as the ability to support password protected notes in the Notes app, but like the recent OS X 10.11.3 update, it appears to focus primarily on under-the-hood bug fixes and performance improvements with few noticeable outward-facing changes.
We’ll update this post with any new features that are discovered in the second beta of OS X 10.11.4.
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Apple Seeds Second WatchOS 2.2 Beta to Developers
Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming watchOS 2.2 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the first watchOS 2.2 beta and more than a month after releasing watchOS 2.1, the first major update to the watchOS 2 operating system that runs on the Apple Watch.
The second watchOS 2.2 beta can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on an iPhone running the iOS 9.3 beta by going to General –> Software update. To install the update, the Apple Watch must have 50 percent battery, it must be placed on the Apple Watch charger, and it must be in range of the iPhone.
watchOS 2.2, along with iOS 9.3, introduces support for pairing multiple Apple Watches with a single iPhone. Both updates are required, with each watch running watchOS 2.2 and each iPhone running iOS 9.3.
There are were no other obvious outward-facing changes introduced in the first watchOS 2.2 beta aside from an update to the Maps app, but the update undoubtedly includes under-the-hood performance updates and bug fixes to address issues that have been discovered since the release of watchOS 2.1.
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