Brad is moving to a Panasonic GH4 camera, which he will shoot in 4K and then downgrade to 1080p. He's planning on getting a Mac Pro. Leo says that's what the Mac Pro is designed for 4K. Leo says it's an amazing machine. But Brad is worried because Leo's Mac Pro wasn't all that great and he wasn't happy with it.
Michael called in to say that he had an issue with Apple, so he took Leo's advice and wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook. He bought a new MacBook Pro from Apple, and was in the Apple store every week because of issues he was having with it. After sending a letter to Tim Cook, he got a call from Cook's office. They assigned him a tech, and followed up with him every day on the different things they had tried. After working with them for 10 days, his drive failed completely. He sent the computer into Apple, and they sent it back working perfectly.
The spinning beach ball means the Mac is working on something. This could be a failure in the program, the operating system, or the hard drive. As computers get older, hard drives get harder to read, and the computer takes longer. Since James' iMac is quite old now, it may be time for a new one. This symptom is difficult to diagnose accurately.
Mike bought a MacBook Pro recently, updating it through Apple's build to order interface. He needs a CD player, though. Leo says that the base model is the only one that still has a CD player, but the down side is, it also has a spinning hard drive and no retina display. The problem is, for $100 more, Mike could've gotten a retina display and much faster performance with an SSD drive. If he doesn't need all that, it's fine. But he won't save much doing it.
Roger wants to get a Mac Mini, but Apple hasn't upgraded it in a long time (Oct 2012). Leo says that is a common complaint with Mac fans. It's a shame too, because it's very affordable and a great product. It seems like Apple doesn't care about anything but mobile these days. It's like they have a limited attention span. They're all mobile now with iPhones and iPads, and they are less worried about the desktop computing experience. Leo's been hearing rumors for months about a new Mac Mini coming, but nothing has materialized.
Leo wants to know what Chris does when he travels and what laptop he uses. Chris says he uses a MacBook Air. It's nice and compact and works great on airline tray tables. Since his has an i7 processor, it really does a great job managing his photos. It may take awhile to render, but it works good enough. In his book "1 Hour 1000 Pics", he talks about how to use your computer to manage and weed out your images. It's more about your discipline.
Dave has a new MacPro, but he's not so sure it's the "latest and greatest" computer out there. Leo agrees. It's not better than the current Haswell processors, and at that price, Dave's not really getting more speed then a comparable iMac for every day tasks.
There's a new phishing scam on that spoofs the safari apple.com address. Note the address looks like safari.apple.com but it's really "com-rewards.in." Leo says to look at the top of your browser and you'll see where it really comes from. Never buy into a promise of a "special gift," either. That's almost always a scam.
Todd would like to have separate Apple IDs for his kids. Leo says users can have up to 5 Apple IDs per credit card, but only two Apple IDs per device. iTunes allows 10 devices with 5 computers. Todd will have to remember to deauthorize them when he stops using a device.
Leo also says that he can have as many iCloud accounts as he wants, and that's good for backing up photos to Photostream. Todd can have a separate iCloud account for Photostream and then a separate Apple ID for purchases and iMessages.
Apple has released iOS 7.1 for iPhone and iPad, and Leo says users should run, not walk, to install it. It solves a lot of problems that have creeped up. It does seem to have battery problems, however. Leo advises resetting the iPhone after you update it, that should clear out the "cruft" and get it back to it's usual battery life. Leo advises going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. Don't choose the "Erase All Content and Settings," as that will erase all data as well.
