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Apple Mail problem

This afternoon I wanted to show you a quick tip to avoid an Apple Mail problem I’ve seen a lot, particularly for people with btinternet.com email addresses, over the past couple of years.

Apple Mail has a trick up its sleeve, which when it works is great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work! There’s a setting which attenpts to amend the settings for your mail account whenever your mail provider changes its settings so that you continue to be able to send and receive mail. More often than not, the call I get is that a BT mail user now can’t send email, and when I look into it, Apple Mail has amended the settings for the outgoing mail server to the incorrect details (I have also seen a couple of people with incoming mail settings incorrectly changed).

There’s an easy fix for this, and that’s to turn the setting off before it goes wrong. It doesn’t matter if you use BT Mail, gmail, Outlook.com or something else…..mail settings rarely change (and if they do, the changes are usually well publicised in advance). So for my money, this setting is pretty pointless. I’d rather have it fixed in stone, so that when incoming or outgoing mails stop working, I know it’s something else that’s wrong.

To find the setting, go into Apple Mail/Preferences/Accounts and click in the Advanced tab for each of your Mail accounts. The first setting (‘Automatically detect and maintain account settings’) should be turned off i.e. unticked.

If you find you’re in a situation where Mail suddenly stops working for you, check if this setting is turned on, and then you’ll need to double check the incoming and outgoing servers are set correctly for your account. […]

By |October 1st, 2015|Help and Advice|0 Comments
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About todays release of OS X El Capitan

Today, September 30th, marks the release of OS X El Capitan, the latest version (10,11) of OS X. As always I strongly recommend holding off installing it for a little while until any last minute bugs have been discovered and fixed. As always, I expect most Mac users to completely ignore that advice and go ahead anyway! So I have a couple of thoughts for you before you upgrade.

This latest release is a traditional minor upgrade to Yosemite(similar to how Snow Leopard was to Leopard, and Mountain Lion was to Lion). There are plenty of new features added (see here for more info), and minor tweaks to how things are done, but its not a complete reworking. As such, the chances are that it won’t create any significant problems to Mac users on release. But if you use your Mac as a major part of how you make your income, let other people find that out for you – there’s nothing in El Capitan that you can’t wait a couple of weeks for!

If you’re still desperate to go ahead…..please make sure you do a backup of your entire system before performing the upgrade. If the upgrade causes you problems, at least you’ll be able to go backwards and carry on working. I’ve written plenty of stuff about backing up, the most applicable being this one.

And whenever you do the upgrade, I strongly recommend you create installable media for your own use. This will save you downloading the whole 6Gb again should you need to reinstall the new OS on any of your computers. You’ll need to stop the upgrade happening and run a manual process before going ahead, and I did document this for an […]

By |September 30th, 2015|Apple Software News, Help and Advice|0 Comments
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Backup before upgrading to iOS9

OK, for those of you who are about to ignore my earlier advice saying that you should wait a short while before upgrading to iOS9, PLEASE read the following!

If you have to, absolutely, must install iOS9 as soon as it releases there’s one thing you need to do before you go ahead. The chances are that everything will be absolutely fine and you won’t reget it, but on the off chance that you are unlucky (and Apple have released some duff updates previously – see this for example), you’ll be happy you’ve followed my advice below.

Make sure you have at least one good backup of your device today. See below for more details

Carry on with the update if you really insist (but I’d rather you waited 72 hours, honestly)
How to backup
The best way to backup is by connecting to a computer and using iTunes. If you don’t have a computer, do you have a friend that does? Failing that you’re reliant on iCloud (good luck with that!).

1. Connect your iOS device to the computer with your lightning cable.
2. Just below the play controls you’ll see an icon for your device, click on that.
3. Go to the summary section and check that your iPad is backing up to this computer.
4. Select ‘Encrypt local backup’ and enter a password you will remember. This ensures that all confidential data (health data and passwords being the prime examples). Miss this step out and when you restore you’ll be prompted for all your passwords again.
5. Click backup now.

That’ll take 5-15 minutes or so depending on the capacity of your device, but it’ll mean that if the upgrade goes wrong, you’ll be able to go backwards. Trust me, you’ll […]

By |September 16th, 2015|Help and Advice|0 Comments
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Finding the right IT Support company for you

Like any other specialist area, IT (or generally, technology) is not something that everyone is capable of dealing with on their own. But how do you go about finding the right IT Support company for you? Well, it’s not as simple as ‘pick a card, any card’, there’s a lot more to it than that……

When it comes to things that are outside my area of expertise I accept that I need to build a relationship with someone who can help guide me in the right direction. At home, I wouldn’t attempt to make any repairs to the plumbing (I’m so cack handed when it comes to DIY, I’d certainly need someone to come and repair my attempt at a repair!), so I have a plumber that I know and trust. This extends into many fields (electrician, TV aerial guy, financial advisor, car mechanic etc.). At work, there’s a similar group tasks that are important, of which my knowledge is limited. Banking, tax matters, business insurance; they’re all jobs I hand over to people with more knowledge than me in their particular field.

From a small business perspective I see these specialist positions as forming my own unofficial ‘board’ – a group of specialists who are able to guide me in their respective fields towards my business goals. Your board members may include an accountant, a HR person, bank manager, and for many small businesses a technology person is essential.

But, whether you are looking for a support company at home or work, what you should look for when you search for someone? There’s a few common things you should look for so let’s look at those.
Trust
First and foremost, you need someone whose opinion and advice you trust. […]

By |September 1st, 2015|Help and Advice|0 Comments
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Looking for users with Apple Music problems

Like many people I was straight on board with Apple Music when it launched. Unlike some of them though, I’ve had no Apple Music problems whatsoever.

Today I’m trying to understand what problems people are getting, and see if I can help explain whether their problems are caused by the Apple Music software, or their understanding of how it works. I’ve had a couple of people with issues recently, all of which have been resolved by having it set up correctly on their devices. Like many iCloud services, if you use multiple devices, settings on one can affect the others and cause you some problems

If you’re an Apple Music subscriber and are having problems using it, please get in touch with me using the following form so that I can try to get some idea of what problems people are seeing. Anyone who replies will have their Apple Music problems looked at (and I’ll do my best to resolve them for you), and then I’ll collate some information based on the replies so I can put some blog posts together to help you in future.

By |August 18th, 2015|Help and Advice|0 Comments
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