If you come from the Windows world, uninstalling apps on a Mac might seem a bit odd to you. Unlike in Windows, where you go through a whole uninstall process, on a Mac there are no such hoops to jump through. To uninstall a Mac app, you simply highlight it in your application folder, and trash it. The problem, though, is that many Mac apps leave behind preference files and other breadcrumbs, even after you delete them. To remove all traces of an app from your Mac, delete it using AppCleaner.
Ask any computer expert, and she will stress the need for not only local backups, but offsite backups as well. One option to get offsite backups is to use an online service. For many years, I was a happy subscriber to Carbonite. As the number of computers in my household grew, however, I needed a more economical solution. My wife and I each had a desktop and laptop, and I also ran a Windows virtual machine on one of my Macs. That made five systems that I needed to backup. After a bit of research, I settled on CrashPlan, and haven’t looked back. Not only is the CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited plan a good choice for a family with many computers, but CrashPlan might also be a good choice for you if you don’t want to pay anything at all.
We’ve already talked about how you can encrypt files in Evernote. Two of the three methods in that post involved using other programs (one of which is also available on OS X). If you’re on a Mac, though, and want to encrypt PDF files and load them into Evernote, you don’t need any third-party programs at all. OS X can handle encrypting a PDF and getting it into Evernote, all on its own. There’s one slight catch, though.
Some Mac task management apps allow you to use a keystroke to create a task from an Apple Mail message, and then have that task link back to the Mail message. This is particularly handy if, like me, many of your tasks originate from Mail messages. If you’re a Toodledo user, you can do this as well, although it will require you to purchase a third-party Mail plugin.
Consider this post to be a gripe. The gripe is about iCloud, the Apple voodoo that will keep all of your documents, photographs, and music magically in sync between your iOS and OS X devices. Just turn it on and it works, without any further effort on your part. Edit a document on your iPad, and there it is waiting for you when you pick up your Mac. Except that it doesn’t quite work that way if you’re a Mac user.
