Friday and Saturday, April 13 & 14, was our e-Waste event! We were beyond excited to be able to host this event for a second year in a row, and we were even happier when we received the final tallies and heard we collected 250,000pounds of e-Waste! Way to go Utah! Without your efforts to collect and transport outdated electronics to our collection point at the Maverik Center, we wouldn’t have been able to fill up as many semi trucks as we did.
Electronic waste, or e-Waste, is simply outdated electronics. Everything from computer towers to cell phones fall under the e-Waste umbrella. On Friday and Saturday, we collected pallets upon pallets of computer towers, CRT (tube) monitors, giant TV sets, printers and filled giant boxes with keyboards, mice and other smaller electronics.
If you recycled, we hope you scored one of our awesome drink koozies! Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to collect all the old electronics you had lying around and bringing them to our event! You helped reduce our overall footprint, reduce waste in landfills and greenhouse gas emissions, and participated in one awesome community effort!
You got your Mac, but weren’t too keen on springing for the AppleCare protection plan because it was just too much. Well we’ve heard your cries and are glad to be able to bring the price down for AppleCare on all Mac computers by $20. Your Mac computer comes with a standard 1 year warranty that protects it from everything, with the exception of theft and accidental damage. You also get 90 days of over the phone tech support as an added bonus.
AppleCare takes your warranty, and the 90 days of phone support, out to three years from the original date the Mac was bought. AppleCare is a great service and will save you money over the life of your Mac if you run into any issues. Not only that, but if you are the kind of person who likes to sell your stuff for the new model every year or so, AppleCare helps to maintain your Mac’s resale value.
Use that extra $20 to buy yourself some cool apps from the Mac App Store, or go to lunch, add some gas to your car, the sky is the limit.
Let’s face it, there are a bunch of iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s users out there. I think it’s safe to state that most folks have their iPhones protected by some case or another. I think it’s also safe to state that most iPhone owners don’t carry an additional camera because of the exceptional lens with which the iPhone comes equipped. Well, now there’s an iPhone case that can keep your phone protected and give you the feeling that you’re sporting a high quality camera.
This is the iCam. While it won’t improve the photo quality of your iPhone snapshots, it will protect it from bumps, scratches, and drops. It could also be a great talking point when people ask you why your talking into your camera.
Got a favorite app or fun Mac doodad? Post it in our comments section or on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add Simply Mac to your circles on Google+.
If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 5 or later, chance are you’ve signed up for a free iCloud account. iCloud is a pretty nifty little service that gives iDevice users a bunch of free options to use with their Apple gadget, one of which is Photo Stream. Once you’ve enabled Photo Stream on your device, any pictures you take or screen shots you make will automatically get uploaded to the internet on your own Photo Stream. Photo Stream can be really great when used with iPhoto because all your pictures will already be on your computer without you having to connect a cable and sync anything, pretty slick. Well, lets say that you don’t have iPhoto running all the time. That means you’ll have to wait for iPhoto to open and retrieve the new photos from your iCloud account. I’m gonna show you a cool little trick to getting Photo Stream in your Finder sidebar or even in your Dock.
1. Get Started
Assuming you have iCloud and use Photo Stream, you’ll need to access your Finder’s Library folder. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Finder icon in your Dock, then click on the word “Go” from the menubar. With the “Go” menu open, press and hold down the “option” key on your keyboard. Library will appear in the list where it wasn’t before. Click on Library and navigate to Application Support > iLifeAssesManagement > assets > sub. Within this folder are all your Photo Stream photos. In the search bar, type the word “image”.
2. Keep Going
From the Kinds menu that appears, select “Image”. Next, click on “sub” from the gray bar, and then click the “Save” button under the search bar. A little diaglog box appears that lets you rename the Smart Folder we are creating and will let you add it to your sidebar. Just leave the save location as the default “Saved Searches”. This is a great option if you want quick access to your pictures from photo stream. If you want them even faster, next, I’ll explain how to add this folder to your dock.
3. Options
Right click on the Smart Folder you just created in your sidebar and select “Open Enclosing Folder” from the menu. You’ll notice you can also remove the folder from the sidebar if you don’t want or need it there anymore. Once you’ve opened the enclosing folder, you’ll see a folder with the name you gave your saved search.
Now, just click and drag it to your dock. Because it’s a folder, you’ll only be able to put it next to other folders or next to your trash. Now you have quick one click access to the photos from your Photo Stream without having to waiting for iPhoto. Unfortunately, this is a one way process, there is now way to drag photos into this folder and have them appear on your iDevice. Nevertheless, I’ve found this emensly helpful and hope you will too.
Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your circles on Google+.
It’s no surprise to most everybody who’s ever been inside an Apple Store or Apple Specialist, like Simply Mac, that Apple is making tons of money. Or, in CEO Tim Cook’s place, country loads of money. Apple’s stock has surpassed Google, the market’s always in fluctuation, but for the time being, Apple is doing fine. They’ve got over a billion dollars just lying around.
Tim Cook should be feelin’ fine with his paycheck. Bloomberg reports that “Tim Cook was the highest-paid chief executive officer in the U.S. last year,” he received “$378 million, [including] salary, perks and bonuses ($1.8 million) and a one-time stock award ($376.2 million), that extends over 10 years.”
Unless a miracle occurs or the economy collapses and our currency is worthless, I’m pretty sure most of us aren’t going to come close to seeing that kind of change in our wallets. I’d be satisfied with just his bonuses.
It’s been calculated that in a single year he’s made more money that the Kingdom of Tonga. It’s pretty clear that when your annual income exceeds that of a country, the company you head up is doin’ well. I think one of the most interesting aspects of these types of high rollers is how down to earth they tend to be. I would argue that it’s the reason I keep buying Apple’s products. It’s because I trust these guys, despite their gobs of moolah.
So you finally decided to spring for an iPad? One of the best parts about Apple products is the 1-year warranty. Outside of accidental damage or theft, you can rest easy knowing that you won’t be paying for part replacements or labor associated with the repair for your gadget for one year from the date of purchase. It also includes 90 days of phone support for troubleshooting, software problems, etc.
AppleCare is a pretty sweet deal because it takes the normal amount of protection and bumps it up to two years for your iPad. Not just two years of parts and labor coverage, but two years of phone support for all the questions you might have about your new iPad. That’s why this deal of the week is so great.
