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Videos by Andy Slye

Category: Guides (Page 10 of 18)

how-to-backup-mac-time-machine

How to Backup Mac with Time Machine

October 21, 2014 / / 1,545 Comments

Video Transcipt:

In this video I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac using Time Machine. So you’re watching this video right now because you’re serious about backing up your Mac so congratulations you’re in the right place. Everybody needs to be backing up their data and their computer because there is always a possibility of something like your hard drive crashing or God forbid like somebody stealing your Mac or you know just files getting accidentally deleted. So let’s go over how to backup your Mac. It’s super simple, and you won’t even have to think about it once you have it set up. So the first thing you need to do is make sure you have an external hard drive that is at least the same capacity as your Mac’s hard drive or preferably even larger. So I’m going to leave an Amazon link right in the description below to the best external hard drive. The one that I use is a Western Digital external hard drive. That’s what I use to back up my Mac, and it’s the best. This one I’ve never had a problem with so that link will be in the description below. So once you have an external hard drive the next thing you need to do is just plug it in and connect it to your Mac using the USB cable. And the hard drive will show up on the desktop right there on the right side. You can double-click on that to enter it or you can open up the Finder and find it there. Okay so my external hard drive is connected. The next thing we’re going to do is open up Time Machine so the easiest way is to just search Spotlight for Time Machine then click Setup Time Machine. Now we’re going to turn Time Machine on real quick. Once you turn Time Machine on you’ll see your external drive here in the list so select your external drive in the list then click Use Disk. You can also choose encrypt that backup, we’re not gonna do that right now. So here is Time Machine. This is what it looks like. Shows your external hard drive name, shows you how much space is available on your external drive, shows you when your oldest backup is, your latest backup, and the next backup. Okay then I want to check this box that says “Show Time Machine in menu bar”. So that means we got a little time machine icon in the menu bar up top. We’re going to go over that just a second. So click the options tab or the options button. And this is where you can add folders that you want to exclude from the backup. Okay so I’m not going to add any because I want to back up everything on my Mac hard drive so I’m going to leave that the way it is by default. And Time Machine will start the backup automatically or you can go up to Time Machine icon and choose “Back up now”. And when you click the Time Machine icon you can see the info if it’s backing up. You see mine is currently backing up right now. I can skip it. I can enter Time Machine, and I can open Time Machine preferences. The first initial backup will take a while. I have 400 some gigabytes and it took a couple hours, about 2 hours for mine. So once it’s done you can see the details. You can open up your external drive and go into the backups folder here and just see that what it backed up. And you can see that it backed up my whole entire Macintosh hard drive. That’s what we want is a successful backup and if you leave that hard drive connected it will back up automatically every hour and then you can actually just turn the backup external hard drive off and disconnect it and then connect it whenever you want to back up again. So let’s enter Time Machine. Now this is the Time Machine and it shows you all the recent backups you’ve done, all the backups that you have available. So if you ever want to go and recover a deleted file you can do this so at the bottom right you can choose the backup that you want to go to and click on it and then you go and browse for a file that you want to recover. And once you find one you can just click that Restore button at the bottom right and then you can exit out. And it’ll recover that deleted file so that’s just a quick overview over the Time Machine UI right there. So that’s all there is to it basically guys. That is very simple. Time Machine is awesome. Once you set it up for the first time you won’t need to mess with it again. So now you know how to backup your Mac. Hakuna Matata. No worries, you’re good to go. Thank you so much for watching guys if you like this video make sure you give it a thumbs-up and subscribe to this channel for more videos like this in the future.

By Andy Slye

cheapest-iphone-plan

Cheapest iPhone Plan: The Ultimate Guide

October 18, 2014 / / 2,380 Comments

How does unlimited data, unlimited texts, and unlimited calling sound? How does $30 a month sound? How does contract-free and upgrading your phone anytime sound? This is the ultimate guide to the best and cheapest iPhone plan.

The Plan & What You’ll Need

I switched to this plan because it was too good to pass up. It’s best for individuals with just one line. It’s a prepaid plan from T-Mobile ($30/month for unlimited web, unlimited texts, and 100 calling minutes). You may be saying “Whoa Andy, hold up. 100 calling minutes is not enough!”. Here’s where my tech methods (yes I went there) comes into play. I will show you a few tricks you can do to avoid going over the 100 minute limit and basically get unlimited everything. Now I’ll explain how you can get this plan for yourself.

You’ll need the following:

Tip for AT&T iPhone owners: If you already own a GSM AT&T iPhone you have 2 options to unlock it. If you’re 18 months or more into your 2-year contract you can get it unlocked for free from AT&T by submitting an unlock request. If you’re not 18 months into your contract you can get your iPhone unlocked via eBay.

Activating Your New Plan

Once you have your unlocked or contract-free T-Mobile iPhone and the T-Mobile SIM card starter kit, visit this page to start your online activation. It’s a super simple process. T-Mobile walks you through it, hand in hand.

Select the $30/month Unlimited Web & Text and 100 talk minutes plan during activation. You can choose to activate a new phone number or transfer your current number if you have one. If you choose to transfer an existing number, it may take up to 24 hours for the transfer to complete. My number transfer took less than 12 hours.

Bingo! You now have the cheapest iPhone plan. Now what about that 100 talk minutes? Here are some tips to avoid going over that limit.

How to Stay Under 100 Talk Minutes

To stay under the 100 talk minutes limit, you’ll need to make most of your calls over WiFi or your cellular data connection. To do that you’ll first need to:

  1. Sign up for a free Google Voice number
  2. Install the free Google Hangouts iPhone app

Using the Hangouts iPhone app you can make calls to any phone number, and it will use your data connection (WiFi or 4G/LTE) to make the calls. It won’t use any of your voice minutes. Check out this page for details about using the Hangouts app to make calls.

Another way to get around the limit is to use FaceTime Audio if you’re calling another iPhone user. It operates in the same way as the Hangouts app in the sense that it uses your WiFi or cellular data connection to make the calls. See this page for more details.

Now you’re all set up on the cheapest iPhone plan and basically getting unlimited everything! Enjoy your new monthly cash savings. Don’t forget this is prepaid so you’re not under any contract and you can upgrade your phone anytime. Doesn’t get any better than that, folks.

By Andy Slye

how to install windows 8 on mac

How to Install Windows 8 on Mac – Parallels 9 Tutorial

June 30, 2014 / / 1,544 Comments

In this video I will be showing you how to install Windows 8 on your Mac. So this method of installing Windows 8 on your Mac requires two programs: Parallels and Windows 8. Both links to these programs will be in the description below. So right in the description below you can click links to these programs where you can get these. Parallels is an application for the Mac that allows you to run Windows or other operating systems virtually right inside your Mac. It works perfectly. I love it. It’s the best way to run Windows on your Mac. Also you’ll need a copy of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. I’ll leave the link to the Amazon product page on Amazon for the Windows 8.1 Pro full version where you can get that.

Once you have Windows 8 and also once you have Parallels installed on your Mac you can go ahead and get started. So let’s open up Parallels on my Mac. I already have Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 installed virtually. Now I’m going to show you how to install Windows 8 from a clean slate using Parallels on your Mac. So let’s go to the plus sign and hit “New”. Then we’re going to choose the one that says “Install Windows or another OS from DVD or image file”. Hit “Continue”. On this screen you choose where you want to install it from so if you have Windows 8 on a disc, on a DVD disc you will choose DVD. Load it into your DVD drive on your Mac then hit “Continue”. If you have an image file you can choose image file. So choose whichever one you have.

On this screen you’ll enter the product key that came with your Windows 8 version or Windows 8.1 whichever one you have. On this screen you will choose how you want Windows 8.1 to perform. I always choose “Like a PC” because I like it to just be a separate entity from my Mac with some integration as well. You can still copy and paste from your Mac to your Windows virtual machine, but you can also choose “Like a Mac” where it lets you run Windows programs right from the Mac desktop, all that good stuff. But I just like to keep it separate and I just choose “Like a PC”. Here I just choose “Like Windows 8” so you don’t have to mess around with any other external programs, third party programs. Hit “Continue”.

On this screen just give your Windows Virtual Machine a name so whatever it is: Windows 7 or Windows 8, Windows 8.1, just give it a name then hit “Continue”. Alright and Parallels will start to install Windows 8 on your Mac in this little box. And just let it run depending on how fast your computer is, your setup, what kind of processor you have, that will determine how fast this will go. It should go by pretty quickly though. And during the setup it will ask you what version of Windows 8 you have: if you have Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro. Choose whatever one you have. Hit “Next” and then it will start to install Windows 8 on your Mac. Now I’ll probably speed this portion up for the sake of this video.

Okay after the setup completes Windows will automatically restart. Alright after Windows 8 gets done doing all its automatic installation and setting everything up it’ll bring you to the Windows 8 Start screen and then you can actually maximize the Parallels window to make your Windows 8 full screen like you’re on a Windows 8 system. And you can go in here and start playing around and setting up your Windows system. That’s how easy it is. Parallels makes it super easy to get everything set up automatically for you so you can get right into Windows 8 and start doing your thing. So that’s how to install Windows 8 on your Mac using Parallels. I hope this video helped you out. If you have any questions just leave a comment down below. I’ll try to get back to you. Thank you so much for watching. Keep having fun out there and make sure you subscribe to this channel as well and give this video a thumbs-up. I’ll talk to you guys later. Bye.

By Andy Slye

how to install multiple mac apps automatically

How to Install Multiple Mac Apps Automatically

June 25, 2014 / / 1,541 Comments

GetMacApps.com

Transcript:

What’s up? It’s Andy with MyTechMethods. In this video I’ll be showing you how to install multiple Mac apps at once automatically using a free web app. So if you’re a Mac user and you want to install multiple apps at once, and you want to save a lot of time, a lot of effort, this website will help you out. It’s called GetMacApps.com and it lists a bunch of the most popular free Mac Apps on here, and you can go down here and just select any app that you want to install. You can select all of them if you want to and then once you select all the apps that you want to install on your Mac you just click this button called Install These. And the instructions for this website are right here on the left if you want to just follow those but for this video I’ll just show you how to do it really quickly. So if you go through here select all the ones that you want, I’m just going to select an app that I don’t have on my system currently which is, I don’t have Audacity so I’ll just select that. But you like I said you can select all the apps that you want and then click this little button here and it’ll give you this code here. What you want to do is just copy this code then open up terminal on your Mac. Okay now once you’re in terminal you’re just gonna paste that code into your terminal that you just copied and then hit enter. It’s going to install all the apps you selected in the background automatically, and you can go get your coffee, get your caffeine in for the day, come back and it’ll be done. The time it takes will depend on how many apps you selected to install. This one went pretty quickly because it was only one app so there you go it’s done. And then once I close Terminal out I can go and search for my apps and there it is. Audacity has been installed and there it is. So that is an awesome website for Mac users. Bookmark that. It’s called GetMacApps.com. It’ll definitely come in handy if you get a new Mac or you had to reinstall for some reason. You can just reinstall all those apps all at once automatically. I hope this was helpful to you. If you’re a Windows user as well you can use a similar site called Ninite.com which is really awesome. It does the same thing for Windows. It’s probably is a little easier actually so check that out. I did a video on that. You can click that little annotation. It’ll take you to that video if you’re a Windows user. Make sure you give this video a thumbs-up and subscribe to my channel. Thank you so much for watching. Keep having fun out there and I will talk to you later.

By Andy Slye

how-to-save-battery-ios-7

How to Save Battery on iOS 7

April 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

In this video I’ll show you how to save battery on iOS 7. All of these tips apply to any iOS 7 device: iPhone, iPod, and iPad

Tip 1: End all background running apps once a day. To do this all you have to do is is double tap the home button and swipe up on each app to end the background process. This will save battery when you’re not using it.

Tip 2: Enable airplane mode when you’re not using the network or the cellular data on your device. So normally when I go to bed I just swipe up to enable airplane mode by tapping on the airplane icon. It shuts off all data connections and saves battery life.

Tip 3: Enable auto brightness or just lower your brightness level overall on your device. Go to settings then go to wallpapers and brightness and you can enable auto brightness if it’s not already enabled. Also you can just turn down your overall brightness there using the scroll bar. Keep auto brightness enabled to extend battery life on your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

Tip 4: Disable Bluetooth and Airdrop if you’re not using those features.

Tip 5: Disable any unnecessary notifications in your notification center. Go to Settings then Notification Center and disable any of these that you do not need notifications for. You can choose to disable all of them or just certain ones depending on which app it is so you can customize it to your liking.

Tip 6: Disable unnecessary location services. So in Settings go to privacy and then location services you can choose to turn location services on but only turn it on for certain apps. I disabled location services for any app that does not need it. A lot of these apps don’t need your location information. That’ll save battery life for sure.

Tip 7: Disable unnecessary system services. Scroll to the bottom and tap on system services and disable these three options: diagnostics and usage, location-based iAds, and popular near me. These three apps are basically unnecessary for the majority of iPhone users so turn those off. Also turn off frequent locations.

Tip 8: Limit ad tracking. Under Settings go back to privacy and at the bottom you see an advertising tab. Tap on that and make sure that your limit ad tracking is enabled. You want to limit the ad tracking that your iPhone is doing in the background.

Tip 9: Disable Diagnostics & Usage reports. Go into Settings go to General go to About scroll to the bottom and go to diagnostics and usage and make sure that the “Don’t send” is checked. If you want to send that stuff and be a good citizen you can leave it on “Automatically send” but if you want to maximize your battery life you can change that.

Tip 10: Reduce motion. If you don’t care about the parallax 3D effects on the background and the transition effects for the app’s closing and opening go to Settings go to General, Accessibility go down to Reduce Motion.

Tip 11: Disable background app refresh. Go into settings then general and then tap on background app refresh. Disable it for all apps or enable it and then enable certain apps like I have. I turned off background app refresh for apps that I do not want to update in the background. That’ll save battery life especially when you have a lot of apps open at the same time.

Tip 12: Disable automatic updates by going into Settings go to the iTunes and App Store option. Here you can disable automatic downloads and automatic updates for music and apps. Also you can disable cellular data so it doesn’t use your cell data to do automatic downloads.

Tip 13: Configure Spotlight search settings. Go to Settings then go to General tap on spotlight search and here you can disable spotlight search for any app that you want. You can customize this list for any app that you do not need spotlight search for. Uncheck it and spotlight search will not index that app which will save battery life.

That is how to save battery life on iOS 7. I hope you enjoyed the tips. If you have any other tips that I didn’t cover or I missed just leave a comment below. Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thanks for watching!

By Andy Slye

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