iCloud

Doug is a singing voice teacher who recently upgraded his Macbook Air with the new Apple M1 design. Leo says that Doug is the ideal candidate for the M1. But what Doug is experiencing is issues with his backups being restored. What Leo recommends is to use the old computer to upload all photos and videos to iCloud. Use the most recent version. The way the old iPhoto used to store them is in a big blob. Go to the Pictures folder and R/C on the library. Select "open contents." There he will see the original photos folder. Copy that over.

Deborah is thinking of buying a thumbdrive called PhotoVault. Leo says that you don't really need them. They are overpriced. It's just a thumdrive with special software. You don't need that when you can go in the Cloud with Google Photos, Amazon Prime Photos, and even iCloud.

Alex's iCloud account nearly got hacked, but fortunately, his 2 Factor Authentication feature stopped it cold. Leo says that more companies are going to require authentication as a security measure. Everyone should use it. 

Charles is noticing several of his recent photo files aren't as large as they should be on his Mac Mini. Leo says that if Charles is using Apple Photos for an App to store his photos, to r/c on the photos library, and then select Show Package Contents, he'll see photo folders, including the "originals" photo folder. That'll verify his originals are there.

Al and his wife have decided to move everything up to the cloud and use a smaller Mac Air instead of his huge 27" iMac. He's uploaded everything up to Amazon. Will that be safe? Leo says it will, but it's a smart idea to have more than one backup option. Make a local backup copy and a second service in the cloud. Leo recommends Google Photos because it's free. If Al has iCloud, then he can turn on Cloud syncing and then sync them all. He can then optimize storage in Apple Photos and it'll eliminate the high res versions until he needs them, but he can still see them in Photos. 

Jim's wife has a 32GB iPhone and she keeps running out of space because iCloud keeps downloading the pictures back to her phone. Leo says to look in the Photo settings. Make sure that the "optimize phone storage" feature is enabled. It will keep the full rez photos in the cloud, and a lower rez version on your phone. The other option is to turn off automatic sync to iCloud. That will prevent iCloud from putting them back on the phone and once the user deletes them, they will stay deleted. Then use Google Photos to save photos to the cloud and delete them off the phone.

Sharon has an iPhone XR with a mess of reminders in it, along with notes. But when she updated the phone, her lists all disappeared. Leo says that there are a whole bunch of lists in reminders. So Sharon may have overlooked them. If they are missing, they might be on iCloud. How can she find them? She has no idea. Leo says to go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID. You can find that info in your phone settings. Once you log in, you can snoop around until you find it. It may be in notes.