November 2016 – The MacMAD Apple User Group

Fight Calendar Spam

Recently, I have been receiving mysterious spam calendar invitations like the one below. You may have received them also.

fullsizeoutput_6b35 I never saw a corresponding email. Even worse, the only options are accept or decline. Either one sends a message back to the spammer, confirming my email address! This junk is coming through your iCloud account. Here are instructions for preventing this type of spam from The Dangling Pointer blog. �

Since this is associated with your iCloud calendar, it affects both iOS and Macintosh.

They probably didn’t get your email address from anywhere. It appears they are trying big lists of likely email addresses @icloud.com.

Magnetic Car Mount for iPhone

I like this small magnetic mount to hold your phone on your car dash. It clips onto the air vent. The magnet only grips your phone because you must stick a piece of steel (supplied) onto the back of your phone. That metal piece is thin enough so that it doesn’t interfere with even the very thin Apple iPhone case.

The magnetic attraction is strong enough to hold your phone in place unless you crash.

The clip holding the mount to the air vent isn’t quite as strong. It has beefy rubber jaws and a strong spring, but sometimes the mechanism sticks, resulting in a less-than-tight grip. I lubricated mine with some silicon spray and worked it back and forth, and it gets a good grip now.

I like this mount because when you get in the car, you can just stick the phone up there. No fooling around with clamps, etc.� — it just sticks on and you are ready to go. In most cars, it won’t block your view out the windshield or your view of the instruments. It’s ideal if you use your phone for navigation. You have a few inches of flexibility up or down as to where you place the phone for the best positioning in your car.

Use Apple Pay at Gas Stations

I like the convenience of Apple Pay and have been looking for places that accept it. It seems like paying for gas at the pump with Apple Pay would be convenient and more secure than using your credit card directly.

Gas purchases are unlike other purchases because you normally have to present (scan) your card before pumping gas, and before the total value of the purchase is known.

There seem to be three levels of support for Apple Pay at service stations:

Go Inside and Prepay ,”Preauthorize”, a maximum limit (BP, Kangaroo, CircleK, WaWa)
Download an App that works with Apple Pay (Exxon-Mobile’s Speedpass+ App)
Apple Pay works at the pump (requires new hardware at the pumps) (Texaco/Chevron)

Method 1 is� pretty useless. Any convenience factor is destroyed by having to go inside first. At BP, Discover actually rejected the transaction, but it went through on Visa. After pumping gas, I went back inside to get my receipt. The clerk was unable to print a final receipt. The only reason I would ever do this again is if my phone was the only method of payment I had with me.

When I heard about the Speedpass+ App in method 2, I was skeptical about needing an additional app, but it does have advantages. Since it doesn’t require any new hardware at the pump, it can roll out immediately to all Exxon Mobile stations. The App knows which station you are at via GPS. You tell it what pump you are at, and you can complete the transaction without holding your phone up to the pump. So, you can pay without getting out of your car, if you want to.

Method 3 is probably what you were expecting from a gas station that accepts Apple Pay at the pump. You hold your phone near the pump. Your phone and the pump talk to each other via NFC. Once you begin the transaction, you have 45 seconds to start pumping gas. Chevron/Texaco is leading the pack by rolling this out extensively.

Any method of using Apple Pay is more secure than swiping your card and will prevent your card number from being stolen by scanners on the pump, or by hacked or compromised pumps. This is because Apple Pay does not give the merchant your real credit card number, but rather a one-time credit card number valid for that transaction only.

Tutorials Online

There are several sources of helpful Macintosh and iOS (iPhone and iPad) tutorials available to you online.

Apple has a series of short tutorials on various subjects. They used to have video tutorials. I don’t see those anymore. Instead, they have short well-illustrated tutorial pages. These are accessible from the Apple Support page.

If you prefer video tutorials, take a look at www.themacu.com . The videos on their Quick Lessons blog are free. There’s a nice list of interesting topics. You can buy their longer tutorials through the App store. Their App is called TMU Tutorials. Macintosh “All Access” is $19.99.

ScreenCastsONLINE has quite a complete collection of thorough Mac and iOS tutorial videos. A subscription to ScreenCasts Online is $21 per quarter.

There is also a free ScreenCastsONLINE YouTube channel with useful tips of the week.

If you watch someone else using an App, you usually have that Aha moment when you think “I could do that!”.� So, take a look at some of these useful tutorials and get more out of your Mac, iPad or iPhone.