Greetings, Mac users!

It certainly has been a long time since I last posted. Time sure can get away from a person when they wear as many hats as I do though. Anyway, I’ll make my oft-repeated pledge to post more often, and work on doing better going forward. Regardless, I thank you all for being patient with me. I’m grateful for each and every one of you!

To start with, I have iPhone Photography class news!

I have one class scheduled at the Ah Haa School in Telluride for next Sunday, Feb. 25th, but it’s already full! So I went ahead and scheduled another one for Sunday, March 24th, 1-4 pm, again at the Ah Haa School in Telluride. Here’s the link to sign up. Here’s the class blurb as well:

“Learn the art of capturing truly compelling photos with your iPhone.

Are you a recent iPhone convert, or do you simply struggle to take decent photos with your “iDevice”? As photographers have been discovering for years now, the best camera is the one you have with you. In recent years, the quality of the cameras in smartphones like the iPhone has simply exploded, and as the camera specs improve with each new version (not to mention the addition of multiple lenses!), you always have an amazingly capable camera with you. This class will help you learn the art of capturing truly great photos using your iPhone. (Lesson 1: Stop treating it like a point-and-shoot camera.) This class will include both technical instruction and outdoor experimentation, followed by an indoor critique session. As a bonus, we’ll spend time learning about some of the best alternative camera apps available for your iPhone as well.”

I hope to see some of you there!

Next up, I have to remind everyone again about the ever increasing prevalence of scams.

I simply can’t put it more simply and succinctly than this:

You cannot trust ANYTHING you receive these days, whether it’s a phone call, text, email or popup on your computer. No matter how real/legitimate it appears, you simply can’t trust it.

You need to resist the urge to respond or click on anything in the message, no matter how urgent it appears. In fact, the more urgent and/or threatening it appears (“you’ll lose all your photos” or “you’ll damage your computer”), the more likely it’s a scam! If you need to reassure yourself that it’s not real, visit the actual website of the entity that supposedly sent the alert/message, and see if there’s any sort of alert there. And when you do that, make sure you don’t use Google or any other search engine to look up the website/email/phone number of the entity, because search engines are often loaded with scam ‘ad’ search results at the top of the list. In other words, some scammer has paid Google to list a phony site, pretending to be Apple.com, McAfee.com, Norton.com, etc., right at the top of the list and they’re just another version of the phishing scam you’re trying to avoid in the first place. I’m afraid this is just how bad things have gotten in the past few years. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse, now that AI is taking off like it is. Again, that’s why I have to keep reminding everyone not to trust ANYTHING they get on their devices that they can’t confirm independently.

And not to scare you, but AI is also going to make it so we’ll have to be even more vigilant, as they’re already starting to create ‘deep fakes’ of people’s voices, so that they can attempt phone scams like pretending to be a family member claiming to be in trouble and needing money wired to them immediately. Some sites are recommending that we all create a “safe word” for our family members (and do it in person, not via phone, text or email) so that when presented with something like this, you can ask, “what’s the safe word”, and if the person on the other end doesn’t know it, you know you’re being scammed. It obviously needs to be something that only the family knows, and isn’t something that would be in our social media anywhere, like a pet’s name or something. A favorite book title from our youth, or the middle name of a distant relative, something like that.

I know this all seems more than a bit crazy, or sci-fi, but that’s where we’ve come folks, so get ready for it. I imagine I’ll be getting even more calls than I usually do after you all read this, but so be it. 邏

I’m only repeating these examples so much because I do get so many calls, several a week, from people wondering if something they’ve received is legitimate, and it almost never is! Seriously, over 99% of the time, it’s not, no matter how real it looks.

Some of you may have read about the Colorado State Public Defender system being hit by ransomware a week or so ago. My younger daughter, Louisa, graduated law school last year and became a PD in Ft. Collins in January. According to her, everything in their system is still locked down, and there’s no estimate for when they might get it back up. It’s really something…

I wanted to find something positive to wrap up with, but this has gotten so long that I think I’ll just stop here. I’ll post again soon, with something other than bad news about technology!

Take care, all! John