Updating to Yosemite

Students and teachers who may now update their laptop to the new operating system, Mac OSX 10.10 "Yosemite."  Feature improvements include 

• a smoother looking and more visually appealing interface, 
• the ability to AirDrop between MacOS and iOS devices, 
• improvements to iCloud drive (cloud storage)
• new versions of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band are now FREE.

Yosemite default desktop image.

You will need to login to the App Store with an account to download the update.  Most people created an account when they updated to Mavericks (Mac OS 10.9) last spring.  If you do not have an account and would like to create an account without using a credit card, follow the instructions here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2534

Creating an App Store account without a credit card.

Individuals should expect the download to take about an hour and a half to download, then another half hour to install.  Once you install Yosemite, restart your laptop and run the free updates to Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, and Garage Band.

Free Updates with Yosemite.

Saving Pages Files

Some teachers and students are having trouble sending the files created with the new version of Pages.  This is giving people trouble, because our mail system doesn't know how to handle this new type of file, and they become corrupted.

There are three ways to solve this.  First and best option would be to use the File menu and Export the document as a Word document.  It will create a file that ends with the DOCX extension.  With this file, a user should be able to open and manipulate the file you created.

The second option would be to use the same File menu and Export the document as a PDF.  By doing this, it makes an image of what the file would look like which becomes very hard to change.  This is good when you don't want people changing your work.

The final option is to compress or "zip" the file.  Holding Control and clicking on the icon of the file will give you the option to compress the file.  The resulting file is a "zip" file that preserves the structure.  Emailing the "zip" file allows the recipient to open the file if they have the same version of Pages that you created it with or a newer one.