Just Bought New MBA

[iubhounds]

I have been holding off purchasing the MBA. I moved to Mac in October 2010 with an iMac. That is still my "main" computer here at home. It works great with never a problem. Last fall I decided to upgrade my first generation iPad and ended up buying the iPad Mini w/Retina. I use that a lot but I see with the new MBA, it may not be used for anything more than a reader. It is great to use thought while watching football or college basketball games for in-game stats.

I initially bought the MBA for when I travel which includes more tent camping than anything else. I have a blog and it was much easier to type from a laptop, adding photos etc ... plus it has more memory as my iPad Mini is only 16Gb. I know I could add a case with a keyboard for the Mini but I never found a case that I really liked for that after looking at function, and price.

I found though while traveling a few weeks ago, that my iPhone 5S was the most valuable device for weather, texting friends, and the default map. Since the trip was scheduled for only a couple weeks I decided to rely on free wifi instead of buying a new internet data program.

Due to my locations ... in the middle of nowhere ... I never did use my MBA while traveling.

Here are a few questions where I have not been able to find the answers to and cannot figure out:

1. I wanted to use this laptop as a travel computer, meaning having it's own bookmarks, it own photos, simple a solo computer NOT synchronizing with my other Apple devices.

2. I found out the hard way due to the way the defaults are set up, that Google Chrome synchronized with my iMac's bookmarks and did exactly what I didn't want to happen ... many bookmarks that I will not use while traveling/camping.

3. Today I have used Safari all the time and am seriously considering making that my default browser on this device. How do I keep it from synchronizing automatically what my iMac and Mini bookmarks and favorites??

I did go into the preferences, logged into iCloud and unclicked Safari. This was the only way I read about that was suppose to stop automatic synchronization. Photos seems to synch with my iMac and other devices .. but I don't have the room to do that with my iPhone.

I do not plan to buy storage from iCloud. I back up all my devices to my iMac not iCloud.

Do any of you use your MBA as a separate computer without synchronizing with other Apple devices?

It's a great computer, built early 2015. The 13.3" screen is not a big adjustment as I expected after using a 27" monitor for the past 4-5 years. I do have external hard drives to run time machine and also for additional memory.

So how can I keep from everything synchronizing in the future with all my other devices? Is it possible to pick and choose what I want this MBA to synchronize with my other devices?

 

[motrek]

...
Do any of you use your MBA as a separate computer without synchronizing with other Apple devices?
...

Yes, and I think you've worked out how to do this by yourself. Go to the iCloud UI on all your devices and you can pick-and-choose what you want to be sync'ed.

Personally I use iCloud Drive (even the free version is useful for transferring small files between computers), Contacts, and "Find my Mac/device" and I find this works well for me.

 

[iubhounds]

Yes, and I think you've worked out how to do this by yourself. Go to the iCloud UI on all your devices and you can pick-and-choose what you want to be sync'ed.

Personally I use iCloud Drive (even the free version is useful for transferring small files between computers), Contacts, and "Find my Mac/device" and I find this works well for me.

Thanks for the idea to use iCloud Drive for transferring small files between computers. I have a few Excel sheets I'd like to bounce back and forth between computers. I am going to recheck here in a few minutes to see if Numbers will now link to other Numbers spreadsheets. It didn't in 2010 so I had to buy the Microsoft Office for Macs just for that feature.

I'll check into iCloud Drive and see how that does.

 

[motrek]

Thanks for the idea to use iCloud Drive for transferring small files between computers. I have a few Excel sheets I'd like to bounce back and forth between computers. I am going to recheck here in a few minutes to see if Numbers will now link to other Numbers spreadsheets. It didn't in 2010 so I had to buy the Microsoft Office for Macs just for that feature.

I'll check into iCloud Drive and see how that does.

iCloud drive just shows up as a drive in your Finder windows, as if you had plugged in an external drive. You can drag and drop any files you want to it, including Excel files. So no need to use Numbers if you don't want to!

 

[iubhounds]

iCloud drive just shows up as a drive in your Finder windows, as if you had plugged in an external drive. You can drag and drop any files you want to it, including Excel files. So no need to use Numbers if you don't want to!

Have you every had trouble with iCloud Drive? There seems to be a lot of negative posts about using iCloud for anything? Would Dropbox be a better option?

 

[Ulenspiegel]

...I initially bought the MBA for when I travel which includes more tent camping than anything else. I have a blog and it was much easier to type from a laptop, adding photos etc ... plus it has more memory as my iPad Mini is only 16Gb. I know I could add a case with a keyboard for the Mini but I never found a case that I really liked for that after looking at function, and price...

I would have tried the Incase Origami Workstation for iPad as you already have an Apple Wireless Keyboard. It is great, I have one myself.

 

[motrek]

Have you every had trouble with iCloud Drive? There seems to be a lot of negative posts about using iCloud for anything? Would Dropbox be a better option?

I've never had a problem with it.

I have used Dropbox and it seemed to work fine but I'd rather not have extra software installed on my computer if I don't need to. I recall the Dropbox software put something in my menu bar and was generally more invasive than just presenting a drive like iCloud does.

 

[iubhounds]

I've never had a problem with it.

I have used Dropbox and it seemed to work fine but I'd rather not have extra software installed on my computer if I don't need to. I recall the Dropbox software put something in my menu bar and was generally more invasive than just presenting a drive like iCloud does.

Sounds good, I'll give it a shot.

 

[iubhounds]

I would have tried the Incase Origami Workstation for iPad as you already have an Apple Wireless Keyboard. It is great, I have one myself.

I'll take a look at that Workstation. For some reason when we tried to connect my wireless keyboard to my iPad Mini ... it failed to connect every time.

 

[Melrose]

Have you every had trouble with iCloud Drive? There seems to be a lot of negative posts about using iCloud for anything? Would Dropbox be a better option?

The last I heard, DropBox can't be trusted for secure documents.

Over the past few years they've had at least two tech writers call them out for lame security.

 

[iubhounds]

The last I heard, DropBox can't be trusted for secure documents.

Over the past few years they've had at least two tech writers call them out for lame security.

Yesterday I deleted Dropbox from both my computers and went iCloud Drive. Just in case I do have my spreadsheets backed up but have 12 of them in iCloud Drive.

Didn't Dropbox have a recent security breech?

 

[Melrose]

Yesterday I deleted Dropbox from both my computers and went iCloud Drive. Just in case I do have my spreadsheets backed up but have 12 of them in iCloud Drive.

Didn't Dropbox have a recent security breech?

Yeah, something like that. They've had security issues off and on for at least 4 or 5 years. The problem is that they aren't actively improving - on one occasion they denied anything until some blogger was able to prove how accessible his files were from anyone anywhere, then DropBox patches it quick and makes a press release about how they voluntarily improved security blah blah...

It's great for sharing or syncing regular old files, but I never put anything even remotely personal up there.

 

[iubhounds]

I've never had a problem with it.

I have used Dropbox and it seemed to work fine but I'd rather not have extra software installed on my computer if I don't need to. I recall the Dropbox software put something in my menu bar and was generally more invasive than just presenting a drive like iCloud does.

Logged into my iMac last night and saw that none of my excel files had been updated with those same files on my MBA. I checked and saw that I was still logged in under the same iCloud account, I only have one account.

Another thing I noticed, when go to iCloud and click the file it moves to my download folder instead of opening the file. I've searched and found no answers for either of my problems. I did update Yosemite to 10.10.4 on Tuesday. Would that be an issue?