 from our favorite playlist. What we haven't been is annoyed that Apple has deleted any of our music, because it hasn't. If you think tracks are deleted, then there is something else going on. Yet whether you deleted them while distracted, or somebody at Apple is giggling at their secret malicious update to iTunes, there is no reason it should be more than an annoyance.
There is a saying that nothing digital really exists unless it exists twice: if there isn't a copy of it somewhere, then the one original is in such danger of being lost that it might as well be gone already. However, this is a reason to make backups: it's not a reason to duplicate our files all over the place yet that is somehow what we do. You included. Very much you included: stop trying to look innocent. You have multiple copies of the same Word document and you've definitely got duplicated photos, admit it. Stage 1 of reclaiming space on your hard drive is admitting that you've got a problem. Stage 2 could be buying Gemini 2.0 for OS X.
Every day, alongside our regular Daily Deals post, we are showcasing some of the offers available from our own MacNN Deals store. In light of tomorrow's general release of the iPad Pro 9.7-inch, today's items are all things you can use to keep your data safe by backing up your mobile devices to cloud storage, and also a way to recover your lost files.
We feel a bit like we're rats suggesting that SoundCloud is a sinking ship that we're going to desert but right now, this week, there is reason to make certain you have all of the audio you've uploaded there. It will be a blow if the company closes as a result of poor financial returns, as it's a service we've enjoyed personally and we continue to use professionally: you can hear every one of the MacNN podcast shows on there. Nonetheless, the firm has announced serious financial losses and while we hope they can turn it around, we don't want you (or us) to lose any of our audio on there.
This is where coming new to a product may be a help: we've been using Quicken 2016 for around six weeks now, while researching a full Hands On review, and in the mix of good and bad things we've found out about it, we entirely missed something. Quicken 2016 does not backup your data the way previous versions of the software did and, we'd say, every version of every software should. The more longstanding a Quicken user you are, the more likely it is that it wouldn't occur to you that the feature would be gone. Hopefully you haven't had any reason to notice the feature is switched off, but at some point, you're going to, and it may be under the worst of circumstances.
Today's Pointers column is both seasonally and environmentally conscious: it is seasonal in that we assume you will be getting some fabulous new gear before the end of the year, and it is environmental in that 30 percent of it is made up of recycled content. Back in August, we wrote a Pointers column about the value of off-site backups, and you'll see some of that again here -- but this time we're going to talk about backups generally -- it's wise, it's easier than you think, and you might need one so you are ready to transfer your data over to your new datathing when the time comes.
There is a slim chance that you've never run nor heard of Apple's Disk Utility application. That chance decreases the longer you've had a Mac as this little app is the answer to so many issues. It's where you format new hard drives, create disk images, and where you used to be able to repair permissions if you needed to. If your Mac is doing something odd, you could run Disk Utility and have it poke about your hard drive, looking for possible problems, and often fixing them too. If you have many hard drives, such as in a RAID backup system, you lived in Disk Utility -- or you used to. Apple has radically remodelled Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan and that's got people steaming.
Pages is the anti-Microsoft Word. Where Word has every single conceivable feature going -- and quite a lot of them work, even! -- it does rather show them to you. Despite the promise of the Ribbon making it easier to find what you want, Word users still have to hunt through buttons and icons that they'll never need to know, nor care about. In contrast, Pages does less, and looks like it does a gigantic amount less. We've had people ask us about swapping to Word because Pages doesn't do X or Y -- when it does.My baby boy died the day after he was born (March 22, 1997). He had trisomy 13 translocation. With that came a lot of physical defects, some being ventricular and atrial septal defects and a double outlet right ventricle. I have searched and searched and cannot find out exactly what a double outlet right ventricle is. Can you help me?
Melissa, one of my most vivid memories from my pediatric residency was sitting with a mom while she rocked her son who was born with trisomy 13. We were in the Intensive Care Nursery at Children’s Hospital Oakland, surrounded by tiny premature babies in incubators. This boy was full term and normal size. While the other babies were all hooked up to mechanical ventilators, IV pumps, or other high tech equipment, this child was simply wrapped in a receiving blanket, cradled in his mother’s arms. As she gently rocked back and forth in the plain wooden chair, she knew that he would die within a day.
The fullness of motherhood was compressed into that day. A mother’s deep love for her son, her tender concern, her exquisite pain of separation, her comforting touch for a lifetime’s scraped knees, her worry for a lifetime’s dangers, her peace in their inseparable bond, all came together in that rich moment as she gazed upon her precious little boy.
Even when our children have normal life-spans, their childhoods vanish oh so quickly. When childhood is cut short, it is a gut-wrenching shock. Trisomy 13 (also called Patau Syndrome) occurs in up to 1 out of 5,000 newborns (Smith’s Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation, Saunders 1988). Even the mildest forms of this syndrome can be devastating.
The 13th chromosome contains blueprints that direct a baby’s development in the early weeks following conception. When a child has an extra 13th chromosome (three copies, instead of two), as is the case in trisomy 13, the genetic messages are confused and contradictory – there’s just too much to juggle. This results in multiple significant defects in major organ systems. The brain is often the most severely affected. Children with trisomy 13 may also have abnormalities in the shape of their lips, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, and bones. It’s also common for these children to be born blind, deaf, and with no sense of smell. Taste and touch become the limited means by which a mother can convey an ocean of feeling.
Most children with trisomy 13 have some kind of heart defect, but a double-outlet right ventricle is not common. A normal heart has four chambers. Blood from the body enters the right atrium. From there, it flows into the right ventricle, whose strong muscular wall sends the blood out of the heart to the lungs (via the pulmonary artery). In the lungs, the blood is supplied with oxygen before it returns to the heart, entering the left atrium. From there, it flows into the left ventricle, whose mighty walls propel the blood out of the heart (via the aorta) to supply the rest of the body with oxygen.
In double-outlet right ventricle, the pulmonary artery and aorta both exit from the right ventricle. Thus, poorly oxygenated blood is used for the body’s main supply. The only exit from the left ventricle is a hole in the wall (called a ventricular septal defect) through which the oxygenated blood from the lungs can at least enter the right ventricle to blend with the depleted blood from the body before it leaves. In your son, a hole in the wall between the two atria (an atrial septal defect) also allowed mixing of the blood entering the heart. Double-outlet right ventricle occurs in less than 1 percent of children with congenital heart disease.
Trisomy 13 was first described in 1657, but four hundred fifty years of medical knowledge have not improved the outlook for children born with this syndrome. Most babies who are conceived with trisomy 13 die early in gestation.  Only 18 percent reach their first birthdays — and these have severe mental defects and seizures (Smith’s Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation, Saunders 1988).
While we cannot cure trisomy 13, we have started to find ways to detect it early. Sometimes, a blood test, called the AFP (alphafetoprotein) or triple screen, may help a pregnant woman find out her baby’s risk of several diseases, including Trisomy 13. Trisomy 13 is often detectable on prenatal ultrasound as early as 10 weeks of pregnancy. Chorionic villous sampling can detect trisomy 13 by 12 weeks. Amniocentesis, usually performed after 16 weeks gestation, can give a definite answer if any question still remains.
Often, trisomy 13 is associated with older mothers. Even so, the risk of having another baby with trisomy 13 is usually very low — unless, as with your son, the trisomy 13 is a translocation. A translocation is not associated with mom’s age, but is a hereditary chromosome problem. The risk of