Freelancers - these are people who know by heart all the local coffee house, never seen their customers live and constantly hunt for free outlets. If all this is about you and you do not think the working process without loved the Mac, we have a few tips that will be useful.
Save battery power
Despite the autonomy of the modern Mac for 9-12 hours to leave the house without charge - a very bad idea. However, the outlet has not in all schools, so you may have to stretch the remaining charge for the whole day.
In OS X is very easy to "calculate" the application exhibiting an unhealthy appetite for Mac resources. This can be done directly from the menu bar by clicking on the battery icon, or via the standard tool "Resource Monitor". You can look at the tab "Energy", see which applications consume the most battery, and try to limit their use.
The most energy-intensive are probably the browsers, but a variety of background applications (especially when a lot of them) can also gradually consume a significant amount of resources. If you want to achieve even greater effect, do the following:
- Disable visual effects ( "Settings» → «Accessibility» → «Display» → «Reduce transparency");
- Turn off automatic updates of applications ( 'Settings »→ Mac App Store);
- turn off geolocation for those applications that do not need it ( "Settings» → «Protection and Safety» → «Location Services");
- decrease the brightness of the display and keypad illumination.
For those who really works hard, all this may not be enough. In this case, one way out - to get external batteryThat can charge your MacBook, iPhone and other mobile gadgets.
Watch for traffic
Free Wi-Fi - a great thing, but in some convenient place and it is far from ideal, and even non-existent. In such cases, rescue iPhone tethering, but it should be very attentive to the traffic flow. OS X does not care, you are connected to the home access point with unlimited channel or to distribute through the iPhone 4G, which has rigidly limited traffic package.
Trouble can easily be avoided by using a small utility TripModeWhich is able to restrict application access to the Internet when connected to iPhone tethering.
You just have Mark the applications that are allowed access to the network, and work quietly. A nice bonus: TripMode able to automatically go into saving mode immediately when connected to the iPhone and leave it when you again connect to Wi-Fi.
Price - $ 7.99, but it is worth it and will pay for itself with a vengeance. If in doubt - there is a free trial period of 7 days.
Download trial version ➝
Take care of confidentiality
Social networks are fraught with many dangers. There is a potential threat to intercept all data that you send, including the websites you visit, as well as information entered by them. Some access points can be attacked by hackers for the purpose of identity theft through DNS spoofing.
The problem is solved by using VPN, acting as a tunnel which conceals and encrypts the data being transmitted on both sides. Even if an attacker can intercept your traffic, to do with the information they will be able to nothing, because it is securely encrypted.
The choice of VPN - a purely personal matter. The most famous is probably the app TunnelBearWhich has versions for Mac and iOS. Pay solutions are much more reliable, but if you want to try something out of the VPN-free, then pay attention to CyberGhost or Hola.
Keep track of your time
It is difficult to overstate the importance of taking into account the time for remote workers - is the starting point. Not paying enough attention to this, you'll spend too much time on tasks or mistakes in the calculations. When the hourly pay system is not even discussed, but even if you are not billed for Projects based on the elapsed time, his account - the first step on the way to an increase in productivity.
Specialized solutions, there are many, mostly they are paid, but the there are also free, for example, SlimTimer. If you are not ready to bother with the timing, start with pomodoro-timers. This is a time-tested way to increase productivity. Timers in the Mac App Store is also a lot of, I myself use Pomodoro Time Pro.
Stay in touch with colleagues
The fact that you are working away from the office, does not mean that you have to be a hermit. Most companies have corporate chat rooms for conferences, but it is often easier to discuss with colleagues anything using instant messaging.
Built-in application "Messages" allows you to exchange text messages with the owners of Mac and iOS-devices, but that his capabilities are not limited. "Messages" can be easily configured to work with Facebook or Google Hangouts, to keep all the correspondence in one place. This is done quite simply, more about the setup process can be found in this material.
For a more exotic services will approach one of the most popular instant messengers on the Mac - Adium.
Perhaps, that's all. If you are a freelancer with years of experience, share your tips in the comments.
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