What its APFS?

[Raven]

I just purchased a new Mac mini and monitor for my wife's use at home. Mostly for bookkeeping, banking, browsing and email use. She uses an iPad for most personal stuff. We migrated all her files to the new mini and upgraded the OS from 10.13.6 to 12.5.1. There are now two more questions...

1. When I set up her Super Duper back up, there is a message about APFS. See screen shot.
Do I convert, and if it fails, how difficult is it to "manually reformat"?

2. Her Microsoft Office app is 2008 and works very slowly.
She looked at buying a new version and it seems you have to buy a subscription now. Is this the only way or is there a cheaper option?

[jchuzi]

OS 12 requires APFS. SD will automatically make the conversion but you can use Disk Utility to do the same thing. You can also format manually with Disk Utility by selecting the backup disk and clicking Erase. BTW, a Time Machine backup requires APFS (case sensitive). I'm not sure about a SD backup, but SD will make the correct decision.

I don't know if this MS Office offer is still good, but check out this offer. FWIW, I have a subscription. If you figure out the per-month cost, it's quite inexpensive and MS issues frequent updates (included in the price).

[Paddy]

Re: Office - that deal that Jon linked to seems to still be active and it's definitely cheap.

Please do understand though that these aren't straight up legit keys - they're what's known as "grey market" - ie: they're keys that were intended for a particular product channel - usually either the Microsoft Software Developer Network (MSDN) or TechNet for IT Professionals who pay a subscription fee - mostly intended for evaluation purposes. Or they're left over from a bulk buy of OEM licenses. Many of them will work - some won't. Some may work for a while and then stop working. And you almost certainly won't get any assistance from MS if you need it, as the thing with OEM licenses is that there is no support from the developer (support is supposed to come from the vendor - and that won't happen with these discounted ones sold online, because, of course, the OEM software is not supposed to be sold separately from the machine.) Anyway - as long as you are aware of all that and ok with it, then fine. One would hope that the deal being promoted by AppleInsider is one of the more reliable ones, but no way to tell. Also no way to tell if the key is US-specific, btw. (this is definitely an issue with keys intended for non-North American markets - I'm just not sure if they differentiate between Canada and the US as well for the perpetual licenses - they most definitely do for MS 365)

I now use MS 365 - it has a few useful perks that you don't get with perpetual licenses: software is continually updated, and you get 1TB of online storage per user with OneDrive. As I noted above: MS 365 is region/country specific - a 3rd party key bought in the US will not work in Canada. If you were to try to buy at MS 365 in the US from Microsoft directly, it will switch you to the Canadian site/pricing.

[Raven]

Paddy,
All good to know. Thank you! It certainly makes me wary when I see any kind of "deal" these days. I don't want to deal with the time and hassle if it doesn't work later.

On a similar vein, my wife and I send out Christmas greetings each year to friends using personal photos in Smilebox. In the past, I used their browser app for free, but it has limitations. This year I thought I would buy their app. I did that once before years ago. So, I downloaded the install package, and I get this message - "Cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" (en.softonic.com), and "Mac OS cannot verify that this app is free from malware".

Now I'm hesitating. How to confirm that I should do it this way again? Oh, for a simpler life! 

[Xairbusdriver]

That is the standard way Apple warns you that the app was not created by a Registered developer. It only requires ~$90/yr to register with apple, but some folks still don't want to bother, especially is they don't want to sell on the Apple Store (with its other regulations and fees). As long as you can verify that the 'developer' is reputable (do some web searching/visit forums/look for reviews/etc.) and/or you have a suitable malware app, it is probably no problem.

On the other hand, how many cards do you need every year? Will you actually save any money or personal energy by paying for another limited-use app?