Mac

Take Control Books

April 2, 2023 by Peter Tatikian

If you’re like me, you enjoy being the Apple tech answer person. Maybe it’s for your family and friends, maybe it’s part of your job. Either way, trying to find clear, accurate info isn’t so easy to find. You can spend endless hours going down various online rabbit holes, reading posts by unknown authors with questionable advice, or watching YouTube videos that skip over that essential step you’re trying to troubleshoot. It’s all very piecemeal, often inaccurate or out of date, and often poorly written. Worst of all is that you probably didn’t genuinely learn anything; at best you found out how to do one particular thing in a monkey-say, monkey-do, kind of fashion.

Some Take Control Books from the catalog including iCloud, Apple Watch, Shortcuts, and Apple Mail.

If I want to actually learn something from start to finish, I skip the online search. My first stop is to look at the Take Control ebook catalog. These are electronic books written by established authors in the Apple community. They’re clear, accurate, edited, and are kept current with regular updates. The subject can be a deep dive into a single app (1Password, Photos, Apple Mail, etc.), a holistic overview of a topic (Mac backups, iOS security, Wi-Fi networking, etc.), an overview of all the features of a service (iCloud, Apple ID), or a review of all the updates in a recent operating system (iOS 16, Ventura).

They are available as PDF files and ePub documents. They’re designed as a blend of a traditional book (chapters, table of contents) and a hyperlinked electronic document. The PDF files are formatted for printing, although I’ve found the best way to dig in is to load them up on an iPad and read them using Readdle’s free Documents app. I like to highlight and bookmark them as I read them. They’re also fully searchable if you just want to quickly solve one thing. I’m a big fan of this series and started by buying their first titles (Take Control of Panther) back in 2003.

Most titles are around $15, which is a bargain when compared to other high-quality Apple-focused instruction that does this in depth; (ScreenCastsONLINE, Learn MacSparky, The Sweet Setup). Most titles receive regular minor updates for free, with significant discounts when a new version of a title is released (usually tied to a new version of the software that’s being converted). There are free sample chapters (and a few free titles) so you can see if this style of instruction works for you. Joe Kissel, the co-owner and frequent author of the Take Control series, is also a big fan of Mac user groups, so there is a 30% discount available to you, the Mini’app’les member. (Look for the code in the Slack.)

Category: Apple Watch, iOS, iOS Apps, Learning, Mac, Mac OS Apps, Software

Mac mini M2: The Little Mac That Could

January 31, 2023 by Peter Tatikian

Comparing the front of the 2022 M2 Mac mini stacked on top of a Late 2014 Mac mini — 2023 M2 Mac mini on top and Late 2014 Mac mini on bottom

Comparing the back ports of the 2022 M2 Mac mini stacked on top of a Late 2014 Mac mini — 2023 M2 Mac mini on top and Late 2014 Mac mini on bottom

Mac users tend to forget about the Mac mini. It’s not a laptop, which limits its audience. It isn’t the new hotness like the Mac Studio, as elegant as the iMac, or as seriously pro-level as the Mac Pro.[1]

And for years, it looked like Apple had forgotten it too. Over the past decade the Mini was often the last to get speed bumps and hardware upgrades. Then with the release of the M1 processor, Apple remembered it still offered the little computer. Mini was first(?) out the door with Apple’s new processor, showing off how much of a leap forward the new custom processor was over the previous Intel chips.

Now it’s been upgraded to the new M2 chip with your choice of the base processor or the M2 Pro. The most basic model, offering 8GB of unified memory[2] and 256GB of SSD storage at $599, is the MacBook Air of desktops, while the M2 Pro model comes with 16GB of shared memory and 512GB of SSD storage. The secret of the Mac mini is its versatility; the base model is an excellent daily-use computer, while the maxed-out model competes with the M1 Max Mac Studio.[3] You can also bump up the memory and storage if you customize your order.

There are a few caveats. It’s still just a little pizza box[4] with no keyboard, mouse, monitor, webcam, or anything else. If you are upgrading from an earlier Mac mini, you’re good; if not, you’ll have to buy these items separately. You also can’t upgrade the memory or storage after purchase; this isn’t new but different from Intel Mac minis. There are still no ports on the front.

The M2 Mac mini is a solid upgrade if you’re using an Intel Mac mini; you will notice the speed difference.[5] It’s less compelling if you already have an M1 model. In almost every configuration, the M2 Mac mini is a good value; any new Apple computer that costs less than a new snow blower is a win in my book.

Category: MacTag: M2, Mac, Mac mini

Meltdown & Spectre

January 5, 2018 by Pete Bockenhauer

We want to make you aware of two bugs that affect nearly every device made in the last 20 years.

Simply put, these security flaws put your information at risk. The best course of action (as it has always been) is do two things:

1) Keep all your devices (Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs) and software up-to-date with the latest updates and patches.
2) Do not install software or click on links from untrusted sources.

For more detailed information, please see the links below:

About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394
Same as it ever was: There’s no reason to melt down – https://blog.agilebits.com/2018/01/04/same-as-it-ever-was-theres-no-reason-to-melt-down/
Meltdown & Spectre – https://meltdownattack.com

Category: Best Practice, iOS, Mac, Updates iOS, Updates OSX

A VooDoo fix for Macintosh Text Replacement Sync

December 13, 2016 by Jeff Berg

I’ve recently won a small victory in the battle against the Black Box that is iCloud Sync and currently have a complete and correct set of Text Replacement shortcuts synchronizing across all my Macintosh computers and iOS devices.

Warning: Voo Doo follows. I’m not a true expert on the deep inner-workings of Mac OS. I don’t believe my fix will do any harm, but proceed with caution and always make a backup! (Then make another for good measure. Remember the 3–2–1 rule!)

Executive Summary

After removing the folder com.apple.InputMethodKit.TextReplacementService from the depths of the ~/Library hierarchy and restarting the computers my current list of Text Replacement shortcuts is available on two Macs that previously refused to synchronize. Both of these Macs legitimately run Sierra, but didn’t start life that way. The folder com.apple.InputMethodKit.TextReplacementService is buried somewhere inside ~/Library. Sorry, I didn’t make note of the full path — I found it using a Finder Search.

Update: A friend in the Ars Technica: Macintoshian Achaia forum reports that the path is ~/Library/Group Containers/com.apple.InputMethodKit.TextReplacementService

The Whole, Sordid Tale

For a very long time (I want to say going back to at least iOS 8?) Keyboard Text Replacement shortcuts weren’t syncing consistently across my Macs and iOS devices. I had varying combinations of shortcuts available depending on which device I was using and no way to get the same set to propogate across all devices At times shortcuts would disappear completely, and reappear as duplicates after I’d taken time to recreate them. This was an annoyance because I make heavy use of a handful of shortcuts and because I want access from all of my iOS apps, Text Expander isn’t an option for me.

I tried numerous proposed fixes without success and refused to try a few that I deemed too extreme, complex and time consuming — particularly given the mixed results reported from the killing of these various rubber chickens. I have an open (for months) support ticket with Apple for months — The engineers were aware of the problem, but no fix was forthcoming.

With the recent purchase of a new MacBook Pro, I found that the shortcuts weren’t syncing over to it at all. I was temporarily ignoring the problem but in the end I knew this would not stand.

Seemingly coincident with the latest round of behind the curtain iCloud adjustments, the system magically started working and after a restart of each device I had a complete set of shortcuts on my iDevices. (So complete that there were multiple entries I’d long ago abandoned and thought I’d purged!) I checked the shortcuts on the new MacBook Pro and was disappointed to find them missing — until I restarted the Mac after which the shortcut list appeared.

Thus encouraged, I removed the extraneous entries from the Mac. This didn’t take long with multiple selection. Next I made a few adjustments to the shortcuts I wanted to keep. I was really pleased when, in very short order, this corrected master list of Text Replacement Shortcuts propogated to both my iPhone and iPad Pro.

Next stop was my iMac. Opening the appropriate preferences pane revealed its own special selection of keyboard shortcuts that (previously) weren’t at all in sync with any other devices. Okay, I got this. Restarted. No joy. Grrrr.

I spent a few minutes re-searching the internet for anything new on the topic. Still a lot of noise and no definitive solutions, but I came across an article that through a chain of “logical leap what ifs” on my part led me to doing a finder search that in the end led me to discover a folder buried deep in my user library: com.apple.InputMethodKit.TextReplacementService. This folder may be a legacy preference/cache because a searching for it on my new MacBook Pro (Sierra native) returns null.

I moved the folder to the Desktop and restarted. I immediately opened the Text Replacement preference pane and found the list was empty. However, within a few seconds it was populated with my complete and correct master list of shortcuts. I repeated the this procedure for my account on the MacBook Air I administer for my mother and had the same experience.

There was one more device in the mix. I keep a 4th gen. iPad at work for reading and light browsing during breaks. The restart trick wasn’t working on that device — most likely because the guest network is accessed through a captive portal. (I speculate that after the device restart, the iCloud Sync Check takes place before the network connection is made.) Last night I brought the 4gen home to do the iOS system update. After the update/restart the shortcuts are present and good to go.

At least for now I have a consisent set of shortcuts across all of my Apple devices and changes made to those shortcuts propogate to the other devices promptly.

Finally.

If you’re having this problem and this fix works for you please drop a note in the comments.

Category: Mac, Troubleshooting

iPhoto with OS X 10.10.4

July 20, 2015 by Joel Gerdeen

I still use iPhoto since Photos does not do everything that iPhoto does. So today I upgraded an old MacBook to Yosemite OS X 10.10.4 and iPhoto would not work. It said to search the Mac App Store and download a new version, but no new version was found. Apple dropped it when Photos was released. A little Googlin’ revealed that if you had iPhoto before you could get it from the Purchases tab of the Mac App Store.

Lo and behold, there it was but it had an Open button since iPhoto was already installed. Clicking the Open button did no good and gave me same error. Checking, I found that I had iPhoto 9.6 which had been working with Yosemite just last month. Checking a newer Mac, I found that iPhoto 9.6.1 was working fine with the latest Yosemite so I copied it over to the old MacBook where it worked fine.

I wondered what I would have done if I didn’t have 9.6.1 to replace 9.6. What if I deleted 9.6 before checking the App Store? I did so but there still was an Open button under Purchases because iPhoto was also on the backup drive. Anyway, once I removed all copies of iPhoto from the MacBook, the App Store presented me with an Install button and subsequently installed iPhoto 9.6.1.

Category: Mac, Photography