Had to replace a failed ssd which was part of a mirrored RAID set in a Late 2012 Mac Mini. It was running MacOS 10.11 El Capitan, so the RAID functionality that used to be part of Disk Utility was not available through the app. Apple’s simple RAID tools are still available in terminal, using the command:
diskutil appleRAID <raidverb>
Options for <raidverb> include list and repairMirror.
When trying to install El Capitan via the recovery partition on a 2014 MacBook Air, I get a message that “no packages were eligible for install.” The problem is that the certificates are out of date, so the installer won’t proceed. The general workaround is to change the computer date to sometime in mid 2017.
date 0115124517
From there, the computer should install El Capitan. If it hangs after reaching a full bar, cycle the machine power. Now it should prompt you to complete the installation.
So my iPhone SE was displaying the wrong album art for a number (though not all) songs. When I checked these albums on iTunes, all the songs had the correct album art. I tried deleting all the songs and then resyncing the playlist, but that didn’t fix the problem. A quick web search turned up the following tip from Reddit.
First delete the playlist, but before starting another sync from the computer, also turn off wi-fi and cellular communications. The easiest way to do this is to place the phone in Airplane mode. Then start the sync, and the correct album art should appear on the iPhone. Apparently this happens when syncing playlists.
What an annoying bug.
To change the backup interval of Time Machine to one day:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 86400
The last digit is the backup interval in seconds; default is 3600.
Apple’s great. iCloud still sucks. Especially since they clearly have only one engineer working on the project. Apple, I understand you want to sell new phones, new computers, and the whatnot. And trust me, us folks who love Apple products will buy them, eventually. You’ve got us hooked. But stop making the iCloud service so closed that I can’t even use the iMac I bought last year to access the service.
Here’s another workaround, in case your mail is broken:
http://www.macstories.net/news/configure-an-icloud-email-account-on-snow-leopard/
For quick reference, the mail server name is p02-imap.mail.me.com, because I suppose mail.me.com would have been too obvious. Fuckers.
Found this write-up here on how to get your Snow Leopard iCal syncing to your iCloud.
Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc. today. That’s noteworthy for me because Mr. Jobs is one of my all-time heroes, although I didn’t always hold him in such high esteem.
My family’s first computer was an Apple IIc, purchased in 1985. It wasn’t my first computer experience (that honor goes to a Texas Instruments TRS-80), but it was transformative. I spent many hours on that machine, writing programs, playing games, writing school papers, and even making art. I learned about word processing, spreadsheets, databases, digital art, and desktop publishing. That was our family’s main computer until around 1991, when we upgraded to a Macintosh LCII. But that IIc still works as of this writing, and is in my brother’s keeping.
In those early days, I learned that Apple computer was founded by the two Steves. In fact, those were probably the first corporate personae that I knew of by name, and Wozniak was my favorite. How could he not be? He was a goofy nerdy guy who loved the Apple II’s, just like I did. He was Polish. He was the Woz. Supercool. Jobs was too… serious.
Fast forward to the year 2000. I was then teaching computer science, and a favorite part of the course covered the history of computers. I learned exactly how innovative and important Apple had been in the early days of the personal computer industry, and about Steve Jobs’ role in that innovation. He was serious, but I then recognized that was what made the Apple, and then the Macintosh, great. He was, apparently, also an asshole, but I was fine with that. My students just thought he was crazy. They probably thought I was crazy, too.
One year around this time, one of my students (no idea who) printed out a picture of Steve Jobs and drew devil horns on it. They cut this out and pasted it to the back of my inbox in the school office. It was, I’m certain, intended to be a malicious prank, but I saw it as high praise. I left that picture there for over a year. No other teachers got pictures of famous people pasted to the back of their mailboxes.
I currently use an Apple computer at work and at home. I own both an iPad and an iPhone, and the latter is rarely out of arm’s reach. I’ll admit that I’m a fan of Apple products, but that’s because they do what they do so well. And I recognize that while their success is the result of many individuals’ efforts, those efforts coalesced because of the vision of Steve Jobs. And my life would certainly be different if that vision was absent. Thank you, Mr. Jobs.