MacFixer Articles

Fix Corrupted Network Time Machine Backups

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 05:06:38 EDT

I've been doing my Time Machine backups over my home network since Time Machine was released. It's a great system. With one bug. Every once in a while, my computer will tell me that there is a problem with my backup, and it has to create a new backup. This is unfortunate because these backups are very large, and I may not have room to keep both, the active and the "archived" old one. And losing the old one means losing the distant history of backups. I like having a long history of backups so I can recovery a file from many years ago if I need to.

But fear not! This is a great article explaining how you can repair a network Time Machine disk image if it ever "goes bad". The process is slow and kind of technical, but it works!

https://www.expobrain.net/2016/12/10/fix-corrupted-time-machine-spase-bundles/

Public Service Announcement: Remember to Erase All Data Off of Your Old Computers and Data Storage Devices Before Disposing of Them!

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 03:44:00 EDT

I recently purchased an Apple Xserve from eBay that I plan on using as a web server. The server was previously owned by a large branding company, with offices in New York and California. How do I know this? They were not the ones selling this computer on eBay. So how could I know? Well, whoever took this server out of service, never properly erased it's hard drives! The hard drives were loaded with hundreds of gigabytes of private, personal information.

What's worse, this server went out of service in 2012. But it is 2018. Where has all this data been for the past 6 years? Who knows. Hundreds of current employees, past employees, and independent contractors who worked with this company have potentially had every last bit of their personal info leaked all over the internet.

This was a major failure by this branding company's IT department and a major security breach -- unless the data or computer were somehow stolen. Then it was just a security breach and not an IT failure.

There is a moral to this story that every last technology user CAN and absolutely SHOULD learn from. Even though there's nothing any non-IT employee at this company could have done to prevent this, this can happen just as easily to every old computer, hard drive, or phone that you throw away, recycle, sell or give away.

Everything MUST be securely erased! You need to securely erase your data yourself, or make sure you give it to someone you trust to erase it. (MacFixer securely erases all hard drives that customers give us for recycling, inside or outside of a computer, whether the drive is failing or fully functional)

Simply deleting important files is not enough. It is extremely easy for someone with the right software to scan all empty space on a hard drive and recover tons of deleted files. This software is inexpensive and completely legal, as there are many legitimate reasons you would want to scan your own drives this way. Few people have enough expertise to know where every program they use, stores every last bit of it's data, and your data. There will always be some pieces left behind.

You can physically destroy your drives, smashing them with a hammer, for example. But you might not know how to remove the hard drive safely from an old computer, and you may not want to smash an old computer, either. I prefer doing a secure reformatting that writes over the entire drive 2 or more times. That makes the drive truly, completely, securely erased.

Don't just throw your device in the trash, thinking "what important info do I have? You want to see my vacation pics?" Well, yes they will look through all of your pics. They will also look through all of your passwords you have stored on the machine, every time you've said "remember my password". You only need the computer's login password to unlock that. How secure is your login password? They can also view your browser history. They can look at all of your documents. Do you do your own taxes? Your tax return is an absolute jackpot for an identity theif. There were full tax returns of people that worked at the "branding" company on the server I purchased. I can't overemphasize how serious this is. Everybody has sensitive information on their computer. And lots of non-sensitive, but still personal information. Criminals with just a little bit of IT knowledge will not hesitate to grab hard drives and computers right from peoples trash to see what they can find on them.

If your head is spinning and you don't know what to do, here it is in a nutshell:
Always securely erase all of the data off of your devices before you dispose of them, NO MATTER HOW you are disposing of them. Every kind of device will have a different way of doing this, so you must learn the right way for your device -OR- be sure you are disposing of them by giving them to someone you FULLY trust to securely wipe the data off (like MacFixer).

The harder part can be determining which devices have personal data on them. All computers, tablets and phones do. Some set-top boxes and tv's might have some basic info. And many copy machines save a copy of every single document you ever copy, to an internal hard drive.

Some New macOS Sierra Features

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 04:19:57 EDT

Apple recently announced the next version of their Macintosh operating system, version 10.12: Codename "Sierra". They also changed the official formatting of the Mac OS name. Formerly "Mac OS X", then just "OS X", now it is written "macOS", to match the formatting of iOS, watchOS and tvOS. It is scheduled to be released in Fall 2016, and will continue to be free like all recent macOS releases. Here are some of the cooler announced features for this new system.

I'm not sure I agree, but according to Apple, the biggest new feature in Sierra is Siri on the Mac. Just like on iPhones and iPads, Siri on the Mac will let you request information and command your Mac to perform tasks. Unlike on iPads and iPhones, Siri's "window" doesn't fill the screen of the Mac. This will let you interact with it a little more, and it will let you continue working in applications while you are commanding your Mac with your voice. Also, while using the dictation feature that's been on Macs for a few years now, I've found that Macs can generally understand your voice a lot better than an iPhone or iPad can. So if you are like me, and Siri has trouble understanding you sometimes, she should work better on your computer.

You'll now be able to use ApplePay on your Mac, to pay on supporting web pages. But it still works through your phone, so you'll have to have your iPhone nearby to pay. From what it looks like, at some point during the checkout process on your Mac, you'll be prompted to scan your thumbprint on your iPhone, which will activate your Apple Pay for the website.

Apple Watch Auto-Login is a neat new feature for Apple Watch users. If you use screen locking on your Mac, you can configure it so your Apple Watch will automatically log you in to your computer when you open it up. No need to type any passwords.

Furthering Apple's iOS/macOS workflow integration, they've added a new feature that unifies the clipboards of all your systems. Think of it as "iCloud Clipboard". Something you copy on one of your devices, will be in the clipboard of all of them, automatically. So you can copy text on a Mac, and paste that text into a message on your iPhone. This one minor little feature may be my favorite. It will make getting small bits of information back and forth from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad easier than ever before!

Dropbox users will like this, you'll now be able to store your Desktop and Documents folders in iCloud. This means all of your computers will have the same documents in their Documents folders, and the same documents on their Desktops. This uses your iCloud storage, so most people will have to upgrade to more iCloud space to use this feature. Although, don't be too surprised if they increase the size of the "free" iCloud space from 5 GB, to something more usable. Also, it's not clear how, if at all, you can access your newly unified Desktop and Documents files on an iPhone or iPad. For those details, we'll have to wait and see.

WWDC 2014 Highlights

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 03:01:01 EDT

Apple recently held their World Wide Developer Conference where they unveiled many new features to the upcoming new versions of Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and iOS 8. Many of the features discussed were very technical and geared towards developers. But they also showed off many end user features. Here are my favorite highlights:

- iPhone to Mac/iPad call & text integration. Your iPhone will act as a conduit to your other iOS devices and your Macs. With this feature, you will be able to send and receive regular text messages (not just iMessages) right from your iPad or Mac. And you can make phone calls using your Mac or iPad. The Phone calls get routed over the network to your iPhone. You can see who is calling you and answer it right on your Mac at your desk. There is a 3rd party program that does something very similar, called Phone Amego. But I was never able to get it to work properly. So I'm really looking forward to these features!

- iCloud Drive is a cool feature that can be seen two ways. For years now, applications have been able to store data and files on your iCloud account. This feature will now let you browse, edit, organize and manage these files all in one place. That makes it very useful. But another way to look at this feature, is that it will essentially be a DropBox replacement. If you are working on only Apple devices, there will be no need for DropBox's awkward syncing. Just store your files on your iCloud Drive and you will have them everywhere. I know that tons of my customers will find this feature very useful.

- Mail Drop! Oh thank god! Many of my customers won't even know what this feature is, but boy will it come in handy. A very common problem I have to deal with, is people trying to send large files in email. From an entire photo album, to large HD video files. A good rule of thumb is that if it's over 2 MB, don't email it. Never mind if it's 1 GB or more. Mail Drop uploads your attachments to your iCloud. Then the recipient either sees links to the attachments they can download over the web, or if they are on these new systems themselves, they will see the attachments inline even though they are actually posted on iCloud. This is a great feature that ONLY NOW, in 2014, will make email a great way to transfer and share files.

- Hand-Off is a new feature that makes it really easy to switch working between your Mac, iPhone and iPad. I can't do this one justice by describing it, you'll just have to watch the Keynote video or see it yourself. But it becomes much easier to be working on one device, and seamlessly switch to another.

- Interactive Notifications, this is a feature I was really hoping for in iOS 7 but better late than never. You can now respond to notifications right in the notification itself, without leaving the app. For example, if you are browsing the web in Safari and you get a text message, you can reply to that message right from the notification itself, without having to ever leave Safari. This is a really great feature.

- There are Keyboard updates in iOS that include word suggestion that should speed up typing even more. And there is now the ability to have 3rd party system wide keyboards. So you will be able to switch to an Android-like "scribble type" keyboard. I'm not a big fan of typing on my iPhone, this should help.

- HomeKit. This is a mini platform apple created to allow all the different home automation companies to make devices that you can control from one unified location. This will be a very cool feature that will make home automation a much more powerful tool.

There are plenty more new features Apple announced, and more still that they haven't yet announced. But these are the top new features for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite according to MacFixer. I'm really looking forward to these upgrades! More so than I have many recent OS upgrades (I'm looking at you, OS X Lion).

New MacBook Pro Predictions

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:40:09 EDT

Many of the Apple rumor-slash-news websites have indicated that the last MacBook Pro update was a small stop-gap update, and that a larger refresh is coming soon. Based on all of the news and rumors I've read, plus some logical reflection on past updates, and Apple's general "mindset", here are my predictions for the next MacBook Pro update. Everything here is pure speculation, I have no insider information whatsoever.

I think the biggest change will be the death of the optical drive! I think the current MacBook Pro represent's the optical drive's death bed. The 17" MacBook Pro could possibly retain an optical drive, maybe as a BTO option. But I think the 13" and 15" will no longer be offered with a built in optical drive.

What will this mean? Well first, I think that they will include a MacBook Air style SSD drive slot, in addition to a traditional 2.5" hard drive bay. This means you will be able to do SSD + HDD configurations out of the box right from Apple. Even with these dual drives, Apple should also be able to make the MacBook Pro thinner, and increase the physical size and thus the capacity of it's battery. Those optical drives take up a lot of space that can be well used for other functions.

I would also love to see discrete graphics, at least as an option, but ideally by default, on the 13" MacBook Pro. Removing the optical drive will leave a whole lot of space in the MacBook Pro. I'm also a big nVidia fan, and would love to see Apple switch back. The nVidia MacBook Pro models always seemed to be fairly powerful while still being very energy efficient.

I think that the 13" models will be upgraded to quad-core processors across the board. Other models will have their processors and graphics bumped accordingly.

There's always a chance Apple could increase the resolution of these screens, possibly up to "retina" status, but somehow I don't see that happening. I suspect that the current resolutions will stay for this revision. I think the next MacBook Pro update that corresponds to the next new full version of Mac OS X (10.8) is likely when we'll see retina Macs. There will need to be lots of upgrades to OS X to fully take advantage of retina display on Macs. I'm referring to either fully recreating all GUI graphics at ~4x the resolution, or finally switching to the mythical "resolution independent GUI". I don't think any of this will happen with the next MacBook Pro update.

There could be a slight form-factor change, but I don't see it as being very significant. These computers are already so small and thin, and the unibody design is clearly superior to the old aluminum and titanium styles, that there isn't much to be done aside from minor cosmetic changes.

So to recap: Speed bump the processor and graphics. Remove the optical drive, and divide that free space among an SSD drive slot, discrete graphics on the 13" models, increasing the battery size, and making the MacBook Pro a milimeter or three thinner.

There is already a surprising amount of free space available inside of a 17" MacBook Pro, which already has discrete graphics. So if any MacBook Pro is going to retain it's optical drive, it would be the 17". I believe they could add an SSD slot to the 17" MacBook Pro without removing any of it's current components. But knowing Apple, they're probably more likely to use all of that space to increase the battery size.

An interesting side effect of these upgrades is that the new line of MacBook Pros will probably weigh a bit more. Even though they will be slightly thinner, optical drives are light and hollow, and battery is solid and heavy.

Also I would personally love to see the matte (aka Anti-Glare) screen option available on ALL models, including the 13". And I also think it should be a no-cost option, like it used to be back when Apple first started making glossy screens. I don't think this will happen, but I would love it if it did.

There you have it, the official MacFixer educated guess at what Apple might do.

Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs Dies at Age 56

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:17:42 EDT

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion - Asterisk

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 05:23:17 EDT

As Steve Jobs says... 'One More Thing' before I write about Lion's new features. OK so that's not the way he uses that phrase, but still.

So aside from all of the logistical differences installing Lion that I wrote about in the previous article, there are two significant asterisks when it comes to installing Lion. They are: *Your PowerPC software will no longer run, at all and *your hard drive may need to be reformatted first.

*PowerPC is dead. If you are a techy, you are probably thinking "didn't that happen 5 years ago?" PowerPC hardware died long ago. But up through Snow Leopard, PowerPC Mac software still ran seamlessly on Intel Macs. So seamlessly in fact, that most people probably have no idea there is even a difference. That is why this problem is going to bite so many people in the ass. I would speculate that most Mac users don't know the difference between PowerPC and Intel applications, and don't know which, if any, of their apps are PowerPC. Popular apps that are PowerPC include: Adobe Creative Suite CS2 and earlier, Microsoft Office 2004 and earlier. Generally, any software from approximately 2004-2005 or earlier, will no longer run. I own an Agfa scanner. It's a very high quality scanner, but Agfa went out of business in ~2001. My Agfa scanner app will never be updated. I can no longer use it natively on my Lion Macs.

The piece of software that allowed you to run PowerPC apps on an Intel Mac is called Rosetta. It was built-in to Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. I'm not happy that Apple has decided to discontinue it. In my opinion, it is Apple's way of trying to kick developers in the ass. But there's no technical reason not to keep Rosetta in the OS indefinitely. It's never a good idea to completely cut yourself off from the past.

There is a way you can check your applications before you upgrade to Lion. However it is a tedious process. You have to open your applications folder and one-by-one (you can skip the Apple applications), repeat this process:
Click on the application you want to check.
- Go to the 'File' menu, and choose 'Get Info...'
- In the 'General' group, the first attribute listed should be 'Kind'. If the 'Kind' is "Application (Intel)" or "Application (Universal)", that program will run fine in Lion. If the kind is "Application (PowerPC)", the app WILL NOT run.
- Close the Get Info window.
- Repeat this process as needed

*Your hard drive may need to be, not just reformatted, but repartitioned. Lion is unusually and extremely picky about what kind of hard drive volume structure it will install on. Lion installs a special invisible "recovery" volume, which requires it to repartition your drive on the fly. It would seem that this part of the installer is not flexible at all. If you are running on a RAID array, or if you have done any kind of custom partitioning of your drive, you will probably have to repartition before you can install Lion. It sometimes even if you haven't done anything at all, you might have to repartition.

How can you check? To my knowledge, there is no way to check ahead of time. The only way to know if your hard drive needs to be repartitioned, is to TRY installing Lion. And if it refuses to install on your drive, you'll know you need to repartition.

So if you are in the repartition boat, here what you (or I) will have to do:
- Do a full backup of your entire computer, either through Time Machine, or if you don't use Time Machine, making a disk image of your whole hard drive (which you can't do while you're booted off the hard drive, so you'll have to boot off another drive to do this).
- Repartition your hard drive to be of type GUID, with a single Mac partition.
- Use Bootcamp Assistant to remake a Bootcamp partition, if needed
- Restore the contents of the backup to your newly erased hard drive.
- Install Lion

These steps aren't particularly complicated. However if you have even a modest 150 GB of data on your Mac, this process, along with the installation of Lion, will likely take as much as 4 hours or more. And theres no way to check ahead of time. Most people will not have to deal with this issue. But for those that do, it will be a very unexpected, and very expensive surprise.

Coming soon: Details on what's new and updated with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Mac OS X Lion - The Logistics

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:27:47 EDT

Before I write about the features of Mac OS X Lion, I think it will be a good idea to write an article about how to install this Operating System, since it is different than past operating systems.

First, the system requirements are as follows: Core2Duo or faster. Generally, any Mac from 2007 or later. 2 GB of RAM. You also need Mac OS X 10.6 installed (sort of).

The primary way to get this software is not to buy it on a disc anymore. For the first time, Apple has placed the whole Operating System in it's Mac App Store for purchase and download. That means, you need fast internet to download it in a reasonable amount of time. You also need an account set up in the iTunes Store (even if you only plan on using it to download the OS update).

There is an alternative. Although it's not available as of this article. Apple will be making a version of OS X Lion available on a USB drive, for users with slow internet and/or users who do not already have Snow Leopard (10.6) installed. However it should be noted that buying a retail copy of Snow Leopard and a retail download of Lion, will still only cost you $60. The USB thumb drive with Lion on it will cost $70.

Installing Mac OS X Server is MUCH different now as well. To get Server installed, first you install a regular version of Mac OS X. Then you have to download a "Server" add-on from the Mac App Store. That server app installs everything you need (Except for Server Admin Tools, which are a separate download) to transform your "client" Mac OS X into a Server. This is totally different than the way it used to be done. Also, the Server add-on is only $50. In Snow-Leopard, OS X Server was $500. In Leopard, the unlimited-client version of OS X Server was $1,000.

So the downside of all this is that the installation process is a little strange, and different from what you are used to. The upside is that Apple has lowered the prices so much, it's now very easy on your wallet, to keep your software current.

If you are going to have MacFixer upgrade your Mac's OS, be sure to know your current Operating System version, so I can tell you if you need Lion, or Lion + Snow Leopard.

Coming soon: A true review of Lion's features.

FXDesktopVolumePositions - A Rare Cause for a Slow Finder

Tue, 24 May 2011 02:22:11 EDT

I've been experiencing regular Finder laggyness for a while now. My Mac Pro is pretty old, so I assumed that was the cause. But the slowness slowly got worse and worse. This isn't Windows, Macs don't get slower over time for no reason! Especially computers with SSD boot drives, Radeon 5770 graphics cards, and 6 GB of RAM. So I started doing some research, and I found out the cause of my lagging. This problem isn't going to apply to very many people directly, but it sure is interesting.

First, a little background info. In older versions of Mac OS, when you inserted a disk, it would show up at the top right corner of the desktop. If that space was occupied, it would show up below it. This was the case for hard drives, USB thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, everything. Even floppy disks way, way back in the day.

Starting with OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Apple came up with a system that let you move disk icons around on the desktop, and remember those locations when you ejected the disk, and then re-mounted it at a later time. It does this by remembering a little bit of information for every single disk that your computer ever sees! Every disk, even CDs and DVDs.

This information is stored in the Finder's preference file [ ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist ], which means it's not a system-wide memory, it's a User-specific memory.

After doing some checking, it seems like most people have somewhere in the area of 400 disks in their Finder preferences file. But not me. I do CD ripping as a side business. I've had thousands upon thousands of music CDs in my Mac. Plus I've had countless hard drives, and other Macs connected to my Mac over the years. As it turns out, my Finder preferences file had records for 9,515 disks!!!

The effect of this was as follows: every time I would click on a file or folder in the finder to drag it, about 3 seconds into dragging, my Finder would freeze for about a second. This often caused me to drop files into the wrong folder.

The solution to this problem is easy. You can simply edit the XML file and delete the entire 'dict' tag following the 'FXDesktopVolumePositions' tag. Or an even easier way to delete all your entries, is to enter this into the Terminal:
defaults delete com.apple.finder FXDesktopVolumePositions

Please note that under normal use, you don't have to delete this information. If you are experiencing laggyness in the Finder, this is probably NOT why. However if you do an uncommon task on your Mac that does require you to connect an unusually large number of disks, this tip should help you out.

New iMacs Have Arrived

Mon, 09 May 2011 14:58:29 EDT

I don't normally write about simple product updates. However, Apple's new iMacs are here, and they are impressive! Every model comes with a quad-core processor. You can upgrade to a quad-core i7 processor, which essentially turns it into a 8-core processor. They have Thunderbolt expansion ports. There aren't many Thunderbolt accessories available yet, but there will probably be lots of them very soon. Every model of iMac comes with a 6000 series ATI (AMD) graphics card. All models start with 4 GB of RAM. You can even configure them with a small SSD drive AND a large HDD drive. This is what I use on my personal desktop, and its a VERY fast setup! What makes all this power really amazing, is that the iMacs still start at $1200!

These days, everyone wants a laptop. And I always tell people to think about it first. For the price of a base model 13" MacBook Pro, you can get a base model iMac. But the iMac is a powerhouse. You get so much more for your dollar with an iMac, you just loose portability.

There must be something I dislike about the iMacs? Why yes, yes there is! Apple STILL sells them only with glossy screens. Many people hate glossy screens and would much prefer the traditional anti-glare screen that past Macs used to have. But aside from the glossy screen, these new iMacs are winners in my book!