I HATE APPLE

why recover time capsule? Was it more than just backups?

Buy a new big drive and back-up again.

I had my overflow Lightroom library on it. :(

Anything you don’t have an off-site copy of, ideally located in a different seismic zone from you, is something you don’t really have, I’m afraid.

Everything I REALLY care about is on Flickr, but lots of stuff in my lightroom backup that I'd rather not lose.

Can USB sockets start to fail? Of the two on my MBP, one is now noticeably much slower to recognise external drives. I've tested with different drives including a brand new one with a better quality cable. And once connected, data transfer speeds are 20x slower.

Entirely possible. On my previous MBP (2012 rMBP) one of the USB ports cut out similarly. It was still under AppleCare then and Apple fixed it for free.

Turns out my drive is unrecoverable. :(

what about the drive it was backing up?

That one is fine but the Lightroom archive is gone so all photos before 2018 (that aren't on Flickr) are gone.

ahhhhh bastard. i’m sorry.

Feels like the dam is breaking on the App Store rules bullshit with this fortnite thing

I dunno. I wish it was a small indie developer that was suing rather than a tentacle of a giant conglomerate that's busy shoring up their own monopolies.

Only Nixon could go to china

absolutely deranged stuff here from apple

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/08/21/apple-files-response-to-epic/

https://adamchandler.me/blog/2020/08/20/linked-where-did-macs-resale-value-go/

lol this guy is a maniac.

my upgrade cycle on macs is averaging about 9 years. not sure what he’s using his for but by my math i’m coming out ahead!

i think the point is that, until recently, if you wanted to upgrade every time a new product on the same line came out you could do so very cheaply, like your were leasing a macbook for a year for 20% of its cost. which is really no more expensive than upgrading every five years or so.

my main laptop is 7 years old btw so i also think this is the insane behavior of someone with too much spare time. but i remember losing 25% (!) when i sold a 3 year old (!) macbook pro in like 2013. that ship has sailed.

I finally installed Catalina this week (because I'm getting a new Air next week & I want the transfer to be as easy as possible). It seems better to me! For instance my mbp wakes up from clamshell more reliably.

when i change the volume on my phone via the hardware buttons in the side, the touch screen lights up and becomes active.

what is the advantage here?

i’m using the buttons on the side. isn’t it obvious that i don’t want to use the screen???

I finally installed Catalina this week (because I'm getting a new Air next week & I want the transfer to be as easy as possible). It seems better to me! For instance my mbp wakes up from clamshell more reliably.

― Joey Corona (Euler),

Thanks for posting this, would like to see other users' experience too. I've been nervous about Catalina since it got trashed on rollout, and I'd love to know when it's safe to install.

i’ve been using it for awhile on my new mini and it’s fine for me. i’m not a very demanding user though. my kids use blender, premiere, it all seems fine.

It borked my printer drivers* and forced me to move from MacPorts to brew.

*only an issue because Fujitsu took an absolute age to come up with new ones. I rarely have to print anything but it’s highly annoying to have to get someone else to do it for you.

i wish apple still made printers just so you could rely on a minimal level of support across operating systems

It’s fine on new hardware in my experience but I haven’t upgraded anything yet. Planning to do that soon, but need to migrate off my last Catalina incompatible app (very old lightroom)

I hardly ever need to print but If this printer ever packs up the next printer I get will definitely have to be compatible with generic postscript drivers. It is however incredibly resilient and seemingly indestructible black and white laser printer.

The Brother 2370 series has been our standard here for almost a decade now. The current ones are shockingly easy to set up to print from both our Macs and our phones.

Been on Catalina since the beginning and I've been recommending it for folks since 10.15.3 or so.

No Catalina issues here, but I haven't bothered with the 10.15.6 Supplemental it's been nudging me about for the last few weeks. But I'm also a light user.

I don't recall having to do anything to get my (cheap 2014 Canon Pixma) printer to work with the Mac. Turned it on, found it, printed to it. (I appreciate this is not going to be the case for older printers). I think this was the second moment (after the breeze of the initial MBP set-up) where I thought "This really isn't going to be anything like owning a Windows machine."

I think my work laptop (2013 HP Elitebook, W7->W10) is sufficiently nailed down by Corp IT strictures not to get in the way of what I need to do, but every other time I touch a Windows laptop, the swearing starts.

(I mean, obviously there's a deluge of effing and blinding when I'm on the work laptop too, but that's not OS related)

A HP LaserJet 5 i picked up for buttons in the 00s is going to outlast me at this rate. It works with everything from a 68k PowerBook to intel iMacs; and outlasted LaserWriters (which require AppleTalk support) too.

Maybe i’ve just been unlucky with my cheap inkjets. Feels like every time there’s a major system update the drivers don’t work anymore. However I now own a b&w Brother on I think caek’s advice. I love it, love how fast it is, love how easy it is, and i hope i get to use it for a long time.

Oh inkjets are definitely a disaster – I've got a little Canon which has some terrible GhostPrint drivers and barely works these days

Yeah I stan for brother lasers. Problem right now is they are sold out everywhere via covid!

yes, i trust this computer. it's my personal computer. i'm logged into the same icloud account as my phone and i've told you i 'trust' it like 20 times already. fuck's sake

Sounds like you've got trust issues.

In the music app in IOS, if browse your music by genre, you get a list of albums in alphabetical order by album title and there is no option to sort by artist.

Who in the world wants to look at their albums alphabetically by title???

oh my god yes, this grates on my nerves and has for ten years

sorry I mean for the iOS remote app - my music library has, like, 4000 albums and if I look at an artist with 20 albums, there they all are in alphabetical order, there is no view organised by year under any circumstances.

A bit mad that the Mini has no built-in mic?

Vast majority of desktops do not have a built in mic.

I feel like, if you're going to build Facetime into MacOS, it's going to need its own mic.

fans of my exhausting tribulations earlier in the year will be pleased to know that i seem to have got back on top of everything fingers x-ed?

1: new battery installed by me
2: better devised system of back-up drives
3: replacement keyb and trackpad plus liquid damage recovery work on my logic board (yes in addition to everything else i spilled water on my laptop, yes i know this is not recommended lol)
4: full clean reinstall
5: full restore from time machine
6: full cancellation of backblaze subscription (despite agitated support from stans this was absolutely causing some of the problems, tho app clash and badly indexed junk accretion were also a cause i think)

so now i have a ton more room

(basic RAM on this model remains fixed and perhaps inadequate -- tho it's not like i'm trying to make films or music here. soldering in larger RAM but also pricier to just move to a newer model. i wd quite like to do some music-making with my niece at some point -- we did a nice delia-derbyshire-themed kids workshop together at the british library b4 xmas. getting into that is the signal for a newer model tho in a year or so's time -- she is still a beginner)

some of this ton more room is from storing old stuff off-laptop but a good deal is absolutely from the clean install: it's no longer having to push thru a fvckton of undredged gloop full of submerged wreckage and broken bicycles molesting one another (yes i know how computers work and this is a correct description)

nice also to watch the booting-up progress bar just go quickly and cleanly lol

also courtesy user alba i now have a good guy to fix stuff, who gives helpful and non-judgmental advice allowing me to dodge always having to call him in to fix stuff for money that i can fix myself for free -- he is a BIG IMPROVEMENT on the very judgmental jackass cited a couple of times upthread as "tracer's guy" (sorry tracer)

i have learnt a LOT abt basic maintenance and laptop hygiene -- which probably i shd have known and always did half-know but there you go, it's not like anyone has been paying for my training except me (welcome to the constraints of freelancer lief)

some of this is thx to ppl in this thread so hurrah! silby's argt that none of this is *really* secure until it's also backed up in a far-away seismic zone also noted for the future: like transferring 20 yrs of photos from (backed-up) hard drive to flickr for example?

that's a project for another day tho (also london is not currently prone to earthquakes or fires)

"soldering in larger RAM but also pricier to just move to a newer model"
=
"soldering in larger RAM possible but also pricier than just moving to a newer model"

Fans you say?

just letting the second shoe fall here

Any of you ever install a MacBook Pro battery on your own? My early 2015 Mac Pro Retina battery is getting older/weaker, and I'm getting the "service recommended" alert. They sell kits at the usual places that include new batteries, all tools, adhesive remover and even safety goggles/gloves for a relative modest price, like $90, but the process seems like a pain. Notice I said "adhesive remover?" "Safety goggles?" Apple, for some stupid fucking reason, *glues* its batteries in place. Apparently even their techs are not trained to remove and replace the battery. They simply remove and replace an entire chunk of the computer, including the keyboard and so on, rather than go through the trouble of replacing the battery itself.

Now, it looks doable from the instruction video, but even the site selling the kit recommends getting a pro to do it. My preferred local pro won't do it. And the other local Apple servicer for some stupid reason refuses to just quote me a price. Apple itself seems to sell the battery for $199, plus I assume there will be labor on top of that, but I can only imagine it could take a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days/hours, which makes the $90 kit price all the more appealing. And yet there is a lot that can potentially go wrong, like, say, the battery blowing up or something. Still ... doesn't seem like that will happen unless I remove it with, like, a hammer. Or will it/can it? I dunno.

Dude just live with it til the arm MacBook comes out

Eh, I don't want a new computer, since my current computer is more than I need. I just need a new battery, or will, eventually. Unless the new MacBooks are the same cost as a new battery, but that seems ... unlikely.

I tried this week to replace the battery on my first gen iPhone SE, which is also glued on, and i fucked it up, the WiFi antenna was out of place and would only pick up from less than a foot away afterwards, so I just got a new SE instead. I’m leery of replacing glued batteries again.

I’m pretty sure the $199 includes labour and it only takes a couple of hours.

Assuming you live somewhere with an apple store or service provider and they are open, that is.