I HATE APPLE

Hmm. I'm not sure that's the not the source of the "boop". I think I know what you mean and it may be the way this phone vibrates on certain surfaces. Or I may be completely wrong and this is actual sound out of the speaker which you don't want.

Alarms go off when your phone is silent. Nothing else that I can think of

My phone has recently started to automatically pull screen brightness down to 50%, when both Auto-Brightness and Reduce White Point are off, and it's not in low power mode. Consensus seems to be somewhere between "you've been using it out in direct sunlight for too long, it's trying to reduce internal temperature" to "get it replaced, it shouldn't be doing that". The former has been true lately, because my daughter's got me back into Pokemon Go. But right now it's sitting next to me on the bedside table and it's stepped down from around 80% to 50% all on its own over the course of 10min.

What with Tracer's wireless charging pad mis-alignment mishap, this model does seem to have some overheating issues (if that's what this is).

Wah

As with many things, a restart seems to fix the mysterious 50% brightness thing (it was still happening this morning). After a reboot, it stays as bright as I set it (though I think auto-brightness is a sensible feature and I will turn that on).

Wow, first the button click was the haptics, now this “boop” is actually the vibration?? I don’t know whether I’m coming or going

I've had to move back to Safari on my iMac, as Chrome has become really unstable over the last few weeks - with even the basic google search page taking a couple of minutes to load. Safari is running smoothly - so no idea what the problem is. It's not a big deal, but it'd be good to be able to use Chrome if I want to.

^ same
Also experienced the brightness issue a few weeks ago but not since. Maybe they fixed it in the latest update?

Not sure if this is the best place to ask for Mac help, but here we go.

A while back I replaced my mac's hard drive with a SSD. At a certain point it wouldn't update anymore and I after reading online I came to understand that this is a regular problem with people that replaced their drives. The consensus fix is this: back up info, reformat drive to APFS, use a bootable installer thumb drive to install the OS (Mojave) in disk utility mode.

When I try to do the last step, I get: "Your mac needs a firmware update in order to install to this volume. Please select a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume instead."

What now?

is that telling you the thumb drive is formatted wrong?

i.e. did you skip step 1 here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

It is a 16gb thumb drive and I formatted it as specified.

Hmmmm. If the thumb drive is MS Extended, and the drive is APFS, is that the problem? The drive supposedly has to be APFS to work correctly with the SSD. Should the thumb drive have been formatted APFS? That's not what the instructions said to do, but....

Nothing should be “MS extended”. How did you format it?

Sorry, Mac OS extended.

The thumb drive should be Mac OS extended according to those docs even if the Mac is going to be apfs so I’m not sure. Sorry

Ugh, tried to do time machine restore and it's saying I can't because the drive is APFS. Grrrrr

My time capsule drive died and now I'm going to have to pay $250 (at least) to someone to try and recover it. So, you know, I hate apple.

The internet is telling me that to get it back to Mac OS extended I have to do a bunch of shit in Terminal. And the things I need to do aren't clear. It says I need to wipe the drive in terminal but there is a big list of drives. Only two say they are APFS, but I don't know which one to wipe out. Confused and frustrated, I'm about to have a toddler tantrum.

If I throw the mac in the backyard while it's raining, will that fix it?

My time capsule drive died and now I'm going to have to pay $250 (at least) to someone to try and recover it. So, you know, I hate apple.

― DJI, Monday, July 20, 2020 1:08 PM (thirty-six minutes ago)

apple can't make hard drives failure-proof

My time capsule is nearly ten years old, probably time to get a new networks drive.

by at least 5 years yes

I, personally, back up nothing, due to stupidity

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)