July 2013 Update

It's been a while since updating this blog, partly due to recovery from heart surgery in April, and partly because Apple has had no major failures with their software updates.

Speaking of the surgery, I'm about 85% fine now. Taking twice-weekly cardiotherapy at St. Vincent's and getting ever stronger. Been working normal hours since early June. The last 10% takes the longest.

1Password at PMUG Monday

I have written about this password manager before, and encourage anyone plagued with password problems (like forgetting them or losing the paper you wrote them on) or risking security failure by using the same password on all your logins.

So come to the Portland Mac Users Group meeting on Monday, July 8 when member Steve Riggins will demonstrate how to securely manage your passwords, credit cards, software licenses, and other information. We meet at 6:30 for Q&A and the general meeting begins at 7:30. We meet at the Ecotrust Center in NW Portland, 721 NW 9th Ave. Plenty of parking plus bus and streetcar service right to the place. You do not need to be a PMUG member to attend.

Issues

The biggest issue for some has been with AppleMail for those who were running Lion 10.7.5 and upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.8. (ML is now at version 10.8.4, which is what will be installed if you are upgrading for the first time now.) It demonstrated crashing, improper mail management and other quirks. It took a reinstallation of ML from the Emergency Repair volume it created from your Mac's internal drive.

There have been updates to Security and Java, which are important. You should always get those. Otherwise, waiting a week after you learn of an update will protect you in case Apple does issue a goofball. That gives me time to find out about it and warn you, and gives them time to discover their error and pull the update.

Other updates include support for iMovie, iDVD and the iWork suite of applications. It's okay to get those. Safari is still suffering from the "Force reload all webpages" bug that has been there since version 5.1. Snow Leopard 10.6.8 users can stop with Safari 5.0.5 and not experience the problem. Lion and later requires 5.1 so you're out of luck.

Most of you will never see the bug; it's triggered if you use the "Open in Tabs" feature, and also keep web pages open and in the Dock for more than a day or two. Unfortunately for me, I use that feature to read my daily web comics, and that opens a window with 21 tabs. Even at a fast (25 Mbps) connection, it takes several minutes for all those pages to load. When it does hit, your only option is force reload or Cancel and quit Safari. Start it up again and most of your pages should come back.

iTunes, naturally, is updated the most frequently, partly to support new features and iOS devices. I did not like the changes introduced in version 10 at first, but I have gotten used to them and now find very few things about it that annoy me. Those of you who don't have pads, pods or iPhones don't need the new version (unless you want to use the movie and TV-rental features) so you can hold out a little longer. Current version is 11.0.4.

The rest of the updates that show up, i.e. RAW Camera Update, Airport Utility, Remote Screen Sharing can be installed, but if you don't specifically need them you can skip. One exception is a class of updates called Firmware Updates. Those reprogram a chip on the logic board ("firmware") and should be installed alone. If you see a firmware update in the list from Software Update, uncheck all the boxes for the other updates and run this. After the restart you can relaunch Software Update and get the rest.

Repair Permissions

Finally, always run Repair Permissions with the Disk Utility app in your Utilities folder. Do this both before and after running the software updates. I wrote the how-to in my November 2011 blog, here: http://bit.ly/15mNWvI.

Dead OS Versions

Tiger 10.4 is long abandoned and Apple does not issue software updates for it any more. But for users of G-Macs (G4, G5) it's the last version that supports Classic OS9. If you still need that to access your oldest application documents, you will want to retire that Mac to a back shelf some day and just use it when needed. If you need to access MacWrite, early Quark XPress and HyperCard files, you need a Mac that can actually run under OS9; not just Classic. The last model capable of that is the white dome G4 iMac with the 15" screen, or the early G4 towers.

Leopard 10.5 is the last version of the OS capable of running on G-Macs with the PowerPC chip. Early Intel Macs could run Tiger (but not Classic) and Leopard. Apple abandoned support for Classic with Leopard. They still issue Security Updates for Leopard but for all intents and purposes, it's dead.

Snow Leopard 10.6 abandoned support for AppleTalk, which killed their workhorse LaserWriter Pro models, but still supported applications written for PowerPC Macs like Quicken 2006, Eudora, AppleWorks and MS Office 2004, among others, by including a block of code called Rosetta. Snow Leopard is still considered current and supported (after a fashion) but will be officially abandoned with the release of OSX 10.9 (called Mavericks - farewell to the cats) this fall.

There is an Excedrin headache plaguing 10.6 users, and me: I can no longer update any old version of 10.6 to the final 10.6.8 using my installers downloaded from Apple. This happened some time after a patch to 10.6.8 was released; there was an update to the updater that would not install unless 10.6.8 was running, but you could not update to 10.6.8 without it. That threw us into the mandatory hands of Software Update and if you had a weak or flakey Internet connection, the 1-Gb download of 10.6.8 would usually fail.

I used to tell people to stay with 10.6.8 forever so they could keep using their old apps, but soon you'll need to relegate your Snow Leopard (or Tiger) Mac to that same back shelf as your old SE-30. It seems that "forever" in computer years is just about five human years.

Lion 10.7 was the biggest change, with the end of Rosetta. If you are still using AppleWorks under 10.6 or older, open up ALL of your .cwk documents and do a SaveAs into either Word (.doc) or text (.txt) formats. AppleWorks is the only program that has NO modern equivalent and there is NO converter available. AppleWorks spreadsheets can be saved as Excel files, and the database info can be exported into tab- or comma-delimited text, readable by some modern database applications.

Mountain Lion 10.8 is current for the rest of the summer; not many apps need upgrading when it came out. Mostly, if it ran under 10.7 it worked under 10.8.

New Macs

If you've been following the Apple news, you've seen that they've upgraded the MacBook Airs, the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros, and announced a radically designed Mac Pro. Be tempted by these models, and the two iMacs that came out a few months ago. The Airs have a new high-efficiency chip that promises even more battery life, as much as 12 hours of gentle (no videos) use for the 13" and 9 hours for the 11" models. Both of them support any size external display and 256 Gb SSD (solid-state drives) so these can serve as your primary Mac. Plug in the external display and you have as much work area as an iMac; unplug it and take all of your files with you. Personally, I would feel chained to my desk if I had an iMac or Mac mini. Even if you seldom take your laptop anywhere, it's nice to be able to. Oh, and the Airs are both $100 cheaper than the previous model (which I have).

The Pro is amazing looking; a black cylinder that resembles a beer cozy for a can of Foster's. Fastest 12-core processor possible, multiple Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3; up to 60 (sixty!) Gb internal RAM and the fastest SSD storage on the planet. Load this down with everything and swap your Mercedes for it. Visit the Apple Mac Pro page and just marvel at it.

New Safari Upgrade for Lion

Along with the release of Mountain Lion is an update to Safari 6 for Lion. I have been having so much trouble with Safari 5.1.x I have been warning Snow Leopard users to stick with 5.0.5.

Well, that's still true for SnL users, but Lion required 5.1. Even after 7 updates it was still a mess, displaying this horrible dialog often:

So the first thing I did to my Lion installation (before going to Mountain Lion) was to install Safari 6. The news is great: All the things I did to make that problem occur have not resulted in a repeat. There was one new problem, however: HTML5 videos on websites like FailBlog and YouTube were off center. I traced that problem to Click2Flash, a plugin that blocks all those horrible Flash ads that infest so many web pages.

After a little Googling, I discovered that it was the now-obsolete 2.5.2 version of Click2Flash that was causing the display error. I also read that the official website for Click2Flash is obsolete; you now get updates from Apple's Plugins page under the Safari menu. The current version is 2.6.2.

To install the update, you must first open Safari's Preferences, go to Extensions, choose Click2Flash, and click Uninstall. Then you can go to the Safari Extensions item under the Safari menu (above Preferences) and locate Click2Flash and choose Install. That gives you the updated version and the mis-aligned video window is fixed.

Also great news: The new version of Safari is MUCH snappier. One of the things I do with it is load 26 tabs at the same time (my Daily Comics collection) and I would usually have to wait and endure a lot of spinning rainbows before I could start reading and closing tabs. That problem is gone. If I have to reload a tab the Not Responding problem does not occur.

Granted all this is after only an hour's use, but I have to say at this point that I am very pleased with Safari 6.

Expect a flurry of updates from me over the next few days as I test out all the updates and spend time with Mountain Lion.

Danger: Avoid Thunderbolt Update 1.2

It's all over the blogs today: Apple screwed up bigtime with the software update for Macs with Thunderbolt ports. Many, if not most, people who apply this update find that their Mac crashes on startup, either into a kernel panic, or just stops at the grey screen.

If you have one of these Macs, DON'T DO IT. Just quit Software Update and wait until Apple fixes this mess.

If it's too late, you can fix things by booting into the Recovery Partition by holding down the R key after hitting the power button. Connect to your network and tell it to Reinstall Lion.

If you have a second Mac also running Lion, you can put the dead one into Target Disk Mode (restart while holding down the T key) and then plugging it into the second Mac with FireWire. Then reinstall the 10.7.4 Update. Obviously this will not work unless both Macs have a FireWire port.

If you want to read what others are writing, start with TidBits, then Google "Thunderbolt Software Update" for the rest.

If you have been maintaining a SuperDuper clone backup, you can also start from that and clone it back over the damaged internal drive. That's the best solution and why I always recommend you have both Time Machine and a clone backup.

Lion 10.7.4, 3 Weeks On

I took three weeks to live with this update because I wanted to see the reports and followups from other users. My final judgement: Not bad.

The only consistent problems have happened to people running VMWare Fusion, software that lets you run Windows on Mac. VMWare's competitor is Parallels, and that has been trouble-free. So if you are using VMWare, wait for them to issue an update before you install Lion 10.7.4.

Those who have not installed Lion at all will find that the version they get from the App Store when they do upgrade will be the most current version with all updates in place. This is an improvement over the old DVD model, where you had to get a disk from the store which was almost always outdated at sale.

The Safari 5.1 problems, specifically the "Webpages not responding" issue is STILL not fixed, as of 5.1.7. Lion users are stuck with it, but Snow Leopard users should stop and stay with version 5.0.5 until this mess is cleaned up. It can be downgraded if you are running 10.6.8 and did get Safari 5.1. You can read about my experience doing it in the April 9 blog posting.

So go ahead, Lion users, get the update. Also be sure to get all Java and Security Updates. Now that we finally have Mac malware to worry about, it's important to keep up.

Last, always Repair Permissions after running Software Update. If you've forgotten how, it's in the November, 2011 Update.

 

Software Update Has Been Busy

I should have been more on top of this, but there have been a lot of updates for 10.6 and 10.7 users. Most important are the Java and the Security updates. There have been stories all over the Web and the semi-conscious media about that Horrible New Mac Exploit. Well, the exploit is real, but Apple is on top of it. Just go to Software Update and run it and you will be protected. No need for a commercial anti-malware program. On the other hand, that exploit was around for quite a while before Apple released the patch. If you want to doubly protect yourself, I have always recommended the open-source and free Clam XAV. Easily located through Google and easy to install.

This is NOT a virus. A virus is a specific type of malware that can infect a computer by simply receiving a piece of email with the virus attached. It can launch and install itself, scan your address book and send itself to everyone in it, while pretending to be from someone else randomly picked from that list.

Viruses run only on Microsoft computers. So far, no one has successfully crafted a virus that works the same way in Linux or Mac computers. Yes, there is malware, but only on a one-off variety; meaning they can attack only one computer at a time, and usually require tricking the user into giving it the admin password. Meaning, if you did not deliberately initiate a process (like an installer), do not give it your password!

Longtime Mac users will remember the early days of Mac viruses that spread on floppies and ran under System 7 and 8. They were quashed in System 9 and nothing like them have reappeared.

Important Safari Setting

There is a setting in Safari that Apple, to this day, has set incorrectly. Open Safari Preferences, click on the first icon (General), and at the bottom UNcheck the box that says "Open "safe" files after downloading." I think they put the word Safe in quotes to be ironic. What it is really saying is, "Do you want to open and run any strange piece of crap that downloads itself without giving you any warning?" Duh, no I don't!

This isn't as bad as Chrome and Firefox, though, which do not even give you that option. There is no such checkbox. This is why I continue to use Safari as my primary browser, using the others only on sites that it can't properly handle.

Flash

Some people don't like to install Flash at all. The reason is that it is a processor hog and can cause a runaway process from a badly coded video or just a random quark hitting your RAM at the wrong time. Since Google Chrome has their own embedded Flash-like scheme, you can use it to visit those web sites that rely heavily on Flash that you want to see anyway. Examples include FAILblog, Cheezeburger Network, and Vimeo. I do use Flash and rarely have problems and when I do they are usually fixed by quitting and relaunching Safari. I also run the add-on "Click2Flash," which blocks individual flash images from a web page until you click on them to load them. I find that works pretty well, overall. Click2Flash is free; just yahoo, bing or google it. (I'm kidding; no one Yahoos anything!)

Other Updates

There are other updates offered by Software Update. iTunes has a version 10.6.1 which you should get only if you already got the 10.6.0 version. It is required only if you rent or buy 1080p HD videos from the iTunes Store, or you got one of the new iPad 2s models. Otherwise you can stick with 10.5.3 or whatever version you are using now that does not misbehave for you. There have been reports of problems with 10.6 that led to the 10.6.1 update, but that's not news to anyone. There are no other updates to avoid, except those for programs you don't own or use, like iWeb, Pages, Numbers and other iWork apps. Do get updates for iLife because that includes iPhoto even if you don't use iMovie or iDVD.

Avoid These Updates

iPhoto and iTunes

Apple just released an update to iPhoto, version 9.2.2. They also released iTunes 10.6. It looks like you should avoid them, based on reports from the Mac blogs. iTunes 10.6 is mainly to support HD movies from the iTunes Store, as well as the new iPad. These updates are available for both Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Lion 10.7.3.

Some reports state that the installation fails, both via Software Update, as well as the version you download from Apple's site. They also cite an interaction between iTunes and iPhoto, requiring both be updated or iTunes can crash on startup.

If you followed my standard rule of waiting a week before accepting anything from Software Update, then you should be fine. Like their recent screwup with the Snow Leopard Security Update, which I wrote about last month, Apple should be updating the updaters with versions that don't cause so much trouble.

You can postpone these two indefinitely. However, any other update, such as an SMC Firmware Update for some laptops, and the Security Update should be performed.

Also, Safari now is up to 5.1.4. If you are using any version of Safari 5.1, you should run this update. If you are still on version 5.0.5, don't update it at all. I will let everyone know if Apple ever releases a version of 5.1 that is as stable as 5.0.5 is.

A Little Mac Humor

"Fans" of the Spinning Beach Ball of Death will get a needed laugh out of this short video that was taken at a recent TED talk.

Solution to Lion SuperDuper problem

I just heard back from Dave Nanian at Shirt Pocket. (On a Sunday during the Super Bowl! I love that company.)

Here is his message:
_____
Time Machine stores its local snapshot in the .MobileBackups folder on the source drive when you're using a laptop.

Rarely, this folder is in a state that makes it uncopyable. If you get an error like this, there are four things you can do:

• Wait for the next actual Time Machine backup to occur, which will flush the folder
• Temporarily turn Time Machine off, which clears the snapshot
• Use "sudo tmutil disablelocal" to turn off local snapshots
• Create and use a copy script that ignores /.MobileBackups (which is more complex for the user, but will be the default in the next version of SuperDuper.
_____

So that's the answer. You can ignore the second two suggestions. When the next version of SD comes out, it will be fixed for good.

BTW, none of this affects SuperDuper users in Snow Leopard or Leopard. It's a Lion-only problem.

Apropos of Lion, I determined that there is no way to downgrade Safari to version 5.0.5. Lion 10.7.0 shipped with, and requires, 5.1 or later. Now we just gotta wait for Apple to fix the mess.

10.7.3 Update Results

Lion Update

Well, I did the update to Lion 10.7.3, and I see no change in performance or features. The update included a jump to Safari 5.1.3, which did NOT fix the problem it has been having with pages not responding, and requiring a forced reload of all open pages.

Obviously Apple knew about the problem or they wouldn't have included the dialog box, which did not exist (or at least, was never invoked) in 5.0.5 and before.

Biggest fail, however, is with SuperDuper. It cannot copy a specific invisible folder called /.MobileBackups, which exists at the top level of the hard drive. It fails with a Type 8 due to error 28: No space left on device. This is actually not true; the target drive has three times as much free space as the source drive it is copying.

I sent the report to Shirt Pocket Software, publisher of SD, and maybe they will have a response next week. You who use SD, be sure to click the Send to Shirt Pocket button at the bottom of the report, which you see by choosing the Show Log item in the Window menu, any time your backup fails.

That .MobileBackups folder exists to save older versions of files like TimeMachine does, but it works when the T-M backup drive is not present. I can't blame this on 10.7.3 because it appeared when backing up the 10.7.2 Lion disk before I ran the updater.

I went through half an afternoon trying to clear out that folder, too. First, it's invisible so I have to run the widget "Hidden Files" in order to have the Finder show all invisible files and folder. Then, when I could see it, that folder had a NoEntry icon on it, which told me I could not open the folder because I didn't have enough privileges.

Root User did not help

Okay, I have to get those privileges, so I enable Root User on my Mac and log in as that. This lets me open things not available to a simple Administrator, but lo, the Hidden Files widget cannot be installed and run in Root. So off to Google I go to find the Terminal commands that will enable hidden files. That works. However, when I open the now-readable .MobileBackups folder, I see the items that are causing the problems (as well as wasting 4 gigs of drive space) but it won't let me delete them! Even as root! I am truly playing in a sandbox that Apple does not want anyone to play in.

The failure was caused by some Safari files. After banging around a bit I was finally able to make them go away and lo, the SuperDuper backup works. I return to normal user mode and run the backup so I can load the 10.7.3 update.

When all this was finished, I plugged in a larger hard drive, one big enough that I could partition it to support both Time Machine and SuperDuper backups. Set to run that night, I wake up to a SD failure again, with the same error message pointing to the same /MobileBackups folder, but with a different file in it: the 10.7.3 Combo Update!

This is where I gave up and am waiting to hear from Shirt Pocket.

Addendum

I got a short answer from Shirt Pocket just now: It seems the only workaround is to turn TimeMachine OFF (in System Preferences, Time Machine) for 10 minutes before running SuperDuper. I wrote back and answered if this is something that can be fixed in the next SD update. Will post when I hear back.

October Update

Lots of things have happened since my last update. Time to catch you all up. This is for users of Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion.

Hard drive prices to soar

A recent typhoon in Thailand destroyed four hard drive plants. This has already raised prices by $20 or $30; by the end of the year they may simply be hard to find at all. If you are thinking of getting a backup drive or upgrading your internal drive, I recommend you hop on this NOW.

Tiger

It’s almost over. Apple supports two systems into the past, and now that Lion is established, that means Leopard is all that will receive updates from Apple. This doesn’t mean you have to leave Tiger if everything still works for you, but it does mean that some web sites will not work with the newest possible version of Safari (4.1.2). If yours is older than that, it is okay to update Safari now. The .2 version fixes all the bugs and screwups that were introduced in version 4.1. But you will still be excluded from some of the latest places. You can still run Chrome or Firefox, though. Other updates you should get, if they are offered, are Security and Java updates.

G-Macs with the PowerPC chip can move a little closer into the present with an officially hacked version of Firefox called TenFourFox. Google it, and download the version designed for your chip (G4, G5).

You can’t sync the new iPhone or iPad because iTunes needs to be the latest version (10.5) to sync to the Mac. Minimum requirement is Leopard 10.5.8. However, the iPhone 4S can work without linking to a Mac at all and just stand alone. Its version of Mail can access your ISP directly, has its own Safari and can buy from the iTunes App Store. It can back itself up through iCloud. You have to maintain your address book within the phone. When you do upgrade your MacOS or get a new one, you can then sync things up.

Leopard

Still supported with current updates to Safari 5. The current version is 5.1, which is for 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. You can use the latest version of Firefox and Chrome as well. Be sure to get the latest security updates, and it’s also okay to get the current version of QuickTime and iTunes. At the moment, if you are on 10.5.8 there are no problematic updates out there. Leopard is the end of the line for G-Macs.

Snow Leopard 10.6

Just a few printer updates plus iTunes 10.5. The current version is 10.6.8, which is a version updated two weeks after the first one came out, to fix some bugs in that release. This is why I always say to wait a week or two before installing updates. I had not had any problems myself, but the blogs were full of complaints, later resolved by the 10.6.8 v1.1 update. Now that is included in the normal 10.6.8 update. Check with Software Update and see if there is a Supplemental Update; if so, get it.

Lion

Current version is 10.7.2. If you are running Lion you need this update. Lion was the most troublesome upgrade we have seen in some time. It’s been working pretty well for me, but I don’t really push my Mac very hard. The MacFixIt blog is full of comments and complaints, and reports of icon placement bugs that were fixed in the update, others claiming still weird.

Safari 5.1 had a text-rendering problem that has been fixed in the 5.1.1 update. Otherwise the new Safari has been fine. You must update 1Password to work with it, however.

I am still searching for alternatives to the apps I lost in the move to Lion. At MacCamp earlier, two classes focused on Lion and one on alternatives to Quicken. I will be very happy to leave the Intuit company behind for good, because they have always been hostile to Mac users and put less effort into their products. One pro-Mac company is IGG Software, publishers of iBank, which is Mac-only and also makes a version for iOS. I will be reporting on how well it works after I have tried it out for a while. It comes with a free trial period so you don’t have to buy it until you know it works for you. It can import Quicken files directly from the exported .qif format, supported in Quicken 2007 or earlier. Quicken Stripped to Worthlessness, aka Quicken Essentials, doesn’t even do this kind of export so avoid it at all costs, even if it is Lion compatible.

1Password

Speaking of 1Password, although it has a complex learning curve, I recommend it as the solution to the multiple-password problem so many Mackers have. You create a simple but difficult-to-guess passphrase and it creates almost-uncrackable passwords for all your web sites. It saves them in a format that you can look up whenever you need to see them, but it does the login for you whenever you go to a password-requiring site. You can also store your bank info in it, and your personal form data so when you find a site where you want to fill in your name, address, phone and other info, it will do it for you in one click. Used in tandem with the free Dropbox to archive and protect your 1Password data file, you can eliminate all worry about losing passwords again.

I like to keep a human-readable text file stored in its Secure Notes section so I can just open the program and read the info whenever I need to say my credit card info on the phone, or otherwise use a password in a non-Web browser context. Dropbox can also copy that file to your iPhone or iPad, and there is a version of 1Password for the phone as well.

iOS5

Some people report failure to install this update to their phone or pad. My iPhone 4 had no problems with the update, and I like the new features it brings. I’m in no hurry to get the 4S, although it would be fun to play with the Siri feature. One thing I like a lot about the update is the fact that the camera shutter can now be triggered by pressing on the sound-up button on the side, making the phone work more like a real camera. Very convenient. Auto-correct is still a good source of mirth and frustration, which makes really bizarre and incorrect assumptions about what you want to type. I turned mine off immediately in Settings.

To experience some of the fun others have had, visit the Auto-cowrecks section of FailBlog.

iCloud

Part of Lion 10.7.2 and iOS5, this replacement for MobileMe automatically stores desired files on Apple’s servers (what marketers call “the cloud”) and syncs contacts and bookmarks, among other things, between your Mac and your iOS device. Although I am using it now, I have not really experienced it because I have not had to recover any files from it. It is nice to have my Apple Address Book info always updated in my iphone without having to wait for a manual sync through iTunes. There is talk of bringing iCloud to Snow Leopard through a 10.6.9 update, but that has not happened yet. MobileMe will go dark next June, so if you are using it, start planning your migration away from it now. iWeb has been discontinued, and any photos or other web pages you have created on MobileMe should be moved over to Flickr or some other photo-hosting service.

Byword; Mac Power Users

This post was composed in a new $9.99 word-processing program designed for writers who are sick of Microsoft Word and find OpenOffice too complex for just plain old writing. Another, more expensive, program called Scrivner has a lot of fans too. Byword supports the Markdown format of coding pages, which is a much simpler way to create coding for blogs, or html for your web site. Markdown is a world of its own and I must learn more about it, which I am starting to do with this app. Once the page is composed, it can be exported to the Clipboard in HTML, ready to be pasted into your blog-site composition window.

I learned about this on the podcast MacPowerUsers, which you can subscribe to through iTunes. It’s not just for power users; it’s to help all Mac users become power users. I recommend everyone subscribe to this and listen. Each episode discusses a specific topic - the last one was about a writer's workflow and his favorite writing applications. There is always something to be learned in the discussion-format program; you will want to keep a pen handy. The show notes, with links, are on the site, where you can play any episode of the show.

Lion Part 3, Updates, iTunes Story

10.7.1 is out

If you are one of the few who upgraded to Lion 10.7, Apple just issued the first, much-needed, update. It consists of the usual round of bug fixes and no visible changes. I installed it immediately, did the usual repair-permissions thing, and am using it now.

It hasn't been made any more compatible with PPC applications, and it never will. So I must continue using my dual MBAir/MacMini system so I can keep using Quicken, Eudora, Word 2008 and all the other stuff that Lion won't run.

Lion Experiences, Part 3

But living with 10.7 for almost a month now has gotten me used to the new features. Last week's PMUG meeting taught me more about the system than three weeks of dinking around did, and I find I like it more. The new backwards scrolling feels more natural now and it's harder to switch back. I am also enjoying the new Mission Control feature that replaced Spaces, and the full-screen feature that I am using with Screen Sharing. In fact, Screen Sharing works so well now I could probably reduce using my KVM switch to move between systems. I still get bitten by forgetting to eject the USB drive before hitting the switch, which has the same result as unplugging without ejecting. I just wish the USB part of the KVM switch worked. It was the last hole in the system.

Setting the Shared Screen to the Mini while running under Lion gives me the best of both worlds. It feels just like I am running Eudora in Lion. Yes, I understand that Eudora is a shambling zombie, shedding limbs as it stumbles around the abandoned city seeking brains, but I have not found a program I like more. Price of being old, I guess.

I Now Take Plastic

Got an iPhone? Run a small business? If you never contracted with Visa/MC to take plastic before due to hassle and expense, there is a real alternative with Square. Visit the iTunes Store and hunt down the Square app. You download a small program to the phone, then go to their web site to register an account and tell them which bank they should transfer your money to, and then they mail you a little "square" device that plugs into the earphone jack on your phone. Open the app, plug in the Square, and you are ready to swipe a card. Its security is as good as any credit card system (faint praise, I know) but their service charge is half that of a normal Visa system. Fill out the customer's email address and the dollar amount and the transfer is immediate. An email receipt is sent to the customer, and after a couple of days, the amount, minus 2.5%, is transferred to your bank.

So if you ever want to charge my service call, remind me if I don't mention it.

Snow Leopard Update

As you may remember, I put the 10.6.8 update on the Don't Bother list. It didn't offer any advantages and did introduce serious bugs for a few people; enough to keep the Mac blogs hopping for weeks.

Someone at Apple was paying attention, because last week they issued an update to the update, 10.6.8 v1.1, which reportedly fixed a lot of the problems. So states the experience of people writing in. Me, I don't know because I stayed at 10.6.7 and will continue to do so.

In releasing the update, Apple also repaired the downloadable Combo Update without changing the name. If you were to go to Apple/Downloads and get it, the new version contains the fixes and Software Update would not offer the 1.1 updater after you installed it. About This Mac would still say 10.6.8.

If you ever do decide to go Lion, you can use 10.6.6 or later to get it from the App Store. When you do, the Lion installer will take you directly to 10.7.1. It couldn't hurt you to wait for 10.7.2, which is now being seeded to developers to test their own programs against. See it by September.

Leopard Updates

There are still updates issued for Leopard 10.5. The final version is 10.5.8 and that is required for the latest iTunes and a few other things, but if you don't need that and are using 10.5.7, stay put until you leave Leopard for good. There are security updates being issued and they are important now that there is actual Mac malware around. Do get those.

iTunes 10.4

It works. No bugs. I am pleasantly surprised. Usually the dot-zero version of any upgrade is problematic. Every Mac I have run it on has demonstrated normal behavior. Good job, iTunes team.

Speaking of iTunes

Most people use the Migration Assistant to move their data from an old Mac to a new one. Sometimes, when that isn't possible or desirable, I manually move the appropriate files, preferences, picture and movie files. That usually works out fine, but there is a problem with iTunes that has not been fixed since the first time I experienced it, three or four years ago.

iTunes is the only application that makes non-standard use of the green button. All other apps will toggle between full size and previous size whenever you click it. iTunes, however, switches between mini-player and normal window. The only way to change the size is to grab the lower right corner and manually resize it. But what do you do if the window is too big for the screen and you can't reach that corner because it's below the bottom? Nothing. You're stuck. This happens if you copy the iTunes Folder from Music on a big screen to a small one, like a MacBook. The program thinks it's still on the big screen and the bottom is down below the bottom, in unreachable-land.

The first time it happened, when I realized what it was doing, I went back to the older Mac, opened iTunes, and shrunk the window so it would fit the smaller screen. Then re-copied the whole folder over again. Well, that takes gigs and I thought there had to be a better way.

So I called Apple and although they had other reports of this problem on file, they had never issued a fix that their support people could tell you to do. Sure, you could throw out everything but your iTunes Music folder and then re-import, but you'd lose all your playlists. So Apple escalated me to a level-2 tech and they couldn't fix it either. They sure tried; tossing out com.apple.itunes.plist and similar files, zapping the PRAM, Safe Booting, all for naught.

While waiting on hold I went back to the old Mac and did the window resize, and then copied everything in the iTunes folder except the actual music files, brought that over to replace the squirrely ones and then just put the music in its place. I launched iTunes, and presto, the new size was remembered and it fit the screen. So the answer was somewhere in that folder. I hoped it wasn't the iTunes Music Library.xml file because I thought that is where the playlists are stored. It turned out to be the iTunes Library.itl file because it was the only other one that seemed to have no other use.

This is important to know because maybe the old Mac no longer runs, although the drive, or a clone backup, is accessible so going back and resizing the window is impossible. I went home to my Mac and tried simply removing that file to see if that is all it would take. Nope, the bad news is the playlists, as well as the entire library index, are stored in that file and not in the iTunes Music Library.xml file as I had thought. Removing that one and not the other makes no apparent change to the iTunes window.

So the bottom line is everything important is stored in that .itl file. Remove it and the window opens to the default size for your screen, but your playlists are gone and the library is empty. Your only option at that point is to choose Add To Library... from the File menu and choose your iTunes Music folder so it can re-index all the music, apps and videos you have in there. Playlists are gone for good.

This is a rare bug because most people rely either on the Migration Assistant or physically copying files from their backup drive. Also, most people seldom move from a big screen to a smaller one. Another fix would be plugging in an external display that's big enough to show the large iTunes window and then resizing it. This bug also reappears if you have the window sized to fit your big display and then unplug it to view the laptop screen alone.

Every other window resizes itself when you do that, or resizes if you press the green button. Apple could fix this by moving the window-size information to the .plist file in Preferences. I hope they do that in the next update. If you know anyone on the iTunes development team, please forward this story to them.

Lion Experiences, part 2

While I like some of the features, I do not like the changes to Spaces. It is now too easy to accidentally invoke a screen shift while difficult to drag items from one to another. I also find it increasingly obvious that this is not really ready for prime time and one should wait for 10.7.1, at the earliest. I am seriously thinking about blowing off Lion and returning to SNL myself. I discovered that now that I can no longer use Eudora, I really hate AppleMail.

Recently I had my first repair call for a Lion installation gone bad. Recovery from this is much worse than I imagined. First the warning:

DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE MADE A CLONE BACKUP OF YOUR SNOW LEOPARD DRIVE!

Even a TimeMachine backup is not sufficient because full recovery from them is very difficult. You want to be able to boot off of your backup drive and clone it all back, killing Lion completely.

This client had broken all the rules. He left his startup items in place (System Preferences, Accounts, Login Items) instead of deleting them all. Each restart automatically launched incompatible apps, causing crashes. He did not do a Repair Disk and Repair Permissions with Disk Utility first.

He did this on his production Mac Pro, without a clone backup. All of this made his Mac's Murphy chip glow hot with excitement. If he had the clone, the chip might have let his installation succeed, but due to the other factors he would still have had problems. Without a clone it is impossible to return to Snow Leopard without erasing the drive before installation, and since TimeMachine had already run, all he could have recovered were his documents.

Lion installs an emergency recovery partition on your drive that contains a copy of Disk Utility and a minimal system. You access this by holding down the Option key at startup and choosing it from the icons that immediately appear. At the moment that is the ONLY repair program available; DiskWarrior will need an upgrade to work on a Lion system.

Oh, the icing on the turd: his drive was 98% full. You should never let a startup drive go beyond 80% because the rest of the space is needed by virtual memory for swapfiles, printing for temporary spool files, caches and the like. I was able to get him down to 92% full, which helped, and set him about clearing off the rest of the space hogs to an external drive. Then I had him go buy another drive for SuperDuper and get that running. I believe, but am not certain, that SuperDuper's latest version is compatible. (2.6.2 is not.)

Disaster story

Speaking of that Murphy chip, another client has suffered hard drive failure on a production iMac with NO backups. This is not repairable due to actual disk damage. I am able to rescue files with DiskWarrior, but that particular iMac does not use industry-standard drives (special heat sensor built onto the drive) so I could NOT keep the old one for later recovery (which I had started to do using DiskWarrior). To fix under warranty Apple wants the dead drive back immediately as an exchange or they want $340 cash for the new one. They give only 48 hours slack for the old drive to be returned. Mac shops do not keep extras of this drive in stock. Oh, and she had deadlines to meet. Those deadlines are now dead.

Most of you already know this and are doing it now, but for those of you who are not, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Would you feel badly if your Mac woke up dead and you lost every document on it, including your email, web bookmarks, Documents folder, iTunes music, etc.? Some people only use their Macs for Web browsing and email and keep the email on the server (Gmail, for instance) so they could lose their data without worry.

Do you use your Mac for production? Could you do without it for a week? With a clone backup you can boot from the clone and finish critical work before taking your Mac in for repair, or move it to a 2nd Mac, if you have one. That 2nd Mac would need to be able to boot from the same drive, impossible if your main Mac is Intel and the other one is PPC. You might have problems launching applications from the clone on the 2nd Mac if the registration is tied to the machine (Adobe is the killer here).

Do you have a lot of documents you do not want to lose, but can do without your Mac while it's being repaired? A TimeMachine backup is sufficient for you. A daily clone is much more convenient because a TimeMachine backup will still require you to reinstall your applications. If you have CS5 purchased as an upgrade from an earlier CS version, you will need the older disk, or at least the serial number, to install the upgrade. Can you find it?

The answer for all Mac user except the extremely casual user cited above is this: Go buy an external drive now. If you want to combine TM and Clone on the same drive, it should be a terabyte, partitioned into two volumes. Check your internal drive now - how much data is on it? Highlight it with a click and type Command-I. It will tell you the capacity of the disk, how much data is on it now, and space remaining. If you have a 500Gb or 1Tb internal drive but less than 100Gb full, a 500 will do you. The clone volume can be 200Gb with the other one serving TimeMachine, which does not delete older versions of documents and needs more space. Powered drives are usually 1Tb and are cheaper than unpowered portable 500 drives, but if you have a laptop and want to take your backup with you, the portable is better. Be aware that both could be stolen! Better to leave the backup drive at home or have ANOTHER cloned backup stored elsewhere. Hardcore paranoids rotate backup clones each week, keeping one in a safety deposit box.

It's your data. DriveSavers charges $1500 and up to recover a dead drive. How lucky do you feel?

My Experience with Lion, part 1

Getting Ready for Lion

My original intention was to just forget about Lion for a few months, letting others do Apple's field testing for them. Then I realized I should go ahead and do it because I need to learn as much as possible, in preparation for those clients who will need help with it. But to give it a go, I had to do a lot of preparation.

A Twin System

The recommended way is to make a clone backup of your Snow Leopard (SNL) system so if things fall apart, one can just boot from the clone and copy it all back, wiping Lion off the map. This is always good, and I always run a clone (SuperDuper) backup in addition to my TimeMachine backup.

Since so many of my necessary programs die under Lion I decided I need to have a 10.6 system always around, which is easy to switch over to. Programs I lose under Lion include Eudora, AppleWorks, Word 2004 and Quicken 2006 (and 2007). The only Quicken that runs under Lion is Quicken Stripped Of Any Usefulness, aka "Quicken Essentials." Intuit doesn't care; they are in the business of helping Microsoft sell as many computers as possible and they couldn't care less about their Mac clients.

I already have a keyboard, mouse and 24" Asus display. I also have a MacMini that serves the TV set. So I bought an IOGear KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) that supported DVI plugs, which both Macs do, with an adapter. Price: $99. So off to Frys I go.

This one also has sound ports, so I can, with a single button press, switch screens, sound output and USB devices. That's the idea, anyway. Setting it up I learned that while the video and sound switches flawlessly, the USB would not switch. I called the company to find out why, and the tech, who didn't really seem to know much, told me that their device did not support USB hubs, powered or otherwise, contrary to the page in the manual which shows how to set it up. He even tried to convince me that the mouse had to go in the mouse-marked port and the keyboard in the KB port.

With a lot of trial and error I finally managed to plug the keyboard in and get that switching, and then got the mouse to work plugged into the keyboard. Since the Air has only two USB ports I did not want to use them both to feed the KVM switch because I could get the hub to work by manually switching the plug between the two Macs when I wanted to print something or run the backup drives.

So I almost got what I want and it works well enough to use. That is good because KVM switches that have DVI are uncommon; most of them are VGA, which costs a quarter of what the DVI one cost. Projectors, the most common market use for KVMs are perfectly happy with VGA output since they are not capable of high resolution images.

Downloading Lion

It was the first day, so there was no other way but to buy and download it from the App Store. It took almost 10 hours because my house is located in 2001 where the best DSL signal I can get is 1.5 Mbps. One mile north and I am in 2011 with 20Mbps. I could, of course, hand over 33% of my soul to Concast and get a good signal from them, but I'd rather have my eyes sucked out by lampreys. (Using Concast's TV costs another 33% of your soul, with the final third going for their phone service. You are allowed to keep 1% of your soul for other purposes.)

Anywhilst, late that evening I had the Lion installer on the drive of my MacBook Air, so I quit everything and started it up. I violated several of the rules I and other techs insist on, just to see what would happen. I did not remove my startup items from Account Preferences, and did not repair permissions first. I had already run Disk Warrior so I knew the Air's "disk" was okay. Installation took just 20 minutes.

By the way, Apple claims that you need 10.6.8 in order to get Lion from the App Store. That is not true. You can do it with 10.6.6 or 10.6.7. All that is necessary is that you be able to access the App Store, which was introduced with the 10.6.6 update. People on Leopard 10.5 will not be able to get Lion until Apple makes it available on a Flash drive, rumored to be out in August some time.

Using Lion

I was pleased to learn that a lot of my most important utilities (Dropbox, SMC FanControl, Little Snitch, You Control) worked fine. I did have to give up Remember, which popped up reminder messages when configured to. The one that comes with iCal does not work as well.

The other issue I had trouble with was actually on the SNL Mini. I could not get screen or file sharing to work, even though both Macs were on the Internet and all the IP addresses were correct. I called AppleCare, and after an escalation to a network specialist, we found the problem was actually incorrect preferences in Network. There were two AirPorts, one of which had an Ethernet icon. She had me clear them all away and create new ones, one for Ethernet connection and one for AirPort.

That fixed it. Screen sharing works perfectly now.

For those of you who have never used it, screen sharing allows me to display the screen from one Mac on another, and operate it remotely. (I wish that worked well enough over the internet that I could use it with my clients!) But since I now have a laptop that will not run the primary programs I have on the Mini, Screen Sharing means I don't have to go to the desk and run the Mini to enter something in Quicken or read/write mail in Eudora. This was the last barrier to using Lion full time.

I can always use Safari to access my email when on the Air, which is what I do anyway when I am away from my Mac but have access to another one.

The differences in how Lion works compared to SNL are pretty interesting. Scrolling with fingers on the trackpad or using the arrows (or the Magic Mouse) are backwards. Instead of dragging in the direction you want the scroll bar to go, you instead drag in the direction you want the page to move. It's more intuitive once you get used to it. Scroll bars disappear when not being used. Check your own use of scroll bars: When you want to move up screen the text is actually moving downward as you drag upward. Bet you never even thought of it as being backwards before.

Windows that always have a scroll bar, like your Documents folder, work the same way when you drag the bar, but to drag downwards with two-finger dragging on the Pad, it moves the opposite way. It's difficult to visualize and describe, even when I have one hand on the Mini's slider and the other on the Air's. Get used to using the arrows on the keyboard more; in Safari and reading email, among other things, they make it much easier.

Sites you should visit to learn more about Lion, including reader reports include the Lion section of Macintouch; the App Compatibility Table; the Lion FAQ on Macintouch; and MacUpdate, State of the Apps. Want more? Google is your friend.

New Macs

Along with the release of Lion, Apple shipped two new Macs: an upgraded Air with the i5 and i7 chip that is in the rest of the MacBook/iMac line (almost twice as fast as the Core 2 Duo at the same clock speed) and a new Mini. Both have the ThunderPort that can drive an external display (not including Apple's current model) and various external storages devices which will begin to show up in the stores soon. The new Air, with the biggest SSD and most RAM appears to be $100 cheaper than the last model.

If you have an older Mini now and you have the software that you need to use upgraded to Lion compatibility, this looks like a great buy. It does not have an optical drive, like the Air, so you will need an external USB drive for that. Apple's is $79 and works only with the Air and the new Mini. The Mini can have either a 500 (standard) or 750Gb hard drive, or the 256G SSD that the Air uses and is unbelievably fast. The base model is $599 but has only 2Gb RAM, so you would want to expand that, at least. It will take up to 8Gb. (4Gb add $100; 8Gb add $300.) Visit the Apple Store online and have fun with their configurator so you can see just what your unit would cost with all the add-ons you desire.