macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

This is strange, I just had my iPhone replaced and now handoff between my MacBook Air (2014) and iPad (Mini Retina) and iPhone (5S) isn't working, but handoff between the iPad and iPhone works perfectly. I've tested in Safari, iMessage, and Mail.

I'm on Yosemite 10.10.1

I've followed the instructions here and done the standard turn it off and on again for all three devices but nothing has changed. Airdrop to the Mac is working fine as well, what else should I try?

Edit: The quick hotspot option is also available on the iPad but not the Mac.

tuyop fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 9, 2015

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 17:28

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:00

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

tuyop posted:

This is strange, I just had my iPhone replaced and now handoff between my MacBook Air (2014) and iPad (Mini Retina) and iPhone (5S) isn't working, but handoff between the iPad and iPhone works perfectly. I've tested in Safari, iMessage, and Mail.

I'm on Yosemite 10.10.1

I've followed the instructions here and done the standard turn it off and on again for all three devices but nothing has changed. Airdrop to the Mac is working fine as well, what else should I try?

Edit: The quick hotspot option is also available on the iPad but not the Mac.

So nobody has any advice on this? Should I contact Apple?

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 17:51

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

ufarn posted:

How would you watermark a video in a simple, non-maddening way? Especially if you have a batch.

I've been using Softmatic's tool for images, even though it seems to mess up the quality of the images, but something similar for videos would be great.

I also have a computer with Windows, if there's something there.

I was hoping iMovie had a script dictionary so that you could just use that to batch edit your videos, but no luck.

Though I did find this so you can avoid softmatic if the resolution fuckery bothers you. You may be able to find some video editing software that has an AppleScript or Automator support.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 16:29

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

savesthedayrocks posted:

I'll check later today when I'm off work, but I have been having problems with getting messages sent to my phone on my iPad Air 2

Edit: Sorry man, continuity works on both my Mac mini and iPad with a webpage on my phone.

Messages from a non idevice don't seem to come through on my iPad but does on my Mac mini.

Ok, perfect. I did a bit of a login dance with my iPhone and MacBook and now it "just works" again.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 19:12

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Textedit documents are taking up like 25gb of space on my MBA. The three big culprits seem to be files called "sleepimage" and "swapfile0" and "swapfile1" stored in private/var/vm.

The rest of the space looks to be iPhone and iPad backups that I'm going to move to an external drive with symbolic links. But what are those other three huge files?

Edit: gently caress, I should have googled harder.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 00:37

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Hughlander posted:

Any good guide for troubleshooting instant hotspot that broke with 10.10.2? Doesn't see my iPhone 6+ or iPad Air 2 anymore. I can use personal hotspot but then I'm at Bluetooth speeds which sucks. I've signed out and back in on all of the devices iCloud accounts. I've turned off personal hotspot. Handoff icons show up but instant hotspot is just being a bastard.

It actually fixed a lot of Handoff problems for me, but I had luck getting it to work before the update by logging out of iCloud on all of my devices and then logging back in after a few minutes.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 00:09

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

How is CrashPlan on OS X compared to Time Machine's resource use?

It's a fairly big resource hog on PC, even though it seems to be the best of the bunch in that regard.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 13:06

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Yeah I'm on board with Crashplan, I use it for my photos and archives on my desktop. I haven't had any real problems for years now, but I've also never really needed the service except as a way to grab random files from my desktop using my phone when I'm away. I'll probably go full-Apple with a MBP this year so I was wondering about power use and stuff. If it's customizable, then I guess it doesn't matter!

I don't think I need it for my MBA, though. I only have like 80gb of stuff on here and it's all sitting in Dropbox and Google drive folders and backed up with Time Machine to an external anyway.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 03:31

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Is anyone else as pleased as me that they updated Evernote to let you customize the toolbar? gently caress that Work Chat poo poo.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 04:22

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I have the Apple bluetooth keyboard and I've never been able to get the function key to work in either Mavericks or Yosemite. Turning on the keyboard visualizer thing shows that it's not registering as pressed on the external KB, but works fine on the laptop KB.

Has anyone encountered this and/or found a fix that doesn't involve a full reformat/reinstall of the OS? Repairing and stuff as suggested online hasn't done anything.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 15:16

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

carry on then posted:

It sounds more like the function key just doesn't work. Have you tried the keyboard on another computer?

Yeah, that's a troubleshooting step I haven't been able to try. I'll have to try to find another mac at some point unless it plays a role in some iPad app that I don't know about. The keyboard has a one year warranty like other Apple products, right? I bought it from the store a couple of months ago.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 19:30

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

ZShakespeare posted:

Probably using Chrome, as Google would like.

Safari notifications should work, but you need to keep a gmail tab/window open at all times. You could keep one open and just hide it (cmd-h). The other alternative (and I think better, especially if you have an iPhone) is to just forward all of your Gmail to an iCloud account. It's what I do, but maybe it won't work for you if you are an email warrior and rely on a complex web of filters and rules and tags.

It works fine with Mailbox (still in beta?), though I'm not sure if that's actual push or just regular fetching.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 02:20

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

What kinds of things do you guys use Alfred for? Nearly all of my work is done by using cmd+space for spotlight, typing the beginning of the file name, and pressing enter and getting to work.

I mostly just work with documents on
Google drive and PDFs with Acrobat. Does Alfred shave precious seconds off this sort of thing?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2015 02:15

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Dubstep Jesus posted:

Ok, good to know. It's gonna be very basic formatting so I'm not that concerned. I recalled hearing that there were issues with excel compatibility between the two versions so I wanted to make sure that didn't extend beyond that.

I would recommend google sheets instead if you're just doing a basic presentation, but I understand if that's not doable because of your presentation remote or something.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 22:34

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Nut Bunnies posted:

If you do RSS, you're gonna want Reeder.

Or Feedly. :colbert:

Check out lifehacker's essential Mac apps, that's where I found most of the stuff I use now like:

Bartender
Fantastical
InsomniaX
USB Helper Overdrive (I think that's what it's called) for Bluetooth mouse shortcuts
Spectacle for window management
MPEG Streamclip

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 03:37

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

How about Scrivener vs. Ulysses II?

I'd love to get into an integrated solution for academic writing, though I think I depend on Evernote's web clipper too much and Google Docs has really been good enough for everything except final draft formatting since I started using it six years ago.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 04:30

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

DigitalRaven posted:

I've used Scrivener for all my published writing over the past six years or so. I'm at the point where it'd take me months longer to complete a draft without it. I took a look at Ulysses, but I do too much with features that Ulysses doesn't have (e.g. the corkboard) to make the jump.

That said, pick one that you prefer and use it. Don't spend ages trying to decide between the two. The only way to write is to write, and prevaricating is a subset of "not writing".

Scrivener really sounds like a good solution since you can import Evernote notes pretty easily, thanks. The next time I'm doing some long writing I'll make the change (Master's probably next year).

# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 16:45

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Rnr posted:

At home I use Brackets as well, for simple web work (maintain an automotive forum, that I run). Mercy on your soul if you actually work for a living doing programming work on a mac...

Do most devs use Windows? I guess that's kind of a silly question since most everyone works with Windows. I guess a better question is whether OS X is over represented among software developers. Is it like, a quarter of devs using a Mac or what?

# ¿ Apr 19, 2015 23:22

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Lexicon posted:

A point often lost on the Windows neckbeard types: a Mac is the only machine that represents the superset of all platforms. You can run everything on it from all desktop platforms, very easily.

That's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought of at all.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 03:58

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I'm tired of plugging an external hard drive into my MBA. Is setting up an FTP with, say, an exFAT partition on my Windows PC a viable option instead for files up to a couple hundred MB and streaming video and stuff? Could I keep an iTunes library that way?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 22:47

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I'd like to be able to just leave the external hard drive at home most of the time unless I'm doing video editing or something though. So is there a way to make the iTunes library available over any internet connection and have it work?

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 00:08

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I'm also concerned with archived media, and hard drive space on the laptop. So iTunes Match is great with its streaming and stuff for music, but if I want to get at, say, my FCP projects away from home, I have to lug the (admittedly tiny) external HDD. Cloud syncing is out because of hard drive space as well.

I can accept that the solution may be worse than the problem, since it's probably not easy or cheap to maintain an FTP over the Internet forever compared to just plugging in a hard drive regularly.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 05:13

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

You should ask IT to supply you with a cloth and some water to give your screen a wipe too. Ugh.

Generic Monk posted:

You'd more than likely still have to keep your active FCP projects on the external drive purely because of bandwidth, but you could easily stick your archived stuff on a synology or something. Only major issue would be your home upload speed limiting out if you wanted to grab a large file over the Internet.

This is a good point. I wasn't thinking that I'd be limited by my ridiculous 1.5mbps upload speed.

I think the real solution is to just buy a MBP with an SSD of a useful size instead of the 128gb I have in the MBA. Thats definitely in the budget for September or October.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 20:43

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Mercurius posted:

Or, as wolffenstein said, you could pay for iTunes match. It'll upload up to 25000 songs from your library into iCloud and you can then access those (either by streaming or by caching them to the computer) on any device signed into iCloud. I think it's $25 a year or something like that.

I have iTunes Match, it's good.

It doesn't work for anything else though, like FCP and Lightroom libraries.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 22:03

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Mercurius posted:

Ah, I misunderstood since you didn't actually say that you had Match, only that it looked great with the streaming functionality.

Unfortunately, nearly all of the cloud storage providers aren't particularly fast for either uploading and downloading so unless you've got a computer (or NAS as was mentioned) that's on and uploading all the time (and even then with 1.5Mbps you'll be struggling) your larger media is never going to be in sync. A larger hard drive in the MBP is good but then you're also looking at a single point of failure (either the external drive or if something happens to the machine) and still have the issue of getting everything synced between computers.

Sadly I don't think cloud storage stuff is quite there for anything beyond basic music/documents/photo storage at the moment.

Yeah, is Crashplan the go-to for backing up external drives on OS X? I've been using it for years on Windows but haven't moved to using it in OS X because I don't want to wreck the battery life on my MacBook.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2015 01:29

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Generic Monk posted:

Kodi can act as an airplay target.

This only works for audio as of iOS 7, I think. At least on PC.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 19:57

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I've been using Spectacle for window management, like snap to half or one-third of the screen. Is there a better option that replicates Windows' functionality? I mean you snap windows by dragging them to the relevant edge of the screen. The keyboard shortcuts are cool too if it has those as well.

Also, Spectacle stopped working with acrobat after some update, so if this program works with acrobat that would be an instant buy and huge improvement.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 00:29

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

flosofl posted:

Moom can do all that.

This looks very useful, thanks!

Actually, is it best to buy through App Store or their website? I never know whether to use the Mac App Store.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 01:03

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

gmq posted:

They'd prefer you to buy it directly from them.

That's exactly what I was thinking about. I read something like this about fantastical now that I'm thinking about it at as well.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 05:38

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

opus111 posted:

the OSX mail application is so amazingly bad, are there any decent free ones goons recommend?

I'm using the mailbox beta, which is laughably basic but I'm not too much of an email power user.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 01:10

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

The last time something like that happened to me I just went nuclear and set up MFA on all my important accounts.

The Facebook one is terrible for using their own code generator and I hate it.

Edit: Oh wait, you can use google authenticator on Facebook! Fixing that now.

tuyop fucked around with this message at 02:52 on May 8, 2015

# ¿ May 8, 2015 02:50

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

gmq posted:

What do you use for backups in this age of tiny harddrives?
I have a 30gb folder with pictures on my old desktop that I don't want to move to my rMBP (256GB is just not enough for archival) but I also don't want them keep them there forever as I haven't turned on that desktop in months.

Time machine on an external HDD partition. I use a 500gb partition on a 2TB Seagate drive. I just plug it in whenever I charge my MBA once every couple of days or so.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 03:09

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

surrender posted:

That's probably why I hadn't seen it until now! I usually tether off Wifi, so I turn off bluetooth on the phone to save battery life.

The most recent Bluetooth chipset takes up to 11 months to consume a 225mAh battery. An iPhone 6 battery is 1810mAh. (A MBP battery is >6000mAh.) You probably use more battery running the screen while you're turning Bluetooth off than the chip uses.

# ¿ May 20, 2015 21:10

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

cbirdsong posted:

The desktop is a handy place to keep files because you can just drag things onto it to put them there, and you can browse there easily in any file picker dialog by pressing Cmd-D. Why are you spazzing out about keeping files in a place that is easy to access?

For some reason it bothers me on OS X to have desktop stuff, but not on Windows.

I use the Downloads folder for dragging stuff to and from. It's already in the dock by default and I think it's faster to click the downloads thumbnail and move stuff to and from than to expose to the desktop and do the same. It also looks more tidy. :spergin:

# ¿ May 21, 2015 13:33

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Soldier of Fortran posted:

Nice app, though for anyone who doesn't want to bother with Finder replacements: Finder does cut & paste too, except in Finder you choose between copy/cut at paste time. Hold down Option when looking paste in the edit/right click menu, or hit ⌘⌥V

Well that's useful as hell, thanks!

# ¿ May 29, 2015 19:45

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Binary Badger posted:

People who like watching Netflix and saving battery power on their Mac should never use anything other than Safari. Less than 6% CPU while I'm playing an HD movie, and that's on a 13-inch Late 2013 2.4 GHz, OS X 10.10.3.

Safari is insanely good on MacBooks. I get like 12-14 hours of work using google drive on safari and around 5 using it on chrome (which is sometimes necessary if I can't find wifi :smith:

).

I also use handoff all the time between safari on my phone, iPad, and MacBook and it's really good!

# ¿ May 30, 2015 18:55

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Shaocaholica posted:

Why isn't the user pictures dir(or a lot of the other user dirs) on by default in the favorites panel in finder? Its easy enough to get to with command+up from documents but how is grandma supposed to know that?

Probably because Apple hates Finder and all things file system related in favour of libraries. Grandma should use Photos (and she's probably the only person who should).

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 20:00

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Pivo posted:

Dude its OSX. Keyboard shortcuts are black magic. Shut up and fall in line!

But pressing option usually changes poo poo hahah. So many hidden menus!

It bothers me that they use these ridiculous symbols instead of just opt, cmd, ctrl, shift. Like, I've been using a Mac for a year and I use keyboard shortcuts constantly, but gently caress me if I know the difference between ⌘ ⌥ and ⌃.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 22:54

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Shaocaholica posted:

My MBP keyboard doesn't have these symbols: ⇧, ⌥ and ⌃

How is that helpful for the average user?

Yeah, it would be fine to replace your buttons with arcane symbols if you just put them on the loving button. Like, here

WTF do I press to force quit finder? These look like dance steps, not stuff on my keyboard!

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 23:11

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:00

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I mean my point was that, while I know how to get to the force quit menu because I'll just mash those symbol keys until I get what I want, it's dumb because they could just put a picture of the symbol on the key itself!

Pivo posted:

Well, ^ is standard for Control in *nix, so that's fine. The ⌥ is quite a literal pictograph, it's an OPTION... you see how it takes one path instead of the other...? Hahah. I know, it's very stupid.

⌘ I dunno.

This is a good way to remember (though cmd is just right there so Dixie isn't needed!).

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 00:45

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