Sunday, July 25, 2021

Recent Questions - Ask Different

Recent Questions - Ask Different

Browser web page gets sync'd across different macBooks

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 11:24 PM PDT

I have 2 macBook Pro's (Catalina and Big Sur) and somehow when I open any web page in Chrome/Brave browser on 1 macBook, it gets synced to the other macBook and a new Chrome icon opens up on the dock. And when I click that, the exact same page what I have opened up in my macBook gets opened on the other macBook.

I checked if the browser has sync enabled but it is not.

Can anyone suggest something I can do to stop the browsers from syncing across the macBooks ?

Can I fit a 12GB tensorflow model in the mac air m1 chip with 16GB Unified RAM

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 06:43 PM PDT

I've read that the M1 chip uses a 'unified memory' architecture, where both the CPU and the GPU share RAM.

Is this equivalent to the VRAM on a traditional NVIDIA GPU?

E.g. If I have a 12GB tensorflow model, can I load this model into the 16GB RAM space on my M1 Chip?

Mac alternative for Subtitle Edit?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 04:46 PM PDT

I'm a video producer and our company recently moved to Mac due to the efficiency of the M1 chip. I used to work with subtitles and translate them using a "Windows only" software named "Subtitle Edit". it has the option to create, edit and translate text, and supports many formats. I was pretty surprised to figure out Mac doesn't have anything that does the same thing... do you guys know any subtitle edit software that's actually good? Video is needed to be played during the editing... I'm willing to pay for an alternative so price is not an issue

MacBook Pro 2013 won't connect to new Wi-Fi

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 06:09 PM PDT

I recently moved house and have had a new router installed in the house which is working fine for all my devices until recently my MacBook Pro 2013 started to have trouble connecting. Ultimately my whole MacBook Pro started playing up but it turned out this was because I was running unofficial macOS (Big Sur) on my old 2013 model.

I did a fresh install back to Catalina but this Wi-Fi issue still persisted. What's odd though is that it seems to only have trouble connecting to this network. Other networks or hot spotting to my phone works fine so fortunately its not a hardware issue.

Each time I click to connect I'm asked for the password and after I enter this hangs about trying to connect for a bit and then says connection failed and I have to restart the whole process again (to no avail). Interestingly, if I enter the wrong password the same thing happens and It doesn't tell me the password is incorrect.

Something more fundamental is going wrong I think. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I can go about troubleshooting this issue? I have restarted multiple times, and reset the PRAM, NVRAM etc but no changes.

Reducing system font size on macOS Big Sur with out adjusting display resolutions

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 02:38 PM PDT

I'm looking for ways to reduce the system font size on Big Sur. I use SwitchResX to lower the default resolution on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro to a slightly lower HiDPI resolution (1790x1120 -> 1680x1050) to get more "crisp" text. Since the system fonts now look larger than when using the default resolution, I would like to reduce the font size.

I've used TinkerTool's Fonts options, but they don't seem to have any impact on the macOS UI fonts. (Similar to https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/393202/110833)

Intermittent lag from external keyboard and mouse

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 02:29 PM PDT

I have a 2018 MacBook Air, and an external Logitech keyboard and mouse. Every few minutes there will be a significant input lag from either the mouse or keyboard or both. Sometimes inputs just straight up won't register at all.

The laptop keyboard and trackpad both work fine, its just the external keyboard and mouse pair. They are connected via an wireless USB dongle, which I'm plugging in with a USB-C hub.

I've tried multiple hubs, so I'm sure that's not the problem. I've also tried a different mouse, which did had the same problems, so its not the peripherals.

Anyone encountered the same problem?

How can I delete my info from Apple TV first generation storage

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 12:04 PM PDT

I have no use for my Apple TV A1218 first gen and want to delete any personal information, movies, etc stored on it. However when I connect it to my tv nothing happens.

High Sierra partition on Macbook pro 2020

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 05:24 PM PDT

Is it in any way possible to create a partition running High Sierra on a macbook pro 2020 shipped with Big Sur?

Ideally, I'd like to be able to boot up holding down option key, and be able to choose between High Sierra and Big Sur.

Obviously Apple will not approve of this sort of unholy behavior, but I like to know if it can somehow be done.

Wifi no icon and can't add wifi in system preferences

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 12:15 PM PDT

I have reinstalled macos high sierra here are some screen shots. No wi-fi icon

No wi-fi sowing up.

I have a 17" early 2011 mbp

What is the fastest external storage supported on Intel 2020 27" iMac?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 08:28 PM PDT

I know modern Macs all have USB3 support, but now there's USB 3.1, USB 3.2, NVMe and of course thunderbolt (presumably multiple versions) and I am lost.

What does the 2020 Intel iMac 27" support? What does that mean for data transfer speeds? When buying an external drive what do I need to look out for to make sure it will be compatible with the fastest option?

Crooked Apple iMac M1 Display

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 10:30 PM PDT

I ordered the new iMac in blue and found it had a slightly tilted display, about 3mm to the left, so I returned it and ordered it in yellow. After receiving it yesterday I noted that the yellow iMac is also slightly crooked, also 3mm to the left. Are there any customers out there, who got the new iMac with a straight and level mounted monitor, or are all tilted to some degree? Just for fun, is this a design feature or did Apple screw up production and design?

media keys stopped working

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 05:37 PM PDT

I have a MX Keys keyboard, connected via bluetooth, and recently, the media keys just don't work anymore.

If I use something like BeardedSpice, it does, but I don't get why it doesn't work without it as well...

Volume keys work fine though, just the play, next and previous aren't working (on any player).

I don't know what could possibly cause this. Any ideas?

EDIT: best guess is some app is "stealing" the key presses, not sure how to find out if that's true and if so, which app.

EDIT 2: tested in another user and it works. Also did reset SMC et al. My best guess still is that something is stealing the keypresses, no idea what nor how to find out.

Does "service recommended" battery slow down a Macbook while on power adapter?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 01:03 PM PDT

I have an early 2015 Macbook Pro running Big Sur. It's displaying a "Battery service recommended" notification since recently

I checked the system information. Cycle count is 437 and full charge capacity is 4770 mAh. That seems odd, since Apple estimates the warning to come up after some 1000 cycles.

I looked in preferences to see if I had checked "Optimised battery charging" but the option is missing (Preferences > Battery > Battery).

I wouldn't be bothered much since this macbook is not my daily workstation and I wouldn't mind even if it had to run on the power adapter all the time. But I'm reading about how MacOS reduces the maximum processor speed by half when the battery has this status. I've noticed how it's slower than it used to be (but I can't really tell how much of the difference is between my ears due to p[acebo/suggestion to be honest).

I can't find much information about it, but I'm interested to know whether the reduction of cpu power is just happening while on battery or also when on AC power.

Prevent "Songs of Innocence" from being downloaded?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 03:01 PM PDT

Is it possible to prevent U2's "Songs of Innocence" from being downloaded to iPod during iOS update? No matter how many times I delete the album it always reappears when iOS is updated. This occurs at least on an iPod 6, iOS 12.x.

Sure, I can always delete it. But, really, why must it be considered part of the OS?

Edit: I suspect I have not been sufficiently explicit on the use of this iPod. So here goes:

I acquired it 3 years ago. At that time it received its initial population of music via iTunes, an iTunes that did not have a copy of the U2 album "Songs of Innocence".

Since then the iPod has sat in a custom cradle, with two connections to the universe. One is a splitter that provides DC power input and allows audio output to my sound system. The other connection is wireless, which periodically collects iOS updates. The iPod has not been connected to iTunes or any other source of music in the past three years.

So as far as I can tell, the only explanation of the return of the U2 album is that it is included in iOS 12. I delete the album after every update. If there was a fix that removed the album from the operating system, that fix has failed. This tale has nothing to do with what happens on iPhones or in iTunes. So my apologies if you construe this tale otherwise. I just find the issue to be slightly annoying, that's all.

How to update macOS to latest release of current version?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 10:21 PM PDT

I am on Catalina 10.15.3 and do not want to move to Big Sur just yet. Software Update does have the option to update to Big Sur but I am unable to determine how to do just a minor point update. How do I install the latest update of Catalina?

Update From a comment by @jefe2000 I am trying the command line version and it seems promising.

$/usr/sbin/softwareupdate -l  Software Update Tool    Finding available software  Software Update found the following new or updated software:  * Label: macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Update-       Title: macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Update, Version:  , Size: 5099042K, Recommended: YES, Action: restart,

But what is the actual label? I was unable to get this to work and have created a separate question for it. Unable to install an update via the softwareupdate command line tool

Managed Software Center - update not updating

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 05:03 PM PDT

I have a Brother printer (model: Brother MFC-J475DW) which works fine. However, I keep getting a pop-up from "Managed Software Center" (pictured below).

I press "Update" and it says it's "Finishing..." but it just goes back to the same screen.

Is there any way to block this window from appearing? Currently, I just keep it minimized.

enter image description here

Wifi dongle stopped working as soon a I upgraded to MacOS Big Sur 11 version

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 06:06 PM PDT

My wifi dongle is not working on Big Sur. Whenever I tried to install the software that came with the wifi dongle, I get a message that the drive is incompatible. I was using a Wifi dongle from this company called Cuddy and when I contacted them, they said they are not sure when are they going to have a compatible driver for the same.

I found a similar post related to this over herewhen someone faced similar issue when Big sur was in beta phase.

And I was looking at Gummibando's answer where he mentioned the following:

While macOS 11 is in development, you can enable the loading of deprecated KEXTs by disabling SIP. See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-big-sur-11-beta-release-notes (Deprecations).

However, the link is not working anymore. Any other solution to solve this issue?

Problems Reformatting SSD on mid 2015 Retina 15" MBP

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 11:07 PM PDT

When I purchased the subject laptop last year I replaced the original Apple SSD with a non-Apple 2 TB SSD. For years I have always kept OS and data on separate drives or at least separate partitions. That always made backups and moving data to new machines simple for me. This time I struggled to create that same arrangement, but it proved too difficult.

I sat down recently to attempt to resolve the mess I created. It appears I had created a 1.05 TB and a .95 TB partition on the SSD. The 1.05 TB partition contained a "container" that contained my OS and data in a couple of "volumes". The remaining .95 TB partition of the SSD was simply a wasteland.

Over the last couple of days I have made numerous attempts to erase/reformat any or all of the SSD but the Disk Utility simply will not allow any of that (erase is ghosted). I have tried changing the size of the first partition, but Disk Utility will not allow that either. Next I tried a few things with diskutil in terminal but do not seem to be making any progress there either. Command + R and Command + Option + R did not work for me because Disk Utility there only shows disk0/OS X Base System, neither of which can be erased, and Reinstall OS X cannot find any drive at all for the install.

So, in summary, help! If I do a diskutil list in Terminal I see disk0 thru disk13... and that can't be right. I want to reformat and start over but nothing seems to get me there. Currently there is no important data on this machine. Oh, laptop still works fine, I just can't live with system and data on same partition.

Some of my symptoms sound similar to Redrighthand's "MacBook-pro Internal PCIe Samsung 512g SSD no longer recognized on MBP (mid 2015 15" A1398)".

Thanks in advance for any help. First screenshot below of diskutil list taken in recovery mode, second screenshot taken of terminal after normal boot. Last two screenshots are of Disk Utility...

diskutil list in recovery mode

diskutil list after normal boot

Disk Utility with SSD selected, Erase ghosted

Disk Utility with Container disk1 selected, Erase ghosted

Accessibility — click a link/button by typing its text

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 10:01 PM PDT

Background: Voice Control lets you click links by just saying "Click <link/button name>".

Question: How would I do this by typing instead of speaking? (Siri has a "Type to Siri" option, but Voice Control does not). Is there really no accessibility option for letting the user type the text of the button they want to click?

What I've tried: I tried Switch Control, but it scans for links instead of letting you jump to ones matching a given text. I've also tried Cmd+F in Safari to highlight links, but nothing I've found lets me click the highlighted link without using the mouse. I've been using Mouse Keys to navigate instead, albeit slowly.

APFS Partitions corrupted

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 07:02 PM PDT

I recently ran Boot Camp Assistant to remove the Windows partition from my 2017 MacBook Pro, but during the partitioning step I quit Boot Camp Assistant. After restarting the computer the next time, I got a flashing drive icon and macOS was no longer booting.

My only option at this point was Internet recovery. I tried running Disk Utility, unfortunately First Aid seems to be unable to fix the problem:

Disk Utility Screenshot

Looks like the APFS Container got corrupted.

diskutil apfs list

|  +-- Container ERROR -69808  |   ======================  |   APFS Container Reference:     disk1  |   Size (Capacity Ceiling):      ERROR -69620  |   Capacity In Use By Volumes:   ERROR -69620  |   Capacity Not Allocated:       ERROR -69620  |   |  |   +-< Physical Store disk0s2 2881B334-866B-4DC7-98F9-2DB0B583B353  |   |   -----------------------------------------------------------  |   |   APFS Physical Store Disk:   disk0s2  |   |   Size:                       451000901632 B (451.0 GB)  |   |  |   +-> No Volumes

Next, I tried diskutil repairVolume on the APFS Volume, but again, no luck:

diskutil repairVolume disk0s2  Started file system repair on disk0s2  Repairing storage system  Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/disk0s2  warning: nx_block_count is 122061322, while device block count is 110107642  error: object (oid 0x1): o_cksum (0x50eca9de0b97f54e) is invalid for object  Checking the container superblock  Storage system check exit code is 8  Error: -69716: Storage system verify or repair failed  Underlying error: 8

GPT partitions:

Password:       start       size  index  contents           0          1         PMBR           1          1         Pri GPT header           2          4         Pri GPT table           6      76800      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B       76806  110107642      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC   110184448   11953680            122138128          4         Sec GPT table   122138132          1         Sec GPT header

Also, recovery tools like iBoysoft do see the APFS volumes and all the files after I provide the encryption password, so the volumes seems to be OK:

iBoysoft sees the APFS volumes

Is there any way I can re-build the partitions/APFS container so the disk will boot again? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Note: currently I am running a fresh install of Catalina on an external HDD.

Quick search in NAS. Which software for overview?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 08:03 PM PDT

We use a NAS in our small company to acces our files from different locations. Searching within the NAS does not work well due to the amount of data stored and slow internet connection. So if we're looking for a file, we need to know exactly where it is.

I do not need a NAS-side solution since the operating system of the NAS is very inflexible.

Is there a way to keep an up-to-date overview of the complete folder/file struture (as text, tree, table, whatever) in which we can quickly search for the files?

What does iCloud *not* backup for iOS?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 04:00 PM PDT

So I know what iCloud does backup: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428

But I couldn't find any source on what it doesn't backup

I accidentally bricked my phone and loaded my backup onto another phone (it's been a while), but I did notice a few things (I'll continue adding things to these lists as I use my phone, in case anybody wonders the same thing):

Things that did not backup/move over to new phone:

  1. There was no call history, that didn't get backed up
  2. Apps that were no longer available in the app store did not get backed up
  3. Apps that I had developed and deployed to my phone were not backed up (icons still there, though)

Things that did backup/move over (somewhat surprisingly):

  1. Apps that saved session tokens still persisted (was still logged in to a lot of apps)
  2. Probably for the same reason the session tokens were backedup, my downloaded Spotify songs also came along
  3. I would've guessed that only iMessages would've been backed up, but looks like all of my SMS texts to android friends also got backed up which is nice
  4. It did backup my iOS settings, I had sleeping screen turned off, and it was brought over

Main reason I'm asking is because I wasn't sure if I should go through the effort of trying to revive the phone to get any obscure data off of it. In an ideal world I would get an exact copy. I'm OK just throwing it out otherwise

Not sure if anybody's ever kept track, if there's a resource somewhere out there that has a list, that would be great closure for me. Thanks!

Can Wineskin work with Catalina?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 02:00 PM PDT

I reviewed my previous question, and I think the differences with Catalina merit a separate question.

A double-click or a menu→open on vanilla wineskin or a wineskin-wrapped Windows app has no visible effect (except for showing the icon in the recent items part of the dock).

I verified that the settings in the accepted answer there are still set.

Photos.app is missing the All Photos view / Photos sidebar button

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 09:07 PM PDT

This question I think is best served with a screenshot.

In Photos, the sidebar for a new library, basically looks like this:

enter image description here

Well, for one of my macbooks, it just literally doesn't have the "Photos" option, which is surprisingly annoying given that I don't really need it and can still search by date and place anyway. But it's driving me nuts. It's not a hidden menu option or account preference.

Other mac just starts at Memories:

enter image description here

I've tried many things, and I've narrowed it down to the machine itself:

  • I can open a .photoslibrary on one mac, and see Photos.
  • Copy the exact same .photoslibrary to this other mac, and not see it.
  • This happens on two completely fresh blank formatted Macs
  • The .photoslibrary is not tied to any account.
  • Same version of Photos.app and Mac OSX.

Please someone know this. This issue does not exist on the web.

Is there a way to force iphone 5 to 2.4ghz?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 06:55 PM PDT

Upgraded my wifi router to a Orbi RBK22 with 2.4 and 5. I have a wifi camera that only uses 2.4. To set up the camera on the new router, the iphone with the camera setup app, must both be on 2.4. Problem is the Orbi auto uses 5 if the device (iphone in this case) is capable. There is no way to set up a 2.4 ssid and a 5 ssid in the Orbi where one can select the particular channel and stay on that channel. So one approach is to have my iphone 5 on 2.4.

Is there a way?

Taptic engine (trackpad) stays on after shut down from Windows 10

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 04:51 PM PDT

I have an Early 2015 Macbook Pro 13-inch Model that has 6 operating systems manually installed on it (High Sierra, Yosemite, Android x86, Windows, Ubuntu and Kali Linux). As I said, I installed Windows manually, without using the BootCamp assistant.

About 2 weeks ago, I upgraded Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. After that, I reinstalled BootCamp helper, since it was broken after the upgrade. It reinstalled successfully. It was all normal from that point.

However, yesterday I noticed that the Taptic Engine (trackpad) stayed on every time I shut down my computer when it was booted up from Windows 10 (this doesn't happen when shut down from other OSes). Is this normal behaviour? If not, how can I fix it?

EDIT 1: I have just discovered something strange. If I shutdown Windows using Classic Shell's shutdown button, the problem happens. But when I shut down using shutdown -s -t 0, it shuts down the computer and turns off the taptic engine too. I will disable Classic Shell and try to shutdown and tell the results.

Do MacBooks have a true "Hibernate" option?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 09:47 PM PDT

I've recently switched from Windows to a MacBook pro. In Windows, there are the following shutdown options:

  • Standby - the machine goes into a "light sleep" from which it can awaken very quickly (like, in a few seconds), but plenty of energy is consumed.

  • Hibernate - the OS dumps the current system state (including the contents of the RAM) to a file, then turns the machine off. Wakeup takes longer than from standby, but there is no latent energy consumption.

  • Shut down - the OS shuts down, and the machine is turned off.

In OS X, what I can see is

  • Sleep - seems equivalent to standby, or an even lighter form of sleep as Mail seems to even continue to poll for new email?

  • Shutdown and restore all apps on next start - turns off machine, seems to start the OS from scratch and restart alls apps - from what I can tell, it's not hibernation

  • Shutdown and don't restore apps - shut down

is this correct, and does OS X not have a true "hibernate" mode that can write its state to disk? Because that's what I'm looking for really. There's talk of a "Safe Sleep" mode on the Internets, but I can't see it in my OS X menu. Is it hidden in 10.7?

How do I restore the audio balance to default?

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 01:10 PM PDT

On my iPod Touch, I was playing around with the audio balance setting (settings -> general -> accessibility)

How can I reset the balance setting so that it is precisely at the midpoint (i.e. the default)?

iPod Touch settings screenshot

Customize Quick Look to allow me to view .yml files

Posted: 25 Jul 2021 04:57 PM PDT

I would like to use "space" to preview *.yml files directly out of the finder on Mac OS X.

I think I have to tell finder to launch the text file quick view handler for files with that type and this has something to do with universal type identifiers (UTI.)

But that's as far as I was able to get.

Can anyone give me the magic formula? Thanks!!
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