Category: apple

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It’s alive I tell you, alive!

Apple Pencil
Image by Nana Dua from Pixabay

One of the (now not so) little people got a new 10th generation iPad for Christmas.

He asked if he could borrow my first generation Apple Pencil to do some drawing on his iPad. I realised that the pencil was paired via Bluetooth with the older iPad, so I unpaired them. We then tried to pair the now charged pencil with the new iPad and no joy. 

Reading on the web, it was apparent that the method of pairing was to plug the pencil into the iPad. Now this is where we had a challenge. The 1st generation Apple Pencil has a Lightning connector, the 10th generation iPad had an USB-C connector.

We got one of those and then set about charging and pairing.

It seems to be failing to hold a charge, despite being connected and fast charging from the 10th generation iPad. Reading the web it looks like that as I hadn’t used the pencil in a while, the battery had died.

Though I had given up hope, my son hadn’t. While I was away for work, he tried once more to charge the pencil, and low and behold, it charged up, it paired and is working well with the 10th generation iPad.

It’s alive I tell you, alive!

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I think the Apple Pencil might be “dead”

Having purchased an USB-C to Lighting adapter from the Apple Store in Bristol to connect a first generation Apple Pencil to a 10th generation iPad, I think there might be a problem with the pencil.

It seems to be failing to hold a charge, despite being connected and fast charging from the 10th generation iPad.

Reading the web it looks like that as I haven’t used the pencil in a while, the battery has died.

Currently I have it connected to an older iPad with a lightning port, hoping it will charge.

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Used Apple Pay in a shop

Though it was July 2015 when Apple Pay was introduced in the UK, I have never actually used it until August this year! I bought some parking on my phone and used Apple Pay to pay for it.

It was only today that I actually used Apple Pay at a till! I paid for some shopping using the system at one of those “unexpected item in the bagging area” machine.

I know I should know this, but it was quite a seamless experience. I did have to double tap, which I didn’t think I would need to do.

Well done that now, do I need to do it again? Probably not.

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Used Apple Pay for the first time…

Though it was July 2015 when Apple Pay was introduced in the UK, I have never actually used it until today!

I bought some parking on my phone and used Apple Pay to pay for it. Seamless process as I didn’t have an account for that particular parking app and hadn’t registered a card with it either. This is how I usually use other parking apps.

Having entered my car registration and duration, I then paid using Apple Pay, which only required a double click on my phone.

It was only a couple of weeks ago I had added a payment card to Apple Wallet, and hadn’t had an opportunity where Apple Pay could be used easily. If I could use contactless, then I would usually use that.

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iPod no more

Apple have announced that they are going to stop selling the iPod once the current stocks of iPod touch run out.

Since its introduction over 20 years ago, iPod has captivated users all over the world who love the ability to take their music with them on the go. 

Today, the experience of taking one’s music library out into the world has been integrated across Apple’s product line — from iPhone and Apple Watch to iPad and Mac.

I never had the first iPod which was announced in 2001.

The first iPod I got was the 4th version that could show photographs. I used it extensively for podcasts as well as music.

As part of a MoLeNET project at the college I was working at we got a range of iPod devices. We also used a range of 3rd edition iPod nano devices.

I used a 6th iPod Classic, on this I could add images and video, as well as music.

Later we got the iPod touch for the project, which was used for much more than music. I used that for apps, videos and web access.

However now I listen to music on my iPhone and through my Alexa devices. Most of the music I also listen to now is through streaming services, rather than download or rip from a CD.

I always liked the iPod and though technology has moved on, it was something for me that was highly innovative for its time. Though the concept of an mp3 player wasn’t innovative, the way that Apple interpreted the concept was innovative.

So did you have an iPod and if so which one?

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Where’s my fusion drive?

A week ago my iMac’s fusion drive failed. Despite trying to fix it myself through software the reality was that it was looking very much like a hardware failure. I booked it into the Apple Store for a repair.

Less than a week later I got a call from the Apple Store saying it was fixed and I could come and pick it up. Having driven up to the store and come home, I got my iMac out of the car and set it up. I switched on my iMac. 

The Apple Store had replaced the failing hard drive, but that was it. They had left it pretty much, from an OS X perspective as I had left it with them. The SSD was still visible, but at least now I could see the 3TB physical drive. I had to reset the fusion drive. Luckily I knew how to do this via Terminal and the diskutil resetfusion command.

I did think that this was poor, as the last time the drive failed they had reset the fusion drive and installed OS X onto the iMac. 

Having reset the fusion drive, I then set about formatting the drive and installing OS X. Decided to bite the bullet and install Big Sur, knowing full well that I had applications that I liked that I wouldn’t be able to use. Key for me was Fireworks, but I did have Photoshop which I could use instead..

Installing Big Sur didn’t take long.

Then I used the migration assistant to start moving files from the external hard drive to the iMac. This took much longer than I thought it would.

Finally after many hours it looked like my iMac was back. iMac

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Getting it repaired

Well after the failure (again) of the Fusion Drive in my iMac I took it to the Genius Bar of my local Apple Store. They confirmed my diagnosis that the Fusion Drive had failed.

I had a few options.

I could replace the SATA HDD myself with another SATA HDD, which I did consider. I could replace the broken SATA HDD with a new SDD drive.

I could get someone else to do that.

However upon consideration, taking a 2014 iMac apart isn’t a simple job and would require replacing the adhesive for the glass LCD panel. So wasn’t sure I wanted to go down the road. Also the cost of a 2TB or 3TB SDD was quite expensive, though buying a 3TB HDD myself would be cheaper than what Apple was proposing to charge.

I did consider before taking it to Apple to get someone else to do this, but they would charge £84 first just to diagnose the problem, so would then charge (like Apple) for labour on top, as well as the replacement HDD cost.

What the Apple Store was proposing wasn’t excessive and so decided to go down that road.

So now they have my iMac for a week, well hopefully less time than that.

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Fusion drive fails again

Back in April I had a few problems with the Fusion Drive on my 2014 iMac. So much so that I had to copy the data off the iMac onto an external drive and then reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Having got back to where I had been before the drive failed I was happy with going back to work on the iMac. However I was suspicious that the drive might fail again. I kept regular backups of files and photos, but I did have an expectation that the drive might fail again.

On Saturday it did just that. I was using the iMac to sort out some train tickets and other tickets when it just froze. Nothing was working, so I switched it off at the back and when I switched it back on I was rather downhearted, but not really surprised, to see the prohibitory symbol.

I booted into Recovery mode (hold down the Command and R keys when turning on and release once you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe). I ran disk utility which confirmed the Fusion Drive had failed. The SDD was working fine, but the (mechanical) hard drive had failed. A Fusion Drive us made up of an SDD drive and a standard hard disk drive combined to look like a single drive under OS X.

Luckily I hadn’t lost any data, but wasn’t sure what to do next.

I did reformat the SDD and installed OS X onto that (and even upgraded to Big Sur). The speed was very impressive and to be honest part of me did think about leaving it like this. However this wasn’t a practical long term solution as the iMac would just randomly reboot for no reason. Certainly couldn’t use the iMac for anything productive.

I did look into fixing the iMac myself, but in the end booked it into the Cribbs Causeway Apple Store Genius Bar for an appointment. The 2014 iMac counts as vintage technology (as it is just under their seven year limit) and isn’t quite obsolete, yet!

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Working well

So last week the hard drive on my iMac stopped working. I had to migrate the data off the defunct drive, fix it, format it and migrate the data back again.

Well having now used it for a few days it appears to be working fine, I think it might be working even better than it was before.

However as with any drive, I will be making a regular backup of the data.

Just in case.

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Really?

So last week the hard drive on my iMac stopped working. I had tried to repair the drive and reinstall Mac OS X. In the end I bought a new external hard drive and decided a new approach and in my last blog post I discussed how I was using the migration assistant to copy files and settings from the defunct drive to the new external drive, and how I had to wait….

Having left my iMac overnight I came down the following morning, slightly apprehensive I looked in on the iMac, pressed the space bar, and I was rather downhearted to see the prohibitory symbol.

Mac prohibitory symbol

Oh no, this reminded me of 2017 when the fusion drive had failed.

It looked like the whole process hadn’t worked.

So I went to make coffee, but when I came back it had gone and I saw the Migration Assistant back in full flow finalising the migration. Maybe it had worked.

Once the migration process had finished I rebooted the iMac using the external drive and everything was working now.

Well not quite, though all my data was on the external hard drive, the settings needed to be updated and various applications needed passwords and all manner of things.

So my plan for the day was to work from the external hard drive and then later reformat the iMac hard drive and migrate the data back.

To be honest I got so fed up with the spinning beachball that I started the Migration Assistant just before lunch. I took the decision not to migrate some of the user accounts, as yes I wanted to retain the data, but didn’t need it on the main machine.

So I formatted the internal iMac fusion drive, checked the health of the drive and installed a fresh copy of OS X on there. I then started the Migration Assistant, taking the data and settings from the external drive and putting it back on the internal drive.

What was interesting was how much faster this process was from external hard drive to the internal drive compared to the other way round.

It was also interesting to note that once I had completed the migration, that unlike working from the external drive, as well as no spinning beachballs, most things were working just as they were before the crash.

So, so far, all seems to be working fine.