Category: mac

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Well that was stupid!

I messed up my Mac mini by turning off Bluetooth after having issues with the wireless keyboard.

Mac mini

I have been very pleased with my M4 Mac mini since I got it last year, for such as small (and low cost) computer it has been perfect for my needs. I have a great wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse  (Logitech Pebble Keys) which has worked all fine for me. I used it with both the Mac mini and my MacBook Pro.

My son had come over and borrowed it for his MacBook Air. Afterwards he turned the keyboard and mouse off (something I never do).

The following day I turned on the Mac mini and the keyboard and mouse didn’t work. I checked and saw they were tuned off, so I turned them on.

The keyboard worked fine, but the mouse had stopped working.

I was able to use my old Apple Magic Trackpad to navigate. Despite some initial troubleshooting, the Mac mini still couldn’t see the mouse.

So being unable to connect the mouse again, I decided I would do the usual IT thing and turn Bluetooth off and then back on again…

Literally as I used the Magic Trackpad to turn off Bluetooth, as I clicked, it clicked that I had done the wrong thing, as now I couldn’t use the Bluetooth Trackpad to turn Bluetooth back on…

Every solution online assumed you had a keyboard, my Bluetooth keyboard didn’t work.

I couldn’t remote in, which was the other way I thought I might be able to sort it. I had that turned off.

Having recently moved I knew I didn’t have a spare USB keyboard or mouse in storage. In the end my son came over with his USB mouse and an USB-C USB-A adapter. This worked and I turned Bluetooth back on. 

I realised that the issue was that for some (stupid) reason I had messed up my initial setup of the wireless keyboard and mouse. It can be configured to be used by three different devices, however I had set it up the Mac mini as device one for the keyboard and device three for the mouse. I had been using the keyboard with my MacBook Pro as device two. It was only when my son had come over the previous day and had borrowed the keyboard and mouse for his MacBook as device three. This would have all been okay, if I had the Mac mini as device one for the mouse, I didn’t. This is why it didn’t work for me, and why I then went down that rabbit hole of turning Bluetooth off. I won’t be doing that again. So, the keyboard and mouse was never the problem, it was all down to the user.

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M4 Mac mini

Mac mini

I recently replaced my old iMac with a new M4 Mac mini. I went for the base model.

      • 10-Core CPU
      • 10-Core GPU
      • 16GB Unified Memory
      • 256GB SSD Storage

I have been meaning to replace the iMac for a while now, as it is old, and is no longer supported by Apple. I have replaced the fusion drive twice on the iMac, and I think that means it probably would go again at some point in the future.

So far, I have been really impressed. The new Mac mini is really zippy and certainly is fast enough for virtually everything I want to do with a Mac. 

The only real negative is the size of the hard drive. At 256GB it’s rather small. However the 2TB storage option would have cost an additional £800. Decided it would be easier to buy an external 4TB storage for £100 or thereabouts.

I got a 4K monitor to run it with, as well as a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

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Moving to iCloud Photos

I really liked My Photo Stream. It made my blogging and writing workflow so much easier. I would take a photo on my phone and then using My Photo Stream I would be able to use the photo on my iPad or my Mac. So I was quite disappointed that Apple have closed it down.

According to Apple the solution is to move to iCloud Photos.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that as I knew I would need to upgrade my iCloud+ subscription to the 2TB tier.

So for a week or two I tried doing stuff without My Photo Stream and without using iCloud Photos.

After a while it was apparent that this wasn’t working. So at the beginning of July I upgraded my iCloud+ subscription and on my home iMac I turned on iCloud Photos.

I knew it would take some time to sync my photo library to iCloud as I have over 70,000 photographs in the library.

I did initially have some teething issues, so had to restart the iMac and Photos a few times, but so far it appears to be working as needed. 

I also turned iCloud Photos on, on my iPhone to check it was working.

The photographs I take on my iPhone are now available in iCloud Photos on my other devices.

I do quite like the ability to access all my photographs on my iPhone, whereas with My Photo Stream it was only the last 1000 photos.

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My Photo Stream will be shut down on 26 July

My Photo Stream

I received an email from Apple about My Photo Stream closing down.

My Photo Stream is scheduled to be shut down on 26 July, 2023. The photos in My Photo Stream are already stored on at least one of your devices, so as long as you have the device with your originals, you will not lose any photos as part of this process. If a photo you want is not already in your library on a particular iPhone, iPad or Mac, make sure you save it to your library on that device. For more information on this transition and instructions on how to download photos from My Photo Stream, read Information about the My Photo Stream shutdown.

I really liked My Photo Stream. It made my blogging and writing workflow so much easier. I would take a photo on my phone and then using My Photo Stream I would be able to use the photo on my iPad or my Mac.

Sometimes I would load photographs from my Canon DSLR onto my iMac, then be able to use those photographs on my MacBook.

Now according to Apple the solution is to move to iCloud Photos.

Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud.

The main reason I’ve not done this before, is partly as My Photo Stream worked, and I would need to upgrade to iCloud+ and with the number of photos in my library, I would probably need the 2TB upgrade.

Well I have until the 26th June.

As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will be stopped on 26 June.

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Warm MacBook

coffee and laptop
Image by Free Photos from Pixabay

I am still having issues with my MacBook doing “something” having closed the lid and placed in my bag. It seems to be still running even the lid is closed.

In the past when I shut the lid of the MacBook Pro it would sleep and when I opened the lid it would wake.

I have noticed that on too many occasions when retrieving my MacBook from my luggage or my backpack that it is warm. It is also doing “something” as it is also running down the battery. This is annoying as the battery is quite old and it doesn’t have the battery life it use to have when I first got it five years ago.

I am wondering if it could be Bluetooth, though a lot of things are better with Bluetooth, I am not sure in this case it is. Could it be my wireless headset? Could it be AirDrop?

The only solution appears to be turning it off, which to be honest is no hardship when you are putting it in the bag in the back of the car. But sometimes you want to be quick, lift the lid and do something and then put it back in the bag.

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Trackpad not clicking

I got my MacBook Pro out and was looking at a few websites and I realised that my trackpad was no longer ‘clicking’.

The tap to click was working fine, but the click had stopped working.

It was a bit disconcerting, but the MacBook was still usable.

I thought was my trackpad broken.

However…

When I did a restart I couldn’t click on my name to log into the MacBook Pro as tap to click didn’t work on the user login screen.

I had to get a mouse out to log in.

I did wonder if I would need to get it fixed, but first I did a Google search.

One possible resolution was to reset the SMC.

The system management controller (SMC) controls how a Mac manages power.

      1. Shut down your Mac.
      2. On your built-in keyboard, press and hold all of these keys:

Shift  on the left side of your keyboard
Control  on the left side of your keyboard
Option (Alt)  on the left side of your keyboard

      1. While holding all three keys, press and hold the power button as well.
      2. Keep holding all four keys for 10 seconds.
      3. Release all keys, then press the power button to turn on your Mac.

I did this and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the trackpad was working again.

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Hot, hot, hot…

Mojave

I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to Mojave 10.14 mainly as Outlook had stopped working properly, and I needed to upgrade the Mac OS X so that I could install the latest version. Generally no real issues except one.

In the past when I shut the lid of the MacBook Pro it would sleep and when I opened the lid it would wake.

However on a couple of occasions now I have noticed as I reached into my rucksack that my MacBook was hot, really hot. 

What appears to be happening is that the MacBook is not going to sleep when the lid is shut. It keeps “working” and as it shut (and in a bag) it just gets warmer and warmer. The fans kick in, but even then it can’t cool down properly (with the lid shut and in a bag).

Of course I don’t think this can be good for it, so will need to check if the MacBook is in fact asleep or shut it down properly before putting it in the bag.

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Solving the Sorry PowerPoint can’t read ^0 error




So there I was opening a PowerPoint file from my OneDrive folder when I got this error message: Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read ^0.

What was happening? Well first some background.

My iMac’s fusion drive had failed, I had it replaced and then reinstalled OS X before using the migration assistant to restore my iMac files, applications and preferences.

Well there I was thinking everything had gone so well. I had virtually no data loss, so was pleased I had managed to get things sorted. However I was annoyed when opening a PowerPoint file from my OneDrive folder I got an error message.

I got this error message: PowerPoint found a problem with content in <file name>. PowerPoint can attempt to repair the presentation. If you trust the source of this presentation, click Repair.

The word trust made me think that this was a permissions issue rather than corruption.

I clicked Repair and then this message appeared: Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read ^0.

I wasn’t sure what was going on.

As part of my back up back in April I had backed up the files from the OneDrive folder onto my external hard drive. I hadn’t updated it since, as far as I was concerned I didn’t need to back up the OneDrive folder as it was already backed up in the cloud.

Going through the OneDrive files I realised that virtually all the files I had created or edited since the back up weren’t working and “needed repair”. I was as you might imagine rather annoyed. What was worse was the files had also synced across the cloud and my laptop.

I did some Google searching for a solution, and to be honest it wasn’t too much help. I did try and reset OneDrive but this didn’t work.

I was convinced that this was a permissions issue rather than file corruption or data loss. The file sizes looked fine for example.

In the end though I did come up with a solution.

In Finder right click the file and select Version History.

Note that this option is only available for files on OneDrive.

As you can see I had two versions of the file with the same date and timestamp.

This reinforced my opinion that this was a permissions issue.

Right click the three dots.

Then select Restore (or Download).

This then creates a new version, which will open.

The file can now be opened normally.

I’ve not worked out how to do this for multiple files, so am having to do it for each file that doesn’t open.

This process also works on Windows computers as well.

This has demonstrated that despite having an online cloud and a physical backup there was still the potential for data loss after a hard drive failure.

 

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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.