You can get previews of your images on the OSX desktop like this:
Mine were broken and just displaying the generic preview icon. Here’s how I fixed it.
Continue reading ⟩Jun 22
My Apple photo library was way bigger than it should be. It turned out I had some very large videos in it that I must have dragged into it previously. There’s no way of arranging your photos by size from within the Apple photos app. But you can find the files in your finder and then arrange them by size. Here’s how to see the largest files in your Photo Library.
Continue reading ⟩May 26
Here’s how to remove duplicates from your Apple Photo Library.
1. Download a free app called ‘Duplicate File Finder Remover’
Any app like this will do that finds duplicate files in the finder.
2. Find your Photos Library. It’s in your home user folder in a folder called ‘Pictures.’
Control-click on it and select ‘Show Package Contents.’ This will open the folder so you can see what is inside it. The photo’s library is actually just a folder.
Inside the photos library you should see a folder called ‘originals.’ This is the folder you will drag into the ‘Duplicate File Finder’ Application to search for duplicates.
Open the Duplicate File Finder app and drag the ‘originals’ folder into to. Press ‘Show results’ to search fro duplicates.
Here you can see that I had 1128 duplicates taking up 2.33 GB of data. Click ‘Review and Remove’ to remove them.
Apr 16
I just upgraded to OSX Montery 12.3.1 and it broke my printer. The printer just comes up with an error saying ‘Filter Failed.’ I downloaded the new Fuji Xerox drivers but that did not fix it. I reset the printing system (Apple’s suggested fix) but that did not fix it either. In the end I tried making a new printer with the generic PCL driver and that worked. I’ve lost all my custom printer features, but at least it prints!
Continue reading ⟩Apr 13
The first time you start up a new Apple computer it asks if you want to transfer data from another computer. If you select yes, it opens Migration assistant, and gives you the option to connect to another computer. There are various ways you can connect. Some are very slow! Some are fast.
- The slowest is to use wifi. If you connect your computers using wifi it may take days (literally days) to transfer the data across.
- A faster way is to connect the 2 computers using an ethernet cable. This is still fairly slow.
- The fastest way is to use a thunderbolt USB-C cable to connect the 2 computers together.
I recently used Thunderbolt to connect my new MacBook Pro to my old Mac Mini and it reduced the transfer time from days to hours.
Ethernet can transfer at speeds up to 1Gbps.
Thunderbolt 3 can transfer at speeds up to 40Gbps. It’s 40 times faster!
This is what a Thunderbolt (USB-C) cable looks like:
You simply connect the thunderbolt port of one MacBook directly to the thunderbolt port of the second MacBook.
If it doesn’t work, check out this article on the different types of USB-C cables that Apple sells.
Apr 06
When I unboxed my new MacBook Pro I booted it up and followed the prompts to connect my old MacBook Air to transfer my old files across. For some reason it did not recognise my old MacBook Air. I used the USB-C cable that came with my new MacBook Pro to connect the two computers together. It didn’t work.
The next day I tried again, this time with a different cable, and it worked. The USB-C cable that is supplied with new MacBook Pro is NOT a thunderbolt cable. So you cannot use it to transfer data. Apple saved themselves some $$$ by throwing in a cheaper cable that you can only use to charge. Read on and I’ll explain the differences.
A not thunderbolt cable.
This is what a USB-C Thunderbolt cable looks like. It’s also what a NOT Thunderbolt cable looks like. They look exactly the same! Some of Apple’s cables USB-C cables are Thunderbolt and some are not. The ends looks the same, the cable looks the same, but they are not the same.
Have a look at these 2 items in the Apple Store:
These cables are both USB-C. (That refers to the shape of the connector on the end). But one is a ‘Charge Cable’ and one is a ‘Thunderbolt Cable’.
The one on the left will charge your computer. That is all it will do. The one one the right will charge your computer and it will also allow you to connect to another computer, or a SSD drive, iPad or any other Thunderbolt device.
They will both charge your computer.
It gets even more confusing if you head down to JB HiFi and but another USB-C cable because it’s possible to get a USB-C data cable that has a slower charging rate!
When you buy a USB-C cable you can get ones that charge fast, charge slowly, transfer data fast, transfer data slowly, or don’t transfer data at all. Apple’s charging cable does not transfer data at all.
Mar 15
I’ve never found a good way to block out business calls from my iPhone on Holidays. Quite often I’ve just turned my phone off. Apple’s new ‘focus’ mode is very powerful and allows you to stop all incoming calls and notifications, then just let through calls that you want. They don’t appear at all!
Continue reading ⟩Mar 11
I just received this email form Apple telling me that my iCloud is full.
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