apparently the latest Catalina update turns some Macs into bricks, so if your computer is useful right now ...
― lukas, Sunday, 12 April 2020 06:26 (four years ago) link
fizzles, have you tried swiftkey?
― Fizzles, Sunday, 12 April 2020 07:50 (four years ago) link
wondering exactly how long I can avoid Catalina for. The new Xcode demands it, ffs
― stet, Sunday, 12 April 2020 09:23 (four years ago) link
I'm just gonna skip Catalina. and maybe the next one too? probably didn't need to go to Mojave either, but no problems with it on my 2014 mbp
― Joey Corona (Euler), Sunday, 12 April 2020 09:43 (four years ago) link
ok so i checked "battery information" and under condition it says "like calstars sed: replace that sh1t" so that is reasonably categorical, thx 🎶 caek 🎶 thx everyone
*big sigh* here we go i guess 😔
― mark s, Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:03 (four years ago) link
i was going to make hot cross buns today
― mark s, Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:04 (four years ago) link
Make the buns, you won’t solve this today.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:42 (four years ago) link
first i am printing out all the nonsense i will need in case this aged lump *gestures irritably* dies on me
― mark s, Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:47 (four years ago) link
ok well i've purchased the correct replacement battery (i THINK) and the fancy new designated screwdriver as advised (i THINK) and they won't arrive before friday so HCG here i come
did i also need to get a "spudger"? i feel i can improvise this tbh
― mark s, Sunday, 12 April 2020 11:50 (four years ago) link
A guitar pick will usually suffice. Been a long time since I tried something like this though!
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 12 April 2020 14:04 (four years ago) link
Spudgers are verging on essential on phones (delicate objects and surprisingly large forces required) but you should be ok improvising with a flathead or pick or whatever with a laptop, especially one that’s seven years old. Feel free to post the ifixit link if there’s any steps you’re particularly nervous about. And keep track of all the screws! (Ice cube tray, egg box, etc)
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 12 April 2020 14:50 (four years ago) link
if i have the right page the ifixit seems p straightforward to be honest
(judging by the supplied picture i get a spudger with my new array of screwdrivers, it just doesn't call it this in the spec?)
― mark s, Sunday, 12 April 2020 16:05 (four years ago) link
A spackling knife can stand in for a spudger
― calstars, Sunday, 12 April 2020 18:43 (four years ago) link
spudger sounds like an 80s grange hill character
― megan thee macallan 18 year (||||||||), Sunday, 12 April 2020 18:58 (four years ago) link
No, spackling knives are metal and thus conductive, which is unwise for electronic work. Guitar pick ftw
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Sunday, 12 April 2020 21:34 (four years ago) link
the spec around spudger nomenclature is ill-defined. needs an ietf rfc.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 12 April 2020 22:23 (four years ago) link
I'm holding off on upgrading MacOS until there's a vaccine
― lukas, Monday, 13 April 2020 02:52 (four years ago) link
ok so i think i installed my new battery successfully on my own (currently mid-calibration but it is def charging, which the old one wasn't)
― mark s, Saturday, 18 April 2020 17:38 (four years ago) link
holy shit mark! don’t want to jinx it but hats off!
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 18 April 2020 17:53 (four years ago) link
congratulations mark s
has anyone here ever replaced the screen glass on a unibody MacBook Pro? was it terribly difficult?
my mid-2010 model, which I had assumed to be dead for other reasons, seems to be working well except for cracked glass (the display looks fine otherwise)
ifixit describes a really involved process requiring opening the case, but I've seen a guy on YouTube do it by "simply" removing the old glass and installing a new piece
― Brad C., Saturday, 18 April 2020 18:10 (four years ago) link
laptop battery now fully charged and re-calibrated so that's a thumbs up
as caek suggested, replacing it wasn't difficult, just a bit fiddly (some of the screws are v tiny and you don't want to drop them into the machinery or down the cracks in the floorboards)
― mark s, Sunday, 19 April 2020 11:31 (four years ago) link
ps i did get a spudger with my specialist screwdrivers but it was not in the end needed
― mark s, Sunday, 19 April 2020 13:10 (four years ago) link
replacement battery operative and robust, i guess i have to put in the work to free up some memory
i: do backblaze fans know any ways to dial down its space hogging ii: ilxor tips on what i can clear out of ancient garbage which cleanmymac™ fails to dig out
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 13:52 (four years ago) link
Just archive everything. Throw it in Dropbox and use selective sync.
― dan selzer, Saturday, 25 April 2020 15:11 (four years ago) link
I've never noticed Backblaze hogging space! Hmm
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 April 2020 15:54 (four years ago) link
when i was bothered by the spinny disc like 18 months ago i took it to the tiresome man in hackney road and that was his diagnosis: remove cleanmymac and quit backblaze
i did for a while and things were better but then i decided i wanted both of them for the things they do? also i want a less tiresome man to advise me on my laptop and mend it when necessary
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 16:05 (four years ago) link
also apps keep quitting unexpectedly that are usually robust: chrome, msil, scrivener
{i never use anything else lol)
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 16:20 (four years ago) link
mail not msil
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 16:21 (four years ago) link
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/report-apple-will-begin-selling-macs-with-its-own-processors-in-2021/
God help us if they're abandoning x86.
― Nhex, Saturday, 25 April 2020 16:31 (four years ago) link
did we have this discussion already? once backblaze does it's initial back-up, it's pretty harmless. I've never noticed it doing much at all.
I wouldn't bother with cleanmymac though. I'd run Onyx every now and again, and use appzapper or appcleaner to clear out old applications and their files.
― dan selzer, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:31 (four years ago) link
I use daisydisk (mostly because my old license is still good) and use it to dig into where the clutter is hiding but otherwise don’t have anything lording over my files
― mh, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:36 (four years ago) link
ppl on reddit having the same problem (some with replies saying "i'm baffled this shd not be happening") https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9rgacc/backblaze_bztransmit_process_is_chewing_up_almost/https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/aoeb4s/ballooning_wired_memory_usage_from/
we did discuss it before (when i was wondering abt reinstalling it): ppl (= tracer and dan s i think) said it shd not be a problem bcz it's not a memory hog. so i re-installed and it stated to be a problem again. one solution i guess implied by the reddit threads is "simply have less files" which is a thing i plan to make happen. maybe that will solve it. or maybe something else is going on (this is literally all magic to me, if i installed a grasp of how it all works in my brain i wd be getting spinny disk problems in my head)
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:55 (four years ago) link
Having 10% of your disk space free is critical - have you checked that lately?
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:16 (four years ago) link
yes and i do
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:19 (four years ago) link
Grrrr
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:30 (four years ago) link
i plan to empty it further when i can gather the will but
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:37 (four years ago) link
I like Grand Perspective for a visualisation of what is taking up disk space.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Saturday, 25 April 2020 21:21 (four years ago) link
have I recommended the ol hurl into the sea recently?
― silby, Sunday, 26 April 2020 02:22 (four years ago) link
under lockdown i cannot access the sea
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 12:22 (four years ago) link
Out the window then
― calstars, Sunday, 26 April 2020 13:38 (four years ago) link
lol so i took ed's suggestion and DLed GrandPerspective:
https://i.imgur.com/VzlQdKW.png
the big red square in the bottom right is backblaze
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 14:28 (four years ago) link
ii: ilxor tips on what i can clear out of ancient garbage which cleanmymac™ fails to dig out― mark s, Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:52 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Have you ever used OnyX? It probably won't help much with visualizing your HD space to delete junk from your HD, but I think it does a good job of cleaning out the cobwebs (and, once you've run through a few of their recommended sweeps, ends up deleting 5-10gb of HD junk that you probably would never have felt comfortable deleting. I'm using a Late 2008 Macbook running El Capitan, and I feel like OnyX has helped keep everything running smoothly (probably run it whenever things start getting unstable, prob about once a year, and it usually helps).
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:18 (four years ago) link
will try thk u
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:30 (four years ago) link
Has backblaze finished its backup?
― dan selzer, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:45 (four years ago) link
i thought i could catch it on a brief pause in its endless backing up and tried to answer yr question but of course it started backing up again, it's p much always backing up
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:57 (four years ago) link
the schedule ive given it is "start at 22.oo end at 8.oo" (ie overnight when i am sleeping and/or worrying) but it does not seem to respect this schedule
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:00 (four years ago) link
How much work are you doing? It should take a week or two to back everything up. After that it’s just incremental. Are you not letting it finish the initial backup?
― dan selzer, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:04 (four years ago) link
the initial back-up took place a long long time ago (some years ago) and yes i think to 6-8 days i forget now, the "just incremental" element is constant if not quite non-stop
don't really know how to answer "how much work are you doing" -- i'm a writer and an editor so i'm working all day daily on documents in word and/or scrivener but i can't imagine this is creating enough vast new material in itself to justify the amount of incremental backup apparently required, even if a doc is like 200,000 words or whatever
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:11 (four years ago) link
i mean i am quite likely doing something wrong and dumb! but it is not evident to me what it is (beyond having way too much stuff on my laptop but that's kind of a different issue, the vast bulk of it is entirely unchanging)
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:13 (four years ago) link
if backup software is constantly chugging memory all the time, isn't that... wrong?
― Nhex, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:51 (four years ago) link