The MacValley blog
Welcome to the MacValley blog, your first stop for all the latest MacValley news and views.
The MacValley blog Editor: Tom Briant
|
Labels used in posts
|
To search the blog posts please use the box below
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Saturday, May 25, 2019
The Four Things That Kill Your iPhones Battery The Fastest
1. Screen Brightness Isn’t Your Friend
2. Feral Apps
3. Hordes Of Notifications Swamping Your Lock Screen
4. Putting Your Battery Life In The Freezer
Final Observation
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Apple News and Views for Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Apple News and Views for Wednesday, April 17th, 2019
- Apple and Qualcomm’s legal battle…has come to an end. Apple and Qualcomm, fighting over Apple’s next cellphone modem, reached a settlement. An Apple iPhone with a Qualcomm 5G modem is expected in 2020.
- Wisconsin’s governor wants to renegotiate the Foxconn deal. This deal was touted as bringing thousands of jobs to Wisconsin. It’s not going to happen.
- In other news, the President of Foxconn makes noises about running for President of Taiwan.
- Back to the Mac. Jason Snell in Macworld opines on how working on the Mac will change as macOS and iOS share code.
- Using your iPad as a second display has proven popular. Will Apple integrate it into macOS 10.15? Stay tuned…
- And in a development straight out of Mel Brook’s classic film The Producers, investors have filed suit against the producer of Nerds, a musical based on the rivalry & friendship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Your editor remains stuck in the past, running his late 2011 Mac mini with macOS 10.13.6. He doesn’t plan to upgrade until he pays off his car. By that time, Apple may switch to its own CPU for the Mac.
He would remind his readers itching to upgrade of this. George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones wrote those books on an antique 486 running MS-DOS. He deliberately disconnected it from the ‘Net. He writes with Wordstar without a spell checker, so the spellings of Westeros do not get flagged.
Tom Briant
Editor, MacValley Blog
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Commander 1-Free Dual-Pane File Manager for Your Mac
One of our members asked me for an easy way to transfer files from one folder to another.
I advised her to download and install Commander 1 from Eltima Software. For the money, it provides the best dual-and file manager you can get.
Now you download it for free from either Eltima’s Website or from the Mac App Store.
Features You Will Enjoy
You will enjoy the convenience of two side-by-side panes. You won’t waste time setting up two Finder windows
If you want to swap the left and right panes, go up to the Command drop-down menu to select that command. You can do it even quicker by pressing the Shift+Option/Alt+E keys.
Along the bottom, you’ll see a row Function Key commands. Through the Preferences menu for ViewerYou can pick which viewer app you want to use, either Commander 1’s own or macOS’s QuickLook or Preview
So, What’s the Catch
The Catch to this great deal is that Eltima makes its money from people who buy the Pro Pack. For the first 15 days after your download you can try out the Pro Pack features.
If you want them after the trial period, you need to buy a license for $29.99 from Eltima.
If you decide to skip activating the Pro Pack, you still have all the free feature forever.
If you often wish for a dual-pane file manager instead of wrangling the Finder’s windows, I highly recommend. For the price, it can’t be beat.
Commander 1 Free with a $29.99 Pro Pack available after 15 day trial period.
P.S.
If you’d like to save a few bucks, find the press release and read it.
Tom Briant
Editor, MacValley Blog
Monday, February 4, 2019
Decluttering Your Mac of duplicate files
I recently worked on cleaning out and clearing my boot drive. I got it down to below 300 Gb in used space. Still bloated blue whale size, but an improvement. Digital decluttering has begun!
I haven’t read Marie’s Kondo’s decluttering books. To be honest, I have read lots of other books on decluttering. I suspect a lot of these methods are universal.
How I did It
First, I found out which Rooms (folders and sub-folders) contained the most digital debris. I used the OmniDiskSweeper tool from the Omnigroup. Yes, the same people who make those other great Omni apps.
This one is free. You pick a drive or partition to sweep.
The app gets to work, sorting through all your files. It will say “sizing” in the titlebar of the window as it sweeps. It also shows the number of gigabytes swept so far.
When done, you will see a number showing the size of all your files in the titlebar. All your files, even the hidden fatbombs you forgot about.
Below in the window, you will see to the left all your top-level folders, both visible and otherwise hidden, by size.
Your /User folder will usually be the biggest.
Click on the size displayed to break it down further by subfolders.
In case you prefer a graphical display of your fattest folders, I can recommend Daisy Disk or GrandPerspective.
Duplicates, Duplicates, Duplicates
I have a lot of duplicate files. I’ve downloaded the same file twice or I have an earlier and later version. How do I find all the duplicate files?
A lot of the time, you know where you put duplicate files. You just want to search 1 or 2 folders. A lot of duplicate file finders, though, search the whole disk or partition first. You get a huge list of duplicates.
Gemini 2 from MacPaw allowed me to search only my selected folders.
I could weed out the duplicate files, placing a checkmark next to the duplicates to send to the Trash.
I got rid of 2.17 gigabytes of excess PDFs within an hour from just two folders of e-books. This beat sifting through a whole 1 Terabyte hard drive’s worth of duplicates.
Step 1
Boot Up Gemini 2. I should warn you it has proven unstable at times, probably due to constructing tables in memory. This increases speed, but can prove unstable.
To reach this screen, press Command + N for New Scan
Now drag the folder(s) you want to examine to the center circle. You’ll see a green symbol with a cross. You can release the mouse button.
This screen means Gemini 2 has accepted your files for scanning. Click on the green button “Scan for Duplicates"
You’ll see this screen as Gemini 2 scans your folder and sub-folders for duplicate files. Give it time.
Gemini 2 has finished its wowrk. Now you can see the list of duplicates arranged by size
Gemini 2 displays the selected set of duplicates. Over to the right, you’ll see a display of the first page of a PDF
This is a closer view of what you see when choosing duplicate files to delete. Click on the rightward facing arrow next to the file title.
This displays the files and their paths.
Choose a file to delete and this is what you see.
Over at the lower right-hand corner, you see the total amount of files selected for deletion and the button to click to delete them.
You’ve deleted your first set of files. Congratulations. Wanna go back for more, or call it a day? It’s your choice.
Gemini 2 will start over where you left on the next time you boot the app up.
Tom Briant
Editor MacValley Blog
Apple News and Views for Monday 02-04-2019
Apple News and Views for Monday, 2/3/2019
How do they stand all that rain in Seattle? Just asking…
How to Reinstall macOS if macOS Recovery is unavailable
In other words, you’ve wiped the boot drive and don’t have an installer handy.
I assume you read this on your computer at work or another computer at home.
The most useful Siri Shortcuts for iPhone
Guess I need a better phone than my 5C
How to set up a Mac and macOS to take advantage of an internal SSD and external storage setup
Macworld finally took notice of this hack to make your /User directory portable.
How to Give your 2012 or 2014 Mac mini a performance boost by replacing the hard drive with an SSD
If you bought a 2012 or 2014 Mac mini and want to bump up its performance, you can do it! Read the article to find out how.
Apple needs blockbuster acquisitions in gaming & video streaming to thrive, claims J.P. Morgan
Wall Street (those wonderful people who brought you 2008) wants Apple to buy Netflix and Activision.
Apple Watch Series 4 fall detection summons emergency services, saves elderly man.
Another reason to get an Apple Watch.
Tim Cook admits that higher iPhone prices are a ‘factor’ in declining upgrade rates
You think so, Tim?
Marie Kondo tries to get my digital life in order
How to KonMari Your Way to a Happier Digital Life
Today the closets, tomorrow the hard drives!
I searched on the topic “Marie Kondo digital” in Google. A lot of articles popped up.
Review: HP Tango X, an AirPrint printer that tries to look like a book
Adventures in making a printer not look like a large ugly plastic object in your stylish home.
Tom Briant
Editor, MacValley Blog
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Did you backup your computer today?
Dear Friends:
Did you back up your computer lately?
Today in Southern California the weather is wet and blustery. Good day to stay inside, watch Netflix or read Agatha Christie novels.
But you must make sure you backed up your Mac!
If you don’t know how to back up your Mac using Time Machine, Apple has you covered here.
Tom Briant
Editor MacValley Blog