Back From the Dead—But not using a bootable drive…

My Mac Backup Strategy, was:

1. Backup to Time Machine regularly to have access to that data.
2. Backup regularly to a fast “bootable” external drive “clone” using a nifty 3rd party tool such as SuperDuper.

Having an external bootable backup meant that if my internal drive(s) failed, I could quickly fire up a workable system and continue working, until I restored it all to a replacement drive. But as I discovered last night…

At this writing, you can’t make a bootable backup disk with Big Sur. And the M1 (non-Intel) Macs can’t boot from an external drive. Now what? You could (and should) keep using Time Machine of course, but that is just saving your data and apps, not creating a “boot disk”. You’ll have to repair/replace your drive or Mac first, then recover using Time Machine. Unless you have a backup computer and work with all your data “in the cloud”, hours or days of downtime is inevitable with a hardware failure.

Short version: Make multiple backups of everything that is important to you. Including backing up to (a non-bootable) external drive with SuperDuper or other “cloning” utility. If your recovery strategy is “Make an appointment at the Genius Bar”, make sure you allow for at least a few days of downtime. If your business can’t afford downtime, try to work with all your data “in the cloud”, have a spare Mac, and be sure if you shut one Mac down, you can still do everything you need to on the other. And Test and Verify that this actually works!!

Readable Technical details and workaround(s) at Shirt Pocket Watch (SuperDuper developer’s blog) www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/, and this thorough summary from TidBITS: The Role of Bootable Duplicates in a Modern Backup Strategy.
— Read on

P.S. TechWite is also back from the dead. At least for this one entry. I’ve always been UNPREDICTABLE. 😎

—Techwite

How to Fix Persistent Apple Calendar Entries

Meetings, appointments, reminders—if you’ve put Apple’s iCloud Calendar to good use for awhile, you probably have lots of old Calendar events, maybe years, maybe decades of old events. You are paying for that storage with your money, and for the processor overhead with your time. And…do you really want the NSA to have access to all this? You should clean it up. It’s the past. Let it go! But how?

This is Apple, so it should be easy, right? Well, yes, but friends, this is one of those rare potholes in the normally smooth road of the Apple ecosystem. Apple will help you hide your old Calendar entries, but we want to DELETE, and just locating information on how to delete them requires an epic effort worthy of a Homer narrative. For you, TechWite provides the “Cliff’s Notes” shortcut to the answers:

🙈  The iCloud Ostrich Method

Hide old events in iCloud: Click the Gear icon for Preferences… > Advanced > Old Events. But they are still there.  We want to DELETE and in iCloud, that’s as good as it gets. On your Mac? Back when versions of OS X were named after BIG CATS, there was a similar option in Calendar > Preferences. That option is GONE.

Stop Making Sense—Warning: If you manually delete appointments ONE at a time, iCloud will try to send “updates” to all the meeting recipients of those old meetings. You may have hundreds or thousands of entries. Imagine the annoyed responses from old friends, lovers, family, and former work associates asking why you are cancelling a meeting in the PAST?? My advice: If you encounter this issue, and get queries, DON’T RESPOND.

Like the Labors of Hercules! The long, tedious, and frankly annoying search propelled as if by a motivational prophecy from the Delphic oracle—that this should be easier, this should be obvious, and if “The Steve” were here, this simply would not be a problem.

• Apple support on Twitter abandoned me because I didn’t “DM” them.
• Apple Support Communities (formerly known as ‘the boards’) had many, many, many posts asking for help on this topic, and virtually NO solutions.
• Books about “Calendar”? There were some books about iCloud but otherwise, not to be found.
• Mac OSX Hints site came closer to a solution by suggesting cool Apple technologies AppleScript, and Automator, but for me, these either worked partially, inconsistently, or not at all. And at last I found…
• “The Golden Link”—to “Advanced Calendar and iCal troubleshooting“, which was: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204598. (But, this being the Inkernet, where everything is subject to change, as of this update, March 1, 2022, the Golden Link is a DEAD Link! Fortunately, I summarized most of it.—TW)

  iCloud: Advanced Calendar and iCal troubleshooting

  The most common causes for data-based issues with Calendar are:

• Unreadable or incompatible calendar data.
• Reoccurring calendar events that have no end date (such as birthdays).
• Duplicate events.
• An excess of calendar events that happened in the past (especially those that were previously synced from another calendar client).

Any of these conditions could be the cause of your issues with Calendar in OS X (or iCal) and iCloud.

Well thanks Apple! And in that most important (and now disappered) article, Apple explains how to perform all kinds of maintenance on your Calendars, backing up, disconnecting from iCloud and other services, cleaning up, and restoring. I leave that work to you, reader.

…to delete those old entries, here are the two answers:

1. Delete Entries in Macintosh Calendar App: In the search bar, type “.“—a single period—and press <Return>. This will produce a search response list of ALL your entries, which you may then select (using the various select options that you know how to use, right?) and <Delete>. (This still has the issue with sending “updates” to recipients, so be careful. Otherwise, go to #2, below.)
   [BTW: Can you do this in iCloud? I can’t even find the Search Bar in iCloud. Where is it??]
2. Use a 3rd Party Macintosh Calendar Tool: Download a more capable Calendar replacement, or a Calendar utility. These will do the work for you that Apple has abandoned. I recommend BusyCal. You can download the free trial, and use it to batch clean your calendar using their wonderful List View of calendar entries. You may like it so much that you decide to buy it. (I did!)

And there you have it.  Peace Out.—TW

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Apple and Ive Flat Design Assault

via Former Apple Design Gurus Criticize Apple’s Current Designs.

via “Flat Design”? Destroying Apple’s Legacy… or Saving It.

Wake up, Tim! Many years ago, Apple used a great deal of research and creative thought to revolutionize, popularize, and consumerize “Personal Computing” by creating interface rules and guidelines that made most Macintosh applications work consistently, regardless if the application was written by Apple, Microsoft, or one of the hundreds of other software companies that have passed into obscurity at the hands of change and monopoly. (Remember WordPerfect? pfs:Write? ThinkTank? Aldus Pagemaker?) It wasn’t always that way.

The power of this innovation is lost today because—like so much of technology—it is taken for granted. Apple designers, most notably Jonathan Ive, have placed form far above function. The result is inconsistency in the interface, hidden interface elements, huge assumptions about users knowledge, or perseverance, or desire to explore, and the capacity of users to remember invisible elements and features.

If you struggle figuring out how to do something on your iPhone or iPad or Mac, especially something that ought to be simple and obvious, then you’ve encountered the new design philosophy. Learn more about how it ought to be – read the articles linked at the top of this article. And, heck, you could tell Apple what you think! (Maybe they’ll hear you.)

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I admit it!!

OS X: Keyboard shortcuts – Apple Support.

I admit it! Although I’ve been using Macs as long as there have been Macs, I still can’t remember those weird symbols that represent the Macintosh “modifier” keys. Okay, the “clover leaf”, i.e. Command key, is easy, but do you really recognize all the other ones? Can you distinguish an Option key from a Caps Lock?

In any case, I present them here from Apple’s most excellent “OS X: Keyboard shortcuts page”. Go there. I guarantee you will learn something. Or use the page to jump to another good one, like how to access the special character variations:

 

Enjoy!

 

A Mac Tip for You

Are you spending way too much time trying to get something done? I’m talking about on your computer. If you don’t have the right tool—or you don’t know how to use it—you’re going to waste time. Time is your life. Don’t waste your life! I’ll focus more on that, next time, but for now, how about a hot Mac tip?

Keeping the “Desktop” on your computer clean and organized can be a challenge. Even for the most disciplined and organized of users, it’s still like the kitchen in your home. It accumulates stuff. Kitchen: Mail you don’t know what to do with, groceries you haven’t put away, dirty dishes. Computer: Files, folders, apps, stuff you haven’t decided if you want to keep or not.

I’m not going to tell you how to clear your whole Desktop, but I will tell you about one awesome, simple feature built into the Mac OS that every Mac user should know about. (Windows users, I can’t help you.) And this feature is so easy, so obvious, and so useful, to me it is a metaphor for the whole Macintosh experience. Check it out.

You’ve got files and folders all over your Desktop. It’s a mess. So sort it.

1. Click on your Desktop
2. In the Finder select View > Sort By > Name
3. Everything on your Desktop is now sorted by Name. Not what you wanted? You’ve got other choices, try one of those, including: by Kind and by Tags.

Does that help? Now you’ve got a lot of organized junk on your Desktop. And that’s not my favorite tip. Go ahead and think about some of those files. Maybe you want to put all the photographs into one folder? Maybe you just want to put most of that stuff into a folder called “Organize Later” and get it out of sight. Either way, follow along…

1. Select the files that you want to put in a folder. This is basic Mac stuff, you know how to:
   1. [Command]+[Click] to make multiple selections
   2. Use the mouse to drag a selection triangle over a group of files
   3. Or use [Command]+[A] to select All—everything on the Desktop—(but de-select any drive volumes, or this tip won’t work)
2. Once you’ve made the selection, [Right]+[Click] with a mouse, or two-finger click with a trackpad…
3. You should see a pop-up menu, with “New Folder with Selection (xx items)” at the top.
4. Select that menu and, Walla! Watch everything you selected jump into a newly created folder on your Desktop called “New Folder with Items”. Without lifting your fingers from the keyboard, type a folder name and press [Return].
5. Done!

These are explicit instructions, but seriously, this is as simple as: Select files, [Right]+[Click], select menu, Name the folder. Oh! Did you make a mistake? Didn’t want that name? Didn’t want all those files in that folder? No big deal, in the Finder Edit menu, right at the top, you can UNDO.

To me, this is an elegant, mind-bogglingly simple function that does so much, and says so much about the Macintosh OS: Choice, flexibility, ease of use, speed, and downright utility! Not everything on a Mac makes this much sense, but if you explore, you’ll find there are many, many features like this to help simplify and automate your work. Because really, shouldn’t the computer be working for you?

Apple Flashback 1996: “Powered by Macintosh”

Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, Apple was a renegade. Corporate IT departments hated Apple because Macintoshes were different. Steve Jobs had been ousted from his own company, and Apple was floundering under a slow parade of unimaginative leadership. The media, smelling blood as Apple stumbled, piled on like a swarming mass of leeches on a fallen water buffalo, never mentioning Apple without also using the word, “beleaguered”.

“Evangelist” Guy Kawasaki, using a new and powerful marketing weapon called “the Internet”, and assisted by a ragtag band of Mac enthusiasts known as “EvangeListas”,  promoted the Mac and kept the spark of life in Apple until the eventual return of “the Steve” and the introduction of Apple’s premier “Think Different” product—the first iMac. Those of you who have only been using Macs for the last ten years or so may find this hard to believe, because Apple is such a successful consumer electronics company and its products are so awesome, but it nearly died, and that’s the truth.

I was an Evangelista, and now and then one of my ideas appeared on Guy’s Evangelist. We fought the good fight!

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Why your colleagues…

Ever wonder why some IT colleagues still look askance at you using a Macintosh in the Windows dominated office, but don’t seem to have much trouble with you pulling out an iPad? Why is that? Because the Macintosh is a full-bodied complete operating system and environment that competes directly with (or to be honest, devastates) the brain-dead Windows that BDC IT has invested in for the last 30 years.

And the iPad? I think there are two reasons. First, they don’t yet see the iPad as a real, complete tool to get things done. (They’ll change that opinion over time…) But mainly, because for the iPad, there is no competition. Heck, most of the IT guys have their own iPads, and LOVE them.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Apple Flashback 2005: Apple Causes Stock Market Decline

“Once again, irresponsible Apple Computer has failed to conform to analysts expectations. Apple, the only innovative company in the computer business and the major innovator in consumer electronics, maker of the wildly popular iPod series, recently announced record profits, high margins, and the sale of over 6 million iPods and 1 million Macintoshes in the last quarter. A day later, as the price of Apple stock fell on this disappointing news, Steve Jobs announced the ‘new’ iPod—a thinner, color screen version capable of playing movies. Also announced, a new version of iTunes, which will include the downloading of video media from the iTunes Music Store, and an update to the iMac, adding to its ample capabilities a built-in iSight camera for video chatting, a ‘remote’ so that the beautiful flat-panel can be easily used to display DVDs as well as other rich media, and all for the same price as the previous model. The oracles of Wall Street, shocked at this disastrous development, proclaimed that Apple has now set itself up for a new decline, since it couldn’t possibly continue this ‘pace of innovation’. Apple stock tumbled again, by five points or so, dragging with it the entire stock market. [At this writing, Apple stock is at $74 and climbing on news of more TV content on the iTMS. OH if only I had bought a few hundred shares when it tumbled down to $45!!—Chris]”

— from “Old Weird News”, Unpredictable Issue #79 12/12/2005

This is Starbucks Dude

Okay, I admit it, I call Starbucks “my other office”, and I sit here with my iPad or MacBook Pro and check my email and read and write. In fact, right now, everybody who has a seat here has some device in front of them. Most of us tolerate a colleague taking the occasional phone call, within reason, and we get annoyed with people who are loud and long on their calls. We might even put up with a YouTube video, if it’s short, and funny, and the guy keeps the volume down—but if someone starts watching BBC or CNN battle scenes from anywhere, I’m going to ask them to use their headphones, or turn it WAY down.

Some things are just not acceptable. Starbucks is a place of diversity and tolerance, and frankly, with all the banging of dishes and water running and coffee grinding and steam streaming, it is a place of noise. Noise and tolerance. Once in a rare while someone pushes this concept a bit, like the guy with the “card table laptop” in one of my other posts, but usually, usually, nobody really goes over the top. Until today.

There’s a guy with a BIG Dell laptop, attached to an external monitor – and no, I don’t mean one of those super portable USB connected external flat panels. Visualize this on a little round wooden Starbucks table. I’m talkin’ about a DELL desktop monitor with a stand. 20″ diagonal. How did he even get it in here?! He’s eating up TWO power outlets at once. Oh, did I forget to mention the EXTERNAL keyboard AND mouse?? Is it Bluetooth? I didn’t notice. What’s next? A laser printer??

This is a Starbucks dude. Starbucks!!

Edited with BlogPad Pro

The Time of Darkness

The early to mid-Nineties of the past century. A time when Steve Jobs had been ousted from Apple and the company, lead by a dizzying array of corporate Big Heads, was always referred to in the press as, “beleaguered”. The Big Heads worked hard to kill all creativity at Apple. Their goal? Make Macs just another tan box, indistinguishable from Windows PCs, so, as they thought, Big Dumb Corporations would buy millions of them. But of course, they failed, fortunately.

—from “Geek Speak Review” Unpredictable Issue #81

Edited with BlogPad Pro