Category: Apple

All things Apple Computer

  • Time Machine Encryption Slow Takes Too Long

    Time Machine encryption can take literally days to complete. How do you speed this up?

    The problem is here: It is common and logical to follow the pattern:

    • Format a drive “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”
    • Select that disk in Time Machine and select “Encrypt backups”.

    Time Machine will perform the first backup (unencrypted) on the drive, then after it finishes, it will begin this long process of encrypting the drive. This is the routine that can take multiple days, even if your first backup was only a few gigabytes. This sucks.

    The faster technique is in Disk Utility to:

    • Format the drive “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)” (which only takes a few seconds)
    • Select that disk in Time Machine and select “Encrypt backups”.

    Time machine will perform the backup on the encrypted disk and will be done immediately after.

    Hope this saves you some time!

  • The disk “your disk” wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it

    trying to safely eject any hard drive

    This error message has come up on a number of occasions and I’m sure many people have wondered what is the best way to deal with this. This is for macOS, OSX, Macintosh operating system. These instructions are the same for Mavericks, Yosemite, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey.

    I have found a few main things that cause this error…

    1) There is an application you launched with a file open on that disk. Double check you have no applications running with files open on the disk. You can try quitting applications that opened files on the removable disk.

    2) There is a terminal open, and you have changed directory onto the disk path in terminal. Check any open terminal windows and change directory

    cd

    to go back to your home folder, or

    exit

    to close them.

    3) There is some other application, maybe an operating system application and not one you explicitly launched, holding a file on the disk open.

    There is an application called “What’s keeping me” that can help you find which process is keeping your disk from ejecting http://www.hamsoftengineering.com/products/wkm/wkm.html . EDIT: This link is now broken as of 2022

    I found QuickLookUIService will often hold on to the disk. QuickLookUIService is used to preview document, photos, or videos and will not properly let go of those files sometimes. In this case it will need to be Force Quit. Open Activity Monitor, sort by name, or search for QuickLookUIService, and click the x button and Force Quit! Or you can do it on the terminal with

    killall -9 QuickLookUIService

    Good luck ejecting your disks!

  • iPhone interface with React

    After reading about the new CSS backdrop-filter I decided to see how much work would be involved to create an iPhone like interface using HTML, CSS, and React.

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  • Slow zoom on OS X Yosemite

    If you use Zoom controls from Accessibility system pref, and using an external monitor, you may have experienced *very* slow performance after upgrading to Yosemite.

    One workaround is to set Zoom Style to “Picture-in-picture”.

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  • OS X Yosemite Messages app title bar bug

    When you touch the Messages title bar, then click somewhere else on your screen, the messages app will move as if you dragged it. Such a strange bug and it was not sadly addressed in 10.10.1. Reproducible on any Mac, every time. How this could slip past QA is beyond me.

  • How to stop Amazon Music Helper from running in the background OSX

    After installing Amazon Music on my mac, I noticed this background task “Amazon Music Helper” running. I tried to kill it, it came back.

    The fix I used was to remove execute permission on that file:

    chmod -x /Applications/Amazon\ Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Amazon\ Music\ Helper

    Then kill the process again and it shouldn’t come back.

    I have bought music since then and find that all the features (that I use) work fine. This thing isn’t even needed!

  • OS X Mavericks won’t display my monitor’s display resolution

    QuickResIconQuickRes to the rescue!

    Having problems getting OS X Mavericks to display your monitor’s native resolution? I had this problem with an Acer AL1916W with 1440×900 resolution. My solution was to download QuickRes Free from the Mac App Store. Run it and click the icon up in the Menu Bar. Select the monitor. Select the resolution you want.

  • iPhone maps icon in iOS 6 is navigating from BJs Brewhouse

    The new iPhone maps icon in iOS 6 is navigating starting at BJs Brewhouse on De Anza in front of Apple Headquarters

    iPhone maps icon iOS6

  • SLUG Magazine 2.2 – adds iPhone 5 4-inch support

    Now that XCode 4.5 and iOS 6 is out, I decided to update SLUG Magazine iPhone app to support the new iPhone 5 and removed the ‘for iOS4’ text on the loading screen (which was there throughout the iOS 5 release).

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