Who are the changes in Mac OS X El Capitan for? Not for me, apparently

Over at The Loop, Dave Mark commented on Apple’s list of enhancements in El Capitan.

It’s an impressive list. I guess. But it really brought something into sharp relief for me: I don’t use any of the new features in recent Mac OS X updates. I was really tired of Lucida Grande and I prefer flatter design, so the interface improvements in Yosemite and now El Capitan are worth the update alone, as far as I’m concerned.

But it’s kind of sad for me. I’ve realized that my passion for computers and technology has really moved past the “computers” part. I am still a loyal Mac user, and will continue to be for the following reasons:

1. I’m heavily invested in Apple’s “ecosystem” by this point, which is fine with me.

2. Windows sucks. As much as I think Microsoft is trying to improve, and as much as I appreciate Microsoft’s newfound scrappiness as the underdog, Windows still sucks. Especially the licensing process that assumes everyone is a criminal.

3. Linux on the desktop is still half baked, and if anything seems to be getting worse as it becomes clear that it’s never really going to catch on. (That said, I am as devoted to Linux on servers as I am to the Mac on the desktop. But it’s all command line for me.)

As iOS has taken over, I find my Mac is more and more relegated to its “truck” role for me. I still use my Mac almost every day, but only for two things:

1. Work.

2. Music production.

I never play games on my Mac. (Though that might change.) I no longer browse the web on my Mac, except at work. As much as I love the portability of my 11-inch MacBook Air, I might as well just have an iMac at my desk at work, for how often my MacBook Air is ever out of its bag at home.

I no longer even bring my Mac along when I travel for “emergencies”, because there are no work-related emergencies I can’t fix with my iPad, thanks to a trio of awesome apps from Panic. And using the iPad for work is just awkward enough to ensure that I only use it in emergencies, which improves my travel experience.

And at work, I’m set in my ways. I use the Adobe apps, because I have to. I use BBEdit and Transmit. I use Pages and Numbers for documents and spreadsheets, about once a week each. And I use web browsers, for testing my work. I don’t even listen to music on my computer anymore, because I have a Raspberry Pi at the studio running as a “jukebox”.

I hate almost every email interface. They’re so ugly and confusing and useless. I’ve actually taken to using the iPad interface for Gmail in a web browser to check my email, because it’s the least awful. (Want to do that too? Here’s the “secret” link.)

The only built-in features of Mac OS X that I actually use on a regular basis are Safari, Calendar, and Notes. Ah, my beloved Notes. More on that in a minute.

OK, so that brings me back to Apple’s big list of enhancements in El Capitan. Let’s take a look:

Automation
I like Automation in principle, and have used it once or twice, but honestly either I’m just clueless or too limited in my use of the computer, but I don’t really see anything I do on a regular basis that could be improved by Automation.

Calendar
Yeah, I use this, but the new features they’re promoting are really not interesting to me. I guess I lead a boring life. The one thing I do want in Calendar is something they took away… an easy way to enter the time on a new event without having to use the mouse! [Update (10/2/2015): I’ve just discovered the final release version of Calendar does support entering the time when you’re typing the name of the event, the way earlier versions did. Strike this complaint from the record!]

Chinese Features
International
Japanese Features
Nope. I can respect why these are in the OS and I think they’re important, but they are not applicable to me.

Mail
I used the Mac Mail app for years, until it finally got too buggy for me to tolerate anymore a few versions back. Maybe it’s fixed now. I may never find out, because I’m satisfied enough that the iPad interface for Gmail I mentioned above is the least-sucky option available.

Maps
Seriously? I tell you what: try printing out a map this app generates. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See what I mean? Seriously?

Hey, you didn’t actually do it, did you? OK, I’ll show you. If you’re looking at this (already sparsely marked) map on your screen and you hit Print, this PDF shows the absolute non-existent level of detail you get in the printed version. (I especially like the label at the top: “near United States”. Thanks.)

Maybe you’re saying, “That’s not the point… why would you even print maps anymore?” Well, by that reasoning, why would you even look at maps on your computer anymore? As it happens, I had a very specific reason for printing maps. I’m going on a road trip to Utah next week, and I learned the last time I was there that there are huge swaths of the state where you can’t get a data signal. And I didn’t have any printed maps.

This time I want to be prepared. So I was printing out several maps from Google Maps, but their text was small, and the thin gray lines they use for minor highways almost completely vanish when printed. So I thought I would at least try Apple’s Maps app instead. Not only are they inferior, the printed version you get is completely different from what you’re looking at on the screen, with the majority of the text labels entirely missing. What the hell, Apple?! How is this useful to anyone except a 4th grade geography student? (Come to think of it, I have a 4th grade geography student living in my house. Maybe she can fill it in for me.)

Mission Control
I haven’t even taken the time to figure out what this is. I’ll admit I’m still stuck in System 7 when it comes to my approach to window management, but I just can’t fathom why I would need this. It would just add confusion.

Notes
Now we’re talking. OK, Notes is one app I genuinely love from Apple. Don’t laugh. I tried Evernote. I tried it for nearly a year. I found it over-designed and slow compared to Notes. I just need a place where I can store whatever random pieces of information come along, and an easy way to search through them to find what I need. Notes does that perfectly. And what’s even better, it syncs flawlessly between my Mac, my iPhone and my iPad. Apple can do whatever other weird crap they want to Mac OS X, just please don’t take away Notes.

Photos
I use this to store my photos, by default. But I hate using the app. It seems to be designed for people who have taken less than 100 photos and never plan to take more. Same goes for iCloud Photo Library or whatever it’s called. I find both cumbersome and unusable given that I take probably a dozen photos a day. I just want a place off my iPhone where I can keep my photos, so I can clear room on it for more photos. Now I can’t seem to do that anymore. It sucks.

I realize I’m an edge case here. Any photo I take that I think is worth remembering, I post to Instagram. The rest, I don’t want to trash, but I will probably never look at again. So I don’t need a photo feed on my devices. That’s Instagram. Just take all of the rest away and store them in the vault, please. I have a feeling this is something where I should really seek out an alternative solution, but I haven’t found the time. Suggestions are welcome, but it has to be drop-dead simple or I won’t bother with it.

Reminders
Ack. I wanted to like Reminders when it was first introduced, but I found it unreliable and more effort than just sending myself an email. I hate email too, but it’s a reliable catch-all place to dump any “action items” that are in front of me. Having to put those into Reminders is extra work, and if Reminders doesn’t reliably, you know, remind me, then what’s the point?

Safari
I like Safari. I go back and forth between using it and Chrome as my default browser. Presently I’m in a “Safari phase.” I suppose some of these new features are nice, but honestly it’s only the developer tools I really care about. Fortunately, those are pretty good and getting better.

Split View
This is a new feature that, in theory, I like. But I’m not yet convinced I’ll actually like the implementation, or ever really use it on a regular basis.

Spotlight
Ack. Again. Get this away from me. I never use it. The only times I even interact with it are by accident. I finally took the time to figure out how to disable the keyboard shortcut so I’d stop accidentally calling it up by pressing Command-Space when I’m typing too fast (like right now).

Worse, I have a Mac mini at the studio that is kind of the hub of our network. It’s a file server, VPN server, powers our projector for client meetings, and also runs Parallels Desktop for Windows testing. And it is slow. Really. Unbearably. Slow. I have tried several times to diagnose the problem, without success, until yesterday, I think. It seems the culprit was the system process that scans and indexes file contents for Spotlight. I’m not sure if it was the huge number of files, the handful of huge individual files (Parallels disk images), the server’s Time Machine backup drive, the slow processor, or some kind of genuine hardware defect at work, but so far the system seems much faster since I completely disabled Spotlight on it yesterday.

Which is not straightforward in any way.

Other
OK, so now that I’ve largely crapped all over El Capitan’s marquee features, let’s see if there’s anything interesting left in the grab bag.

New system font: I do like the new system font, a lot.

Find your cursor: this is a great idea, but I find it’s a little inconsistent.

AirPlay video from QuickTime Player: not interested.

Peer-to-peer migration: meh.

Rename from context menu: great, a harder way to do something that’s been around for as long as I’ve used a Mac.

Auto-hide menu bar: do not want.

Copy file path in Finder: oh… hmmm… yeah, I suppose this will be helpful. If I can ever remember that it exists and how to do it. (Hold down Option after opening the context menu? How intuitive!)

Redesigned Disk Utility: sounds good. I’ll have to check it out. Which I will do the next time I am panicked about a hard drive dying and then I’ll hate it because I’m already frustrated about something and I’m not expecting something else new.

Color picker: I suppose.

Rotate annotations: ???

Find My Friends widget: I may use this, but I’m not sure why I’d need to have it on my computer vs. just taking out my phone. The same could be said of Messages, I suppose, but I can type way faster on a real keyboard, so it’s actually useful to get those on my Mac. What benefit does Find My Friends on a Mac offer over the iPhone version?

While we’re on this topic, I’m sure I was not alone when Find My Friends was introduced in saying, “What’s with the rich Corintian leather?” I mean, “When would I ever use this?” I think it’s really the name. Change it to “Find My Family” and suddenly it makes perfect sense. I don’t use it daily, but I do use it at least once or twice a week, and it has proven incredibly handy.

So that brings us to the end of the list, and of my rant. Maybe this has ended up being more of a psychological profile of me than a valuable assessment of the state of the Mac in 2015. OK, it’s definitely that. But I wonder how common I am as a long-time Mac user (bought my first Mac in 1994) who has mostly become disillusioned with the direction of Apple’s software.

Full disclosure: I own a small amount of Apple stock as part of a retirement account I can’t touch until I’m in my 60s. Clearly I am trying to drive up their stock price.

Installing Ubuntu on an HP Stream Mini PC

c04526282When I heard the news a few weeks ago that HP was introducing a cute little blue mini PC that would only cost $180, my first thought was, “I want one!” And when I heard that the Stream Mini would ship with Windows 8.1 preinstalled, my second thought was, “And when I get it the first thing I’m going to do is install Ubuntu on it.”

Easier said than done.

The actual process of installing Ubuntu is not difficult. The difficulty proved to be in simply getting the Stream Mini to boot from a USB stick.

tl;dr

The HP Stream Mini has UEFI boot. If you hit F12 at boot, you get the UEFI boot selector screen, but that’s no good because it won’t show the USB stick. For HP devices like this you need to hit F10 on boot to access the UEFI/BIOS configuration tools. From this point I trust you can find the settings to change the boot order. Just put your USB stick ahead of the hard drive in the order and you’re set.

Actually, I do prefer to read the whole thing, no matter how long it is

Now, for those of you who want the full story, here’s how it goes. I’ll say up front that I primarily use a Mac, so my instructions for preparing the USB stick are Mac-only.

Actually, not quite true. Most of what I’m describing is done at the UNIX command line, so for a UNIX/Linux system, the experience should be similar to this, but you don’t have to convert the .iso file. Also, for the first couple of steps I’m using the Mac-only command diskutil. The instructions on the Raspberry Pi page mentioned in step 2 use the generic UNIX equivalents.

For Windows… you’re on your own. It involves crappy third-party apps you have to download and, well, yuck. I started out all of this trying to get it set up using the Windows 8.1 install that came on the HP Stream Mini, but I quickly gave up and switched to my Mac. (The official Ubuntu docs have instructions for Windows that I read before giving up.)

Step 1: Download Ubuntu

There are many options (including other Linux distros), but if you’re undecided, you probably want to get yourself a copy of the latest version (or latest LTS [Long Term Support] version) of Ubuntu Desktop. Be sure to go for the 64-bit version. At the time of this writing, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS is the latest and greatest.

Step 2: Prepare your USB stick

Déjà vu? No, I really have written about this before. More or less. While there are some minor differences, this is basically the same process I described for preparing an SD card with Raspbian for a Raspberry Pi using a Mac.

You can read the even lengthier details there, but basically, you want to:

1) Insert a USB stick (I recommend at least 2 GB, but who can even find one under 4 GB these days?) into a USB port on the Mac. Make sure you don’t care about losing all of the data on this USB stick, because you will.

2) Open Terminal and save yourself some extra typing in the immediate future by starting with: sudo -s

3) Type diskutil list and press Enter to see a list of volumes. Look for your USB stick and note what it says at the right under IDENTIFIER. There’s a good chance it’s going to be disk1s1 but it could be something else. You just need to know the disk1 part. Don’t worry about the s1. Remember this for later.

4) Unmount the disk. Enter this command: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1 being sure to replace the 1 with whatever number you saw in the previous step.

5) Find your Ubuntu installer image. It’s probably in your Downloads folder. Type cd ~/Downloads and press Enter. Then type ls -al and look for the Ubuntu filename, which likely ends with .iso. You’re going to need to convert this into a .img file.

6) Run this command: hdiutil convert input.iso -format UDRW -o output.img but be sure to replace input.iso with the actual filename of your Ubuntu .iso file. You can also change output.img to whatever you want… or at least the output part. This is the filename for the new .img file.

7) Run ls -al again. Mac OS X probably “helpfully” stuck a .dmg extension on your .img file, so run this: mv output.img.dmg output.img replacing both instances of output as appropriate.

OK, now we are actually ready to write Ubuntu onto the USB stick. Run this command:

dd bs=1m if=output.img of=/dev/rdisk1

Be sure to use the correct name for your .img file, and the correct disk number in that rdisk1 bit. Note that the r I added stands for “raw” and it just makes the process go a bit faster.

Now, wait. It shouldn’t take too long, but it might be a minute or so. Once you get the # command prompt again, your USB stick is ready to go. You’ll probably also get a system dialogue box warning you that the disk you inserted is unreadable. Just ignore that. Remove the USB stick from your Mac and insert it into the (powered down) HP Stream Mini.

Step 3: Boot the HP Stream Mini and access the UEFI/BIOS configuration

With the USB stick in one of the HP Stream Mini’s USB ports, power on, then immediately press and hold (or, if you like, frantically tap repeatedly) the F10 key on your keyboard. This should bring up the UEFI/BIOS configuration tool.

hp01

First, go to the Storage menu and choose Boot Order. The dialogue below will appear.

hp02

I recommend disabling UEFI Boot Sources as shown here. Then under Legacy Boot Sources look for your USB stick (not shown here because I didn’t have one inserted when I took the photo). Follow the instructions in the lower right of the box to select and change the order of the boot devices. Make sure your USB stick is above Hard Drive in the list. Press F10 to confirm.

hp03

Now go to the File menu and choose Save Changes and Exit. The computer will now proceed to boot up from the USB stick.

Step 4: Run the Ubuntu installer

This is pretty straightforward. Unlike earlier Linux distributions, Ubuntu these days has a very polished installer program that should feel very familiar to anyone who’s ever installed Windows or Mac OS X on a computer before. There are several steps such as picking your language, location and keyboard layout, but just follow the on-screen instructions and wait for the process to complete, which in my experience took about 20 minutes.

After installation is complete, the system will ask you to reboot, then remove the USB stick and press Enter. Follow those instructions and in less than a minute you should be up and running with a clean install of Ubuntu!

A couple of quick steps to improve the Yosemite UI on non-Retina Macs

I’m guessing most Mac users running a Mac that can handle it have already updated to Yosemite, or will soon. I’m the kind of user who always runs OS updates whenever they’re available.

I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s decision to make Helvetica Neue the new system font in Yosemite. I like Helvetica, but I don’t love it. I prefer something with a little more personality, a little less ubiquity. That said, I do prefer geometric and Grotesque-type fonts over humanist fonts… and I was really sick of Lucida Grande, which I never really liked in the first place.

My first reaction when I tried the Yosemite beta was that it looked half-assed. The final version is a bit more polished, but it still feels poorly thought out. Or, at least, it did until last weekend when I was at an Apple Store and I saw Yosemite on a Retina MacBook Pro for the first time.

Wow.

Retina is clearly what this interface was designed for, and eventually that’s how we’ll all be experiencing it. But for now, and for a while to come, most of us will probably be stuck with non-Retina Macs and the inferior presentation of Yosemite’s refined UI that they deliver.

That said, there are a couple of things you can do to improve the experience. Part of why Yosemite doesn’t look great on a non-Retina Mac is that there’s too much subtle stuff going on that just kind of gets mucked up when you don’t have that precise definition on letters and icons. You can improve this aspect of the UI immensely by reducing its use of transparency. Open up System Preferences and switch to Accessibility. Check the box labeled Reduce transparency.

Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 12.11.23 PM

Another optional change you may wish to make is to darken the menu bar and Dock. This is more of a matter of taste, but personally I like the darker look. Switching this on essentially inverts the colors, so your menu bar has a nearly black background with white text, and the Dock becomes translucent dark gray, instead of translucent white.

Once again in System Preferences go to General and check Use dark menu bar and Dock.

Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 12.11.16 PM

Now enjoy your new OS!

How to get iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) apps to stop defaulting to iCloud when saving

Ever since I semi-fully embraced iCloud, I’ve found that the iWork apps — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — always default to wanting to save every new document in iCloud, which I never — well, OK, almost never — want to do. It’s fine that it’s an option, but I want the default to be saving to my local hard drive (which, actually, means saving to my Dropbox account).

It didn’t take much effort to find this thread on Apple’s support forums, but the first suggested solution — turning off “Documents and Data” in System Preferences → iCloud — seemed draconian. With this option you can never sync your documents to iCloud.

A little further down the thread I found the “real” solution, courtesy of “Bernie_uk”, which was important enough for me to want to share here.

It requires opening up Terminal, but it’s not too scary. You just have to run this command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

This command doesn’t turn off anything in iCloud; it just tells the system that your default should be saving files to disk, not to iCloud. Note that since this is a global setting, it will affect not just iWork, but any other apps that use iCloud’s “Documents and Data” syncing. (I guess.)

Quick Mac Tip: Fix missing background on second display

At work, I plug my 11-inch MacBook Air into a 23-inch LCD, which I use as my primary screen, with the Mac’s display as a secondary screen. Frequently, due to some combination of not closing it then unplugging the Mini DisplayPort plug in the proper order, or… something… I will find that when I open up my computer the next day, my desktop background (a.k.a. “wallpaper” for recent Windows switchers) on the MacBook Air is gone, replaced with a far-too-bright light gray generic background. Yuck!

Previously I had resorted to logging out and back in, or even rebooting, to fix this problem, but yesterday I searched and found an answer. It’s really simple! But it does require opening Terminal.

Go into Applications > Utilities and open Terminal. Then at the command prompt, type this (and, of course, hit Return):

killall Dock

That’s it! The Dock will quit and automatically restart, and the desktop will be restored!