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Apple Macbook, MacPro, iMac & IOS Tips, Tricks & Software Thread


Neilp

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You're sort of in between, a full reinstall of the OS and then full restore from time machine will only put you back where you started. I'd be tempted to do a full reinstall of the OS but not restore anything from time machine except the Documents folder, however it depends on how you've got your personal files plus music and media arranged over your storage. Then just reinstall the applications you want, but with picking and choosing data and applications, it's going to be a time consuming faff.

 

Whatever you do, make sure you've go backups first :lol:

 

Sorry just to confirm, you can reinstall just parts of your file system from a time machine back up?

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You're sort of in between, a full reinstall of the OS and then full restore from time machine will only put you back where you started. I'd be tempted to do a full reinstall of the OS but not restore anything from time machine except the Documents folder, however it depends on how you've got your personal files plus music and media arranged over your storage. Then just reinstall the applications you want, but with picking and choosing data and applications, it's going to be a time consuming faff.

 

Whatever you do, make sure you've go backups first :lol:

 

Sorry just to confirm, you can reinstall just parts of your file system from a time machine back up?

 

Yes. Ideally if you have all the applications (and any product keys) on hand you wouldn't want to restore the application folders. You'd be better just restoring your personal files and doing a clean install of the OS and any applications you want to keep.

 

There's some stuff on this page, it's a little out of date but not massively, covering using migration assistant to selectively grab stuff from a time machine.

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/1165784/how_to_restore_data_from_time_machine.html

 

Good stuff here: http://pondini.org/OSX/SetupLion.html

 

Here's a quite short version of above: http://www.macworld.com/article/2066996/how-to-transfer-backups-from-time-machine-to-a-new-mac.html

 

If it were me, I'd only restore/migrate the "User Account" data, not Settings or anything else as that's where any "slowness" may be "hiding".

Edited by SuperStu
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I have a photo issue. Last night I added some photos to my photo library on Mac (el capitan) they are not showing on iPhone (6S plus)

 

It works the other way, I can see photos taken on phone on my Mac.

 

What's going on??

 

Upload can be quite slow (in my experience) if you have a lot to push up to the cloud, however if it's just one or two, it sounds like it's something else. This isn't El Capitan specific, but worth a run through.

 

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/06/02/how-to-fix-os-x-photo-syncing-problems/

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  • 4 months later...

Read an article the other day about the amount of power the Facebook app draws from your iPhone/iPad. The nub of it was that the app can be rather busy in the background and this in turn can impact battery life. Without going into full detail of the jobs it is running in the background (some you can turn off like location, some you can't like clipboard scanning, photo scanning, etc) they did a vaguely scientific test over a week where they used Facebook via Safari instead of the app. They found batteries were on average 15% healthier if the app was not used. That's quite a chunk.

 

Obviously this will vary by how heavily you use Facebook but if you're struggling with battery life suggest:

 

- double tapping the home key

- swiping the Facebook app away

- use Facebook via Safari for a few days

- see if there's a difference to you

 

There's no need to delete the app, IMO, just make sure you've properly closed it, not just pushed it to the background.

 

I've been doing it for 3 days now and reckon there's about 10% in it and I can't say Facebook in Safari is particularly harder to use than the app itself. I am now slightly curious as to what's it doing in the background that isn't configurable to drain so much juice...

 

Article: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/08/uninstalling-facebook-app-saves-iphone-battery-life

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I have a photo issue. Last night I added some photos to my photo library on Mac (el capitan) they are not showing on iPhone (6S plus)

 

It works the other way, I can see photos taken on phone on my Mac.

 

What's going on??

 

You need to make sure that the photos you uploaded to the MAC have been copied to iCloud . . . you phone should then sync those photos.

 

I think there is a setting to auto upload "manual photos" to iCloud.

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  • 2 months later...

If anyone wants to test the new Safari, you can download the technology preview here.

 

https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/release-notes/

 

Seems to be stable enough for me with browsing. It does install as a separate browser, so you can always switch back to your current version at any time.

 

:thumbs:

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Agree - everything just works.

 

Example - I run one windows laptop which the kids use and to be honest if it sent to hell via ransomware etc I would not be overly bothered - It was a free one. My father called me the other night asking if he should upgrade to Windows 10 as it was free and to be honest I had no idea it was free so It thought best option would be to upgrade mine from Windows 7 so I could talk him through any issues. Yes issues - and there were a few - kept sticking on the looking for upgrades which meant three separate changed and restarts via task manager. When I updated to El Capitan - deciding to use the track-pad or mouse to make the click was the most difficult part of the process. W10 looks a cross between and XBox and OSX !

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  • 2 months later...

nope and you won't find one . . well I have never seen a decent one. You certainly won't find a dock like you would get with a Dell or IBM Notebook

 

You are better off using a stand of some sort with a wireless keyboard and mouse, you then just have to plug the MBP in to the monitor and power.

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2x Arms, one for the monitor, the other for the tray

 

http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/56/language/en-US/Default.aspx

 

this is the tray

 

http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/147/language/en-US/Default.aspx

 

The arms are sprung loaded, so I had to weigh the tray down when I got my Macbook

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2x Arms, one for the monitor, the other for the tray

 

http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/56/language/en-US/Default.aspx

 

this is the tray

 

http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/147/language/en-US/Default.aspx

 

The arms are sprung loaded, so I had to weigh the tray down when I got my Macbook

 

Curse those lightweight designs! Thanks for the links :thumbs:

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  • 4 months later...

<rant>

 

Anyone using office for Mac?

 

Every single time I launch excel' it wants to do an update, and not just little 5mb security patches, giant multi 100mb updates? How is this possible, my whole OS doesn't update that much let alone a spreadsheet, word processor and mail client.

 

</rant>

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Any one have an tips on removing adware from a 2014 mbp?? Ive somehow downloaded a ad ware virus :(

 

Find it and delete it. I know that sounds stupid, but thats literally what you have to do. I had one quite recently that was masked as an Adobe Flash file in Applications. Go through that folder to see if you can find anything that you don't recognise, once you do find it, cmd+i and check the date it was created, if it was around the same time as the adware turned up, you're probably onto something. Just delete the file and that'll be it gone.

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