Do You Have Microsoft Silverlight Installed on Your Mac?

What Microsoft says:
Microsoft Silverlight will reach the end of support on October 12, 2021. Silverlight development framework is currently only supported on Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11, with support for Internet Explorer 10 ending on January 31, 2020. There is no longer support for Chrome, Firefox, or any browser using the Mac operating system.

What Wikipedia says:
Microsoft Silverlight (or simply Silverlight) is a deprecated application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash.

So, if you have Silverlight installed on your Mac, you might as well delete it now.


John R Carter Sr

MacBook Air for Sale

A friend in California just posted this to a forum I subscribe to. It is one heck of a deal if you're interested in a MacBook Air. That's what I'm using right now, and mine is a year older than Tracy's Air. Tracy is a very honorable man, and can be trusted for anything he says. We've bought electronic 'stuff' from him previously.

His email is: <tracy@tracyvalleau.com>

Jim Hamm

Tracy Valleau <tracy@tracyvalleau.com>

Ah... life

On September 15, this year, I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with 16
GB of RAM, and an i5 processor. 256GB SSD.

Then they released the M1 two months later.

GRRRR.....

So, I've ordered the M1 version, and will let you all know what I think
of it.

Meanwhile, my 3-month old Air is up for sale. Cost me $1281 in total.

Will sell for $800 OBO if anyone is interested.

Tracy

Removing Adobe Flash

It is recommended that Adobe Flash should be removed from your computer to avoid any potential hacking issues. Here's how.

Jim Hamm

Removing Flash from your system

As Adobe advised, you should remove Flash Player from your system — whether you have a Mac or PC.

It is a bit lengthy, but here is how to remove it from a Windows PC:

  • For Windows operating system, download the official Uninstaller from Adobe.

  • Make sure that you have closed all browsers, tabs or apps.

  • Double-click on the downloaded Uninstaller.

  • When prompted for confirmation, click on “Yes.”

  • When complete, you will be asked to restart your computer to complete the process.

  • For the last step, press the Windows key and ‘R’ to bring up the ‘Run’ command.

  • In the “open” box, insert C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash and hit “Enter.”

  • This will open the specified folder. Delete all the files in this folder.

  • Repeat the previous three steps, but open the folders and delete the content of:

    • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

    • %appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player

    • %appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player

  • If you search for the folders and they don’t exist, it has been removed successfully.

How to remove Adobe Flash from a Mac:

  • First, determine your Mac version by clicking on the Apple icon and then About This Mac.

  • Download the uninstaller for your Mac version. For Mac OS X version 10.6 and later, click here, and for Mac OS X version 10.4 and 10.5, click here. For earlier versions of Mac, click here.

  • Run the uninstaller that you downloaded.

  • When the uninstaller starts, click uninstall.

  • Make sure to close all browsers so that the process can complete.

  • Once that is complete, delete the following files from your system:

    • <home directory>/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player

    • <home directory>/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash\ Player

  • To verify that the process is complete, click here and select “Check Now” on that page.

Which is Better, Onyx or CleanMyMac?

If you can put up with the techie way that Onyx works, and you can hold out until it becomes available on Big Sur, then I see no real big reason to spend money on CleanMyMac.

On the other hand, CleanMyMac does one thing quite well that Onyx doesn’t do, and that is to clean out your personal Preferences with files that didn’t get properly removed by simply dropping an app into the trash. But even that may not be worth $39 for the dozen or so files lingering in Preferences that only take up a little space in the hard drive.

I do rely on CleanMyMac to completely uninstall an app. It’s more thorough than the free version of AppCleaner. CleanMyMac also cleans out hidden malware, viruses, and adware, and that’s something Onyx doesn’t do.

On the other hand, Onyx can rebuild certain Apple databases. I don’t think CleanMyMac does that.

So in the end, I think you need both. My approach to solve problems is CleanMyMac first followed by Onyx followed by a NVRAM/PRAM reset and then maybe even an SMC reset. In most cases, a corrupt Preferences file is the cause of an app not working right, and CleanMyMac handles that easily.

Here’s the thing with CleanMyMac. A single license can only be run on one computer - at a time. This means if you want to use it on several computers, you just need to reset the activation and activate it on a different computer - while your activation key is valid. I have one license and two computers that I use CleanMyMac on - just not activated on more than one at the same time.

Here is a comparison of Onyx and CleanMyMac

:https://macpaw.com/cleanmymac/cleanmymac-vs-onyx

John R Carter Sr



How Long Does it Take to Download a File?

I went to a new website for the first time. It took twenty seconds to load. And I have a very fast computer with the latest Big Sur OS and 16GB memory. My Internet speed is 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload. The next time I opened that same site, it loaded in 1 second, and that is because that page was cached by the browser from the first time it was accessed.

Clicking on a link within an open page can result in the same long load time.

Each time you open a website, the browser saves a snapshot of the page - called a cache. The cache doesn’t take that much storage space, and it’s part of the browser function to do that (can’t turn it off).

The Internet is often unforgiving. The only thing to improve the speed of the Internet is for all servers to have a fiber link to the Internet backbone, and the servers themselves must be tuned to handle extremely heavy requests. This often means having multiple servers placed around the world all containing the same information and ready to provide data to any request from anywhere in the world. Some companies with websites have one server in one place and no sophisticated means of handling requests.

Hackers found that by pushing millions of requests onto a website in a short period of time, they can cause that website to hang.

Where a fast Internet access comes in handy is when downloading very large files.

A 25GB file downloaded on a 25 Mbps service will take four times longer than the same file downloaded on a 100 Mbps service. Upgrading to Big Sur is about a 16GB file. 1 byte is 8 bits. So a 25 Mbps (mega bits per second) speed is more like 3 Mega bytes per second (MBps). 1 GB (gigabyte) is 1000 MB (megabyte). So a calculated time to download a 16GB file at 25 Mbps is like 88 minutes (16 / .003 / 60). A 100 Mbps service gets in done in 22 minutes. Latency (time for computers to think and time to transfer data) makes it even longer.

I think Apple compresses the original file to something like 4 times smaller and then automatically uncompresses it after it has been received. They call these compressed files ‘packages’ with an extension of either .dmg or .pkg. These are similar to compressed Zip files that have the extension .zip.

John R Carter Sr

Covid Alert App for iPhone

Here's an article discussing a feature for a smartphone that might alert you to a possible virus exposure:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/18/coronavirus-app-exposure-alerts/

This feature is available in Arizona. I got the app from Apple's App Store, and I installed it on my iPhone.

https://covid19.arizona.edu/covidwatch

I don't know much about this idea yet, but thought I'd give it a try, and I'll do some more reading about it.

Jim Hamm

macOS Big Sur

FYI and possible interest, here is an Ars Technica review of macOS Big Sur. Here is the full link:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/

Ars has probably long been my favorite writer of 'tech' articles, and I'll start reading the article soon. After I upgraded to Big Sur a couple of days ago, I just now took a look at "About This Mac" in the  logo, and it states: "macOS Big Sur, Version 11.0.1." So, for me, anyway, macOS X is gone, after many years of use. No issues so far with Big Sur on my MacBook Air.


As a side note, here is a bit of trivia about Apple's M1 chip, which reminds me this is a small world we live in. Apple licensed the chip technology from Arm, a UK-based company, has TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) in Taiwan manufacture the chip, sends it to China to be installed into a Mac, then shipped to the U.S. (and elsewhere) for Mac aficionados to purchase. One can almost visualize the $ flowing every which way.

Jim Hamm

macOS Big Sur

I just now finished upgrading to Big Sur, and so far it's fine, with minor visual changes noted. I asked myself a couple of rhetorical questions: why did I do this, and why did Apple do this? For myself, I think curiosity is the best answer. For Apple, I did a bit of web research and came up with the following answer for Big Sur:


"MacOS Big Sur comes with a simpler design, new app icons, smoother animations, refreshed app design for all pre-installed apps. MacOS Big Sur also has a new menu bar as well. The Mac will now also have a control centre, like iPhones."

On the menu bar, which is now black with white lettering, I noticed a new icon, and clicked it. It opens up a control center, which gives one the option to do a few things like change screen brightness, sound level, etc. At first glance it doesn't appear to be particularly useful, but I'll see as time goes on.
My overall impression? Meh! .

Jim Hamm

MacLife Magazine

.Today on the AZ-Apple Zoom meeting we discussed tips on using a Mac, gleaned from the October 2020 issue of MacLife Magazine. This issue contains 100 useful tips and keyboard shortcuts for both the Mac and an iOS device. If you'd like to read about these, a single issue of the magazine can be found here or in the link below for only $5.99. Highly recommended.

Jim Hamm

https://www.magazinesdirect.com/az-single-issues/6937019/maclife-magazine-single-issue.thtml

Apple's New M1 Chip

If you're a Mac user you're probably aware that in their "event" yesterday, Apple announced a new chip, called the M1. For your possible interest, following are two articles with a discussion on what this means for Apple, and why they did this.

Jim Hamm


Apple's M1 chips inside latest Macs offer fresh opportunities. Here's what you need to know.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2020/11/11/apple-new-m-1-chip-what-to-know/6228264002/

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/

About Big Sur, When To Do the Upgrade

If we can trust what Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) has to say, then wait for the third update after the initial release. But, if you have already done the upgrade, then you may have noticed a few advertised features aren’t yet installed, and possibly a couple of minor annoyances. Welcome to the Early Adopter Club.

I have been using the Public Beta release for quite a while, and I am pleased with both the performance and the features. However, I can’t honestly tell you anymore what’s different without turning on my other computer that is still running Catalina and place the apps that I use side by side. Yeah, what a difference! Subtle, to be sure.

CCC also has a dire warning. If you expect to clone your system after doing the upgrade, and have a bootable clone afterwards, forget it. There’s a serious problem with part of Apple’s internals that prevents CCC from creating a bootable drive. CCC has every confidence that in time this will be corrected. Until then, you can still create a clone for use as a backup, and the drive can be used with Migration Assistant to restore from - with the caveat that you will be restoring to a fresh install of the operating system if what you need to restore is the entire package.

So if you want to be proud that you’re running the latest software, go ahead and do the upgrade - after you make a clone of the current operating system to restore from if you really want to go back. You might also want to use a separate Time Machine drive with Big Sur so that you can be sure that the old Time Machine drive will be compatible with Catalina should you revert back.

Given the precautions that one must take to feel safe about doing the upgrade, then maybe it would be better to wait until the Early Adopters are saying nothing but nice things.

And now, here’s what CCC has to say in detail:

***********************************************
macOS Big Sur and Carbon Copy Cloner backups
Apple will be shipping a major new operating system in the near future, and I wanted to take a moment to explain how this change affects your CCC backups.

• We recommend waiting for a few updates before upgrading to Big Sur because important components of the OS aren't working yet.

• Early adopters can install macOS Big Sur onto the CCC backup volume to make it bootable. (NOTE: What this means is that you will be booting up from the external drive to run Big Sur. Make sure that it is an SSD to avoid running s-l-o-w-l-y.)


What's changing in Apple's next OS upgrade?
With the announcement of macOS Big Sur, Apple has retired Mac OS X (10) and replaced it with macOS 11. As with every OS since the original release of Mac OS X, CCC has been adapted to accommodate the changes to this new OS. As the numeric change would suggest, though, this is the biggest change to macOS since Apple introduced Mac OS X roughly 20 years ago.

The system now resides on a "Signed System Volume". This volume is cryptographically sealed, and that seal can only be applied by Apple; ordinary copies of the System volume are non-bootable without Apple's seal. To create a functional copy of the macOS 11 System volume, we have to use an Apple tool to copy the system, or install macOS onto the backup.

Will CCC 5 work on macOS 11 or will I have to upgrade?
CCC 5.1.22 is compatible with macOS Big Sur, and that update is free for all CCC 5 license holders. Choose "Check for updates…" from the "Carbon Copy Cloner" menu and follow the instructions provided to apply the update.

When we have an update that includes support for cloning the System volume, we’ll make a blog post and post an update to CCC. In the update notification, you’ll see a statement at the top of the release notes indicating that we’ve added that support. You can set the interval at which CCC checks for updates in CCC’s Preferences window.

Can CCC copy the macOS 11 System volume?
CCC will be able to use Apple's APFS replication utility ("ASR") to copy the System volume (we field-tested that functionality for the flawed 10.15.5 update). As of the latest Big Sur release, however, Apple's APFS replication utility is not working correctly with the Signed System Volume. As a result, ASR-created copies of the System volume are not bootable. Apple is aware of this issue and is currently working to resolve it.

Can I still make bootable backups on macOS 11?
Yes. There are two approaches to making your backups bootable on Apple's new OS. When Apple works out the problems in its APFS replication utility in an future update to macOS Big Sur, CCC will leverage that directly to copy the System volume and produce bootable backups. In the meantime, you can install macOS Big Sur onto your APFS-formatted CCC backup volume if you would like to make it bootable.

Does CCC back up all of my data, applications, and system settings?
Yes, absolutely. This part of CCC has not changed — CCC continues to provide complete backups of all of your data, applications, and system settings. Additionally, CCC offers support for snapshots, giving you access to older versions of your files. We design CCC to be a complete and more flexible replacement to Time Machine.

Does my CCC backup have to be bootable for me to restore data from it?
No. Bootability is a convenience that allows you to continue working if your startup disk fails, but it is not required for restoring data from a CCC backup. You can restore individual folders and older versions of files (i.e. from snapshots) using CCC while booted from your production startup disk. CCC backups are also compatible with Migration Assistant, so you can use Migration Assistant to restore all of your data to a clean installation of macOS (e.g. on a replacement disk).

Should I upgrade my Mac to macOS Big Sur?
Major system upgrades are often disruptive, so we have always recommended a very conservative approach to applying them. Consider the following:

• Is the upgrade required for my Mac?
• Will this upgrade improve the performance of my Mac, or degrade performance?
• Does the upgrade provide some functionality that will make me more productive, or otherwise greatly increase my enjoyment of using my Mac?
• Does the upgrade fix a problem that is preventing me from effectively using my Mac?
• What software will no longer work after applying the upgrade?
If the upgrade turns out poorly and you have to downgrade, you certainly may downgrade using a CCC backup from an earlier OS. These sorts of procedures require time and effort, though, so you should weigh that potential hassle against the potential gain of the OS upgrade.

Lastly, we recommend that any users that rely heavily upon the availability of their Mac for work or other productivity consider waiting for several OS updates before making the upgrade. Early adopters inevitably find some shortcomings and bugs which are resolved in minor OS updates.

***********************************************

I will be doing a thorough walkthrough of Big Sur in the November and December general meetings.

John R Carter Sr