Apple app updates only compatible with Big Sur, but showing up in Catalina, and continuing to give notifications of updates is incredibly annoying

So I am running Catalina 10.15.7.

 

But Apple keeps sending me Updates Available, but the only available update is for Garage Band, which the update only works in Big Sur. I know they want me to move to Big Sur, but I literally can’t.

And the reasons I can’t just update to Big Sur are many. First off Catalina is running very well right now, but also I am on a job that uses Adobe Premiere Pro 2019 13.1.5, and I haven’t seen anything that shows that it runs in Big Sur. And while I would rather move to a newer version, that is what they are running at the company.

When adding new music to Apple Music, formerly iTunes who wants it to autoplay? I sure as hell don’t!

 When using Apple’s Music, formerly iTunes to import music, why does it automatically play what you are importing? There used to be a choice in iTunes to keep it from doing this, but Apple purposely removed this feature. So now every time you import something it automatically plays that, even if you are already playing something else.

Now I don’t know about you, but importing and wanting to play are seperate things, and I would always rather chose to hit play than to have auto-play.

Why does this feature even exist? And it gets ridiculous when importing downloads of multi-disc albums, when it plays some random track off all 4 discs, starting one, then another, then another, then another.

I know apple doesn’t want me to own any of my own music anymore unless I buy it from them or stream it from them, but I don’t buy any music from them, and I wish they would have a more hands off approach.

Mac OS Catalina Finder Save Dialogue box selection inconsistencies

 A huge annoyance that I have run into in Catalina, is a major inconsistency of the Finder’s Save Dialogue box. In previous OS’s when I saved a file, the name of the file was always selected when the window popped up. This window shows what I mean.

The problem is that in Catalina the selection of the name seems to be random. Sometimes when I output a file I get it selected where I can use keyboard shortcuts to alter the name if necessary, as always used to happen previous to Catalina. The problem is that sometimes, and I can’t say why or when the selection dialogue shows up unselected, so I can’t use keyboard shortcuts to change the name, but have to use the mouse (or trackball as it is for me) to select the name and change it.

I can’t understand why sometimes the text is selected and sometimes it isn’t. This seems totally random, and I can’t figure out why it happens.

I have posted about it at the Apple community forums, though I don’t expect to hear a response.

OWC ThunderBay 4 Firmware update did not fix the issue of the drives ejecting

 

So after taking the time to do the upgrade on the firmware on my OWC Thunderbay as I saw in this post on their forums, and shutting down my computer over the night, I restarted and one of the drives disappeared.

Sure SoftRaid managed to fix it in under 10 minutes, but having this happen every restart or wake from sleep is not OK!
So I don’t want to have to do it, but I am going to try turning off Put Hard Drives to Sleep when Possible in my Energy saver to see if I can get around this issue (the post on OWC said that is the issue).

We shall see if that helps. And I have allot of spinning discs that I actually would like to have spin down when possible, but just not have my whole raid go down by dropping drives.
Super frustrating.

My OWC ThunderBay 4 Thunderbolt 3 has been having drive ejects, Firmware Update Available

 

So I want to preface this with the fact of just how much I love OWC. I have been buying their gear for many many years, and it has always been very reliable, and they have amazing customer service. I have had them replace ram, and quickly get back to me on issues for years and years.

Lately though I have been a few issues, and this post is about one of them.
So I have a fairly new Thunderbay 4 Thunderbolt 3 and am running a full version of OWC’s amazing Softraid to run it in RAID 5. It is way too small with 4 2TB drives, for a 6TB raid. I am on an iMac Pro running Catalina 10.15.6 and all the sudden have been getting drive drops often on waking up from sleep, or when restarting, forcing a quick rebuild or making me restart to get the drives back. And constantly having the drives be out of sync, though Softraid fixed this in a minute or two each time.
Now it hasn’t happen while I was working and I haven’t lost anything, but it has been annoying.
Now while looking at their forums for another issue I will post about in another post, I ran into this post about Disk Ejecting a firmware update. I quickly downloaded and went through the steps to install. It basically says it has to do with allowing drives to sleep in the energy saver control panel, but this firmware should permanently fix the issue.
As with most things of the sort it is made a bit of a longer process, because of having to disable SIP or System Integrity Protection, and is a multi-step process since you have to then install a kext file, restart and then eject your drives, and install the firmware update.
Now this is where I would add a note to the process, because while the instructions said it would take about 30 seconds, once I selected the firmware and hit the FWUpdate button. It did not take 30 seconds, in fact my computer sat beachballing for well over 30 minutes, before it successfully did the update. This is fine if it fixes the issue, but 30 SECONDS IT DID NOT TAKE!!!
The process then has you uninstall the KEXT, turn SIP back on restart and then turn back on all of your networking which you have turned off earlier.
When I restarted the final time Softraid again said the drives were out of sync, but lets hope that has fixed the issue.

More ways that Apple Music is messed up for those who moved from iTunes and some ways to fix things with some work

I have been chronicling all the problems I have had since moving my iMac Pro to Catalina with Music, formerly iTunes. Since Apple broke iTunes into multiple apps I have had nothing but problems with the app.

One of the big ones for me is that in the move to Music, Apple decided to ignore all the years of column organization you did with your playlists. They defaulted every playlist to the Playlist view, which only shows your album artwork, song titles, album title and time of the track.

There is a much superior Songs view, but even it starts with only limited columns, but as with iTunes if you customized the main songs list to have the columns and widths that you want, then they would propagate to all new playlists you create. Now the problem arrises, because all your playlists from iTunes were reset to the default Songs layout, so you either need to change each and every playlist (over 3100 for me) or it is time for a trip to Doug’s Scripts.

Doug’s Scripts has been around for a while now previously having the best applescripts for iTunes, and now slowly updating scripts to work with Music if they work. My only complaint with the site is that you should be able to search for scripts that just work with Music, and maybe it could use a voting system to vote on old scripts and see if they can be made to work on Music, as their are few that I really miss. Still it is just an awesome site.

And Doug has updated an old script to fix this very problem, Assimilate View Options V 5.1. This script brings up a window with all of your playlists and you can select them and hit process and it will go through and duplicate the playlist and add all the tracks in the same order with the current View Options baked in. It’s only issue, is that pesky view being automatically set to the Playlist view instead of the Songs view you want. So you will still need to switch every playlist to Songs, view, but Doug has a tip to set a keyboard shortcut to the Songs view so you can at least speed up the process.

I still can’t fathom why apple doesn’t let you specify a default view in Music. And it is worse that Apple chose to ignore your organization from iTunes when importing into Music, but I am assuming that was easier for them, but hell if they would have just let you update the view options first so that all the playlists imported with your default would have been amazing. That is assuming Apple still cares about people using local music libraries and I am pretty sure they don’t. So for now this is at least a solution.

Annoyance in Catalina save dialogue box

OK so I have found a new annoyance with Catalina and it is in the save dialogue box.

Often when I am rendering something in After Effects I overwrite an old render with a new one. But when I make the file, it adds a _1 to the filename, so I open the save dialogue and hit the right arrow to go the rightmost character and delete the two characters. Before Catalina that is how it worked, but now it goes to the end of the .mov so if you delete, you delete the .mov instead of the last 2 characters.

This is a new behavior, and completely changes how I have worked for years. It is a huge annoyance!

More Problems with Apple Music on Catalina

I swear the problems with Apple Music, Apple’s iTunes replacement for Catalina never cease and they don’t get better.

I am stilling dealing with the items in folders showing up out of order in folder iOS sync, but here is another issue that is driving me nuts.

I know that basically they just want you to use Apple Music and not own your own music anymore, but I still own a lot of music, and when I create a new playlist in Music and drag the music I want in it to the playlist the tracks show up for a little while and then disappear. Now the music has been added to the library and I can go find it and then re-add it to the playlist, but why the hell if I add it to a playlist does it then leave the playlist. Honestly Apple What The FUCK!!!!

Apple needs to fix Catalina’s iOS Finder Sync

I was scared when I heard apple was breaking up iTunes and everything has been proved right. The sync is terrible.

To get any syncing working I have to let it sync once, and then click out of the iPhone in the finder make changes and sync if the sync button isn’t greyed out.

iTunes folders are showed in some completely random order in the finder.

In iTunes
In Catalina Finder Sync the same folder

What the hell is this? And the old iTunes applescripts to remove playlists from Folders no longer work.

And there seems to be no way to get custom Ringtones into your phone anymore, only payed ones. WTF!

And if you start a sync their is no way to stop it if say you need to restart your computer. In iTunes you could at least Force quit iTunes, but you can’t force quit iOS finder sync, even restarting the finder just keeps it going. I have turned off all automatic syncing and WIFI sync so that I don’t have to deal with this issue.

OMG iOS sync on Catalina is f***ing garbage!!!

OK so I been having problems with the iTunes replacement Music in Catalina since upgrading, but the worst part seems to be the finder iOS sync! Not only are anything in folders shown in the finder in completely random order, but the sync itself barely every works! if you select any music to sync the sync button gets grayed out! Sometimes if you let it do an initial full sync but make the changes in itunes after a sync you can hit the sync button and it will work, but it is far from assured that this will work.

It usually takes me multiple restarts, and connect and disconnects to get the damn sync to do anything, and I am running a fairly new iMac Pro! WTF!

Apple doesn’t give a shit about you syncing your own music anymore, they just want you to use their cloud music and Apple Music, so they have relegated syncing to the dumpster fire of Catalina Finder sync! WTF!