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.

MacRumors is reporting that Apple is delaying it’s anti-tracking feature from iOS 14

 

MacRumors is reporting that Apple is basically bowing to pressure from major developers and delaying it’s Ad Anti-Tracking feature from iOS 14. 

I have to say I think this totally sucks. If I am going to have to deal with Apple stopping things like Game Streaming on my iPhone, then I should at least have the privacy bonuses that they push so much in their adds.

I don’t want any app to be able to track what I do at all. In fact I think Safari should have containers on iOS to keep things like Facebook locked away from anything else.

Delaying this feature does not help it’s customers, it helps the big money making companies to continue to bilk apple customers.

Apple Music Sync should not force you to sync your Mac’s Music library



I really hate that I am unable to sync my Apple Music Subscription music without also syncing my Music on my mac which I want to sync manually via a cable to my iPhone. I feel like I am getting ripped off as I can barely use the functionality of Apple Music which I am paying for. The two services should be separated.


I do not want Apple to sync my music on my Mac to the cloud, I have over 62,000 songs most of which are not available from Apple Music and if they are I have customized all the metadata to be just how I want it, and I don’t want to take the chance that Apple will mess with it. I tried iTunes Sync when it first came out, and it messed up my whole library and took me years to get it back to exactly how I wanted it.


I want to be able to save playlists from Apple Music and have what I do in Apple music be consistent across my devices, but should not have to also do the same with my personal music library. I don’t want my music to be recompressed (bad enough to have to do use Apple Uncompressed instead of the more ubiquitous Ogg) or messed with in any way. Bad enough that I have to use the awful Finder Sync for music, that can’t be force quit.


Honestly I wish Apple Music and Music were split as two apps, and your mac music could become part of Apple Music if you wanted it to, but it should be your choice.

Apple’s policies that block Microsoft’s XCloud and Google Stadia make no sense, as they allow video services to do exactly what they are blocking

 So it has been all over the news that Microsoft has stopped development of it’s Xcloud gaming service for iOS because of Apple’s store policies, so it is only coming out for Android. And the same is true for Google’s Stadia service and it is a ridiculous policy, especially becaue exactly what they are blocking for games is what Video Apps do with content.

Apple is saying they only allow games owned by the developer and specifically allowed by Apple, so for a service that runs games on it’s own servers and gives you a video stream on your mobile device so you can play from anywhere. This is completely ridiculous because it isn’t like Apple approves every show on any of the streaming services it allows, so why does it require it for games?

Sure it is in the App store rules, but it is arbitrary because it only applies to gaming apps. And it is even like these games would compete with Apple Arcade because they are a whole different category of games.

This isn’t protecting consumers from anything, it is actively harming consumers for some dumb reason that I can’t even fathom.

Apple updated the iMac today and made the lowest iMac Pro 10 core, are these the last Intel Macs?

Apple upgraded the iMac today with new processors, all SSD (say goodbye to Fusion drives), up to 10 core 10th generation intel processors, AMD 5000 series graphics cards, and the option to have a matte finish for $500. They also got rid of the 8 core iMac Pro, making the bottom model 10 cores, to match the cores of the new top 5K. Still look the same, a new look will wait for Apple Silicon.

Tim Cook mentioned that they still had Intel machines in the works. Is this the last Intel machine before Apple Silicon arrives? It seems likely unless there is one more laptop processor upgrade, but it seems unlikely.

Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple Silicon and the passing of Wintel

Jean-Louis Gassee formerly of Apple and also fo BeOS has an article on the new Apple Silicon and how it could be the death knell for Wintel, the powerful combination of Intel hardware and Windows.

His take is that since ARM is in fact a more efficient processor and if Apple manages to push the hardware and software to be faster than Wintel (which is could be since it is RISC instead of CISC) it will push Microsoft to really get behind it’s ARM version of Windows that it has been playing with and releasing, but without enough support. And that will push Intel to have to get back into ARM processor development or break the WINTEL partnerdship.

Let’s hope Apple Silicon is eventually that much more powerful and faster and more efficient than anything Intel comes out with, because with Apple writing the software it will mean a sea chance, and for once it would be awesome for Apple to be faster than WINTEL, but pushing Microsoft to ARM I hadn’t even thought about as the fact that Microsoft haven’t even made versions of all their software for their arm hardware, and yet they are working on it for Apple Silicon.

If I have my mac not restart apps when it restarts, why does it launch all previously launched apps if it crashes?

I pretty much said it all in the title, but if I have my mac set to not restart apps when it restarts, why when it crashes does it restart all the previously open apps? In all likelyhood it is one of the apps that crashed, so why not honor the setting that I have been using and not open apps if it crashed?