10.11.2 El Capitan update did not require NVIDIA web driver to boot (though it looks crazy)

I run a NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4 GB of RAM in my MacPro, and it is not flashed. So when I update the system I have to use VNC to sign into my Mac and update the NVIDIA Web drivers and restart before my Mac shows anything on the monitors (or I have to swap my old GTX 270 and do the Update).This seems to have changed with 10.11.2. In fact it showed the updating screen before the Desktop, and then came to the desktop. Of course it was not normal, in fact all Blue Colors were Orange! I wish I had though to take screen shots, as after the update I upgraded the NVIDIA web driver and restarted and everything was back to normal.This is awesome news if this continues in the future, as it makes it much easier to upgrade to the latest NVIDIA web driver. I hope it just wasn't a fluke.

Still unable to log into Messages with iCloud in El Capitan 10.11.2

So 10.11.2 came out, and I am still unable to log into Messages with iCloud on my Mac, though it works fine on my iPhone and iPad.So I am on the phone with Apple Tech support. They for sure can see that my MacPro is not authorized. We went through signing out my iPad and iPhone of Messages, Facetime and iCloud and then signing back in, but that didn't help.I was then moved to a level 2 tech, who sent me and apple application called Capture Data, and had me try to log into Messages with it collecting packets, and I sent the info to Apple and they will be contacting engineers.They were very nice and I am supposed to hear back Monday. Fingers crossed that they can figure this out. Seems like it has to be on their end, as it worked fine before El Capitan and the weirdest part to them as well is that it still happens on my clean install of the OS.

Update on iTunes and El Captian

So I have still not got iMessages to work in El Capitan and I have to Log into iCloud every time I restart or it doesn't work, but this is about iTunes.After getting my iTunes back working, but losing all of my playlists and Metadata, I have been working on re-rating my tracks, and remaking my playlists.What is interesting, and scary to me is as I rate more tracks, iTunes slows down more and more, and I am getting more and more beachballs. Basically I listen to a track and give it rating then skip to the next track, and often it starts playing the new track, but doesn't show it in the interface for a while and I get the beachball for a bit before I can rate the next track. And as I rate more tracks and remake more playlists it gets worse.I just hope once I am done (as I am only in B so far) that it doesn't slow down to the speed of my old messed up Library. I thought the new clean library would just stay faster, but it seems to be getting slower the more work I do on it!This is really scary as it shows that the slowdowns are indemic in iTunes code with large libraries and a large metadata collection.It means Apple really needs to start over on iTunes and rewrite the code from the base up, but that is a scary prospect as it will likely break much of the functionality that exists (and they have already been losing more and more functionality over time), and create new issues for a while.Honestly I just hate to have to put all the time into fixing my iTunes only to see it be slow and hard to use again.

Problems with Mail in El Capitan eating all application memory

I have been getting problems in El Capitan running out of application memory (and I have 24 GB of RAM and am not running many programs). I checked Activity Monitor and it seems that Apple Mail is the culprit and is eating all of my memory and run time.I did a google search and came up with this Apple Discussion on the issue. It seems that Mail is loading all of it's log files into RAM and compressing them into ZIP files. You can at least temporarily fix the problem by deleting your log files at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/ with Mail closed.And the problems continue with El Capitan!

ITunes 12.3.1.23 and El Capitan Nightmare as well as my previos Synology NAS nightmare!

If you read my blog you know I have been having a nightmare of a time with El Capitan, and the latest is iTunes.I have a huge library with over 40,000 tracks and many videos. Now honestly I have been some issues with iTunes for the last 6 months, but that was a very different situation. Years back I decided my iTunes Library was too big to keep within my MacPro, so I had gotten a Synology DS212j NAS to hold my Library. It had 2 3 Terrabyte Hard Drives in a mirrored Raid 1 configuration, with my Library kept locally. There had been some issues moving media because of the different drive file formats (Character Case), but mostly it went well and worked fairly well for a while.The first problem was all the sudden I lost a bunch of files, and they had been put in a strange folder and renamed. I got in touch with Synology and someone admitted that it was the synology, but never helped. Eventually I tuned off the Synology Cloud Sync app, and it fixed the issue, though I had to re-import all the messed up songs. The synology then worked fine for years, until...One day I noticed my tracks on playlists on my iPod had gotten weird, so I went into iTunes and realized something had happened to my whole library. While my raitings were still there, 75% of my playlists were completely messed up, with randomized songs, and even worse much of the library was messed up. Not only were many tracks showing up as another song, and when you played them they came back to life as their old song. There were strange doubled tracks, and on the Synology even weirder stuff was going on.Many tracks had become folders, with the track missing, and completely other songs within the folder from elsewhere in my library.This is an example. And this was all over my library.Not only that but tracks were gone and were listed, but were other things like PNGs.Or even JS files.And many video files were renamed to different files, or sometimes even different file types. So a video would show up as audio, or audio as video. And some files are just completely missing.And my Time Machine Library backup had the same issues, so it must have happened a week or two earlier and I didn't notice until I synced my iPod!Literally my whole Library was a mess!I moved the whole thing back to an internal drive, and let iTunes Organize it, but it still left many files on the NAS, though they should have all been copied locally. And I had to manually add back all the files that were put into strange folders within my library. I literally spent the last 6 months fixing it. Deleting all of my playlists and fixing them, and using TuneSpan to figure out which tracks weren't local and moving them local manually. Finally I had all my files locally in the…

ITunes Spindump

I am posting my iTunes Spindump from iTunes burning my CPU to try to get it fixed, so I am posting it here.
Date/Time:       2015-10-30 18:06:05 -0700OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.11.1 (Build 15B42)Architecture:    x86_64Report Version:  19
Command:         iTunesPath:            /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesVersion:         12.3.1 (12.3.1.23)Build Version:   2Project Name:    iTunesSource Version:  1200012003001023Parent:          launchd [1]PID:             724
Event:           cpu usage (microstackshots only)Thread:          0x99dc (89% cpu over 102 seconds)Duration:        102.00sSteps:           100
Hardware model:  MacPro4,1Active cpus:     16
Fan speed:       1327 rpm

Powerstats for:  iTunes [724] thread 0x99dcUUID:            89930B69-4818-3148-B8D9-56EB65C5C28DStart time:      2015-10-30 18:06:08 -0700End time:        2015-10-30 18:07:46 -0700Parent:          launchdMicrostackshots: 43 samples (43%)Primary state:   43 samples Frontmost App, User mode, Thread QoS User InteractiveUser Activity:   0 samples Idle, 43 samples ActivePower Source:    0 samples on Battery, 43 samples on AC  43 start + 1 (libdyld.dylib) [0x7fff8fb075ad]    43 ??? (iTunes + 8910016) [0x10a3ed4c0]      43 -[NSApplication run] + 231 (AppKit) [0x7fff9991eb65]        43 -[NSApplication finishLaunching] + 354 (AppKit) [0x7fff9991f022]          43 -[NSNotificationCenter postNotificationName:object:userInfo:] + 66 (Foundation) [0x7fff8d3600fa]            43 _CFXNotificationPost + 693 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff93525925]              43 -[_CFXNotificationRegistrar find:object:observer:enumerator:] + 1922 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff935266d2]                43 ___CFXNotificationPost_block_invoke + 50 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff93569912]                  43 _CFXRegistrationPost + 407 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff93569ba7]                    43 ___CFXRegistrationPost_block_invoke + 63 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff93569c2f]                      43 __CFNOTIFICATIONCENTER_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_AN_OBSERVER__ + 12 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff93569c9c]                        41 ??? (iTunes + 6391274) [0x10a1865ea]                          41 ??? (iTunes + 6365930) [0x10a1802ea]                            41 ??? (iTunes + 8751069) [0x10a3c67dd]                              41 ??? (iTunes + 9629611) [0x10a49cfab]                                41 ??? (iTunes + 2493126) [0x109dceac6]                                  41 ??? (iTunes + 9343854) [0x10a45736e]                                    41 ??? (iTunes + 9344851) [0x10a457753]                                      41 ??? (iTunes + 9267015) [0x10a444747]                                        41 ??? (iTunes + 9366605) [0x10a45cc4d]                                          41 ??? (iTunes + 2207291) [0x109d88e3b]                                            41 ??? (iTunes + 2134647) [0x109d77277]                                              41 ??? (iTunes + 2457875) [0x109dc6113]                                                41 ??? (iTunes + 9343854) [0x10a45736e]                                                  41 ??? (iTunes + 9344851) [0x10a457753]                                                    41 ??? (iTunes + 9267015) [0x10a444747]                                                      41 ??? (iTunes + 9366605) [0x10a45cc4d]                                                        41 ??? (iTunes + 2383951) [0x109db404f]                                                          41 ??? (iTunes + 2384211) [0x109db4153]                                                            41 ??? (iTunes + 9506337) [0x10a47ee21]                                                              41 ??? (iTunes + 2369361) [0x109db0751]                                                                41 ??? (iTunes + 2377627) [0x109db279b]                                                                  41 ??? (iTunes + 9506486) [0x10a47eeb6]                                                                    41 ??? (iTunes + 10003040) [0x10a4f8260]                                                                      41 ??? (iTunes + 9984753) [0x10a4f3af1]                                                                        41 ??? (iTunes + 9993163) [0x10a4f5bcb]                                                                          41 ??? (iTunes + 3543453) [0x109ecf19d]                                                                            41 ??? (iTunes + 13745676) [0x10a889e0c]                                                                              41 ??? (iTunes + 13751739) [0x10a88b5bb]                                                                                41 ??? (iTunes + 13752703) [0x10a88b97f]                                                                                  41 ??? (iTunes + 13709309) [0x10a880ffd]                                                                                    23 ??? (iTunes + 13705429) [0x10a8800d5]                                                                                      18 ??? (iTunes + 11954139) [0x10a6d47db]                                                                                      4  ??? (iTunes + 11954152) [0x10a6d47e8]                                                                                        3  ??? (iTunes + 15014107) [0x10a9bf8db]                                                                                      1  ??? (iTunes + 11954136) [0x10a6d47d8]                                                                                    15 ??? (iTunes + 13705394) [0x10a8800b2]                                                                                      6  ??? (iTunes + 11954139) [0x10a6d47db]                                                                                      5  ??? (iTunes + 11954152) [0x10a6d47e8]                                                                                        2  ??? (iTunes + 15014107) [0x10a9bf8db]                                                                                        1  ??? (iTunes + 15014122) [0x10a9bf8ea]                                                                                        1  ??? (iTunes + 15014109) [0x10a9bf8dd]                                                                                        1  ??? (iTunes + 15014094) [0x10a9bf8ce]                                                                                      2  ??? (iTunes + 11954136) [0x10a6d47d8]                                                                                      1  ??? (iTunes + 11954144) [0x10a6d47e0]                                                                                      1  ??? (iTunes + 15014088) [0x10a9bf8c8]                                                                                    3  ??? (iTunes + 13705889) [0x10a8802a1]                                                                                      3  ??? (iTunes + 8381776) [0x10a36c550]                                                                                        2  CFStringCompareWithOptionsAndLocale + 9083 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff934eb39b]                                                                                          2  _CFCompareStringsWithLocale + 6189 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff935a7fbd]                                                                                            1  __CompareTextDefault + 102 (CoreFoundation) [0x7fff935a81d6]                                                                                              1  icu::RuleBasedCollator::setAttribute(UColAttribute, UColAttributeValue, UErrorCode&) + 387 (libicucore.A.dylib) [0x7fff9d517c63]                                                                                                1  icu::CollationFastLatin::getOptions(icu::CollationData const*, icu::CollationSettings const&, unsigned short*, int) +…

El Capitan and iTunes major problems

So if you read my blog you know I have been having major issues with El Capitan, so much so that I did a fresh install on another hard drive, but it did not fix either my Messages issues or my issues with iTunes.iTunes has just been incredibly slow. Like so slow it is unusable with constant beachballs. It just barely functions, and even then not much. It is just a mess. I tried what I could, running Diskwarrior and TechTool Pro as well as fixing permissions to see if it would fix anything, but it didn't so I decided to re-import my Library.This should not be a hard process as it just involves removing the iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml file from the iTunes folder (SAVE THEM THOUGH), then restarting iTunes. One step they don't tell is that if you Medua is on an external drive, then open itunes and set the Media to that location and the go to Library and import the XML you moved .Now this took quite a long time for me as it basically brought up a dialogue for every iOS app saying it was already there, either older, newer or the same, and the do the same for all check box did nothing. So about 12 hours later I had my library imported again, and low and behold, while everything i back with proper metadata, iTunes is once again unusable.Just frozen with a beachball.It is all also pegging my processor (or at least some of them as shown from Activity Monitor. And is sending up a slew of messages in the console, including that it is pegging the processor.And is is basically beachballing and unusable!I don't want to lose my whole iTunes Library, which I have literally worked years on! WHAT THE HELL! This is ridiculous, between the iCloud issues and iTunes being completely fucked, El Capitan is the worst update to OS X I have ever used, and I have used them all!

El Capitan Clean Install still can’t authorize Messages!

So I decided it had been too long since I have done a clean system install, and since I am having so many OS X problems, I decided to do a clean install. I found an old small hard drive, and wiped it and installed El Capitan on it.After re-install I tried Messages, and low and behold, I still am getting the can't authorize iMessage message! WTF! And I have a serial number in my about this mac, and have no replaced the motherboard or processors or even ram! THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING! It worked fine until El Capitan!Honestly I can only think of one thing it could be, and I hope it isn't. I have this Wifi and Bluetooth Card from MacVidCards to enable Handoff, Continuity and Airdrop. It worked fine in Yosemite, but maybe Apple did something to stop it in El Capitan, and that is stopping me from being able to use Messages in El Capitan. Maybe.Going to also go through all my internet accounts and see if paring them down helps. I don't know, this is so damn frustrating!

Mac Peformance Guide on a new Mac Pro

Mac Performance guide fields a question on why their isn't a new MacPro tower.And hopefully they have it right, that Apple is not dropping it, but waiting for Thunderbolt 3, which can go over a USB 3.1 cable, and leave it all one port.Still doesn't answer the need for real PCI slots and the ability to use normal video cards (especially NVIDIA cards), but it would make for a much simpler machine. If a port can be USB, Video or Thunderbolt with the same connector.

Larry Jordan has a good article on how Disk Utility has been emasulated in OS X El Capitan

Larry Jordan has a good in depth article on the emasculation of Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan. He goes into how Soft Raid is the best solution to create software Raids in El Capitan.Of course Soft Raid has always been a better solution than Disk Utility, but it is also a $179 solution to something that you used to be able to do for Free in Disk Utility!