No one is talking about the fact that Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 runs on Yosemite, El Capitan and Sierra on Mac

So Adobe released it’s latest update to it Creative Cloud Suite yesterday, and no one is talking about one of the biggest things for Mac OS X users! The last version 2015, only ran on El Capitan, which was an issue for many (especially Hackintosh Users), not running on any earlier OS. Well with 2017 it seems things have changed!

Just check out the Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 System Requirements on Adobe’s site, and you will see what I mean!

Mac OS X  v10.10, v10.11 or v10.12

Yes, that means it now runs on Yosemite, El Capitan and Sierra! Who releases a new version that works on earlier software? A company that listens! Wow! Awesome!

And I can finally upgrade to Sierra on my home machine!

Message now works on my Mac and all it took was resetting my PRAM! Some NVIDIA weirdness though.

I can’t believe I had not tried that, but Apple support got me and now Messages works in El Capitan

There was some strangeness though, and it is to do with my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670 I mentioned in my previous post. After resetting the PRAM the computer came back up, but all the blue was orange again, and this time I took screenshots, but they looks correct once the problem is fixed! And to fix the issue I had to re-install the latest NVIDIA web drivers, though they were showing as already installed. Next time I will take a physical picture.

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.

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 same folder, and iTunes was working correctly, though I did still have some misnamed video files to figure out.

That is when I upgraded El Capitan. As I have documented before when I upgraded iTunes slowed to a crawl, and was beachballing all the time! Between this and having lost the ability to sign into Messages, I decided to do a fresh install and see if that would fix things.

It didn’t, still no Messages Activation, and iTunes was still slow as hell. I did manage to get iTunes to Organize my files and finally it seemed to work and either just got rid of references to the files on the NAS or copied them over, but as soon as this finished iTunes just completely locked up. As soon as it opened it beachballed literally all the time. I would leave it all day and night and still it would be beachballing.

So I thought I would try starting over by importing my iTunes Library XML into a fresh iTunes that had it’s media set to it’s current location. This was a nightmare in itself as for every iOS app I had it said there was either a newer, older or same version, and would not accept when I said do the same for all, and they would take a while to come up. And once everything was imported, iTunes just started beachballing again and never stopped. The console was lit up with errors, such as the following:

10/30/15 5:49:42.131 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.xpc.launchd.domain.pid.quicklookd.707) Path not allowed in target domain: type = pid, path = /Library/Frameworks/iTunesLibrary.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.iT unesLibraryService.xpc error = 147: The specified service did not ship in the requestor’s bundle, origin = /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/quicklookd. app

10/30/15 6:06:20.814 PM iTunes[724]: ApplePushService: APSConnection being used without a delegate queue

10/30/15 6:07:47.000 PM kernel[0]: process iTunes[724] thread 39388 caught burning CPU! It used more than 50% CPU (Actual recent usage: 89%) over 180 seconds. thread lifetime cpu usage 90.071686 seconds, (89.625322 user, 0.446364 system) ledger info: balance: 90006478766 credit: 90011558608 debit: 5079842 limit: 90000000000 (50%) period: 180000000000 time since last refill (ns): 100547978800

10/30/15 6:07:48.253 PM spindump[589]: Saved cpu_resource.diag report for iTunes version 12.3.1 (12.3.1.23) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/iTunes_2015-10-30-180748_JonahLees-Serenity.cpu _resource.diag

10/30/15 6:08:40.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(747) deny(1) file-read-data /Applications/iTunes.app

10/30/15 6:21:16.645 PM mDNSResponder[88]: 63: Could not write data to client PID[724](iTunes) after 10 seconds, 13 replies waiting

10/30/15 6:37:03.000 PM kernel[0]: PM notification timeout (pid 724, iTunes)

And I also posted the SpinDump of my CPU hogging at my blog, in case anyone could help, but got no responses at any online forums.

So I once again removed my iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml and reset the media location to it’s current organized location. This left me with only my Cloud purchases in my library, though not downloaded. So used Fat Cat Software’s PowerTunes  (yes I have bought about anything that could help fix my library in the last 6 months, PowerTunes, TuneSpan, Supersync and TuneUp) to import the media not currently in my Library.

Now most of my media is back, but all my playlists are gone, and even worse all my ratings are gone, and that is literally year and years of rating my music to make smart playlists based on my ratings!

This has literally been one nightmare followed by another! And now I have to go through and re-organize my whole library, remake all of my playlists, and re-rate my over 46,000 tracks in my music library alone! And I am missing still missing tracks from the whole Synology fiasco, as some of the tracks it made folders of just dissapeared when it did it.

Now most of my playlists are easy as they are just albums, as I find it easier to add to my iPod that way, but I also had playlists of best of by year. So all tracks with a certain rating or higher by year randomized, and that is mostly what I listen to. So I have to get through my entire library and rate every track to make those again. And I don’t want to sync my iPod again until I do that!

THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A WHILE!!!!!

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!

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!

Major Problems with El Capitan: Continued Again

My problems have been continuing with El Capitan.

Now it is iTunes that is really a mess. It is so slow, that it is barely functioning, with a beach ball lasting hours at times. My wife and I were trying to stream a movie from my computer to my Apple TV, and it froze up and stayed that way for hours. iTunes is just wrecked at this point.

I might have been able to fix Photos, so it goes to the correct Library. I had to use Fat Cat Software’s iPhoto Library Manager to do it though. When I opened iPhoto Library Manager 4, it showed 2 Libraries, and one was the one that Photos was trying to use, and it was an empty Library that I never created, and was showing up RED. So I deleted it, and iPhoto seems to go to the correct library now.

Still have been unable to get Messages to function at all, though I was able to make it go further by repairing permissions using Onyx, since that functionality has been removed from Disk Utility (as well as the ability to create Software RAIDs). And since it doesn’t even work for a brand new account, or after a re-install of el capitan I am kind of stumped.

My next step is to format another drive and install El Capitan on that and see if I can get Messages to work on that. I don’t really want to do that, but I can think of no other way to get Messages to work. My current system does go back quite a ways, so a clean install might be in order, though I don’t want to, as I have all the programs I want installed, but it looks like that may be my only recourse at this point.

Will keep updating to tell you how things are going.