Apple/Mac

This review is a long-time in coming. Back at the end of 2013 I wrote an article on Enabling a USB to Serial Port Adapter in OSX. The issue was that Apple changed the way the drivers worked under Mavericks and there were some tricks you had to do to get them working again. One of the things that came out of writing that blog article is that the author of a piece of OSX (now macOS) software called Serial, Chris Kent, dropped me a message after reading my article: Sure to his word, he sent me a review copy and I loaded the software on my Macintosh; but as life would have it, I just didn't need a Serial...

Today Apple released iOS 10.2 which, among some other features, includes support for Cable TV (and other) provider Single Sign-on and a new application from Apple called TV. Unfortunately there is a big issue with their support for single sign-on providers: Still missing are a number of major services like Spectrum, Google Fiber, AT&T U-verse, Verizon Fios, and Comcast Xfinity, plus the main competition for Sling, Sony's PlayStation Vue. -- appleinsider [Author's Note: Time Warner Cable and Insight are also missing] What does this mean to you depends on whether or not you are currently paying a "traditional" provider for cable or satellite Television access. If you are, hopefully you are paying one of these...

Appears that with the coming of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, we are once again faced with various peripherals that cease to function correctly. I often do work that requires a serial port.  I’ve carried a Keyspan USA-19HS with me in my briefcase for close to a decade (maybe more).  I’ve always been able to get it to work properly, but recently, with my upgrade to a 15″ MacBook Pro Retina Display and subsequent upgrade to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, my trusty little friend may have met his day.  Keyspan does not show a driver that supports OS X 10.9 and loading the 10.8 driver resulted in no change from not having the driver. I...

For reasons beyond anyone’s understanding, Apple sets OS X’s bluetooth audio quality quite low, this is probably to allow for better bandwidth, but still.  When I first read the bluetooth quality setting here’s what I found: 1 2 $ defaults read com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 2 To improve overall streaming quality for your Bluetooth audio, set it to something like 40: 1 defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 40 So much better. [Update:  20130812]:  I found a bluetooth log that you can enable if this doesn’t fix your problem.  By reading through it you may find additional information about your problem.  To enable the log: 1 2 sudo touch /var/log/...

iCloud debuted Tuesday for all iOS 5.0 devices. On Friday, the iPhone 4S was released. You’d think that would be a banner week for us. However, there is disharmony afoot in our Apple-land. The Issue In 2001, iTunes was released. I quickly setup an iTunes account using my personal email address. In 2002, .Mac was released. I quickly setup an account with a free email @mac.com. In 2008, .Mac was renamed to MobileMe and my @mac.com account got a new domain and I now also had an @me.com address. For 10 years, that hasn’t caused me a problem. I have purchased an amazing amount of content via iTunes: Music, Videos, Television Programs, Movies, Applications,...