I was recently given a 2012 MacBook Pro from a family member who asked me to wipe their data and recycle the computer.
Erasing the hard disk was easy enough – I just connected it to a SATA to USB-A bridge box that I have and reformatted it from my Mac Studio.
Where I ran into trouble was trying to load a clean install of Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan on the MacBook Pro. I kept running into an error that read, in part:
"OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install."
I tried a couple of variations on reformatting the disk from another MacBook Pro and a Windows 10 PC with no luck.
With a Jan. 2017 date, my MacBook Pro happily installs El Capitan now
It turns out that the date needs to be rolled back to 2017 to get the installer to run properly. Here’s how I fixed the problem:
Boot the Mac from your install media. Make sure any network connections (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) are disconnected or disabled.
When the OS X installer screen appears, click Utilities > Terminal.
From the Terminal application, issue the command: date 0115124517
The response from Terminal should be a string that reads something similar to: January 15 12:45:00 2017.
Quit the Terminal app.
Reconnect your network connection.
Follow the on-screen prompts to complete your Mac OS X install.
As you can see, the processed worked for me. The problem related to the El Capitan’s installation certificate has expired. As a result, the installer returns the error message about no eligible packages being available to install. When you disconnect the Mac’s network connections and roll back the date, you are ready to party like it’s 2017 and reinstall El Capitan.
Mac Studio running Windows 11 on VMware Fusion, credit: VMware
VMware, the desktop and server virtualization company, has finally caught up with their competitor, Parallels, and released VMware Fusion with VMware Tools support for Windows 11 late last month.
The July 28 VMware Fusion 22H2 Tech Preview was announced by Michael Roy on the Fusion blog. Now, Mac users with either an M1 or M2 Apple Silicon-based Mac can run Windows 11. Sort of.
First, the good news. With the Fusion 22H2 (aka, second half of 2022) Tech Preview, VMware now includes the first pre-release version of VMware Tools. VMware Tools are the drivers that get injected into the guest operating system to provide emulated hardware compatibility with the host computer’s hardware. The beta release of VMware Tools that comes with the new Fusion beta offers support for a virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip, a Microsoft requirement for Windows 11, drivers for 2D graphics and VMX3 networking drivers. During this beta period, VMware continues to offer Fusion as a free download. New VMware Fusion licenses start at $149.
Now, the bad news. Fusion 22H2 is still in beta. While my first run experience with the latest build of Fusion is running well, the setup and installation process is not for the casual user. This all stems from a licensing deal between Microsoft and Qualcomm. In short, Qualcomm is the exclusive manufacturer of ARM SoCs that are used by Microsoft, and a select few partners, for OEM devices the run the ARM edition of Windows. The exclusive nature of this deal, therefore, prevents Microsoft from selling ARM CPU editions of Windows directly to customers as they do with versions of Windows that run on Intel and AMD processors.
As end-users, the only way to get a Windows for ARM installer is to enroll in the Microsoft Windows Insider beta program. But the Microsoft provided installer comes in a Hyper-V .vhdx virtual disk image file. While Parallels Desktop 17 does a good job of automatically downloading, converting, and installing Windows 11 for you, there is no such option with Fusion. Honestly, that’s a bit of a letdown, in my opinion. To get the ARM version of Windows 11 to run on the Fusion 22H2 technical preview, you are left to download the .vhdx Microsoft installer file and then do the .iso file conversion on your own. Otherwise, you are left with the option of downloading an untrusted and pre-converted .iso file from the Internet. If VMware plans on making Windows 11 compatibility on Apple Silicon Mac’s a selling point, my expectation is that they will need to do a lot of work to give customers a smooth onboarding process like Parallels did.
Windows 11 Pro running in VMware Fusion 2H22 Technical Preview on my Mac Studio
And therein lies the crux of the problem. There are no companies mentioned here that officially support running Windows 11 on an M1 or M2 Mac. Not Microsoft and certainly not Apple. VMware and Parallels don’t either, but both vendors now ship software drivers that make running Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs possible.
It is possible to get the ARM edition of Windows 11 running on an Apple Silicon Mac and then activate Windows with a Microsoft license key. I was able to activate my Parallels Desktop 17 Windows 11 install with a Windows 11 Home license key that I purchased from NewEgg.com. While my install of Windows 11 Home is now legally licensed, my configuration is absolutely not supported or endorsed as a valid configuration. This hodgepodge approach is good for anyone who wants to tinker with Windows, like I do at home. However, as an IT professional, but is certainly not a production-ready solution. Without official support and legally purchased Windows ARM edition SKUs, this solution has no place in a commercial organization.
One day, I expect that Microsoft/Qualcomm exclusivity deal will come to an end. More CPU vendors will make ARM-based processors for PCs, and Microsoft will be able to sell Windows ARM licenses to OEMs and customers. Until then, virtualized ARM editions of Windows belong in the lab. Apple, Parallels, and VMware have proven that the foundation is there and that it works. Now, Microsoft just needs to end the Qualcomm contract.
Until then, I’ll be dreaming of the day when I can have a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a Windows 11 Pro VM running on my desk at work.
Excellent reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell and The Last Word team at MSNBC.
During the The Last Word telecast on July 21, O’Donnell details the facts of the case, as we know them, and raises very serious questions about the deleted Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6.
In summary, O’Donnell reminds us that:
The Secret Service has a budget of $3B annually
The first of three emails informing staff to preserve records was sent by the Secret Service Office of Strategic Planning on Dec. 9, 2020
In an undated Jan. 2021 and a Feb. 4, 2021 email, sent by the Secret Service Chief Information Officer, reminds staff of their obligation to preserve records and includes instructions on how to do so
The Secret Service received the first written records preservation request before the physical act of exchanging agent smartphones for new devices
Ornato was promoted to the political post of White House Deputy Chief of Staff
The Secret Service runs a sophisticated cyber-crime organization and knows the legal obligations it has to handle and preserve records
In my previous post on the Secret Service deleted text message fiasco, I suggested that we wait until more details about what happened by brought to light before placing blame on an IT staffer. Now it is beginning to look like the Secret Service, led by Director James Murray, either willfully ignored record preservation requests and established records and information management governance policies, or directly issued orders that the text messages be deleted from Secret Service issued smartphones. With a $3B annual budget, the Secret Service has more than enough money, in my opinion, to digitally and physically archive any Secret Service agent’s smartphone that was even remotely involved with the events leading up to and taking place on January 6, 2021. To suddenly have digital records be deleted and no discussion that I have seen about going back to the physical devices used on Jan. 5 and 6, is unfathomable to me. The Secret Service knows how to perform digital forensics and records preservation.
While it will likely be years before the full story comes out about what happened to Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, it is, in my opinion, growing more obvious this situation has less to do with an IT staffer having a bad day and that something much more politically motivated, possibly with criminal intent, has taken place.
Earlier today, I was skimming the space news in the Apple News app for macOS. Most of the time, I read Apple News on my iPhone 13 Pro Max.
While reading a USA Today article about the James Web Space Telescope (JWST), I decided that the text was uncomfortably small, and I wanted to make the printer easier to read.
But I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Unlike the iPhone version of Apple News, on macOS, the font control appeared to be missing.
Let’s take a look at Apple News on iPhone.
As you can see in the screen captures above, the iPhone version of Apple News has a prominent double A icon in the article header (on the left) that allows you to control the font size (on the right). Tap the larger capital A and the font gets larger. The smaller capital A decreases the font size.
Now, let’s take a look at Apple News on macOS.
Look at all that open space in the the window and toolbar controls region!
The important thing to note here is that the macOS version of Apple News is essentially the same version of Apple News that runs on the iPad. This is due to a behind-the-scenes technology called Mac Catalyst. In short, Mac Catalyst apps are a quick way for developers to release their iPad OS apps for Macs that have either an Apple Silicon M1 or M2 CPU in them.
Here’s the same article as it appears in Apple News on iPad.
Looking at the controls region at the top of the screen, again, there is a lot of open space! Knowing that the iPad has the font control clearly visible in the article header makes the lack of a double A font control on the Mac even more frustrating. As an Apple One subscriber and Apple customer, I felt like I was doing something wrong.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to find the answer: Use the Command and Plus or Minus keyboard shortcuts!
Option 1: Use the keyboard
To use keyboard zoom control shortcut, hold down the Command key (on either side of the space bar) and then press the Plus key or the Minus key on your keyboard to enlarge or shrink the print size.
This keyboard shortcut has been around for a long time in macOS and Windows web browsers. When in the browser, this is a muscle memory reaction to make things readable. I use this shortcut on NYTimes.com all the time.
Option 2: Use the Menu Bar
If you have a hard time remembering keyboard shortcuts, there is an alternative – the View menu. It’s easy to forget about the macOS menu bar if you use iOS and iPadOS devices all the time. Outside of the Apple News app window, use the View > Zoom In or Zoom Out commands to increase or decrease the font size in the Mac Menu Bar all the way at the top of the Mac screen.
If you want to revert back to the article’s default text size, you can either use the Command + Shift + 0 keyboard shortcut or the View > Actual Size menu command.
In Conclusion
I get it, application and OS platform maintenance is hard. Apple is trying to upgrade developer tools, manage macOS, iOS, and iPadOS on annual scheduled with new features, and, I hope, keep application feature parity. That’s supposed to be the whole point of Catalyst. Write one app and easily package it to run on iPad and the Mac. My small font control gripe shows how there are still holes in Apple’s plan. If Apple can’t, or won’t, keep application parity, how are customers supposed to stay on top of the differences between the same Apple application on different Apple platforms?
And that is the real problem. Customers should never feel that they are doing it wrong.
“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by the Intercept and CNN.
There are a couple of details that are interesting about this situation.
The first is the that the messages are reported as having been deleted as part of a “device-replacement” program being run by the Secret Service.
If you think about how we switch from and old iPhone to a new iPhone, we do a backup to iCloud, switch over to the new iPhone, and then restore the iCloud backup to your new iPhone. But a large organization like US Secret Service, will be using a mobile device management (MDM) solution.
MDM solutions allow IT departments to remotely manage a fleet of mobile devices. They don’t necessarily backup devices. They are used to enforce security features, automate software deployments, and, in the case of a lost or stolen device, securely erase devices that still have Internet access.
In my opinion, having managed a corporate fleet of smartphones, the most probable answer is the most likely answer. New smartphones are purchased and activated, given to their new owners, and the owner signs into the MDM tool on the new smartphone to deploy the default configuration.
While corporate email is stored on the server to be downloaded by the new device, plain old text messages, the ones that use the cellular network, are not.
Specifically, what is and what is not backed up and restored during a smartphone refresh effort depends, obviously, on the migration software and procedures used by technicians during the cutover.
In this first case, there is likely a contract IT staff member who is having a very bad day today if they made a mistake that prevented text message data from being migrated.
The second detail, and the one that can land someone in legal trouble, is if someone in the Secret Service or their IT management firm, willfully instructed someone to erase smartphones, or by omission, leave out a migration step to transfer or archive text messages.
The Apple //e was my first Apple-branded computer. My first computer was an Apple II-series clone, the V-Tech Laser 3000.
As I am slowly working on restoring my main Apple //e, I’ve been buying other machines to pick up various parts that I need. For example, the second Apple //e that I purchased came with an Apple DuoDisk drive and an Apple Monitor II.
For purchase #3, I am on the hunt for expansion cards. Specifically, the Apple Mouse Interface card.
Here’s my vintage Apple //e unboxing video and a first look at the cards inside.
After buying a replacement Apple //e earlier this year, I wanted to find and Apple Disk II Controller Card and at least one Disk II 5.25″ floppy drive.
It took me a while to find a reasonably priced used Apple Disk II controller card and Disk II floppy drive on eBay. The card and drive needed a good cleaning before I tried to use them. While there was dust in the floppy drive, the read/write head was still remarkably clean. The card had a bent pin 1 on the drive 1 connector. I carefully bent it back into position. I used 70% Isopropyl Alcohol to clean the card and some DeoxIT D5 in the Apple //e’s expansion slot to ensure a good contact between the card and the computer.
Apple Disk II controller card
Apple Disk II 5.25″ floppy disk drive (1978)
Disk II with the case removed, showing Woz’s custom disk drive analog board
One thing that I did learn was that I was unable to have both a Disk II controller card and the newer Apple I/O controller card, for use with the Apple DuoDrive, in the same machine. To get my Apple //e to boot from the Disk II controller card, I had to remove the Apple I/O controller card before the computer would boot properly. While you apparently can’t mix and match these two types of 5.25″ Apple controller cards, you can have two Disk II or two Apple I/O controller cards installed at the same time. Just not one of each. In my experience using the //e back in the mid-1980s, you either had two Disk II drives or a single DuoDisk drive. You never mixed the two systems.
Disk II History
The Disk II system for the Apple II, II+ and the //e offered users improved data transfer rates over cassette tape-based storage systems and allowed for the direct access of a file by name, according to the 1982 version of the Disk II Installation manual.
According to the Disk II article posted on Apple2History.og, Apple CEO Mike Markkula wanted a faster way to load programs on his Apple II. Steve Wozniak set out on the task of creating a custom disk drive controller board. Steve Jobs brokered a deal with Shugart Associates to sell Apple stripped down versions of the SA-400 disk mechanism.
The Disk II Floppy Disk System, consisting of a Disk II controller card and a Disk II floppy drive, was made available for pre-order at a cost of $495 in June of 1978. Once Apple started shipping the Disk II, the price increased to $595.
A single Disk II controller card was able to drive up to two floppy drives. The drives received power from the controller card which is plugged into an expansion slot on an Apple II-series motherboard.
Early versions of the Disk II system were able to store up to 113.75 KB when using Apple DOS 3.2.1 and earlier. With Apple DOS 3.3, the version of DOS that I use with my Apple //e computers, Disk II was able to write 140 KB disks. Apple provided a 13 to 16-sector conversion utility to upgrade disks for use with newer versions of Apple DOS.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (2003) and dual FireWire (charge) / USB-A (sync) cable
This Public Service Announcement (PSA) deals with early generation iPod music players. If you own a first generation iPod with Scroll Wheel (2001), a second generation iPod with Touch Wheel (2002), or third generation iPod with Dock Connector (2003), you need the FireWire charging brick and a FireWire to Dock Connector cable or the FireWire/USB-A to Dock Connector dual-headed cable. The combo cable was pretty crazy: You connect the FireWire end into the charge brick and the USB-A end into your Mac or Windows PC so you could sync and charge your iPod at the same time.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (2003) with FireWire Charger and Cable
When Apple announced that they were retiring the last iPod, the 7th Generation iPod touch from their product line up, like many of you, I pulled out my old “Classic” and “Touch” iPods to take a stroll down Memory Lane.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (left), iPod Video, iPod touch 1st Gen, iPod touch 6th Gen
In my May 11 iPod look back, I was trying to charge my third-generation iPod with Dock Connector, I was doing so from an Apple USB-A charging brick. It wasn’t until I pulled out my FireWire charger and cables was I able to wake up my oldest iPod from it’s slumber.
My new Mac Studio is here and I am setting it up with a Dell UltraSharp display while I am still waiting for the matching Studio Display to arrive. I’m also thinking about what I can use my iMac for as it’s second act. Maybe it will get setup in one of the kid’s rooms when they go back to school in the fall.
With an update or two, my iMac still has a bit of life left in it if you don’t mind the discoloration around the edges of the display. Steve published a video published on his Mac84 YouTube channel back in March about using and older second hand Mac and running it as your main computer. In short, for not a lot of downsides, you can run an older computer and save a ton of money if you aren’t the kind of person who needs the latest and greatest. Steve was providing a counter-argument to Karen Haslam’s MacWorld UK piece titled Why you shouldn’t buy a second hand Mac.
Earlier this year, I adopted a used 2011 Mac mini that I purchased from Free Geek Twin Cities. With shipping and some extra RAM, the who thing cost me about $200. So why would I buy an 11-year old Mac that can only run macOS High Sierra (v10.13.6) and spend money on new RAM? Well, I didn’t have one in my collection yet, but that’s not really a good reason.
No, I decided to by a used Mac mini because I wanted a Mac that I could use a home server of sorts. New Apple Silicon Mac minis are too expensive. So are other used recent models (2014 – 2018). Originally, the starting price for the 2011 Mac mini was $599, according to the July 20, 2011 press release. I just wanted a machine that I could hang an hold hard drive off the back of serve out files and host a local copy of media files of old TV shows that I had on DVD in the Apple TV app on my iPad Pro. I also turned on the content caching feature to try to help out on software update days when I have to download OS updates and then install it on multiple devices in the house.
My Mac mini runs really well and just sits quietly in the background until I need it. I did notice that occasionally it would drop off the network. I run this Mac without a keyboard or mouse, I access it over the network using Edovia Screens, which is one way I that I find that it’s off the network. That problem was easily fixed by using the Energy Saver control panel to schedule a daily reboot at 2:00am – a time that no one in the house would be using it. If you want more flexibility about when things happen on your Mac, and you don’t mind using the Terminal app’s Unix command line interface (CLU), can use the launcherd service (crontab on other Unix or Linux systems) to write and schedule all sorts of tasks to fit your needs. For me, I was happy with the Energy Saver control panel. (I used to manage production Linux database servers at work. While I can write shell scripts and schedule them with crontab, I just dont’ want the extra hassle on my home machines.)
So, where does this leave us? Speaking personally, I’m happy with my adopted Mac mini. It’s small and easily lives inside my downstairs entertainment center along with an old Blue-ray player, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii. It does what I need it to do, and it’s service life was extended meaning that it won’t end up in a landfill anytime soon.
If you are looking for an inexpensive option for a computer for home use needs like surfing the web, sending email, and productivity documents, a used or refurbished machine is a great way to go.
Many computers have a long service life after they are no longer manufactured. Re-using old computers and gadgets is good for your wallet, helps the planet, and saves you money. That sounds like a good deal to me.
With a loving tribute to the iPod touch, Apple gives their handheld music player line of products a well-deserved send off. In the Update posted to the Apple Newsroom page, Greg Joswiak is quoted as saying:
“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”
1st Gen iPod touch (L), 6th-Gen iPod touch (C), and the iPod 5th-Gen (R)
Apple’s iPod line ran from October 2001 until May 2022. In the fall of 2007, Apple released an all screen iPod touch based on the iPhone that was released just three months earlier.
When the original iPod was released, I was using a Diamond Rio PMP300. Back then, I was still using a Mac part time, but the focus of my work was moving quickly toward Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server. Having an MP3 player that could plug into a parallel port seemed like an advantage. The Rio may have been cheap, but the 2001 Mac-only iPod was a much more elegant product.
Over the years, I had purchased several iPods, starting with 2003’s third-generation white iPod. I loved that thing. I took it everywhere with me. A couple of years later, my fifth generation (2005) white iPod with color screen and H.264 video play back, took over riding shotgun with my Palm Treo.
It was 2007’s iPod touch – released just a few months after the original iPhone – that was a game changer. The first iPod touch brought the paradigm shifting awesomeness of iPhone to those of us who were not on AT&T/Cingular or simply wanted the iPhone without the phone. That fall, I packed my young family into the car, drove an hour away to the nearest Apple Store at the time, and bought one. As a consolation prize, my wife and I took the kids to the Rainforest Cafe that was in the same mall.
The iPod touch and a 2006 while MacBook running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, were the two devices that switched me back to being a Mac first home user. (I still have to use a Windows PC at work.)
I loved and used my iPod touch all the way up to the fall of 2011 when I was able to finally purchase an iPhone 4S on Sprint (now merged with T-Mobile).
My girls, now iPhone Pro users themselves, both received various iPods over the years, but it was their iPod touch models that were used the most.
For me, these was something exciting about being always able to have your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and games with you all the time. If I could find a free Wi-Fi hotspot, being able to jump on the “real” Internet with Safari and check email with Apple Mail was just so much nicer that using Palm’s Blazer web browser and email client on my Treo.
I’m glad that the iPod touch line ran for as long as it did. Today, in my opinion, the base iPad model takes over for the iPod touch with a much larger screen and a rich feature set. On hearing yesterday’s news that iPod touch was being discontinued, I almost insta-bought one of the 32GB blue and white iPod touch models. I wanted to add it to my iOS museum right next to my original first generation iPod touch. I still might.
While it is nice to take this moment and think about iPod touch, and what the iPod line meant to me, I love my iPhone 13 Pro Max. It can do everything that the iPod touch could so and so much more. I will always have fond memories of the iPods that I used – just like I do for my Apple //e and Macintosh SE, but in the world of personal gadgets, we are always looking forward to the next great thing that will put a dent in the universe.
The iPod touch seventh generation will be the final product in the iPod line. You can still buy one, starting at 32GB for $199, from Apple and authorized resellers while supplies last.
