Being a list of things which make me want to throw a computer out the window

• On my MacBook Mail.app got thoroughly confused, and was unable to send mail, change SMTP server, or edit the SMTP server list – the popup menu had several blank lines instead. In the end nuking ~/Library/Accounts/ (via another admin account) seemed to restore things, though I had to reconfigure all my accounts.
• On my Mac Pro the SMTP server settings were OK, but various other Mail settings were reset, such as loading remote images, default composing as Rich Text, turning on the Junk Mail filter… And ‘conversation view’ on one of my accounts is broken, but OK on the others.
  
• Command line printing to the MFD queues seems dead. While it seems merely vexing on older OS X releases (one has to manually authenticate each job) on El Cap it just hangs the print queue app. Since I’ve not used ‘lp’ in about 10 years I mostly missed this. Probably some sort of sandboxing or keychain thing; I filed a radar about it… [30/10 – this turned out to be a corrupted pref file on my Mac, the PrinterProxy.plist, though one still has to individually authenticate lpr jobs]
• (added 27/10) Time Machine does not work on desktop Macs connected to a UPS over USB. On MacBooks OS X does not run Time Machine when on battery power unless a checkbox in the TM preferences is checked. Looks like El Cap is assuming that the Mac is on permanent battery power, but of course does not reveal the option to tell it to back up anyway. Workaround – unplug the USB cable and do without auto-shutdown on power out.

More to be added as discovered.

With the release of El Capitan .1 last week I decided it was time to take the plunge and update. Everything on the Munki server side is now in place for the upgrade – to their credit Symantec were prompt to issue an update for SEP, and updates for other apps came out pretty quickly too. With the .1 update supposedly fixing the Office 2016 issues I figured it was time to move.

First I made sure I had good backups, using Time Machine and also Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I just ran the installer and let it do its thing. Afterwards I ran Managed Software Centre to update SEP, etc, and all seemed fine. Of course I’m now about 2 hours in, so there is plenty of time to regret this…

A few points to note

• The MacPorts update was very slow. I’m not sure of the cause but the self-update step took at least 10 minutes, which seems a lot. I don’t think this is an El Cap issue, just coincidental server slowness.
• GoodSync needs updates to quash various bugs.
• Anyone using GoodSync to backup their local mailboxes needs to note that under El Cap the local mailboxes have moved from ~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes to ~/Library/Mail/V3/Mailboxes and update their backups accordingly.

I’ve still not done much with an actual install of El Capitan, though I have it on an old MacBook Pro for testing. I have been working on some back-end things to make sure that machines using my Munki service should upgrade OK, and I think I’m about there – a test install of Yosemite with packages like Symantec EndPoint, Latex, etc upgraded OK, though with various caveats.

• You need to be running MacTeX 2015 for a smooth update due to restrictions on what can be installed in the ‘unix’ directories under El Cap.
• Symantec had an update for SEP out within a few days, and that seems OK. On my Munki service I have set things so the update is only pushed to machines running El Cap as the previous version seems to be fine on Yosemite, and I don’t see the point in fixing what ain’t broke.
• MS Office 2016 seems to be badly broken, and according to Microsoft the fixes will be coming from Apple in an OS X update. How much this affects you depends on how much you use Office. Me – not at all.
• MacPorts has been updated and supports El Cap, though as always a reinstall of all ports is needed for a major OS update.
• IDL 8.5 seems to be OK, though it does not officially support El Cap.
• Ureka (IRAF) already explicitly supports El Cap in the latest release – 1.5.2.
• X11 seems OK under xquartz 2.77 but 2.78 seems close to release with some bug fixes.

At the moment I still don’t recommend installing El Cap on a ‘work’ machine which you can’t afford to lose. Maybe once 10.11.1 is out – though I have some new incoming Macs which I assume will ship with El Cap now, so they’ll be ‘volunteering’ to test.

Still alive, just been busy with building decants, summer schools, and conferences. And turning old Macs into furniture.

And now it’s the new academic year and Apple releases El Capitan… I’ve not even had time to play with a beta, let alone the release version, and probably won’t for a while.

Things I’ve read about El Capitan:

• It doesn’t suffer the /usr/local/ migration problem which slowed down Yosemite updates
• Apparently XQuartz survives the update too
• You need to be running MacTeX 2015 to avoid issues arising from the restrictions that the SIP feature imposes

Munki seems to be OK with El Capitan, but MS Office seems to have serious issues. Outlook 2011 simply does not work in Exchange mode, though IMAP is OK. Office 2016 seems generally crashy too. And Symantec Endpoint AV is totally broken by the update with no (public) ETA for an update. I have to say the latter is the least concerning; in all the time I’ve been running SEP it’s not flagged anything, and I think the need for AV on the Mac remains marginal, but so long as it works and doesn’t kill my Mac I’ll tolerate it. However if it’s a case of updating to El Capitan in a week or so with lots of security fixes, versus waiting for Symantec, I know what I’m doing!

FileVault is the OS X full-disk encryption system, which everyone should use unless there is a really good reason not to. Mostly it just sits there in the background and doesn’t get in the way. Mostly.

If you don’t enter the correct password a few times then OS X will switch to the ‘Reset Password’ assistant. And there is no (obvious) getting out of it – even if you restart the machine you will be taken directly back to the assistant. This is most vexing if, say, the source of your problem password entry was not forgetfulness but a malfunctioning keyboard.

Thankfully there is a non-obvious solution or two.

• Restart the Mac and reset the NVRAM (press Command-Alt-P-R until the Mac chimes)
• Mouse-up to the top of the screen, and the menubar appears. From there select /Startup Disk. Enter your password to unlock the drive and reboot.

Check the video on Der Flounder to see the second option in more detail.

It appears there is a bug in Mail.app in Yosemite, which affects pasting text copied from Microsoft Word (and only Word). Chunks of text are omitted at random, which can be quite annoying.

I don’t use Word that much (BBEdit forever) so didn’t notice this, but was able to replicate the issue. My default message format in Mail.app is Plain Text, as used by all civilised people. My guess is that there is an issue in whatever code Mail uses to convert the RTF (Rich Text Format) copied from Word into plain text. On a hunch I switched to Rich Text in Mail (Format/Make Rich Text) and that seemed to work OK. However I did not perform extensive testing so it may well be this is not a 100% reliable workaround.

Other solutions mooted online involve pasting from Word into another application (like TextEdit, Pages, or TextWrangler) and then pasting from there into Mail.app. Hopefully Apple will address this issue in an update to Mail.

People being people, and academics being academics, there is often a lot of complaining about IT support – no matter where you are. But this example is one of the worst I’ve ever heard about. The US Ambassador to Kenya “ordered a commercial Internet connection installed in his embassy office bathroom so he could work there on a laptop not connected to the Department email system”

Apparently the US State Department is currently in the middle of rolling out a new, ‘modern’, desktop suite, based on Microsoft Office 2010…

The jokes just write themselves, but in the interests of taste, I’ll stop here!

I don’t like Java very much. Desktop programs written in it tend to have horrid user interfaces, and the history of browser-based exploits mean I refuse to use any website which wants to run a Java applet. Java is one part of my ‘unholy trinity’ of programs – Flash, Java, Adobe Reader – to try to avoid installing on your computer.

The most recent update to Java on the Mac brings ‘feature parity’ with the Windows release in a most unfortunate manner – the installer now offers to install the ask.com browser toolbar, and reset your browser homepage. Stay classy, Oracle.

Thankfully most Mac science software (e.g. ImageJ or TopCAT) which requires Java does not require the Oracle package, but instead asks for Apple’s Java 6 package, which can be installed automatically the first time you run a program which asks for it, and does not include a browser plugin.

In summary, if you have a problem which you think can be solved by installing Java on your computer, you’re wrong – you’re just adding one more problem to the pile!

Queen’s recently established a printing policy which is aiming to replace desktop printers with shared Xerox multi-function devices (printer/copiers) in central areas. While we’re not making use of their printing facilities at the moment, in the medium-term, once all our building moves are sorted out, we will be.

If you’re using a computer which is on the Queen’s Active Directory then the new campus-wide print queues show up automatically – otherwise a little effort is required. I have a set of notes on how to print to these queues from OS X (10.8 & later), Windows 7, and Linux, though the latter case is ‘difficult’.

Mac users who are part of the Munki-managed service will be able to install these print queues with a single click from Managed Software.

For a long time my default recommendation for a Mac laptop has been the MacBook Air 13″ – it’s a good basic machine. With the 1.7GHz dual-core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD it comes to £866 ex VAT. The problem with the machine is that it only has one Thunderbolt port, which means you have to choose between video-out and gigabit networking, or else buy a docking station or Thunderbolt Display. Since gigabit networking is mostly non-negotiable, you’re obliged to spend around another £150 (ex. VAT) on a dock, and then possibly another £20 on a USB or Thunderbolt ethernet dongle in case you go somewhere where you need wired networking. Total price, around £1040 + VAT = £1250.

I wasn’t keen on the Retina MacBook Pro 13″ for a few reasons – chief amongst them being that I wasn’t sure the screen was justified, and that the machine was up to driving it without a discrete GPU. Well, having used retina screens for a while now myself, I think they’re more than justified – they’re so much easier on the eyes that I think anyone who is using computers for extended periods should have one. And having played with a 13″ rMBP, and spoken with folks who have one, it seems my concerns on the GPU front were overstated. And most importantly, the rMBP comes with two Thunderbolt ports, which means you can have both gigabit networking and video without a dock!

In terms of spec, the entry-level CPU is fine for most people – a 2.6GHz dual-core i5. I don’t see the point in upping this to the i7, as all that adds is a slightly higher base clock speed and the mostly useless hyper-threading virtual cores. So a machine with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD comes to £859 ex. VAT, which is actually cheaper than the similar-spec MBAir… Throw in the £20 gigabit dongle and we’re at a total of just under £1060 inc VAT.

Oopsie. :/