Archive for the 'Macintosh' Category

New three-monitor (4K + 5K + 4K) setup for my 2014 Mac Pro

Friday, May 26th, 2017 • 5:42 pm

Like many other professional Mac users, I suspect, I was quite relieved when Apple finally shared, in early April, with a select panel of writers who cover Apple news, their plans for the Mac Pro and, more generally speaking, for pro and “prosumer” users of Macintosh computers. When the new Mac Pro was announced in 2013, […]

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Editing a formula in Numbers: an example of macOS’s failure to buffer quick user actions

Thursday, May 4th, 2017 • 3:20 pm

Here is a very simple example of something that is fundamentally wrong in macOS in its current incarnation. STEP 1: In the current version of Numbers for macOS 10.12 (Sierra), which is Numbers 4.1.1, select a cell: STEP 2: Now press the = key on your keyboard, which is a shortcut for inserting a formula […]

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macOS 10.12 (Sierra) on Mac Pro: A solid release

Tuesday, January 24th, 2017 • 2:53 pm

As you know if you’ve read my recent blog posts, I’ve had a bit of a torrid time with my 2014 Mac Pro in the past few months, because of a recurring problem with random video freezes. It turns out that, contrary to what I had believed earlier on, the problem was not hardware-related, but software-related […]

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Video freezes on Mac Pro: It was software after all

Saturday, January 21st, 2017 • 6:35 pm

I have an update on the situation with my Mac Pro that I blogged about in December… Back then, I indicated that the unpredictable video freezes that I had been experiencing for a while appeared to be gone after I had had one of my video cards replaced by Apple under warranty. If you follow […]

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Fix for recurring Microsoft Word 2016 document opening/saving bug

Thursday, December 22nd, 2016 • 4:02 pm

Ever since I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2016 on my Mac, I have been experiencing this recurring bug. Word 2016 works OK for many days. (I say “OK” and not “great” because Word never works great, even at the best of times.) Then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it becomes unable to open […]

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Video freezes on Mac Pro: Video card replacement required

Sunday, December 18th, 2016 • 5:19 pm

I don’t know it is bad luck or something else, but I have certainly experienced my share of hardware flaws and failures with Apple products over the years. I am not talking about more or less predictable failures here, like conventional hard drives failing after a few years, or power adapter cords becoming frayed (although […]

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OS X 10.11 (El Capitan): New mouse-related bugs

Saturday, July 23rd, 2016 • 5:53 pm

One of the very few new features that I was (moderately) excited about when I upgraded to OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) was the “Shake mouse pointer to locate” option in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display: After a few months with El Capitan, I can now report, with relatively conclusive evidence, that once again, Apple has proven […]

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OS X 10.11 (El Capitan): Problem with vanishing keystrokes still not solved

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016 • 1:35 pm

In March, I wrote about my experience with OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), in relatively glowing terms. After my nightmarish experience with OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), the relatively smooth upgrade to El Capitan and the significant improvements in responsiveness were like a breath of fresh air. I even found long-standing bugs that were significant for me and that […]

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OS X 10.11 (El Capitan): Finder fails to record first few keystrokes typed immediately after creating new folder

Saturday, March 26th, 2016 • 2:33 pm

Last week, I wrote about how pleased I was with my upgrade from Yosemite to El Capitan. I am still pleased, but daily use of El Capitan is starting to reveal things that I hadn’t noticed in my first few days of playing with the new OS. As I noted in my post, I am […]

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My experience with OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) on my 2014 Mac Pro

Friday, March 18th, 2016 • 6:16 pm

I haven’t written on this blog since last year and my very traumatic experience with upgrading my 2014 Mac Pro to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). It’s not that I don’t have anything more to say about OS X or other topics. It’s just that I find it less time-consuming and more immediate to post things on Twitter, […]

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OS X 10.10.3: Fixes major responsiveness issues on 2014 Mac Pro

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015 • 6:03 pm

This has been a very traumatic few months for me as a Mac user. As indicated in several previous blog posts, I purchased a new Mac Pro along with a new 4K display back in July 2014. The machine shipped with Mavericks and worked pretty well until I upgraded to Yosemite. I waited until OS X 10.10.1 […]

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OS X Activity Monitor: Yet more evidence of Apple’s sloppy work in Yosemite

Friday, March 13th, 2015 • 5:00 pm

Here’s another example of Apple’s sloppy work in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) that is very easy to reproduce (at least on my Mac Pro): Open the Activity Monitor application (in the Application/Utilities folder). Option-click on your desktop to hide the foreground application, i.e. Activity Monitor, and switch back to the Finder. Click on the Activity […]

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OS X 10.10 (Yosemite): Preview fails to keep up with fast window resizing (continued)

Monday, March 9th, 2015 • 1:31 pm

Since my original post about a bug with window resizing in Preview in Yosemite, I have received feedback indicating that not everyone is able to reproduce this bug on their system. This leads me to suspect that the problem might be limited to specific hardware configurations, like the other responsiveness issues that I have be […]

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OS X 10.10 (Yosemite): Preview fails to keep up with fast window resizing

Friday, March 6th, 2015 • 5:56 pm

Here’s a typical example of the many things that are wrong in Yosemite in terms of performance and responsiveness. When you first upgrade to Yosemite, you might notice all kinds of different responsiveness issues and it can be all quite confusing, giving you a general impression of unresponsiveness even though you cannot quite clearly pinpoint […]

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Word 2011 for OS X: Easily confused

Thursday, March 5th, 2015 • 3:44 pm

If you’ve ever felt like confusing the heck out of Word 2011 for OS X just for fun (and who wouldn’t, really?), try this: In the Finder, create a folder called “Confused Word” on your desktop. In Word 2011, create a new document and save it as “Test1.docx” in the “Confused Word” folder. Leave the document open […]

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