Tag: Mac

Factory Reset

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My seven-year-old Mac Mini has been running slower and slower of late. It had got to the point of making me wait just too long. Hanging and freezing is not a way I like to work. I didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with the hardware (save that it’s rather old and somewhat slower than the new generation of these little boxes).

Anyway, On Saturday morning, I took the plunge. I already have most of my data on an external drive, so I can keep the 1TB fusion drive relatively free for the swapping that this only having 8GB of RAM demands these days. Oh, I remember when 8GB of RAM was the stuff of dreams, and not that long ago either!

I also have another 4GB external drive for Time Machine. On top of that, I use Backblaze for my remote backup solution. All in all, if something did go wrong with this exercise, I would still have the documents, diary entries, photographs and videos that I’ve amassed over the past couple of decades.

I did a final check for anything I might need in the future that was lurking in a corner. I had a few things on the desktop, so I moved them off and rebooted in recovery mode.

So far, so good, as I had not yet deleted anything. Then I started the process, erased the internal drive, and everything was gone. Then I re-installed the OS, in this case, Monterey.

That was relatively quick, but now came the primary choice. Do I individually download and install each program, or do I restore from Time Machine? I wimped out, and I did the latter. I was surprised that it took several hours. That gave me time to get off my butt and do a few overdue tasks around the house!

Eventually, Time Machine did its job, and the system was ready to use. I’ve had to wait several times as I fire up software for the system to verify it, but that’s a one-off. It’s certainly made a difference, and it’s given the old box a new lease of life. Everything is running smoothly again, and I’m not freezing unless I open the windows!

I intend to get one of the new M1 powered Mac Minis later in the year, but this has been a cheap, quick fix for now. It was much less painless than I thought it might be, and I’d certainly recommend it if your old machine is moving like a snail.

From Android To Apple

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Blackberry Keypad
The first smart phone I got was a Blackberry. At the time I was quite happy with it. The iPhone came along. I was in the US at the time, and it was only available with AT&T, and their service had so many holes where I lived. Therefore I went the Android route with a Motorola Droid. I rather liked its slide out QWERTY keypad. In fact I recall that I positively didn’t want a touchscreen phone!

Over the next few years, I upgraded. I moved to England, and for a while ended up with a fairly cheap HTC phone — a Wildfire. It was quite underpowered, even back in 2011, but it got me a contract, rather than an expensive prepaid, pay-as-yoiu-go option.

I moved onto an HTC Desire, then I got a Samsung Note 1. I loved the stylus, although I ended up using it less than I thought I would. It worked though. Then a Note 3 which seemed lightning fast in comparison. My wife and I also had Samsung Note tablets.

Meanwhile though, my wife was getting more and more frustrated with her ever-crashing Windows laptop. It wasn’t just Windows, I think the laptop was beginning to fail hardware-wise too.

Anyway, I took the plunge and bought her a MacBook Pro for Christmas 2014. She loves it. It’s in daily use, and I’m typing this on it right now.She works for a large pawnbroker chain, and they had a 16GB iPad Mini 2 going cheap, so I purchased it, just to try one out. I was impressed with the size (to be honest my Note 12.2 was just too big to be that portable). I was also impressed with the quality of the iOS apps compared to Android.

My Windows desktop gave up the ghost. As a replacement I purchased a Mac Mini. That was ideal, as I didn’t need anything else, as my keyboard, mouse, printer and monitor was working fine. I didn’t need one of the new ‘complete’ systems that High Street retailers tried to push on me when I went to look in their stores. I rapidly filled the iPad mini 2, and my Christmas present in 2015 was an iPad Mini 4 with 128GB.
iPad Mini 4

Our Note 3 phones were out of contract in the fall of 2015, but we went over to a SIM only plan as we felt there was more life in them yet. However, having now partly got into the Apple ecosystem, the Note was the odd man out.

In 2016 we took the plunge and got a 256GB APple 7 plus each, on a two-year contract. Right now, there’s still a year to go on those. We’re not looking to upgrade this year in any case. We’ll see how the iPhone X pans out over the next twelve months, and look at our options in late 2018.

It’s Been A While

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I’m as guilty as the next person.  I mean to post in a blog regularly and I do for a short time, and then it gets neglected.

Whats been occurring?

A few months ago, I had the opportunity  to buy a secondhand iPad Mini 2 for a good price so I did. It’s been a real useful addition too. I like the size; quite frankly my Samsung Galaxy NotePro 12.2 is too big to chuck in a car at pocket and carry around everywhere.

Then the PC died. I’d been running Windows 10 Technical Preview on it for the best part of a year, and it was certainly better than Windows 8, but it was still prone to annoying slowdowns and lock ups.

AppleI decided to go for a Mac instead. My current budget wouldn’t stretch to a Mac Pro, and as I already had a decent  Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse and a widescreen monitor only a few months old, a Mac Mini fitted the bill just right.

As I had my data on external drives and in the cloud, set up was a doddle, and I was up and running in no time.  Of course, when you’re running software, the Operating System should really just be there in the background taking care of everything and OS X does just that. None of those hang ups or slowdowns either. I’m happy with the switch, and perhaps a new iPhone might logically complete this change to a new ecosystem.

I’ve actually been writing this post on my iPad Mini. I’d be the first to say I’d rather be using a full size keyboard, but the experience hasn’t been too bad. Better than blogging anything more than a couple of sentences from a smartphone!