Rigs Is Back With More Uninformed Laptop Questions

[eleanorigby]

And I trust you, people I have never met in real life, more than I do some random website.

I need a new MacBook. This will be my third laptop purchase in my life. No, I'm not switching to non-Apple stuff. Yes, the prices are outrageous.

I've now heard of Back Market but the more they tell me they're legit, the more askance I view them...

And since I live my life out loud on social media, I posted about this on FB and an old HS friend (we've stayed in touch) has just purchased himself a new MacBook and is interested in selling his old one to me.

All well and good, but I don't know what to do next. I have QUESTIONS:

1. How does the seller go about deleting/wiping his Macbook so that I do not have his stuff? Honestly, I'm worried about viruses and porn. Before you come at me, you need to know that I have zero p0rn on any of my laptops (all 2 of them); have never accessed any p0rn on any of my laptops or online, ever. This makes me something of an anomaly, but it is nevertheless true. No, I don't care what you're doing online regarding p0rn (as long as it's not child pron), but see no reason why the choices you make should also be made by me. So, yes, I am concerned about p0rn files, mostly because they apparently also bring viruses with them.

2. How can the buyer be sure that #1 has been taken care of without offending the seller?

3. And this is probably a very stupid question, but I didn't pay attention the last time I bought a new laptop (in 2012) and my old contents were uploaded onto my new MacBook in the Apple store. No doubt a moral failing on my part... But how does one go about transferring the contents of one laptop to another? Even I did end up purchasing a laptop from Back Market, I'd still have these same issues, mostly #3.

I humbly await your answers. TIA.

[hajario]

If I were as worried as you, I'd take both of the laptops to an Apple store and have them wipe the old one and transfer the stuff from the new one. It'll cost a bit but it will be done correctly.

[stormie]

Originally Posted by hajario

If I were as worried as you, I'd take both of the laptops to an Apple store and have them wipe the old one and transfer the stuff from the new one. It'll cost a bit but it will be done correctly.

Yep.

It's easy to wipe a computer. Even a me can do it. Transferring is easy if you know how to do it and have the right stuff, so I am told. I find the attempt creates swearing.

I'd go with Hijaro's suggestion.

Do not abandon your disk-based stuffs! You can still get an external CD/DVD drive. It's a flat box about the size of a CD, and you connect it to your computer when you want to play a CD or DVD. Not sure how long these will be made.

[AHunter3]

While it is not true that there are no Mac viruses, worrying about them is a lot like worrying that if you step outside of your house, you'll be trampled by rampaging zebras.

I have owned and used Macs since 1986 (the heydays of System 3 on a floppy!) (Fat Macs before the Mac Plus came along!) and I've toted PowerBooks and MacBooks out and about into and onto all manners of networks and systems and opened an extremely wide variety of files and navigated to lots of web sites, including the shady ones of multiple flavors of shade (yes including p0rn).

In all that time the only malware that has ever infected my computers was the nVir virus. I've encountered some other Mac-native infectious critters such as the Autostart Worm without being hit by them personally, but even including every single evil buggie I've run into on friends' and customers' and colleagues' computers, I've encountered less than ten cases of malware over the course of 35 years.

The likelihood that you're going to inherit an infectious bit of code from a secondhand Mac is vanishingly small. (hajario's advice is good, though. The Apple Store folks will be happy to give you an officially pristine boot drive and transfer all your files and settings for you).

[Pencil]

I concur with @hajario. Book time at the Genius Bar. They are really super helpful.
IIRC you're in Chicago. There's one store on Michigan and another at the 800 block on North Ave. Two in the suburbs as well.

Should you try to do it yourself, Migration Assistant is your friend.
BTW, how old is the one you're thinking of getting? Is it a MB Pro or Air? Some years were not good for MB Pro.

[SmartAleq]

If you REALLY want to be sure, take the two laptops in, have them REPLACE the hard drive on the new one with a brand new fresh one that doesn't have even the possibility let alone the actuality of Someone Else's Child Pr0n on it, then do a reinstall of the OS and mirror your old computer onto the new one. This will be the spendiest option but also the one that gives absolute peace of mind. You might even have the old wiped drive installed into an external case so you have extra storage available, like for a non-networked backup drive for pics and documents that you absolutely cannot risk losing. That way, even if your laptop gets stolen or falls in the pool you have your important files backed up and you can even keep that drive in your safe so it's even fireproof. That's if you're a paranoid suspenders AND belt person.

[eleanorigby]

Wow. Lots here and I understand every other word.

So, I can take my current MacBook Pro (2012) to the Genius Bar with the other Mac that I did not purchase from Apple directly, and they'd still be willing to help me?

That's amazing and, if true, restores my faith in people. I dunno the age of the used Mac. Asked him; awaiting reply.

I understand what you're saying Smarty and it's smart. Not sure I'd need to do it. Didn't mean to go on and on about the pr0n, I am just envisioning the worst wherein I go to do something and suddenly (instead of a giraffe) there's nekkid peeps doing nekkid things. Wildly implausible perhaps, but I've had wildly implausible things happen to me my entire life...

I do appreciate you all weighing in. I'll keep you posted.

[Pencil]

I have a 2014 Mac mini as my media computer, hooked up to the TV. It stopped working a few months back.

I'm fairly good with Apple products, but all the usual resets failed me. So I booked time at the Apple store. Went there, they hooked up a diagnostic thingie and sure enough, something didn't work. They wanted to keep it and said they'd text me when it was done.
The next day I got a text, went there and could pick it up, free of charge. They certainly didn't have to do that, and the warranty is long gone. I talked to the service guy and he readily admitted that it was goodwill that I was certain to tell people about (doh!). And also that he thought it should have at least a couple of more years in it.

So yeah, expensive machines, but if one can afford the upfront, the cost spread out over the years makes it a better deal than almost any PC.

[hajario]

Originally Posted by Pencil

I have a 2014 Mac mini as my media computer, hooked up to the TV. It stopped working a few months back.

I'm fairly good with Apple products, but all the usual resets failed me. So I booked time at the Apple store. Went there, they hooked up a diagnostic thingie and sure enough, something didn't work. They wanted to keep it and said they'd text me when it was done.
The next day I got a text, went there and could pick it up, free of charge. They certainly didn't have to do that, and the warranty is long gone. I talked to the service guy and he readily admitted that it was goodwill that I was certain to tell people about (doh!). And also that he thought it should have at least a couple of more years in it.

So yeah, expensive machines, but if one can afford the upfront, the cost spread out over the years makes it a better deal than almost any PC.

I can’t imagine that that’s true. My HP laptop is used for internet and the occasional spreadsheet or word doc. I also use it for home accounting. It’s six years old and nowhere near the end of life its life. I paid $700 for it and haven’t had a drop of trouble.

[eleanorigby]

I've had some nice interactions with the folks at the Genius Bar, but the last time I went in with my laptop (I had gotten some kind of weird message about my battery that I no longer recall--I'm helpful that way), they said that at some point soonish, my MacBook Pro's battery would start to swell and it'd be a good idea if I replaced the laptop with a new model.

I see the sense in that, and have heard tell of this swelling battery horror, so 3 months later, I'm starting to look around. Thing is, mine still has a DVD /CD player slot, which I will miss. I have transferred many a music CD from my actual collection that way...

My friend has to charge BOTH of his older Macs to see how old they are. He says he has an Air and a Pro, but that the Pro is older than the Air, so who knows. I'm not going to spend money on even a used MacBook from 2015...

Right now I'm having another problem with my current laptop, but I have to go do other things, so will leave you all hanging. Okay, real quick. I've tinkered with the Display settings (not that there's much to that) but cannot make the new Spoutible page display the way my Twitter and FB do. IOW, Twitter and FB both have the 3 columns and I can navigate them no problem. Spoutible is HUGE, so HUGE I can't access the far right hand side of the screen with my cursor, so can't "like" things or follow people.
The only way I can get Spoutible small enough to fit on the whole screen is by choosing the Default for Display in my MacBook Settings, BUT that means when I hit the green expand button, I lose my navigation menu at the top of the screen. I cannot tell you how much anxiety that engenders in me. And moving the cursor up to the very top of the screen only results in me regaining that menu occasionally. I wish I could pin it somehow. Right now I am typing in a small window, instead of using the whole screen, because of this oddity.
Since the other websites work okay in my preferred settings, I assume this is a Spoutible thing, but how could it be? Tis another computer mystery for me...

I can adapt and remember to keep battering the cursor against the top line of the screen, but should I have to do that? It seems odd. Thoughts? Will check back probably tomorrow. Thanks!

[AHunter3]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

So, I can take my current MacBook Pro (2012) to the Genius Bar with the other Mac that I did not purchase from Apple directly, and they'd still be willing to help me?

If the second one isn't also formidably ancient, yeah, they're nice that way.

I wouldn't even rule out their willingness to help with old old hardware, it's just that they don't necessarily have the familiarity.

Less than 3 months ago I bought a used vintage-2018 MacBook Pro off eBay and needed to roll the OS back from Big Sur (MacOS 11) to Mojave (MacOS 10.14). They did it for me, didn't charge me a nickel, were very helpful. It took them two tries to get it right (something got lost in the notes and they instead upgraded it to Ventura the first time) but you can't beat free and helpful.

[What Exit?]

My laptop is from 2014. Still works fine and when I have issues, I don't need to go to a genius bar to get it fixed. Windows Laptops are generally much easier to work on. Bonus, it was a Win 7 laptop when new and I was able to legally upgrade for free it to Win 10 around 2018. Apples aren't especially better than PCs they just have a cult of personality around them.

[SmartAleq]

Okay, stupid question I guess, but why exactly don't/can't they just, y'know, replace the battery if the old one is fuxxord?

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by SmartAleq

Okay, stupid question I guess, but why exactly don't/can't they just, y'know, replace the battery if the old one is fuxxord?

Yes, this is an excellent question and one to which I do not have an answer. I truly loathe planned obsolescence, especially with tech. It's right up there with "just because we can make changes, we will!" as one of the things I most dislike about tech. That and how people assume you know or if you don't know, assume you're stupid. I often want to say to these people: can you run a code blue? But then, nowadays, I probably couldn't myself...

Anyway, update: old HS friend's MacBook is from 2014 which is silly. So, back to new Macs. And they may or may not be a cult of personality, but I know myself: at this point, it does not pay for me to change systems. Everything I own is Apple. I bought them initially because I kept hearing about viruses and PCs. And now here I am.

I have a really sweet used iPad that I got for $300 back in the day. I use it on plane trips and sometimes around the house, but since I have an iPhone 13 now (because my very old iPhone 6 that I loved literally fell apart--the back fell off and the innards became outnards), my phone does a lot that the iPad does.
I got my first MacBook for grad school; my father gave me this one as a graduation present, which was darn nice of him, but now it needs replacing.
I use a Dell laptop for work. MEH. It's kind of a PITA. And even at work, they've now dumped Windows Office Suite for Google Suites, and unless you want to hear a lady curse like a sailor, do NOT ask me about Google Suites. It sucks. I digressed a bit there, but my point is that I don't buy Apple products often.

So, I'm off the Apple Store this weekend. This has been a spendy month for me. Front brakes being fixed as I type. But then it's done and I can go back to whining about something more interesting.

[Pogo]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

... unless you want to hear a lady curse like a sailor, do NOT ask me about Google Suites. It sucks.

Peggy

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by Pogo

Peggy

Yikes....

[mjmlabs]

I'm pretty sure that A) They sure could just replace the battery with a new one; B) But given the age of the ailing laptop, something else is apt to fail soon and then who knows what's next, and the hardware may even soon become obsoleted by some OS update or whatever; and C) In any event, they'd rather sell somebody a new laptop than a replacement battery.

Not being directly involved, I'm guessing that B) is more relevant than C), but perhaps my optimism in that regard is misplaced.

Also, P.S. to Rigs: You can snag an external optical drive for cheap pretty much anywhere, and you should! Hell, buy two, they really are cheap these days. (As long as you don't buy them from Apple.)

[Diamonds02]

I dont have anything to add other than...

LOL (regarding #1)

[hajario]

I was a manufacturing engineer for cutting edge electronics for the better part of 30 years. There is effectively no such thing as “planned obsolescence”, at least not in the way that most people think. Products are designed to a certain spec and price point that the marketing folks believe will sell well. That’s it. We don’t plan to make shitty things that will fail at some point.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by hajario

I was a manufacturing engineer for cutting edge electronics for the better part of 30 years. There is effectively no such thing as “planned obsolescence”, at least not in the way that most people think. Products are designed to a certain spec and price point that the marketing folks believe will sell well. That’s it. We don’t plan to make shitty things that will fail at some point.

I don't define planned obsolescence as things fall apart at some point, and those things usually don't start off as shitty. I define it as (in this instance) Apple refusing to troubleshoot my 2012 MacBook Pro starting in 2020 because it was considered "too old". They directed me to a third party retailer (name forgotten by me). That's obsolescence, and it has to be planned by Apple. They decide which products they'll continue to support and which ones not. They did the same thing to my first laptop from Apple. I had to have 2 somethings which I do not recall replaced, but I did so at the Genius Bar, after that didn't work, they referred me to a 3rd party repair place (instead, I replaced the laptop).

It's a thing. At some point, parts for the older refrigerator or washer or whatever can't be gotten easily, if at all. Consumerism depends on us replacing, not repairing. It wasn't intended as a criticism.

I did not face the Apple Store this weekend. I do need to get there soon. I'll go with the middle of the menu. For what I use my personal laptop for, that will suffice.

And good idea re the external CD drive, stormie!

[hajario]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

I don't define planned obsolescence as things fall apart at some point, and those things usually don't start off as shitty. I define it as (in this instance) Apple refusing to troubleshoot my 2012 MacBook Pro starting in 2020 because it was considered "too old". They directed me to a third party retailer (name forgotten by me). That's obsolescence, and it has to be planned by Apple. They decide which products they'll continue to support and which ones not. They did the same thing to my first laptop from Apple. I had to have 2 somethings which I do not recall replaced, but I did so at the Genius Bar, after that didn't work, they referred me to a 3rd party repair place (instead, I replaced the laptop).

It's a thing. At some point, parts for the older refrigerator or washer or whatever can't be gotten easily, if at all. Consumerism depends on us replacing, not repairing. It wasn't intended as a criticism.

OK, then you are using a different definition than what is standard. You hate a different thing.

Planned obsolesce is the engineers intentionally designing something to fail after a certain amount of time has passed.

[thorny locust]

It may not be the hardware engineers, but somebody is surely designing computers to fail after time has passed: by refusing to any longer update browsers for older systems, if nothing else. That eventually renders the computers unsafe to go online with, even when everything else is working fine (as, IME, it generally is.)

[AHunter3]

a) Carbon Copy Cloner is your friend. It will make an exact copy of an entire hard drive (including being bootable if the original is bootable), or of any subset of a hard drive.

b) To connect any Mac since 2011 to another, you want a Thunderbolt cable. If the old Mac has the old type ports, you want an adapter* for one end of the cable. Then in System Preferences you go to Startup Disk and you should find a button there that says "Target Disk Mode" — click it and it will walk you through booting *that* computer in a mode that makes it behave like an external hard disk, and then you connect that Mac to the other Mac and it will mount the first Mac's disk and you can get to all its files.

* the old original Thunderbolt had a D-shaped connector, a form factor called "mini displayport". The modern ones are just skinny little symmetrical ovals. The adapters let you plug in one of the skinny connectors and on the other end is a D shaped connector.

[SmartAleq]

FWIW I use Open Office and it's fine for anything I need to do--exporting to PDF is a little bit more complicated than using Word but then again, Open Office costs me nothing so the tiny bit of extra time will never add up to the pricetag MicroSlop wants for their software. I'm a huge proponent of open source software in spite of knowing enough to be able to pirate basically anything I want--I don't bother because if a paid for program exists there's probably an open source equivalent that's just as good, if perhaps a bit more bare bones than the paid version. Which is fine by my, bells and whistles mostly annoy me anyway.

[Jaglavak]

IIRC, Open Office was infiltrated by demon spawn of satan and began to use pieces of proprietary code. Libre Office forked off at that point and only uses 100% open source code. It works just fine for me.

[SmartAleq]

I did not know that, might have to switch to Libre then.

[Zeener Diode]

I wondered what became of that demon spawn I summoned several years ago.

[Pencil]

Demons?

But severe problems for several years.

Between October 2014 and July 2015 the project had no release manager. During this period, in April 2015, a known remote code execution security vulnerability in Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 was announced, but the project did not have the developers available to release the software fix. Instead, the Apache project published a workaround for users, leaving the vulnerability in the download.
<snip>

It was revealed in October 2016 that 4.1.2 had been distributed with a known security hole for nearly a year as the project had not had the development resources to fix it.

4.1.3 was known to have security issues since at least January 2017, but fixes to them were delayed by an absent release manager for 4.1.4. The Apache Software Foundation January 2017 Board minutes were edited after publication to remove mention of the security issue, which Jim Jagielski of the ASF board claimed would be fixed by May 2017. Fixes were finally released in October 2017. Further unfixed problems showed up in February 2019, with The Register unable to get a response from the developers, although the existing proof-of-concept exploit doesn't work with OpenOffice out-of-the-box.

Version 4.1.11 was released in October 2021 with a fix for a remote code execution security vulnerability that was publicly revealed the previous month. The project had been notified in early May 2021.[that] the security hole had been fixed in LibreOffice since 2014

Originally Posted by SmartAleq

We told you to stop trying to write your name in the snow after a six pack but do you listen?

🎵 Watch out where the huskies go
And don't you eat that yellow snow 🎶

[Jaglavak]

Close enough:

Originally Posted by Wiki

Members of the OpenOffice.org community who were not Sun Microsystems employees had wanted a more egalitarian form for the OpenOffice.org project for many years. Sun had stated in the original OpenOffice.org announcement in 2000 that the project would eventually be run by a neutral foundation...

Sun's contributions to OpenOffice.org had been declining for some time. They remained reluctant to accept contributions and contributors were upset at Sun releasing OpenOffice.org code to IBM for IBM Lotus Symphony under a proprietary contract, rather than under an open source licence...

Sun was purchased by Oracle Corporation in early 2010. OpenOffice.org community members were concerned by Oracle's behaviour towards open source software, specifically the Java lawsuit...and lack of activity on or visible commitment to OpenOffice.org...as Meeks put it in early September 2010, "The news from the Oracle OpenOffice conference was that there was no news." Discussion of a fork started soon after.

LibreOffice Online is an online office suite which includes the applications Writer, Calc and Impress and provides an upstream for projects such as commercial Collabora Online.

It is the most actively developed free and open-source office suite, with approximately 50 times the development activity of Apache OpenOffice, the other major descendant of OpenOffice.org, in 2015.

[eleanorigby]

OMG. I am going to cry, but they are tears of relief. I just got off the phone (800 number) of tech support for the maker of my external hard drive. This man was so kind over the phone. It took a bit for him to understand that I am not concerned (at the moment) with transferring the data on my EHD to my new M2.

I couldn't even get the data to go ON my EHD. Or, (to be accurate), I couldn't tell if I had successfully backed up my data when I tried last week. I couldn't tell when the back up was finished or if it was even working. I did find the guide to what the patterns of flashing lights mean, so go me.

Turns out I had not backed up squat last week. NOWHERE in that user manual or in the YT video I watched did it mention I had to OPEN TIME MACHINE* along with this EHD. I did so, discovered it will take 6 HOURS to back up my data and it gives me a progress bar and the # of GBs so far etc. Such a relief, I cannot tell you.


"This is very old software and the new Macs will not understand it"
He wanted to reformat my EHD so that it can take my data and (if necessary) upload it onto my M2, but I said no. I understand the value of that plan, but I've had all I can take for today. My old MB is busy transferring data to the EHD and will be until 10pm.

I took notes and more importantly, I understand (some of) it now. Oh, not the mountain that is reformatting, but one thing at a time. This has given me confidence to tackle the effing Microsoft chicanery tomorrow as well. And I can call the 800 number back with the reformatting issue, if needed.

I THINK (I am not sure of this) that once I sign away a great deal of money to Microsoft that they will drag my old Word and Excel docs up to current status. That's what they did at work. I'm also going to print out the most vital of the docs, so if worse comes to worst, I can re-input all the data manually. Yes, I would do that, just to avoid the cloud getting the passwords to my retirement accounts and other stuff. Yes, I'm a Luddite, apparently.

A GF talked to me about 2 factor authentication for my G drive. I do realize it's wise to have that, even for the silly, non-financial stuff I use Gmail for. I will look into that as well.
Do you think that if I do the 2 factor authentication that my G drive would be reasonably safe from hacking? I am not sure anyone can know that for sure, but...
So, here's my plan:

Finish the back up of old MB. Write up notes on how to do this for next time.
Check out link Pencil provided for 1 time purchase of $120 Microsoft Product (which is NOT an option when I attempt to open a Word doc on my M2. They only push the subscription).
Check out the Google drive download (but I would still have the 2 factor authentication) and use that instead of the Microsoft Office purchase. If I did this, I would (obviously) convert the old Word docs to Google docs etc. How exposed are they?



Go live on a compound in Idaho and deal only in barter is Plan B. lol

I realize that some of you are likely rolling your eyes at all this angst about tech and progress etc. And that's okay. We all have different life skills and interests. But I am sure that I am not alone in the angst, and I also think there are any number of people who just Don't Think About It and are probably living with insanely exposed financial data or other security risks due to just this issue. That's one reason I share my angst. Usually when I ask a "stupid" question, there is at least 1 other person who thanks me later for doing so.

I'm not done by a long shot, but I feel like I'm starting to figure stuff out. That is largely due to Pencil(who gets a nice dinner!), but others here as well. Thank you all. I do appreciate my Giraffe friends, more than you will ever know.

*did not know I had something called Time Machine on my Mac.

[Pencil]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

I'm not done by a long shot, but I feel like I'm starting to figure stuff out. That is largely due to Pencil(who gets a nice dinner!), but others here as well. Thank you all.

I THINK (I am not sure of this) that once I sign away a great deal of money to Microsoft that they will drag my old Word and Excel docs up to current status. That's what they did at work.

I have word 2015, not 2021, but I cannot fathom that things are different. MS wants to keep you in their corral. So I made a new document, saved that as a Word-97, closed everything, double clicked the doc and Word -15 opened it right away. Up on top of the Word window it said - in square brackets - [compatibility mode] which I interpret as saying that it has formatted this for the newer version.* To get it totally up to date you have to pick File -> Save as…


* Changing things like fonts that are no longer there and stuff like that.

Do you think that if I do the 2 factor authentication that my G drive would be reasonably safe from hacking? I am not sure anyone can know that for sure, but...

No, no one can be sure. But it’s as safe as you can reasonably hope for. I would say the risk is greater for the hard drive to spontaneously catch fire and start dancing La Cucaracha.

Check out the Google drive download (but I would still have the 2 factor authentication) and use that instead of the Microsoft Office purchase. If I did this, I would (obviously) convert the old Word docs to Google docs etc. How exposed are they?

Are you afraid of them getting hacked, i.e. personal information getting exposed? Or that the files will be lost, corrupted? In either case I’m a firm friend of belt & suspenders. 2FA will do a lot for the former, having a backup for the latter. If you split things into separate files, you’re going to be even safer regarding exposure, i.e. don’t keep all your passwords in one file, and do not name the file Password. Better to have something really innocuous such as Tina’s Bday invite and Regulations nursing station2. Keep half the password in one file, and the second half in the next.
Note: This is for your peace of mind only. No one will ever get that far.

Go live on a compound in Idaho and deal only in barter is Plan B. lol

Iowa is next door. Maybe their ’well regulated militia’ is less wacky than the one in Idaho. Corn or taters?

did not know I had something called Time Machine on my Mac.

It takes a very long time the first run, since it’s basically cloning the hard drive, warts and all, i.e. it’s not just backing up files, it backs up everything. Everything? Yes everything.

We all have different life skills and interests. But I am sure that I am not alone in the angst

No, no you are not. But admitting that is another thing and kudos for doing so. The majority of users are blindly ignorant and [broad brush] men are not only blindly ignorant, but often think that they know and understand way more than they actually do. This is especially the case with tech, where they somehow think they are supposed to know that stuff.

[SmartAleq]

We told you to stop trying to write your name in the snow after a six pack but do you listen?

[mjmlabs]

[Blast it all, I started mouthing off before bringing m'self up to speed. Nevermind, sorry for the interruption. ]

[AHunter3]

I personally think two-factor authentication is "security theatre" and likely to be supplanted in the relatively near future. On my computer, I can't remote in to my workplace without picking up my cell phone and clicking "authenticate" to prove I'm me, but on the phone itself I can remote in, switch to the authentication app when it bings, and get in all on the same device, and it's a lot easier to misplace or steal (or it would be if I used it like everyone else does and toted it around with me everywhere I went).

My guess is fingerprint ID (which Apple has already implemented) plus iris ID (all these devices have good video cameras nowadays). Lots harder to hack and no issue with "oh but the device I set up for 2-factor is back home or in my car".

Originally Posted by hajario

When I bought office furniture in 2018, I downloaded it and was given a key that could be reused if something happened

I just bought a replacement office chair. I didn't realize I had the option of downloading it. That would have been so much easier than dragging the box through the front door and then up the stairs!

[JackieLikesVariety]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

I just bought a replacement office chair. I didn't realize I had the option of downloading it. That would have been so much easier than dragging the box through the front door and then up the stairs!

I assume you have a 3D printer...

[AHunter3]

Nicely done!

I too am familiar with the process of "I haven't the vaguest idea what these steps did but I did these steps and they worked". Having done my share of that to make Unix things happen on the Mac.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

Nicely done!

I too am familiar with the process of "I haven't the vaguest idea what these steps did but I did these steps and they worked". Having done my share of that to make Unix things happen on the Mac.

This is very kind of you, and makes me feel a whole lot better.

[AHunter3]

I'm mostly a non-Dock-user. But I recall that if you right-click anything in the Dock and go to "Options" you can select "Show in Finder" and it will take you to the item itself where it lives on your hard drive.

I'm totally a non-Cloud person. I do not use anything that calls itself "cloud". Cloud bad. Cloud deliberately obscures where things actually are. Cloud treat computer users as too stoopid to understand local folder hierarchies versus "your files are being stored on somebody else's computer, which is acting as a file server".

[AHunter3]

Yeah, the one I'm typing on is just 5 years old (I'm *at work* at home at the moment), but my main *personal use* computer is getting rather venerable at 12 (although does everything I want it to do, if not quite what my employer insists that it be able to do, namely run Mojave or later). Computer I use as a server for a multi-user databases is vintage 2006 — 17 years old now!

I get marked as an Apple fanboi since I've only owned Macs, only run Windows in emulation and/or virtual machines. There is a lot about the Mac environment that I strongly prefer, but Apple-branded apps are generally not among them. BBEdit, not TextEdit. GraphicConverter and Photoshop, not iPhoto or whatever they renamed it to. Got my own homegrown music player I use instead of iTunes. Carbon Copy Cloner, not Time Machine. Eudora (still!), not Apple Mail. Brave, not Safari. Etc.

[eleanorigby]

Here's something weird that worries me. My new laptop's battery is amazing and lasts over a week without charging. Before you alert the media, I tend these days to only use the laptop on weekends, so it's not like I'm taxing the computer.

I wanted to add 2 measly songs to my iTunes/playlist last night. This entailed finding out that the new laptop/iTunes operates totally differently than the old iTunes (and yes, my iTunes on this laptop is up to date). I had to Google and found LOTS of issues with getting iTunes stuff onto an iPhone13, so to Steve Jobs successor, whoever he may be.

But, I managed it (and TBF, it is simpler than previously). But here's the thing. Because I'm a paranoid incompetent nut when it comes to this stuff, I thought I had better plug my computer in to charge while fiddling with this iTunes nonsense.
I did. And the indicator turned orange, which means it needed a charge. All well and good. Thing is, THIS MORNING, 9 HOURS LATER THE INDICATOR IS STILL ORANGE.
This is freaking me out not a little. Battery is only up to 81%. Do not notice how low it was but think I saw 60% last night prior to hooking it up.

This is ominously like my old laptop... but my old laptop when it was 10 years old. This one is 6 months old.

Do I freak out? I am NOT happy about this little orange light.

[Pencil]

[QUOTE=eleanorigby;1805485]so to Steve Jobs successor, whoever he may be.
Tim Cook.

Do I freak out? I am NOT happy about this little orange light.

Do not freak out.

Apple and others have become increasingly better at battery management. That would mean not cranking charging on full to top up everything (as that tends to wear out batteries quicker).

Two things to do:

1. Check the system status
-menu -> about---> System report.
You'll get a window with a column pane on the left where you can pick heading. You want to find Power and then read on the right. A little bit down about charging and battery status. I highly doubt there's an issue, but just to be certain. Things occasionally fail.
2. Go to settings. I don't have your version of MacOS, so I can't really guide you, but there's are things like "Energy savings.." and so on. You want to find and look at all these and their settings. There is probably some choice of charge optimization. There is on my Iphone. If that is on, then that is also probably the reason for the orange light of doom.

[eleanorigby]

Ah. That took some doing, but my battery is 100%. And it took until 4pm today, but the orange light of doom has turned to green. We like green.

Thanks so much. I didn't know that sort of thing existed. I also found Battery in System Settings and that also shows it's all fine.