The IT Nerd

The most controversial thing about the MacBook Pro that was just released is the notch. While it gives you insanely thin bezels, it does cut into the menu bar. That’s a problem for me as I run iStat Menus which monitors things like RAM and CPU usage as well as system temperature. If I have enough things active, it runs up against the notch:

On the left side of the screenshot is where the notch is. If anything else enters the menu bar, it goes under the notch. For example I’ve gotten rid of the Bluetooth icon for that reason as it was inaccessible at times. I needed a more elegant solution. Which is why after some research I installed a utility called Bartender. What Bartender does is allows you to take control of your menu bar so you can decide what is visible, and when it is visible. In my case when I run it, it makes my menu bar look like this:

While I clearly have a lot more space on my menu bar, you’re likely wondering where the rest of the stuff went to. Well, the stuff that I don’t need to look at on a constant basis gets placed here:

You can see that there’s a hidden menu bar with items that I don’t need on a constant basis. You can make it reappear if you click on the three dots. But the really cool thing is that they can reappear when needed. For example:

• When I am on battery power, the battery icon will show.
• When Time Machine is doing a backup, the Time Machine icon will show.
• When I am disconnected from WiFi, the WiFi icon will show.
• When my Cisco AnyConnect VPN Connection gets dropped, the icon will show.
• When Garmin Connect has a notification, the icon will show.

The net result is that I get some space on my menu bar that allows me to see what I need to see, while making sure that the notch will not be an issue. And this setup can help anyone who doesn’t have a new MacBook Pro, but simply has a Mac with a ton of menu bar items.

Hopefully this tip helps you. If you have any ideas as to how to bring sanity to your menu bar, leave a comment or send me an email and share your thoughts.

So you just got a brand you Mac with the M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Mac processor in it. Congratulations! You absolutely made the right decision. But to fully leverage that new processor, you need apps that are designed for Apple Silicon so that you get the best performance and the best compatibility. Which means the question is, how do you make sure that your apps are ones that work with Apple Silicon? Before I get into the two ways that I would recommend to do that, let me explain the three different app types and why you should care:

• X86-64 app running under Rosetta 2: If you’re coming from another Mac, or the developer of the app in question is on the lazy side, they may have only created an app that runs on Intel Macs that have Intel processors using the X86-64 bit instruction set. Which means that when you use that app on an Apple Silicon computer, macOS will have to use a translation layer called Rosetta 2 to allow it to run on Apple Silicon. Most of the time this works very well. However it is entirely possible that you may not be getting the best performance from the app in Rosetta 2. Also, it is also possible that you may have some issues with the app as no translation is perfect.
• Universal Apps: This is where things get a bit confusing. Apple uses the term “Universal” for Apple Silicon/M1 optimized apps which work with Intel Macs too. But Apple uses the same term to refer to the same app being available on iOS and macOS. In this case, I am talking about the former as that form of Universal App ensures that you get good performance and compatibility with Apple Silicon Macs.
• Apple Silicon Apps: These are apps that are native on Apple Silicon. These apps will give you the absolute best performance on your Apple Silicon Mac.

At the moment, I would expect most people who own Apple Silicon Macs to have Universal as developers really only want to write one app that works on both Intel and Apple Silicon platforms. But over the next few years, I expect that developers will transition over to Apple Silicon apps because there will be less and less Intel Macs in the market as time goes on and Apple will eventually drop support for Rosetta 2 for that reason. Thus it’s in your interest to make sure that you have as many apps that are Apple Silicon compatible as possible to stay ahead of this.

So, how can you tell what types of apps you’re running. Apple has a built in tool called System Information that can help you with that. Simply go to the Apple Menu –> About This Mac –> System Report. This will bring up System Information. Scroll down to the Software section and pick Applications. You should see this:

Here is where you will see all the apps that are on your Mac. Under “Kind” you will the type of app. In the screen shot above, you will see that I have the Apple Silicon version of Zoom, but everything else on the screen is a Universal app. You will also see iOS apps which is fine, Intel apps are ones which you should upgrade if you can, and Other. I honestly have no clue what that is. And nothing that I searched for cleared that up for me. If anyone out there has any info on this, I’d really appreciate a comment or an email with some clarification.

The second option is to use an app called Silicon which scans your computer for apps and displays everything in a user friendly way:

If you see a green dot next to the app, you’re good. If you see a yellow dot next to the app, then you need to update the app. It really doesn’t get any simpler.

Once you have an idea of what types of apps you have, I would go to the developer’s website or to the App Store to see if there is an update. If there isn’t one, I would email the developer as that may encourage them to update their app seeing as they will have to do it at some point.

Hopefully this helps you to get the most out of your new Apple Silicon Mac. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll do my best to help you out.

This Friday marks the release of the Apple Watch Series 7. That has sparked a number of inquiries into my inbox as to which Apple Watch that one should get. Hopefully this article can help you in deciding which one you should get.

Let’s start at the top. Apple has three Apple Watches on offer: 

• The Apple Watch Series 7
• The Apple Watch SE
• The Apple Watch Series 3

Buying the Apple Watch Series 3 is a complete waste of your money if you are in the market for an Apple Watch. Why you ask? Here’s the reasons why I would avoid it like it is radioactive:

• It has an S3 processor which is a 32-bit processor. It’s also the last 32-bit processor that Apple supports. Which means it’s not long for this world. It is entirely likely that in the next year or two that Apple will drop support for it. After all, they dropped support for anything below the Series 3 in watchOS 7. 
• Not only that, the Series 3 is not all that fast. Though I will admit that if you have never had an Apple Watch, you won’t know what you’re missing.
• The Series 3 doesn’t support Apple’s Family Sharing feature. That’s the feature that allows you to activate and manage an Apple Watch without the person on the receiving end of that Apple Watch needing an iPhone. As long as the Apple Watch in question is a cellular model.
• The Series 3 lacks ECG functionality and fall detection functionality that is found in the SE and Series 7, and the blood oxygen monitoring that is exclusive to the Series 7.

For those reasons, I’d avoid the Series 3. That leaves the SE and Series 7. Here’s what I think of those two options:

• If you’re price sensitive and you don’t care about the always on display and you don’t care about blood oxygen monitoring, the SE is for you.
• The SE is also a great choice to give a child or a parent or grandparent an Apple Watch as you can leverage the Family Sharing feature at a lower price point.
• If however you want “the new hotness” of the most recent Apple Watch, or you want the option of getting a titanium or stainless steel case which the SE does not offer, or the 20% bigger screen versus the SE interests you, then the Apple Watch Series 7 is for you. Not to mention that the Series 7 is also noticeably faster than the SE.

You can’t really go wrong either way as both options will be supported for Apple for years to come. It’s just a matter of deciding what features you want and how much you’re willing to spend to get them.

Hopefully that helps you to decide what Apple Watch to get. But if you’re still having a hard time deciding, drop me a note or leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out.

After installing iOS 15, the emails that come through on my phone were silent even though I have sounds associated with him either default or custom sounds. I went through the usual troubleshooting which was as follows:

• I have power cycled my iPhone 12 Pro no change.
• I did a hard reset. No change.
• I changed the sound but there’s still no sound notification when emails come in.

I started to dig around and it appears that Apple made a change that isn’t inherently clear to users who were used to the behavior in iOS 15. If you go Settings –> Mail –> Notifications –> Customize Notifications, you’ll see this:

Note the Customize Notifications option. If you click on that, and choose an email account on the next screen, you then see this:

Chances are, this is turned off, turn on alerts and make sure that a sound is selected. In other words, it should look like this:

Now if you have an Apple Watch, you need to do some extra work. Specifically:

• Go to the Watch App on your iPhone
• Go to Mail
• Change “Mirror my iPhone” to “Custom”
• Select “Send to Notification Centre”

That way, unless it’s a VIP I won’t get a notification on my Apple Watch.

By doing all of this, it roughly approximates the behavior that was present in iOS 14 and earlier. I say approximates because this does not fully fix this problem which I am certain is a bug. One that I hope will be fixed in a future iOS update.

Has this helped you? I would appreciate it if you could provide some feedback and let me know.

On Monday, Apple released a ton of software to the world. And that as is typical for me caused my phone to ring and my inbox to fill up from people who had minor “quirks” in terms of how the software looked and functioned that annoyed them. I’ve collected the common “quirks” into this article along with how to fix them. I’ll start with Safari 15. It has a feature that colors the Tab Bar. If that annoys you, here’s how to turn it off:

1. Go to the “Safari” menu, then “Preferences”
2. Go to “Tabs”
3. Uncheck “Show color in tab bar”

Now this same feature exists in iOS/iPadOS 15. Here’s how you disable this same feature in those OSes:

1. Go to “Settings” then “Safari”
2. Under the “Tabs” section turn off “Website Tinting”. Note: On iPadOS the option is called “Show Color in Tab Bar”

Safari on iOS and iPadOS 15 also moved the address bar to the bottom of the screen by default. Based on what my clients are saying, it’s not a popular change. But you can change it back to the top easily:

1. Go to “Settings” then “Safari”
2. Under the “Tabs” section, select “Single Tab”

watchOS 8 removed the dedicated bed icon for activating sleep mode. That caused a few calls from clients of mine who used Apple’s sleep tracking feature. In watchOS 7, you simply had to swipe up from the bottom and click on the bed icon to activate sleep mode. Now in watchOS 8, it’s tied to the new Focus Mode feature which Apple defines as “A powerful new set of tools gives you more control over how you prioritize your time and attention. So you can find balance and stay focused on whatever you’re doing in the moment.” The problem is that this change is confusing lots of users. To save you stress of figuring it out when you’re going to bed, here’s how you activate sleep mode:

1. Swipe up from the bottom to display Control Center.

2. Find the moon icon, press and hold it to get the menu pictured below.

3. Choose Sleep.

Finally, some of you might have issues with iOS 15 where you might have problems with Bluetooth devices (Bluetooth headsets specifically) and WiFi. The solution could be classified as a “nuclear option.” But it seems to fix most things that have been reported to me.

1. Go to Settings
2. Go to General
3. Go to Transfer or Reset iPhone
4. Go To Reset
5. Click on Reset Network Settings

The reason why I call this the “nuclear option” is that you will have to re-join any WiFi networks that the phone was paired with after you do this. Which by extension means that you will need to know the passwords of said networks before you go down this path. It also seems to reset some cellular options like roaming preferences and WiFi calling. But it seems to clear up strange Bluetooth and WiFi issues. Thus it’s worth trying.

Do you have an “quirks” in watchOS 8, iOS/iPadOS 15 and Safari 15 that you’ve come across and fixed? Please leave a comment below and share your wisdom. Alternately, if you have a “quirk” that you need help with, leave a comment below and I will try and assist you.

UPDATE: Someone emailed me asking where Private Browsing Mode was in Safari on iOS/iPad OS 15. I am not sure why Apple did this, but it is buried in the tab menu:

If you click on it, you’ll be given the Private option:

Click on it and you’ll be in Private Browsing Mode.

Choose done. To get out of Private Browsing Mode, simply follow these steps and choose “x Tabs” where “x” is the number of tabs that you have open.

My inbox got flooded with questions about the M1 Mac starting moments after I posted this review on the MacBook Air with the M1 processor. The main question being if one should get 8GB or 16GB of RAM.

Here’s the short answer: If you can afford it get 16GB of RAM.

Here’s the detailed answer: The Apple M1 processor is a SOC or system on a chip which is similar to what they do with the iPhone. Meaning everything is integrated on the chip. CPU, RAM, GPU (graphics processing unit), everything. That means you get whatever is on the chip and you can’t upgrade it later. That makes deciding on how much RAM you need a big decision. Here’s the thing, Macs last a long time. I am typing this article on a 2015 15″ MacBook Pro which is still is able to run the latest operating systems, and it still gets security updates, and doesn’t feel slow (by Intel standards) despite being five years old. It’s not unusual to get as many as six or even seven years out of a Mac. Thus by going to 16GB regardless of what you are doing, you are truly future proofing things and avoiding the possibility that you may need to buy a whole new computer should your needs evolve.

Now, here’s the only caveat that I will point out. If you’re using these M1 Macs as a bridge to get a quick speed increase while waiting for the Apple Silicon Mac of your dreams, then you might have an argument to only get 8GB. But the flip side of that is that this is dependent on your workflow. If your workflow is RAM intensive, photo or video editing is a great example of this, then you’re going 16GB regardless.

While I’m here, I’ll also help you with your storage requirements. All of the M1 Macs that Apple has released come with 256GB of storage. Will that work for you or do you need more? Here’s my rule of thumb for that:

• If you currently have a computer with 256GB of storage, get 512GB.
• If you currently have a computer with 512GB of storage, get 1TB.
• If you currently have a computer with 1TB of storage, get 2TB.

The reason being that storage creep is a thing. As in you slowly tend to run out of storage as you use your computer because you save more music, more movies, more pictures and the like as you use it. Thus getting more storage than you need now will save you headaches later.

There’s one final thing. When it comes to the MacBook Air specifically, the base model comes with 7 GPU cores and the more upscale model comes with 8. Neither the 13″ MacBook Pro or the Mac Mini with the M1 processor have this option. Does it matter? Given my experience with a base MacBook Air with 7 GPU cores, I would say no. The computer was so insanely fast that I suspect that the 8th core would only give you marginal gains unless you were using your MacBook Air to edit 4K video or something like that. The flip side to that is that if you’re really interested in editing 4K video on a regular basis, you should really be looking at the the 13″ MacBook Pro with the M1 processor as that comes with cooling fans that will give you a bit better performance on top of the fact that it comes out of the box with 8 GPU cores.

Hopefully that helps you to configure the right M1 based Mac for your needs. If you still have questions, email me and I will help you as best as I can.