How to disable the Focus function on an iMac? Preferably permanently!

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On 2024-06-06 15:59, Colour Sergeant Bourne wrote:
> On 6/6/24 1:33 PM, Alan wrote:
>> On 2024-06-06 10:20, Colour Sergeant Bourne wrote:
>>> How to disable the Focus function on an iMac? Preferably permanently!
>>>
>>
>> Just go to Settings and remove all the foci...
>>
>> ...AFTER you turn OFF "Share focus across devices"
>>
>>
>> This is assuming you have the latest version of macOS of course.
>>
>> :-)
>
> Thanks, looks like that took care of it. Have no idea how I managed to
> accidentally turn it on in the first place!

Apple's opaque status and wording in all things related to focus don't
help: you made me go look at the settings for focus.

* Do Not Disturb shows - but it's not clear what state it's actually in
(A simple ON-OFF slider would do the trick).

*Allowed People show "None allowed" under it - but drilling deeper and
it shows: calls from anybody are allowed;

Etc. Settings on Mac has become very cruddy in layout and what it
shows. (Not to mention finer control of date/time formatting which has
narrowed in scope).

--
British writing about the US can be condescending, but that there is
value in an outsiders’ perspective because they can “see the alarming
cracks in the wall the resident has stopped noticing… but also see the
grandeur of a room where the resident can only see the cracks.”
Jesse Armstrong.

When I put my Mac to sleep for the night, all the external hard drives
spin up for a few minutes around once an hour or so which is irritating
me. The screen does not wake up. I was wondering if anyone had any
suggestions for how to prevent this.

I'm running a 2020 Retina 5K iMac under macOS 12.6.7. In my Energy Saver
System Preferences, both 'enable power nap' and 'wake for network
access' are UNchecked. 'put hard disks to sleep when possible' is checked.

André

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service.

I have this old computer as a living room backup. It wasn't started for
a while and then started booting to a shut down when just past the
halfway mark on the blue ribbon progress bar. First aid wouldn't
complete its verification and nor would fsck in single user mode.

Eventually I managed to get FSCK -Rc to repair a huge number of clusters
(?) and now the whole drive appears to be completely empty in DU

But First Aid runs fine.

I dont remember what OS was on it (it may have been Mojave) but trying
to reinstall seems to want to run El Capitain.

Whatever it was, I can't re-install anything. At first it says drive
locked and then it wants to do a fresh install of El Capitain.

What is the best way of getting answer to the question of what is on the
drive or if DU says NOTHING, is that the only answer? I'd like to look
to see if there were any photos or videos on this computer which I
haven't got on any backup drive before I format and re-install

On 2024-06-09 17:21, Amanda Ripanykhazov wrote:
> I have this old computer as a living room backup. It wasn't started for
> a while and then started booting to a shut down when just past the
> halfway mark on the blue ribbon progress bar. First aid wouldn't
> complete its verification and nor would fsck in single user mode.
>
> Eventually I managed to get FSCK -Rc to repair a huge number of clusters
> (?)  and now the whole drive appears to be completely empty in DU

The "repairing" of clusters may have also removed the information
connecting all the files rendering the disk useless for MacOS.

There may be data recovery programs that can go in and suss out some files.

> But First Aid runs fine.
>
> I dont remember what OS was on it (it may have been Mojave) but trying
> to reinstall seems to want to run El Capitain.

Usually Macs want to re-install from the OS they were born with (I
think) if the disk is completely borked.

> Whatever it was, I can't re-install anything. At first it says drive
> locked and then it wants to do a fresh install of El Capitain.
>
> What is the best way of getting answer to the question of what is on the
> drive or if DU says NOTHING, is that the only answer? I'd like to look
> to see if there were any photos or videos on this computer which I
> haven't got on any backup drive before I format and re-install

I do hope your backups have all (or at least most) of what you want.

Assuming you did have backups, I'd not invest much more time into it -
fresh install recover from backup (or sell it) and move on.

--
"It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid
the culture and independence of the ancient States of Europe."
Winston Churchill

Coming with the new iOS and Mac OS' this fall, from the Mac you can
access your iPhone (say in another room) to pretty much full
functionality. The iPhone itself stays locked.

--
"It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid
the culture and independence of the ancient States of Europe."
Winston Churchill

On 2024-06-10, Alan Browne <singularity@blackhole.org> wrote:
>
> Apple announce their AI as "Apple Intelligence" with the emphasis on
> _personal_ and _private_.
>
> Integrated of course across Apple apps. (... and 3rd party via App
> Intents API).
>
> Strong "action" oriented commands.
>
> AI will be on device for most processes.
>
> Private Cloud Compute for loads that can't be done on device - using
> Apple Silicon based servers. No storage of your data.
> Independent 3rd party source code verification.
>
> Siri to get AI - and boy does she need it. (Recent use has come up with
> a lot of flaws). Also remembers the recent context in Siri as well as
> your cross app context over time.
>
> Writing tools for various apps to rewrite messages (such as a mail
> message) in different ways. Grammar checking, tone, etc. Auto TL;DR
> summary generator, etc. and so on.
>
> Reading tools to summarize incoming e-mails with relevant content.
>
> Emoji generator (text what you want, it gens an "emoji" like
> illustration. (silly fun).

Bring it! The way they describe the architecture and the demonstrations
all look very promising!

> ChatGPT 4o integration w/o an account. If you have a ChatGPT account,
> then "paywall" features will be accessible as well...
>
> (As soon as the Keynote mentioned ChatGPT - Apple stock shot up).

I can do without the ChatGPT stuff. Much more interested in Apple's own
private curated AI capabilities.

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JR

On 2024-06-10 14:16:49 +0000, Alan Browne said:

> On 2024-06-10 09:40, Amanda Ripanykhazov wrote:
>> On 6/9/24 7:40 PM, Percival John Hackworth wrote:
>>
>>> Sounds like a dead or dying hard drive.
>>>
>>> Install a new disk into the machine and reinstall MacOS from the network
>>> (command-R from boot).
>>> Attach the old drive to the system with a USB cable. Amazon sells ones from
>>> Sabrent but there are others.
>>> When the new install asks if you want to migrate from another machine, select
>>> the old drive as the source OR use your latest Time Machine Backup.
>>>
>> Thanks guys! I kinda knew that was the position, - I was just hoping
>> that I might have overlooked some option for reading what was on the
>> drive.  But short of re-building whatever the Master Boot Record is
>> called on a Mac, I do accept that this is unlikely.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure this is just a backup computer and whatever is on it is
>> somewhere else as well so it just isnt worthwhile spending too much
>> time getting it working.
>>
>> I also agree that this whole situation only arises because the drive is
>> on it's way out and the computer urgently needs throwing away,  rather
>> than wasting time pulling it apart to put a new HD in it
>
>
> What year is the computer? That it wants to "El Capitan" suggests 2015
> which (to me) is not an old computer. Core 2 Duo suggest closer to
> 2010 if not older...
>
> It could be (with a new drive and install) a great starter Mac for
> someone out there with modest computing needs.

A few years ago I bought a used iMac Intel Core i5 (Mid-2014) that had
Mavericks installed on it. I transferred El Capitan from an Intel Core
2 Duo over to it (using CC Cloner) and tried to upgrade the new machine
to Big Sur (the maximum OS it will run) from the network. Instead it
installed Mojave. Actually I'm glad it turned out like that, GUI-wise.
Strangely it keeps an "upgrade to Big Sur" reminder in the Software
Update control panel.