For those of you that want certified refurbished Mac hardware, the following is Apple's site for refurb items: Certified Refurbished Products - Apple
I've been thinking of replacing my iMac with a Mac Studio (which would require me to find another display). If I do, it will be from the Apple refurb site.
I've a Samsung Galaxy Watch that my wife gave me for Christmas a few years ago. It wasn't a new product when she got it for me (I believe the next version was released less than a year later).
This watch sits between their S3 and Watch 4 - they botched the naming convention for this watch and just named it Galaxy Watch, which is confusing as hell!
It replaced my Galaxy Gear S watch, which was a cellular networked watch. That watch was functional but dated when I got it, as well. I loved taking calls from that watch, though!
This particular watch is the 46mm BT version of the Galaxy Watch. It works well enough but stopped being fully supported maybe a year ago (it runs on the Tizen OS, which has been depreciated). Well, let me rephrase: the watch is still supported; it gets occasional updates, but nothing like the current Samsung Watch products (because Tizen OS isn't supported anymore - it will eventually die). The last update I got was 8/18/2022, a small update that enhances GPS stability. The update prior to that was 11/2021 and was probably the very last large update.
I'd replaced this watch with a FitBit Sense, which is equivalent to an Apple Watch Series 7, but the Sense stopped working maybe a month ago (it won't charge). I'm in the process of RMAing the device. They'll send me another one once I send mine back to them.
I bought the Sense using employee stipend funds (bought it during the thick of Covid - the employer gave us funds to use to stay healthy at home). I should've just bought a damned Apple Watch instead, because Fitbits aren't really dependable/durable. There's a chance I'll eventually have issues with the replacement.
To be honest, I may just sell the replacement and use the funds to buy an Apple Watch.
So, for now, I reverted back to my Samsung Watch and am liking it. I love it's heft and it's UI is easy to navigate. It's also GPS-capable, so it should be able to track my runs and other physical activities (using tethered software, I assume). It's doing a lot of what the Sense does. The only thing the Sense does that this Samsung Watch doesn't is sleep tracking and heart monitoring.
Continuing to use the Samsung Watch even once I get the Sense replacement, wouldn't be the worse idea, I guess.
We'll see.
The Apple Watch Series 7 is still on my radar, too.
I posted about buying Airpod Pros earlier in the year.
One thing I absolutely hate about them (and all AirPods) is the fact that they won't stay in my ear. I shouldn't have to spend this amount of money for ear buds that won't stay put.
Now, I'll say right now that my ear canals are hairy. I'm not a hairy guy by any means. It took me YEARS to grow a fully fleshed-out mustache and I can't grow a full beard (I have no problem growning a goatee). My legs aren't extremely hairy, nor are my arms or chest (or armpits). My ear has a good amount of hair growing from the ear canals, though.
At first, I tried clipping my ear hairs, and it works, but it's a bit tedious and I don't like the barbed feeling of the ends poking into me when I insert the Airpods.
I was close to selling them and getting a pair of Beats instead, as I heard they're much better at staying in place.
I was reading the MacRumors forums this week and saw that someone mentioned that they used a product called Comply premium earphone tips. I ordered a set two days ago.
They arrived today and while sitting on my patio drinking a beer, I tried them.
OMFG. They work. They work very well.
I'm using the medium set (these came in a set of three, sized small, medium, and large).
I also bought a magnetic ear buds tether, as well, but I think I was overly redundant. Honestly, I wouldn't have known these would work, because I've tried at least 5 other sets of ear bud tips - only the sixth set worked.
It's time to wear out these AirPods!
Note: I also bought a Spigen Ultra Hybrid Mag (MagFit) clear case. I want to get a MagSafe battery, but at $99, maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list.
I've some Mac-specific questions.
1. I added keywords to many of my pictures and videos in the Photos app. I've created smart folders on my MBA. The photos and videos are stored in iCloud for sharing with other Mac hosts. When I view those photos on my Mac Mini, I can see the keywords but the smart folder criteria was never copied/synched to iCloud. I'd rather not create another set of smart folders on the Mini. The question is: is there a way to copy/export smart folders from one system for import into another system? This might also be a good iCloud feature request for photos.
2. Can smart folders be shared across a network?
I'll attempt to answer these questions myself via research and trial/error, but I wanted track the research here.
UPDATE:
I ended up enabling iCloud photo sharing on my Mini, which copied all my photos and videos to the Mini. I just noticed that all of my created smart folders were copied over to the Mini, too! There's no need to delve into question 2.
UPDATE 2:
Sometime in December 2022, I disabled iCloud photo sharing on both the Mini and my MBA, as the pictures had consumed my 200 GB of iCloud space. They are backed up, which is good, but I can't currently view the photos as active photos. This is a major reason why potential Apple device owners should carefully evaluate drive space options when considering the purchase of Apple appliances.
Since I've been using the Mac Mini and Macbook Air, I've migrated my browser usage to Microsoft Edge.
Why? I like the way Edge manages tabs. I can have many tabs but the tabs that aren't being actively used are disabled until you begin to use them (they're on standby, using minimal memory).
I decided that I wanted to use the same browser and tab manager browser extension combination on my gaming machine, which runs MS Windows 10 Pro.
The results were disappointing. While the browser extension works, it also apparently kills YouTube audio. No matter what "fixes" I applied, the only solution that allows YouTube audio is removing the Workona Tab Manager browser extension. When I removed it, I regained audio. When I reinstalled it, I lost audio.
I left the following review for the Workona folks:
I've been playing with Photos and smart albums. I like smart albums a lot, but I'm running into an issue where I'm seeing LOTs of duplicates within the Photos app.
As mentioned in the prior post, I've made a backup (and I've removed the duplicates). I think I'm going to delete everything that's in my Photos app and then import all of the photos that is in my backup archive. I'd have to start over with my attempt at organizing using smart folders, but that's OK.
You'd think that Photos would have a built-in duplicates management system. Supposedly, iOS does, but I didn't see the feature in my Photos app on my iPhone 13 Pro Max (using v15.6).
I haven't taken any pictures or videos in maybe a week, but I'll be sure to check and backup any recent videos and photos before I commence with this project.
UPDATE:
From my Notes -
8/13/2022
I started playing with smart albums in Photos on my MBA.
I ran into the issue of many pictures having 3+ duplicates.
I want to start fresh (I’ve a backup of my photos, and the backup has zero duplicates).
I deleted the photos that are in the Photos app on the MBA, then went to disable Photo in iCloud.
Since iCloud will wait for 30 days to delete the photos, I logged into iCloud from a web browser, and am currently deleted them all manually. iCloud won’t let me delete more than 1,000 pictures at a time, and waiting for the deletion to complete takes a few minutes.
UPDATE - deletion is done.
I had to wait until iCloud registered that there were no more photos/videos being stored (I waited for the iPhone to show no files in Photos as well).
Importing the photos from my backup drive was trivial. I went from 2500+ files to 1,586!
I re-enabled Photos in iCloud (in the Settings configuration panel on the MBA). I’m currently awaiting for the iCloud backup/sync process to kick in now.
I deleted all the tags I was using, since there were duplicate tags too (some were all lower case and some had the first letter capitalized - gahhh!!)
I kept my smart folders, though…there was nothing wrong with those and I can edit the filters easily.
This refresh worked better than I’d thought!
One thing I need to ensure of is that I positively need to backup my backup (I’ve a beefy NAS). It’s already holding my iTunes music (which I also cleaned up - it had a ton of duplicates too, and wasn’t well organized).
It’s late right now (3:30 AM). I’m waiting for tomorrow to finish up this project and for iCloud to backup the photos I’ve just restored.
————
It’s now 4 PM.
I checked at 12 PM and iCloud had just finished backing up all the videos and photos. That took quite a while and the dataset wasn’t all that large, either (27 GB).
I spent the last 2 hours creating keywords and assigning them to the photos and videos. Since I’d kept the old Smart Folders, I just had to adjust them to use the new keywords I’d created.
This is REALLY nice. As well, the keywords that are assigned to the photos appear to be synced with my iPhone, as I can now search the photos on my phone using the keywords that I created and and assigned. I’m wondering If I should do another backup now, to solidify those keywords - I do NOT want to have to create and assign keywords again.
Below are my notes from learning a bit about smart folders in MacOS.
Copied from a Notes entry:
8/3/2022 - Smart Folders
I want to better organize my photos and videos (that are stored in Photos and currently shared to iCloud).
I also wanted to try using Smart Folders.
I’ve also never backed up my photos, so I got the idea that I could save my photos as a backup, while also sorting them (Photos contains both videos and photos), and also removing duplicate photos.
One thing I had a problem with is determining how to get the smart folders to only search a certain drive. By default, when created smart folders, the criteria is set to search the native SSD. I couldn’t find a way to change this to search against the Extreme Pro.
I noticed that there are many duplicates of photos (they’re appended with (1), (2)…). I need to study up on how to use smart folders to eliminate the duplicates (if possible).
Once I get the duplicates removed, I’ll need to go through them and get rid of any needless photos/videos. The plan is to archive them all, as well as not have them taking up iCloud space and hard drive space on both the Mini and MBA.
I also couldn’t find a way to refine an existing smart folder’s name, so I created a new one and gave it the name I needed, then saved it. I then had the problem of having the original smart folder and couldn’t find out how to delete it. The following URL helped to delete that folder: https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-an-Item-from-the-Finder-Sidebar-on-a-Mac.
8/4/2022 - Smart Folders 2
After watching a few videos on Youtube about how to create searches and saving the searches as smart folders, I did the following:
