(Part 2) Top products from r/osx

anything with an FTDI chipset is your best bet these days - I see one other person recommending prolific, I have had nothing but bad luck with those, at least if you need anything above 9600 baud. I keep one of these in my bag:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AHYJWWG

On the software side, there is an excellent app on the app store called, cleverly enough, Serial. It's not free, but it works very well, and shouldn't require you to install any drivers. If you'd rather skip paying, minicom is in brew, that works well too.

Pretty sure that Epson will just gobble up what it can in memory, then start sending, and the additional pages will just spool and send when they can. This is how buffers work on printers too.

Another couple options.

MetroFax is an eFax service that you can upload documents too. There’s probably a file size limit, so you may need to break it into several jobs. Also it will cost money per page I believe.

There are still USB fax modems (https://www.amazon.com/Robotics-USR5637-Controller-Dial-Up-External/dp/B0013FDLM0/) that will work with macOS. In this case, it’s essentially a print job that will spool to disk, then send. Doubt you’d be able to find one easily on short notice.

Good luck.

Ars Technica's OS X reviews are very extensive and present a lot of info in a straightforward manner (it may be helpful to go back and read the Mountain Lion (OS x 10.8) article as well).

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/

If you'd rather have something more like a reference book I'd recommend The Missing Manual series. Again, you may find it helpful to read up on the previous version of the OS as well, because Mavericks builds on a bunch of stuff that was introduced in Mountain Lion.

http://www.amazon.com/OS-Mavericks-The-Missing-Manual/dp/1449362249

> Would a cooling dock be ok if I decided to use a mechanical...

An enclosure like this would probably work best. The cooling dock could get the job done if you have a metal enclosure or one with holes that allow air to pass through, though.

> Forgive my ignorance but is it possible to boot from a ssd only and access my home folder and files from a separate mechanical

Yep! You could even (slowly) boot from an SD card if you wanted. Just install the OS to the drive you want to boot from and format the other one as HFS+.

Server: http://www.amazon.com/OS-Server-5-0-Essentials-Supporting/dp/0134434773/

Troubleshooting: http://www.amazon.com/Support-Essentials-10-11-Supporting-Troubleshooting/dp/013442820X/

These books map closely to the Apple Training Courses offered by Apple Certified Training Centers. And the certification tests are based on the courses, so if you can study these books, you should be able to take the tests and get certified.

And once you get your feet wet, you'll discover a plethora of "Mac Admin" blogs and sites like MacEnterprise, AFP548, Rich Trouton's blog, Ben Toms' blog, and more. These have many answers for solving problems and doing tasks as a Mac sysadmin.

My opinion is that if you want to get a little more serious about audio for your PC, you would also need to get an external DAC/AMP with SPDIF interface. There are such units out there that would connect via USB.

From here, get yourself a decent set of open back headphones... don't go cheap. Here are two models to consider.

Beyerdynamic DT990:
http://www.amazon.com/Beyerdynamic-DT-990-Pro-250-Professional-Acoustically-Applications/dp/B0011UB9CQ

Sennheiser HT650: http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-9969-HD-650-Headphones/dp/B00018MSNI/

I recently got the HT650s and I love them!


Here is where the amp comes in; these headphones have higher impedance, so they need the amp to drive them, then the DAC to convert the digital audio to analog for you. For instance, the DT990 comes in a 250 ohm and 600 ohm variety, so you would look for an amp that can drive that amount accordingly.

Me personally, I went with the Fiio E17 / E09 combination, which works fine for my setup. The E17 is also portable, so I would have the option to use it on the go if needed.

I posted a similar thread a few years back, and it seemed to come down to this book. I bought it, but it's pretty above my head and I haven't had the time to really try and delve in.

Have you looked into MaxMSP?

John Siracusa writes reviews of new major OS X releases for Ars Technica. These reviews are more than a dozen pages long (to the point that the most recent one is also available as a Kindle ebook), so he has to start writing them well in advance of the actual release, using the developer Golden Master seed.

howardgrigg is implying that he will now have to start all over, since he may have found bugs that are now fixed, or successfully used features that now have bugs. (In reality, he'll probably just go through and retest everything—or at least every bug—he mentioned individually.)

I bought a pair of 3TB Hitachi internal drives like this on Newegg during Black Friday sales in 2014 (or was it Cyber Monday?) ...anyway... a pair of internal drives plus a 2 drive dock similar to this that cost me maybe $20 on sale? Everything was on holiday sales, so 2 drives plus the dock for them cost me less than $150. I popped the drives into the dock, plugged it in and assigned one drive to Time Machine and the other to SuperDuper. Everything just runs itself. Zero hassle.

what model computer do you have?

some of the older macbooks had a combo 1/8"/mini-optical port. you could go from that to some sort of box (something similar to this) that converts an optical signal to discrete 5.1. and to be honest, with headphones you're not going to notice the difference between 5.1 and 7.1.

i don't know that the newer macbooks (specifically the air that i have) support the optical connection through the headphone jack.

another option might be to find an external USB audio device but without doing a lot of research, i don't know if there's one that's specifically mac compatible.

• The Linux Command Line
  
• Explain Shell
  
• Apple Developer Bash Reference
  
• Take Control of the Mac Command Line
  
• Command Line Crash Course
  
  Also, install homebrew for package management. Mac uses its own version of bash with some stuff slightly different than most linux distros, but they are pretty much the same.

Unplug the wireless usb dongle that came with it, hard reboot OSX then plug the usb transmitter back in, preferably on a port closest to were the mouse is. check and see if the mouse behaves better when it's very close to the usb transceiver, if it works fine close then it's most likely interference. What I did is bought a usb extension cable and put the transceiver on the end of it and taped it under my desk right above the mouse.

If it's shit all around and works on other computers fine in the same room, then that points to the usb transceiver is not fully compatible with OSX. In that case, take 5$ and go purchase a new one that's guaranteed 100% solid on OSX.

If you search the r/hackintosh sub there should be many posts discussing which ones to get and which ones to avoid.

This is the one I use and it's generally praised in the community.
https://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Bluetooth-Micro-Adapter-GBU521/dp/B007GFX0PY/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

Double check with customer reviews that it's the correct model number that works with OSX, companies are known to switch the product up with a different cheaper chip after word gets out that they are using decent parts in them...


make sure your batteries are charged and no major source of interference, like a microwave, cordless phone or a powerbox is close by (even a powerbox on the other side of the wall will cause interference).

If the mouse is just dying from old age then pick up a corded mouse to avoid all this shite in the future.

You need a USB to serial adapter, like https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Converter-Prolific-Chipset-TU-S9/dp/B0007T27H8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1499385175 or https://www.amazon.com/Console-Essential-Accesory-Ubiquity-Switches/dp/B01AFNBC3K/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1499385175&sr=8-8&keywords=usb+to+serial+adapter . Anything with Prolific will work, or SiLabs (also seen in Cygnal stuff). Both have OSX drivers. I think the Prolific drivers may be built in these days.

Anyway - Install the drivers and then you can use screen or other tools to attach to the tty, e.g. screen /dev/tty.<something> 115200. All the USB to serial stuff will generally present as a TTY device in /dev.

I have a similar setup at home. I used the 4-port version of this:

http://www.iogear.com/product/GCS1642/

This is the 2-port version, and MSRP is just under $500. Amazon has it for $345 http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-2-Port-Switch-Audio-GCS1642/dp/B004GKM9JK Add a few DVI-HDMI cables from Monoprice for a few dollars, and you are in business.

EDIT: Added Amazon link

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing/apple/the-linux-users-guide-to-mac-os-x-624449

Most thorough book on OS X: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321963555/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1449332315&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1QDDYGBHMR9CG5DR1RDZ

Bro, this looks reliable https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Replacement-Magsafe-Magnetic-Adapter/dp/B07RPD51XV/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?keywords=magsafe+2+charger&qid=1563365417&s=gateway&sprefix=magsafe&sr=8-5

That seems to be what I have gotten from my "research" as well. I was wondering on your view of the process of replacement...e.g. difficulties that you will encounter and so on for when (if) I make the jump.

For reference this is the SSD I am considering: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3W19MO/ref=twister_B00EHFJJHY

I'm getting the same crash on my early 2014 MBA

I'm running an external monitor through thunderbolt and another one through this dongle (http://www.amazon.com/J5-Create-JUA350-Display-Adapter/dp/B0079VXOWO/)

Lid closed