With all the new stuff coming out, I thought it might be interesting to share what are the most fragile parts of your tech setup.
I was heartened on a recent ATP episode to hear that John Siracusa still uses Quicksilver as his launcher, as I also do. But man, does it crash regularly. I still love it, though.
I know that if QS ever became unusable, there are obviously plenty of other launchers out there (please, don’t recommend, I’m not in the market but I know the market). But there’s one part of my setup that I have no idea how I would replace it.
In our home office and at our church office, we have desktop speakers connected to an Apple Airport Express for AirPlay from our laptops or phones. They are clearly not “young” devices. When they finally die, I don’t know how I would keep the “play music wirelessly from different devices” setup going. Maybe HomePod Minis?
What is most fragile in your setup? Old hardware or not-recently-updated software, or some rickety automation that makes your workflow possible but feels like a Rube Goldberg contraption?
I have a dual setup: a windows machine at school and my Mac at home. I do most of my work on my Mac, I save my files on Onedrive. So it should in principle sync with my work computer. When it works, its great. But for some reason, I no longer have access to my Microsoft account on my Mac. So Onedrive doesn’t work anymore on my Mac. I can’t even check my work emails on my Mac… And my school’s IT refuse to help me, since its not a problem with my work laptop…
A few weeks ago I pulled a 2009 Mac mini out of the closet because it had the only software that would let me fix and recompile a program that was last updated in 2011 and written a decade before that. My fingers were crossed but they do say that Mac minis never die!
I’ve got similar issues with Windows programs running on a virtual machine. I won’t be able to do that once my Intel Macs go away.
The strand of fiber optic cable coming to the house is probably the most fragile part of the setup. It broke one (some years ago) which caused a 100% communication outage here for nearly a week.
I am using eeros that are approaching 10 years old at this point. Is eero still the best mesh WiFi tech? My wife is always complaining about our home WiFi.
The 2012 Mac Mini running MacOS Server that is our home email & calendar server. I know I should migrate to something newer, but I haven’t found anything that combines reliable service with ease of management like this.
A sensible person would use a cloud service provider like Fast ail or similar, but I really don’t want a never endearing subscription that relies on a 3rd party
It’s not just Apple. One of the reasons given for the move from native apps to web based apps is avoiding any operating system (Mac, Windows, etc.) based problems.
I still have photos in Aperture. I’m not comfortable moving to Photos (I don’t want another app that sucks in my files and I don’t have a broadband connection to support the Photos sync model). I have more recent photos in Lightroom, but I’ve never warmed up to it or Adobe enough to move old images over. So I keep an ancient (2013) laptop around that still runs Aperture in case I need those old images.
I’m still using Marvin 3 as an iOS ePub reader, despite it finally being pulled from the App Store after many years of neglect.
On the hardware front there isn’t a single piece of tech in the house that will run Apple Intelligence.
Are your Eeros hardwired together or do they use radios for backhaul? It can make a significant difference in speed. Here are two Speedtest runs on my iMac, one with Ethernet connection and one via Wi-Fi to the hardwired Eero 4’ away from the iMac.
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunalety, my Microsoft account was assigned to me by my school. I can only change the password. My current password works fine if I’m using my work laptop, but if I try with my Mac, my iPad or my iPhone, it keeps telling me that I’m using the wrong password. And before you ask, I’m pretty sure I’m using the right password.
As of this morning I would have to say HomePod mini /Homekit. I had a simple setup, 8 smart bulbs. Last year the 16.4 upgrade bricked the HomePod mini I was using for a hub and I had to purchase a replacement.
This morning Siri told me “some devices aren’t responding” and I find the mini “downloading”. This time the mini did recover but not before losing my HomeKit setup.
Short answer: adding a nest thermostat to HomeKit.
Unnecessarily long answer: I have my wife’s old 2013 MBP running Linux in a VM and that runs Umbrel, which runs home bridge and that runs a plugin to connect Nest to Apple Home.
There’s also a Homebridge plugin to connect one of my window AC’s to homekit in the summer too.
I have helped a few clients to get Microsoft accounts working with their Macs. I have found that the error messages are misleading.
Recently, I had one client report that she kept seeing “wrong password” when trying to set up Mail, even though the same password worked fine when logging in via the web to read her email.
It turned out that there was an extra layer of authentication that was required by the Microsoft account, but for some reason the Mac wasn’t picking up on that and presenting the option. It took a long time to figure that out, but once I realized that, all I had to do was figure out how to ge the Mac to do the right authentication dance.
In this case, it meant connecting Mail.app via System Settings instead of Mail.app’s Preferences. For whatever reason, System Settings presented the second authentication screen but Preferences did not. As soon as we got through that hoop, everything connected and it’s been solid ever since.
And for what it’s worth, I have never been able to get that client’s iPhone to connect to the Microsoft mail server. When I first tried it years ago, tech support told me that Microsoft didn’t support iPhones. Which I knew was BS — Microsoft’s help claimed that the version of software they were running did support iPhones. Tech support either didn’t set it up properly or just blocked iPhones.
All of which is to say, you might be able to get your Mac connected to the school’s Microsoft server by trying to connect via System Settings, but it may be impossible to get your iPhone or iPad to do so.
I don’t really care about the iPhone. But if I could get my work email and Onedrive to work on my Mac, I would be happy. Thanks for sharing, I’ll try it out.
