Category Archives: Uncategorized

2025 just about here. And the rumors too!

rumor
Oh the rumors that the web wants clicks for!

Just a reminder that the internet websites that deal with Apple products, news and reviews…are clickbait ad-revenue generators FIRST. Any site that spreads rumors about the newest possible Apple release iPhone model, that isn’t out, is just about you clicking their link, watching their AI-generated text and/or video and all about not being accountable for a bogus “rumor”.

Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches, expert rumor researchers Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia investigate how rumors start and spread, how their accuracy can be determined, and how rumors can be controlled, particularly given their propagation across media outlets and within organizations. Exactly what is rumor, and how does it differ from gossip? Even though these terms are commonly used interchangeably, they differ greatly in function and content. Whereas gossip serves to evaluate and shape the social network, rumor functions to make sense of an ambiguous situation or to help people adapt to perceived or actual threats. Why do people spread and believe rumors? (text from ResearchGate)

So we humans look for a solution or perception of on, and in a panic, need to find if something exists and be the first to have, to satisfy. And thus, even the web has a solution for that: its not a lie, its just a rumor. Just a possible speculation that others might want to … believe.

So just STOP it. Stop clicking videos. Stop believing that some web site has information before an actual Fortune 500 company, worth trillions, has released it. While there might be a wallstreet reporter that is in with Apple’s blessing…doubtful because there are laws and SEC rule about stock prices and insider trading. Sure, maybe some Chinese factory that is deceitful could release images of Apple’s manufacturing dies or models…but Apple would have that place shutdown or the PRC would execute/reprogram that factory manager… but leaks are possible.

So you and others need to stop rumors. Who cares? You know each year Apple will release something. With the new Silicon chips, its now an annual number..M1, M2…M4, then M5, etc.  Will there be a folding phone? Maybe research the failure and problems Samsung’s fold models have…like delaminating screens and fold lines. And that most should take replacement warranties out because you are lucky if that folding phone lasts 12 months of functionality.

Rumor has it that someone is making money off you. Yup.  So Happy New Year!

Offtopic Rant: Clients that ghost you.

Ghost illustrated on black background

A friend referred me to her friend for some WordPress support. While most of the issue was PEBKAC, I learned that there are still dated-looking WordPress sites, that use vulnerable PHP and some wonky CSS custom editing to get solutions. While I was able to hard edit a PHP file and make the client changes, I refused to update the PHP version of her cPanel site because I was not the theme creator and not comfortable making a change that could result in a borked theme or live site used for business income. I left the requested work* resolved and completed, and further changes to the “footer”.
But the client never paid, did not ask for invoice nor had I a chance to bill for the time after cancelling any further support. I’ll chalk it up for no good deed goes unpunished.

The lesson here is not only being leery of unstable business owners that fail to understand, aka ignore, their website underpinnings, but the main problem was actually caused by the website user/owner clicking a feature that resulted in a change to editing the page. Visual is versus Text. So I recommend, take a course in Beginning WordPress content creation. Knowing some HTML is even better. Plus if you fire/cancel your Websupport person, you better realize, they won’t ever help again.

Mac OS 15 Update and Features

Color rays with Sequoia text

Apple released Mac OS 15 back in September and recently updated to 15.1 which fixed some issues…and alot more features but waiting on the Apple Intelligence along with Mac Mini M4, iMac M4 and MacbookPro M4 models.

From Apples press release page on the update to MacOS Sequoia 15.1

This update introduces the first set of features powered by Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that unlocks powerful new ways to communicate, work, and express yourself, all while protecting your data with an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI. This release also includes drag and drop support for iPhone Mirroring and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your Mac.
Apple Intelligence (Mac with M1 and later)

Writing Tools

Writing Tools are available nearly everywhere you type, allowing you to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text right in the app you’re working in

Rewrite suggests different versions of your text so you can choose which combination of flow and wording you like best

Proofread lets you view suggested improvements to what you’re writing, like grammar fixes and language refinements

Summarize allows you to select text wherever you’re writing and generate a high-quality summary

Siri

A new look and feel includes a glowing light that wraps around the edge of your screen, animates responsively to the sound of your voice, and lets you keep scrolling or typing while you talk to Siri

Type to Siri when you don’t want to speak a request out loud

Richer language understanding enables Siri to follow along if you stumble over your words or change your mind mid-sentence

Conversational context is maintained over the course of a session, so you can refer more naturally to something you said in a recent request or something Siri mentioned in a recent response

Product knowledge helps you get answers to thousands of questions about the features and settings on your Apple products

Voice enhancements make Siri sound more natural, expressive, and clear

Photos

Memory movies can be created by describing the story you want to see

Photos search lets you find photos and videos simply by describing what you’re looking for

Clean Up removes distractions in your photos

Notifications

Notification summaries make it easy to catch up on your notifications with a glanceable summary of the most important information

Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus that ensures the most urgent notifications get through to you while silencing potential distractions

Additional Features

Smart Reply in Mail and Messages help you quickly respond to messages with suggested responses

Transcription summaries in Notes give you an intelligently created summary of the transcript from your audio recording

iPhone Mirroring

Drag and drop support lets you seamlessly move files, photos, videos, and more between your Mac and iPhone

AirPods

Hearing Protection feature helps users minimize exposure to loud environmental noise across listening modes (available in the United States and Canada)

Features require AirPods Pro 2 with firmware version 7B19 or later. All features may not be available for all countries or regions, for more information visit: https://apple.com/airpods-pro/feature-availability/

This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

Option to automatically download and install games and apps to an external disk drive

Game Center friend invites can be sent directly from the Contacts app and Friend Suggestions and receivers can see the invites in the inbox in Settings

Removing Vmware for Mac to install FREE Version

VMware Fusion for mac Logo
Credit: this info was taken from OSX Daily.

VMware Fusion Pro does not come with a dedicated uninstaller, and while you can uninstall it through System Settings or by dragging the VMWare Fusion app into the Trash, neither of those methods will remove all traces of VMWare from the Mac, like the daemons, caches, preferences, and library support files. That’s what we’re going to cover here, walking through how to manually uninstall VMware fusion from Mac, including all of the associated files.

How to Uninstall VMware Fusion on Mac, Manually

First, you begin to uninstall VMware Fusion Pro from the Mac by using the drag & drop Trash method.

1: Trash VMWare Fusion to Uninstall the App

-Open the /Applications folder and locate “VMWare Fusion.app”
-Drag and drop “VMware Fusion” into the Trash icon in the Dock
-Right-click on the Trash icon and choose “Empty Trash”

You can also right-click on the “VMware Fusion” application and choose “Move to Trash”, and then empty the Trash.

This removes the primary VMware Fusion app, but many other supporting files, preferences, and components will be remaining throughout the MacOS file system, and if you’re looking to thoroughly uninstall VMware Fusion from the Mac you’ll almost certainly want to remove those files too. You can do this by navigating to the directories and file paths through the Finder, or with the Terminal, whichever you are more comfortable with

Next, to fully uninstall VMware Fusion from MacOS, you will want to manually remove the following files from throughout the Mac file system.

2: Manually Delete Associated VMWare Fusion Files from MacOS

/Library/Application Support/VMware/VMware Fusion
/Library/Application Support/VMware/Usbarb.rules
/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion
/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion
~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion Applications Menu
~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion
~/Library/Caches/com.vmware.fusion
~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.LSSharedFileList.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionDaemon.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionDaemon.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionStartMenu.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusionStartMenu.plist.lockfile

Note that some of these are the System Library folder, while others are the user Library folder (denoted by the ~ tilde to represent the active users home directory).

Again, you’ll want to drag those items into the Trash, and then choose to Empty Trash to remove them from the Mac.

Finally, and this is optional and more advanced, you may wish to search the Mac file system for any remnants of VMware by opening the Terminal application and using mdfind to locate additional components and remnants.

3: Optional; Use Terminal to Locate Additional Remnant Files

mdfind -name “vmware”

By running this command, you may see a report like what is shown below, finding additional vmware files that are laying around, including even the initial installer DMG file you may have downloaded.

~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion Applications Menu
~/Downloads/VMware-Fusion-13.5.2-23775688_universal.dmg

You can then manually remove these files as well, if you’d like to be thorough about uninstalling VMware and any associated downloads or installers.

How to Download & Install VMware Fusion Pro for Mac for Free

VMware Fusion Pro is now available for free for personal use, according to a blog post on the developers website.

VMware Fusion Pro is powerful hypervisor software that allows you to create and run virtual machines on your Mac, enabling the capability to do things like run a virtualized Windows installation atop MacOS, or run Linux alongside MacOS, or similar situations where you’d want to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. We frequently cover virtual machines and some of the neat things you can do with them, and VMWare Fusion Pro offers another virtualization option alongside UTM, VirtualBox, QEMU, and Parallels.

We’re going to walk through the process of downloading and installing VMWare Fusion Pro for free, using the new personal use license.

You’ll have to go through a somewhat cumbersome registration and download process, but once you do you’ll have full access to VMware Fusion Pro for free on your Mac, available for personal use. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Go to support.broadcom.com and click on “Register” to create an account for Broadcom
Once you are registered for a (free) account and logged in, you will have access to download VMWare Fusion 13 Pro, so agree to the terms of service and click the download icon to get the installer (some users are reporting difficulty finding the download, try using this link to product downloads page – thanks wgs!)

When finished downloading, open your ~/Downloads folder and open the “VMware-Fusion-13_universal.dmg” file to mount the disk image, then launch the installer

Launch the installer for VMWare Fusion Pro, agree to the terms of service for using VMware Fusion Pro and then choose that you want to use VMware Fusion Pro for personal use and proceed with the installation. VMWare Fusion Pro will now launch and you can create a virtual machine or configure an existing one if you have a disk image to use, or download a Windows installer directly from Microsoft.

Create a virtual machine in VMWare Fusion Pro

Now that VMware Fusion Pro is installed on your Mac, you’re free to setup or create a new virtual machine. The app makes it particularly easy to download and install the latest versions of Windows (Windows 11 specifically, at the moment), so you can quickly have a Windows 11 VM setup in short order if you choose that option.

VMware Fusion Pro performance is really good, especially running on any Apple Silicon Mac, as you can expect with basically all modern virtualization experiences. But whether or not you could tell the difference between VMWare Fusion Pro, Parallels, and UTM, are perhaps up to the user and how the VM is used.

Same site, new look!

firewood shed
Simple Firewood shed!

New look. New year. New debt. New fear.

Hope 2020 is as clean as the look on this site!

See you soon with more comments on how Apple isn’t being a good company. How Apple products are still too expensive to own, fix and maintain. And let’s see if having Siri in my house is a good thing! Cheers to more pwd/account breaches and hoping other states follow in California Privacy laws.

Apple Airport RIP

 

Apple announces no longer supporting the Airport products.

“We’re discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last.”

 

RIP AE.

Beware email scams and phishing!

Virus Total

Seems someone was using my domain name (not my domain server, that is hosted by InMotion and my WordPress is updated regularly) to spam a phishing URL (it was someone named Les at Performance Sales that sent me the email…but I couldn’t verify it that was a spammer trying to use my domain…since the contact phone number was Illinois but fax number was in Nevada.

And his website of “performancesales dot com” was some marketing site for … well his phone and info didn’t match their site so I decided not to reply. If it is legit, maybe Les will visit here and read this.

The link sent was clearly deceptive… a space was between the www in is was ww w.macanix.com. This was also a doc file name but no attachment. Another clue, hover over the URL and its nothing as it appears. I copied that, and pasted into virustotal.com URL checker and bingo, malicious.

(I won’t post the malicious URL but it goes to a walstinefa domain which is 403-forbidden.)

If you aren’t sure of a URL sent to you, Visit virus total and paste it in.

Also, whether on a mac or windows, always use some antimalware. I recommend purchasing Malwarebytes Antimalware.

10.12.2 update causing black screen for some…

First time I’ve seen this: an iMac user had an update from Apple pushed (10.12.2) for Sierra. Well, the screen turned black after update was done and login. Mouse moved around.

Solution was to restore back to last Time Machine backup (took several hours). Other suggestions (after the fact and not going to risk) was to blindly enter pwd. It may be that Apple’s installer has a random/long time bug that wants  the user to login but the screen is black (keyboard still works, you can hear errors if you type something and hit enter). So if you get this same screen with mouse functioning, try to enter your password. It might even want your login ID and pwd.

Thanks Apple. Hope your 2017 fixes this…