The devil's darning needles have had a bad press, and appear in just a few paintings. Here's a vanitas still life, a meal for chaffinches, and some stranger associations. | Continue reading
How to investigate an app that crashes when starting up, using log entries. Includes detailed instructions for one of the simplest adventures in the log, and a summary of code signature errors. | Continue reading
Humans have lived with trees since our origins, and trees feature in many paintings. This explains the importance of sketching them from life, and shows examples of different species and contrasting artists from Rubens and van Ruisdael to van Gogh and Cézanne. | Continue reading
When a can only run for a moment, it might seem hard to work out why it crashes. Here are useful clues from the crash log and elsewhere to help you get the app running properly. | Continue reading
Apple has released its regular weekly update to XProtect for all versions of macOS, bringing it to version […] | Continue reading
Two groups of paintings: figures seen mostly in planar mirrors arranged vertically, and landscapes reflected by a horizontal water surface. | Continue reading
Some background tasks will only run when a laptop Mac is connected to mains (AC) power. This is also true for XProtect Remediator scans. What can you do to ensure these are still run? | Continue reading
Venetian walls were too damp for fresco, so their largest painting were made on stretched canvas. Those giants exceed 10 m (33 feet) in their longer dimension, with the largest 22 m (72 feet). | Continue reading
Not sure which Retina quality displays you can use with your Apple silicon Mac? This site has all the answers and more. | Continue reading
When you need to check what's in a potential phishing email, run a locked-down virtual machine for safety, as explained here. | Continue reading
To enable Theseus to retrace his steps out of the Labyrinth, Ariadne gives him a ball of thread, in return for which he promises to marry her. Once the couple escape to the island of Naxos, Theseus abandons her and sails back to Athens. | Continue reading
I hope you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 361. Here are my solutions to them. 1: This second […] | Continue reading
Spotlight can't index the contents of document versions to make them searchable. How you can change that and save having to browse those versions when you need to recover old content. | Continue reading
A painting commissioned by the Grand Duke of Tuscany towards the end of the 30 Years' War in Europe, details with its figures the suffering resulting from war, rather than the triumph of victory. | Continue reading
Spotlight fails to index the content of text files starting with odd characters like 'LG' and 'Draw', Although we understand this is caused by checking the file type using file(1), this suggests an explanation of why it should do that. And whether it will ever get fixed for Intel … | Continue reading
A painting for England's King Charles I to encourage him to make peace with Spain, left by Rubens in 1630. Its figures make clear the meaning of war, as explained here. | Continue reading
Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: This second […] | Continue reading
If generating QuickLook thumbnails and previews, and indexing metadata for Spotlight, depend on UTIs, how come they tolerate misleading file extensions? A simple practical demo. | Continue reading
Do you know the difference between a caduceus and the rod of Asclepius, what each means? Paintings by William Blake, Renoir, and others explain. | Continue reading
You realise that a few hours ago you trashed an important file by accident. How can you search your Time Machine backups without looking through them one at a time? | Continue reading
Contents of this series, together with a list of major Naturalist painters and links to fuller accounts of their paintings. | Continue reading
You're in a rush, and need to disconnect your MacBook Pro's external drive. But when you try to eject it, one or more programs may be using it. What do you do next? | Continue reading
Little used for 400 years, in the 19th century painters extended their scenes by including reflections seen in a mirror. Here are some significant examples. | Continue reading
How to discover what went wrong when a document doesn't show the right thumbnail, but a generic icon instead. How to dive deeper to solve problems with 3rd party thumbnail and preview generators. | Continue reading
Apple has released its regular weekly update to XProtect for all versions of macOS, bringing it to version […] | Continue reading
From red-figure paintings on Greek pottery, through tin-glazed maiolica, to painted porcelain and enamelled earthenware, more painting in three dimensions. | Continue reading
Most apps save settings in their preferences file managed by cfprefsd as the UserDefaults server. Here's how to avoid problems that can cause, and how to use the defaults command. | Continue reading
Born son of the King of Athens, the god Poseidon, and Princess Aethra, his first task was to find his father's sandals and sword, and take them to Athens, where Medea tried to poison him. | Continue reading
I hope you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 360. Here are my solutions to them. 1: With parents […] | Continue reading
Generating icons for display as thumbnails, and previews of documents, depend on speed of delivery and icons as faithful as possible for their size. How QuickLook achieves this in Tahoe. | Continue reading
The botanical painter Marianne North, Val Prinsep who was born in Kolkata and painting for Queen Victoria, Colin Campbell Cooper, and Nicholas Roerich, who died there in 1947. | Continue reading
Soon after introducing iCloud and iCloud Drive, Apple changed the way most metadata was handled to ensure it was synced up to the cloud. Recently this has been reversed, and little metadata is now synced. Was this an accident or intentional? What is the workaround? | Continue reading
From William Hodges in around 1780, Edward Lear nearly a century later, and Vasily Vereshchagin at about the same time, views of the Taj Mahal and the Himalayan mountains. | Continue reading
Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: With parents […] | Continue reading
From the first image thumbnails around 35 years ago, the Mac has delivered better thumbnails and previews of documents, most recently using QuickLook. Here's how it works, and how it can fail. | Continue reading
Around 1890, two aspiring painters passed through a phase of Naturalism: in Spain, Joaquín Sorolla, and in Sweden, Anders Zorn, both on their way to become masters. | Continue reading
Traces the path of metadata from inside a PDF document and its extended attributes, to those in Spotlight's indexes and displayed in the Finder. Only a third survived that journey. | Continue reading
After reaching a peak around 1909, in 1916 Bonnard suddenly stopped painting mirror play, and didn't resume until the 1930s. | Continue reading
This new version adds a drag-and-drop window to inspect the metadata of files using mdimport and mdls. | Continue reading
For over 40 years, Bonnard used mirror play in many of his paintings of intimate domestic scenes, often involving his partner Marthe as model. | Continue reading
Version support built into macOS doesn't preserve versions as well as it could. Here's how to use Versatility to ensure you don't lose versions in iCloud, moving a file, or backing up. | Continue reading
Apple has released an update to XProtect for all versions of macOS, bringing it to version 5344. Version […] | Continue reading
Classical and mediaeval friezes and sculpture were often painted or polychrome, a practice that remained popular for religious statues, and sculptures made by some painters. | Continue reading
A summary of iCloud Drive syncing of attributes, data, extended attributes, document versions (complex), Spotlight index content, and QuickLook previews. | Continue reading
The update bringing macOS Tahoe to version 26.5 is modest in size and, apart from its security fixes, […] | Continue reading
Apple has released the update to bring macOS Tahoe to version 26.5, and security updates for Sequoia and […] | Continue reading
Perseus kills the sea monster, and marries Andromeda as his reward. Phineus and his friends turn nasty at their wedding, and are turned to stone, and how the couple became constellations. | Continue reading
I hope you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 359. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Could in […] | Continue reading