Macs

Menu Bar Clutter 2020

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A quick catch up after the 2010 and 2012 editions.

Skitch Capture material for sharing.

Quick Draft Simple text editor for notes. Syncs with iOS devices.

Dropbox Online storage, file sharing etc.

Backblaze Online backup service.

MyAddress IP address monitor syncs across iCloud for when you are away.

BlockBlock Keeps an eye on what is being installed and notifies you about anything suspicious.

Presentify Highlighter for presentations etc.

Hazel Automates routine tasks.

Typinator Type in a short sequence and it gives you the long form version.

1Password Excellent password manager.

PopClip The single most useful thing to add to a Mac.

Amphetamine Keeps your Mac awake. Very configurable – set a time or wait for a job to finish etc. before going to sleep.

BwanaDik Monitors your connection notifying you when down. No longer supported but included here for continuity with older posts.

WiFi

LittleIpsum Adds Lorem ipsum text in words, lines or paragraphs. No longer supported.

Cookie Removes specified cookies, trackers and the like either at set intervals or when you quit the browser etc.

Memory Cleaner

Bluetooth

AirPlay

Sound

Bartender Declutter the menu bar. Hides all the icons you do not need to click on regularly.

FuzzyTime Tells you the time in a normal (not to the precise second) way
in a variety of languages. I have had to add the day to the display otherwise I would not have much idea what day it was lately.

ClipMenu Having tried numerous clipboard managers I have found nothing as useful as this although it has not been updated in years and never made it to version 1.

Spotlight Search for anything on your Mac.

User

Notifications See/ignore information.

Yadit #100DaysToOffload

Resolving Liquid and Hyperwords errors – com.hyperwords.liquidwordsfree

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Even on a Mac things can go awry. The nifty Liquid app was spewing out errors in the Console…

com.apple.xpc.launchd: (com.hyperwords.liquidwordsfree) Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

Console errors

Others have observed that just deleting the Liquid app will not remove the errors. You will need to dig a little deeper and delete…

com.hyperwords.liquidwordsfree from the Containers folder in your Library

~/Library/Containers

com.hyperwords.liquidwordsfree.plist from the Preferences folder in your Library

~/Library/Preferences

com.hyperwords.liquidwordsfree from the system’s…

/private/var/folders/vx/qbl8t4dn1dsbjqc4_67vymg80000gn

(that last bit may be different for you).

If you have trouble finding these folders the nifty PopClip app can, once you have selected the text, offer you a folder icon that will take you straight to the desired location.

Alternatively the nifty Hazel app will find all those extraneous files, when you have moved the main app to the Trash, and ask if you want to delete those too.

Once it is all cleared out a fresh install from the App Store and all is well again.

Today’s secret word is Nifty.

X is for OS X

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Who does not love a good computer operating system? I know I do – every day.

As the classic Mac OS grew in to an ever growing tangle of code it was decided to find a replacement and start again. Several options were available and a likely contender was the Be system but ultimately Apple decided to buy NeXTSTEP which had been created by NeXT the company that Steve Jobs had started after leaving Apple – effectively bring Jobs back to Apple. NeXTSTEP was reworked in to a new version of Mac OS. As it would be the tenth version, was based on a UNIX system and was a departure from the last version Mac OS 9 it was called Mac OS X rather but still pronounced 10. The name was later shortened to just OS X. It is now expected to revert back to Mac OS so as to fit in with iOS, tvOS and watchOS.