Mac

Connecting iPad/iPhone to GarageBand on a Mac – Wireless

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There is an old post, from 2011, that is regularly visited (I assume it is linked on a forum somewhere) and so it is probably time to do an updated version expanded into several posts covering all the options available today.

To connect using a WiFi network:

Open Audio MIDI Setup which you will find in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder – or hit the Command and Space keys and type Audio MIDI into the Spotlight search box.

From the Window menu select Show MIDI Studio.

Menu selection in Audio Midi SetUp

This will open the MIDI Studio window from where you can select Open MIDI Network Setup from the MIDI Studio menu.

Menu selection in Audio Midi SetUp

You need to create a new session by clicking the + button

Creating a new session panel

The default name is Session 1. Tick the box to select that as the network session you wish to use

New session selected

With an app sending MIDI signals your device will be available. Click the Connect button for it to join the network session.

iPad available

Your device will be listed as a Participant in the right hand panel – from where it can be disconnected if required.

iPad connected and good to go

In the iPad’s/iPhone’s app you will see the Session 1 option within the MIDI settings – sometimes shown as a Settings button or three dots …

Dots

or a cog wheel icon

Cog

Once connected to the Network Session it is all happening in GarageBand…

The Reset

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Over the years the old Mac had become such a tangled mess (the oldest file dates back to 2009) and iCloud Drive had become inaccessible from the Finder which insisted I needed to log in although everywhere else insisted I was logged in, and everything was working normally, but System Preferences refused to let me log out. Having tried killing birds and all manner of Terminal artfulness which failed to change anything I decided to just set up a new account and move into that. Alas this meant finding all the Serial numbers/licences for a lot of apps etc. Most seem to working now but I am sure something will turn up and refuse to work. Have made a fresh Time Machine and will try and keeps things better organised until the new iMac’s arrive.

Have reduced the web site to a minimalist HTML site because that is all it needs to be. Yes you could make a case for a little CSS design but we will live with it for a while. Have removed the Indie Web stuff from this blog as I was not using it and had no real interest in doing so; similarly the link to micro.blog is gone as I do not do the social/interaction thing so derived nothing from it – as excellent as these projects are and worth supporting if that is your thing. At some point I will develop my own theme for this blog.

Onwards.

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.

Set up Xiki with Aquamacs

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Step by step set up using Aquamacs editor with the awesome Xiki…

From these instructions.

Ingredients:

A Mac running OS X Mavericks which should have Ruby 1.9.3 as the default version.

Jewellery Box to manage your Ruby versions (RVM) and gems

The Aquamacs editor.

Xiki

Recipe:

Open the Terminal and install the Xiki gem…

$ gem install xiki

Verify that all is well…

$ xiki

A Xiki directory will have been created in your Home folder so jump into that…

$ cd ~/xiki/

Then run the set up script…

$ bash etc/install/el4r_setup.sh

You will now need an editor that will see an invisible file (the dot at the start of the name hides the file from being listed in a Finder window: .el4r). I use BBEdit but the free version called Text Wrangler will do the job…

Show hidden files
Select the Show hidden items option

Add these lines to the end of the init.rb file in the .el4r folder within the xiki folder within your Home folder…

$LOAD_PATH.unshift “~/xiki/lib”
require ‘xiki’
Xiki.init

KeyBindings.keys # Use default key bindings
Themes.use “Default” # Use xiki theme

Fire up Aquamacs and it should drop you straight into Xiki…

Welcome to Xiki in Aquamacs
Welcome to Xiki in Aquamacs

Happy Birthday Mac!

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Can it really have been 30 years ago today that the world was introduced to the Macintosh?

Before the presentation the 27 year old Steve Jobs was shaking with fear and anticipation; “I’m scared shitless” he uttered and then stepped on stage and changed the world – a feat he would repeat several times.

Today, when all computers work like the Macintosh it is hard to imagine what was so special about windows, menus, scrolling text, graphics, speech synthesis etc. all chugging along on an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor and 128 Kb of RAM. The wonderful Cathode can take your modern Mac back to those wonderful pre-Mac days…

Jobs and Steve Wozniak had defined what a personal computer would be like and how it would work. IBM dominated the world of computing and were venturing into the fledgling personal micro computer market (micro computers as opposed to the mainframe and mini computers widely used at the time). The Apple II dominated the personal computer market of the day; introducing the world to the Spreadsheet and providing work for a small company called Microsoft..

microsoftcard1980

The Apple II would continue to sell well despite the appearance of the Mac. The personal computer belonged to the individual and would empower them in their daily lives; liberating them from the corporate controlled IBM computers operated in the basement by boffins. That was the Big Brother that the Mac was designed to destroy….

Jobs saw the personal computer as something you could pick up and carry – the Apple II was a wedge shape so you could tuck it under your arm and the Mac had a built in carrying handle. The IBM personal computer models fail this basic requirement…

Just one year later Jobs will be sacked not to return to the then nearly bankrupt Apple in 1997.

My One Star Review Addiction

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I confess I am addicted. Whenever I venture into the Mac’s or iOS App Stores I have to select the Most Critical reviews option and read the bizarre one star reviews.  I have mentioned some, such as for Pixelmator, Panogaea and a MIDI controller, in the past.  It is a fascinating world where people plainly do not know how to use their computer, complain that an app lacks a specific feature although no one ever suggested that such a feature was included or are just plain stupid and are willing to publicly voice their own shortcomings and/or put the blame on the developers.

Apple’s [wikipop search=”Mac_OS_X_Lion”]OS X 10.7 (known as Lion)[/wikipop] has been around for almost a year. Every new Mac sold in that time uses it as do the countless older Macs which have been updated.  It is used every day by millions of people without any problem.  Yet we are still being treated to delights such as…

What can one say? Perhaps if the reviewer had persevered for more than an hour they may have eventually found the View menu (to clarify: this contains options on how you want to View things) and the option to Show Status Bar on the bottom of the window…

 

And what about Quick Look with the Space Bar?  What about it?  It is much improved with Lion…

Thanks for sharing.  My addiction is satiated for today.

 

After posting this this morning… a few hours later Serendipity kicks in.

Windows 8 on a Mac – Virtually

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After downloading the developers version of Windows 8 I installed it as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.

After a false start trying the Other Windows option:

I tried the 64Bit Windows 7 option and off it went:

It was mostly a case of clicking through the standard settings apart from the Advanced installation option for a completely fresh install:

We went for a walk in the Autumn sunshine while it whirled away and returned ready to go:

Mac Pinball HD controls

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At least a copy of Pinball HD from the Mac App Store means that I no longer have to steal borrow the girl’s iPad to get my daily fix of The Deep table:

Alas there does not seem to be much in the way of instructions or a high score table (not that I ever get on it!). Thus far I have figured:

Down arrow: To pull back trigger/launcher (moves slowly – keep pressing to get any power)

Left & Right arrows or shift keys: left & right flippers

C: Toggle camera view Zooming, fixed perspective, fixed looking straight down

Esc: Exit full screen

⌘F: Enter full screen

Space: Nudge the table (use with caution)

Enter: Toggle pause

You have got the mission…

Update: The app was updated on January 26th, through the App Store, rectifying many of the problems with the early version – but still no high score table 🙁

Snow Leopard / Time Capsule Working!

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Having added a Time Capsule to the mix of Macs it was somewhat frustrating to find my Snow Leopardified Mac was not working while ye olde iBooks running Leopard were purring away backing up flawlessly. I was stuck in the never ending “Making Backup Disk Available” bit. A seemingly common problem.

But today it started working and I am now backing up with the rest of them. So what changed? It would be nice to think that the return of Steve Jobs had something to do with it. Maybe installing iTunes 9 triggered something. But it was probably dropping the wireless network down to the b/g setting from the b/g/n option that made it happier. The slower setting is strangely the stronger faster setting for me.