Techo Blog

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Decided to upgrade the MBP M1 2021 to Goldengate to remedy a few issues.
1) Homebrew installs no longer supported on Monterey
2) Weird bug causing no DNS connection on wireless hotspots

By all accounts the feedback so far is that Goldengate is quite a solid effort on introduction so I took the risk of a 27.0 update and so far am impressed. Most of the negative feedback (aside from liquid glass) appears to surround the Mission Control feature which I don't use heavily anyway but I did a straight upgrade from a working 12.7.6 install to 27.0 and it was quite seamless. The upgrade was done via the System Software Update process and took about an hour or two.

Notes on 27:

App launchpad has been replaced by a piece of horse shit so I needed to find a replacement launcher - there are a few offerings around but I settled on AppHub which does a pretty good job. I was mightily impressed by the import from LaunchPad feature which brought back my old arrangement of custom folders for the grouped apps so I didn't have to go through a long and tedious setup again.

Liquid glass (the word on everybody's lips) is dodgy to say the least ( it must appeal to modern folk that like to be surrounded by a sense of visual chaos very much like modern life) anyway I have maxxed the slider so the intrusion of dross below windows, etc is minimised.
There is a Reduce Transparency option but this has the effect of turning the menu & Dock bar black and also will not allow anything to reside on the Desktop in the area where widgets are positioned - brilliant!

Apple virtualization works OK - I used a very light app called Viable from the Eclectic Light Company to create a Monterey VM and it is working well.
As a full VM with working USB peripherals/etc it does not do that but I only use the VM to test apps run on the OS OK so quite nifty and easy to use.

Viable - 2.2M
UTM - 1.22G

The first VM I tried using a 12.6.2 .ipsw file failed on install but another 12.6 .ipsw file worked OK. Once the VM was built and running I updated the OS to 12.7.6 just fine.

I still have quite a few Intel apps which require Rosetta to be installed again (not done by MacOS 27) but this was quick and easy (option to install given by first Intel app run).

I guess when MacOS 28 deep sixes the Intel apps the answer will be to run a VM with a MacOS version that will run Intel apps.

The only other gripe I have is the transition of useful arrangements like System Preferences to IOS styles (which of course were designed for screens with small real estate so much is hidden) - seems crazy when using a large desktop screen to have to play games like find the hidden item ....

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Been having an issue with connecting to wireless hotspots of late and also found that the iphone hotspot was not working either.
Using the iphone hotspot I found that the connection would be made but the DNS would not work. Upon reading about the issue the consensus seemed to fall on both Monterey having issues in this regard and EE (mobile supplier I use) messing with IPV6 server settings. It all worked a good while back but since then I have both changed to EE and upgraded Monterey dot releases so unable to get things going I took the nuclear option of upgrading the MBP from MacOS 12 (Monterey) to MacOS 27 (Goldengate).
Well, I don't usually go for a .0 release of a new OS but I must say that I am impressed with MacOS 27.0 (apart from the dodgy liquid glass shit) and as a bonus my iphone hotspot now works OK.

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Host machine: MacBook Pro M1 14” running 12.7.6 Monterey
Source machine: Sony Digital Handycam PC100E

Basically used a USB Video Converter (Fulfalic VHS to Digital Converter - 1080P USB 2.0

The converter plugs into a USB port on the host computer (in my case a CalDigit dock) and connects to the HandyCam with a standard RCA/Phono 3-way to 3.5mm headset jack cable (it uses the yellow AV jack on the HandyCam).

The software used was the opensource OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software) app for macOS (v31.1.2).

Set the HandyCam to play mode and the video/audio should appear in the OSS window.
It can be a bit fiddly to get going but once the OBS app was launched and a few settings done I needed to toggle the preset tickbox to show the video from the camera.

Initially I had a problem with video no being received but found that the phono/rca cord I was using was supplied with an audio device so I suspect the video wasn’t wired through - it was OK when I changed the cable out for another one and of course toggled the preset.

Settings:

MacBook -
System sound - use USB audio

OBS-
Add source - Video Capture Device
Device - select USB Video
Use buffering - ticked
Resolution - 640 x 480
Aspect Ratio - 4:3
FPS - 30
Format - MPEG-4
Encoder - x264


Worked pretty well with videos up to c. 60 min

60 min of video ended up as c. 1.25GB MP4.

The DV output could be used but traditionally would have used the Firewire interface which of course is obsolete so a string of potentially expensive adapters would be required - for me the AV output via a very cost effective converter (c. £19) did the job.

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Got a new film scanner which which managed to last 29 scans before going POP!

A bit of history about this scanner -

The PrimeFilm XEs was produced by a Taiwanese company which is branded as Pacific Image Electronics in the USA.
A partner company in Europe is Reflecta GmbH which purveyed rebranded scanners. The PrimeFilm XE Super Edition was known as the ProScan 10T in Europe. Since the ProScan 10T had been discontinued in Europe I managed to obtain the PrimeFilm XEs from USA however when it went pop it was difficult to get repaired in Europe. It should be noted that PIE have since made available updated models of their previous scanners.

Anyway I decided to have a go at repairing my particular cabbage.

Opening the unit required the removal of 5 phillips head screws. The immediate fault was obvious - one of the 4 wires on the stepper motor control board was floating in the air. The reason for this was down to poor build quality as the scanning gantry has to move past the stepper motor leaving a very small gap and the control wires are routed on the side of the motor via the gap. The fix was to re-route the wires across the back of the motor and reattach the broken one - best to use a bit of duct tape to secure the wires. Once this was done the scanner worked again with the scanner gantry operating OK however there was a black line across the images and they were a bit askew. This turned out to be a loose screw on the right side of the PCB on the back of the gantry - this controls the alignment of the sensor which I guess is on the PCB. Once the PCB was aligned with the gantry and the screw tightened the image scans appeared to be good.

So far the repaired scanner is working well and using the 10000 dpi setting will get more detail than the Epson V700 flatbed and more than a camera scan with a 24Mpx sensor. The difference between a scanner and camera is that the scan is slooooow. A camera with a higher resolution sensor would of course be more competitive with the XEs but at normal viewing distances both methods will be good enough.

For more details see HERE

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Couldn’t help but notice how compact .heic files can be compared with .tiff files but it is difficult to get an understanding of the quality merits of both compared.
There is divided opinion as to whether HEIC/HEIF is lossless but as far as I can see it can be either. I think this is a typical case of the ‘people who know’ are not saying much and the ‘sales/marketing’ folk are left to prey on the masses with smoke and mirrors (typical of the tech world). For my own interest I just did a basic check by converting a 16bit tiff panorama to a heic file and the file size difference was dramatic.

I would typically edit the 16bit tiff in Photoshop or similar but the final output tiff I would downsize to an 8bit tiff to get a more reasonable file size and so I did a comparison between an 8bit tiff and a heic file to see if there was a degradation in quality.
Process:

16 bit tiff – c. 1.1G uncompressed - opened in Pixelmator Pro and saved as 8 bit tiff with compression
8 bit tiff – c. 168M opened in Preview and exported as HEIC Lossless
heic – c. 79M

I opened both the tiff/heic files in Preview then zoomed 15x (1600% zoom) at which point pixels are visible (this is a very very very small section of the panorama).

To my eye there was no difference in detail or colour between the zoomed fragments so I would say that it appears that HEIC files can more or less be saved as lossless with no noticeable degradation (caveat: not so sure if this is the case with multiple sequential saves though).

TIFF files may always be the gold standard for editing but HEIC looks OK for output files that save storage space.
HEIF/HEIC files have the ability to contain editing data as well so I suspect that once the editing apps allow it then they may also be useful as source files as well (with the consequent saving of storage space).

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Sometimes I get a bit frustrated with the big fruit.

Good –
Hardware is good quality, nice to use (they had some big problems with keyboards recently but it was corrected for the later Macbook Pros)


Not so good –
OS cycle too frequent. A new version every year and support for two previous releases. The side effect of this is that third party software vendors are starting to sync to this support cycle which shortening the life of software.

Tendency to online storage (eg: Books and PDF’s) to allow device syncing

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Brilliant app this OCLP Patcher – I have been able to get my old MBP going on a reasonably recent supported OS.

Basically the MBP was previously patched using DosDude’s patcher to allow Mojave (10.14) to run.
It was running OK on Mojave but the trackpad wasn’t clicking which now turns out to be a hardware issue.

Using the latest cut of OCLP (1.4.3) it seems to correct/upgrade any previous patches done by the DosDude patcher however it did need the HD to be APFS formatted rather than Mac OS Extended. For me this meant a disk format with Disk Utility and a fresh install done with OCLP.

OCLP will download the correct OS image and also create the installer on a thumbdrive (at least 16GB). Also because the machine is so old there are issues with the USB 1.1 interfaces so they recommend using a USB hub with attached USB keyboard and USB mouse for the duration of the install until the requisite root patches have been applied by OCLP. I indeed found this to be the case as at one point I got a screen that required the keyboard to work so the hub method worked well (just the mouse really needed actually).

The OCLP install when done will actually allow official updates to be accepted however I think some care is needed here. Normally OCLP will detect a change and offer to re-install the root patches but the latest version of OCLP should always be used and check the OCLP site as to whether the latest updates will work or not (currently Sonoma is on offer from the Software Update panel).

The biggest concern for me was the non-metal graphics card used in the old MBP and the non-retina screen but OCLP 1.4.3 appears to address the non-metal cards adequately and the screen appears OK (not as good as Retina of course).

The wireless card functions OK with auto logon working fine (I think the MBP 5,3 had a good card).

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Noticed that some of my apps broke and would no longer be able to access files in a folder in the Documents path.
I use a folder in the Documents path for app data that I don’t want to lose if the app profile is removed for whatever reason (eg: app uninstall).
The issue involved the permissions allocated to the apps which can be reviewed via System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy tab then Files & Folders in left panel. In theory when a new app is run if it is unsigned then MacOS will ask if access to particular paths is allowed(usually Desktop/Documents & Removable drives). If so then the app will be placed in the Privacy list with checkboxes ticked accordingly however there is no way to manually add apps to this list so if the ‘Ask permission’ dialog doesn’t appear then there will be no way to authorize the app. There is an option to allow Full Disk Access which could be used but in my case this still didn’t override the controls.

I found that to correct the problem I needed to uninstall my apps along with the Documents path folder they were using and then re-install the apps. The custom Documents path folders were created and the apps worked again.

I think the issue arose after some updates to Monterey as they had previously worked OK.

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Books support has become quite terrible with the later MacOS versions. Running Monterey I have found that syncing via the Finder for Books is broken – the reason is that PDF’s when brought into Books will now be stored in the iCloud (no longer stored with epub books in local library). The sync process still expects to find the PDF’s in the local library folder along with the downloaded epub books. Basically with PDF’s in Books the cloud is the only option unless PDF’s are imported into the Files App on IOS devices.
The other downside is that with the older iTunes/Books apps it was possible to do rudimentary database details and curation with the list tab but the list tab is now gone and it is only possible to record the author and title for each PDF.
The underlying sqlite databse still exists but Apple has removed most of the basic code that formerly existed.
10.13.6 High Sierra -
Repository /Users/USER/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/data/Docu ments/iBooks/Books/ (DB path)
Books.plist
Epub files
PDF files

Database /Users/USER/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Documents/B KLibrary/
3 files –
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite,
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite-shm,
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite-wal
12.7.4 Monterey -

Repository /Users/USER/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/data/Doc uments/iBooks/Books/ (DB path)
epub files
note: pdf files appeared on import then were deleted/moved to -

pdf files /Users/USER/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud-com-apple-iBooks/Documents/ (DB path)
note: Mobile Documents is empty and shows as iCloud Drive so PDF's must be pushed automatically up to iCloud (no local storage?)

Database /Users/USER/Library/Containers/Books/Data/Documents/BKLibrary/
3 files
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite,
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite-shm,
BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite-wal (same as for 10.13.6)
note: 2 Books folders visible - 1st one is com.apple.iBooksX, 2nd one is com.apple.iBooksX.DiskSpaceEfficiency (1st is the pick)

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Yet another annoying hassle in Apple’s effort to get to Utopia (and the pot of gold). Used the sync feature with the 13 Mini connected to the Finder however after a sync of the whole library I found the cover art of the albums imported from CDs was horribly jumbled between albums. Note that the CD albums had been converted to mp3 by a third party app and not imported directly by Apple Music/iTunes also that the sync was done over the existing iPhone library on the device (previously sync’ed on 10.13 High Sierra with iTunes). The album art in the Apple Music library was correct for all albums.
Result:
To correct the issue I had to remove all the albums from the iPhone library and then sync the whole library from Apple Music. I couldn’t find a global delete for the iPhone library so I did a sync with one artist which left only a couple of albums on the iPhone which could then be deleted quickly (Sync will only copy globally or whatever is specified by checkbox and will delete non-specified albums from the iPhone – individual album addition is not possible).