Do You Have Microsoft Silverlight Installed on Your Mac?

What Microsoft says:
Microsoft Silverlight will reach the end of support on October 12, 2021. Silverlight development framework is currently only supported on Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11, with support for Internet Explorer 10 ending on January 31, 2020. There is no longer support for Chrome, Firefox, or any browser using the Mac operating system.

What Wikipedia says:
Microsoft Silverlight (or simply Silverlight) is a deprecated application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash.

So, if you have Silverlight installed on your Mac, you might as well delete it now.


John R Carter Sr

MacBook Air for Sale

A friend in California just posted this to a forum I subscribe to. It is one heck of a deal if you're interested in a MacBook Air. That's what I'm using right now, and mine is a year older than Tracy's Air. Tracy is a very honorable man, and can be trusted for anything he says. We've bought electronic 'stuff' from him previously.

His email is: <tracy@tracyvalleau.com>

Jim Hamm

Tracy Valleau <tracy@tracyvalleau.com>

Ah... life

On September 15, this year, I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with 16
GB of RAM, and an i5 processor. 256GB SSD.

Then they released the M1 two months later.

GRRRR.....

So, I've ordered the M1 version, and will let you all know what I think
of it.

Meanwhile, my 3-month old Air is up for sale. Cost me $1281 in total.

Will sell for $800 OBO if anyone is interested.

Tracy

Removing Adobe Flash

It is recommended that Adobe Flash should be removed from your computer to avoid any potential hacking issues. Here's how.

Jim Hamm

Removing Flash from your system

As Adobe advised, you should remove Flash Player from your system — whether you have a Mac or PC.

It is a bit lengthy, but here is how to remove it from a Windows PC:

  • For Windows operating system, download the official Uninstaller from Adobe.

  • Make sure that you have closed all browsers, tabs or apps.

  • Double-click on the downloaded Uninstaller.

  • When prompted for confirmation, click on “Yes.”

  • When complete, you will be asked to restart your computer to complete the process.

  • For the last step, press the Windows key and ‘R’ to bring up the ‘Run’ command.

  • In the “open” box, insert C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash and hit “Enter.”

  • This will open the specified folder. Delete all the files in this folder.

  • Repeat the previous three steps, but open the folders and delete the content of:

    • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

    • %appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player

    • %appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player

  • If you search for the folders and they don’t exist, it has been removed successfully.

How to remove Adobe Flash from a Mac:

  • First, determine your Mac version by clicking on the Apple icon and then About This Mac.

  • Download the uninstaller for your Mac version. For Mac OS X version 10.6 and later, click here, and for Mac OS X version 10.4 and 10.5, click here. For earlier versions of Mac, click here.

  • Run the uninstaller that you downloaded.

  • When the uninstaller starts, click uninstall.

  • Make sure to close all browsers so that the process can complete.

  • Once that is complete, delete the following files from your system:

    • <home directory>/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player

    • <home directory>/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash\ Player

  • To verify that the process is complete, click here and select “Check Now” on that page.

Which is Better, Onyx or CleanMyMac?

If you can put up with the techie way that Onyx works, and you can hold out until it becomes available on Big Sur, then I see no real big reason to spend money on CleanMyMac.

On the other hand, CleanMyMac does one thing quite well that Onyx doesn’t do, and that is to clean out your personal Preferences with files that didn’t get properly removed by simply dropping an app into the trash. But even that may not be worth $39 for the dozen or so files lingering in Preferences that only take up a little space in the hard drive.

I do rely on CleanMyMac to completely uninstall an app. It’s more thorough than the free version of AppCleaner. CleanMyMac also cleans out hidden malware, viruses, and adware, and that’s something Onyx doesn’t do.

On the other hand, Onyx can rebuild certain Apple databases. I don’t think CleanMyMac does that.

So in the end, I think you need both. My approach to solve problems is CleanMyMac first followed by Onyx followed by a NVRAM/PRAM reset and then maybe even an SMC reset. In most cases, a corrupt Preferences file is the cause of an app not working right, and CleanMyMac handles that easily.

Here’s the thing with CleanMyMac. A single license can only be run on one computer - at a time. This means if you want to use it on several computers, you just need to reset the activation and activate it on a different computer - while your activation key is valid. I have one license and two computers that I use CleanMyMac on - just not activated on more than one at the same time.

Here is a comparison of Onyx and CleanMyMac

:https://macpaw.com/cleanmymac/cleanmymac-vs-onyx

John R Carter Sr



How Long Does it Take to Download a File?

I went to a new website for the first time. It took twenty seconds to load. And I have a very fast computer with the latest Big Sur OS and 16GB memory. My Internet speed is 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload. The next time I opened that same site, it loaded in 1 second, and that is because that page was cached by the browser from the first time it was accessed.

Clicking on a link within an open page can result in the same long load time.

Each time you open a website, the browser saves a snapshot of the page - called a cache. The cache doesn’t take that much storage space, and it’s part of the browser function to do that (can’t turn it off).

The Internet is often unforgiving. The only thing to improve the speed of the Internet is for all servers to have a fiber link to the Internet backbone, and the servers themselves must be tuned to handle extremely heavy requests. This often means having multiple servers placed around the world all containing the same information and ready to provide data to any request from anywhere in the world. Some companies with websites have one server in one place and no sophisticated means of handling requests.

Hackers found that by pushing millions of requests onto a website in a short period of time, they can cause that website to hang.

Where a fast Internet access comes in handy is when downloading very large files.

A 25GB file downloaded on a 25 Mbps service will take four times longer than the same file downloaded on a 100 Mbps service. Upgrading to Big Sur is about a 16GB file. 1 byte is 8 bits. So a 25 Mbps (mega bits per second) speed is more like 3 Mega bytes per second (MBps). 1 GB (gigabyte) is 1000 MB (megabyte). So a calculated time to download a 16GB file at 25 Mbps is like 88 minutes (16 / .003 / 60). A 100 Mbps service gets in done in 22 minutes. Latency (time for computers to think and time to transfer data) makes it even longer.

I think Apple compresses the original file to something like 4 times smaller and then automatically uncompresses it after it has been received. They call these compressed files ‘packages’ with an extension of either .dmg or .pkg. These are similar to compressed Zip files that have the extension .zip.

John R Carter Sr

Covid Alert App for iPhone

Here's an article discussing a feature for a smartphone that might alert you to a possible virus exposure:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/18/coronavirus-app-exposure-alerts/

This feature is available in Arizona. I got the app from Apple's App Store, and I installed it on my iPhone.

https://covid19.arizona.edu/covidwatch

I don't know much about this idea yet, but thought I'd give it a try, and I'll do some more reading about it.

Jim Hamm

macOS Big Sur

FYI and possible interest, here is an Ars Technica review of macOS Big Sur. Here is the full link:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/

Ars has probably long been my favorite writer of 'tech' articles, and I'll start reading the article soon. After I upgraded to Big Sur a couple of days ago, I just now took a look at "About This Mac" in the  logo, and it states: "macOS Big Sur, Version 11.0.1." So, for me, anyway, macOS X is gone, after many years of use. No issues so far with Big Sur on my MacBook Air.


As a side note, here is a bit of trivia about Apple's M1 chip, which reminds me this is a small world we live in. Apple licensed the chip technology from Arm, a UK-based company, has TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) in Taiwan manufacture the chip, sends it to China to be installed into a Mac, then shipped to the U.S. (and elsewhere) for Mac aficionados to purchase. One can almost visualize the $ flowing every which way.

Jim Hamm

macOS Big Sur

I just now finished upgrading to Big Sur, and so far it's fine, with minor visual changes noted. I asked myself a couple of rhetorical questions: why did I do this, and why did Apple do this? For myself, I think curiosity is the best answer. For Apple, I did a bit of web research and came up with the following answer for Big Sur:


"MacOS Big Sur comes with a simpler design, new app icons, smoother animations, refreshed app design for all pre-installed apps. MacOS Big Sur also has a new menu bar as well. The Mac will now also have a control centre, like iPhones."

On the menu bar, which is now black with white lettering, I noticed a new icon, and clicked it. It opens up a control center, which gives one the option to do a few things like change screen brightness, sound level, etc. At first glance it doesn't appear to be particularly useful, but I'll see as time goes on.
My overall impression? Meh! .

Jim Hamm

MacLife Magazine

.Today on the AZ-Apple Zoom meeting we discussed tips on using a Mac, gleaned from the October 2020 issue of MacLife Magazine. This issue contains 100 useful tips and keyboard shortcuts for both the Mac and an iOS device. If you'd like to read about these, a single issue of the magazine can be found here or in the link below for only $5.99. Highly recommended.

Jim Hamm

https://www.magazinesdirect.com/az-single-issues/6937019/maclife-magazine-single-issue.thtml