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OS X El Capitan [OT]

I got it last night and its really good. I have a 2011 13" MBP which has always done me good but recently its been getting a bit slow, I did change it to 8gb of ram a while ago but running multiple stuff like Safari, twitter, excel, iMessage, Skype at the same time started to chug a bit but now its much better than before.

I like all the smoother transitioning between stuff now, it generally feels more optimised and faster which I like, there is more life in it yet!

The twitter and Skype apps didn't work at first but a restart eventually fixed that although iMessage on it for some reason only shows numbers and email addresses I'm not sure why, not the biggest problem but a bit of an inconvenience admittedly.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
"Make Yosemite look like Mavericks" turns up a lot of hits, they'd probably still work in El Cap.

I do kind of miss the more 3D interface of olde sometimes, like Snow Leopard era.

Snow_Leopard_Desktop.png


The buttons...Like Steve Jobs said when he first introduced Aqua, they make you just want to lick them. Now they're just flat nothing. Oh, and you could actually tell what the active tab in Safari was.

I mostly miss the little jewel traffic lights circa 10.3. In 10.5 they got strangely harsh, softened again in 10.7 (but got smaller) and then turned boring and flat in the current versions.
 

Mortemis

Banned
First time updating on the first week of release for OSX. Is there any big bugs to make me avoid El Capitan or is it safe? I have a 2014 MacBook Pro that's running really well on Yosemite, don't want to fuck it up but I am interested in the new el cap features.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
I mostly miss the little jewel traffic lights circa 10.3. In 10.5 they got strangely harsh, softened again in 10.7 (but got smaller) and then turned boring and flat in the current versions.

Yeah, kind of miss the brushed metal there too.

I bet in 5 years things will come back around and we'll be leaving flatland and heading for more pop-ey interfaces, just like they once were. Then people will tire of that and we'll come full circle again.

finder-metal.jpg
 
In reference to an earlier post I made in this thread.

I just bought a 2015 Mac-book Pro and it's arriving in the mail tomorrow. I'm really excited to try out El Captain (first Mac ever). Does anyone have any pointers on what I should do after getting it? Necessary software or tweaks or is it pretty much good to go out of the box?

I've traditionally been exclusively a Windows man and after a clean install I have a ritual of installing applications and drivers.

See, the funny thing about post-install rituals is that they're different for every person. I'm going to give you my recommendations--I feel very strongly about them and firmly believe that they're the best way to use OS X--but take them with a grain of salt. I don't want to bias you too much.

First, in terms of tweaks: In Windows, you use the start menu to launch applications that aren't pinned to to your taskbar. Starting in Lion, Apple introduced a new way of launching applications called "Launchpad." Launchpad is very similar to Windows 8 in that it takes up the entire screen and is designed to replicate the interface you'd find on a phone.

I vastly prefer the pre-Launchpad method of starting applications: Drag your "Applications" folder into your dock. Right click, and choose "Display as: Folder" and "View content as: Grid". You can now launch applications by clicking the applications folder on your dock. Perhaps more importantly, you can now "install" new applications by dragging them right into this folder.

You can repeat this process with your Documents folder for easy access to your documents.

Newer versions of OS X also hide a folder that applications use called Library. The problem with this is that if you have any technological literacy at all, you'll almost certainly need to access this folder. Just as one of many examples, Minecraft loads custom textures from a location inside this folder.

To unhide it, go to "Applications" -> "Utilities" -> "Terminal". Copy and paste the following text, and then press enter.
Code:
chflags nohidden ~/Library

By default, new Finder windows (Finder = Windows Explorer) open to this weird view of everything on your computer. I like to change this to my home directory. You can change this by entering the following into the terminal:
Code:
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfLo"; defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file://${HOME}/"

In terms of programs, you'll definitely want something extract .7z and .rar files. I use The Unarchiver for this. The first time I open it, I like to go into settings and uncheck the file associations for everything but .7z and .rar files. By default, it's a bit over-aggressive.

That's pretty much it. There's a couple of other tweaks that I like to make, but they're fairly nonessential.

(The one other major thing that I do is delete a bunch of the default Apple applications. I never use Chess and I don't like having it's icon take up space when I go to launch something. However, I seem to be the only one who's really bothered by this, and starting with El Capitan, it actually requires temporarily disabling System Integrity Protection, so it's not really something I'd recommend to someone else unless it really bothers you)
 

NekoFever

Member
I got it last night and its really good. I have a 2011 13" MBP which has always done me good but recently its been getting a bit slow, I did change it to 8gb of ram a while ago but running multiple stuff like Safari, twitter, excel, iMessage, Skype at the same time started to chug a bit but now its much better than before.

I like all the smoother transitioning between stuff now, it generally feels more optimised and faster which I like, there is more life in it yet!

The twitter and Skype apps didn't work at first but a restart eventually fixed that although iMessage on it for some reason only shows numbers and email addresses I'm not sure why, not the biggest problem but a bit of an inconvenience admittedly.

If you haven't already, consider sticking an SSD in there to speed things up. I have a 2011 MBP too, which was feeling sluggish. When the hard drive died (probably didn't help the speeds if that had been failing for a while) I replaced it with an SSD, which made a night-and-day difference. I'm not even considering an upgrade now, which I was getting quite antsy to do before.
 
There are a few software options for theming, but I looked up Flavors and it looks like with the new security systems in 10.11, it's the end of the line for that app: http://www.flavours.interacto.net

The other problem with Flavors is that, as of when I last checked, it doesn't have any actual Mavericks themes.

They say it doesn't work with El Capitan, but I have System Integrity Protection turned off... I wonder what would happen. It's a moot point though as they don't have the theme I would want.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
See, the funny thing about post-install rituals is that they're different for every person. I'm going to give you my recommendations--I feel very strongly about them and firmly believe that they're the best way to use OS X--but take them with a grain of salt. I don't want to bias you too much.

First, in terms of tweaks: In Windows, you use the start menu to launch applications that aren't pinned to to your taskbar. Starting in Lion, Apple introduced a new way of launching applications called "Launchpad." Launchpad is very similar to Windows 8 in that it takes up the entire screen and is designed to replicate the interface you'd find on a phone.

I vastly prefer the pre-Launchpad method of starting applications: Drag your "Applications" folder into your dock. Right click, and choose "Display as: Folder" and "View content as: Grid". You can now launch applications by clicking the applications folder on your dock. Perhaps more importantly, you can now "install" new applications by dragging them right into this folder.

You can repeat this process with your Documents folder for easy access to your documents.

Newer versions of OS X also hide a folder that applications use called Library. The problem with this is that if you have any technological literacy at all, you'll almost certainly need to access this folder. Just as one of many examples, Minecraft loads custom textures from a location inside this folder.

To unhide it, go to "Applications" -> "Utilities" -> "Terminal". Copy and paste the following text, and then press enter.
Code:
chflags nohidden ~/Library

By default, new Finder windows (Finder = Windows Explorer) open to this weird view of everything on your computer. I like to change this to my home directory. You can change this by entering the following into the terminal:
Code:
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfLo"; defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file://${HOME}/"

In terms of programs, you'll definitely want something extract .7z and .rar files. I use The Unarchiver for this. The first time I open it, I like to go into settings and uncheck the file associations for everything but .7z and .rar files. By default, it's a bit over-aggressive.

That's pretty much it. There's a couple of other tweaks that I like to make, but they're fairly nonessential.

(The one other major thing that I do is delete a bunch of the default Apple applications. I never use Chess and I don't like having it's icon take up space when I go to launch something. However, I seem to be the only one who's really bothered by this, and starting with El Capitan, it actually requires temporarily disabling System Integrity Protection, so it's not really something I'd recommend to someone else unless it really bothers you)

Just to touch on some of the above, you can change the default Finder window behavior in the Finder preferences (New Finder Windows Show:), no Terminal required.

As for Launchpad, you can always drag the apps you don't use into a folder like iOS.

What I usually do when setting up my Mac is sign into iCloud for the stuff I want and need, install Dropbox, and then futz with settings: I switch my trackpad scrolling to the "unnatural" position, always show my scroll bars, path bar and tab bar in the Finder and other windows, make the sidebar icon size small in Finder windows, and (with recent versions) enable Dashboard and configure my usual widgets. The Mac App Store has definitely made it much easier to grab the applications I need without hunting for CD keys or media these days, and that's nice too.

I've never used Migration Assistant. I always treat a new Mac as an opportunity to start fresh.

The other problem with Flavors is that, as far as I can tell, there aren't any actual Mavericks themes.

They say it doesn't work with El Capitan, but I have System Integrity Protection turned off...

Let me know how it goes. I actually just downloaded it for Yosemite and I'm amazed how smooth and clean it works. A far cry from the glitchy days of Shapeshifter, or when you had to log in and out to get changes to stick.

I presume they cancelled dev for El Cap just because most users aren't going to turn off SIP, thus reducing their potential audience, and in any case I don't think they want to be encouraging average users to do it either.
 
So I upgraded my Macs software to El Capitan however with that found that all my notes are now gone, any reason why that is the case and how I can retrieve them? I don't know if the bastards at Apple fucked up somewhere but all my notes are gone, I had some important information gathered in them the past few years so this is actually pretty horrible for me.

Would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me out here, panicking here. :(
 

Burai

shitonmychest57
So I upgraded my Macs software to El Capitan however with that found that all my notes are now gone, any reason why that is the case and how I can retrieve them? I don't know if the bastards at Apple fucked up somewhere but all my notes are gone, I had some important information gathered in them the past few years so this is actually pretty horrible for me.

Would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me out here, panicking here. :(

Double check in account settings that Notes is turned on for iCloud. I had to re-enable it to sync my notes back in.
 
Double check in account settings that Notes is turned on for iCloud. I had to re-enable it to sync my notes back in.

I don't use iCloud at all, but I'm getting confused. Having given up all hope I started up notes, put something in the search bar and got my old files. I don't know why they have made it so that my old notes are not visible without doing a search, besides the search I can't seem to find them.
 

mrkgoo

Member
So I upgraded my Macs software to El Capitan however with that found that all my notes are now gone, any reason why that is the case and how I can retrieve them? I don't know if the bastards at Apple fucked up somewhere but all my notes are gone, I had some important information gathered in them the past few years so this is actually pretty horrible for me.

Would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me out here, panicking here. :(

Do you use iCloud for notes syncing? For the record, they introduced a new notes app that uses an entirely different foundation.

I upgraded my notes on my iPhone before el captan and it transferred my existing ones to the new system.

So no clue how to help yet, but if you have activated iCloud one way to see if it's a screw up on iCloud end is to log in at iCloud.com and see if the "master" copy in the cloud (again IF you use iCloud) is blank or not.

For the record as well, I've activated a few people on iCloud when they've had local contacts and the idea is that it merges local into the iCloud account. Occasionally, I've seen it where it does the reverse and merges the blank iCloud down to the device ie deleting all local copies.


Edit: a quick Google reveals that the notes database is kept in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes/

Now don't mess about too much X in there but may be worth a look and not sure how to restore that, but it's a start. I looked in mine and it has a lot of links. So not really seeing any straight database at this stage.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Also worthy of note is that when I started up elcapitan, it had deleted my entire pop email history.

It WAS there though, because when I selected rebuild it all (well I assume all) came back.

I keep local copies in my Mac and delete them off the server so I had a mini-panic attack thinking maybe I had lost all my emails.

I do have a time machine backup though.
 
Let me know how it goes. I actually just downloaded it for Yosemite and I'm amazed how smooth and clean it works. A far cry from the glitchy days of Shapeshifter, or when you had to log in and out to get changes to stick.

I presume they cancelled dev for El Cap just because most users aren't going to turn off SIP, thus reducing their potential audience, and in any case I don't think they want to be encouraging average users to do it either.

Welp, I tried it because it was curious.

Initially, it didn't work out so well. Upon launching Flavours, it displayed an error message that said my version of OS X was unsupported, and provided only three options: "Check for Updates" (which will of course fail), "Uninstall" and "Quit."

Well, this didn't really answer my question. I was still curious about whether the program would work in El Capitan. All I had discovered was that the developer had decided to forcibly lock me out.

So I opened the terminal and typed:
Code:
sudo nano -w /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist
...and changed: "<ProductUserVisibleVersion>" and "<ProductVersion>" from 10.11 to 10.10.

I then saved my changes with Ctrl+W -> Enter -> Ctrl+X. This is exactly why I have System Integrity Protection disabled. :)

I then launched Flavours. Everything. Works. Absolutely. Perfectly.

And, wonder of wonders, I'd missed this last time: there's a theme called Plus Minus which is almost exactly the same as the old Acqua theme. Not perfect, but close enough for me to make it a daily driver, especially since I can combine it LiteIcons and cDock. Except...

There's no way that keeping ProductVersion set to 10.10 isn't going to cause problems down the road. See, this is the kind of thing that pisses me off. Here is an application that is quite good and works perfectly, but I can't use it because the developer has arbitrarily decided to lock me out. Show me a warning, but let me continue at my own peril if I so choose!

Edit: Okay, on a second go-round, there actually are some visual issues that I'm pretty sure weren't present in Yosemite. Nothing terrible though.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Welp, I tried it because it was curious.

Initially, it didn't work out so well. Upon launching Flavours, it displayed an error message that said my version of OS X was unsupported, and provided only three options: "Check for Updates" (which will of course fail), "Uninstall" and "Quit."

Unperturbed, I opened the terminal and typed:
Code:
sudo nano -w /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist
and chanced: "<ProductUserVisibleVersion>" and "<ProductVersion>" from 10.11 to 10.10.

Ctrl+W, Enter, Ctrl+X. And this is exactly why I have System Integrity Protection disabled. :)

I then launched Flavours. Everything. Works. Absolutely. Perfectly.

And, wonder of wonders, I'd missed this last time: there's a theme called Plus Minus which is almost exactly the same as the old Acqua theme. Not perfect, but close enough for me to make it a daily driver, especially since I can combine it LiteIcons and cDock. Except...

There's no way that keeping ProductVersion set to 10.10 isn't going to cause problems down the road. See, this is the kind of thing that pisses me off. Here is an application that is quite good and works perfectly, but I can't use it because the developer has arbitrarily decided to lock me out. Show me a warning, but let me continue at my own peril if I so choose!

Edit: Okay, on a second go-round, there actually are some visual issues that I'm pretty sure weren't present in Yosemite. Nothing terrible though.

Might be worth pinging them or sending them an email and see if they can push an update to let it run in unsupported disclaimer mode. It's $5 for the app, and I'd be willing to buy it to take my chances with 10.11 and beyond but otherwise it's not really worth it.
 

Guess Who

Banned
Yeah, kind of miss the brushed metal there too.

I bet in 5 years things will come back around and we'll be leaving flatland and heading for more pop-ey interfaces, just like they once were. Then people will tire of that and we'll come full circle again.

finder-metal.jpg

Man, people didn't even like brushed metal at the time.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Man, people didn't even like brushed metal at the time.

I didn't like it mostly because they had fat borders around every window, and they sunk-in a lot of interface elements rather than having them pop off. The actual texture wasn't really ever that bad.
 

the3ye

Member
Just to touch on some of the above, you can change the default Finder window behavior in the Finder preferences (New Finder Windows Show:), no Terminal required.

As for Launchpad, you can always drag the apps you don't use into a folder like iOS.

What I usually do when setting up my Mac is sign into iCloud for the stuff I want and need, install Dropbox, and then futz with settings: I switch my trackpad scrolling to the "unnatural" position, always show my scroll bars, path bar and tab bar in the Finder and other windows, make the sidebar icon size small in Finder windows, and (with recent versions) enable Dashboard and configure my usual widgets. The Mac App Store has definitely made it much easier to grab the applications I need without hunting for CD keys or media these days, and that's nice too.

I've never used Migration Assistant. I always treat a new Mac as an opportunity to start fresh.



Let me know how it goes. I actually just downloaded it for Yosemite and I'm amazed how smooth and clean it works. A far cry from the glitchy days of Shapeshifter, or when you had to log in and out to get changes to stick.

I presume they cancelled dev for El Cap just because most users aren't going to turn off SIP, thus reducing their potential audience, and in any case I don't think they want to be encouraging average users to do it either.

Same with Library folder.
&#8984;J in your Home folder and check last option.
 
Does El Capitan let us resize partition sizes for Windows? I made a bootable Windows partition and I want to make it bigger without wiping.
 

jstripes

Banned
Man, people didn't even like brushed metal at the time.

Most of the visual "flare" of the '00s computer world was essentially "because we can".

Everyone had fancy, new, modern compositing engines, and wanted to show them off.

In hindsight, it's like looking back at the way you dressed in junior high.
 

Mortemis

Banned
alright, just finished my backup and about to install. Do you guys recommend doing a clean install or is a regular update good enough nowadays?
 

wmlk

Member
As someone who only has a 2013 MBA with nothing else from the Apple ecosystem, do you guys think it's worth the update from Yosemite?

I found Yosemite's changes to be very minimal. Just a visual change more than anything.
 
Just started having an issue where the Mail app literally starts taking 99% CPU and 10+ GB of RAM, just while being open, and having, I'm not kidding, 6 messages in it. wtf is going on

Edit: HOW HIGH CAN IT GO, GUYS?

cCTIUhW.png
 
Safari has been running oddly since this last update. It'll outright freeze up at times so that I can't even Force Quit. It'll return to normal-ish after a few minutes but I've found performance on Safari to be a big downgrade. Has forced a temporary return to Chrome, which I'm not pleased about since it killed my laptop's battery everytime I used it.

For reference, 2014 MBP w/ 16gb ram
 

Ninja Dom

Member
Just started having an issue where the Mail app literally starts taking 99% CPU and 10+ GB of RAM, just while being open, and having, I'm not kidding, 6 messages in it. wtf is going on

Edit: HOW HIGH CAN IT GO, GUYS?

cCTIUhW.png

How much RAM you got?

Mail and iMessage are the two apps I never quit on my iMac. I can leave it on continuous for 2 weeks or more. I'll quit all other apps when I'm not using them but those two I never do.
 
How much RAM you got?

Mail and iMessage are the two apps I never quit on my iMac. I can leave it on continuous for 2 weeks or more. I'll quit all other apps when I'm not using them but those two I never do.

8GB physical RAM

It eventually solved itself, funnily enough. I think it was purging the gmail messages since I just disconnected that account. I'm making the transition from my @gmail.com to my @icloud.com

I'm assuming that even though Mail was showing up as empty after disconnecting my gmail, behind the scenes it was flipping the fuck out trying to delete my thousands of messages in a timely manner. Or something. I have no idea, really

On an unrelated note, changing your primary email from one provider to another SUUUUUUUUUUCKS
 

Ninja Dom

Member
Why are you changing from gmail to iCloud for your emails? I've been using gmail since it started, seems fine and supports a lot of features. Also works fine for me in Maill app on iOS and OS X.
 
Why are you changing from gmail to iCloud for your emails? I've been using gmail since it started, seems fine and supports a lot of features. Also works fine for me in Maill app on iOS and OS X.

I've been wanting to do it for a while, since I don't actually use any of gmail's features anyway, nor really have anything tied to it other than Google Wallet. It's the last big Google service I use, and I don't really have a need for it

Also as of 9.0.2 and El Capitan my gmail account has NOT been playing nice with the iOS mail app and Mail on OSX. At all. I can't reliably get any mail on any of my devices, despite my best efforts. I spent two days messing with it to no avail, so that was my catalyst. I could have switched to the gmail app on iOS if Google wasn't so adamant about making sure you can only "archive" a message from a notification instead of actually sending it to the trash. That's a required feature for me

So it's a combination of a) not really feeling any pressure to keep using Google's services, b) not using any of the features that make gmail more powerful than anything else, and c) it stopped playing nice with iOS and OSX Mail apps

Basically, I've traded the time I would have spent getting gmail to work in Mail for going to every account I've ever created and updating my email. So you know, progress. Ironically the only thing I can't change is my AppleID, because the way Apple set up their system it's possible to make a new AppleID with an @icloud email, but impossible to change an existing AppleID to be an @icloud.
 

mcarlie

Banned
When you move the mouse all the way to the left in Safari you get this sidebar that shows up. Anyway to disable that?
 
Hmm now that is odd. And just to be sure, these Live Photos were taken on an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus and animate on the iPhone? Are you using Photos on Mac to import the Live Photo from the iPhone? What happens if you AirDrop the Live Photo to your Mac?

Also on Yosemite Live Photos had a photo and a separate movie listed side by side in Photos app. Do you still have that? Only now in El Capitan does it put the photo & movie together to create a Live Photo.

EDIT1: Now even video thumbnails play when I hover my mouse over them in Photos on OS X. Do they play for you?

Yeah that's right, taken on a 6S and play like normal on the phone when the screen is pressed firmly. The photos are coming in through photo stream on my mac and I then save them from there into an album. I haven't tried airdropping yet, will give it a go (although I never have much luck with airdrop).

And no, the thumbnails don't move still either :/

EDIT- there's a menu item that says 'Turn on Live photos' but for some reason it's greyed out

When you move the mouse all the way to the left in Safari you get this sidebar that shows up. Anyway to disable that?

I'd also like to know this
 

Servbot24

Banned
I'm loving split screen mode - Have Photoshop full screen on monitor 1, with iTunes and Safari side by side on monitor 2. Plus with desktops, I can easily switch monitor 2 to ZBrush or any of other app I need. Very nice :)
 
Trying to install it on my MacBook Air after my desktop installation was flawless and HOLY SHIT THE APP STORE IS SO GODDAM SLOW. Projected download time was 2 DAYS.

Anyone with multiple Macs and at least a minor level of comfort should look into making a USB installer once they've downloaded it once.

EDIT: I should not leave old windows open.
 

Caronte

Member
Gf1Om9F.png


69ejiPg.png


Nonsensical lines and calling the same thing with two different names (I don't even know why they changed that, it was right in Yosemite). Come on, Apple. Translators are not that expensive.
 

Ninja Dom

Member
@zeyphersan
Sounds perfectly reasonable. You're still gonna have to keep your gmail for YouTube though, right?
Has iCloud mail been perfectly reliable? It's great that it supports Push on iOS. On OSX I think I have Mail poll my gmail every minute so it's almost as fast as Push. What's iCloud spam filtering like?

I'm just worried that Apple will change their email system again down the line. In the time I've had my Gmail, I've also had a Mac.co
 

Ninja Dom

Member
Yeah that's right, taken on a 6S and play like normal on the phone when the screen is pressed firmly. The photos are coming in through photo stream on my mac and I then save them from there into an album. I haven't tried airdropping yet, will give it a go (although I never have much luck with airdrop).

And no, the thumbnails don't move still either :/

EDIT- there's a menu item that says 'Turn on Live photos' but for some reason it's greyed out

Ah that's it. Photo Stream seems to be stripping the Live Photos. I get my Live Photos on my Mac by connecting my 6S to my Mac with a lightning cable and importing them into Photos app. I've not even seen that menu item that's greyed out for you.
 
Macosxpb.png


I remember the first time I saw the Aqua GUI.

My jaw was literally on the floor. It looked so incredibly good at the time...

I have to admit, I still have to get used to the new flat look.

I think Windows does it better.

Something is very off about the way everythings color composited after Yosemite, imo...
 
I uninstalled Total Finder after the developer said he wouldn't support it after Apple introduced SIP. Someone suggested Path Finder as a replacement but I'm not interested in a full finder replacement.

Also, I've stuck with my own third party window management solution as Apple's split screen thing is a bit naff.
 

VariantX04

Loser slave of the system :(
I love how fast El Capitan has made my 2012 rMBP but I quickly realized I updated way too soon. I fired up Logic Pro X and it seems there's a problem with AU validation for Native Instruments products. Many other music software companies warned against upgrading but I only read that after the fact. :/ I have projects due in the next few weeks and I can't afford to wait for an update. So my question is, is there a way to downgrade to Yosemite even though I don't have a previous backup available? Thanks.
 
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