macOS Archives

Anything related to Apple, Macs and macOS

How to download older versions of macOS after Mojave was released

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My good old MacBook Pro from 2011 can only supports macOS up until 10.13 High Sierra. It’s been purring along nicely with macOS 10.12 Sierra for the last couple of years, and I didn’t see the need to upgrade just yet. Why risk breaking things that are working, right?

A couple of weeks ago, macOS 10.14 Mojave was released, with which my MacBook is sadly no longer compatible (not officially at least). So when I searched for “High Sierra” on the Mac App store, I was surprised to learn that it didn’t come up. It appears that only the very latest macOS release is available to download from the Mac App Store.

So now the $100k question is: How can I get an official copy of macOS High Sierra, now that Mojave is out? I’ve never downloaded it before, therefore it doesn’t show up in my “previous purchases” tab either. Have I missed my 12 month window to download the last operating system that’s compatible with my hardware?

Lucky for us, Apple have made some contingencies. I did some research and found several older Mac operating system for ya’ll’s enjoyment. Might come in handy 😉

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How to transfer files from your GoPro to your computer via WiFi

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There is an iOS and Android App available to transfer files directly from a GoPro camera to a mobile device. Those apps transcode files and compress them for easier viewing, and to save storage space.

While that approach gets footage onto my iPhone, I still need to transfer the files to my Mac for editing. Plus, there’s an additional compression step involved which can’t be good for picture quality. Besides, it takes forever to do its job.

A much more useful approach would be to hook directly into the GoPro and transfer files that way. This leaves the SD card place and doesn’t disturb the (sometimes hard to reach or difficult to recreate) position of the camera.

Here’s how to do it.

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How to take pictures with Photo Booth on macOS

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In this episode I’ll show you how to take pictures with built-in and external USB cameras using Photo Booth on macOS. Photo Booth is the equivalent of the Camera application in iOS. I will also explain how to export your images, where they are stored on the hard disk, and what you can do if … Read more

How to turn text into an audio file on macOS

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Ever since Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, there has been a great and very underrated feature built-in to every Mac: the ability to highlight some text and have macOS turn it into an audio file.

This is a wonderful way to listen to written text while you’re on the go, or if you want to skim through text you or others have written while you’re occupied with another activity, such as walking or driving. I love this feature!

I’ve seen the option in the context menu many times, but I’ve never dared to use it until today. Perhaps I held off for so long because the option reads “add to iTunes as Spoken Track” – and I’m just not a big fan of iTunes.

Turns out, this text-to-audio option bypasses iTunes altogether. It doesn’t open automatically and we won’t need it to transfer tracks to our iPhones either. What a relief!

Let me show you how to do it in this article.

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How to transcode an AFIC file with macOS Finder

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Yesterday I had to transcode some audio files recorded with Quicktime on macOS. Quicktime works great for that, but it only stores files in its native AIFC file format. That’s the Audio Interchange File Format, a format developed by Apple in 1988, storing audio data as uncompressed PCM data. Sadly though, AIFC is not commonly … Read more

How to run Commodore BASIC as a Scripting Language on macOS

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Did you know you can run Commodore BASIC v2 on your Mac and Linux systems as a scripting language? It’s true – thanks to the marvellous efforts of Michael Steil and James Abbatiello. They’ve adapted the original BASIC v2 as featured on the VIC-20 and C64 with additional routines so that it works natively on … Read more