macOS Monterey

Link

Apple Releases macOS Monterey 12.2 Developer Beta One Without Universal Control

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple seeded the fist developer beta of macOS Monterey 12.2 on Thursday. MacRumors reported on the, rather limited, details that were available. One thing missing was Universal Control.

Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences. We don’t yet know what’s included in ‌macOS Monterey‌ 12.2, but Apple has yet to implement a major feature — Universal Control. Universal Control is designed to allow a single mouse and trackpad to be used with multiple Macs and iPads, and Apple has said it will be launching this spring.

Link

Ex-Apple Staffer Discusses Shortcuts on macOS Monterey

Charlotte Henry ·

In a new AppleInsider podcast, former Apple employee Matthew Cassinelli to discusses the integration of Shortcuts in macOS Monterey. For those of us still getting used to the addition, it’s a conversation worth listening to.

Since the public release of macOS Monterey, users can now create, edit, and sync their iOS Shortcuts directly on a Mac. Announced earlier this year at WWDC, Shortcuts on macOS will also slowly replace the previous automation tool, Automator, bringing one system to the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Matthew Cassinelli previously worked on the original Workflow app, which was acquired by Apple in 2017 and evolved into the Shortcuts app. After staying on the team at Apple for a short time, Matthew became an independent creator, helping others learn Shortcuts, and reporting on new actions available with every update.

[Headline corrected November 26  to clarify that Mr. Cassinelli was not an engineer at Apple.]

Link

Disk Utility Can Now Manage Snapshots in macOS Monterey

Andrew Orr ·

Disk Utility can now manage AFPS snapshots, no matter which app created them, in macOS Monterey.

This new feature is cunningly hidden so that you don’t notice this huge leap forward when you first open the app. To engage its new powers, select a volume and use the Show APFS Snapshots command in its View menu. This opens a new table view in the lower part of the main view in which the selected volume’s snapshots are listed.

Podcast

A Summit of Geeks – Mac Geek Gab 899

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · Add Comment

MacMost’s Gary Rosenzweig joins John and Dave today to share Quick Tips, Cool Stuff Found and, yes, to help answer all of your Apple-related tech questions. Topics include dealing with Monterey’s “Load Content Directly” issues in Mail, Network Utility Replacements, Monterey image tricks, portable Apple Watch chargers, and much more! Press play and learn at least five new things with your three favorite geeks!

Link

Apple Offers Fix For macOS Monterey Bug Bricking Some T2 Macs

Charlotte Henry ·

When macOS Monterey was rolled out, an issue arose whereby some Macs with T2 chips were bricking. 9to5Mac reports that this has now been resolved.

Now, Apple says it has identified an issue affecting the T2 security chip that caused this problem and is rolling out a fix to prevent it from happening in the future. In a statement, Apple explained (via Rene Ritchie): We have identified and fixed an issue with the firmware on the Apple T2 security chip that prevented a very small number of users from booting up their Mac after updating macOS. The updated firmware is now included with the existing macOS updates. Any users impacted by this issue can contact Apple Support for assistance. To prevent this problem from occurring to additional users, Apple has rolled out an updated version of the bridgeOS firmware that runs on the T2 security chip. Users already impacted by the problem are instructed to contact Apple Support for assistance.

Podcast

macOS Monterey Quick Tips, M1 Choices, and Cool Stuff Found — Mac Geek Gab 898

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · 2 Comments

It’s been a busy week in the Apple world: the new M1 Pro/Max-based MacBook Pros began arriving, Monterey dropped for most, AirPods Gen 3 arrived, you had questions, and your two favorite geeks have answers! Listen as John and Dave help try to sort through all of this, deciding what’s important, what’s not, and which macOS Monterey Quick Tips you might’ve missed in the mayhem. Press play and learn at least five new things together with the MGG family!

‘Data Jar’ App For Shortcuts Has Arrived on macOS Monterey
Cool Stuff Found

'Data Jar' App For Shortcuts Has Arrived on macOS Monterey

Andrew Orr ·

Data Jar is a Shortcuts-adjacent app that lets you store data for use in a shortcut as persistent key-value pairs. You can store text, numbers, booleans, lists, dictionaries, and files. This lets you read and update data directly from Shortcuts. As an example of how I use Data Jar, I have a shortcut that lets me rename a bunch of files at once. Some files are renamed sequentially and Data Jar helps me store the latest number for the files, and it gets updated with every new file I rename with it. It’s a great app, free for Mac and I personally recommend giving a big tip to the developer if you find Data Jar useful.