Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

The second one

This deffo appears to be the case. Emptying the bin has just given me an extra 20gb for a start. And there's 16gb of photos. Just need to figure out if me deleting them, will cause problems elsewhere.

Is there a forum approved USB C hub (usb c to multiple normal usb)?

I'm not as familiar with Macs as I thought I was. What am I missing here. What is the "other" 40gb~ likely to be. Bit baffled here.

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Any other users? Best would be to just download something like daisy disk. It’ll tell you exactly what it is.

Re USB-c hubs. Go Anker or Caldigit for quality.

Why is it displaying two hard drives? Only one is listed in Locations in the finder app.

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Maybe it’s partitioned. What’s it look like in disk utility?

It's been passed onto me, the HD was/is encrypted, and when I did the set up, I also told it to encrypt it. I have the passwords for both (the previous encryption and the new). Is there any way to just nuke this to nothing/factory settings and start again?

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Here:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204904

Go to Disk Utility and wipe the disk before you continue with the installer.

Note it may install an older version of MacOS, and you’ll have to find an updater in the Mac App Store.

I'm using an eBay job, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324206554452 - which seems to be really decent quality so far, wasn't shipped from China so actually arrived in decent time, and wasn't the cheapest one going.
Seems well made and does the job.

@nefarius ..here's anther option, in case you like the thing to be space grey and actually have the USB 3.0 outs -
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124647670150?hash=item1d05948186:g:mM0AAOSwhF1gWQqz

I have a couple of their USB dongle things, think they're really good, better than the OG Apple ones.

Why is it displaying two hard drives?

That's fucking confusing, isn't it.
It's normal though, as in: they do that now (since Catalina I think).
It will be like that when you re-install the OS (which I absolutely would do, to start-anew).

IIRC one is read-only for the OS files and the other is user data. At least in theory. Not sure what's going on with this particular computer.

In the strange world of APFS they share free space so both are 120 GB and both have 50 GB free.

The Finder hides the complexity from the user.

There are two drives as one is the data and the other is a signed, read only partition for the OS. From the next version, Mac OS will work like an iPhone and let you nuke all the user data without removing the OS.

I haven’t got a link to hand, but the Other might be time machine snapshots, which can be removed using tmutil in the command line, if you google it.

The Finder hides the complexity from the user.

Which does my cunt in coming from a pc.

Uhhhhhh. Have I fucked it? There isn’t a disk to select...

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This is normal - the complexity is hidden from you.

I hate you, but lol.

Go back to disk utility and show us how it looks.

Restarted the computer, only this time time it only gave me the option of installing Mojave. So I’ve done that, and am now manually updating to big sur. It does appear that everything has been wiped properly now at least.

Oh for fucks sake. Now it’s getting stuck on this after clicking agree to the ts and cs.

And of course the advice online is “boot it off a usb stick or other external drive” but I’m stuck here with only 2x USB c ports.

Macs “they just work” - like fuck they do!

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Recommendations for a battery (or where to get one) for a 2013 Macbook air?

I replaced the original one around a year ago, from battdepot. But a year later its not holding any charge. I think it was around £35 - happy to pay more (ifixit have replacements at £80) if I'm going to get reasonable life (3-5 years say), otherwise the cheapest £20 ones seem to last a year.

IME its a false economy having anything other than an Apple fitted OEM replacement battery. £129 for an Air will give you another 5+ years of service

just to clarify, you've installed Mojave successfully already and are now upgrading to BS?

Do you have a pressing reason to upgrade right now? As far as I can see the changes are minor and cosmetic, though I'm running High Sierra and its rock solid - I've no direct experience with BS

Just thought I'd get it running with the most up to date one, will sack it off if it's not really needed.