T: 01380 830224 E: [email protected]
If you’re uploading .svg files to the WordPress Media Library, you might have been unable to, seeing the error “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons.”
Open your .svg up with a text editor and check that the first line shows as
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
If it doesn’t, whack that in, save the document and try again. Adobe software often omits the xml declaration if you optimise the svg output. Pop it back in, problem solved.
I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since we last posted something about web development; time really does fly when you’re up to your neck in client work!
So what have we been up to during the last couple of years? As per usual, pretty much everything we do is for clients who don’t want us to talk about our involvement with a project, so we can’t publically post anything about individual projects 🙁 But in round terms it’s been:
Need a reliable, cost-effective developer to turn your designs into a working website? Need help with an existing website that’s gone pear-shaped? Give us a call on 01380 830244 and we’ll see what we can do…
If you have an Apple Mac, installing minor versions of System updates, Security updates and updates of Apple supplied applications is a generally* trouble free experience. Whilst that’s often also true if you have a Hackintosh, installing updates is not without risk. So the Hackintosh user has 2 choices.
Actually in some specific situations this is a perfectly sensible approach. If you’re using the Hackintosh in a professional setting, it runs what you need perfectly well and it’s not stopping you doing or getting new work, why give yourself any hassle? It works, leave it be. My only caveat to this rule is please, for the love of everything holy, don’t use it for anything financially sensitive. Banking, investing, buying stuff online or any other personally sensitive transactions on a machine that never receives security is just asking for trouble in the long term.
The process is basically the same as it would be on a normal Mac, with a few significant difference. This assumes that you’ve done a vanilla install using Clover and have all of your .kexts in in the /EFI/ folder
As you can see, there only a few extra steps compared to performing an upgrade in a sensible, defensive manner on an Apple Mac. But I can’t emphasise enough how important Step 1, 2 and 3 are. The only fundamental software difference between a Hackintosh and normal Mac should be what’s on the EFI partition. But that partition contains all the system specific tweaks for the hardware your Hackintosh needs to run smoothly, on a particular version of Mac OS.
By following Steps 1, 2 and 3 you can be sure that when you startup from your backup drive, Clover is loading from the EFI partition on your backup drive. Thus when you install a software update, you can be confident if it all goes to pot you can simply drop into the BIOS, change the boot drive and be back where you started prior to attempting the update. Then it’s a question of doing a bit of research to suss out what caused the problem, ( or just choosing to do nothing if you don’t currently have time or inclination).
If that sounds terribly complicated, it’s really not. It’s a just a few additional steps assuming you’ve got things setup correctly in the first instance. Without this safely net you risk turning your lovely, stable and fast Hackintosh into a large paperweight – until such time as you get the boot issue sorted.
Please give us a call on 01380 830224 to discuss your requirements, we’d be happy to help. If you’ve a Hackintosh that’s been “bricked” by a System update, don’t panic. All your data will still be intact, we just need to fix whatever conflict there is between the specific OS installation you installed and your Clover configuration.
* Sometimes even Apple Macs get stuffed by OS updates, which is why I would always suggest having a known good bootable clone drive knocking around, regardless of whether you use a Apple Mac or a Hackinotsh.
** Yeah, yeah, I know it’s actually UEFI, but most people know the term BIOS, so let’s not split hairs 🙂
Solid State Hard Drives ( SSDs ) are great. They make all the difference between a computer being painfully slow or feeling snappy and responsive. However they do have one significant downside. You get a lot less storage capacity for the same money. To make matters worse Apple supplied a lot of machines with a pitifully small 128GB SSD.
Well you could enable iCloud Drive and enable Optimise Storage. That will shift a fair amount of the documents off your computer and up onto the interwebs. However for many people, fitting a larger SSD would be preferable (not just from a data privacy point of view). So is it possible without breaking the bank by paying for Apple’s somewhat usurious SSD pricing? Absolutely!
For any model of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacPro, Macmini or iMac that doesn’t have a soldered on SSD, it’s perfectly possible and cost-effective to upgrade to a 2TB* or larger SSD.
Sounds interesting? Just get in touch with your serial number ( or exact model ) and we can provide pricing that includes cloning your data to the new drive, securely erasing the old SSD ready for sale/disposal, plus installing any necessary software tweaks. Depending on the current drive we might also be able to convert the SSD into a neat external drive as well.
So if you’re in Wiltshire or Somerset, frustrated with a tiny hard drive but don’t want to spend £x000s on a new Mac, give us a call on 01380 830224 and we’ll see if we can offer you a cost-effective upgrade path for your kit…
* As of September 2019. As time goes by I expect 4TB or larger drives will drop in price and become perfectly cost-effective options for home/pro users. Currently 4TB drives command a steep price premium over 2TB or smaller models.
One pleasant surprise about the 2018 Mac mini is that the RAM* is once again upgradeable and you can fit up to 64GB RAM. This makes it potentially a good choice of machine for musicians, programmers and anyone else needing oodles of RAM.
However the price Apple are charging for Build To Order RAM upgrades are frankly shocking. In August 2019 a 32GB upgrade was priced at £540, which is astonishing considering you can currently buy compatible RAM from quality vendors for £130. Even if you factor in our charge to fit the RAM for you, Apple are demanding a ~300% mark up.
It’s not even that difficult to replace the RAM yourself. You just need to be very careful when dismantling, especially around the WiFi antennae. Also wear protective gloves – when pushing the logic board out of the case you have to use quite a bit of controlled force, so as it releases the board shoots forward and can trap a finger against the sharp edges of the case.
Do a quick boot test before final reassembly to ensure the RAM is recognised, and then after complete reassembly run a RAM test for 24hrs or so as a “soak test”. After that you can be pretty confident there are no compatibility issues going forward.
You should be aware that if the machine needs to be repaired under warranty you would need to refit the original RAM. However in my experience the Macmini has been one of the very few Mac products in the last 10 years that has basically been bombproof. IMHO it’s a small but acceptable risk, especially when balanced against the huge cost savings to be made.
Have a 2018 Macmini? Need more RAM but want to save some money? Give us a call on 01380 830224 to discuss options, pricing and turn-around time.
* The hard drive is unfortunately soldered to the motherboard, ruling out future SSD upgrades. I’m not sure how many people really need T2 enforced hardware disk encryption as FileVault should be secure enough for everyone but the most security obsessed. Of course it does mean Apple can maintain their astonishingly high SSD pricing, but I’m sure that has nothing to with it…