Wednesday, January 21, 2015

OSx 10.10.1 Annoyances

If you have had a Mac for any length of time, you are probably used to upgrading to the latest version of the OS when they release it.   Of course within the past couple of years we have all learned that we even have to be wary of Apple and its releases, as they have not been perfect by any stretch.  

My work is holding off on the latest release due to incompatibilities with some pieces of software.  This didn't stop me though, and this was because:  1. I had already upgraded, and 2. Luckily it turns out I didn't use the software in question.  Yay!

But, I have noticed that there are a couple of things in the new release that I find particularly annoying, especially since the modified behavior that I had either previously set specifically, or that was already a default action(and I preferred).

The first one is the setting in System Preferences for automatic display brightness adjustment.  I find this setting annoying as I don't like my computer deciding how bright my screen is supposed to be.  Also, having the screen brighter certainly drains a bit more of the battery.  My eyes are adjusted to having it set lower, and I like it that way.  Plus, when you have a headache(or migraine as I tend to get), the last thing you want is a brighter screen.  

With the 10.10.1 release, the update turned on automatic brightness adjustment.  It took me about an hour to actually notice it.   But if you want it off (like me), go to System Preferences -> Displays and uncheck the box next to "Automatically adjust brightness".  

The other setting that really irked me was that after updating to 10.10.1, I noticed that the default behavior of the machine when you close the lid had changed.  For the longest time the action was to put the computer to sleep when you shut the lid.  After updating, the default action was to hibernate.  As people have probably experienced, hibernate is a royal pain, mostly because when you open your laptop, you have to press the power button and then wait for it to restore.  On a Mac, when you sleep it, you simply open the top and the display comes alive almost right away (within a couple of seconds typically) and you can then log in and get right to work.  Pretty much almost no waiting.  Hibernate is a sloth to come back in comparison to sleep.  

I had to do a little digging to figure out how to fix this.  What you need to is open up your command line terminal and enter the following to make sleep the default when the lid is closed:

  sudo pmset -a lidwake 1

After that, if you shut the lid, it should simply sleep.  Now, some people are probably saying, "Why not just specifically tell it to sleep?".  The reason is to save time.  Instead of taking the time to go to the menus and click sleep, you can simply shut the top of your laptop and have it automatically do it for you.  

Again, these are my annoyances with OSx 10.10.1.  If you are not bothered by them, then continue on.  Otherwise, I hope this helped to fix them for you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jeff,

Great article. A few tips for the sleep option. Use a feature that's been around since lion, call "hot corners." Just pick a corner that you want the laptop to sleep, drag your mouse to it and bingo! It's in sleep mode

Use it all the time!

Keep up the great work!

Numberwhun said...

Yeah, I do use hot corners. I have it set to simply lock the screen when I need to step away. Because you don't need your security guy playing a joke on you. :)

All in all though, that is another great option. Thanks!

 
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