blog.holgerkrupp.de

Category: Apple

  • Apple Photos can’t handle RAW

    I’ve noticed it and reported it to apple during the macOS 26 developer beta. Unfortunately it has not been solved and I haven’t got any reaction from Apple, so I’m wondering if it’s a macOS bug or a me-Bug (as this should never happen, even a me-bug is a macOS bug here).

    I’m shooting JPEG+RAW using my Canon R8 camera. That means for every photo I take, two files are saved. The raw data from the image sensor and a JPEG file that has some automatic adjustments done to it in camera. The JPEG is often good enough to share but for some pictures it’s great to have the flexibility from RAW files.

    When importing the images to Apple Photos, the App shows one image with the information that there are two files related to it. The user can switch per photo if the JPEG or the RAW should be the “original ” that is used for editing. This can be changed, the original is mentioned first in the photo library icon.

    switching between RAW and JPEG
    Switching between RAW and JPG

    When switching from JPEG Original to RAW Original, often (not always) the image looks completely broken. Often it’s just black with pieces of photos in some areas.

    JPEGs
    RAWs

    You could think that the RAW file was destroyed while importing the images, but that’s not the case. In Photos you can go to the source file in the FINDER or export it to a location of your choice. When doing so, you find the RAW file completely intact and can open and edit it with other software without any issue.

    Finder
    Affinity Photo

    This is bug in Apple Photos which can’t display the RAW file correctly. This bug has been reported to apple in July 2025 under FB18980689.

    Edit: the iPhone Version can display the same images (synced using iCloud Photo Sync) without a problem.

  • Up Next – An Independent Podcast Player

    Up Next – An Independent Podcast Player

    I’ve created a new app that is supposed to launch alongside Apples iOS26 Update. I took what I’ve learned when developing “One Trick Pony” and “Raúl”, applied new Swift6 concurrency rules and modern way of working to build “Up Next”. I’ve been using it already some time now while updating and bugfixing. The app is now ready and I’m waiting for apple to allow the submission of iOS26 apps. Stay tuned – if you are running the iOS26 beta, you can already install the app using TestFlight. Head over to my new Development Website at Extremely Successful Apps.

  • Downloading 2TB from iCloud

    How long does it take to download 2TB of iCloud Photos? My Hard drive broke. After buying a new one, I had to download my iCloud Photo Library from Apple (to have a local copy of all my Photos). To see the progress, I wrote a small Shell script that monitored the file size and regularly wrote it into a csv. To Launch this shell script, I nested it in an Automator App. To not run this App manually, I wrote a small menu bar app, AutoRun, that would open my Automator App every hour. This is the result:

    It took about 40 days to download my photos. I have a Gigabit Fibre optical connection. If I had a direct connection to Apple, it could have taken 4,5 hours.

  • Network Light 1.0

    Network Light 1.0

    Ralf Stockmann hatte den Bedarf an einem macOS Menüzeilen Tool, das regelmäßig einen Speedtest durchführt geäußert. Da ich mit SecondClock schon ein Projekt habe, dass eine App in die Menüzeile packt, habe ich lauthals versprochen das in wenigen Tagen zu bauen. Im Hintergrund haben Ralf und ich Anforderungen ausgetauscht, ich habe etwas recherchiert und herausgefunden, dass Menüzeilen-Apps in macOS Ventura mit SwiftUI nochmal deutlich leichter zu implementieren sind. Nach nur wenigen Tagen war der erste Prototyp fertig. Settings, Exportfunktion wurden hinzugefügt. Die App ist jetzt in einem Status, dass ich sie auch anderen Bereitstellen kann. Sie ist schnell programmiert worden, ich will in Zukunft noch ein paar weitere Funktionen (Notifications,…) hinzufügen, dem Code aufräumen, etc.

    Die App und den Sourcecode findet ihr kostenlos bei GitHub. Für 1,20€ könnt ihr mich auch unterstützen und die App, sobald macOS Ventura auf dem Markt ist, im AppStore kaufen.

    Wer möchte darf sich gerne an der Entwicklung beteiligen, neue Ideen eintragen oder beim Design helfen.

    Network Light
  • iPod shuffle (4. Generation Sammlung)

    iPod shuffle (4. Generation Sammlung)

    Vor ein paar Jahren, es muss 2018 oder so gewesen sein, habe ich mir in den Kopf gesetzt alle iPod shuffle der 4. Generation (die fast quadratischen) zu sammeln. Diese iPod-Reihe ist in vielen verschiedenen Farben erschienen. Es gab 3 verschiedene Releases, in 2010, 2012 und 2015, mit jeweils anderen Farben. Manche Farben ähneln sich sehr, manche sind sogar gleich. Selber habe ich drei dieser iPods besessen. Einen roten, den ich leider am Hamburger Fischmarkt oder so verloren habe und zwei verschiedene silberne, einen von 2010 und einen von 2012, beide einer ist glänzender als der andere.

    Es ist leider nicht immer einfach die fehlenden iPods zu finden, da ich oft über die Seriennummer gehen muss und eBay Verkäufer dann oft skeptisch werden. Habe ich die Seriennummer kann ich auf https://applesn.info/devices/ipod/ nachsehen wann der iPod produziert wurde – alternativ kann man auch die 4. und 5. Stelle der Seriennummer manuell überprüfen.

    Hier meine aktuellen iPods – falls jemand einen der fehlenden iPods hat, würde ich mich sehr freuen, wenn ich den bekommen könnte.

    meine iPod shuffles

  • iCloud Drive (again)

    iCloud Drive (again)

    I just migrated my MacBook Pro (2016) to a M1 Mac mini. For different reasons the MacBook Pro isn’t suitable anymore for some of my needs, but it’s still a good machine for writing, traveling and using around the house. So I decided to buy a Mac mini as a replacement for my App Development, Podcasting and other desk centric work. As Apple didn’t announce a M2 Mac mini yet and I wasn’t willing to pay the original price for a computer that has been introduced two years ago, I decided to buy a used one. The options there were limited. I got a base 8GB/256GB model for around 500€. As it’s a desktop computer and won’t be moved around, it’s not a big deal to get the low-storage-model and add an external drive to it. I researched the best options to move the home directory to an external SSD, and luckily macOS offers this as a quite hidden, but official feature. Deep in the User options of the System Preferences, there is the option to select a different location for the home directory.

    Advanced User Options
    Choose home directory

    As I was migrating from a 512GB MacBook Pro, I already removed a lot of clutter that had been accumulated in the last 5 1/2 years and was able to migrate the data to the new computer via thunderbolt. After installing a 2TB SSD in an external enclosure, I wanted to move the data from the existing home directory to the new SSD in order to change the home directory location once everything was finished. Unfortunately that’s where the problems began.

    The transfer of the 200ish GB started fine but at one point macOS decided it had to stop, because a file that was supposed to be copied already existed. The error message says “The operation can’t be completed because an item with the name […] already exists.”

    Error message when copying files

    I found, by searching for the file name, that it was part of my Photos library. As this library is located on iCloud, I decided to delete it from the Mac and just redownload everything once the remaining files were moved. Little did I know that Photos weren’t the only files that made problems. Everytime I reinitiated the transfer, a new file would result in the same error message. Some files were hidden files, some were normal user accessible files. I googled for the error message and couldn’t find a satisfying solution. But I remembered that I already had some issues with files when using iCloud Drive. So I logged out of iCloud, restarted the transfer of the files and it worked flawlessly.

    After the files have been transferred, I changed the home directory as shown before. The system rebooted. I turned iCloud back on, checked that everything was working fine and deleted the old home directory form the Mac. It might be a good idea to create a second admin account that’s not been used but has its home directory on the internal SSD, just in case the external drive breaks and your user is no longer properly working as the home directory is no longer available. And backup your data. If you have it backed up, and the external SSD fails, you will still be able to fix it.

  • DHL Etiketten umformatieren

    DHL Etiketten umformatieren

    Ich habe mir, da ich relativ viele Pakete verschicke, einen Etikettendrucker zugelegt. Leider sind große Etikettendrucker, die mit 103mm Etikettenbreite drucken relativ teuer. Auch ist es als Privatkunde von DHL nicht möglich die Paketmarken in der nötigen Größe herunterzuladen. Ich habe mir einen brother QL-600 Drucker* gekauft. Dieser druckt auf 62mm breiten Endlos-Etiketten. Um jetzt die großen DHL Packmarken auf diese Größe zu drucken habe ich mir einen Shortcut-workflow für macOS geschrieben, der die relevanten Teile der DHL Marke auf die schmalere Größe kopiert.

    typisches DHL Paket
    Neu formatiertes Etikett

    Mein Workflow schneidet die oben gekennzeichneten Bereiche aus dem original PDF aus, dreht sie ordnet sie neu an und speichert das ganze als Bild ab. Das Bild kann das auf dem Labeldrucker ausgedruckt werden. Dabei kann man sich die Druckereinstellungen (Papierformat etc.) gut als Preset abspeichern.

    Screenshot der Druckvorschau

    Der Workflow ist zur Zeit nur auf DHL Etiketten ausgelegt und schneidet ganz stumpf Bereiche aus dem pdf aus. Ich habe vor dies in der Zukunft zu verbessern, aber wer ist schon benutzen möchte kann sich den Shortcut für macOS hier herunterladen.

    *Affiliate Link.

  • iCloud is losing files

    I was programming a new app, when I wanted to reuse some code snipped from one of my old apps. I used the recently opened projects dialog in Xcode, but Xcode failed to open the project and also removed all other projects from that dialog. As I’m storing my Xcode Projects on my iCloud Drive as a first backup (in case my Mac breaks), I headed over to the Finder and found that not only the xcodeproj Container, but also a lot of swift files were missing. I headed over to iCloud.com where deleted files from the past 30 days can be restored. But they were not there either.

    Luckily I do run Time Machine (and have most of my projects on GitHub), so I connected my external drive to the MacBook and opened time machine.

    TimeMachine View of one of my apps

    As you can see in the TimeMachine view, at some time between end of May and beginning of June a lot of files where lost. I was wondering if I accidentally deleted those files. So I’ve checked other projects. The same picture. A lot of files where missing, some still available. Same for other iCloud Drive data, like my Numbers documents.

    Numbers Documents missing in iCloud Drive

    Files missing in several locations without any system behind, can’t be explained with accidentally deleted. Somehow iCloud is dropping files which can’t be restored through iCloud.com.

    iCloud.com restore files view

    iCloud.com offers only 7 recently deleted files, even though more are missing. As seen from before, the files disappeared somehow in the last 14 days, so they should be visible in the last 30 days of deleted files, if they have been deleted manually.

    If someone else has the same issue, I would be happy to hear about it.

    This is, after Apple removing my desktop background all the time, the second big issue I have with data saved in iCloud.

  • Pixel Consoles

    Pixel Consoles

    Vor vielen vielen Jahren habe ich mich im Pixel Design versucht. 2003 habe ich das Nintendo Entertainment System im Pixelstyle designt. Jetzt, zu Coronazeiten, habe ich das Hobby wieder aufgegriffen und wieder mit dem pixeln angefangen. ich wollte das ganze noch reduzierter machen, als 2003. Das kleinste Merkmal das erkennbar sein sollte, sollten Steuerkreuz und Buttons sein. Alles andere muss so stark wie möglich vereinfacht werden, dass es noch gerade erkennbar ist.

    (more…)

  • Apple is optimising my desktop pictures away.

    Apples Photos app is the standard app a lot of Mac users organize their photos. It’s well integrated in macOS and iOS, it syncs the photos between all devices sharing an appleID. Not only the photos shot with an iPhone are but also photos shot with other cameras and imported via Photos (btw a really bad name for an app if you want to write an article about it and about the photos storred in the app called Photos). I’m organizing all my photos in Photos. My database contains currently about 35000 photos and 900 videos. A lot of these photos are “big” raw files (in my case about 30MB per photo), most of the videos are 4K. As apple has huge prices on their storrage options within their devices and because I want the security of a) having my photos available from all the devices and b) backed up externally (this is not my only external backup), I use iCloud Photo Library. I’m currently storring 691GB of photos and videos in iCloud.

    This amount of data neither fits my iPhone (128GB), nor my TouchBar Pro (512GB). Therefore I’m using a function called “Optimized Storrage” on all devices. This function storres only thumbnails and recently used photos locally on the device and deletes the full resolution images from the Mac after they have been transfered to iCloud. It’s a clever system leaving me with about 75GB of storrage used for my photos on my Mac.

    Now to something else: I like to customize my MacBook Desktop with personal photos I’ve took somewhere around the world. Those photos can be selected directly out of the Photos app. To find the nicest pictures, I’m marking those with a heart or ‘favorites’ function within Photos and have a condenced selection of photos to select my desktop background from.

    No I’ve noticed two things: My desktop pictures often change from the one selected to standard pictures provided with macOS. In addition not all my favorite photos where available within the menu to select the background from. Sometimes it happens, when I wanted to change from a standard picture to a different one, the picture disapears and only a questionmark is remaining in the selection panel.

    So what’s happening here? After some investigation within my photo library I’ve noticed that the pictures I’ve previously selected (out of my favorites) were ‘optimized’ to iCloud and no longer available locally within my TouchBar Pro. Therefore macOS can’t find and use them as background images anylonger.

    I don’t know why apple wouldn’t program an exception in their ‘storrage optimization routine’ to not optimized favorites (as most people might want to have them available all the time) and especially not delete images that are used by another part of the operating system. I understand that thirdparty apps can’t see which photo has been selected as background images, but Photos is a first party app integrated in the OS, it should be able to do a bit more than other apps and should avoid this behavior.

    A radar (bug report within apples bug reporting system) has been filed for this on June 2nd.