Twice

Yesterday was one of those days you wished you hadn't decided to work on your Mac, because after all was said and done, you spend the whole days fixing software that didn't work right or broke OS-X. Really, one of those days.

I keep track of what updates are available for the apps on my Mac. I use MacUpdate to keep current. I don't use their app or subscribe to their service because I don't like the user interface. Some apps automatically update from the user settings or the company has their own app to check updates, such as Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription.

Anyway, I found one needing updating, Adobe Air, which is free and not in the subscription service. It's been an easy update, but the latest version downloaded and installed, and after finishing I clicked the "Finish" button to quit the app and eject the icon.

That's when the first of the two times yesterday, the installer didn't work. It finished and I was able to eject the icon but the app didn't quit. I don't know what happened, but OS-X had it in the dock as open, and it wouldn't force quit.

When I closed all the other apps I tried to restarted the Mac, nothing. It was hung. I tried to shutdown the Mac down, nothing. It was hung. I powered it off for a minute and restarted it. This is the sledge hammer approach but if nothing else works, this works.

OS-X is good about recovering itself after an unexpected power shutdown, but it is recommended once everything is up and running, to restart or shutdown and restart again to get a clean start, which I did and carried on with the other work.

Ok, onward to installed Datacolor's application for their Sypder 5 Elite color calibration tool. I downloaded it, and ran the installer program. And when it finished and I clicked the "Finish" button, the same thing, nothing.

Yup, the same thing again. The Mac was hung and wouldn't respond to anything, which necessitatd a power shutdown and repeat the process to wait and do it again for a clean restart, and then get everything working.

That done I put Datacolor's icons for the Spyder 5 utility and Spyder Gallery Utility to calibrate smart phones and tablets in the Menu bar. I don't calibrate the iPhone 5s anymore because Apple's bluetooth software on the iPhone won't pair with the Mac but will with the iPad.

I use Bartender to arrange and manage the Menu Bar icons. It's a cool app, but recent versions have problems with some icons and the drag tool doesn't work to move the icon. I'm not sure if it's their app or OS-X, but the two Spyder app icons wouldn't drag to where I wanted.

I finally got them in place but it completely rearranged the rest of the icons, so I had to load all of them and move them to where I wanted them, and the restart the Mac to ensure the arrangement was right. It's not right with the two Spyder icons, but I'll live with where they're at for now.

Update on below.-- The iStat app runs fine now. The first time it ran without problems but the second time the file cache (below) went beserk. The third time today, it's ok, not increasing app memory or file cache, so it may have been an anomaly with the Mac. I'll continue to use it now.

Ok, you can see where this is going, and one would quit for the day and do something else. Not me yesterday as I had one item left. I use iStat to monitor the Mac. It's a good app, and I put the display in the Menu bar, but hidden behind a single icon, which shows below the menu bar, so the block of information doesn't clutter the menu bar.

Well, the app tends to eat app memory over time, and isn't released when you quit the app. This is because it runs 3 daemons all the time, and one continuously montitors all the processes and sensors, etc. going on. This is the daemon that is the problem, which can use 0.5 to 1 GB of cpu, much which is allocated but unused.

And the OS-X daily maintenance doesn't recapture it if you quit the app. So the company sent me a beta version which supposedly eats less and releases unused memory. Well that it does quite well but then out of nowhere it will eat file cache, like your uncle at a free Thanksgiving Day buffet.

It was fine for about an hour but then went beserk and ate 5 GB's of file cache in just a few minutes. I quit the and purged the file cache (a command you should learn to use). I haven't decided to uninstall and reinstall it and try the new version again. I think being a beta version they do some testing and then remove it when the app works.

That's for another day for now. I'm fried of being frustrated at the events.