Automatica Corporate ID Refresh
As we head into 2025, we are in the process of rolling out a new corporate ID for Automatica with the aim to freshen and simplify our visual imagery. We're k...
Read post →Our thinking
Blog
Technical notes and observations from years of supporting creative businesses on Mac.
Check APC UPS Warranty Status and Build Date
I had a bit more trouble than I would have expected trying to find a page on APC's website to enter a serial number and check the warranty status of a UPS. O...
Read post →macOS High Sierra Internet Recovery Error: “The Recovery Server Could Not Be Contacted”
I had a Mac recently that had been wiped via Find My, so it had neither an OS nor the recovery environment on the internal drive. It also had the default fir...
Read post →Automate LetsEncrypt certbot SSL certificate renewal on macOS
The instructions for certbot on the EFF website for macOS instruct you to schedule the automatic renewal using Cron. On recent versions of macOS, Cron has be...
Read post →Display most recently modified files in a folder, and all subfolders, using Terminal
I recently needed to search through a fairly extensive list of files to find when the most recently modified files were last edited, and needed to search in...
Read post →Fix issues wth Out of Office (OOF) rules on Microsoft 365
Sometimes the Out of Office auto-responder can get confused and it won't send replies correctly, or even at all. Sometimes it sends an old reply instead of t...
Read post →Universal Print Drivers for Windows 11 arm64
I've been deploying more and more Snapdragon powered PCs for clients lately and generally they're really good. They are fast, the battery life is great and t...
Read post →Create a Bootable Windows 11 Installer USB with Autopilot Configuration for Zero-Touch Enrolment in Intune
I've recently been building an SOE for a client using Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 with Autopilot and Intune. In order to streamline the whole process, I wan...
Read post →Print to Fuji Xerox / Fujifilm printers from Windows 11 on ARM64 / Snapdragon
None of the existing 64-bit printer drivers for Windows 10 or Windows 11 will work with Windows 11 on ARM. Xerox can make it tricky to find a print driver th...
Read post →Upgraded from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro via Microsoft Store. Ended up with Windows 11 Enterprise that wouldn't activate.
I was setting up a new Surface Laptop (with a Snapdragon arm64 CPU in it – very nice) recently and as part of the setup procedure, I needed to upgrade it fro...
Read post →Force Spotlight to rebuild search index on macOS Sonoma and later
I had a Mac recently that was really playing up with Spotlight. So much so that I couldn't even drag Macintosh HD into the Search Privacy window as it came u...
Read post →Unable to install Microsoft Print to PDF printer on Windows 11 24H2 - Error 0x800F0922
I had an issue recently where a fresh install of Windows 11 24H2 was unable to use the Microsoft Print to PDF printer. It was showing as installed in Optiona...
Read post →Recover password for Mac saved in Apple Remote Desktop
A client of mine has got a couple of servers that I haven't touched in years and somewhere along the line I've lost track of the login credentials for them....
Read post →Change 3CX System Owner via ssh on v20
I recently took on a new client and in the process migrated their 3CX instance onto a new host as part of their onboarding process. In doing this, I took a b...
Read post →Work out temporary Apple ID after enabling Federation in Apple Business Manager (ABM)
I had a company-owned MacBook Pro that was locked to an Apple ID using a company email address. Whilst I had the Apple ID password, I only discovered that th...
Read post →Unzip multiple zip files with unicode filenames inside the archive
I had a bunch of zip files from a Google Takeout that I needed to extract on macOS and deal with the contents. As it turns out, a LOT of the files in the arc...
Read post →Sort Firefox Containers Alphabetically
I use Firefox containers a lot when I'm working for a number of different clients - e.g. I'll have a container in Firefox for each regular client so I can lo...
Read post →Flatten fillable PDF Form from Acrobat on macOS
I was recently dealing with needing to fill in a PDF form and then supply it to someone as a flattened PDF so that they couldn't (easily) edit it. I don't kn...
Read post →Synology Cloud Sync can't sync to Dropbox after upgrade to Dropbox Team Space
I've had a couple of clients with a Synology syncing to Dropbox via Cloud Sync and after Dropbox upgraded their tenancy to use the new Dropbox Team Space, sy...
Read post →Unable to create PDFs from Office apps on Windows. Error log states: Aptos not found, using Courier.
Microsoft have recently changed the default font in Office to Aptos . Apart from the visual changes, this seems to cause problems with Acrobat Distiller and...
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