Ladybird or Ladybug  – Η λέξη της ημέρας

Ladybird η πασχαλίτσα.

Μέχρι τώρα την ήξερα ως ladybug αλλά σήμερα έμαθα πως Ladybug λέγεται στην Αμερική, και ο όρος στα Βρετανικά αγγλικά είναι Ladybug.

Την έμαθα βλέποντας το unicode όνομα που δείχνει η Character Viewer macOS app όταν διαλέξει κανείς το ανάλογο emoji.

Error message: Unable to start Parallels services

If you like me use Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac on macOS 10.14.6 you’ll find yourself at some point trying to start Parallels Desktop and it alerting

Unable to start Parallels services

The dialog includes a URL for the following KB article with various troubleshooting steps. The first time I had this issue, the only thing helped was logging into macOS Recovery and re-installing the macOS 10.14 (last thing on that troubleshooting list).

However the issue re-occured after I have installed all available macOS 10.14 security updates.

So today after trying again all items of the KB article and as I wasn’t really keen on re-installing macOS 10.14 for Parallels Desktop to run as long as don’t re-install security updates, I did yet another search and found following article on the forum.parallels.com

The solution mentioned there worked for me… so here I am noticing this info, to able to find it, next time my Parallels Desktop refuses to start.

  1. Restart in Recovery Mode (hold down Cmd-R until you see the Apple Logo)
  2. Select Terminal from the Tools menu
  3. Enter chflags restricted /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/db/KernelExtensionManagement” (with “Macintosh\ HD” being replaced by the name of your hard drive)
  4. Restart the Mac. All should be good.

Safari 14.0.1 & Choose File(s)

After updating my Safari to the latest 14.0.1 version on my macOS 10.14.6 the file selector which would usually come when one clicks onto ‘Choose File’ button, stopped working.

Interesting enough when one drags and drops a file from a Finder window onto the Choose File button, this file will then be selected, but… WTF? Safari 14.0.1 works fine on macOS 10.15.x or on iOS.

Anyhow while I am hoping for Apple to solve this in a future update for macOS 10.14.6 users, I decided to implement a warning on the page of my Free ICS to CSV converter showing only when one opens the page using Safari 14.0.1

So I coded something like the following in php…

if (get_browser_name($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) == 'Safari') {
if (get_browser_plattform($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
echo "Note for Safari 14.0.1 on macOS 10.14.x: 
      Please use another browser…";
}

Whereby… my php functions… get_browser_name($user_agent) and get_browser_plattform($user_agent) calculate as follows:

function get_browser_name($user_agent) {
if (strpos($user_agent, 'Opera') || strpos($user_agent, 'OPR/'))
 return 'Opera';
elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Edge')) return 'Edge';
elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Chrome')) return 'Chrome';
elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Safari')) return 'Safari';
elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Firefox')) return 'Firefox';
elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'MSIE') || 
  strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7')) 
  return 'Internet Explorer';
  return 'Other';
}

and…

function get_browser_plattform($user_agent) {
    if ( strpos($user_agent, '14.0.1') && 
        strpos($user_agent, 'Mac OS X 10_14'))  { 
	return true; 
    } else { 
    	return false;
    }
}
 

I thought first I should check for iPhone or iPad in the $user_agent, this however has still the issue I noticed sometime ago here.

So… I am simply checking for the Safari and the macOS versions, because I actually know through tests that the function is fine on newer or older systems, and I otherwise do not want to make things more complicated for users of other browsers.

Well, I am fine with that solution for the time being. 🖖

PS: Is it me or it is so much difficult currently pasting code text in the editor of WordPress and having it formatted in a decent way?