AHT Fix - restore the Apple Hardware Test on your (old) Mac

This article applies to you only if you have an old Mac that was released before June 2013. Yes, this article is about old hardware that is still out there. It is even still traded on ebay for exmaple. So I am pleased to announce AHT Fix. The tiny app restores the Apple Hardware Test on older Macs (released before June 2013) where Mac OS X, OS X or macOS has been reinstalled from scratch. Please also have a look at the "Implementation details and credits" in this article.

The Problem

„Apple Hardware Test (AHT) contains a suite of diagnostics that will test the hardware of your computer. […] If your Mac was released after June 2013, you will use Apple Diagnostics rather than Apple Hardware Test (AHT).“ See also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

If you have reinstalled an older Mac from scratch, the diagnostic tools might no longer be available. If there is content in /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics you are affected. Unless you have the original disks that came with your Mac, there seems to be no way to restore the AHT.

The Solution

AHT Fix. You can grab a copy from https://github.com/jonelo/ahtfix

The application will determine the model of your Mac, query an Apple server, download the appropriate AHT binaries and restore it on your Mac. And once restored you just need to follow the instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257 in order to perform all hardware diagnostics on your Mac.

Note: Starting with El Capitan (OS X 10.11) there is a new feature called System Integrity Protection (SIP) that prevents the modificaiton of a number of operating sytem directories by default.
In order to use AHTFix on El Capitan and later you have to disable SIP temporarily.
See also https://www.macworld.com/article/2986118/security/how-to-modify-system-integrity-protection-in-el-capitan.html

System Requirements

• A Mac, released before June 2013
• Mac OS X 10.6 or later
• SIP disabled if you run El Capitan (OS X 10.11) or later
• An internet connection (any bandwidth)

Implementation details and credits

On https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest you find detailed instructions from Claude Becker how to restore the AHT manually. I put those instructions (and a few more) to a bash script so that you can restore the AHT in a comfortable way.

I also would like to thank Apple for hosting the AHT binaries on their servers. That really helps users to restore the AHT on Macs that would be otherwise incomplete.

How to protect your privacy in the text editor called Atom 1.0

Yesterday Atom 1.0 was released and the way to protect your privacy has slightly changed compared to earlier versions. So this is actually an update to my blog that I wrote nine months ago. See also http://loefflmann.blogspot.de/2014/09/how-to-protect-your-privacy-in-text.html

Screenshots have been taken on a Mac, but instructions apply to all platforms that are supported by Atom 1.0 (OS X 10.8 or later, Windows 7 & 8, RedHat Linux, and Ubuntu Linux).

osxapp_vers has been committed to github

Three days ago I blogged about how to find the OS X version and build information in an Install*OS X*.app. I have put the lines to a script, improved it, tested it and committed it to github. See also https://github.com/jonelo/osxapp_vers

Have fun,
Johann

How to protect your privacy in the text editor called Atom

The problem

Atom is a very nice text editor for OS X, but it comes preinstalled with a package called Metrics. By default that package reports usage information to Google Analytics including a unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 hash of the machine's MAC address. I am sure there are people who don't like that. For example one could get the Mac's mac address by using rainbow tables.
Well, the information that is being reported to Google Analytics is well documented on the Atom's FAQ and github, but the instructions how to disable it are pretty spartanic IMHO: "If you do not want this information reported, disable this package from the Metrics section of the Settings view".

The solution

This graphical note should help you to disable the Metrics package in Atom in order to prevent sending usage information to Google Analytics.