130 MACWORLD MARCH 2020
HELPDESK MAC 911newer APFS format.
While Macs can back up to a
networked Time Machine destination,
including a Time Capsule, all drives
backed up still must be HFS+ or APFS
formatted.
If you’re not sure how your drive is
formatted:
- Select the drive in the Finder. (If it
doesn’t appear, select Finder →
Preferences, click General, and check the
External Disks box.) - Select File → Get Info.
- Examine the Format field.
If the Format line reads
anything but APFS or “Mac
OS Extended (Journaled)”,
Time Machine can’t
handle it.
The solution is to
make a copy through
another means—Disk
Utility or a cloning tool like
SuperDuper! or Carbon
Copy Cloner—and then erase
the original drive, reformatting it
with one of the types acceptable to Time
Machine. Then restore your data back over.
However, if you need a formatted drive
compatible with Windows or other
platforms, you will need to skip Time
Machine. You can use Arq or ChronoSync
for incremental backups, the above
cloning software for nightly updates to
another drive, and/or an cloud-hosted
backup service that archives external
drives as well as your startup volume, like
Backblaze.HOW TO “CLICK ACCEPT ON
THE ACCOUNT PAGE” WITH
APPS IN THE MAC APP STORE
Woe to those who receive cryptic
messages on their Macs. “Click accept on
the account page to update this app” is
one of them. Which apps? Which account
page? AIEEEE! (Picture Cathy (go.
macworld.com/cath) here with frizzy hair,
tongue sticking out.)
Turns out that this is an
easy problem to resolve,
and it comes from a place
of corporate generosity.
Apple makes a number
of apps free to macOS
users, some of which
were paid at one point.
This typically affects iMovie,
Garageband, Keynote,
Numbers, and Pages.
MacOS still registers and downloads
those apps via the Mac App Store, and
ownership can apparently get muddled
even if don’t recall using multiple Apple
IDs or copying the apps across computers.
It can also occur if you Mac is serviced and
the drive remains in place but the
motherboard is swapped.