How to prepare M4 Mac Mini for resale.

We could probably help you become more familiar with macOS and work through all these difficulties if you want. But no product suits everyone, so if you're determined to sell your Mac, see:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Regards.

GetRidAsap wrote:

Also, I have recently tried to move my music to a usb stick and it seems to add 10 blank files that my hifi has to rapidly jump through before playing any album.

This is the Finder trying to "help" you in the same way that my cat tries to "help" me when I am using my computer, by lying across my mouse pad, or plopping herself in front of the screen.

Mac filesystems can store some information that PC filesystems can't. The Finder is trying to be "helpful" by saving extra information in a sidecar file, with the idea that if you ever copy stuff back from the non-Mac-fomratted drive, it will stitch the main file and the sidecar file back together. So you get something like:

SONG1.AAC
._SONG1.AAC
PHOTO1.JPG
._PHOTO1.JPG

There may be other files or directories whose name begins with ".", but these are the ones that cause problems. On Unix (the basis for macOS), a leading "." in a filename means "hide this file from directory listings unless a user asks to see hidden files." But many non-Mac systems, even those based on Linux, will look at the ".AAC" or ".JPG" suffix and conclude that the sidecar files are AAC music files or JPG photo files. When they try to play or view these files, they will discover that the files are "corrupt" and will often throw up error messages.

You don't really need those sidecar files for .AAC, .MP3, and .JPG files – even if you later want to use the main files on a Mac.

One way around this problem is as follows: After you finish preparing your USB flash drive, and just before you are about to Eject it in the Finder,

• Go into Terminal to get to the shell (command line interface).
• Type the command dot_clean -m and a trailing space, but do not press the RETURN key.
• Drag and drop the USB flash drive icon from the Finder's Desktop into the Terminal window. This will cause the Terminal application to type in the Unix path name of the USB flash drive, complete with any escape characters that you need to represent the name properly on a Unix command line.
• Press RETURN.
• Tell the Finder to Eject the USB flash drive

If you use the Automator application, you can probably set up a little "script" and save it as an icon on your Desktop so that the steps are

• Drag and drop the USB flash drive icon onto the "Clean Flash Drive" (or whatever you call it) script icon.
• Tell the Finder to Eject the USB flash drive

Here's how to create a drag-and-drop application to clean off those metadata files.

Run the Script Editor. This is in the Utilities folder under the main Applications folder. When a dialog comes up, click on the New Document button at the bottom of the window.

Enter the following script. I will post a second reply with the text, so you can copy the text from this thread and paste it into the Script editor window.

Select the Export… item from the Script Editor's File menu. Select "Application" in the File Format pop-up menu field. Set the other fields as shown, and then press the Save button.

You can now quit the Script Editor.

To clean a USB flash drive, right before you Eject the USB flash drive from the Finder,

• Drag-and-drop the Desktop icon for the USB flash drive to the icon for the the Dot_Clean application.
• The application will launch and quit. Nothing visible will happen, but it will clean the most troublesome "._" files off the drive.

There are many things I do not like about Apple but I have to admit their computers are darn good!

I would respectfully suggest that the problems you are experiencing are simply because you have not got to grips with your new machine.

It is every bit as good as the "hype" you have seen on YouTube once you become accustomed to it.

If you sell it you will likely lose quite a bit of cash and your new Windows machine may be more familiar but it won't be as good.

I bought a windows machine a few years ago and worked hard to get used to it but eventually I gave it to my grandson because it just wasn't as intuitive as my Mac and didn't perform as slickly.

I don't know what you mean by "the easy life"

macOS is far easier and user-friendly than windows when you get used to it.

Give it a fair try and you will never want to go back.

There are plenty of people on these forums only too willing to help you get over your initial problems.

Here is the text to copy and paste into the AppleScript and Description sections of the Script Editor window. (You don't need to apply boldface; the Script Editor automatically used bold face and color to highlight the structure of the script after I saved it, and before I copied and pasted it to this thread.)

----------

on open (theItemsDropped)

repeat with itemToClean in theItemsDropped

set posixItem to quoted form of the POSIX path of itemToClean

set shellCommand to "dot_clean -m " & posixItem

do shell script shellCommand

end repeat

end open

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When saved or exported as an Application, removes Finder-created metadata files (e.g., ._PHOTO.JPG, ._SONG.AAC) from any USB flash drive whose Desktop icon is dragged-and-dropped onto the application.  One would then Eject the drive before the Finder created more such files on it.

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Servant of Cats wrote:

Select the Export… item from the Script Editor's File menu.

Actually, that screen shot is from File > Save… – but the dialogs are almost identical, and you can save the script as an application using either menu item.

You can use Script Editor to create an application that will make cleaning a USB flash drive a bit more convenient.

I can’t test & post the script now, but might do so later.