Updated CPU core frequencies for all current Apple silicon Macs

How operating frequencies of CPU cores used by the latest base M5 chip compare with those from previous families in the M series, and what that means. Complete with updated tables for all current chips. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

The Dutch Golden Age: Jacob van Ruisdael’s trees

Active in Haarlem and Amsterdam during and after Poussin's later years, his depiction of trees is outstanding, and his old oaks are lifelike. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Disentangling timestamps with Dropera 2

Study how the four key timestamps of a file change when you create, edit, preview the file, using Dropera. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Medium and Message: Soot and milk

Ink, soot suspended in water, making the transition from drawings into paintings. The secret of shellac. Casein, originally from sour milk, as a binder in some vast murals. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Updating CPU frequencies for Apple silicon Macs

A call for help: can you help complete this table of all the CPU core frequencies of M-series chips? M3 Ultra and M5 values are requested, please. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Paintings of Dante’s Inferno: 14 Count Ugolino

The horrific story of a count locked away to starve to death, who turned to cannibalism. How that came to be used falsely in Lavater's physiognomy. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 331

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 331. Here are my solutions to them. 1: A […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Should you repair permissions?

First we repaired disk permissions, until SIP made that impossible. Then we reset user permissions until Apple withdrew that advice. Next we ran repairHomePermissions in Recovery. Should you still use that? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Louveciennes landscapes: After the war

After the Paris Commune, Pissarro returned to discover most of his life's work had been destroyed, but he and Sisley continued to paint in Louveciennes and its surrounds. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Last Week on My Mac: Why Spotlight can’t find some files

In macOS Mojave, Apple changed the way that Spotlight indexes the contents of plain text files. That introduced a bug that prevents indexing of any of the contents of files starting with certain characters. For many Macs, that bug won't ever be fixed. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Louveciennes landscapes: Before the war

In the summer of 1869, Renoir was living at his parents' house in Louveciennes, and Monet was living near Bougival. Together they painted the works that set out the manifesto of Impressionism. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Saturday Mac riddles 331

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: A red […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Explainer: How does macOS recognise file types?

For the last 10 years, macOS has relied on Uniform Type Identifiers to recognise different types of files, for opening in apps, QuickLook, Spotlight and in other features. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Reading Visual Art: 232 Alchemy

Popularly intended to transform base metals like lead into gold, alchemy relied on special glassware like alembics, and is included with other 'dark arts' in paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Be careful when interpreting APFS timestamps

Two confounding factors to take into account when interpreting timestamps on files: what updates the Last opened time, and access via QuickLook. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

The Dutch Golden Age: Johannes Vermeer 2

A stolen painting of a concert, a girl with a pearl earring, ladies with a maid and writing a letter, an astronomer and a geographer. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

A Spotlight bug affecting all recent macOS: the LG error

From Ventura (if not earlier) to Tahoe, Spotlight appears unable to index text files that start with two specific letters. Although those are exceedingly rare, this could still catch you out. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

Apple has just released an additional out-of-cycle update to XProtect, bringing it to version 5321. As usual, it […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

The Dutch Golden Age: Johannes Vermeer 1

Finding form with his famous compositions of figures lit by daylight from windows on the left. His use of maps, curtains, and his unique depth of field effects. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Gain access to a locked Mac with Recovery Assistant

You've tried entering your password, but it doesn't work. Should you try guessing? As that imposes increasing waiting times of up to 8 hours, maybe not. Try this instead. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

Apple has just released its weekly update to XProtect, bringing it to version 5320. As usual, it doesn’t […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Medium and Message: Sticks and crayons

Modern and mixed media such as wax crayons, pencils, oil pastels, oil sticks and oil bars have become increasingly popular, although many age poorly and most have to be kept under glass. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Rewriting a file’s history

How to create a new file with a creation date 4 months ago and versions dating back to 3 months before that Mac even existed. All without changing any clocks. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Paintings of Dante’s Inferno: 13 Treachery

Fraudsters, the incestuous Myrrha, mother of Adonis, a counterfeiter, Potiphar's wife, then the treacherous who betrayed their kin. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 330

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 330. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Sounds […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

LogUI build 77 improves readability of log entries

Displays emoji to indicate the type of each log entry, improves export as Rich Text, and augments fields when copying entries. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

A painterly family: the Alma-Tademas 1884-1943

Lawrence and his second wife Laura were successful painters, and taught their older daughter Anna to paint. He was knighted, and after his death was interred with great honour in St Paul's Cathedral. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Last Week on My Mac: The quiet firmware revolution

Ten years ago, a firmware worm that could have inserted malware into Mac boot flash storage was demonstrated, and shortly afterwards many Macs were found to be running outdated firmware. We've come a long way since. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

A painterly family: the Alma-Tademas 1836-81

1869 was a disastrous year for Lawrence: his wife died suddenly, leaving him to care for their daughters, and he also had a medical problem that defied diagnosis. He went to London and fell in love at first sight. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Saturday Mac riddles 330

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Sounds like […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Explainer: FileVault

The T2 chip was designed for FileVault, and it comes at no cost to that and in Apple silicon Macs. Here's how it works, and why everyone should enable it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Reading Visual Art: 231 Tiger

Drawing the chariot of Bacchus/Dionysus, fighting with Christian martyrs, in a Paris zoo, or torrential rain in a tropical storm, or being hunted to be turned into a skin. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Inside the Unified Log 6: Difficult times

Apparently based on Mach absolute time, log entry times are converted to wallclock times. This exposes them to the vagaries of time zones, seasonal adjustments, and periodic wallclock adjustments. Here's how all that works, and can confuse. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Commemorating the centenary of Christian Krohg’s death

Trained in Germany because there was no academy in Norway, he soon developed themes of poverty, social injustice, and Norway's independence. A major influence on Edvard Munch. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Check if an app is stuck in translocation

Why is that app slow to launch, unable to update itself, generally behaving erratically, and often crashes? Could it be stuck in app translocation? Here's how to tell, and how to fix it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

Apple has just released its weekly update to XProtect, bringing it to version 5319. As usual, it doesn’t […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

The Dutch Golden Age: Ordinary people

Washerwoman below stairs, a kitchen maid, haggling in the market, selling fish door-to-door, pouring milk, farming families, and drinking. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Check your Mac is secure

How to check secure boot, SIP, Gatekeeper/XProtect, its SSV, FileVault, macOS and its firmware, and XProtect Remediator scans. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Medium and Message: Surface texture

Tiny jewels fashioned from blobs of white paint, Rembrandt's textured paint layers. Turner's scratchings, and van Gogh's textured Wheat Field with Cypresses, seen in fine detail. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Inside the Unified Log 5: Navigation

How to combine the time of interest with waypoints to reduce 100,000 log entries to just a handful, and discover what you're looking for in the log. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Paintings of Dante’s Inferno: 12 Fraud and inciting division

First a centaur killed by Hercules, then souls being tormented by reptiles, those with fraudulent lives burning in hell, and dismembered parts of those who inflamed dissent. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 329

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 329. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Two […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Is Tahoe quicker to launch apps first time?

Whether a quarantined and notarized app undergoes translocation, Tahoe doesn't run XProtect checks to determine if it's malicious. And how to tell when an app is running from translocation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Impressionism

In 1865, Bazille, Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Cézanne started painting outdoors in front of the motif in the forest, and so Impressionism began. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Last Week on My Mac: Tahoe’s elephant

All of us rely on tone (brightness, lightness) to interpret what we see. Visual artists have gone to great lengths in tonal modelling, but macOS Tahoe offers only bleached-out white or blacked-out black. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Barbizon

After some early visits, young landscape painters started to visit the forest in 1829, and became the Barbizon School. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Saturday Mac riddles 329

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Two credentials […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Explainer: How is XProtect’s data updated?

Until Sequoia, it was simply downloaded and installed as any other software update. Since then it has changed frequently and its behaviour can now confuse. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago