Painting poetry: John Keats

Paintings based on Endymion, The Eve of St. Agnes, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, mainly from the Pre-Raphaelites. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 hours ago

Saturday Mac riddles 287

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


@eclecticlight.co | 22 hours ago

A brief history of logs and Console

Introduced with Mac OS X, logs became a good way to diagnose a Mac's problems, using Console. Then in 2016 it all changed, and not for the benefit of administrators or users. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 23 hours ago

Interiors by Design: Bedrooms

One of the most private areas in a house or apartment, shown here by Degas, Maximilien Luce, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Eric Ravilious and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

How iCloud can be simpler than a server

iCloud is now used for key services including notarization checks. For XProtect updates, it should be quicker and simpler, so long as you mind the pinniped. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 days ago

Paintings of 1924: 2 Narrative and miscellaneous

Paintings of the Trojan Horse by Lovis Corinth, Vuillard's lover and her husband, sea eagles chasing an eider duck, and George Bellows' boxing match. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 days ago

XProtect has changed again in macOS Sequoia 15.2

There are no changes for Sonoma and earlier macOS, and Sequoia 15.0-15.1.1 will also continue working as before. But 15.2 and later work differently, as explained here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

The Real Country: Idyll

Life in the country has its idyllic moments: a worker lying in the sun and flowers, a meal with violin music, country dancing, and courting, even among the cows. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

Is it worth storing Time Machine backups on a faster drive?

It's well known that writing Time Machine backups to storage is throttled to slow them down. What's the point of using faster SSDs that are more expensive if macOS stops them from being fast | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Apple has just released updates to XProtect and XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released updates to XProtect for all supported versions of macOS, bringing it to version 5284, […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Reading visual art: 180 The holly and the ivy

An association made in a traditional British Christmas carol found only exceptionally in paintings, including two 'problem pictures' from the 19th century. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Tune for Performance: Core types

Can you promote threads set to run on E cores so they run on P cores instead? Can you demote threads set to run on cores so they run in the background on E cores? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Changing Paintings: 50 The making of myrrh and birth of Adonis

A dark tale of incest, transformation, and obstetrics in the arboretum, leading to the precious resin myrrh, and the birth of Adonis from a tree. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 286

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 286. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Keeps […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Are sparse bundles faster than disk images?

Why does compressing a 15 GB file within a sparse bundle run more slowly than would be expected from its write performance? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Commemorating the centenary of the death of Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, painter of childhood

The greatest painter of children, school and childhood in the European canon. Paintings from 'Les Miserables' to the classrooms of the Third Republic. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Compression models

Why data compression is everyday, and how its performance problems can generalise into tasks of similar structure. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Celebrating the bicentenary of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes 2

From 1872, as symbolism developed in his paintings. From 'Death and the Maiden', through 'The Poor Fisherman', to his recurring theme of the Sacred Grove. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 286

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


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

A brief history of Activity Monitor

Originally Process Viewer and CPU Monitor, in 2003 they merged and became Activity Monitor, similar to the current version. Also borrowed for Xcode Instruments. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Celebrating the bicentenary of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes 1

First of two articles celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth. Covers the period up to the years after the Franco-Prussian War, when he achieved popularity. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Has Apple stopped updating EFI firmware?

Did you spot the change that didn't take place as expected in the 15.2 update this week? It marks the end of the Intel era for Macs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Paintings of 1924: 1 Portraits and figures

Portraits in pastel by Baes and Laikmaa, and oils from Lovis Corinth, Christian Krohg, Emily Carr, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Sérusier. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Tune for Performance: Do you really need a big internal SSD?

Why pay an extra $600 for a 2 TB internal SSD, after all fast external SSDs are cheaper. Maybe you need to check whether disk performance becomes a rate-limiting factor. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

What has changed in macOS Sequoia 15.2?

The macOS 15.2 update includes the second phase of AI support for Apple silicon Macs, introducing the Image […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Apple has released macOS Sequoia 15.2, and security updates to 14.7.2 and 13.7.2

As eagerly anticipated, Apple has released the update to macOS 15.2 Sequoia, together with security updates to bring […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

The Real Country: People

Painted by Jules Breton, Jean-François Millet, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Léon Augustin Lhermitte and others during the late 19th century. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Tune for Performance: Activity Monitor’s CPU view

The CPU view in Activity Monitor is the starting point for tuning the performance of software. Here are its virtues, and a few vices to beware of when using it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Changing Paintings: 49 Galatea transformed from a statue

Pygmalion carves an ivory statue of the perfect woman, and prays to Venus for a bride in its likeness. When he showers the statue with his kisses, it turns into the woman he wanted. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Tune for Performance: do more threads run faster?

Discovering whether using more threads makes a task faster gives insight into where its performance is limited. How to use a VM to investigate this. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Girodet

A brilliant pupil of David who won the Prix de Rome, he survived the Revolution unscathed, and even won a battle with one of his models when she refused to pay him. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 285

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 285. Here are my solutions to them. 1: This […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

How Thunderbolt 5 can be faster or not

What TB5 actually provides in its Symmetric and Asymmetric modes, why those are most important to connect Mac to dock or hub, and how that can go wrong. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Paintings of the Coast of California 2

From Anna Hills' unspoilt coast near Laguna Beach in 1915, to Paul Dougherty's California Cliffs of 1935, with others by Guy Rose, Granville Redmond, and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Tuning for performance

Tuning your Mac for performance can be a good investment of time. Beware of general benchmarks, though, and develop your own objective measurements. Then identify the rate-limiting step methodically, so you can address that. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Paintings of the Coast of California 1

From Albert Bierstadt's visit to the Farallon Islands in 1872, to George Bellows in 1917, with paintings from Mannheim, Granville Redmond and others in between. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 285

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


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

A brief history of Mac servers

A/UX was released for the Mac II in 1988, then in 1993 Apple changed course with a series of servers, before Mac OS X Server in 1999 and its first Xserves in 2002. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Interiors by Design: Félix Vallotton’s disturbing domestics

In each of his interiors from the late 1870s to the early 20th century, there's something not quite right, starting with a painting hanging at an odd angle. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

The Finder column width bug is over 11 years old

I first recall being caught by it in Mavericks 11 years ago. It has even changed the way I use Finder windows. It survived Covid and Apple silicon, and lives on in macOS Sequoia. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

The Real Country: Drains and engines

Rural depopulation as labour moved to work in city factories, dominance of larger suppliers in food markets, draining waterlogged land, and the development of the tractor. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

Inside M4 chips: CPU core management

A first attempt to describe how macOS decides for a thread which type of core, which cluster, which core, what frequency, and how mobile it should be. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Reading visual art: 179 Knitting, poverty

Knitting shepherdesses, peasant girls, smallholders, a goose girl, fisher girls, by Millet, Breton, LA Ring, Winslow Homer and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

How is Thunderbolt 5 doing so far?

TB5 promises twice the data transfer rate of TB3, and three times that when supporting external displays. How close is it to achieving those? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Reading visual art: 178 Knitting, past and pastime

Knitting and crochet as a sign of history, Welsh identity, the bored chaperone, the height of a party, or a peaceful and productive pastime. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Managing kernel extensions

It's time to review old kernel extensions, and uninstall those no longer needed. Here's how to do that, using uninstallers or manually. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago

Changing Paintings: 48 Killed by Apollo’s discus

Apollo's discus strikes Hyacinthus in the face. As he dies from that wound, his spilt blood is turned into the hyacinth flower in his memory. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 284

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 284. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Unsolicited […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago