Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 5 War

From the marble quarry at Carrara, through Alpine passes to Lake Garda, over to alligators near Miami, and scenes from the First World War in England. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 hours ago

Last Week on My Mac: Discovering discovery

From speech synthesisers and Blu-ray encoders to wallpapers and widgets, appexes have proliferated far beyond the wildest dreams of the OpenDoc designers, but so little is known about they're managed by macOS. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 23 hours ago

Painting Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame

The tragic story of Quasimodo, hunchback bell-ringer of the cathedral, and Esmeralda, a beautiful young dancer, and her pet goat Djali. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

Saturday Mac riddles 303

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


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

A brief history of Mac native file systems

A brief start with MFS for 400 KB floppies, followed by HFS intended for the first hard disks, upgraded to HFS+ in 1988, and followed in 2017 by APFS for all the OSes. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 day ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 10 Rags to riches

From tired seamstress to milliner, into the fashion house of Paquin, and onto the streets alongside the affluent of Paris at the turn of the century. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 days ago

Is your Mac’s firmware still supported?

A round-up of firmware updates across 15.4, 14.7.5 and 13.7.5, prospects for future macOS and firmware updates, and problems updating to 15.4. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

Interiors by Design: Screens

Paintings by Hogarth, Whistler, Lucy Rossetti, Orchardson, Elihu Vedder, Dagnan-Bouveret, Bonnard, and Willian McGregor Paxton. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 3 days ago

Discover appexes with AppexIndexer

Explore the app extensions installed on your Mac, in a list of well over 400, including many in macOS, and those in 3rd party products. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 4 Travels

After he had closed his portrait studio in 1907, travelling with friends, more watercolour views of Venice, and a look at some of his sophisticated techniques. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

How disk images and VMs are more efficient

How read-write disk images and those used in Apple silicon virtual machines use sparse file format to save space on disk. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

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


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 3 Venice

A portrait with unusual references, many bravura watercolours of Venice and his travels through the Alps on the way, and a short visit to North Africa. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Rise of the Appex: What are App Extensions?

With as many as 500 or more appexes in your Mac, these have become widely used and important. What they are, where they are, and how to control them. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Changing Paintings: 65 The Cumaean Sibyl

Aeneas' ill-fated and brief affair with Queen Dido of Carthage, past the Cercopes who had been turned into monkeys, and on to the Sibyl to take him to visit his father in the underworld. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 302

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 302. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Shortened […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

How robust are APFS clone and sparse files?

How do clone files and sparse files cope with being backed up and restored? Can they save space in iCloud Drive? Some of these answers may surprise. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

All aboard: a century of painting railways 2

With Frits Thaulow in Norway, van Gogh in Arles, the construction of what is now the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and what can happen a railway carriage. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Sequoia Spring

One of the largest updates to macOS, with the most ever vulnerabilities fixed, Sequoia 15.4 also brings a lot of new components, particularly Private Frameworks. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

All aboard: a century of painting railways 1

Taking the train with Turner, William Powell Frith, Manet, and Claude Monet, who became something of a railway buff in the 1870s. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 302

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


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

A brief history of disk images on the Mac

From their use to replicate floppy disks in manufacture, to their key roles in macOS, for distribution of software, and on network servers to contain backups. Unglamorous but essential. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Interiors by Design: Dressing table

Originally the toilet, this is where ladies prepared themselves for the day. Paintings from Hogarth. Degas, Vallotton, Pierre Bonnard and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Apple silicon VMs struggle to update to Sequoia 15.4

Is it possible to update a VM running macOS Sequoia to version 15.4? Three attempts, three failures. And why are all those file creation dates wrong? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 2 London

Spanish dancers, Madame X and scandal, Monet painting at Giverny, loose oil sketches, and a husband who became a surrogate dog. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

A primer on predicates for LogUI

How to construct and use filter predicates to refine the log entries shown in LogUI or most other log browsers, and in the log command tool. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 1 Pupil

Early paintings from his time as a student in Paris, a series painted when he was on Capri in 1878, a portrait of his teacher, and exotic smoke. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Can APFS special files save storage space?

Deleting clone files saves no space, but converting copies into clones could free up plenty of storage. Sparse files can also be highly efficient, and squeeze 285 GB into just 16.5 GB. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

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


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 202 Rabbit & Hare

From Dürer's groundbreaking hare to the fable of the hare and the tortoise, a hidden hare in a well-known Turner and a white rabbit for the first of the month? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

LogUI build 37 now has more power for browsing the log

Adds support for using your own filter predicates so you only see the log entries you want. Either in a one-off editor, or to its popup menu. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Apple has released macOS Sequoia 15.4, and 14.7.5, 13.7.5

Apple has just released the update to macOS Sequoia to bring it to version 15.4, and security updates […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Changing Paintings: 64 Scylla meets Glaucus

Scylla accosted by the grotesque sea-god Glaucus. When she runs away from him, he seeks the help of Circe, only for her to turn Scylla into a pack of hounds, then into a hazard to navigation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 301

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 301. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Roll […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

External boot disks: structure and problems

Systematic and thorough account of the structure and function of bootable external disks and dual-boot systems from High Sierra to Sequoia, and how to diagnose their problems. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Paintings of the Franco-Prussian War: 2 The Siege of Paris

As winter grew colder, Parisians started to starve. A city known for its food and restaurants had to scavenge meals based on horse, dog, cat and even rat. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Bring back the magic

The magic of Mac was how you could double-click a document and it opened in the right app. Now that works differently with LaunchServices, it offers me 70 apps to edit any text document. Can we return to magic please? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Paintings of the Franco-Prussian War: 1 Collapse

How conflicting ambitions took Napoleon III to war against Prussia when France was so ill-prepared. Defeat was inevitable, and soon Paris was under siege. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 301

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


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

A brief history of compression on Macs

Raymond Lau's hugely successful Stuffit dominated Mac compression utilities from introduction in 1987 until Mac OS X in 2001. Also a NuBus card, and most recently AppleArchive. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 9 Poverty

The urban poor, painted by Raffaëlli, George Breitner, Fernand Pelez, Christian Krohg, Geoffroy, Henningsen in cities across Europe. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

macOS 15.3.2 Sequoia won’t install older macOS on Apple silicon Macs

Can you install macOS Sonoma on an external SSD for an Apple silicon Mac running Sequoia 15.3.2? So far this has defeated two of us on many attempts. With useful tips that should have brought success. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

Interiors by Design: Writing desks

From a saint's integrated office, through tables with quills and ink-pots, to beautifully crafted furniture for the home office. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Controlling LaunchServices in macOS Sequoia

The hidden command tool lsregister can be used to control LaunchServices and its registry, but there are now snags in most of its features, as explained here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 201 Dancing, ballet and erotic

At the ballet with Degas,Sargent's Spanish dancer, entertainment in North Africa, an Ionian dance, the Can-Can, Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

How macOS Sequoia launches an app

Overview of how different subsystems work together during launching a notarized app, from LaunchServices to checking WritingTools and AI availability. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all macOS

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


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 200 Dancing, myth and folk

A dance to the music of time, the hours, Muses, sirens, winged putti, faeries, maidens fearing death, mid-summer feasts and folk dancing. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 19 days ago