What do XProtect BehaviourService and Bastion rules do?

Introduced in macOS Ventura, these monitor for potentially malicious behaviours, according to 12 Bastion rules. Detections are recorded in its local database and reported to Apple as security intelligence. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Trees 1

The first of two articles about painting trees, featuring Rubens, Poussin, Gainsborough, Constable, Corot and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Making Apple silicon faster: 3 Multitasking

How Swift supports cooperative multitasking using async/await. How to call asynchronous code from within synchronous code, and does it also multithread code in parallel? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Sea of Mists: Pupils, Knud Baade

From the south-west coast of Norway, he studied under JC Dahl in Dresden between 1836-39, and specialised in dramatic nocturnes. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

How file systems can change in Sequoia with FSKit

Apparently Sequoia includes user space file system support, as now used for the MSDOS file system in macOS. Is it ready to use yet? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Reading visual art: 139 Ferry

Charon ferrying the dead to the Underworld, and rarely back again, Psyche in her quest, the centaur Nessus, and lots of sheep and cattle. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A brief history of Mac system fonts

Chicago, Charcoal, Lucida Grande, Helvetica Neue, and San Francisco or SF Pro - a visual journey through 40 years. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Changing Paintings: 25 The slaughter of Niobe’s children

The consequences of pride, when all 14 of Niobe's children are slaughtered by Apollo and Diane, but she's unrepentant to the last. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 261

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 261. Here are my solutions to them. 1: From […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Firmware matters

All about Mac firmware, from PowerPC Open Firmware to Apple silicon's LLB and iBoot, and what the rules are for updating firmware. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Heroines 6: Jason’s first abandoned wife

First wife of Jason of the Golden Fleece, abandoned when he went off on his quest and married Medea. He came to a sticky end, though. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Something for the weekend?

This weekend we're in the Lake District. Wouldn't it have been simpler if, rather than preparing a notebook, all I needed was a VM with all my apps pre-installed and ready to go? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Heroines 5: Paris’s jilted lover

First wife of Paris, Prince of Troy, abandoned so he could seduce Helen. When Paris needed her to heal him, she refused then was filled with remorse. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 261

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


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A brief history of Disk Utility and First Aid

Originally two separate apps, they were brought together in Mac OS X, and have survived largely unscathed to Sequoia. Here are some highs and lows to remember. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Seaside & Series

Coastal landscapes from Claude in 1639, through visits to the island of Capri, to Étretat and Monet's series, and Divisionists in the Midi. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

How macOS keeps an eye on UPS and wireless devices

Using a combination of iohid and BatteryCenter, macOS checks attached UPS and wireless keyboards, mice and trackpads ever 2-5 seconds. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Sea of Mists: Pupils, Thomas Fearnley 2

Paintings of the Grindelwald Glacier, and various Norwegian landscapes, he died of typhoid when he was only 39. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Making Apple silicon faster: 2 Multithreading

The general rule for allocating threads to P and E cores according to their QoS, with fine controls such as Game Mode, and frequency control. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Sea of Mists: Pupils, Thomas Fearnley 1

A Norwegian landscape painter who trained with JC Dahl in Dresden, and who shared themes with the German Romantic painters. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Does Sequoia’s Password app change keychains?

Differences between file-based keychains including the login keychain, and Data Protection keychain. How the Passwords app in Sequoia caters for the latter. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator

Hot on the heels of the slightly earlier update to XProtect, Apple has just released an update to […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect

Apple has just released an update to XProtect for all versions of macOS from El Capitan or so, […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Reading visual art: 138 Halo

In their heyday, worked elaborately in gold leaf, but lost with the realism of the Renaissance. Revived by the Pre-Raphaelites, and rarely used for secular figures. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Making Apple silicon faster: 1 Threads and tasks

Understanding terms, including process, thread and task. How the assigned Quality of Service, or QoS, is used to determine how threads are allocated to cores. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Changing Paintings: 24 Arachne’s fate

How Arachne came to a weaving contest against Minerva, but told the truth about gods and goddess, so was turned into a spider. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 260

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 260. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Apple’s […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

How Sequoia changes virtualisation on Apple silicon

Sequoia's macOS VMs and Apple ID, USB storage and other devices, number of concurrent VMs, nested virtualisation, and how to run Sequoia beta in a VM on Sonoma. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A painted weekend in Morocco: 1867-1914

Paintings of Morocco by Marià Fortuny, Théo van Rysselberghe, Enrique Simonet, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Excitement and despair

It's over 10 years since Apple stopped providing documentation such as programming guides. Some of the consequences on concurrency, virtualisation, AI and SwiftUI are considered here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A painted weekend in Morocco: 1832-65

Delacroix as a pioneer of Orientalism with his paintings of Morocco, based on his visit in 1832. Then Marià Fortuny, war artist there in 1860. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 260

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


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A brief history of Mac enclaves and exclaves

T1 and T2 chips in Intel Macs, integral in M-series chips, used in Sequoia's virtual machines at last, and an essential feature in Private Cloud Compute. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

In Memoriam Emile Claus: Into the light 2

His Impressionism changed into a dazzling Luminism. He painted a series of famous views of the River Thames when in exile in London. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

Do your Macs a favour by getting a UPS

Please protect your Macs from mains voltage surges and sudden loss of power using a UPS. Here's how to select and use one. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 months ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Rivers

Rivers, rather than their banks, have been an unusual theme in landscape painting. Examples from Daubigny's series in northern France, the specialist Frits Thaulow, and many others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

What’s going on with AI in Sequoia?

How we have gone from spell-checking, through optical character recognition, to Sequoia's new Writing Tools that can proofread and summarise text. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Sea of Mists: Pupils, Peder Balke

A Norwegian who became a pupil of JC Dahl in Dresden, and painting nocturnes of Nordic ports, and awe-inspiring rocky coasts and mountains. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

SilentKnight 2.9 and Skint 1.07 updates restore auto-update

These fix auto-updates, and extend SilentKnight's Help to cover Apple silicon security. Compatible with Sequoia. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Reading visual art: 137 Helmet

The helmets of Minerva, Bellona, Mars, Perseus, Achilles, Aeneas, the Knights of the Round Table, and Joan of Arc. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

First details of macOS 15 Sequoia

Which Macs will run Sequoia, and which are stuck on older macOS? Are there any new emoji, and what about ChatGPT? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Changing Paintings: 23 Arethusa, Lyncus and the magpies

How Arethusa was turned into a sacred stream, why King Lyncus was turned into a lynx, and what the Pierides were transformed into. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 259

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 259. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Thinly […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Multitasking, parallel processing, and concurrency in Swift

From running multitasking on a single CPU, MultiFinder and cooperative multitasking, massively parallel systems using Transputers, to building concurrency into the Swift language. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Heroines 4: Phaedra’s shame and a chariot accident

In an act of revenge by Aphrodite, Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus, with tragic consequences. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Next Week on My Mac: WWDC

When will we learn about macOS 15? What important changes will it bring? When will the public beta be available? Will there be any new Macs? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Heroines 3: The anger of Achilles and the faithfulness of Briseis

After Achilles slaughtered the rest of her family, Briseis becomes his enslaved concubine. While he's angry, she remains devoted to him until his death. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 259

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


@eclecticlight.co | 7 months ago