Why won’t a system app or command tool run? Launch constraints and trust caches

Why won’t Ventura let you run a copy of one of its bundled apps, and why does it refuse to run some command tools? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 16 Sirens and Calypso

Odysseus is lashed to the mast as his ship passes the Sirens without being lured away. He’s the only survivor after shipwreck, then is trapped with Calypso for seven years. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 207

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 207. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Not actually existing in the imaginary world of Vision Pro. Click for a solution Virtual reality… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Malware detection and remediation by XProtect Remediator

In June 2022, Apple retired MRT and replaced it with XProtect Remediator. Here’s all you need to know about this new tool and what it does. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Dressed for the beach 1892-1922

In the early 20th century, some bathers opted for trunks, a few still bathed naked in seclusion, and modern clothes broke out on occasion. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Sonoma under the hood

There’s a great more to come in Sonoma: two major changes in virtualisation, iCloud, privacy, accessibility and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Dressed for the beach 1600-1890

Throughout the 19th century, as going to the beach became more popular, adults at least only bared essentials, and even covered arms and legs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 207

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Not actually existing in the imaginary world of Vision Pro. 2: Not apparatus for another OS i… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Bastion in defence of Sonoma security

In Ventura, Apple has been introducing more behavioural detection and protection. This is only going to expand in Sonoma. Here’s what it promises. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 4 The offence of Sardanapalus

For his third Salon in 1827, he submitted one huge work developed from Lord Byron’s account of the death of Sardanapalus. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Cold boot or restart?

Sometimes, a cold boot fixes problems not fixed by a simple restart. Why, and which problems is it better at fixing? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator security software for Macs running Catalina or later, bringing it to version 99. Version 98 wasn’t released. Apple doesn’t relea… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Hard reality: 8 The illusion of depth

More important than perspective projection are cues including depth order, relative size, height in the picture plane, and aerial perspective. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

More app updates: SearchKey and SearchKeyLite 1.5, and Scrub 1.3

Two metadata editors, and an app to improve your privacy by cleaning metadata and more. Updated for High Sierra and later. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What features has Apple announced for macOS 14 Sonoma, and can your Mac use them?

Which Macs are supported, which new features are available on each, and what about OCLP and obtaining betas? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 59 Aegis

An attribute of the goddess Athena (Minerva), it consists of the image of the face of Medusa on a shield or breastplate. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How to run a macOS beta on Apple silicon

What’s the best option if you don’t have the luxury of running betas on a dedicated Mac? How to install and run them in a VM. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Mykhailo Boichuk

Leader of a school that flourished in Ukraine from 1910 until it fell victim to Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937. Most of his visual art was destroyed. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What to do when an app uses too much memory

How to tell whether an app has a memory leak, what to do about it, and the differences from a kernel memory leak. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

macOS 14 Sonoma support

Apple has now announced which models will enjoy official support for macOS 14, named Sonoma: iMac 2019 (iMac19,x) […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 15 Escape from Circe

She invited Odysseus and his crew to a feast, where she turned most of them into pigs. Odysseus avoids that fate, and later gets a prophecy from Tiresias. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 206

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 206. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Image library replaced both in 2015. Click for a solution Photos Image library (what it is) repl… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What to do when an app crashes as it opens

Causes include code signature errors, app translocation, damaged documents, and corrupted or incompatible preference file. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of the most famous piazza in the world: 1880-1908

From Renoir in 1881 through multiple Impressonists to Monet in 1908, more views of Piazza San Marco in Venice. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Drawing ahead

Apple needs to widen the gap between late Intel and Apple silicon Macs without locking Intel Macs out, mature Stage Manager, fix System Settings, and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of the most famous piazza in the world: to 1840

From Bellini in 1496, through Canaletto, to JMW Turner in 1840, views of Piazza San Marco in Venice. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 206

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Image library replaced both in 2015. 2: Not taken with your Brownie, but with a backup. 3: An… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 3 Massacre at Chios

Two major works showing the plight of Greeks during their war of independence, first signs of Orientalism, and several literary narratives. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Customising metadata display in the Finder

Where to look for file metadata in the Finder, and how you can customise it, in spite of its apparent confusion. And how APFS takes care of extended attributes for you. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Hard reality: 7 Strange landscapes

Hodler's Parallelist paintings, and more than 30 of the paintings of Paul Cézanne depart from the basic optical principles of reflections. Why? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How should we check the integrity of important files?

What are the performance differences between SHA-256 and 512? What throughput can you expect when checking hashes? And how to correct errors detected? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 58 Sickles

A symbol of the harvest with Ceres, a weapon for Bacchantes, the sign of the Divine Reaper Saturn, used by Iris to cut locks of hair, and for cutting the cereal crop. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ghosts in the machine: .DS_Store files

Introduced in the Finder in Mac OS X, these hidden and invisible files have been quietly causing havoc with backups, revision control systems, and more. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Viktor Zarubin

Among 15 works shown here are two of Sviatohirsk Monastery, destroyed by Bolsheviks after October Revolution of 1917, and shelled into ruins in 2022. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple’s big test of data integrity

Since November 2020, every T2 and Apple silicon Mac that has booted Big Sur or later in Full Security mode has check the integrity of its 9 GB SSV. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 14 Odysseus and Polyphemus

Queen Penelope and their son Telemachus were awaiting the return of Odysseus, whose ships ended up off the island of the Cyclops. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 205

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 205. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Fifteen years and seven generations until it died a year ago, the last of the whole line. Click … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Dealing with a kernel panic

How to capture the panic log, immediate actions likely to help make a diagnosis, and how to read the panic log. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Folk Tales in Paintings: Lady Godiva and Wanda

The curious story of the countess who rode naked through the city of Coventry to win its people a cut in taxes, and Wanda of Kraków. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Should we be worried about data integrity?

From its outset, APFS hasn’t tested the integrity of file data stored on it. Would this be a good idea, or should macOS switch to the ZFS file system instead? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Folk Tales in Paintings: Robin Hood and other merry men

Robin Hood, who robbed the bad to help the poor, and his colleagues William Tell, Oleksa Dovbush and Holger Danske. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 205

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Fifteen years and seven generations until it died a year ago, the last of the whole line. 2: … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Would you like to Comment or Finder Comment?

Finder Comments are accessible, easy to use, and unreliable because they rely primarily on data stored in a hidden file. Regular Comment extended attributes are more reliable. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 2 First success

Started training in 1815, first commission in 1819, set his sights on the Salon of 1822, and made his name with ‘The Barque of Dante’. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Updates: xattred 1.5, Cormorant 1.5, Metamer 1.2 and ArchiChect 2.5

Extended attribute editor with much enhanced interface, app inspection tool, compression tool designed for AirDrop use, and a simple extended attribute editor for Spotlight search. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 57 Tridents and bidents

Neptune’s trident has three tines, while Pluto’s is a bident with only two. Or it could be a pitchfork. How to read them in paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Monitoring file integrity with updates to Dintch and Fintch

APFS has no feature to check file data integrity. Dintch and Fintch are two apps that tag files with SHA-256 hashes to address this. New versions. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Hard reality: 6 Reflections in the landscape

Optical principles are straightforward, but can become extremely complex in practice. Examples from Jan van Eyck to Hodler and Signac. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago