Saturday Mac riddles 199

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Folder for arched roof locks your data securely. 2: Links for unlocking and a store for passw… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What is purgeable disk space?

When the Finder works out how much space is available on disk, what does it count as being “purgeable”? The answer may surprise you. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Hard Reality: Introduction to the development of realism

The hard road to realism: development and propagation of knowledge, how to apply it in paintings, and its benefit on visual art. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Will your new SSD support TRIM and SMART?

If you want it to have full TRIM and SMART support, it’ll need to have an NVMe interface and a Thunderbolt connection. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 48 In the spotlight

Examples of putting figures in the spotlight from paintings of Tiepolo, David, Goya, Gérôme, Thomas Eakins, and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Mints version 1.12 reveals SMART indicators for some SSDs

Adds the ability to check some key SMART health indicators for Apple Fabric and PCIe SSDs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 47 Shadow play

Using shadows to tell or add detail to a visual story. Examples by Robert Campin, Gérôme. William Holman Hunt, Lovis Corinth and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

When the Finder’s error exceeds 50%

The Finder reported free space had risen by over 80 GB, that’s more than 50%. It looked like something had wiped some of my media libraries. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Petro Nilus

Also known as Pyotr Nilus, Piotr Nilouss, and Peter Alexandrovitch Nilouss, he emigrated to Paris in 1920. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Tackling problems with permissions, ACLs and other access controls

What’s blocking you from saving that document: permissions, ACLs, privacy, an extended attribute, or what? Here are some clues. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has released security updates to Monterey 12.6.5 and Big Sur 11.7.6

Apple has just released security updates to macOS Monterey and Big Sur, bringing them to versions 12.6.5 and 11.7.6 respectively. These patch the remaining security vulnerability in IOAccelerator, … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 7 Greeks in trouble

With Achilles out of the war, the Trojan army takes on the Greek expeditionary force. Under the leadership of Hector, it gets the upper hand and puts the Greeks into retreat. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 198

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 198. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Visible vapour after I sync with Liverpool plus. Click for a solution iCloud Visible vapour (clo… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

The app that won’t go into quarantine

How an obscure ACL can prevent a quarantine flag from being attached to an internet download: demonstration and explanation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

The Resurrection in modern paintings

Paintings by William Blake, William Holman Hunt, Albert Edelfelt, Albin Egger-Lienz and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: Storage stories

There’s a big difference between the storage that’s available, and what’s advisable. Whether it’s affordable is another question. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Paintings of eggs

Long before they were turned into chocolate, they were coloured, and hunted on Easter Sunday. Paintings by Claude Monet, Diego Velázquez, and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 198

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Visible vapour after I sync with Liverpool plus. 2: Hanging decoration to fascinate an infant… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Thanks for the Memory in Mac OS 8.6

For a while, most users worked in Mac OS 8.6, 9.0 was new and a beast, and there was also the Public Beta of Mac OS X. So how did we manage memory then? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has released macOS Ventura 13.3.1

Apple has just released an urgent security update to macOS Ventura, bringing it to version 13.3.1. This addresses two security vulnerabilities in IOSurfaceAccelerator and WebKit, both of which Appl… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

The Crucifixion in modern paintings

Paintings by William Blake, Elihu Vedder, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Léon Bonnat, James Tissot, Lovis Corinth and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Just which volumes are encrypted?

Here’s an APFS (Encrypted) volume that isn’t encrypted, and an unencrypted volume with FileVault active. Something must be wrong. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Suppers, Veronese and the Inquisition

How Veronese was accused by the Inquisition of blasphemy by painting “buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs” and others in his vast painting of the Last Supper. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How to check whether an SSD gets trimmed

Why should you trim an SSD? How to tell whether an SSD needs trimming, finding out whether it has trim support, and whether it does trim. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Mykola Pymonenko

Naturalist views of ordinary people in Ukrainian countryside that use Bastien-Lepage's successful formula with defocussing of the background. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How Cryptexes are changing macOS Ventura

Details of the three standard Cryptexes in Ventura 13.3, when they can be loaded in the boot process, and where they fit in with Rapid Security Responses. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Not Like That: Lost completely

Apelles, Vermeer, Goya, Hogarth, Courbet, Pissarro, de Haan, and Gustav Klimt: their paintings now lost forever. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Getting more from Disk Utility’s First Aid

Should you run First Aid on every volume, then each container? And why can it return status 65? How can you work around that? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Trojan Epics: 6 Achilles and the princess

Achilles acquires himself a concubine, as does his commander Agamemnon. When the latter is forced to return his, and takes Briseis from Achilles, there’s trouble. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 197

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 197. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Supplies arrive by parachute, unsolicited crypto, or wireless file transfer. Click for a solutio… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How APFS mounts encrypted volumes, snapshots, cryptexes and more

Details of what happens when an APFS (Encrypted) volume is mounted, when mounting a Time Machine snapshot, unmounting a volume, and loading a Cryptex. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

A blossom festival in paintings 2

Trees in blossom from Sérusier, Bonnard, Waterhouse, van Rysselberghe, Nikolai Astrup and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Last Week on My Mac: fsck status 65

Have you ever tried running First Aid on an APFS volume and been told it failed with status 65? It’s time for that to be fixed, so we can check and repair disks properly. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

A blossom festival in paintings 1

From Samuel Palmer in 1830, through Sisley’s Terrace at Saint-Germain, to van Gogh’s pink orchards, a festival of Spring blossom. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Saturday Mac riddles 197

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Supplies arrive by parachute, unsolicited crypto, or wireless file transfer. 2: Find my fligh… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How to maintain your Desktop in Mac OS 8 and 9

In Classic Mac OS, icons were determined by hidden databases. Here’s what we had to do periodically to keep them from breaking. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 46 The eyes have it

The Mona Lisa illusion, Mary Magdalene with eyes red from tears or shut in ecstasy, closed from fatigue, or nearly blinded by light. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Why you should enable FileVault

T2 and Apple silicon Macs always encrypt the Data volume in internal storage. So why bother with enabling FileVault? And can you do that on external bootable disks? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has just released updates to XProtect and XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released an update to XProtect Remediator security software (Catalina or later), bringing it to version 95, and to XProtect (for all macOS from El Capitan or so) bringing it to versi… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Reading visual art: 45 Eyes wide open

Surprise, suspicion, and sheer horror in these wide open eyes painted by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Rubens, Annie Swynnerton and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

How APFS mounts an external disk: 1 Basics

A step-by-step account of how Disk Arbitration and APFS mount an external disk, from handling its partitions, to performing trims. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

macOS Ventura 13.3, Monterey 12.6.4 and Big Sur 11.7.5 bring firmware updates for all supported Macs

This week’s updates to macOS 13.3, 12.6.4 and 11.7.5 should have updated the firmware of every supported Mac. I have now completed my check of those updates, and have updated the database use… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Not Like That: Vanished under varnish

Varnish has been applied to protect the paint layer. But layers of old varnish discolour and trap dirt and contaminants, letting a painting vanish into the dark. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Fixing firmware update problems

What should you do if a firmware update goes wrong? Here’s a guide to avoid panic, whether your Mac is Intel, has a T2, or M-series chip, and for Studio Displays. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Ukrainian Painters: Ivan Pokhitonov

Born to the north of Kherson, he trained in Odesa, then spent much of his life travelling in Europe, painting Belgium and France in particular. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Dive into APFS in Mints version 1.11

Update adds a 22nd tool, to display a log extract tailored to examining the mounting of APFS disks. Also valuable for any APFS investigation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.3?

The update to macOS Ventura 13.3 is substantial, and brings many improvements and fixes, including the following listed by Apple: A remove background option in Freeform to automatically isolate a s… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago

Apple has released updates to Ventura 13.3, Monterey 12.6.4 and Big Sur 11.7.5

Apple has just released updates to bring macOS 13 Ventura to version 13.3 (build 22E252), and security updates to bring Monterey to 12.6.4 and Big Sur to 11.7.5. The Ventura update is around 4.5 GB… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 year ago