Paintings from Ukraine 1

A sketchy history from Soshenko and Shevchenko in the early 19th century, to Kuznetsov and Pokhitonov at the end, with 3 famous expatriates. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Saturday Mac riddles 296

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: No amateur […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

A brief history of scripting the Mac

Includes HyperTalk, UserTalk, AppleScript, Prograph, shell scripts, Automator, Swift Playgrounds and Shortcuts, from 1987 to the present. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 5 On strike

From 1880 workers' strikes brought violence and strife to industrial regions throughout Europe, in the struggle for rights and justice. Shown here in contemporary paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

How external bootable disks work with Apple silicon Macs

Working with external bootable disks: how to create and add them, ownership and LocalPolicy, how that can be changed, and what happens with errors and failure. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Interiors by Design: Carpets

Although of ancient origin, it took 7 centuries for Europeans to use them to cover the floor. They can be exotic in chinoiserie, luxuriant, worn and threadbare, or vibrant. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Permissions, privacy and security: who’s in control?

Permissions, ACLs, TCC's privacy controls, SIP and app sandboxes. What they are, and how you can control them to access and maintain your files. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 192 Curtains as a device

Curtains around 4-poster beds, revealing hidden opinions, framing a cameo landscape, showing time and place, and in a trompe l'oeil still life. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

How to deal with a kernel panic

Your Mac unexpectedly restarts, and a little after logging in you see a Panic Alert. Before sending that to Apple, save a copy and follow this guidance, including how to read a panic log. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 191 Curtains of concealment and revelation

Curtains in Raphael's remarkable trompe l'oeil, concealing a nude, opened by the peeping tom, revealing a lost lover, and as separator between players and spectators. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Getting more from Recovery on Apple silicon Macs

Going deeper into Recovery mode, by setting the correct keyboard, sharing the Data volume with another Mac, using full features in Disk Utility and Safari, and avoiding repairing Home permissions. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Changing Paintings: 58 A wedding ruined by centaurs

The start of fighting in the Trojan War, how the prettiest girl in Thessaly became its toughest warrior, and the wedding feast that became all-out war. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 295

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 295. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Visible […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

What can’t you do on Apple silicon Macs, and what should you avoid?

Running older macOS, support for Intel apps and kernel extensions, booting from an external drive, Boot Camp and Windows support, cloning, and startup key combinations. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Paintings of Saint-Tropez: Colour, boats and bathers 2

Paintings by Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce, and Pierre Bonnard showing fishing boats, trees and bathers near this smalll fishing village on the Mediterranean coast. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: What did 15.3.1 fix?

Important security fixes, but no published CVE entries, according to Apple. But digging deeper was also unhelpful. Could it be GoFetch, or SLAP and FLOP? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Paintings of Saint-Tropez: Colour, boats and bathers 1

A small fishing village that drew several major painters from about 1892, where they depicted its boats, warmth, trees, light and bathers. From Paul Signac on. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 295

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


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

A brief history of bundles

From the resource forks of Classic apps, to versioned and new-style bundles in 2001, document packages, then the incorporation of signatures and notarization tickets. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 4 Coal and construction

Meunier's paintings of the Borinage in Belgium, Breitner's construction in Amsterdam in the late 19th century, and Maximilen Luce's of Paris in the early 20th century. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Watch your background: automatic Time Machine backups

How DAS gathers its budgets and loads lists of activities. When rescoring permits, it then dispatches the process to initiate backup. Re-scheduling has changed in Sequoia, as shown here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Interiors by Design: The silence of Vilhelm Hammershøi

Forgotten until revived in 2005, his paintings now fetch millions. Hauntingly empty, almost monochrome, and often with his wife facing away from the viewer. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Do M4 chips have a new security processor?

Is there a Secure Exclave Processor in M4 chips, a sister to the Secure Enclaves in Macs with T1, T2 or Apple silicon chips? What are they, and what do they do? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 190 Lightning in the sky

Giorgione's Tempest, Cuyp's Thunderstorm over Dordrecht, Delacroix, a prairie on fire, and viewing lightning safely indoors. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Can you calibrate your Apple or MacBook Pro display?

How to create a custom preset to use for your display's colour profile, how you can make use of measurements of a colorimeter, or adjust white point by eye. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 189 Lightning of the gods

Jupiter's bundle of thunderbolts that have survived into computer technology, lightning in great floods, in the destruction of Tyre, and the three witches in Macbeth. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

What is System Data in Storage Settings?

The bar chart in Storage Settings shows most of your startup volume is full of System Data. What does it mean, and what use is it? Is its measure of used and free space accurate? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple has released macOS Sequoia 15.3.1, and 14.7.4, 13.7.4

Apple has just released a security update to macOS Sequoia to bring it to version 15.3.1, and security […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Changing Paintings: 57 The sacrifice of Iphigenia

The Greek fleet is stuck in the port of Aulis due to strong winds and heavy seas. A seer tells Agamemnon the only solution is to sacrifice his daughter to Diana. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 294

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 294. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Cool […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Watch your background: In-app background tasks

Easy to code, these don't need to use XPC although it's used by the DAS-CTS scheduling and dispatch system. They aren't run at constant time intervals, but when appropriate according to other loads. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Inglorious mud: 2 To the War to End Wars

Mud during the Franco-Prussian War, in Nordic countryside, and enveloping everything including the dead during the First World War. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: A brief history of what we take for granted

Achieving reliable colour reproduction with computers drew from several fields from neurophysiology to physics. Could it have been accomplished by anything other than humans? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Inglorious mud: 1 On the move

How the rich paid to walk on planks to cross muddy streets, and hussars helped ladies over mud ruts, children at play, roads in London and Leeds, and a cheeky ploughboy. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 294

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


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

A brief history of ColorSync

First released in 1993 to support colour printing, version 2.0 in 1995 brought fuller features and ICC support. Still going strong despite the decline of colour printing. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 3 Factories

Iron and steel mills and foundries, a printing shop, a lead mine still employing children, and spinners - all relentlessly demanding, without lighter work. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Add custom file and folder icons in Sequoia

Adding your own custom icons to files and folders goes back a long way, to Classic Mac OS […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Interiors by Design: Hospital wards

From those run and staffed by religious orders around 1600 to the 19th century's revolution in nursing, and dazzlingly white interiors with radiators. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Start planning your Mac’s Spring clean

Spring will soon be upon us, and it's time to plan our Spring software housekeeping to clear out the junk that has accumulated over the winter. How to go about it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months 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 | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 188 Poster, adverts

By the late 19th century, presses were churning out posters promoting events and products. Some came to appear in paintings of Paris and other places. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Watch your background: Scheduling XProtect Remediator scans

How does XProtect Remediator scan your Mac once a day? What has gone wrong when it doesn't appear to work? Explained from its property lists to its three different types of scan. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading Visual Art: 187 Poster, messages

Popularised with large-format colour printing in the middle of the 19th century, there appear in several paintings where they contribute to the reading. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

macOS Sequoia 15.3 has improved Thunderbolt 5 performance

Sequoia 15.3 results in significant improvements in read-write speeds of SSDs connection through Thunderbolt 5 docks and hubs. Here are the details and implications for choosing SSDs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Changing Paintings: 56 The hawk, kingfishers and a diver

How Daedalion was turned into a hawk, a wolf was turned into marble, King Ceyx and his wife became kingfishers, and Aesacus was turned into a diver. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 293

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 293. Here are my solutions to them. 1: 42, […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

How to change lid behaviour on MacBook Air and Pro

Apple silicon laptops start up (if not asleep) when you open their lid or connect power. Now you can change that behaviour by setting their NVRAM. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago