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 | 6 hours 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 | 11 hours 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 | 1 day 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 | 1 day 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 | 1 day 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 days 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 days 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 | 3 days 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 | 3 days 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 | 3 days ago

Florence: paintings of the city

Corot's view from the Boboli Gardens, Thomas Cole, John Brett's landscape masterwork, intimate view from local painters, and a portrait by Paul Sérusier. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: What happened with XProtect?

If it's running Sequoia, a Mac most likely installed update to Sequoia silently. However, it could still download the Software Update version, as explained here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 4 days ago

Florence: a history in paintings

Dante and Beatrice, the Black Death that opens Boccaccio's Decameron, the death of Brunelleschi, Botticelli in his studio, and the de' Medicis. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 293

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: 42, 3.14159, […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

A brief history of the Finder

From its clean and spartan origins in Classic MacOS, the Finder has changed it metaphor, and now works more like a browser. Over 25 years of history. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 days ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 2 Living in the city

Crowded apartments in Montmartre, the Lower East Side in New York City, smoke in Charleroi and Dortmund, workers' cottages, and more smoke. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Friday magic: how to cheat on E cores and get free performance

How to more than double the speed of a thread run on the E cores, by running another 11 threads at the same time. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 6 days ago

Interiors by Design: Stairs

Stairs to fall down, to sit in disgrace, or pose with your sibling? Stairs winding up and defying gravity, bearing ballet dancers, or in a Gothic prison. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Thunderbolt 5 SSDs are promising, but fill their cache quicker

Early testing of TB5 SSDs show they do deliver much faster speeds that even USB4 models, although not as high as some claim. But their cache size may limit streaming large amounts of data. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for all supported macOS

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


@eclecticlight.co | 7 days ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect for Sequoia only

Early today Apple released an update to XProtect for macOS Sequoia only bringing it to version 5286. As […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 186 Poison B

The deaths of Demosthenes and Themistocles, Cleopatra's experimental toxicology, and Tristan and Isolde - was it poison or a love potion? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Watch your background: background activities with DAS-CTS

There's normally more than 500 background activities, like Time Machine backups and XProtect Remediator scans, waiting for dispatch in the list maintained by DAS. How this works. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 8 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 185 Poison A

The young Theseus is almost poisoned by Medea, Medea creates a poison potion for Jason to gain the Golden Fleece, the death of Socrates, and of Phocion. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Please don’t delete your logs

Why do some Macs apparently not have Unified log files? Maybe it's because they're being deleted by a misguided housekeeping app. Here's what is going wrong, and what you should do to avoid that. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

What has changed in macOS Sequoia 15.3?

The macOS 15.3 update introduces Genmoji creation in Messages and other apps on Apple silicon Macs, and improves […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 9 days ago

Apple has just released macOS Sequoia 15.3, and security updates 14.7.3 & 13.7.3

Apple has just released the update to bring macOS Sequoia to version 15.3, together with security updates 14.7.3 […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Changing Paintings: 55 The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

Laomedon refuses to pay the gods for helping built the walls of the first city of Troy. The Peleus marries Thetis, with a feast of the gods that sets up the Judgement of Paris. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 292

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 292. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Paul’s […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Does your MacBook Pro or Air need a lunchbreak?

Some services can only be run when a MacBook Air or Pro is awake and running on mains (AC) power. Here's a list, and what you can do to ensure their work still gets done. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 10 days ago

Painting poetry: Byron’s Oriental and other tales

Featuring paintings of The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, Manfred, Sardanapalus, and two scenes from the second canto of Don Juan. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: Can we make cleaning up our Macs simpler?

How can we tell where to look for all those files an app installs outside its bundle? Why not include a manifest inside that bundle so we can track down and delete them when doing the housekeeping? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 11 days ago

Painting poetry: Byron’s Mazeppa

A legend of a young Cossack who has an affair with a married countess in the Polish royal court, and is strapped to the back of a wild horse to ride to his death. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Saturday Mac riddles 292

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


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

A brief history of scheduled tasks

Since 2005, macOS has had the master launcher launchd and its LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons. Then in 2014 Apple added Duet Activity Scheduler to run tasks when conditions are suitable. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 12 days ago

Urban Revolutionaries: 1 Leaving the country

Gullible young women trafficked into prostitution, or were whole families squeezed out because of cold weather, crop failure including potato blight, loss of common land, and war. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

What to do when macOS won’t let you unmount a volume

You're in a rush to eject an external disk, but the Finder tells you it's in use by unnamed apps. What should you do next, and what has Sloth to do with it? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 13 days ago

Interiors by Design: Dining Room

Paintings by Gustave Courbet, Paul Signac, Marie Bracquemond, Vincent van Gogh, LA Ring, Carl Larsson, Maurice Denis, William McGregor Paxton, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Create and use virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs

How to create and set up macOS VMs for virtualisers. The structure of a VM, creation and first run explained. How to enhance it, and how to run it in isolation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 14 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 184 Just sewing

Learning how to sew, gossiping over sewing, or sitting apart, professional seamstresses, Gauguin's odd nude, and Vallotton's sewing maid. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

M4 Pro full on: when CPU and GPU draw over 50 W, and how Low Power mode changes that

How macOS can not only regulate CPU cluster frequencies to control power use, but also moves threads to E cores. This reduces power use of over 50 W to less than 13 W. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 15 days ago

Reading Visual Art: 183 Sewing for a purpose

Sewing for Garibaldi's redshirts, the flag of a castle, Sir Lancelot, fishermen and sailors, Pentecost costumes, and other purposes. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

What can you do with virtualised macOS on Apple silicon?

Which versions of macOS can run in a VM? Can they run Intel apps too, and Intel macOS? How well do they perform? Can they access iCloud and run App Store apps? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 16 days ago

Changing Paintings: 54 How Midas got his touch and his ears

Bacchus granted him the boon that everything he touched turned to gold. When that proved disastrous, his power was washed away, but he then offended Apollo and was given the ears of an ass. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 291

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 291. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Lead-free […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

What are CPU core frequencies in Apple silicon Macs?

Provides maximum frequencies for E and P cores in each of the M-series, a table of all frequency steps used by current M-series chips, and explanation of how they have come about and their importance. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 17 days ago

Paintings of the Tuileries Gardens: 2 After Monet

Paintings by Maurice Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, and others of these popular gardens in the centre of Paris. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago

Last Week on My Mac: A boot mystery solved?

It took over 6 months before creating bootable external disks was fairly reliable, and even then there were unexplained failures. Did someone fail to tell us something? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 18 days ago