From the 8 cores of the original M1 chip to the M1 Ultra’s 20, this is how macOS manages threads from apps, services and other code. | Continue reading
M1 Macs don’t support SMART monitoring over USB-C, forcing us to choose between Full Security without SMART, or Reduced Security with SMART support. | Continue reading
Is a process named triald stealing lots of CPU? Or maybe ~/Library/Trial is huge, or filling your backups? Maybe it’s all just one of Apple’s Experiments. | Continue reading
How can you tell when software uses the Neural Engine in an M1 series Mac? How much power does it use, and what is Espresso? Mysteries unravelled. | Continue reading
QuickTime ruled from 1991-2019, and was bigger than Apple itself. But can you name what replaced it, and whether it works as well? | Continue reading
Visual Look Up also recognises flowers, landmarks and pets, as well as well-known paintings. Here’s how it does those, and how Live Text is different. | Continue reading
How analogue sound is turned into digital audio, how the limits of human hearing determine how that conversion should be performed, and how you should set your Mac’s audio up. | Continue reading
The first phase analyses, classifies and detects any objects within the image. When the user clicks on the white dot, this completes with a search for the best match. | Continue reading
Remember Apple’s failed attempt to detect CSAM in images? Would that have been similar to the way that Visual Look Up works? Is this the thin end of the wedge? | Continue reading
There are two situations when M1 chips confine code to just one of their Performance cores: during startup, before the other cores are running, and when preparing an update. | Continue reading
A promising start for a new feature which could, with a little improvement, become a uniquely powerful tool. | Continue reading
To the north of Kyiv is a 40-mile long column of Russian vehicles, trapped by bad tyres, breakdowns, fuel shortage, and mud. But what of the occupants? Are they fit to fight? | Continue reading
In Activity Monitor, % CPU isn’t on a scale of 0-100. In M1 Macs, it also makes no distinction between E and P cores, nor does it allow for their changing frequency. | Continue reading
Each additional Safari window increases WindowServer’s memory use by 1.7 MB on an Intel Mac, but 50 MB on an M1 Mac – thirty times more. | Continue reading
All disks cache data to be written, which makes benchmarking them tricky. It has more serious consequences which macOS tries to allow for in file systems and backups. | Continue reading
When running some tasks confined to E cores, the original M1 chip from 2020 completes them significantly quicker than an on an M1 Pro. Here’s the detail. | Continue reading
Users and other processes have very limited control over which threads are run on which type of core. As Apple Silicon develops, this is an area set for change. | Continue reading
Fed up with your M1 MBP always starting up, or waking from sleep, when you open its lid? How might you change that behaviour? | Continue reading
We can expect Universal Control in macOS 12.3, but when will Apple get round to fixing the severe memory leak in the Finder’s Find feature? | Continue reading
If you use any of these, Apple’s next update to Monterey 12.3 will bring changes. Start preparing now. | Continue reading
Apple’s Private Relay service isn’t a full VPN, but is designed to ensure that no one knows both your IP address and the sites you connect to. Is it a good choice? | Continue reading
Understanding each of the four stages in the Secure Booting of an M1 Mac. These are summarised in diagram available here. | Continue reading
How can the two E cores in an M1 Pro/Max apparently match the performance of the four in the original M1? Answers, please. | Continue reading
Some apps and other code doesn’t appear to run faster on M1 chips, and some even runs more slowly. Could this be a result of it not using the best acceleration for vectors and matrices? | Continue reading
What are all those files and folders doing inside an app? Which can you safely change to customise an app? Why all the helpers? | Continue reading
Does your M1 Mac run more slowly when it’s on battery power, or with Low Power mode enabled? An exploration of effects on its CPU cores provides an unexpected answer. | Continue reading
The E cores on the original M1 and M1 Pro chips appear to be managed quite differently, with respect to the performance of background processes at low QoS. | Continue reading
Obtaining estimates for individual P and E core performance of processes run mainly in an ALU and those using floating-point and SIMD gives further insight and confirms the cores haven’t chan… | Continue reading
Fed up with the Flying Pointer? Tired of the oldest Universal Bug in Finder Column Widths? Want updates from the App Store? These are some of the annoyances in 12.0.1. | Continue reading
Many folders have them. They’re so invisible that you can’t even see them when you show hidden files. And the only way you know they’re there is when they cause problems. | Continue reading
How does macOS load processes onto the cores in M1 series processors? Are its policies similar between the original M1 and the M1 Pro? | Continue reading
Geekbench 5 scores for the M1 Pro are around 2800 single- and 12500 multi-core. Do they represent maximum performance, though? | Continue reading
How this memory leak probably occurs, which apps it affects, and what you can do to avoid it completely. | Continue reading
Tab groups make it easy and convenient to have dozens of pages open at the same time in Safari. But that comes at a price – they could run your Mac low on memory. | Continue reading
New for Monterey: Disk Utility now offers complete features for the management and maintenance of snapshots. | Continue reading
Is Apple going to meet the promises it made a year ago, to protect its users around the world from the risk posed by its online signing certificate checks? | Continue reading
From the IBM PC XT with its 10 MB hard disk to a SoC which moves data to its SSD at over 7 GB/s. How CPUs interface with peripherals. | Continue reading
The P cores in the M1 Pro/Max CPU are managed in two groups of four, sparing load on the second group, and distributing it unevenly within each group. Its two E cores outperform the four in the M1 … | Continue reading
How APFS, the boot volume group, hashes, and Secure Boot all combine to guarantee the integrity of your system, and save you trouble and work. | Continue reading
Explore running test code of different types on the different cores in your M1 Mac. Provides insight into how your Mac performs, rather than just how fast it is. | Continue reading
A detailed walk through the log shows Safari 15 checking Safe Browsing, phishing sites using ML, and performing trust evaluation of certificates. | Continue reading
Did you think it was only old Mac OS X affected by the Let’s Encrypt certificate expiry problem? No, it’s Safari wherever you can use it. Here’s how to deal with it. | Continue reading
As Apple silently drops Mojave’s support, it releases a security update to iOS 12, which was originally released a week before Mojave. And its entire AirPort range also seems unsupported now. | Continue reading
Unofficially, each major version of macOS gets a year’s full support, with bug and security fixes, then 2 years of security updates. Is that how it works? | Continue reading
Apple seemed reluctant to provide a full installer and IPSW image for 11.6. How does that affect those staying with Big Sur for the next year of security updates? | Continue reading
With Big Sur 11.6 reaching the end of the year’s cycle, it’s time to take stock of just how much we had to download to keep it up to date. | Continue reading
What are the penalties in real-world use for running your code on Icestorm cores, using around 10% of the power used by Firestorms? | Continue reading
Memory, support for multiple external displays, bootable external disks, macOS updates, kernel panics, more ports, and more choice of macOS to install are on my list. | Continue reading