Saturday Mac riddles 248

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


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Is Apple lagging in AI?

Has Apple fallen behind in ML and AI? Why hasn't it got its own Large Language Model, and how can it possibly catch up now? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Flowers

Landscape paintings by Daubigny, Sisley, Berkos, Astrup, Pissarro, Julian Onderdonk, Granville Redmond, Théo van Rysselberghe and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Accents or repeat: how is your keyboard configured?

What happens when you press and hold the e key? Does it repeat, or do you see a window offering accented versions? Do you know you can change that? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Versatility: a new drag-and-drop utility to archive and unarchive file versions

Convert a document into a folder containing all its saved versions, and unarchive that folder back into a document with all those saved versions. All using drag-and-drop. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Sea of Mists: Carl Gustav Carus 1826-50

From 1925, he moved away from themes common with his teacher Friedrich and developed his own Gothic Romanticism. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

How to recover Recovery

There's a problem with your Mac, so you try starting it up in Recovery. But that doesn't work. What should try next? Intel and Apple silicon Macs are then quite different. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Reading visual art: 123 Vanitas in more recent times

After 1850, there was a resurgence of expressions of the emptiness and futility of earthly life, with symbols of death and transience of ephemeral objects. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

APFS: Files and clones

Understanding how APFS works: inodes, attributes, file extents, extended attributes, and how they change with editing and cloning. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Apple has just released updates to XProtect and XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released updates to XProtect Remediator security software (Catalina or later), bringing it to version 129, […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 1 month ago

Reading visual art: 122 Vanitas in the 17th century

Originating in the Northern Renaissance, these paintings expressed feelings of emptiness, and the futility of earthly life. Examples of these elaborate allegories. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Sonoma’s lost versions bug: what it is and how to safeguard versions

How to reproduce this serious bug in Sonoma 14.4, and how to archive all the versions of a file or document so they can't get destroyed. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Is there a problem in Sonoma’s universalaccessd?

Have noticed brief periods of high CPU for universalaccessd in Sonoma? Do you know what com.apple.axserver is and why it can't be found? Can you help with this puzzle? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Serious bug in Sonoma 14.4 will destroy saved versions in iCloud Drive

Do you use saved versions in documents? If a file is evicted by you or macOS, then all saved versions will now be removed, and lost forever. How to work around this serious bug. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Changing Paintings: 11 Actaeon changed into a stag

The grandson of the founder of Thebes happens into Diana's sacred wood when out hunting, and sees the goddess naked. She changes him into a stag, with fatal consequences. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 247

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 247. Here are my solutions to them. 1: A […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

How iCloud Drive works in macOS Sonoma

Step by step through moving to iCloud Drive, eviction to a dataless file, materialisation of local data, editing and syncing with iCloud Drive. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Gambling in paint: Virtue

Gambling among soldiers and young boys, games of Pharo, l'hombre, poker, and the Casino at Monte-Carlo. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Solo or CoreDuet?

How do the SMC and CoreDuet manage the systems in your Mac, and should you fiddle with them? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Gambling in paint: Vice

Gambling as a sure road to Hell, with Bosch, Caravaggio, Georges de la Tour, Hogarth, Géricault, Courbet, Rossetti, and others. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 247

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


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

What makes a disk bootable?

Simply having a boot volume group with a System snapshot in it won't get your Mac to start up from that disk, particularly if it's an Apple silicon model. Some details. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Earth

Pontoise by Pissarro, Paul Nash's Berkshire Downs, Rosa Bonheur's teams of oxen ploughing, and Grant Wood's Iowa prairie. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple silicon: 6 Security

Secure Boot and its 5 stages, the SSV, support for external bootable disks, the SEP, Recovery, and lightweight virtualisation. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Sea of Mists: Carl Gustav Carus 1816-25

A polymath who was professor of obstetrics, he became Friedrich’s pupil in 1814. They shared locations and the use of Rückenfiguren. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Ovid’s myths of macOS: password entry dialogs and the death of Semele

Killed by Jupiter’s thunderbolts when she insisted he proved his identity, this myth is a reminder that making something more secure isn’t always a good answer. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading visual art: 121 Rainbows landscape

In landscapes by Rubens, Constable, Ford Madox Brown, Frederic Edwin Church, Millet, Pissarro, Breton, and Prendergast. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Desktop & Documents Folders in iCloud Drive

Ever been tempted to turn on this feature, or maybe you use it already? Do you know how it works, and whether it preserves your files fully? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple has just released an update to XProtect

Apple has just released an update to XProtect for all versions of macOS from El Capitan or so, bringing it to version 2189. Apple doesn’t release information about what security issues this u… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading visual art: 120 Rainbows narrative

The primary attribute of Iris, with the soothing song of Amphitrite, bearing the Norse deities to Valhalla, the sign of God's covenant after the Flood, and at the Last Judgement. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Manage your Mac’s battery for endurance and lifespan

History from Mac Portable's led acid to the latest lithium-polymer. But how should you manage your Mac's battery? What about when in storage or heat? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Changing Paintings: 10 Cadmus and the founding of Thebes

Europa’s brother Cadmus is told to found a new city wherever a cow leads him. After killing a man-eating dragon, he sows its teeth in the soil. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 246

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 246. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Once a Latin American dance on 445, it’s a year older than the Mac, and now the shared sta… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

iCloud Drive in Sonoma: Optimise Mac Storage or not?

It lets you evict files so their data is only held in iCloud Drive, freeing up local space. But would to get into storage debt as a results? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Painting the circus: performers and melancholy

Degas' Miss La La, a clown feeding a baby, cruelty to performers and animals, the misery of the Saltimbanques, and the melancholy of clowns. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Agatha Christie, dendrites and West Berlin

Making their appearance for the first time in macOS 14.4 are Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot, branches from nerve cells, and isolated fragments of states. What can they be? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Painting the circus: performance and spectacle

From the Circus Maximus with its crowd of 150,000 to those walking the tightrope under the canvas of the Big Top. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 246

Here are this weekend’s Mac riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Once a Latin American dance on 445, it’s a year older than the Mac, and now the sha… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

What malware can macOS remove?

Until two years ago, Apple’s Malware Removal Tool, MRT, was all that macOS had to deal with any malicious software that got onto your Mac. While Gatekeeper and its XProtect signatures can det… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

A to Z of Landscapes: Dawn and Dusk

When to paint looking into the rising or setting sun, or when to put your back to the sun to show its light cast on a mountain peak. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

How to tell genuine password requests from fakes

Malware tries to trick you into providing it your password. How to recognise genuine requests from those fakes. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

What has changed in macOS Sonoma 14.4?

Sonoma version 14.4 is the most substantial update of this cycle so far, and includes extensive new bundles and changes throughout the System/Library folder, which has grown in size by around 150 i… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple has released Sonoma 14.4 update, and security updates to Ventura and Monterey

Apple has just released the update to bring macOS Sonoma to version 14.4, together with security updates to Ventura and Monterey, bringing them to versions 13.6.5 and 12.7.4 respectively. For Intel… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Sea of Mists: Caspar David Friedrich 1830-40

Five years of some of his most enduring works, including ‘The Stages of Life’, his enigmatic masterwork. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

iCloud Drive in Sonoma: Clones, sparse files, versions and more

How local files retain their extended attributes and versions when moved to iCloud Drive, but they’re not available to other Macs. Sparse files and storage economy as well. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Reading visual art: 119 The box, others

Hatboxes from Shakespeare to the Champs Elysées, the wig-box of hanged highwayman, Dickens’ cashboxes, and the painter’s pochade. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple silicon: Memory and internal storage

Memory, from L1 instruction cache to main memory, and how it came to be Unified. Why the internal SSD isn’t like others, and why it’s so essential. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago

Apple has just released updates to XProtect and XProtect Remediator

Apple has just released updates to XProtect Remediator security software (Catalina or later), bringing it to version 128, and to XProtect (for all macOS from El Capitan or so) bringing it to versio… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 2 months ago