Red menu bar in Sonoma

Occasionally, switching apps in Sonoma’s Stage Manager sets the whole menu bar to red, and loses menus on its left. What’s the cause? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

High: Haute Route in the Alps

A journey from the southern shore of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, travelling east to the Zugspitze, highest mountain in Germany. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Viable, ViableS and Vimy updates to fix a bug

These fix a bug when restoring a VM window that has been minimised to the Dock. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Another Finder memory leak in Sonoma

With one leak in the Finder’s Gallery view, it’s time for another, in Icon view. This is an old leak, that has affected older versions of macOS too, but still hasn’t been fixed. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 90 Oil lamps B

In chiaroscuro, for enlightenment, at the centre of family and friends at dinner, and in special safety lamps carried underground by coal miners. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?

Little seems to have changed in CPU cores in M3 chips, if you read reviews. Dig a bit deeper and there are major changes, as explained here. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 89 Oil lamps A

the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

iCloud Drive in Sonoma: FileProvider and eviction

iCloud Drive in Sonoma has changed beyond all recognition, and is now closely integrated with the FileProvider API. This has important effects, including how you can diagnose problems with the log. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Arthur: 11 The Lady of Shalott

Cursed to be confined to weaving images on her loom and forbidden from looking directly at the outside world, she breaks that to look at Sir Lancelot. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 230

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 230. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Prepares a play text for publication and runs your code. Click for a solution Script Editor Prep… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Finder memory leak in macOS Sonoma 14.1.1

Select groups of many JPEG images in Finder’s gallery view, and the Finder’s memory grows steadily until you’re forced to relaunch it. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Gérôme’s Vision: Paintings about vision, truth and photography 2

Paintings in which he helped set the thumbs up and down sign, and painted himself making a sculpture he had previously painted in a painting as a sculpture. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Over the Rainbow

My MacBook Pro 16-inch is on its way. Why is it coming with an M3 Pro and not an M3 Max? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Gérôme’s Vision: Paintings about vision, truth and photography 1

From an early painting of the blind Michelangelo to that of a nude courtesan before a Greek court, vision and visual fidelity was his recurrent theme. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 230

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Prepares a play text for publication and runs your code. 2: Otto’s icon brings actions … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Are we running out of panaceas?

We used to reset the Desktop, the SMC, and NVRAM, install the Combo updater, or perform a clean install. Now there's only Safe mode left. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Painting on the edge: Overview and contents

How some landscape painters blurred the view to paint, while others have depicted motion blur, depth of field effects, or an edge hierarchy. Links to each article in the series. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: strengths and weaknesses

What is Time Machine best at doing? What are its current limitations in macOS Sonoma, when backing up to APFS? A draft list. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

High: Hot and cold in Spain’s Sierra Nevada

Artists who flocked to the Prado in Madrid often visited Granada, where the towers of the Alhambra rise to compete with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Game Mode revisited: why E cores are so important

Once you know how to configure an app to be able to use Game Mode, you can run better tests. Here are measurements of CPU and GPU performance for comparison between Full Screen and Game Mode. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 88 Rope B

Shackles of the night, in a well, as a rope ladder how Romeo meets Juliet, trussing up a robber, or hanging John Brown, the abolitionist. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Backup errors, iCloud Drive and the limits of APFS

Two different errors when backing up two different Macs, a recursive RTFD document, and APFS path length limits. But what’s this about FileProvider? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 87 Rope A

How ropes form a thread running through these four paintings of the Passion and Crucifixion Tintoretto painted. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: Back up and restore external volumes

How well can Time Machine back up other volumes, such as those on external drives? Can it restore them when the original disk fails or goes missing? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Arthur: 10 Elaine of Astolat

She fell in love with Sir Lancelot, nursed him back to health after he was badly wounded, but he refused to marry her, or even take her as his lover. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 229

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 229. Here are my solutions to them. 1: On-camera preview shows you files. Click for a solution Finder On-camera preview (a viewfinder) … | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

SilentKnight 2.7 is more tolerant of error

If you want to install some updates but not all, this version adds two improvements to help you do that without unintentionally downloading what you don't want. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Who had John the Baptist killed? 2 Salome

In 1876, Moreau recast Salome as the author of John the Baptist's execution, amplified by Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss, and the Dance of the Seven Veils. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Scary hasty

Sonoma 14.1.1 and Ventura 13.6.2 apparently contained ‘important bug fixes and security updates’, although Apple provides no further details. What is going on? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Who had John the Baptist killed? 1 Herodias

The original Biblical account of the martyrdom of John the Baptist says that Herod's wife Herodias ordered it in revenge, as seen in these paintings. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Saturday Mac riddles 229

Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: On-camera preview shows you files. 2: Cover for loose papers as a directory metaphor. 3: Wort… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

It’s all about reliability and contingency

Apple silicon Macs are designed and built for reliability. Using old techniques to safeguard from disaster isn’t wise: they need to be reappraised, and contingencies planned accordingly. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Painting on the edge: How do you blur an edge?

Painting with an edge hierarchy requires fine control over paint viscosity and drying time, and a deep understanding of technique. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: How to restore from a backup

How should you restore a whole volume, or an old version of a document to a different folder? Includes details of backup structure. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Apple has released an update to XProtect

Apple has overnight released an update to XProtect for all macOS from El Capitan or so, bringing it […] | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

High: Ascent

An illustrated account of the 14th successful ascent of Mont Blanc, complete with champagne and red wine, and two oil paintings of other climbs. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Should you make an emergency disk for an Apple silicon Mac?

Many of us keep an emergency external drive at the ready by our Mac, in case we need to use it to recover from problems. What’s the equivalent for Apple silicon? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 86 Ravens and crows B

Waiting the knight's end, watching a sorceress, flying over a wheat field, or in front of a sleigh. Wherever they go they seem sinister. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Metamer 1.5 fixes a bug

Version 1.5 of this metadata editor fixes a bug causing a spurious editor when Autosave is enabled. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Time Machine in Sonoma: How to check backing up

How to use the Time Machine log extract in Mints to check whether its backups are working normally, and what are expected errors. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Apple has just released Sonoma 14.1.1 update

Apple has just released updates to bring macOS Sonoma to version 14.1.1, and macOS Ventura 13.6.2 for “MacBook Pro (2021 and later) and iMac (2023)”. Although these are thought to be se… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Reading visual art: 85 Ravens and crows A

Companions to valkyries, accompanying the Wild Hunt, at the Crucifixion and executions, or the first sign of Spring? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Estimating energy use for Apple silicon chips

How much faster are P cores at running the same thread as E cores, and how much more energy do they require? And how do they compare with using the GPU? | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Arthur: 9 The quest completed

Perceval’s sister dies to save the life of a lady, Lancelot achieves the grail, then Galahad, Bors and Perceval do, but only one of them lives to tell the tale. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 228

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 228. Here are my solutions to them. 1: First person seed vessel brought mobile music for 21 years. Click for a solution iPod First pers… | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

How can you check the integrity of Time Machine backups in Sonoma?

APFS checks file system metadata, not file data. Consistency Scan has gone missing, verifying checksums doesn't appear to verify data, and Verify Integrity seems to do something altogether different. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Paintings of twilight

From Rembrandt to the First World War, through specialists including Atkinson Grimshaw, Eugène Jansson, Schikaneder, and Le Sidaner. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago

Last Week on My Mac: Backup simplicity

The most frequent error written to the log during my backups concerns a rogue RTFD that went recursive on me 4 years ago, and has come back to haunt me. | Continue reading


@eclecticlight.co | 5 months ago