Using a Mac without a network connection
eclecticlight.co
eclecticlight.co
It can handle no connection quite well, but unstable internet is really a PITA - commands and applications lag randomly when launching etc... It took me some time to troubleshoot why suddenly ma MacOS was almost unusable and this was the culprit.
Like plugging a device that will be seen as network card and responding to certain api requests to trick whatever service calls them?
The problem is responding to those API requests in a way that the program will accept - if it's just a simple PING, no issue, but if there's any sort of more advanced encryption, handshaking or license checking/exchange going on, you'll need to reverse engineer the algorithm. Some simple versions of that you can just record once and "replay", but most will at least have a timestamp hashed in.
(super rough, lay-man's understanding of the issue - sorry for any inaccuracies)
There are several other methods that I've seen but they are not bulletproof: - talking directly to hardcoded DNS such as 8.8.8.8 - hardcoding IP addresses into SW - Checking for some obscure header as a part of client/server identification
You actually want the opposite, to make it think it's not connected to the internet. In other words, a network connection blockers such as Little Snitch.
Source: typing this from an older ("late 2009") iMac running Linux
I want to have modern peripherals and experience such as 4k display, USB-C, reasonably fast wifi/bluetooth. I don't really have a need for CD-ROM, firewire and IR port...
And believe me, I tried to run Linux on 2018/2019 MBP. Apple really really tries to makes that as painful as possible. Most of the things are behind T2 (including keyboard for example) and since there is virtually no documentation you have to rely on reverse engineering efforts of few talented individuals. Also there are things that just plain don't work such as resuming from sleep (the graphics MUX gets all confused and the driver will not re-configure it for some reason) etc... Basically nice for playing around, not good enough for running as a main device.
That will result in almost unusable system.
I used a similar method to simulate running our software on a government network when I worked in defense.
Timeouts and packets dropping all over the place. Government work sucks.
And the most painful thing is that Macbooks don't have eSIM/cellular so you have to use iPhone with its small-ish antenna. So you have a MBP and your system is barely usable and next to you is your colleague, using DELL with built-in LTE and 4 large antennas behind its display doing over 70Mbps with a sh*t-eating grin asking you if you want to use his computer :-D
TBH, the only reason my Linux boxes surprise me is because I try stupid things such as mounting /var/log as a tmpfs to reduce write loads (mostly on RPis SD cards and eMMC devices).
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704?mt=12 [1]: https://github.com/Aaron-Rumpler/CDM
Later, when downloading several common desktop applications, upon opening them.. it says "this software requires v10.13 or later" .. I assume this is completely on purpose to get the legions of happy Mac owners off of their stable OS and into the upgrade churn ? I assume (US here) you have to have to buy OSX 10.13, register an ID with Apple, to get new software (according to them) ?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mavericks
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_High_Sierra
[2]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl338cf9a8/...
I had to do a quick reality check after reading that article.
Howard Oakley and his work are well known in our community. If you don't know him, then please don't cast aspersions.
A few years back there was this issue of MacOS apps launching with a delay because the OS was checking with Appe if you are allowed to use the app. IIRC, this was just a bug.
Also, you won't be able to use iOS without an initial internet connection.
This creates a curiosity on how usable a Mac is without internet. As it turns out, it's pretty usable.
If you're talking about Nov 2021 when Apple's Gatekeeper servers went down, apps weren't just delayed, they were unable to be opened _at all_ unless you blocked DNS requests to the server or completely disabled your internet connection.
I believe the only apps that were allowed to be opened were the built in macOS apps. Why this verification is done on every single load is completely beyond me. After this and the whole iPhone 7 radio debacle I won't be buying their products for a long time.
IIRC, Gatekeeper responses are cached for some amount of time for each app, so most people were still able to launch a given app. But yeah, you'd have to disable DNS or internet if you were unlucky and the cache had expired.
Apple's failure inspired me to research compressed CRLs. These don't have the same privacy problems as OCSP, and they work offline. As far as I can tell they would be a good replacement for OCSP here (and also in most cases on the web) but I don't know how one could convince them to roll them out.
I took my 7 to the Apple store in 2019 with this issue after giving it to my SO. I was told by the store rep that it was an issue with "the third party manufacturer" (Qualcomm) but Apple would do the repair for free. I learned from some independent repair communities that this was actually a really common issue and Apple was doing some silent recalls.
Convinced this is why Spotlight is so janky on iOS lately and you’ll be just staring at a blank list while searching for a local app.
Also, Howard has been blogging about the Mac and making free apps available for many years. He's not suddenly going to pivot.
Jonathan Levin is far more careful about verifying what he writes.
The „business model” you are speculating about is second in its insanity only to making MIT-or-more-permissive open source software with an expectation that a multibillion corporation picking it up for its own use will share profits with the author in a sudden ethic attack.
edit typos
Why do the worst HN comments always rise to the top?
It does not follow from the GP comment's claim that the author must be writing for HN readers. There may be many articles written by many people about how the Mac works without a network connection, but this one happened to be the one to be posted to HN and make it to the front page because it has traits that are in line with what HN wants to read.
It seemed clear to me that the comment was a snide remark suggesting that the article was clickbait. Much like some of the other snide remarks on this submission, such as the sibling comment "The difference is that this article is an advertisement for the app they're selling." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35149157
- Apple just doesn't care about the size of their updates. Minor OS & XCode updates are in the gigabytes.
- Updates that you don't need right now cannot be cancelled, paused or rate-limited and will just eat your entire data cap with no warning.
- Applications literally take longer to open because of gatekeeper checks
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/449668/what-is-low...
Let me tell you on MacOS that is VERY easy to burn through in 15 minutes.
Ultimately i have been using my personal laptop with ubuntu to stay under the limit.
MacOS even with low data mode seems to use a lot of extraneous data for some reason.
I havent had time to really see what its doing but its been heavy. The first couple days i burned through my allocation in a out 5 minutes.
Three finger middle click…need an app
Want natural scrolling settings separate between a mouse and touchpad, need an app
Want to dock to hide and reappear faster, need an app
Want to control what data leaves your computer/makes call homes…app
Want to use a non apple keyboard with keybinds…most likely gonna need usb overdrive or something.
What keybindings are you using that requires an application to support using a third party keyboard? I’ve been using third party keyboards with macOS for years and have never had need of any third party app.
Generally i have had to USB overdrive since catalina for basic functionality on even old keyboards (ie: dell multimedia keyboard)
But that brings its own caveats. And doing it through a dock is problematic though (it requires a reboot to function) it works fine on a mac mini. In general ive just given up on maintaining the functionality.
You should be able to turn off "check for updates" and "download new update when available", and only manually check for updates at a time and network location of your choice.
Search for "to set update options" on this page: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/keep-your-mac-up-to...
But you may mean something different than I was thinking; maybe you don't find this functionality suitable, or find it doesn't work properly?
But perhaps you (or other readers) might want to leave those settings unchecked so it never automatically downloads, and you can manually tell it to download when you want, when you're in a location you want to. I believe you can have it check for updates and notify you, but not automatically download, too, with the right settings.
I yard out the drive, attach it to another machine and toss a copy of, e.g., slackware64-current (+ sources) and a bootloader on the drive, put the drive back in its original machine and boot/install without a network.
After that, it may or may not ever see a network depending on what it is slated to do.
macOS still works fine. (You have to widen the permissions a bit for OCSP and the TSS api when doing OS updates, however.)
Obviously I feel quite happy that I’ve not found I’ve been allowing connections I didn’t want to but it also makes me feel perhaps I am being a little over the top by adding Little Snitch into the mix.
I went in thinking it would catch dozens of secret connections but nothing. So part of me feels it is over kill and a time waster for myself. Anyone care to explain how wrong I am? I would be grateful to be corrected and happy to buy if I can be convinced it is indeed worth while :)
Not that I'm aware of. Only my main Mac has Little Snitch installed, but as a developer I have other Macs and iOS devices for testing that don't have Little Snitch, and I've never noticed any difference in speed.
Just like you don't need health insurance until you do, then it's too late if you don't have it. The comparison seems obvious enough
macOS 11 stopped support for kernel extensions, and now requires firewall apps like Little Snitch to use "Network Extensions".
In early versions of macOS 11, some Apple apps bypassed network extensions. This was supposedly fixed in macOS 11.2, but there is no way to verify that macOS doesn't have any exceptions that might still bypass network extensions.
Sure there is: you connect the system to a managed Ethernet switch and do port mirroring to inspect what traffic goes over the wire:
* https://community.fs.com/blog/port-mirroring-explained-basis...
* https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_mirroring
If it's encrypted we may not know the exact contents, but you can't conceal IPs.
Also, I’d worry that any traffic I was seeing on the mirrored port was not coming from the Mac but was appearing because I messed up the setup so that what I am seeing is traffic generated by the system I am using to inspect the traffic with
Everyone doesn't need to verify this. The security researchers and other Mac experts can verify it. Security researchers and Mac developers discovered the previous bypass.
For this purpose, a bottom end (say) EdgeRouter and Raspberry Pi should more-or-less suffice. So maybe $100 total?
Why not? It's not like it'd be hard to know. The submission article even talks about running it in a VM, wouldn't be hard to connect tcpdump to whatever bridge it's using and inspect if Little Snitch can truly capture and block all traffic.
If you look for leaks, and don't find any, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
Does anyone know whether this Apple server contact delay applies to every executable? Whenever I compile my code on a Mac the first run is delayed by 2-5 seconds and it's getting really annoying.
Then of course the first thing I do after installing macOS is install Little Snitch (already having a hard copy on an external disk).
Sorry, just never seen someone refer to a digital copy as a hard copy before. You surprised me. (-:
It seems logical though that a copy on a hard drive should be called hard copy!
Compare to Windows 11, which cannot be installed without an internet connection, without resorting to hacks.
Shift+F10 and the magic bypass command still work, though, but who knows for how long.
Straightforward would be a small text-based link at the bottom saying "skip this step"...
So the comment is correct: you can't install (specific versions of) Windows without internet.