Hacker News Reader

Comment by hypothesis | Hacker News Reader

> CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences every update (like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar) ultimately lead me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new personal machine.

Boy are you going to be disappointed when you discover that settings reset quite aggressively, especially in cases where Apple really thinks it knows better.

Want to keep bluetooth off? Both iPhone and macs will not abide.

Want to keep your passwords in local keychain? Nah, they will be automatically migrated to cloud keychain on next upgrade.

View on HN

A warning for anyone who is using local keychain: Don't. Either give in to iCloud keychain or use a different secrets manager.

If you're using a Mac with a T1 or T2 security coprocessor or Apple Silicon, your local keychain can only be decrypted with a key stored in those chips. Your backups are useless. I figured this out the hard way when an Apple depot repair for a failed display flex somehow ended up with my logic board getting replaced as well. After reimaging from backup (SSD was integrated on the logic board), the keychain was unreadable and I lost several accounts without recovery options. AppleCare's response was, well, you should have backed up your files, even though I had...

A fair warning, but I similarly lost a secret after transferring to a new iPhone, even while using 3rd party password manager. Said manager likely used secure enclave and thus failed to work on new phone. Failure was very quiet, not even an error or anything, it just stopped generating codes.

I was able to restore it through external means, but this reinforced “have a non-proprietary backups” for me.

Oh no company is perfect that’s for sure. I don’t use anything deep integrated stuff like the iCloud Keychain, I mainly use my own password manager of choice etc.

The iOS Bluetooth/wifi never bothered me personally because I use those all the time anyway. Of course everyone’s use case is gonna differ, but for me macOS is far from doing things like pushing huge full page “finish setting up edge” or “buy office” when I log in so, I’m happy.

I’m guessing you must be referring to something niche? [parent post kindly edited to add examples]

I’ve been using macs since 2012 and never had any setting change on me.

I do not know what is niche here, but I added couple examples from latest upgrade.

Are they just not testing what some options do? If so, we might be better off just not giving those options.

iOS has a “feature” where wifi and Bluetooth will switch itself back on after a set period of time if you use control center to turn it off. If you use settings it behaves as you would expect.

I’m aware of that feature, but using proper option in settings will not retain off position after next OS update, which is what OP was discussing. This happens every update, so I’m quite sure it’s by design.

Let's keep this factual.

> Want to keep bluetooth off? Both iPhone and macs will not abide.

To turn off Bluetooth, go to settings, select Bluetooth, and turn the toggle off. It will abide.

> Nah, they will be automatically migrated to cloud keychain on next upgrade.

I never even heard of this happening despite having used Macs for over a decade.

> Let's keep this factual.

I will give you benefit of the doubt that you personally never had them, but both are factual based on my experience.

If you are interested you should be able find previous HN threads with same exact symptoms from other people.

> To turn off Bluetooth, go to settings, select Bluetooth, and turn the toggle off. It will abide.

It will abide for a while, but the next software update will turn it back on. This happens every single update.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com