macOS Sequoia is available today
apple.com
apple.com
1. Screen-recording permission once every week ?
2. No more sudo spctl —master-disable. Alternative way is bit complicated.
2. No more control+ click to bypass gatekeeper.
3. Why tcutil reset Accessibility not working for a specific app? It works for “All” .
4. Script to convert NSURL node ref url to posix url not working.
5. Normal usb Mouse pointer acceleration is not smooth. May be need to re tweak those again.
Anything else ? Otherwise all good.
So the category of software will still have some working entries (existing players will try to get approved, and probably will), but it's hard to imagine anyone will want to build a new one knowing its viability on modern macOS completely depends on filling out a form and hoping Apple's approval bureaucracy likes you.
Anyone who's used these unusually locked down entitlements know whether you can apply for it before building the software, or if App Review needs to have their hands on something functional first to approve it?
The screen recording permission thing also doesn't help since I'm using Ice (https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice) because somehow Apple still can't Sherlock this feature.
Once you need to be in the apple developer program to build and run from source or something, that’ll be a legitimate nightmare. But we’re nowhere near that yet.
This is the case for building and running things with restricted entitlements and system extensions.
Unless you disable system integrity protection entirely, which locks you out of your purchased App Store software, DRM content, etc.
Looks like there might be a way of achieving the same thing through the GUI? https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1e2xlcg/disablin...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/1fh5wez/cant_di...
Also false. But Apple's glad you believe in that.
[1] https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/RecordingIndicatorUtili...
When Quarantine was released in Leopard, and Gatekeeper in Lion, and System Integrity Protection in El Capitan, and then "Allow from Anywhere" was removed as an option in Sierra... Each time, people were saying similar things. "Yea, it's bad, and it's getting consistently worse with every release, but surely we are nowhere near 'really bad' yet!"
What is the security benefit of removing the command-click shortcut?
That said there’s no reason they couldn’t have fixed either of those issues instead
Simultaneously, while the user interface of macOS has converged on iOS over the last half dozen releases and the ecosystems are more tightly integrated, not a single one of these changes has gotten in the way of developers running their own code. The situation now is no different than it was in 2006, for example. What has been made more difficult is running untrusted binaries downloaded from the internet. That's not the same thing.
I can run any open-source software I want. Other people can't run my precompiled binaries unless I opt into an attestation system that lets the OS respond to and pre-emptively block binaries from developers found to be issuing malware. Open source is unaffected.
I seriously fail to see what is wrong here.
>Building from source takes a long time, is prone to failure, and is not supported.
Having issues building your Homebrew packages from source? Well, you better not take it to the bug tracker.
I don't think it means that at all. They're both clearly supported by homebrew — one just happens to be the default. You can always use -s or --build-from-source to build whatever package you are installing.
(Ignoring the packages that are just wrappers around closed source software and fetch binaries whether you compile from source or not. Those are the exception, not the rule.)
The level of difficulty is absolutely intentional. For you, it's a small speed bump. For the guy on the phone with my grandma trying to hack her computer, it's more of a hill to climb.
And even if, we had issue with malware infecting iPhones like Pegasus. Locking down environments with these specific mechanisms isn't improving security.
For non-technical users the choice is simple: either Apple decides what is allowed to run on their computer or cybercriminals do. After years of getting burned, non-technical users made their choice. I think it was the right one but the jury's still out for the future.
Perhaps one day these users will get squeezed out of computing entirely. That will be a terrible shame. The same thing is playing out with everything else though. Look at cars and household appliances.
The notion that you can reasonably have knowledge of and control over all the software that is actually running on your machine has not been realistic for decades.
My Windows 10 box became so bogged down that I was convinced it was running some undetectable malware. AV detected nothing, but after a critical look at open ports I just decided to wipe and go to Windows 11.
Here are some of the biggest risks today. Running third-party apps at all, unless they are absolutely necessary. I try to do everything possible with Google-provided apps within the Google ecosystem on my Android phone and the other devices as well, which limits the third-party attack surfaces. My Windows machine runs practically nothing outside of MS or Google. I don't need to.
Other big threats are beyond personal devices at this point. Connecting third-party SaaS to your accounts is a real problem. Facebook, Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub, any service that acts as a platform and runs third-party integrations, that's where you'll get bitten nowadays, and your local AV scans are powerless to shield you from footguns. Just to use HP printer features, HP wanted full, unscoped, read/write/delete access to my Google Drive!
Everyone's "hacked Facebook account" has really been just some stupid game that went rogue. Supply-chain attacks through browser extensions and the rest. Extremely difficult to police from the end-user's position, but deadly and dangerous, because they're out on the net and in the cloud.
IMHO there's a huge difference between no freedom for anyone (iOS) and secure-by-default, freedom only for powerusers (macOS / Android / Chromebooks / ARM Windows devices) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not that Microsoft doesn't salivate about such "improvements" as well.
It’s fine to let the experts worry about securing our systems. The Internet is safer for it. And it’s fine to not think so, too. But for those people, realize that the product may not be for you. That’s why we have a dozen flavors of Linux.
But maybe I’m just getting old.
Can someone expand on this? How do you run software that isn't code signed?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/macos-15-sequoia-mak...
More and more, I find that these sorts of "we know best" attitudes towards security utterly distasteful and the total opposite of empowering. Infantilizing, more like.
What I'd like is upon setup it asks if this is a dev machine, and change the preferences.
They have been ratcheting down on freedom in OS X (and then MacOS) since 2011 or so when I stopped using Apple for personal use. The introduction of the Mac App Store, subsequent lackluster performance, and introduction of scary warnings about running unsigned code in MacOS tell most all of the story. This latest update is just another step in that direction, making running unsigned code that much more difficult. The obvious endgame is to raise the next generation of Mac users to only use the Mac App Store for software, effectively replicating the golden goose that the iOS App Store has proven to be.
Some poor schmuck would find a viral comment that said something like "Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want you to know how to get Facebook Premium! Copy and paste this code into your browser, ignore Facebook's warnings, they don't want you to get it for free!" And badabing badaboom, stolen credentials get sent to some server.
I don't work at Apple and can only speculate on their motive, but since I advise my family to use macOS, it's my hope that this change would prevent them from reading something like "download this scary blob and then ctrl+click on it to open it for free Photoshop! Ignore Apple's warning, Adobe has paid them because they don't want you to get it for free!"
It does make it slightly more inconvenient for me, but I think chromedriver may be the only unsigned code that I run regularly.
1. Need to disable gatekeeper to run unsigned code. 2. Need an active developer account. 3. You can't run downloaded unsigned code.
Driving them off Mac would be a gigantic mistake that over time would lead to the fading of the whole Apple ecosystem.
I think the mistake already happened, you can see fewer and fewer macOS only software and there is very little in the way of novelty/exclusivity (both iOS/macOS). Devs are now more and platform stuff more and more (mostly web technologies because it makes for good UI even though performance is not the best, it doesn't matter with today's powerful machines.
I'll add that one key point that Apple was better on is becoming very moot: software optimisation (performance and UI) matters a lot less in today's cheap powerful computing. Apple is supposedly selling top of the line hardware but skimping every way possible so in the end, when price matched, competitive hardware does not do worse no matter how bad the softwares are optimized on concurrent platform.
Then the usage of the platform will end for many users & developers. One could still live a quite long time on the older systems to ease the transition out.
I do create macOS binaries, although they mostly are just a byproduct if targeting it is trivial. Of course I do not sign any of them, to me that is more or less a scam comparable to ransomware.
This way I support Windows 2000 or newer, MacOS 10.6+, up to 15 years old Linux distributions with the same small binary for each platform, I did an extra mile in supporting WebAssembly target so it's easy to compile the applications to the web. This also allows to create applications for smartphones without the need for approval and having to follow any weird arbitrary rules.
Why support such old versions? Real world users are often stuck with old versions for various reasons, it's a minority of users but they can be the most important ones. And technically because the difference between these old systems and new systems is not that big. Often it just means to use some older API or do a few extra steps. It's all hidden in code that handles multiplatform stuff so it's not in the way. It doesn't add bloat either.
Well yeah because they are very sensibly doing it extremely slowly. Microsoft is doing the same thing; they're just a fair bit behind Apple.
This is one of those features where the benefits seem to very obviously outweigh the drawbacks. 99.9% of users just aren't running unsigned software, so the moment that happens, it is most certainly malware.
If you're developing software yourself, this isn't an issue either, since all the relevant toolchains, debuggers, etc., work just fine under this model. That's a supported workflow. The only thing that isn't supported is downloading some random unverified app bundle from who knows where and treating it as if you could trust it. You 100% can't.
And yes, I also believe that if an OSS project considers "muggles" their target audience, they should prioritize setting up code-signing. Consider it a service to their users. If the fee is a problem, it's important enough to spend the effort to find a way to finance it. If you can't find someone who is willing to put their name on it, you shouldn't ask people to run your software on their machines in the first place.
For me, quite a few? Internal tools at work, open source projects which publish builds on their github, that sort of stuff.
(And no, paying Apple a yearly subscription for the privilege of letting users run an app is not a reasonable expectation of small open source projects)
Problem solved.
I don't really see how the average user is positively affected by these changes - it's not like they will accidentally open terminal and enter random strings infinite monkey theorem style until they hit sudo spctl –master-disable. Ctrl-click was at least possible to stumble over, but I see no good reason not to at least provide a .plist setting to re-enable that behavior. Except to bully more devs into getting signing certs.
These are real, tangible risks.
I can't do the signing as it requires Apple stuff. Not to mention it is unethical to require it as it's used for gatekeeping not just security (requiring Apple to decide if you can run an executable is unacceptable).
Compare it to Android where you can use self-signed certificates and it has an actual function, it allows updates signed with the same certificate to access the existing stored data on the device. It improves security without gatekeeping. At least that was on the older Androids, haven't done work on any newer ones.
I can't do some kind of universal launcher that is signed by me because it would allow to run arbitrary code and therefore it would be banned.
Therefore the only solution is to search for various workarounds (eg. by teaching the users how to run the software) or if not possible anymore stop supporting newer versions of MacOS and rely on web applications to support the platform (like it's the only way on iOS).
Which would be even worse on the desktop as the usability can be quite bad, but at least users would have some chance to use the applications even on their closed system.
Therefore instructions how the users can run the application is the only solution.
Your problems are extremely insignificant in the big picture, where the priority of a serious operating system should be to support regular people in avoiding malware and malicious social engineering. macOS is a general purpose operating system, not a hobbyist or tinkerer OS, and the vast majority of its users are non-technical.
I get that it's annoying, but pushing the work on you is a massive benefit to your users.
It also allows to be used from a C/C++ project so you can do all the required steps, but it's quite more involved compared to simply building the software for all platforms at once.
It's also not related to how popular my language is. It affects any language including C/C++ if you want to have unified cross-compilation to all supported platforms (which is quite typical for any serious project).
You may not be aware but Apple has put roadblocks for such usages as well, you can't rent a Mac VM for automatic builds, it has to be rented for 24 hours at minimum. Using someone's private Mac for building may not be a good idea for various reasons.
And then you compare it to other platforms that don't require anything like this. I even mentioned Android which shows that you can use signing to provide a security aspect without the gatekeeping aspect.
The issue is wider and basically it's an anticompetitive behavior of Apple to any competitor to Xcode.
Enough for this to be annoying. Plenty of tiny tools don't pay for the privilege of doing free work, so aren't signed
> This is one of those features where the benefits seem to very obviously outweigh the drawbacks. 99.9% of users just aren't running unsigned software, so the moment that happens, it is most certainly malware.
You're obviously wrong with your made up stats (you don't need to be a power '1% user to want to install some a single useful unsigned app over the whole lifetime of using a Mac) and ignore the fact that part of the reason why it's 99% and not 88% is precisely because of features like this that make it harder to do so.
But there is an easy way to reconcile - make the old behavior configurable then the imaginary nonexisting 0.0000% users can continue without permanent disruptions
That has never been true. Neither for pro- nor casual users. This might be good for the bottom line of Apple, but I doubt that too, since they squander their reputation. This is non-engineers calling the shots, just like Jobs warned us about.
I do run quite a few unsigned apps and I don't even use a mac that often. This is just stupid...
Link to the talk or interview or whatever where he talks about this?
Will delay this update as long as possible.
From their opening sentence in that press release. Lol.
https://github.com/zackelia/bclm/issues/49
I had to start using it because macOS insisted on keeping my battery charged to 100% no matter what I did, and that can damage the battery.
Additionally, AlDente is even better than the native battery management.
Luckily, I gave 'battery toolkit' a try, and it has been working great:
Every month.
(Which is still annoying, but not the raw level of frustration that weekly would be.)
MacOS is turning into quite the poo log lately. I respect that Apple has every right to completely destroy the legacy of the Macintosh, but they are slow playing it so that it's just a little bit better than the alternatives. The end result is my life gets just a little bit more difficult with every release.
I feel like the freaking frog on the stove while the water slowly heats up. When is it time to jump out?
And unless that's really recent, no, I have colleagues drop out of Teams meetings to enable microphone or screen sharing access all the time.
The funny thing about this, even on Sonoma - I could click the button to allow it, when it said "restart app" I closed the box (or clicked cancel), and it worked anyway. Specifically, I noticed it more on things like Teams/Zoom where I was doing a screen share, it just "worked" - no need to restart the entire application.
Whenever you feel like it. Just like frogs do:
> While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out.
I disagree. Apple's various machinations to control the best available supply lines (deals with TSMC, etc...) make me feel quite entitled in saying what is and is not acceptable behavior on their part. This feeling amplifies with every "courageous" announcement they make sunsetting some useful feature they no longer feel like supporting.
There is a large difference in computing devices versus other simple objects, in that they need software and software can change which is problematic but should not be a problem for the customer/user...
In my opinion Apple is largely failing at providing a worthwhile platform, when they don't just discontinue stuff for their bottom line, most of the changes are for marketing reasons or increasing lockdown to extract more money from customers.
There is not a whole lot of useful stuff that have been added in the last 5 OS iterations but a lot of major annoyance or downgrades/roadblock/complications for usage, etc...
Some app tries to open a file and fails. Doesn't tell me what the file name is. I just want to see the open() call.
I bet I know the answer.
Did this conveniently break Rewind AI?
does zoom, chrome, google meet, etc still require this?
How often do you have to re-authenticate your existing binaries?
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/gatek...
As the hardware iShittification continued, macOS too was also being slowly stripped of features to ensure Apple controlled your data and what you could run on it. Support for independent Kernel extension (outside of Apple's control) was removed mainly to cripple existing independent Application Firewall and virtualisation software. Apple-made OS APIs for these were integrated to the newer macOS and offered as replacement to ensure Apple controlled how Application Firewalls and Virtualisations should / would work on macOS. (Such restriction on the kernel extensions for independent system developers is also meant to prevent support for other filesystem, like ZFS for example - the OpenZFS project is maturing fast on Linux, Windows and macOS and can be a game changer as its usage has the potential to "free" our data from a closed and controlling ecosystem, to be used on any platform of our choice.
Whether you are a developer or a user, a "consumer relationship" with Apple feels like a relationship with a controlling and abusive spouse who repeatedly gaslights you that you are imagining things and are the one at fault because "you just don't understand them".
Is the gist of it that it got locked down more?
I don't really care about tiling multiple windows, but I've always hated the macOS full screen behavior, and before that the old green button behavior, so an alternative that finally works well (the way Windows has for many years) would be amazing.
I realize that this isn't what you're asking, but it might help.
Also, on most windows, you can option-click the green window bar button and get this same behavior. However, some apps, like Safari, will instead expand the window to "a reasonably large size" that will not necessarily cover the whole screen.
These three shortcuts are embarrassingly effective and cover 99% of my window tiling. Others include the standard hotkey(s) + return for fullscreen and hotkey(s) + backspace for the previous window size..
If really 57”, are these multiple separate screens?
I went up from 32 to 40 and regret it, to be honest. It’s m nice for Xcode, but for any other use, it’s too big for me. For instance, I miss notifications that pop up in the top right corner, it’s just out of my field of vision.
(btw, have you tried Rectangle and if so - what didn't you like?)
(Not affiliated with it, just a happy user)
For example, if the user has a large number of files selected and accidentally triggers the open shortcut by hitting enter, their computer is going to be stuck spinning its wheels for a while (the more files involved and the heavier the applications they open in, the worse it'll be) unless they force restart. Involving a modifier key filters for intention pretty well, and so while this scenario is possible with ⌘O, it's far less likely.
Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
> ...
> Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
The enter-to-rename behavior has been in Mac OS since near the beginning, when versions were just named something like "System N.M").
IIRC, I've heard they had very detailed UI design documents back then, that explained their choices (e.g. I've heard they explained the reason for the menu bar being at the top of the screen rather than the top of a window was the cursor will just stop there, requiring less mousing precision).
So if that's the case, there should be documents confirming or denying your speculation.
(you can compare to the current ones and similar docs for other platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines)
I don't recall whether "enter" renamed files, and I can't check whether it does at the moment because all my mac keyboards within reach are tenkeyless, but "return" always has.
But I agree that configurable is generally better.
I am not changing, so that's why I install an additional app.
- cmd+opt is a hell of a combination to type
But in every other Mac app, even in TextEdit, you would Cmd-X to cut a piece of text and Cmd-V to then paste it somewhere else. The same logic is used to e.g. move an image within a note or email, which is also a file.
So Finder is simply inconsistent with the rest of the OS, and after 4 years as a Mac user I have just given up and use either drag-and-drop or a terminal when I need to move stuff.
cmd-c & cmd-opt-v is a different, “safer” operation.
Trying out the new macOS version.. it's a little fiddly to activate sometimes didn't want to go. Then the margin/spacing between the edge of the screens was annoying. Though I discovered that there is an option under "Desktop & Dock" in settings you can turn off called "Tiled windows have margins".
What I haven't figured out is if you can create a keyboard shortcut to tile left or right without using the mouse... so far have not figured out how to do that. Couldn't see an option for it.
Those settings revealed another option though to "Hold key while dragging windows to file". If you hold that key you don't actually have to drag to the edge, just move it to the correct side of the monitor (or not really move it at all if it's already on that side). Interesting alternative.
But I really often specifically use a keyboard shortcut for tile left, tile right or tile left third/middle third/right third (on a 35" Ultrawide).
Here's an image from a history:
https://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2015/06/22/history-...
Not sure if MacOS has had that in the past though...
It annoys the hell out of me that there’s never been an option to invert this. I actually like the old size-to-fit behaviour and I never ever want the iOS-style full screen, I don’t want to have to hold Option to get what was once the default behaviour.
So the bug was about the screen recording permission needed for some apps, Shottr specifically. Despite me allowing screen recording previously macOS Sequoia kept asking me to go into the settings and give the permission. According to Apple, that should have had happened once a week, so I gave a follow up feedback about definitely me not wanting to repeat this more than once. Fingers crossed I won't have to fiddle with permission when taking a screenshot.
But unfortunately it appears that they only changed the policy to do it once a month: https://a.dropoverapp.com/cloud/download/50dcbf08-a812-4ef4-...
Still better than once a week and the final UI is fine, but IMHO it should have an option to disable this behavior.
Same here! I think it was re: locatedb not working? Although I was much more interested in my Feedback re: why dtrace was causing crashes after sleep.
As much as I wish Apple were a more open company, if they just responded to Bug Reports, that would be amazing!
I'm not aware of a fix, hopefully more people will write a feedback about it.
sudo tccutil disable_monthly_screen_recording_prompt [bundle_id]
Jk, thanks for the info! It's nice to know it's available on the system by default when writing scripts for my team.
ope wait that's just bash
wait, maybe it's...
$ jq '. | .messages.thank_you' < strings.json
darn it! how about
$ jq '[].messages.thank_you' < strings.json
!??@@!
But if I were watching Star Trek, they would definitely just ask the computer to grab the fields and it would be a done deal!
Plus, you know, I actually learn how jq works and will need to ask the Magic Sky Oracle less often, in the future.
What's wrong with the docs? Relatedly, do you actually look up every filter and argument used in your AI-generated sample code in the jq docs?
i have some flash cards if you'd like. a teensy amount of effort pays huge dividends with swiss knife software like this (and things like matplotlib, tar CLI options, etc)
% /usr/bin/jq --version
jq-1.6-159-apple-gcff5336-dirtyhttps://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO... hasn't been updated with a "jq" directory yet
> If the working tree has local modification "-dirty" is appended to it.
and one can see their invocation of --dirty here: https://github.com/jqlang/jq/blob/cff5336ec71b6fee396a95bb0e...
Maybe in a couple more major versions we'll have a re-re-designed system prefs app that actually looks like a desktop app again!
And it will only take a few dozen seconds to load! Can't wait!
Trying to guess if I should look for something in the root level of Settings or in the General subsection?
Absolutely no rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.
It's why I just use search for settings now. I refuse to keep guessing wrong.
I like that they _finally_ added window snapping to the window manager, but keyboard shortcuts are still missing from what I can see.
Edit: it is possible! take a look at this Reddit post for a workaround https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1dcy6l2/comment/lax9...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/macos-15-sequoia-the...
As far as the conversation goes, 1st party implementation by Apple would be nice and all, but 3rd party doesn't bother me in the slightest. (at least in this case)
I also use an app that reverses the scroll direction of an attached USB mouse, without affecting the (natural) trackpad scroll direction, because MacOS does not allow changing them independently (looks like they are separate options for mouse and trackpad but they are in fact the same).
The App is called Scroll Reverser [1] it is free and works flawlessly, but it really should not have to exist, it’s ridiculous.
> 14: Eligible users include Pacific Gas and Electric Company customers who have residential electrical service, including areas served by Community Choice Aggregators. Users must be the utility account owner or authorized user of the utility account.
what an extraordinarily specific feature to put into Home.app. I guess California is a pretty big state, with a pretty big portion of their target market, but still
CarPlay EV integration works only with Porsche Taycan.
Are they implementing things just for Tim?
The downside may be that in the pathological case you’re implementing stuff just for Tim. Another downside is you can’t really demo e.g. high-quality backwards-compatible SDKs to an exec.
The upside is you end up with a pretty coherent and un-fickle set of products. Unlike Google, Apple doesn’t have a roster of five (?) competing chat apps that it constantly changes.
If you are interested, please have a look: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/offline-translate-translator/i...
I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!
It’s hilarious that Apple made such a big deal out of it and then failed to release it for everyone.
This works for all notifications from all apps.
Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?
Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk.
You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
> You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
> And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.
And there are also many third party apps that never made Mac versions.
So the amount of data we are talking about exposing is significantly higher.
And the issue is that the DMA is ambiguous about what competition and interoperability specifically means and so it would just take one company to complain about your solution for Apple to be fined 10% of global revenue.
This is again a misinformed take. Your Mac can already get all your iPhone's data from the cloud where it is synced without viable opt-out or compartmentalization.
Only if the data is available in iCloud and it is stored in files and it is not encrypted.
Otherwise data from apps like Instagram will be exposed exclusively via screen sharing.
We do not live in this universe. Consider getting a Chromebook instead if you want to be in that universe. (But then you have a tradeoff: Apple itself seems pretty good about not using your data inappropriately. Google, not so much.)
Health data is available in there, just to go after your example. iPhone backups are also available in there.
At no point am I being asked anything else beyond my Apple ID, password, and two-step approval on another device (such as the Mac) to set up a new iPhone and download all my data.
Thus the outcome is that the Mac indeed has everything it needs to get access to all your iCloud data. In fact, reverse-engineering how to get it directly is unnecessary work - instead, just reverse-engineer enough to capture the Apple ID password (or prompt to it - given there's still no way for the user to tell a real system dialog from one drawn by malware) and approve the 2FA prompt, get an actual, real iPhone and sign into the person's account and then extract all the data from there (via screenshots if necessary).
Are governments recording the screens of Android users?
Put a prompt up that asks for permission? Failing to understand why we're drawing the line on the screen.
Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong. They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS (and no, this didn't lead to a mass-scale compromise of iMessage, contradicting fanboys' claims).
If the feature allows to pull up the iPhone's screen without any user consent, then it is vulnerable to begin with - the reverse-engineering requirement would become an insignificant hurdle compared to the value of such a vulnerability. Presumably however, there will be a consent step, either on the spot or prior (maybe it can reuse the cryptographic pairing mechanism that happens when the phone asks you to "trust this computer?" the first time), and no third-party (whether using an approved API or reverse-engineered) would be able to bypass it without the user intentionally consenting.
The idea that breaking device attestation that is secured through Secure Enclave hardware i.e. not accessible from user code is an insignificant hurdle is hilariously ridiculous. It is borderline impossible for any ordinary developer.
And people that bring up the "just ask the user" argument clearly don't remember how poorly that has worked in the past e.g. Microsoft Vista. Users will blindly approve any dialog which is why Apple has been so careful to limit them to targeted actions which a "do you approve this app to record everything on your iPhone" is not.
If this is true, then my worry isn't even about malicious attackers, it's my neighbor (with a real Mac) being able to (accidentally!) eavesdrop on my phone screen (since according to you this is the primary security measure).
It's obviously ridiculous, and the primary security measure is that there must be a prior key exchange and consent step. If that part is secure, then it would be secure against a third-party.
If that part is not secure, then no Secure Enclave-ing will help you, because worst case scenario, the attacker can just use a real Mac as part of his attack to pass the secure-enclave-protected authentication step, or just exploit the good old "analog hole" by using the real Mac as the main attack vector (and then just capture its HDMI output and feed in inputs via a USB-capable microcontroller simulating a keyboard).
If you’re going to make such a claim, you should be very careful to ensure you’re not misinformed yourself.
> Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong.
No, they did not. We already knew Apple not allowing iMessage on Android was a lock-in choice. The trial with Epic brought that unambiguously to light, years before the release of Beeper Mini¹.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
> They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS
What claims? The only time I remember Apple publicly addressing iMessage on Android was after cutting off Beeper Mini’s access.
¹ Which is an important distinction from the earlier Beeper, which used trickery with iPhones to accomplish the task.
Apple is first-party to the device, but third-party to me, the user. Why are they more trustworthy than a free open-source tool? Who the hell are they to tell me who I can and cannot trust?
I really don't see how it falls outside of the DMA.
Which is everything wrong about current Apple. How far the Apple has fallen off the tree. Back in the resurgence of the Mac after Steve Jobs returned, the policy was to make everything as open as possible, now it's entirely the reverse.
If the iPhone/Mac were a competitive product as they are, there would be no need to retort to that sort of shenanigan, the whole thing would be openly documented but implementation quality would be the deciding factor. It is not surprising that Apple doesn't want to compete because they wouldn't necessarily win, before even talking about price.
In any case, while it's a nice feature to have, it can only be considered worthwhile because all of Apple's strategies for convergence have failed pretty hard (after mocking Microsoft) and there are now too many annoying things you need to do specifically on a smartphone (because of Apps, Auths, or other nonsense of the sort).
If anything, it is extremely dumb (considering the price and marketing around ecosystem) that you cannot just use whatever data is on the phone but with correct desktop app implementation even (and especially) for Apple first party app.
As a Mac user that is getting old (I remember System 7 from my youth, and I used System 9 for a bit) I feel extremely saddened that we are now celebrating what is basically a custom implementation of VNC/Remote Desktop for a completely locked device/OS. This feature was considered essential/basic 20 years ago, having to use it to access a limited device because a company can't figure out proper convergence, largely out of pure greed, is really not something to be happy about.
I'm sure one day they'll figure out how to make a Mac App to properly exploit all the health/sport data of their very expensive Watch products (that require an iPhone for no good reason). But when this day will come I probably won't be a customer anymore so whatever...
My perception is quite different. One of the first things Steve did after his return was to revoke the licenses for Mac clones (Power Computing, Daystar, UMAX, etc). Also, the iPod, iPhone and iPad were created under his leadership and have always been very far from open in their designs, regarding both hardware and software.
Apple was (and still is) very open when it helps them, e.g. by adopting and enforcing USB (original iMac) or USB C (laptops from ca 2015 on).
“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”
Because the DMA was designed not to be specific about what companies are required to do to be in compliance.
That's how adversarial interoperability worked for decades (and gave free software the ability to interoperate with proprietary formats, see LibreOffice for example) before abusing the DMCA and/or threatening legal action to take down compatible implementations became common practice. I do not recall of any security breaches as a result of this.
Apple are however not going to do that, because doing so would overnight destroy their moat around Universal Clipboard and all their existing interoperability features. So instead they make up some bullshit that non-technical governments and courts will take years to disprove, buying them more time to operate anti-competitively.
It is however sad to see a member of a technical forum gobble up said bullshit.
Hint: it doesn't.
The existence of competitor would by itself be enough proof to the fact that Apple is not restricting competition. But for such a competitor to exist, they would require enough assurance that the business will be viable and they won't get sued out of existence.
Apple either publishing the protocol or at the very least publishing an official licensing agreement allowing anyone to reverse-engineer and reimplement said protocol would achieve this.
Especially given you are so quick to criticise me for gobbling up said bullshit.
Why is Microsoft able to do it just fine (without running afoul of the DMA) while Apple supposedly can't, despite MS having an ever larger marketshare of its field than Apple and this would warrant even more scrutiny?
The multitude of third-party RDP clients (and nobody being threatened with legal action for implementing one) out there may be at least part of the answer.
Release their implementation following the guidelines, and see if it passes review, fix and resubmit as needed until it's accepted.
I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.
Before there were many stuffs like Apple News never making it but at least there was some pretense of working on it.
Since EU people are getting a less featureful product, they should get products priced accordingly.
Otherwise, Apple should just fuck off EU if it doesn't want to play ball, they started the whole thing by being consumer hostile and the greediest corporation ever, they make Microsoft look like the good guys.
While the DMA's changes to the app store received the most publicity, the DMA mandates for modularity for any feature where a home-advantage could be granted by the gate keeper. Since features like AI and screen mirroring are already established markets with competitors, Apple offering these as built in functions could be interpreted as actions against the DMA unless they offer a way for others to tap into it via APIs.
However this is just a guess. There is a cynical rhetoric that it's to punish the EU but this is a pretty flimsy idea since it's clear that Apple is relying on these new features to propel upgrades to M series macs and new iPhones. Currently there exists no tentpole feature for people in the EU to upgrade. The other reason is that it's pretty tenuous to think that the EU masses will rise up against the EC because they don't have screen mirroring or image playground.
I’m unsure whether the DMA compels them to provide specific APIs beyond the ability to connect to arbitrary devices and draw to the screen, and it’s maybe a little bit concerning if it does. My understanding was that nothing in the DMA specifically compelled Apple to create e.g. MarketplaceKit, it’s just that the alternative would be to open up iOS far more than Apple is willing to do.
Not doing so only costs Apple whatever marginal business they expect to lose in EU for not offering this or that feature. So I'd expect more of this going forward.
"gets wise to this" how, exactly? The EU can certainly set conditions which Apple must meet to ship a feature. They have no legal grounds whatsoever to demand that Apple ship that feature to Europe, specially modified to meet their exacting requirements.
How would that even work? One way to comply with the EU's demands that a product work a certain way, is to not sell that product in the EU. Is your stance that EU has a right to force companies to sell their wares in the EU?
It could very well become that after enough of this, DMA 2.0 would have a provision stipulating that any feature withheld in the EU would need to have a valid technical justification that passes review by a panel of independent experts.
Sometimes I wish they tax the hell out of those US behemoth in a way that would open space for EU companies to become competitive. The network effects are too big when it comes to IT, it's not very wise to let the US be the sole beneficiary of such an industry.
The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.
This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
Apple says "With iPhone Mirroring, users can now fully access and engage with their iPhone right from Mac while iPhone remains locked nearby." And nowhere does Apple say this feature doesn't work for games.
I'm never the kind of person who discounts a feature before I even use it. And I clearly said I haven't used it.
As another comment mentioned, it appears to use the cursor position as the pinch-gesture location.
For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
I can see why it is completely fine for your application but you can't say the same for other applications.
Besides it doesn't even make much sense to need that when the thing has such a powerful processor, Apple need to get their shit together and have it run real Mac software and that's it.
This makes it practically useless for developers.
VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction.
But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.
But I also like running 32-bit apps and knowing where the system preferences are (because they haven't changed every year for me). So swings and roundabouts.
Even though Mojave and Catalina still carry scars from the crimes committed in Yosemite towards good adherence to the HIG, they're miles better.
Something you learn to really like on Windows is how well "described" most of the UI is on hover. In macOS even for seasoned users there are always some things you are never quite sure do and you have to Google much of it. Plenty of the UI is not discoverable, Windows got that part way better.
They've said this in every mention of Apple AI since the WWDC, but they haven't mentioned at all if you can disable the cloud calls. I'm assuming you won't be able to, but if you can, that will be a very neat guarantee to have. If that same ability comes to an iPhone, I'll be very tempted to break my 10+ year Android tenure.
You can't enable Apple Intelligence and disable PCC, though.
https://nathancraddock.com/blog/macos-dev-tty-polling/
Apple is doing a lot of great things in systems fundamentals, but I wish they'd take some time to clean up warts in their POSIX implementation.
- iphone mirroring keeps going into "paused" mode, showing a "resume" button
- iphone mirroring doesn't unblock apps that need face Id, e.g. whatsapp says "passcode required" without prompting for some form of auth (auto auth is enabled, but no luck)
- iphone mirroring is not really "mirroring": one cannot use both app and phone at the same time, and see what is going on.
- window tiling shortcut requires dragging a window first, Rectangle is much more flexible ie the window only need to be active
- UX for security got worse with "ask every month". Apple doesn't trust us knowing what we're doing, ie there should be a "trust forever" somewhere if I want to
- tagging people in Photos is still extremely buggy
- sequoia is hard to spell (when googling for info) (just me? lol)
man that's so dumb
Jokes apart: I tend to wait 2-3 months at least before upgrading. There's usually a number of security fixes, and a number of bug fixes, in the first, well, 2-3 months after a new Mac OS goes live. After that, things become quite stable.
Feels good knowing when my storage wears out, i don't lose the whole machine.
MBP:~ root# /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --getappblocked This-App-Never-existed <... > Incoming connection to This-App-Never-existed is permitted.
Apple, if you continue release untested products we will start buying Lenovo.
I wonder what goes into the product discussions over the name. Is there a rhyme or reason or is it just want sounds best to the PMs and marketers?
The only OS-level features mentioned are windows tiling and iPhone mirroring. As an Android user, I do not care about the latter, either.
If I factory reset my MacBook Pro M1 it'll go back to Ventura, then I have to manually upgrade to Sequoia.
I asked ChatGPT and it suggested I create a bootable USB drive install media for Sequoia instead (after downloading Sequoia from the app store):
`sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sequoia.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume`
That seems a cleaner and more direct solution. Can anyone verify this works without issues? (I'll probably do this over the weekend)
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/erase-and-reinstall...
Personally it was fairly easy using the standard reset UI through settings over doing a full recovery wipe.
1. Upgrade to Sequoia
2. "Erase all Content and Settings" from Settings.
I'm ok with this. I'd rather they get the core right rather than scrambling to deliver all these nice-to-haves in time, and botching it up.
It’s pretty cool! Still playing with things but upgrade went smoothly and I like the customizability.
Thanks for reminding me I totally forgot. Gonna try this with my phone and my laptop.
Apple is generally much better at development in their kernel, and more judicious about keeping it functional, than other developers.
One can dream.
They don’t do licenses, credit cards or ssh keys yet so we probably won’t switch… yet
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud-windows/icw7603...
However it also doesn't randomly crash or simply refuse to autofill in Safari, so, I already switched.
Apple passwords doesn’t have to be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING to make financial sense to us, it just has to work well enough where previously we didn’t really have any free options we liked.
The recent live wallpapers feature is really cool, hopefully they've added more
That is what Apple is not telling you with this announcement.
This is the best article I found on the topic. Note that once a mac is no longer supported for a new os the old os will get security updates for two years after that.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/with-macos-sonoma-in...
Most of the time they do, but depending on the data you work with and the risk you can accept, that might not be an acceptable policy.
I'll note that anyone running an out of date MacOS should use Chrome or Firefox. Safari gets its updates via OS updates, whereas third party browsers have their own update cycle.
DMA forbids using your platform's data or position to support a service without giving third parties equal access. Third parties are pretty clearly excluded from screen mirroring or running ai on device, so these seem like things Apple can't legally launch in the EU.
Macs are great and so is macOS, but it's not that good, at the end of the day it's just a computer
(Run non-retina displays at 2X frame buffer for proper anti-aliasing)
...for now; until Apple disallows any kind of system extension or desktop UI enhancements.
This sort of app might get a better output by forcing the 2x rendering and then scaling it to the native display resolution but it cannot possibly be of the same quality as what we had before, unless they rewrote rendering or something like that.
As far as I know there are 2 "real solutions": you buy a display that is retina class in one of their historically supported resolutions or you accept to lose a bit of desktop space by running a "sub-retina" class display at x2. For example, a 27 inch "4k" (they are 3840x2160) display will get you a desktop space of 1920/1080 in HiDPI mode. That is sad because a 27-inch iMac from the early 2000 had more desktop space, an image not as sharp but it wasn't bad as long as they kept sub-pixel antialiasing.
As far as I'm concerned, it is that way because they went the lazy way around implementing HiDPI and being able to market it like they were so much better than Microsoft. But that only works if you solely buy their hardware because nobody followed them on the desktop specs (even though it's slowly coming lately it seems).
This issue in my opinion is a testament of how much anti-consumer and disdainful Apple is; because it couldn't possible have cost them a lot of engineering to be able to support both, it is clearly for their bottom line and that's it.
1. https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/tree/opensource
Edit: Also want to mention that window sizes and various UI elements also snapped into their 'intended' locations. Two screens, both 1440p, one ultrawide for anyone reading. YMMV.
From reading the comments in these threads and some additional resources, it does seem that the problem is not whether or not the display is “retina” per say, but that macOS is designed to run on high density displays and can have problems with low density ones. My mistake I guess.
I think the point that Apple should have better support for a wider range of displays still stands. It is not unreasonable to want your general purpose, professional-grade computer which costs thousands to work correctly with a variety of displays and resolutions, especially when lesser machines do it better.
At this point I’m just whinging bitterly though, the blurry icons are not the end of the world and buying new displays or a new computer just to fix them would be silly.
So on phones it has usually been about 300dpi. On laptops and desktops it's been something over 220dpi.
Apple has is actually enshittifying too (dumb UI changes, worse apps - see "Catalyst", etc), it's just that Microsoft has became a trailblazer in that field so Apple still feels good in comparison, despite the many downgrades.
Is that a mistype? In an apple advertisement? Regardless, the whole thing feels like it has been written by a high school student. Try reading the following without wincing:
‘A redesigned Reader allows users to read articles more quickly with a streamlined view, a summary, and a table of contents, and a new Viewer helps users put videos front and center while still giving them full access to system playback controls.’
"Highlights" as a singular brand/product/whatever name. Like saying "Postmates delivers stuff"
My point stands… the quality of writing in this article is very poor: overly long sentences, clunky information reveal etc. it feels more like a first draft.
> The new Highlights feature easily reveals directions to the addresses mentioned on a web page.
[0]: https://www.pocket-lint.com/how-to-use-window-tiling-customi...
Proceeds to talk about new App features instead of OS ones.
New versions of Safari are already available for older macOS versions through System Update for a few years, I've already downloaded Safari 18 on my Sonoma. And for Passwords, Messages, Notes and Maps there's no legit reasons why newer versions can't be distributed through App Store, other than using their new features as a promo for their new macOS...
I can’t recall the last time I upgraded immediately. Maybe 2018? Been waiting for minor and patch releases of the bug ridden OS before upgrading myself (if personal device is eligible)
Then you look at the paragraph for this and it says, "Coming Soon: Apple Intelligence"
They announced this in June, and it's just loosely coming "this fall." I have a feeling they are finding it very difficult to do anything with any kind of consistency or value on their 8gb RAM phones / Macbooks. Their models they have demonstrated so far are a relatively low parameter count with LoRA adapters for various use cases.
I have a feeling that the majority of Apple Intelligence will eventually just be farmed out to their "secure cloud" or whatever they were calling it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/15/iphone-16-pro-demand-es...
I find that a little hard to believe. I would suppose the vast majority of customers don't think a lot about the timing of software features in a purchase decision.
When it comes to what Apple does with those parts, or market segmentation, or sale projection, he's got no special knowledge. In this specific case, pardon the technical language, but he's full of ...
i think Apple hyping AI so much was a mistake, doesn’t have nearly the same impact to them as hyping up a new camera feature or a new screen or a new color or something.
The only reason the iPhone 15 Pro was the only of the 15 generation to get the AI stuff is that they happened to put 8GB in that device, giving it enough headroom to not majorly impact user enjoyment trying to cram a multi-GB model into memory. But all of the iPhone 16s have 8GB (+?)
The ones who buy on day one do. I don’t find it surprising that the people who even know about and anticipate the release date of a product are the ones who are eager for specific features. If those aren’t there yet, there’s no rush to buy.
I’m no analyst but I expect demand in the EU won’t be that (comparatively) great either. When the flagship feature isn’t available, there’s little reason to spend the extra money.
They just don't feel like it's release ready so they're refining. Apple has done this with major releases over several iterations now where a couple of features are held back for the .1 release while it's perfected.
I'd be more inclined to use 'iterated'.
But I'm with you, since Apple signaled going all-in on "an assistant that has access to everything" I switched to an android with the intention of never enabling Google services and certainly not the voice assistant. Unfortunately I've found it too annoying to go completely without Google, I've read that RCS messaging won't work with an unlocked bootloader, nor will precise location, so I'm stuck with some evil in the name of features parity.
I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that being unable to properly grok the biggest holiday of the year for many Western countries is sufficient.
And given that Christmas resolves to a date (it actually offers up the autocomplete of "Christmas Day" to make it easier, then simply making the search criteria a calendar date), for me it literally shows all photos on Dec 25. I guess mileage varies.
>Search for photos and videos in the Photos app simply by describing what you’re looking for. Apple Intelligence can even find a particular moment in a video clip that fits your search description and take you right to it.
If we accept Apple's claim that Apple AI is coming in beta in fall 2024 (or per the Canada page December 2024), and I have the release of 18 which by that restriction is not Apple AI enabled, I can already do complex semantic search which means that functionality can't be "Apple AI", right? And person on date has been in iOS for at least two prior generations as well. iOS has been allowing you to search by people in images, places, events, and text appearing in the image, along with broad categorizations like "sunset", "beach", etc, for at least two generations.
However when you're typing in a search, for each term it tries to contextualize it via selections. For instance if you already had "{Person} on " and then typed Christmas, it will let you pick if you mean Christmas the event, Christmas an "object", or Christmas the literal text (an icon of a couple of lines of text in a photo frame). I suspect the poster selected, probably unintentionally, Christmas the text and it gave them images where that text appears somewhere in the image. Just out of curiosity I did that and it gave me a set of images that I thought must be mistaken, but on each image somewhere the text Christmas could be found. In one it was a crazily distorted cursive writing on a table cloth hanging over the edge of a shelf, which is just crazy.
And it's not just a case of "the last 5% takes 95% of the work", it's more like "the last 5% is an open research problem".
That is the biggest hurdle, in my opinion. If we could even reply with, "sorry, I don't know about that", it would be such an improvement over what we have today. Sadly, from what I understand, the only way to say "sorry, I don't know about that" is to just say that to every single question?
The problem is we don't train them that way. They're trained on what data is on the internet, and people... people really aren't good at saying "I don't know".
Applying RLHF on top of that at least helps reduce the deliberate lies, but it isn't normal to give a thumbs-up to an "I don't know" response either.
...
Of course, all this stuff does seem fixable.
Kids learn to express confusion and uncertainty in an environment where their parents are always very confident of everything.
Overall though, I agree that this is the biggest issue right now in the AI space; instead of being able to cut itself off, the system just rambles and hallucinates and makes stuff up out of whole cloth.
I really do think it's a training set problem. It's been amply proven that the models often do know when they lie.
Sure, that's not how children learn to do this... is it? I think in some cases, and to some degree, it is. They also learn by valuing consistency and separately learning morals. LLMs also seem to learn morals to some degree, but to the degree they're even able to reason about consistency, it certainly doesn't feed back into their training.
---
So yeah, I think it's a training set issue, and the reason children don't need this is because they have capabilities the LLMs lack. This would be a workaround.
Yes there is, it's that we don't know how. We don't have anywhere close to the level of understanding to know when an LLM knows something and when it doesn't.
Training on material that includes "I don't know" will not work. That's not the solution.
If we knew how, we'd be doing it, since that's the #1 user complaint, and the company that fixed it would win.
Never stopped them from presenting and shipping previous Siri "updates" that haven't made Siri even remotely usable or reliable ;-)
They should not be selling 8GB machines, it was always about being greedy with upgrades. Now they painted themselves in a corner.
Local Apple models are likely in the 2-3B range, but fine-tuned to specific tasks.
Moving from Windows to Mac because you hate updates is like moving from Ubuntu to Red Hat. It's more of the stuff you hated except you don't realize it; ignorance is bliss?
Or maybe Bluetooth automatically switching to "reduced audio quality" (I know, I know, it's a feature, not a bug...)
Or wait, the kernel panic I get every once in a while would be nice: panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffe00318c8a1c): DCP PANIC - ASSERT!AppleDCPDPTXPowerController.cpp:538 No device added after powering on the rails. HPD=0 - dcpav(27)
I haven't had a system that felt so unreliable since Windows 98. :D
I don't think I've experienced a single system where Bluetooth is working well. Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS all have their share of Bluetooth issues. The Bluetooth spec must be beyond broken.
On Linux, my experience has been both better and worse. More random disconnects and the need to re-pair is more frequent. The nice thing is I can automate the workarounds on Linux but can only curse on MacOS :D
Back in the day before things like homebrew it was far worse... the days of macports and mod_python to run your Django app are fortunately behind us.
As a web developer I'd be happy if Safari usage fell off a cliff.
Even as a web developer, I haven't encountered enough issues with Safari to warrant that view and what it would mean (fewer privacy protections for web users). In fact, I stopped using Chrome years ago because it used to destroy my battery life. And Safari always felt more snappy and more "native."
... compared to Chrome, right? Not to Firefox with uBlock Origin and Facebook and Google containers ...
I do like and respect Firefox but it’s hard to take them too seriously as a separate competitor if all their revenue comes from Google.
But what choice do they have?
Besides, from other discussions mostly on HN I get the impression that you can donate to them but you don't know if the money will go to the browser or to their latest crypto or "AI" initiative.
Having Google, an advertising company, in sole control of how the web works is bad for everyone.
And no, don't start whining to me about monopoly abuse if Apple willfully contributes to the entrapment. This isn't an ideological plight, it's a Microsoft-level power grab.
I have no issue with Firefox, Brave, Opera, Edge ..
I'm talking about Safari.
Keep WebKit alive. Open source Presto. Support Ladybird. Hell, I believe that Microsoft should never have abandoned Trident…
Turns out it’s not available in EU because yadda yadda Apple threw a fit.
Oh well.
Publicly traded corporations generally engage in strategy. They don't "throw a fit".
You're suggesting some kind of emotional immaturity. That's not how these corporations generally operate.
I don't know why the iPhone mirroring isn't supported, but I can absolutely guarantee you it's not because anybody is "throwing a fit".
Because a company itself cannot express emotions, the externally facing visible decisions are used as a proxy.
For example, a company raising prices to an unexpected level may be described as “greedy”. A company executing a series of decisions that appears misguided or incalculable may be described as “panicking”.
I know, it's common and it's wrong and unhelpful. That's my point. It doesn't help us understand the situation better, but actively misleads us if we're interested in actually analyzing problems and coming up with solutions.
And I just looked it up and it appears that Apple isn't supporting it because their reading of the EU law is that they'd have to support iPhone mirroring to third parties like Windows and Linux, where it would be harder or impossible to control the security and privacy.
That's something that can be talked about intelligently, whichever side you're on. Saying they're "throwing a fit" is not. It's false, and makes the conversation worse for all of us.
Depends on who's in charge.
Meta has shit PR primarily because Zuck doesn't like/understand comms.
Hes bollocks deep in AI because he likes it. Even though it costs him shareholder value (dropping those billions on new data centres to run massive loss making AI infra. )
- Which mac are you using? - Any missing hardware support? - Dual booting? - How's Bluetooth? - Anything else that was surprising, scary, or disappointing?
As for the MBA, suspend is still a miss (I read that the asahi team can't get certain devices to go to deep sleep, so they chose a safer low power mode instead). The lack of DP over usb-c is a bit annoying, but I mostly use the laptop display on macOS too, so I don't really mind. I think thunderbolt is not there too, but I have no thunderbolt devices (dock or storage). It boots very fast, but I'd recommend against KDE as the MBA gets hot with it. I'm using Sway. I heard about microphone issue, but I've never used it for calls as I have a usb one on my desktop.
The installation process is as easy as something done in the terminal can be. It's pretty much guided (just make sure you have enough space for the installation). If I had to redo it, I'd choose the minimal installation as I don't like KDE that much and it was some pain to remove it.
Don't get me wrong, Mac hardware is nice hardware. But there's no reason to own it if you're using alternative operating systems.
The bang for your buck on computing is wildly better on something like a Beelink mini PC than a Mac Mini. Windows laptop hardware has also most definitely caught up to the M1.
And I think we all know you listed off everything that's gonna be broken with Asahi Linux like Bluetooth and microphone as something you "don't use" just because you know it's broken.
And I genuinely don't use Bluetooth. Everything is wired, although I use WiFi on the MBA. Neither do I like to use the laptop microphone (noisy environment, so I use a headset or the usb microphone). The only thing I care in a laptop is WiFi, a good enough keyboard, a good enough screen, low temperature and noise, and a battery that last at least 4 hours. My default workstation is the desktop.
But yeah, I do agree with you that it's better to go with PC if you're planning to stick with Linux long term.
I suppose this isn't the case anymore
You can say that about every single OS
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06/28/eu-hits-back-at-a...
It’s possible to Airplay iPhone to window and see what’s on the screen. Continuity with iPad work just well so it’s also possible to control iPad using MacOS.
But combine both and we get into no-no land.
It’s not a secret that Apple brings much more revenue from US than from EU. I named it a fit, but I’m perfectly aware it’s a power struggle between EU and Apple and I think it’s an end of the era.
And it works perfectly. Pair it with kdeconnect and you have even a better experience of integration between your phone and your PC than with Apple. Only thing that is missing is the ability to take calls from the PC, that to be fair, it's not something that useful to me (if I want to make phone calls from the PC I use my landline number with VOIP).
Again, I see no innovation in the Apple ecosystem, after trying it out I'm happy to have returned to Linux+Android, overall a better experience. I don't miss Apple at all, it was like being in a cage...
The last thing I want to do is operate my phone with a trackpad/mouse and keyboard.
If you bought into the apple ecosystem with a recent Mac I’d not bother. But for those of your running a PC Ubuntu is incredible and their new App Store makes finding and installing software super easy. My workstation pc with Ubuntu is insanely faster than my Mac Studio when it comes to jetbrains IDEs. It’s so snappy I first couldn’t believe the performance diff.
I don't know what marketing team created this whole "our trackpad is so different" belief, but they've done a brilliant job!
What makes Apple's trackpads so nice is a huge and solid surface. I came from Thinkpads myself and honestly didn't expect that to be as much of a thing as it turned out to be, but yes, they really are that much better. There are a few PC laptops these days with similar trackpads, but you definitely have to look for it when picking one.
Every time I tried to install it to test if it was good, something broke for no reason. This happened to me on many PCs and many versions of Ubuntu.
The last time I tried 24.04, the installer crashed in the middle of the installation and I couldn't finish it.
If someone wants to test Ubuntu, I'd say you should try it, but do not get surprised if something very basic seems broken since that's my entire experience with the distro. I'd recommend Fedora instead.
Much as I like it, its not as convenient to use on a laptop as OSX, for every day things.
Plus I like illustrator too much.
For a workstation, yeah, anything with more than one processor/GPU will be super fast on ubuntu.
But Gnome is a dick to use nowadays. very opinionated and an arse to configure.