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The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 4: How Much Memory Does Your Workflow Require?

re: security
re: OWC articles by Lloyd

Fourth of a series.

View all refurbished and used Macs at OWC...

Click title to read more.

The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 4: How Much Memory Does Your Workflow Require?

2024-03-27

How to determine the memory your workflow requires? A little sleuthing while you work can zero-in on exactly what you’ll need. Too little memory, and all that CPU and GPU power can be starved of data while the system fetches it from disk.

...

18 CPU cores in use by Zerene Stacker

NEW! Automatic File Version Deletion in macOS Sonoma 14.4

re: Apple Core Rot

At last—an automatic solution to overcrowded drives!

As a further market-leading bonus feature , some software is automatically killed so that it cannot create any files at all! And your USB devices might disappear too. All these things help keep file creation to a minimum—sheer genius.

Apple is on a roll!

macOS Sonoma 14.4: Reasons Not to Update

2024-03-15

iCloud Drive — Destroys Saved Versions

Users running macOS 14.4 that have "Optimize Mac Storage" enabled should be aware that they are at risk of losing all previously saved versions of a file if they opt to remove it from iCloud Drive local storage. Versions are normally created automatically when users save files using apps that work with the version system in macOS. If you have already updated, either do not save files to iCloud Drive at all, or turning off Optimize Mac Storage. To perform the latter in System Settings, click your Apple ID, select iCloud, and then toggle off the switch next to "Optimize Mac Storage."

MPG: what a clown show.

And what a blessing that Apple canceled its plans for an automobile.

MPG advises strictly avoiding as many Apple iCloud features as you can. Enable only the features you need. In no situation should you EVER consider Apple backup of any form a reliable backup.

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Java users on macOS 14 running on Apple silicon systems should consider delaying the macOS 14.4 update

re: Apple Core Rot

OMG—this is almost unbelievable.

Except it's not—Apple gross incompetence at software quality assurance knows no bounds. Shipping a release without even rudimentary testing is standard practice.

This problem is one in a very long line of feckless screwups.

See also: macOS Sonoma 14.4: Reasons Not to Update (including data loss!)

Java users on macOS 14 running on Apple silicon systems should consider delaying the macOS 14.4 update

2024-03-15

An issue introduced by macOS 14.4, which causes Java process to terminate unexpectedly, is affecting all Java versions from Java 8 to the early access builds of JDK 22. There is no workaround available, and since there is no easy way to revert a macOS update, affected users might be unable to return to a stable configuration unless they have a complete backup of their systems prior to the OS update.

The issue was not present in the early access releases for macOS 14.4, so it was discovered only after Apple released the update.
[MPG: will Apple be releasing a new Jackass series featuring itself?]

...

Oracle has notified its customers, Apple, and our partners in OpenJDK of this situation. We recommend that users of Java on ARM-based Apple devices running macOS 14 delay applying the update until this issue is resolved.

MPG: unbelievable. Profuse profanity is fully warranted.

Obviously, Apple has zero software quality assurance for testing a technology used all over the world. MPG reiterates its advice to wait at least 6 months to “upgrade” to any major new release, and preferably a year.


The Ultimate Mac Buyers Guide, Part 3: How to Configure a Professional High End Mac

re: security
re: OWC articles by Lloyd

Third of a series.

View all refurbished and used Macs at OWC...

Click title to read more.

The Ultimate Mac Buyers Guide, Part 3: How to Configure a High End Mac for Professional Work

2024-03-13

In this article, I discuss how to go about configuring a performant Mac for high-end usage. Such usage includes things like:

  • Bulk photo processing, especially from RAW, 100 megapixel images and/or high volume.
  • Focus stacking and panorama assembly.
  • Photoshop documents with many layers.
  • Large Lightroom catalogs.
  • Video rendering especially 8K/6K/4K footage and especially RAW footage.
  • Time-sensitive workflows with deadlines.
  • Instant gratification takes too long!

...

18 CPU cores in use by Zerene Stacker

Reader Comment on “Storing Important Data on the Boot Drive is Asking For Trouble — Always Make a Separate Volume”

Stephen S writes:

I just discovered your website macperformanceguide.com; it is a real treasure. I just bookmarked it for additional reading.

In your comments on creating a separate volume in the Data portion of the Macintosh HD, it was interesting to contrast this with the advice given to me earlier in the day by a senior employee in an Apple-affiliated store. He said, in essence, we don’t use the word “volume” but instead “partition.” I told him I was setting up a new iMac running Sonoma (14.2) and that I had 0.7TB of research data in a parent volume that contained many subfolders of critical data collected over the last 20 years. I asked his advice— which offered nothing that sounded rational.

The fact that over all my years of computing, I have never seen another person organize files in a logical manner and I remain astounded by this, but given the low level advice I was given, it makes much sense.

Your article, Lloyd, needs to be presented in Mac User Groups and taught to those rendering help via Apple support. My question to you relates to the allocation of memory in the “Work” volume in the Data storage drive volume. I purchased the new iMac with a 2TB internal hard drive. After installing 95% of the apps I use, plus the operating system and miscellaneous files, what I have left is this:

<M3 hard drive composition.jpe>

When I add a volume using Disk Utility, do I need to allocate sizes in the window (i.e., Reserve Size and Quota Size?) Or will the OS determine this without my needing to define how much storage this particular new volume can allocate (e.g., 1.4TB) and how much do I need to leave in reserve (e.g., 0.17TB = 170GB).

Have I understood this correctly? Thanks for teaching us so much.

MPG: volume is the only word that works. It’s what you actually use. Partition is nerd talk, an implementation detail does not even exist for some volumes. Moreover a partition need not have a volume, it can be space set aside that cannot be used. So using “partition” really demonstrates a lack of understanding in multiple way.

APFS volumes are not partitions and that’s what makes them so attractive eg they share the space among volumes intead of balkanizing it as with partitions.

BTW, a partition need not have a volume (it would useless and invisible to the user).

Minor point: no Mac today has a hard drive any more, but Apple still makes the boot volume "Macintosh HD”. I just call mine “Boot” for “boot volume.

Disk Utility: create an APFS volume

MPG: the video below shows (in part) how to create a separate volume on any drive including your internal SSD (boot drive). Make sure it is backed up with a minimumof two backups stored safely away from the computer—see external backup drives here.

OWC Thunderblade Thunderbolt SSD

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TLS/SSL Certificate Updated (had expired)

Thanks to users who reported a “cannot establish a secure connection” issue this morning / last night.

There was never a real security issue. It was an expired SSL/TLS certificate (these are forced to expire every year, thank you Apple for the make-work security theater)

Now fixed. Certificate good until next January, and I will put that date into my calendar.

SSL/TLS certificate for diglloyd.com, etc

OWC Mad March Savings, Awesome Price on Thunderbolt Dock, Macs, etc

My favorite Dock, I have 3 of them still in use and would buy it all over again. Once $280 it is now a give-away steal: $99.99 OWC 14-Port Thunderbolt Dock

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Mac deals

re: The Ultimate Mac Buyers Guide, Part 2: The Huge Value of Refurbished and Used Macs

Why pay full price for a Mac that is only modestly faster than prior ones?

Various

Recommended

OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock
Ideal for any Mac with Thunderbolt 3


Dual Thunderbolt 3 ports
USB 3 • USB-C
Gigabit Ethernet
5K and 4K display support plus Mini Display Port
Analog sound in/out and Optical sound out

Works on any Mac with Thunderbolt 3

Extract Text From Password Protected PDF: macOS Image-to-Text Feature

Please respect all copyright laws. Copyright also allows for “fair use”.

Sometimes I want to quote a short passage in an article in PDF form. But I run into a problem—copying even a single word is blocked. I don’t want to type things in as that is tedious and leads to errors.

Consider the following user manual section:

Attempting to copy this text in Preview or Adobe Acrobat results in being blocked:

Manual note (screem capture) — locked 

Solution — Image to Text 

Recent versions of macOS have a nifty image-to-text feature: you can now select the text within the image as plain text, like this:

  1. Take a screen capture of the text.
  2. Save it as a JPG or PNG somewhere,
  3. Open it in Preview or Safari.
  4. Select the text, the copy it.
  5. Paste the text where needed. TIP: paste into an editor like BBEdit to clean up any gremlins.
Text selected within screen grab in Preview.app

Resulting text from Fujifilm Digital Camera GFX100S FF200003 Owner’s Manual p148:

The following restrictions apply when the electronic shutter is used:
• Sensitivity is restricted to values of ISO 12800-100
• Long exposure noise reduction has no effect.
• The flash will not fire unless pixel-shift multi-shot is enabled.


Elon Musk: “Just bought a new PC laptop and it won’t let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account”

Why don’t I switch to Windoze, given all Apple Core Rot? Let me count the two dozen reasons... crazy idea but people who don’t do what I do keep thinking it is some kind of good idea.

Will Apple move to some invasive new login and AI system? Having already vandalized my iMac 5K with an unwanted forced update, I wonder.

You might want to not auto-update for major releases.

As for Windoze:

Just bought a new PC laptop and it won’t let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account, which also means giving their AI access to my computer! This is messed up.

There used to be an option to skip signing into or creating a Microsoft account. Are you seeing this too? — Elon Musk


The Ultimate Mac Buyers Guide, Part 2: The Huge Value of Refurbished and Used Macs

re: security
re: OWC articles by Lloyd

Second of a series.

View all refurbished and used Macs at OWC...

Click title to read more.

The Ultimate Mac Buyers Guide, Part 2: The Huge Value of Refurbished and Used Macs

2024-02-29

What’s the difference between the latest and greatest Mac and last year’s model? One year. Yeah, Mac performance today is way more than most users can use, stunningly strong, and that has been true for 3-4 years now.

The Apple marketing persuasion machine hypnotizes users into thinking that each new Mac or iPhone is a big improvement. Rarely is that true other than incremental gains and sometimes obnoxious negatives. Newer is not always better. The reality is still brewing its coffee while the “faster and better” narrative sprints around Silicon Valley thrice and is digesting lunch before anyone takes a hard look.

...

The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 1: Choosing the Best Mac for Your Needs
OWC ROVER PRO wheels for Mac Pro

No tools or hassle… just place your Mac Pro’s factory feet into the Rover Pro’s polished stainless-steel housings and secure with a few hand twists.

When you’re done moving your Mac Pro around, the Rover Pro makes it just as quick and easy to convert back to the factory feet for stationary use.

Apple Core Rot: a Perspective from Jeff Johnson

re: Apple Core Rot

Reader Don H sent me this link. Good take!

The entry essentially mirrors your point (and many others') that chaining MacOS release dates to an annual cycle leads to buggy software that never gets fixed.

When OS-X’s initial development from the earlier Mac Classic really stabilized (around the time of Tiger) the development cycle was closer to two years for the next three releases. After that (when Cook took over) it gravitated around one year, most likely to mimic iOS’ annual cycle and to sync up with WWDC. Jeff Johnson makes a good case for why that happened, and strongly disagrees with the results.

Apropos my “calender-driven releases” command I’ve made many times.

The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard

2023-11-13, by Jeff Johnson

...

"Unfortunately, the periods of Mac stability came to an end with the era of Tim Cook. My firm conviction is that software quality is impossible to maintain with annual major updates. There's just not enough time between major updates to work on the minor bug fix updates that give rise to quality, indeed are essential to quality. Once Apple engineers are "finished" releasing a major update, they have to turn around immediately and work on the next major update. After all, WWDC in June every year is only eight months later. Tim Cook's schedule is relentless.

Software quality is a marathon, not a sprint. It's the result of many minor bug fix updates over time with no major updates to introduce new bugs. There was a significant difference between the initial quality and final quality of Snow Leopard. That's why spending a week on bug fixes is nothing but a drop in the bucket. Apple has accumulated more than ten years of technical debt, never giving itself enough time to pay down that debt.”

...

MPG: anyone who thinks Apple software quality is anything but an oxymoron should have their head examined.

The Apple propaganda narrative is that “we work hard on bugs”. The truth is that quality comes way down the list from the date on the calendar, and that investment in software quality is a distant 10th to new versions.


Apple Rolls Out Post-Quantum 3 (PQ3) Messaging Encryption

re: security and encryption

Excellent. I’m glad my cat videos will be private now and forever.

You have no computing security, but not because of over-the-wire concerns. Anything transmitted should be considered compromised. More on that below.

iMessage with PQ3: The new state of the art in quantum-secure messaging at scale

2024-02-23

Today we are announcing the most significant cryptographic security upgrade in iMessage history with the introduction of PQ3, a groundbreaking post-quantum cryptographic protocol that advances the state of the art of end-to-end secure messaging. With compromise-resilient encryption and extensive defenses against even highly sophisticated quantum attacks, PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to reach what we call Level 3 security — providing protocol protections that surpass those in all other widely deployed messaging apps. To our knowledge, PQ3 has the strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world.

...

Although quantum computers with this capability don’t exist yet, extremely well-resourced attackers can already prepare for their possible arrival by taking advantage of the steep decrease in modern data storage costs. The premise is simple: such attackers can collect large amounts of today’s encrypted data and file it all away for future reference. Even though they can’t decrypt any of this data today, they can retain it until they acquire a quantum computer that can decrypt it in the future, an attack scenario known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later.

To mitigate risks from future quantum computers, the cryptographic community has been working on post-quantum cryptography (PQC): new public key algorithms that provide the building blocks for quantum-secure protocols but don’t require a quantum computer to run — that is, protocols that can run on the classical, non-quantum computers we’re all using today, but that will remain secure from known threats posed by future quantum computers.

...

Quantum-Secure Cryptography in Messaging Apps

MPG: the government can track you wherever you go, and through hundreds of databases. If you carry a phone or drive anywhere or eat food, a great deal can be know about you—and your banks, etc spy on you too. Good luck!

With all this long explanation, I still cannot figure out whether Apple can read my messages, email, etc. Is it end-to-end or not?

On top of that, security is only as good as its weakest link:

  • The receiver can reveal the conversation and is subject to all sorts of security attacks that could do so.
  • Your device can be compromised, directly revealing decoded messages, keylogging, etc.

If you think you have privacy with an app like iMessage and/or Signal, think again. If you are important enough to a Power, they’ll find a way.


The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 1: Choosing the Best Mac for Your Needs

re: security
re: OWC articles by Lloyd

First of a series.

Click title to read more.

The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 1: Choosing the Best Mac for Your Needs

2024-02-23

Buying a computer is a partial confusopoly with a frosting of FUD*: RAM, flash drive, CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, etc. More is better, right? Not so fast.

Spend more and play it safe? Spending too much for what won’t matter is bad enough, but spending more and still not getting what will help is most costly of all, especially at the high end.

This article will help organize your thinking as to which Mac is best for you, while avoiding technical jargon. You can then buy with confidence, though professional users might need a bit more thought. Luckily, it’s hard to go wrong if a few things are first considered.

...

The Ultimate Mac Buyer’s Guide, Part 1: Choosing the Best Mac for Your Needs

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