Silicon Investor - Apple Product Help

[Smart_Asset] I'm having difficulty posting photos from my Mac to the photography thread. I t...

Smart_Asset — 1/14/2026 11:14:28 AM

I'm having difficulty posting photos from my Mac to the photography thread. I try to grab and release but doesn't seem to work......???

Maybe large files from my new iPhone 17??

[Stan] iOS 26 Settings You NEED To Turn Off NOW! [IMPORTANT] [youtube video]

Stan — 10/14/2025 8:14:09 PM

[greg s] WiFi speed test shows good results. It's a lot faster on WiFi compared to my 201...

greg s — 5/18/2025 5:50:01 PM

WiFi speed test shows good results. It's a lot faster on WiFi compared to my 2011 Mini, I think this is because the WiFi performance of the 2011 Mini is not so good at the location of the computers which is a place where the WiFi signal must pass through some big kitchen appliances, a TV, and 2 walls.

I recommend installing a Mesh Wi-Fi system. My home is an old adobe brick structure that has been added onto over the years. That presents some serious wi-fi barrier issues. That all changed when I switched to a mesh system. i get fast wi-fi anywhere in the house and even in my separate guest house nearby. My system is a Netgear Orbi Mesh system with one router and three satellites. My system is years old so these may be even better:

netgear.com

[Frank Walker] I have a new Mac mini M4 just installed new today May 18, although I actually or...

Frank Walker — 5/18/2025 4:53:39 PM

I have a new Mac mini M4 just installed new today May 18, although I actually ordered it direct from Apple in Marc about 2 months ago. Was too busy to install it, and still had my old 2011 Mini to work with.

Interestingly the System Settings shows the computer only has 10 months left on warranty so Apple somehow knows when the computer was bought. I wonder if they would know this if I bought it from a retailer such as as BestBuy. Not a big deal as I'm sure I won't need it fixed for any defects.

One strange thing is the new Mini cannot identify my keyboard which is a bluetooth Apple Magic Keyboard from about 2010 (bought used recently). The keyboard works OK with the new Mini M4 however. The MacOS keyboard identifier method asks me to press the key to the right of the Shift key on left side of keyboard (Z key) and when I do that the Mini says it cannot identify the keyboard. I have a similar Magic Keyboard for the 2011 Mini and it has the same problem, so I guess this is a minor MacOS bug that has been there for a decade or more.

WiFi speed test shows good results. It's a lot faster on WiFi compared to my 2011 Mini, I think this is because the WiFi performance of the 2011 Mini is not so good at the location of the computers which is a place where the WiFi signal must pass through some big kitchen appliances, a TV, and 2 walls.

Lots of work to be done making the M4 Mini my new computer.

The 2011 Mini had 512GB HD as the base, while the 2024 Mini M4 only has 256GB SSD, which is ridiculous and an obvious money grab.

Maybe Macs in fall 2025 will have an M5 chip. There was a 1960s Star Trek episode where there was an M-5 computer (it was a baddy).
en.wikipedia.org

Although I will be demoting the 2011 Mini to lower responsibilities, it still works quite well except for some Safari issues that might go away with a MacOS upgrade to High Sierra. Picture shows the 2 computers, I have same types of monitor, keyboard, and mouse for both.

[clean86] 17 hour upload? Should be a download. Reminds me of the old days on Dial up!

clean86 — 3/2/2025 4:37:35 PM

[SirWalterRalegh] Thanks Clean 17 hour upload!?

SirWalterRalegh — 3/1/2025 10:04:48 AM

[clean86] Not sure if that Mac will run the current MacOS but here is a page that will exp...

clean86 — 2/28/2025 7:46:13 PM

Not sure if that Mac will run the current MacOS but here is a page that will explain how to update your system to the versions available for it:

support.apple.com

[SirWalterRalegh] I have a macOS Catalina which was purchased in 2017 and hasn't been used for fiv...

SirWalterRalegh — 2/28/2025 2:15:34 PM

I have a macOS Catalina which was purchased in 2017 and hasn't
been used for five years.

How do I get it updated to the current OS?

TIA

[clean86] So far for the few playlists I've tested it downloads the entire playlist. As t...

clean86 — 1/5/2025 12:48:59 PM

So far for the few playlists I've tested it downloads the entire playlist.

As to the rest of the post I'll just say youth os wasted on the young now get off my lawn haha.

[Zen Dollar Round] Thanks for that info, I'd have been very surprised if they hadn't added that fea...

Zen Dollar Round — 1/5/2025 5:46:26 AM

Thanks for that info, I'd have been very surprised if they hadn't added that feature by now.

Does it work for all songs in all playlists you can stream, or a subset of them based on content rights?

Another factor in that equation: Are most of Spotify's youthful customers aware enough about the lack of cellular coverage in sparsely populated areas to take the extra step of downloading beforehand if they don't have satellite internet access? Unless someone in their group of friends knows about the issue and tells them, the inexperienced wouldn't think to download their playlists before heading out.

I'm stating that based on my personal experience with those under 40 years of age. They tend to be as unaware about computers and tech issues as most elderly people are. Unless they were nerds in school growing up and into computers or hacking, kids know very little about the advanced technology they're using or its inherent flaws and limitations.

I've seen this multiple times with late Millennials and all GenZ (Zoomers) kids, they can't troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag and fall for tricks that defy basic logic. A common one is using gift cards to pay the IRS for back taxes or for someone claiming to help them fix their computer. They don't know how to protect themselves against any of them unless they watch YouTube channels like Scammer Payback or Kitboga.

Even if they are aware of scammers and thieves, the young still ask me, "Why do they do that?" :-(

[clean86] I use Spotify and there is an option to download the music from play lists to my...

clean86 — 1/4/2025 8:27:27 PM

I use Spotify and there is an option to download the music from play lists to my device in cases where there is no internet.

[Don Green] greg I upgraded my original iPod Classic 7th generation to a 256GB flash dr...

Don Green — 1/4/2025 3:30:50 PM

greg

I upgraded my original iPod Classic 7th generation to a 256GB flash drive about 10 years ago. I had it done by a tech company near Denver, and they did an excellent job. I've had no regrets since then. Recently, I learned that you can add Bluetooth, a new connector, and most importantly, a new battery—all reasonable upgrade options. I considered all of them.

In the end, I decided to buy an iPhone SE with 256GB of memory and loaded all my music onto my phone. Again, no regrets. Moving forward, I think I will finally leave the Apple media environment and get a high-quality music player, like the one I mentioned earlier.

Don

[greg s] Thank you, Don. For my uses, my old iPod Nano's are fine. But Zen's hint about...

greg s — 1/3/2025 10:05:46 PM

Thank you, Don. For my uses, my old iPod Nano's are fine. But Zen's hint about expanding capacity has me intrigued. Can you imagine the capacity of an iPod if still offered? Yeah, I'm pretty old school.

[greg s] Well now, this is very cool! I'll check it out!

greg s — 1/3/2025 10:00:56 PM

[Don Green] I also have this model and have had for about 10 years est? I think it was the ...

Don Green — 1/3/2025 9:43:41 PM

I also have this model and have had for about 10 years est? I think it was the best Ipod released and if it only had a 256G storage it would be perfect for my needs. I use it mainly for playlists of maybe 30 songs per playlist. But in recents months have been considering this activostyle.com the only isse is I have read reports it gets prettt warm and sadly I can never find it in a store to actually play with.

I use Musicbee as my music management software.

Don

[Zen Dollar Round] Did you see this post years ago, or try any mod like the ones there? The site i...

Zen Dollar Round — 1/3/2025 9:17:04 PM

Did you see this post years ago, or try any mod like the ones there?

The site is still up and still a good way to add a lot of capacity to old iPods:

The iFlash.xyz website is still up and running.

[greg s] I bought four iPod Nano's years ago, each with 16GB storage. I download to each...

greg s — 1/3/2025 9:09:03 PM

I bought four iPod Nano's years ago, each with 16GB storage. I download to each according to music genre. I still have one that has not been used at all. They have BT so I can play on BT speakers or AirPods. Shame they are no longer sold. They are quite small.

[Zen Dollar Round] > When I asked my son a Major Mac user he told me Spotify! lol! young people ...

Zen Dollar Round — 1/3/2025 8:56:28 PM

> When I asked my son a Major Mac user he told me Spotify! lol! young people no longer buy music, they just rent it via streaming service

Good luck with that when there is no internet available. I've heard may stories about kids taking road trips using streaming who lose access to their tunes when no cell towers are around and don't have satellite access either (like when spelunking or something).

Does Spotify have an option with their paid version to download files temporarily to their devices, like Netflix allows with their streaming videos?

> I guess I would to if I hadn't already invested in 500-1000 CDS over the years

My 23-year-old niece loves CDs and had a cool modern single disc vertically mounted player in her room. There are a lot of knockoff modern devices with modern takes on vintage gear, like copying the designs of Sony's portable Walkman CD player, but in very stylish ways. How about this wood grain version from KLIM?

CD's are becoming collective again by vintage media collectors and hipsters, just like vinyl has been for many years now.

[Stan] Does anyone recommend installing an antivirus app for iPhones? I have a 13 ProMa...

Stan — 12/30/2024 12:26:55 PM

Does anyone recommend installing an antivirus app for iPhones? I have a 13 ProMax with up-to-date IOS.

I already use Norton for my computers.

[Zen Dollar Round] Apple security updates (Dec. 11, 2024) Apple issued another big batch ...

Zen Dollar Round — 12/11/2024 4:45:39 PM

Apple security updates (Dec. 11, 2024)

Apple issued another big batch of security patches today across its supported software systems, as well as adding features, including Apple Intelligence additions, and bug fixes.

[Zen Dollar Round] Apple bug fixes: macOS 15.0.1, iOS 18.0.1 et al Along with security patches, ...

Zen Dollar Round — 10/5/2024 1:05:01 PM

Apple bug fixes: macOS 15.0.1, iOS 18.0.1 et al

Along with security patches, Apple’s latest updates patch a bunch of bugs in its current software.

macOS 15.0.1
Messages may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message with a shared Apple Watch face
Improves compatibility with third-party security software

iOS 18.0.1

This update provides important bug fixes and security updates for your iPhone including:
Touch screen may be temporarily unresponsive in certain circumstances on iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models
Camera may freeze when recording macro mode video on the Ultra Wide camera in 4Kwith HDR turned off on iPhone 16 Pro models
Messages may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message with a shared Apple Watch face
Performance may be impacted due to an issue with memory allocation on some iPhone models

watchOS 11.0.1
Apple Watch may unexpectedly restart for some users
Music app may unexpectedly quit when loading media
Battery may drain more quickly than expected
Touch screen may be temporarily unresponsive for some Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 users
Messages may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message with a shared Apple Watch face

iPadOS 18.0.1

This update enables iPad Pro with M4 to update to iPadOS 18 and provides important bug fixes and security updates for your iPad including:
Messages may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message with a shared Apple Watch face
Performance may be impacted due to an issue with memory allocation on some iPad models

visionOS 2.0.1

This update provides important bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users.
YouTube video player in Safari may freeze
Safari Web Extension data may be lost after updating to visionOS 2
Messages may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message with a shared Apple Watch face

[Zen Dollar Round] It won't remove embedded ads within videos like YouTube has, but it removes them...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/27/2024 2:25:56 PM

It won't remove embedded ads within videos like YouTube has, but it removes them elsewhere.

It'll also take out those text boxes embedded within articles that point other articles, I did that yesterday for an ESPN article.

I think I'll get most use out of to remove those annoying windows blocking the screen asking for an email address or to disable your ad blocker for their site.

Basically, if the ad appears inside an iframe in the HTML code, it can remove it.

I can't subscribe to every newspaper requiring that now to read one article showing up as a top search result. Sometimes I'll try to find other articles referencing the one I can't reach, that works sometimes.

All of these companies now requiring subscription set up the problem themselves after decades of providing their content freely. It's why I like The Guardian's approach to it.

[Zen Dollar Round] I recorded a video of using it from my Mac with the built in tool for that, but ...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/27/2024 2:15:35 PM

I recorded a video of using it from my Mac with the built in tool for that, but I messed it up and didn't demonstrate the full effect and ease of using it.

I've been too busy to remake it and upload the video so I let it go.

I recommend anyone curious about it running Safari 18 take a look. Sonoma can use Safari 18 too.

[clean86] Interesting feature will be useful for some things that are totally annoying, to...

clean86 — 9/27/2024 1:04:24 PM

Interesting feature will be useful for some things that are totally annoying, to bad it won't take out ads.

[clean86] Just found that option will check it out and report back.

clean86 — 9/27/2024 12:37:18 PM

[Zen Dollar Round] Has anyone tried Safari 18's new Hide Distracting Items feature yet? It's pretty...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/26/2024 8:32:57 PM

Has anyone tried Safari 18's new Hide Distracting Items feature yet? It's pretty cool.

To use it on any webpage with elements you'd like to hide, click this icon in the upper left of the address bar...

...then select Hide Distracting Items... from the dropdown menu. Click away on each page element you want removed, they'll be highlighted as your cursor moves over them. The animation for removed items is satisfying too.

I haven't tested it thoroughly to see if it lasts between sessions, and I wonder how long it will take web designers to implement blocks for it.

[Zen Dollar Round] macOS 15 Sequoia issues People using Apple’s new macOS 15 Sequoia report variou...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/25/2024 9:36:40 AM

macOS 15 Sequoia issues

People using Apple’s new macOS 15 Sequoia report various issues with it.

macOS Sequoia change breaks networking for VPN, antivirus software

Users of macOS 15 ‘Sequoia’ are reporting network connection errors when using certain endpoint detection and response (EDR) or virtual private network (VPN) solutions, and web browsers.

What to do when you can’t open an app you just installed in macOS Sequoia

In macOS Sequoia, Apple has added another stumbling block to launching software that has not gone through Apple’s baseline vetting process for apps.

Downloading files in Safari under MacOS Sequoia

After updating to Sequoia my file downloading process in Safari is broken.

macOS Firewall Regressions in Sequoia

It seems the OS firewall can sometimes start blocking access to web browsing after upgrading to macOS Sequoia.

[Zen Dollar Round] Mac firmware support Howard Oakley has been tracking Mac firmware updates and A...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/25/2024 9:22:47 AM

Mac firmware support

Howard Oakley has been tracking Mac firmware updates and Apple support issues for older Macs and macOS versions.

Firmware updates with macOS 15.0, 14.7 and 13.7

… For many years now, firmware updates have only been supplied in macOS updates and upgrades, and haven’t been offered as separate installations. It therefore follows that the only Macs that can receive firmware updates are those still supported by one of the three supported versions of macOS. If the most recent version of macOS your Mac can install (without using Open Core Legacy Patcher) is Monterey, that automatically means that it can’t get any further firmware updates, as the final version of Monterey was 12.7.6, released on 29 July 2024. In practice, though, Apple normally stops revising EFI firmware well before that event, and this year has followed that pattern again.

Which firmware should your Mac be using?

How to check your Mac’s firmware version
The simplest way now is to run either of my free tools SilentKnight or LockRattler, available from their product page. Alternatively, use the About This Mac command at the top of the Apple menu; hold the Option key and click on the System Information command. In the Hardware Overview listing, this is given as the Boot ROM Version or System Firmware Version.

What to do if your Mac’s firmware is different from that shown
If the version is higher than that given here, it indicates that Mac has installed a more recent version of macOS, which has installed a later version of the firmware. This is almost invariably the result of installing a beta-release of the next version of macOS. This occurs even when the newer macOS is installed to an external disk.

If the installed version of firmware has a version which is lower than that shown, you can try installing macOS again to see if that updates the firmware correctly. If it still fails to update, you should contact Apple Support.

[Zen Dollar Round] iOS 18 touchscreen bugs People using iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 report annoying touch...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/25/2024 9:16:28 AM

iOS 18 touchscreen bugs

People using iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 report annoying touchscreen bugs with the new Apple software.

Touch screen issues hit iPhone 16 Pro and older models

In what appears to be an iOS 18 bug, users of iPhones including the iPhone 16 Pro are reporting touches and taps not being recognized. … Most reports concern the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, but they are not exclusive to the new models. Instead, anecdotal evidence appears to suggest that the problem lies with iOS 18. … There’s no indication of how many users are affected, and reports on online support forums say it is happening on certain iPads, as well as iPhone models as old as the iPhone 14.

[Zen Dollar Round] Very good to know, thank you! I know Quicken 2007 hung on for a long time for Ma...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/21/2024 3:23:37 PM

Very good to know, thank you! I know Quicken 2007 hung on for a long time for Mac users, and some continued to use in a VM until that didn't work, or kept an old Mac around just for that purpose.

Let us know how you like Quicken 2024. A relative uses a version a few years older and navigates it pretty well, but it was such a far cry from 2007 as far as customization for reports and other features it had, he was frustrated for awhile learning it.

Last I tried to use it, Quicken's overseas tech support wasn't great either and they charged for it as well, but that was at least 10 years ago.

[Broken_Clock] update on Quicken My older Mac finally died. Probably needs a new battery. I ke...

Broken_Clock — 9/21/2024 1:38:02 PM

update on Quicken

My older Mac finally died. Probably needs a new battery. I kept it around just for the Quicken. I got desperate and went and bought Quicken 2024 so I can do my taxes. As I installed it, a prompt came up giving me choices on importing data. Lo and behold, they have added a "import from Quicken 2007" choice. I did it from a file I saved and it worked. What a relief!

[Zen Dollar Round] > Ventura upgrade was smooth as silk only had to update my welcome tablet driver...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/21/2024 3:47:11 AM

> Ventura upgrade was smooth as silk only had to update my welcome tablet driver.

Good to know, glad it went well for you.

> The iMac has no built in ethernet and no way to connect it which is a deal breaker and the Studio is so expensive.

The current base model iMac can use one of the Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and an adapter for Ethernet, and the higher end models add USB 3 ports for the same possibility.

The way overpriced Apple M1 Ethernet/Power Adapter is also a possibility.

A standard RJ-45 port would've been nice, but those ports are too big, old, and ugly for Apple to include on the back of their iMacs considering their obsession with elegant design. Form over function still rules at Apple in some ways.

> Not great choices for Mac computers these days.

Agreed. I'm a big fan of the all-in-one iMacs. The Mac Studios are pricey as you say, and you have to add a monitor as well.

There are rumors of a new 30-32" screen iMac to be released by next spring, but still just rumors at this point.

> $1900 for a studio display is also expensive wish Apple would sell reasonably priced hardware.

<Doren has entered the chat> :-)

[clean86] Ventura upgrade was smooth as silk only had to update my welcome tablet driver. ...

clean86 — 9/21/2024 2:05:07 AM

Ventura upgrade was smooth as silk only had to update my welcome tablet driver.

On another note was looking at the new iMacs and Mac Studio.

The iMac has no built in ethernet and no way to connect it which is a deal breaker and the Studio is so expensive.

Not great choices for Mac computers these days.

$1900 for a studio display is also expensive wish Apple would sell reasonably priced hardware.

[Zen Dollar Round] Yes, I forgot to add that. I will report back once I get it done and have tested...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/20/2024 12:06:49 PM

Yes, I forgot to add that. I will report back once I get it done and have tested out OCLP.

[greg s] I will be very interested in hearing back from you after you run this on your 20...

greg s — 9/20/2024 11:11:20 AM

I will be very interested in hearing back from you after you run this on your 2011 iMac (Open Core Legacy Patcher).

[Zen Dollar Round] I need to revise my first reply to you about the Open Core Legacy Patcher and w...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/20/2024 9:31:26 AM

I need to revise my first reply to you about the Open Core Legacy Patcher and what it can do. It is very sophisticated software and I didn't give it enough credit with my original response to you.

Your take is the accurate one, it really is a game changer for older Intel Macs.

While I haven't done so yet, I plan to use it to keep a 2012 iMac still being used by a relative up-to-date and running a newer version of macOS with better security. It already has an SSD installed internally as the boot drive, so I expect the performance hit to be minimal for them.

Before I do that, I'll be using and testing OCLP on my old 2011 iMac once it has an SSD installed. I had the SSD already since it was an upgrade I'd planned years ago to do myself, but I finally found a great local Mac tech who can do it for me at a great price, with a warranty.

At one time I thought I'd attempt it myself, but after seeing the teardown process on iFixit, I decided to just pay a seasoned Apple Certified tech to do it.

[clean86] Thanks for the recommendations which confirmed what I was already thinking based...

clean86 — 9/20/2024 3:16:26 AM

Thanks for the recommendations which confirmed what I was already thinking based on all your info.

Haven't been posting as much as I was but I'm here lurking and reading the content.

Keep up the great work the input is always appreciated.

[Zen Dollar Round] Hi clean, long time no see around these parts... Ventura is your best bet. I wa...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/19/2024 10:40:03 PM

Hi clean, long time no see around these parts...

Ventura is your best bet. I was running it on my 2019 iMac until about 3 weeks ago.

I "upgraded" to Sonoma because I knew Sequoia was right around the corner and I didn't want to play any shenanigans with Apple installing Sequoia for me without my consent. That happened with Sonoma earlier this year to some users, they woke up to find a bug in Apple's update settings had installed Sonoma overnight for them, with no easy path to downgrade if they didn't have a robust back up strategy in place.

I also had a relative tricked into installing Sonoma by Apple's increasingly intrusive notifications to do so, and I am the tech support person for them, so I need to know how it works.

While I'm getting used to Sonoma and it has some nice features, it still has some bugs that haven't been patched and one or two new ones introduced in the last three updates. Annoying!

[clean86] Since Apple seems to no longer supporting Monterey which OS do you recommend upg...

clean86 — 9/19/2024 6:12:26 PM

Since Apple seems to no longer supporting Monterey which OS do you recommend upgrading to?

I was thinking about just moving to Ventura but also thinking of just going straight to Sequoia so I don't have to deal with a yearly update.

Heard bad things about Sonoma so I'd like to avoid it if possible.

[Zen Dollar Round] Advanced SilentKnight: updating macOS and avoiding updates If you didn’t want ...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/17/2024 9:46:56 AM

Advanced SilentKnight: updating macOS and avoiding updates

If you didn’t want to install that macOS update, there is a way that you can now persuade Software Update to forget that it has been downloaded and is waiting, ready to install. This is most useful if you didn’t intend updating macOS, and now want to undo the process.

Shut your Mac down, then start it up in Safe mode. Leave it there for a minute or so, then restart it back into normal mode. Those uninstalled updates should now have been flushed, and Software Update is back to where it started.

---------

Note: Though included in the post to which I'm replying, I'm highlighting it again here because it's important. Apple bugs have installed macOS Sonoma and other updates in that OS, by 'accident,' so this is a way to recover from that issue should it occur with Sequoia.

For you brave souls willing to install Sequoia out of the gate, we salute you!

[Zen Dollar Round] macOS 15, iOS 18 et al Apple released new versions of its various operating sys...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/17/2024 9:37:59 AM

macOS 15, iOS 18 et al

Apple released new versions of its various operating systems today that include security patches (also issuing important security updates for supported earlier versions, a new version of Safari for them, and an Xcode update to patch a keychain vulnerability).

Howard Oakley has some helpful posts about macOS 15.

And he offers a critical trick for stopping unwanted upgrades:

Advanced SilentKnight: updating macOS and avoiding updates

If you didn’t want to install that macOS update, there is a way that you can now persuade Software Update to forget that it has been downloaded and is waiting, ready to install. This is most useful if you didn’t intend updating macOS, and now want to undo the process.

Shut your Mac down, then start it up in Safe mode. Leave it there for a minute or so, then restart it back into normal mode. Those uninstalled updates should now have been flushed, and Software Update is back to where it started.

Ars Technica’s review of macOS 15 by Andrew Cunningham’s is quite thorough, as usual.

macOS 15 Sequoia: The Ars Technica review

The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as “the AI one” in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of “Apple Intelligence” features. That’s funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that’s coming out today. A lot of it is coming “later this fall” in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won’t be ready until after that—rumors say image generation won’t be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet. But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. …

The good

Window tiling is good!
Small but useful changes to most apps that don’t break anything that was already working.
Compatible with most of the same systems as macOS Sonoma was last year.
The bad

Apple Intelligence is the tentpole feature, and none of it is ready yet.
Somewhat significant disk usage increase.
Window tiling isn’t as flexible as it is in Windows 11.
The ugly

Drops 2018/2019 MacBook Air for no great reason. Sure, the processor is slow, but it was also slow last year, and it did have an Apple T2.

[Zen Dollar Round] Important Apple security updates Along with new operating system versions, A...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/17/2024 9:32:47 AM

Important Apple security updates

Along with new operating system versions, Apple is now distributing very large updates to the other operating system versions it still supports for security flaws it labels “important.”

Apple may also be silently installing XProtect 5273 on Macs via the Internet today, though it’s not showing up for macOS 14 Sonoma in at least several cases.

[Zen Dollar Round] macOS Sequoia 15.0 review: The opening act (please check the linked article at ...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/17/2024 9:08:56 AM

macOS Sequoia 15.0 review: The opening act

(please check the linked article at Six Colors for the screenshots referred to in italics)

By Jason Snell
September 16, 2024 10:00 AM PT

When I go to concerts, I always feel bad for the opening acts. No matter how good they are, no matter how hard they try, they’re just not the reason the audience is there. At one memorable show in my hometown music venue, the opening act asked the people at the bar to kindly keep their conversations down a little bit while she was performing. (They continued to ignore her.)

What I’m saying is, macOS 15.0 Sequoia is here, but all anyone wants to know about is version 15.1. As with iOS and iPadOS, this fall’s release is the one that will begin to deeply integrate machine-learning models, dubbed Apple Intelligence, throughout the operating system. But the point-oh versions entirely lack those anticipated features, which won’t arrive until point-one.

This is not to say that there aren’t a bunch of new Mac features in macOS Sequoia 15.0. This release contains some classic Apple moves, like adding a feature found in third-party Mac utilities for years, but with a simplified “now it’s for everybody” feature set. It’s got some surprising (to me, anyway) and useful integrations with the rest of its ecosystem that make the Mac and iPhone work together like never before. A useful OS feature has gotten promoted to a full-fledged utility app, hopefully with the end result of more people using it. One of my favorite Messages features, left for years to dry on the vine, has finally gotten a long-deserved expansion. Safari has received a bunch of updates that should help users cut through the distractions and confusion of the Web.

And this release also features Apple’s continued ratcheting up of its macOS security and privacy procedures—which isn’t a bad thing on its own, but comes with associated degradations of the user experience that Apple doesn’t seem appropriately concerned about mitigating.

There’s a lot here, even without Apple Intelligence. And those features—modest though they’ll be, at least to start—will be along soon enough. The rock star is back stage, diving into a bowl of green M&Ms. But you bought the ticket, you’ve got a drink in hand, and this opening act is going to sing its heart out for you.

Anyway, here’s “Wonderwall”—er, I mean, here’s macOS Sequoia 15.0.

iPhone mirroring

iPhone mirroring even rotates automatically for horizontal content—but won’t let you rotate it yourself.

Every so often, Apple comes out with a new operating system feature that takes me completely by surprise. So it is with iPhone Mirroring, a new app that lets you view and operate your iPhone from the comfort of your Mac.

This is one of Apple’s Continuity features, which means that in order to connect to your iPhone, it needs to be within Bluetooth range of your Mac. Once the connection is established, I’m led to believe that the rest of the conversation between the two devices happens over Wi-Fi. I work about 20 feet away from where I keep my iPhone docked, and I was able to use the iPhone without any problem. Initially connecting to it was a little unreliable, however—sometimes it worked perfectly, and other times I needed to retrieve my iPhone and bring it closer, or unlock it and then re-lock it, in order to get it to work.

It’s the iPhone, on your Mac.

When you’re connected to the iPhone, you see its interface on your Mac’s screen—but the iPhone screen itself remains locked, either at the Lock Screen or in StandBy mode. (If you try to take over an open iPhone, it won’t let you. And when you go back to your iPhone after a sharing session, your iPhone will alert you to the fact that it was being remotely operated, as a precaution.)

When you connect, the Mac’s keyboard and trackpad are interpreted just as you would expect, right down to swipes and scrolling. Requests for authentication can be handled by Touch ID on the Mac. When you move the pointer over the top of the iPhone Mirroring window, a window frame appears, giving you standard Mac window controls (you can minimize the app to the Dock, for instance) as well as two buttons to bring up the App Switcher or go to the Home Screen.

The screen appears flawless, operating at high frame rates and even transmitting audio back to the Mac. I was able to click around and play games as if I were running the apps right on my Mac. I could play podcasts in Overcast and the audio came right out of my Mac speakers.

I was also impressed with the feature that sends iPhone notifications straight to my Mac. They appear as normal Notification Center alerts, but when I clicked on them, they automatically launched iPhone Mirroring, connected to my iPhone, and launched the correct app on the iPhone. It all seems perfectly logical and not a big deal—until you start to think about what has to happen behind the scenes to make all of that work smoothly.

That said, I did encounter some issues. Apple says that the screen will automatically rotate into horizontal orientation when an app requires it, which I found to be true, but there seems to be no way to force a rotation when you’d prefer to use an app horizontally that also works vertically. I also couldn’t seem to bring up Control Center or watch video (presumably due to anti-piracy features?).

Still, this feature is awesome. As someone who sits at my Mac all day, it makes my iPhone and my Mac far more useful to me by making them work even better together.

Put windows in a corner

You can tile windows via drags, keyboard shortcuts, menu items, or straight from the green button in the title bar.

Over the years, Apple has added numerous ways to organize your windows to macOS, from Spaces to Split View to Stage Manager. In macOS Sequoia, it’s finally offering an approach similar to what Microsoft has offered on Windows for a while now: simple window tiling.

Yes, it’s a feature that’s been implemented by numerous macOS utilities over the years, and those utilities will almost certainly offer users more options and customizability than the basic functionality Apple offers. But most people don’t seek out UI-customization utilities, and adding tiling to macOS will help those people. And as usually happens, Apple’s basic implementation will eventually lead to those users seeking out a third-party app that gives them more control.

In any event, Apple’s tiling is certainly basic. You can drag a window to the top, side, or corner of the screen in order to make it quickly resize and fill that half or quarter of your display. By default, nothing happens until you drag a window and your pointer hits a boundary, at which point you’ll see a ghostly rectangle that indicates where your window will be placed. If you want to see it more quickly, you can hold down Option, which makes the ghostly rectangle appear right away (and if you like what you see, you can release your click and the window will be immediately resized, no boundary needed).

I was impressed with one little detail: If you drag a window back out of its tiled place, it resumes the size and shape it had before it was tiled.

Window tile commands abound.

You can click and hold on the green “stoplight” button in the window’s title bar to choose from a few different arrangement options. There are also keyboard shortcuts that let you arrange windows in a hurry. These are bound to an item in the Windows menu called Move & Resize that offers shortcuts for many basic moves. The idea here is that you’ll build up some muscle memory about using keyboard shortcuts to send your windows left, right, up, or down.

Unfortunately, Apple seems to have bound these commands to the Globe key, and if you don’t use an Apple keyboard you can’t access those shortcuts without third-party add-ons. Also, there are no keyboard shortcuts at all for the quarter-screen-based tiling commands.

I’m also disappointed about just how basic Apple’s window-tiling options are. I don’t expect Apple to replicate Moom—in fact, I’m glad they didn’t try—but as an inveterate “put the window in the center” person, I’m surprised that Apple only seems to think people want to divide windows in halves or quarters, rather than thirds.

Still, this is a good addition to macOS. Given that most Mac users are using laptops these days, though, I’m not sure how many of them will find tiling to be the solution to their problems. Users with Macs attached to larger displays, however, may find it quite refreshing.

Videoconference boosts

Look, ma, I’m on the Rainbow Stage! (Not really.)

One of the areas of macOS that’s seen the most improvement in recent years is how the system processes video input. Rather than passing through webcam video directly to apps like Zoom and FaceTime, that video is processed by macOS, using a lot of the same techniques Apple uses to process video and still images on the iPhone.

In 2021, the Mac got support for Portrait Mode. In 2022 it was Continuity Camera, which threw iPhone-quality optics into the mix. And last year, macOS Sonoma brought a slew of layered animated effects, reaction, and presentation overlays.

This year, Apple’s added background replacement to the mix. This is a feature that you’ve seen in a million different apps, in which your background can be replaced entirely with a different image. (I use this when I’m playing D&D—for atmosphere!—or when I’m traveling and want it to look like I’m still in my home studio.)

In a way, Apple’s late to the game with this feature, but its presence means that you can replace your background in any app, not just ones with their own replacement feature. And you may well find that you’ll prefer to turn off the app’s background feature and use Apple’s instead. Apple is clearly using its very good machine-learning-based subject detection algorithm to separate you from your background.

It’s the same technique it uses for portrait mode and its clever cut-out presenter overlay feature, but background replacement does expose the flaws of this technique better than just about any other feature. Apple’s implementation is great, better than I’ve seen in any videoconferencing app, especially in good lighting. Apple supplies some background images (pretend you’re at Apple Park!) and color gradients, but you can also add in your own.

Safari additions

Make those annoying elements disappear.

Apple has rolled a bunch of new features into Safari this time out, and there’s none with more potential than Hide Distracting Items. It’s sort of like an ad blocker, but I think that’s the wrong way of looking at it. If you’re not someone who uses an ad blocker, you’ve undoubtedly run into a page that you want to read—but there’s a blinking ad, or an auto-playing video, or something else that makes staying on that page deeply unpleasant. When you click on the Reader icon and choose Hide Distracting Items, you can click on any annoying item and have Safari make it disappear in a shower of particles as if Thanos had snapped it away.

Yes, this means you can arbitrarily block ads—and on some sites, they won’t come back for quite a while, if ever. I know that a lot of people get upset about the idea of ad blocking—I definitely make a good portion of my income from ads on various websites and in various podcasts—but in my opinion, Apple’s taking the right approach here. Sure, you can use Hide Distracting Items to block anything you want, but what it’s made to do is get rid of that awful thing that makes it hard for you to read a page. I know it’s hard out there on the Internet for publishers, but beyond a certain point, distracting items are a violation of the contract between publisher and reader. I have no qualms in hiding an animated ad or a video when it’s so obnoxious that I can’t focus, and nobody else should, either.

Safari Viewer forces embedded video to fill the window.

Apple has expanded Safari’s Reader feature to be a lot more than just a reader. When a page has more information to offer, the new Highlights icon appears at the left side of the Smart Bar, where the Reader icon has lived up to now. (To use Reader, you now need to click on Highlights and then click again on the prominent blue Show Reader button.)
A local restaurant’s website automatically showed Maps links.

Apple says the Highlights pane will be populated with useful information gleaned from the page and site you’re on, such as a summary of an article, the location of restaurants and other businesses, and even links to movies, TV shows, and music when you’re browsing relevant articles. This all is powered by Apple’s own search engine, the same tool that has powered Spotlight searches for a while now.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag right now, though since this feature is driven by Apple’s own cloud services, I get the sense that the company will continue expanding the scope of sites that are covered over time. I was able to visit the website of a local restaurant and get a direct Maps link, and when I visited a Wikipedia page about a favorite album, it linked to the album on Apple Music. But it also unhelpfully reprinted the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page as the page’s “summary.” Yeah, Safari, I know. I’m looking right at it.

Likewise, Reader has been updated to add a sidebar featuring a table of contents and summary on some articles. I’m somewhat dubious about the utility. If I’m choosing to use Reader on an article, do I need a summary? Is Reader for readers, or people who don’t want to read? Is the summary in the Highlights pane not enough?

Then there’s the new Video Viewer feature, which is essentially the video equivalent of Reader. When Safari identifies embedded video on a page, it displays a Video Viewer command in the menu that appears when you click on the Reader icon. Video Viewer lets you expand the video to fill the entire Safari window. It’s meant as an antidote to sites that embed video but surround it with garbage and don’t let you expand the video yourself.

It’s a nice idea, and when it worked for me, I could see its appeal. It dropped out everything else on the page, provided standard macOS video controls, and even automatically popped out into Picture-in-Picture mode when I switched to a different app, and returned to the Safari window when I went back to Safari.

Passwords becomes an app

It’s a full-featured password manager, bringing in features from Settings and Keychain Access.

After several years of building a full-featured password manager inside the Settings app (not to mention the separate repository of information in the Keychain Access utility), Apple has gone all-in on building a free-standing Passwords app, and it runs not just on the Mac, but on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. (You also have access to passwords on Windows via the iCloud app. It feels like one platform is missing here, somehow.)

So, the good news: the Passwords app puts Apple’s password management front and center in a way that it never was going to be when it was locked inside Settings. It’s got a nice, modern interface—think Reminders, but for passwords—and shows not just standard web logins but things like Wi-Fi passwords and rotating time-based codes and Passkeys. And since Apple lets you share passwords with other people—you can create a seemingly unlimited number of arbitrary groups and then move passwords into those groups—it’s really a full-featured option that will suffice for many users. (To share an item with a group, just drag it out of the list and drop it onto the group, which appears in the app’s sidebar, or right-click and choose Move to Group.)

When I imported my 1Password file—a couple thousand passwords that, I admit, could stand to be pruned back—Passwords bogged down. It would say it had imported my file, but then not show any evidence that the new items had been added—and inevitably, once I attempted to import the items again, it would end up importing them twice. I guess the first import was in progress? But there was no indication that an import was still going on. The app needs to do a better job of showing the current status of imports, and probably should not import duplicates of existing items. Deleting items also took a very long time.

The Passwords app is missing some features that you might expect from using other password apps, though in most cases it’s because Apple offers a different approach to solving the same problem. Password doesn’t offer secure notes, because that’s what Notes is for. It doesn’t save credit cards, because that’s what the Wallet settings panel does, sort of, though it doesn’t do nearly as good a job as 1Password. I also use 1Password to save all sorts of other information—passport numbers, software serial numbers, even SSH keys—in a sort of digital junk drawer. Should Passwords do all those things? Probably not, but I do think that there probably should be an answer for more disordered important information that’s not just “put it in a Secure Note.”

Messages finally gets me

Emoji reactions (and colored tapbacks), at long last.

Across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, Apple is upgrading Messages to let people express themselves better. That’s a good impulse, and after a false start last year (in which Apple attempted to catch up with literally every other messaging service by misguidedly repurposing its sticker functionality), the company has really delivered.

Yes, in addition to slapping a fresh coat of (color!) paint on the classic set of Tapbacks icons, Apple has finally introduced proper support for any emoji to be used as a reaction to an iMessage. When you tap back (or control-click/two-finger-click on Mac) to a message, you now get two lines of reaction options: the first contains the more colorful classics, and the second features the emojis you’ve most recently used to react. You can, of course, use the emoji picker to find the right one.

(When you react, people with older versions of Apple’s operating systems will see a new message that says something like reacted ?? to “HAHA”. Inelegant, but it maintains backward compatibility.)

There’s also support for per-character text formatting, so you can finally use bold and italic in messages, as well as apply animation effects to individual words instead of the entire message. Giving people a broader palette to use to express themselves is always a good choice.

There’s also one more pragmatic new feature: Send Later. You can now tell Messages to send a message at a later time. Last night I remembered, just before going to bed, that I wanted to send a few pictures of a new addition to the family to my mom. It was way past her bedtime and I didn’t want I disturb her. With the new Messages, I could’ve set that message to send in the morning when she was certain to be awake.

This appears to be a server-side feature; Apple says that if your device isn’t connected at the moment when the message is set to send, it’ll still send. Another good choice. After years of Apple seeming to take Messages and iMessage for granted, these are all welcome updates.

Security that fails the test

It’s a multi-step process to open an unsigned app for the first time.

One unwelcome trend in macOS design the last few years has been an increased level of interference with the user in the name of privacy and security. As I’ve argued before, I admire Apple’s attempts to add modern security approaches to the Mac, a system designed in a very different environment decades ago. I just think that Apple has tended to make users pay for the decisions Apple makes, when it should be Apple investing in better ways to interact with users about security issues.

This year, the biggest issue involves apps that haven’t been notarized by Apple. In other words, these are apps that have refused (for whatever reason) to submit to Apple’s process of scanning and cryptographically signing before distribution. While Apple lets the user choose whether to run apps only from the App Store or also allow apps that are outside of the App Store but notarized, there’s no option to also allow apps that aren’t notarized. It used to be that a savvy user could right-click on a new, unsigned app and choose Open to kick off a quick approval process to launch that app for the first time.

That loophole has been closed, which seems unfortunate. (You had to know the shortcut and still validate that you wanted to open the app.) Now you’ve got to take quite a few more steps. On first double-click, Apple warns you that “Apple could not verify [the app] is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.” Your options are Done or Move to Trash. That’s it. Your Mac will refuse to run the app that you downloaded and tried to run, and it won’t even tell you what to do to fix it.

Here’s what you have to do: Open the Settings app, click on Privacy & Security, scroll all the way down to the Security section at the very bottom, and you’ll see a note that reads “[App] was blocked to protect your Mac.” There’s an Open Anyway button here you can click.

It still doesn’t open the app.

Instead, you now have to return to Finder and double-click the app, at which point you’re greeted with a warning: “Apple is not able to verify that [the App] is free from malware that could harm your Mac or compromise your privacy. Don’t open this unless you are certain it is from a trustworthy source.” You are once again strongly encouraged by a default button to move the app to the trash, but you can choose to “Open Anyway” if you really want to.

The app still won’t open, though.

The next step is an authentication. A user with administrative privileges must authenticate to make sure that you’re triple-dog sure that you want to launch the app. Once that authentication is done, the app will launch—and you never have to go through this rigamarole again with that app. At least, until the next time you update it.

Once again, I don’t doubt that unsigned apps are a vector for malware and scamware and that Apple has the best intentions in trying to prevent people from launching them unawares. But this new approach, which involves nearly a half-dozen steps, goes way too far. It crosses a line, I think, between Apple trying to protect the user and Apple aggressively trying to poison any app that would defy its notarization scheme.

It’s on Apple to work with developers to stop this dialog from ever appearing.

Apple has promised to let you run any software you want on your Mac, but it never promised it wouldn’t make the process painful, I guess. I don’t like it. This is just too much.

I haven’t even mentioned what Apple has done for apps that need to capture your entire screen. Apple has built a new window-sharing API that’s more private and secure, which is great—but some apps need more access than that, and Apple has apparently decided that most of them don’t deserve it. Instead, they trigger a user-hostile warning to authorize the app—but only for a month—before they’ll be asked again.

Once again, it’s not that the impulse is bad, it’s that Apple has put the burden on the software developer and the user rather than doing the work itself. If some notable utility apps need more than Apple’s API can deliver, it’s on Apple to figure out how to work around that problem, and forcing monthly approvals by the user is not the way to do that. I hope Apple reaches out to all the developers who have slipped through the cracks and figures out a way to allow useful utilities to safely and securely continue to do their jobs—without alienating them from their users.

In the name of making the Mac a safer place to be, right now Apple’s also making it a worse place to be. This is not an acceptable trade-off. It’s incumbent on Apple to make the Mac safer without compromising usability.

Put bluntly, macOS Sequoia fails this test.

More new features

Of course, in addition to the bigger attractions, there are always a large number of assorted new features that are sprinkled throughout Apple’s platforms. Here’s a brief peek into those:

You can plan hiking routes, view them on topographical maps, and save them to refer to later on an iPhone.

Apple Maps has added trail navigation and topographic maps, across Apple’s major platforms. Letting hikers plan out their hikes and navigate on trails is a great upgrade. Apple has also loaded in hikes for U.S. National Parks. All of this is going to be more relevant on an iPhone, but people do build hiking plans on their Macs and iPads, so it’s good to cover all bases.

Notes now will let you record audio and generate a transcript of the recording, which you can display in a column alongside your notes. I feel like there’s more to be done here in terms of taking notes during a lecture or meeting and linking the comments to the transcript, but it’s a start. You can also now do math inside a note automatically, just by typing an equation followed by the equals sign. And at long last, you can now expand and collapse sections in a Note based on the header, which can keep things tidy in a long, complex document.

Photos has changed dramatically on the iPhone and iPad, but it hasn’t changed much on the Mac. The sidebar has been rearranged a bit, with a new Collections section that helps surface some new automatic groupings of photos. You can now create groups of People and Pets, so you can organize all photos with a collection of people without building a Smart Album. The new Trips feature uses location and time data to intuit when you’ve been traveling and build collections automatically based on that.

New classic Mac-inspired desktops, screenavers, and lock screens are gorgeous.

Desktop and Screensavers get an injection of fun with the new Macintosh screen saver and wallpaper settings, which generates dynamic, colorful artwork based on classic bitmap graphics images from old Macs. The results are gorgeous. The other day, my desktop wallpaper featured the classic System Error bomb icon and a bright green background. Chef’s kiss.

But what about Apple Intelligence?

So, now, to the headliner of the season. One of the biggest strategic moves in Apple’s history is jumping on the Artificial Intelligence train, which it is doing with the launch of Apple Intelligence—later this year. Only Apple Silicon Macs will support these features.)

I’m not going to over-cover these features in this article, because they’re still in beta and aren’t part of the 15.0 release. I’ve been using macOS 15.1 alongside macOS 15.0 this summer, and can report that the Apple Intelligence tools thus far run the gamut from useful to unimpressive.

The built-in Writing Tools have a lot of promise, most especially in offering corrections to your writing to make it more correct, though the interface was pretty messy the last time I checked. I’m less sold on the tools that re-word your writing and change its tone, but again, it’s got some applications—as long as it’s used responsibly.

I really like the idea of using summarization functionality to do things like summarize emails in Mail before you open the message, summarizing collections of notifications for things like group chats, and building a new Priority Notifications Focus mode that intelligently filters what you’re allowed to see.

Photos is a big beneficiary of Apple Intelligence features too, with a new ability to create on-demand Memories collections based on text input—you type “days at the beach with Jamie” and it generates a collection and a movie automatically. But the star feature is Clean Up, which lets you erase items from the backgrounds of images. It’s a feature that has been available in third-party apps for ages, but Apple has finally built it into Photos, and it works quite well.

Other features promised by Apple Intelligence—an enhanced Siri and image generation among them—will appear later and weren’t available in beta form, or weren’t good enough to evaluate. I look forward to trying out these features when they ship to the general public, and watch as they involve and improve. Until then, we’ll all have to sit tight and wait.

And now, an intermission

Sometimes an opening act can surprise you. Yes, it’s often a nameless band that faded into obscurity, but sometimes you end up catching someone remarkable at a late stage of their career, a cult band gone before their time, or even a future hall-of-fame singer just as her first hit is breaking wide.

All the stuff in macOS Sequoia 15.0 might not be what we remember in five or ten years—we’ll remember the headliner, for good or for bad, after Apple Intelligence arrives and makes its impression on us. But there’s still a lot of here to enjoy in the moment, as we wait for the rest of it to arrive. Like the last few macOS releases, this one seems quite gentle. There aren’t major refigurings happening in macOS—it’s still the Mac we know and love. A few features have gotten a bit nicer, some items have gotten a good glow-up, and the whole thing feels pretty solid and stable.

As for what happens next? We’ll have to wait for the roadies to clear the stage, set things up, and anticipate what will happen when the lights start to dim.

Link: sixcolors.com

[Zen Dollar Round] Geekbench AI Geekbench AI is a benchmarking app from Primate Labs Inc. for tes...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/10/2024 12:47:37 PM

Geekbench AI

Geekbench AI is a benchmarking app from Primate Labs Inc. for testing AI performance and accuracy across platforms.

Geekbench AI is a benchmarking suite with a testing methodology for machine learning, deep learning, and AI-centric workloads, all with the same cross-platform utility and real-world workload reflection that our benchmarks are well-known for. Software developers can use it to ensure a consistent experience for their apps across platforms, hardware engineers can use it to measure architectural improvements, and everyone can use it to measure and troubleshoot device performance with a suite of tasks based on how devices actually use AI.

Geekbench AI 1.1 is a free download for macOS 14 or later, iOS 17 or later, Windows, Linux, and Android. Test results, which differ between versions 1.0 and 1.1, are automatically collected for comparison. A $99 Pro license provides extra benefits, such as standalone, automated, private, and commercial testing.

A blog post from John Poole offers more background about the challenges involved in AI benchmarking and how he approached it.

[Zen Dollar Round] LibreOffice 24.8 LibreOffice is a cross-platform, open-source office software s...

Zen Dollar Round — 9/3/2024 5:56:16 PM

LibreOffice 24.8

LibreOffice is a cross-platform, open-source office software suite from The Document Foundation that offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, a drawing application that does 3D, a database front-end, and file compatibility with Microsoft Office and other formats. (See the LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office feature comparison and LibreOffice documentation for more details.)

LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, starting with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats in the areas of security and robustness – to superior support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In addition, LibreOffice provides filters for a large number of legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.

The latest LibreOffice version adds Windows ARM support, a “new mode of password-based ODF encryption” and more privacy protections, among “a wealth of new features, plus a large number of interoperability improvements.”

LibreOffice 24.8 is a free, donationware download for macOS 10.15 and later (with a separately installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE) required for some features, notably the database front-end, Base). Separate native versions of LibreOffice are provided for Intel and Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Macs, and LibreOffice is fully supported on Linux, along with Windows. A LibreOffice Bookshelf offers lots of documentation, and a history of LibreOffice security updates is provided.

[Zen Dollar Round] Critical Chrome security update (128.0.6613.85) Chrome 128.0.6613.85 patches th...

Zen Dollar Round — 8/27/2024 9:22:18 PM

Critical Chrome security update (128.0.6613.85)

Chrome 128.0.6613.85 patches the ninth and tenth critical, zero-day security flaws being actively exploited in Google’s web browser ( CVE-2024-7965 and CVE-2024-7971). Microsoft Edge and other Chromium-based browsers (e.g. Brave, Opera, Arc, and Chromium itself) will also need the critical patches.

Google tags a tenth Chrome zero-day as exploited this year

Today, Google revealed that it patched the tenth zero-day exploited in the wild in 2024 by attackers or security researchers during hacking contests. … This was announced in an update to a blog post where the company revealed last week that it had fixed another high-severity zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2024-7971 )… “Updated on 26 August 2024 to reflect the in the wild exploitation of CVE-2024-7965 which was reported after this release,” the company said in today’s update. “Google is aware that exploits for CVE-2024-7971 and CVE-2024-7965 exist in the wild.”

Google will only support macOS 11 and later with the next release and currently requires macOS 10.15, while Firefox ESR 115 supports Macs running macOS 10.12 and later, providing up-to-date security patches even for these older systems.

Google has also changed its extension system, disabling the uBlock Origin ad-blocker plug-in among others.

Chrome’s Manifest V3 and uBlock Origin

Chromium, the open-source web browser project on which Google Chrome and other browsers are built – and available for Linux, macOS, iOS, and Windows – doesn’t include Google’s proprietary alterations, such as Google’s tracking mechanisms.

Additional links:

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ZDR's take: Big changes for Google's Chrome recently as it clamps down on extensions that allow blocking of advertisements, still far and away Google/Alphabet's largest source of revenue.

[Zen Dollar Round] If I were a video editor or wanted to become one, I'd concentrate on using the s...

Zen Dollar Round — 8/22/2024 4:50:13 PM

If I were a video editor or wanted to become one, I'd concentrate on using the software I posted on the previous page, DaVinci Resolve.

It's incredibly powerful software and the free version provides a surprising amount of functionality.

Given that, I plan to learn it and use it if I have to move beyond iMovie for editing videos I make, especially drone videos.

An article highlighting why it's so popular is linked at the bottom of that post, but here it is again to be sure no one misses it:

Why Video Editors are Switching to DaVinci Resolve in Droves

Video editors are flocking to DaVinci Resolve in droves, marking a major paradigm shift in the editing landscape that we haven’t seen since the dreadful launch of Final Cut Pro X drove users to Adobe Premiere Pro.

[Zen Dollar Round] DaVinci Resolve 19 DaVinci Resolve is professional, cross-platform video editi...

Zen Dollar Round — 8/22/2024 4:39:23 PM

DaVinci Resolve 19

DaVinci Resolve is professional, cross-platform video editing and production software from Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd. that’s free to use while offering a powerful collection of capabilities.

DaVinci Resolve is the world’s only solution that combines editing, color correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post production all in one software tool! … High end professionals working on feature films and television shows use DaVinci Resolve more than any other solution!

Features include various edit types (overwrite, insert, ripple overwrite, replace, fit to fill, append at end etc.) and styles “from drag-and-drop to the timeline, to three-point precision editing driven by customizable keyboard shortcuts”, multicam/multisource playback in a gridded window, finishing tools, VFX support and far more.

Resolve also integrates Fairlight audio tools for recording, editing, mixing, sweetening, finishing and mastering, including 3D audio support, and it includes multi-user collaboration features with individual logins, media management and support for specialized hardware control panels.

In sync with trends at Apple and elsewhere, Resolve has adopted AI features.

The DaVinci Neural Engine uses state of the art deep neural networks and machine learning, along with artificial intelligence to power features such as facial recognition, object detection, smart reframing, speed warp retiming, super scale up-scaling, auto color and color matching and more!

Resolve 19, the latest version, was just released following a beta-test period (and requires changes to existing project files).

DaVinci Resolve 19 introduces powerful new DaVinci Neural Engine AI tools and over 100 feature upgrades! Editors can work directly with transcribed audio to find speakers and edit timeline clips. Colorists can produce rich film like tones with the ColorSlice six vector palette and produce cinematic images using the new film look creator effect which emulates photometric film processes. In Fairlight, the IntelliTrack AI can be used to track motion and automatically pan audio. VFX artists in Fusion have an expanded set of USD tools plus a new multipoly rotoscoping tool. The cut page has new broadcast replay tools for live multi camera broadcast editing, playout and replay with speed control.

DaVinci Resolve 19 is available as a free installer download for macOS 12 and later, Linux, and Windows in return for registering name, address, phone and email information, while DaVinci Resolve Studio is priced at $295.

The free version of DaVinci Resolve is packed with more features than most paid software applications! You can use it to edit and finish up to 60 fps in resolutions as high as Ultra HD 3840 x 2160. You get extensive color grading tools including luma, HSL and 3D keyers, color warper and HDR tools, video collage, elastic wave audio retiming and more. Plus it now also enables collaboration so multiple people can work on the same project, all at the same time! Once you’ve learned how to use DaVinci Resolve and gain more experience, you can move up to DaVinci Resolve Studio. With over 50 advanced features, Studio includes DaVinci Neural Engine, additional Resolve FX, stereoscopic 3D and more!

[Zen Dollar Round] Microsoft app vulnerabilities The Register notes a report from Cisco Talos ...

Zen Dollar Round — 8/20/2024 10:47:54 PM

Microsoft app vulnerabilities

The Register notes a report from Cisco Talos about Microsoft apps that bypass some of Apple’s macOS security systems, enabling potential exploitation by malware.

Multiple flaws in Microsoft macOS apps unpatched despite potential risks

Cisco Talos says eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s macOS apps could be abused by nefarious types to record video and sound from a user’s device, access sensitive data, log user input, and escalate privileges. The vulnerabilities exist across Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and Word, but Microsoft told Talos it won’t be fixing them. … Despite designating these vulnerabilities low-risk status and refusing to patch them, Microsoft has since updated its Teams apps, and OneNote, removing the entitlement that allowed library injection, essentially mitigating the bugs. The Office apps were left untouched, though, and to Benvenuto remain unnecessarily vulnerable.

Multiple Microsoft Apps for macOS Vulnerable to Library Injection Attacks

Widely used Microsoft apps for macOS are vulnerable to library injection attacks that let adversaries use the applications’ entitlements to bypass macOS’s strict permission-based security model and controls.

Attackers can abuse the vulnerable apps to execute a variety of malicious actions — like surreptitiously sending emails from a user’s account or recording audio and video clips — without the user’s knowledge and without the need for any user interaction.

Researchers from Cisco Talos recently discovered the issues when researching the exploitability of Apple’s Transparency, Consent and Control ( TCC) framework for managing and enforcing privacy settings on user data and various system services on macOS systems

Link: macintouch.com

[Zen Dollar Round] Be aware that High Sierra is the first macOS to use APFS, the new file system su...

Zen Dollar Round — 8/14/2024 3:11:45 PM

Be aware that High Sierra is the first macOS to use APFS, the new file system superseding HFS+ and designed for solid state storage media like SSDs.

Upgrading to High Sierra does not automatically convert Mac boot drives to APFS if they have a hard drive installed, but it will for SSDs. APFS was never optimized for traditional spinning hard drives and it's better to leave them as HFS+ for better performance.

Apple has released iOS and iPadOS updates to fix syncing issues with iTunes and older Macs in the past, so that is a possibility. It's clear they don't test anymore with iTunes syncing or these problems wouldn't occur in the first place.