Posts about macOS
The most pleasant surprise of Sequoia is its application compatibility. I didn’t encounter any significant breakages in my day-to-day apps. For my first couple of days using Safari with the Bitwarden extension, some complex webpages failed to render correctly. This eventually resolved itself, so I assume some caches needed to be updated. Bitwarden is failing…
Sonoma 14.1
In the Mojave 10.14.5 update, Apple broke reliable SMB file sharing. Organizations found that the SMB service would stop responding after a few hours of uptime. Apple addressed this problem in 10.14.6. Apple has another SMB problem. In this case, I’m talking about Small and Medium-sized Businesses. Apple has gradually been moving away from server…
APFS is Apple’s new file system, introduced in High Sierra. One of my favorite features of APFS is its partitioning mechanism. APFS volumes can be added and removed with ease to a container using Disk Utility. What’s fantastic is that there is no need to size APFS volumes. The volumes will grow and shrink…
Yubico sells Mac-compatible USB authentication keys for two-factor authentication. Its YubiKeys support a slew of authentication mechanisms. I just started working with their FIPS-validated key for one of my clients. Yubico’s FIPS keys appear to be functionally equivalent to their YubiKey 4 series. (Yubico is currently selling the 5 series for those customers without a need for…
I’ve been using Mojave for a week and I’m still impressed. It’s a very stable operating system. While the core OS has been working well, I’ve encountered third-party compatibility issues. The most serious issue is that QuickBooks for Mac 2019, which is supposed to be compatible with Mojave, crashes consistently when the customer payments…
I took the plunge and installed macOS Mojave on my 2009 Mac Pro (with firmware hack) right after it was released. So far, so good. Here are my initial findings and thoughts: The installer required a Mac Pro firmware update to version 138.0.0.0.0. During the installation I saw a black screen for 50 minutes,…
I usually write about my clients’ computing woes, but even Mac consultants have their own problems. A few weeks ago my 2009 Mac Pro starting exhibiting serious issues. I had kernel panics and hard crashes a couple of times a day. When I restarted the machine, it wouldn’t boot most of the time. The fans blasted…
In the latest versions of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, you now have the option of storing your iMessages in iCloud. There are two benefits. First, your messages are synced across your devices. When you delete a conversation on one device, the conversation is deleted on all your devices. Second, your older messages…
I noticed that NIST recently published the Draft Special Publication 800-179: Guide to Securing Apple OS X 10.10 Systems for IT Professionals. I’m looking forward to reading it. The public comment period is June 23 through August 15th, 2016. The authors are careful to note that the recommendations only apply to 10.10, Yosemite. (System Integrity Protection,…