Mac problem-solving

A list of articles to help you solve problems on Macs running Big Sur and Monterey (11-12). For older articles about previous versions of OS X, see this article.
For basic help with managing problems, see my Mac Troubleshooting Summary.

Here is a downloadable PDF chart with links to all the product pages of my free utilities:
AppSelectionChart

Accessing this blog – news feeds and pages
How to get news on Apple’s latest updates, and updates to my apps

Updates and changing updates – Ventura and support for El Capitan and Sierra

macOS 14

Is this the end for eficheck and non-T2 Intel Macs?

macOS 13 Ventura

Ventura 13.4 makes network diagnostic logging harder
Close, but still no banana: Disk Utility 22.6
Volume names, mount points and normalisation
How help works and how it doesn’t
How macOS now tracks the provenance of apps
What causes App Translocation?
All in the numbers – macOS version numbering
Did that update just break something? How bad updates are getting less likely
Safe mode, caches and CacheDelete
What is a Rapid Security Response (RSR)?
Ventura 13.3.1 can’t change the password of sparse bundles
How Ventura space management tracks changes
When the numbers don’t add up – purgeable and available space
Which files are purgeable? Look with new versions of Sparsity and Precize
Ventura space management: what gets purged and how?
The Finder confuses with wildly inaccurate figures for available space
Finder or loser? – Finder’s volume size bugs
When the Finder’s error exceeds 50%
The app that won’t go into quarantine
Apple has released macOS Ventura 13.3.1, and Safari 16.4.1
Just which volumes are encrypted?
How Cryptexes are changing macOS Ventura
Getting more from Disk Utility’s First Aid
fsck status 65 – Disk Utility errors
What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.3?
Are you ready for 13.3 or 9.1?
What is macOS Ventura doing tracking provenance?
Using a Mac without a network connection
Ventura has changed app quarantine with a new xattr
How does Ventura check an app’s security?
Do Ventura’s signature checks work?
How troubleshooting has changed with macOS security
What’s the overhead of using APFS encryption?
Recovery on Apple silicon Macs has changed again
How does Time Machine make a backup?
macOS 13.2.1, authenticated restart and fdesetup
How Ventura is changing Login and Background Items
Controlling Login and Background Items in Ventura
Apple has released an urgent security update to Ventura 13.2.1
Why are security updates still so unreliable?
Curious bugs in Help Viewer and Stage Manager
What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.2?
Apple has released updates to Ventura 13.2, Monterey 12.6.3 and Big Sur 11.7.3
Is Apple checking images we view in the Finder?
App Nap, undead and nascent apps in Ventura
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 1 Getting started
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 2 Workflow strategies
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 3 Apps and windows
How Stage Manager works in the log
How do you know when macOS detects and remediates malware?
Can you rely on macOS Ventura for malware protection?
How much free space does Ventura need to update?
Why won’t Ventura let me install that?
What has changed in Ventura 13.1?
Apple has released Ventura 13.1 and security updates to Monterey and Big Sur
Disk performance of lightweight macOS VMs on Apple silicon
Lightweight virtualisation in Ventura
Cryptex: how a custom iPhone is changing macOS updates
How does Ventura update faster? Inside the macOS update process
Apple has released Ventura 13.0.1
Disk Utility and Time Machine in Ventura
Fixes and flaws in Ventura 13.0
Reference info for Ventura, and macOS 11 and 12 updates, is complete
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 7)
Did you jump or were you pushed?, Ventura upgrade
Silently updated security data files in Ventura
Stage Manager, intuition and changing interfaces
Ventura for early adopters
Ventura volume layout
Apple has released Ventura, and security updates to Monterey and Big Sur
First call for Ventura
From Control Panels to System Settings in Ventura
The transition from Preferences to Settings
How to keep Monterey when upgrading to Ventura
Preparing to upgrade to Ventura
Should you run a Linux server on Apple silicon?
Why some apps won’t run in Ventura and how to fix it
Should you upgrade to Ventura early, then?
Apple can patch Ventura on the fly: RSR is coming
System Settings in Ventura: a turn for the worse?
Passkeys and biometrics
Apple harvest is coming
Why Passkeys are so important, and how you can use them now
Why Ventura’s Stage Manager is so important
Why you should consider upgrading to Ventura early
12 Installing Linux is different
Lightweight virtualisation of GUI Linux on Ventura
Should you risk or resist Ventura Public Beta?
Who needs Ventura’s Accessory Security?
Stuck together or flourishing apart? macOS, iPadOS and iOS
App security changes coming in Ventura
How might Ventura’s Rapid Security Response work?
Explainer: Virtualisation and Rosetta 2
Where we’re coming from: recent macOS
Where we’re heading: macOS 13 Ventura
When will Apple ship other M2 Macs?
Updates for Ventura and M2 Macs: SilentKnight, LockRattler and SystHist
Watch the ANE
Is Apple’s Malware Removal Tool dropping out of macOS 13?

macOS 12 Monterey

Did Monterey’s updates get any smaller?
How to run a server on macOS Monterey?
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 11 Machine identities
Apple has just released macOS Monterey 12.5.1 update
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 10 Which app?
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 9 Monterey’s limitations
Wrinkles in Universal Control
How Rich Text can vanish in QuickLook
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 8 How Apple limits VMs
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 7 Improving the virtual display
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 6 Support limits
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 5 Hypervisors and virtualisation
Serious bugs remaining in Monterey: a working list
What has changed in Monterey 12.5?
Apple has just released Monterey 12.5 update, Big Sur 11.6.8 and Catalina SU 2022-005
Second beta of Viable for virtualising macOS on Apple silicon Macs
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 4 Core allocation in VMs
Introducing Viable, to virtualise macOS on Apple silicon Macs
An illustrated guide to Recovery on Apple silicon Macs
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 3 Configuration, VM and boot
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 2 How does it work?
Virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs: 1 How well does it work?
Startup and Recovery Modes on M1 and M2 Macs
How to burn a Blu-ray disc in Monterey
Alas ColorSync Utility!
Whodunnit? The housekeeper that killed an app
Apple has just pushed the first solo XProtect Remediator update
Has the Finder become badly behaved?
Introducing XProtect Remediator, successor to MRT
Inside Universal Control
The magic is how not what – Live Text and Visual Look Up
Inside Live Text
Why Monterey’s Finder Find memory leak may not be fixed
Does a faster external SSD help M1 Macs boot faster?
How to investigate network problems effectively
Calibrating your display in Monterey
Will Disk Utility ever work properly?
Read Japanese using Live Text and Translation
Disk Utility can only check backup disks in Recovery
How much free space does an APFS disk need?
What has changed in Monterey 12.4?
Monterey 12.4 update, Big Sur 11.6.6 and Catalina SU 2022-004 are now available
The slim hope of recovery – M1 Recovery Mode and external boot disks
Inside Apple Archive: performance and control
Inside Apple Archive: more than a compression format
What’s the fastest way to transfer files with M1 Macs?
Do M2 Macs need better storage support?
Which SSDs can you boot your M1 Mac from? Do hard disks work too?
Why more apps need speed controls
Inside the new macOS update log
How macOS manages M1 CPU cores
Mirages in the file system: Update and backups
Booting a Mac Studio from an external SSD, and what it doesn’t solve
kextermination is coming
Why M1 Macs don’t have full support for USB-C
How to enable, use and fix Visual Look Up
triald is all about Machine Learning
Trial ethics
What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?
Digging deeper into Trial using Mints
What has changed in Monterey 12.3.1?
Apple has released Monterey 12.3.1 update
Live Text, Visual Look Up, Face Recognition, ML and Privacy
When Visual Look Up fails
How Visual Look Up works in detail 2: Object recognition and Live Text
How Visual Look Up works in detail 1: paintings on Intel and M1 Macs
Spatial Audio, the Sound pane and Audio MIDI Setup
Is Look Up destined for CSAM?
Explainer: macOS updaters
Which of Monterey’s features aren’t available where?
macOS has different strategies for M1 cores
How good is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?
What has changed in macOS Monterey 12.3?
Apple has released Monterey 12.3, Big Sur 11.6.5 and Catalina SU 2022-003
Hidden controls for system settings in macOS
What performance to expect in the Mac Studio
How Monterey checks apps and executable code
Can’t upgrade to Monterey? Try these
Apple has released Monterey 12.2.1 and a Safari update
What has changed in macOS Monterey 12.2.1?
Diagnosing Bluetooth problems in Monterey
Have Monterey updates got smaller?
There’s still a hole in my bucket, Monterey’s memory leak
Looking ahead to macOS 12.3: Python, DropBox and OneDrive changes
How to work around Monterey’s Finder memory leak
What has changed in Monterey 12.2?
Apple has released Monterey 12.2, Big Sur 11.6.3 and Catalina SU updates
Why Time Machine backups can be interminably slow
Memory Lane: Grokking memory problems in Activity Monitor
What does Safe Mode do to an M1 Mac?
Solutions for macOS Monterey and Big Sur
Inside iCloud+ Private Relay: can it be trusted?
Booting an M1 Mac from hardware to kexts: 1 Hardware
Booting an M1 Mac from hardware to kexts: 2 LLB and iBoot
Booting an M1 Mac from hardware to kexts: 3 XNU, the kernel
How M1 Macs can run old firmware when Intel Macs can’t
How Secure Boot works on M1 series Macs
Maintaining macOS has changed
Is backing up to networked storage improving?
Shrinking macOS updates
When you can’t restart an M1 Mac from an external disk
Boot disk layout in macOS Monterey
How Recovery works on M1 series Macs
Apple has released Monterey 12.1 update, and security updates for Big Sur and Catalina
What has changed in Monterey 12.1?
Just like that: the Finder’s failed trick with APFS
Those little annoyances in Monterey 12.0.1
FaceTime’s new effect and modes
Erase All Contents and Settings: prepare your Mac for disposal and more
More memory leaks in Monterey 12.0.1: how to avoid them
Disk Utility still can’t check and repair APFS volumes and containers
Why won’t that Help book open?
Monterey’s memory leak and how to avoid it
It’s the tiddly bits – changes in Monterey
Creating a bootable external disk with an M1 Pro in Monterey
Disk Utility now has full features for managing snapshots
Understanding snapshot data in Disk Utility
How to use offline translation in Monterey
AirPlay Display in Monterey
Shortcuts: flow control, filters, sorting and iteration
Monterey 12.0.1, Big Sur 11.6.1 and Catalina Security Update 2021-007: a summary
How macOS is more reliable, and doesn’t need reinstalling
The pioneers are winning – Monterey early adoption
Shortcuts: counting files and Quick Actions
Getting started with Shortcuts: 1 Basics
Shortcuts: Automating the Mac
Silently updated security data files in Monterey
Welcome to your new M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max Mac
What’s really coming in Monterey and other macOS updates next week
M1 Pro, M1 Max, the notch and Monterey
Marking time
Upgrading to Big Sur or Monterey: migrating Time Machine backups
How Monterey changes Apple Silicon Recovery
When we’re almost twelve – the coming of Monterey
How to create a bootable external disk in macOS 11 or 12
Throw caution to the wind – upgrading to Monterey
Explainer: Live Text
Which of Monterey’s features can your Mac use? A reference table
Should you clean install Big Sur or Monterey?
Retaining access to Big Sur when upgrading your M1 Mac to Monterey
How Apple intends checking images for CSAM
Better beta-testing
Shortcuts are coming to macOS
Will changes to notarization make any difference?
What isn’t changing in macOS Monterey
New Freeware menu, and Monterey compatibility
Which Macs will run macOS 12 Monterey? The answer isn’t simple
Which Macs will be officially supported by macOS 12?

macOS 11 Big Sur and Apple Silicon

See also my specialist M1 listing.

Power on Tap: Dynamic control of P cores in M1 chips
How macOS copes with heavy workloads on M1 cores
Running tasks on E cores can use a third of the energy of P cores
Don’t trust Activity Monitor on M1 Macs
M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2
Benchmarking the Mac Studio (Max) and M1 Pro MacBook Pro
The hunt for the M1’s neural engine
How to pick memory and storage for an M1 Mac
Making sense of M1 memory use
CPU %
WindowServer is hungry for memory on M1 Macs
A guided tour of M1 Recovery
Can you change lid behaviour of M1 MacBook Pros?
When an M1 Mac mini is faster than an M1 Pro: contention and core allocation
Core allocation in M1 chips
What shouldn’t you use an M1 series Mac for?
Scheduling of Threads on M1 Series Chips: second draft
How you can’t promote threads on an M1
How macOS manages many processes on M1 cores
How macOS controls performance: QoS on Intel and M1 processors
On M1 chips 1 + 1 = 4
Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win
Anomalies in base performance of M1 cores
Explainer: Vectors, Accelerate and poor performance on M1 Macs
Do M1 Pro and Max CPUs run slower on battery?
Comparing performance of M1 chips: 4 Icestorm
A Christmas Core Carol – overview of multiple cores on Apple systems
Comparing performance of M1 chips: 3 P and E
How can you compare the performance of M1 chips? 2 Core allocation
How can you compare the performance of M1 chips? 1 Geekbench
Using an M1 Mac: some basic principles
Monterey 12.0.1, Big Sur 11.6.1 and Catalina Security Update 2021-007: a summary
AsmAttic 4 gives insight into M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max performance
MacBook Pro scoresheet
Explainer: Unified memory
Backing up to network storage in Big Sur and beyond
Upgrading to Big Sur or Monterey: migrating Time Machine backups
Going beyond T2M2 with Mints: grokking Time Machine to APFS
Why you shouldn’t delete one of a Volume Group in macOS 11 or later
The macOS update problem
Biggest Sur by far
Inside macOS installer apps and disks
What has changed in macOS 11.6?
Apple has just released macOS Big Sur 11.6, a Catalina Security Update, and MRT 1.84
How to run commands and scripts on Efficiency cores
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Where’s my Data volume? Navigating boot volumes in macOS 10.15, 11 & 12
Hurricane and Icestorm – AMP, power, and background tasks
M1 Icestorm cores can still perform very well
How to create a bootable external disk in macOS 11 or 12
What’s ugliest about M1 Macs and needs improvement
Queue-jumping, hints and deep integration – inside M1 integration
What’s in an M1 chip, and what does it do differently?
What else changed in Big Sur 11.5.2 update?
What has changed in macOS 11.5.2?
Code in ARM Assembly: 14 Lanes and loads in NEON
Accelerating the M1 Mac: 13 an introduction to SIMD
When idiomatic code is slower, and how to Accelerate
Squeezing a thimbleful of update into a ten-gallon can
Why nothing else can back up to APFS like Time Machine does
Why are Big Sur updates so large?
Apple has released macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 update
Is that a thunderstorm coming? macOS 11.6, 12, and Apple Silicon Macs
Six years on from Yosemite to Big Sur
What has changed in macOS 11.5?
Owners and users: Primary and secondary systems on M1 Macs
The perils of M1 Ownership
Is it safe yet to upgrade to Big Sur?
Are there flaws in some ARM64 instructions?
A tendency to panic
Extensions are moving away from the kernel
Making a good Recovery: So many tools
Making a good Recovery: Installing a different macOS in Recovery
Rethinking recovery and re-installing macOS
Is there still something amiss in the M1 firmware?
Code in ARM Assembly: 12 Rounding and arithmetic
Code in ARM Assembly: 11 Floating point registers and conversions
Code in ARM Assembly: 10 Conditions without branches
Code in ARM Assembly: 9 Bit operations
Code in ARM Assembly: 8 Integer arithmetic
Code in ARM Assembly: 7 Moving data around
Code in ARM Assembly: 6 Flow, pipelines and performance
Code in ARM Assembly: 5 Conditional loops
Code in ARM Assembly: 4 Controlling flow
Code in ARM Assembly: 3 Working with pointers
Code in ARM Assembly: 2 Registers explained
Code in Assembly for Apple Silicon with the AsmAttic app (1)
Are macOS updates easier than ever?
Why you can’t make a snapshot of Big Sur’s System volume to roll back
In the recovery position (Recovery on M1 Macs)
How to make macOS betas and upgrades safer
Launching Recovery on an M1 Mac: Booting and control in 11.4
Booting an M1 Mac: external disks and local boot policy in macOS 11.4
M1 Macs have a third Recovery mode
How it took 6 months for M1 Macs to work properly
Why cloning Big Sur isn’t as useful for an M1 Mac
M1 Macs running Big Sur 11.4 support external disks fully
Big Sur 11.4 brings LocalPolicy and recovery access to M1 Macs
Can you create an external bootable disk by cloning an M1 Mac?
What has changed in Big Sur 11.4?
Feeling fast, the psychology of computer performance
M1 Secure Boot, morphine and self-destruction
Dealing with a kernel panic during M1 startup
How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS
Changing updating habits
Cores shouldn’t all be the same: M1 Macs do better
How to restore Spotlight search of Rich Text files
Booting an M1 Mac: external disks and local boot policy
How to boot an M1 Mac into an older version of Big Sur
Time Machine to APFS: When a network backup goes wrong
Would you regret an M1 iMac?
Apple has released Big Sur 11.3.1 update (updated)
AirTags, Big Sur and your privacy and safety
External bootable disks work better with M1 Macs in Big Sur 11.3
When will macOS updates hurt less?
Big Sur 11.3 bug tracker
Apple has released Big Sur 11.3 update
What has changed in macOS Big Sur 11.3?
How macOS launches an iOS app
Looking for the killer app
Can you trust floating-point arithmetic on Apple Silicon?
How macOS manages iOS apps: RunningBoard comes of age
iOS apps are translocated when run in macOS
How abysmal SMB performance can choke networked backups
Time Machine to APFS: Using a network share
Time Machine to APFS: First full backup
Are external boot disks a thing of the past?
Big Sur’s broken clock
Should you back up to APFS or HFS+?
Time Machine to APFS: How efficient are backups?
Big Sur has changed how macOS formats time
Big Sur’s Dock & Menu Bar pane remains a mess
Big Sur can prevent Ulbow, Mints and T2M2 from browsing its log
Time Machine to APFS: Changing disks
Essential reading for M1 Mac users
How big should the memory and SSD be in your next M1 Mac?
Time Machine to APFS: Maintenance and repair
Time Machine to APFS: Backup structure and access
Window controls in Big Sur
Time Machine to APFS: How processes have changed
Time Machine to APFS: Backing up
How to slip ‘unsigned’ apps past Gatekeeper in Big Sur
Next phase of the Apple Silicon transition
Big Sur’s Tower of Babel
Time Machine to APFS: Understanding backups
Time Machine to APFS: Initiating an auto backup
Apple has released Big Sur 11.2.3
Time Machine to APFS: Evolution
Back to measuring the performance of M1 Mac internal storage
Is APFS doing its job? Big Sur edition
Users are losing out against Big Sur’s sealed System
Big Sur 11.2.2 still doesn’t fix bugs with M1 external bootable disks
Apple has released Big Sur 11.2.2, an urgent fix for some MBP and MBA models (updated)
Checking disks on an M1 Mac
More M1 mysteries: Boot Recovery Assistant
Why your M1 may not have Fallback Recovery yet
M1 Macs have another hidden boot mode
Code-signing requirements for scripts and apps in Big Sur
Updating external disks and 1 True Recovery on an M1 Mac
Big Sur 11.2.1 update is broken
Big Sur, Software Update, Content Caching Server and M1 Macs
External boot disks still don’t work properly with M1 Macs
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.2.1?
How to roll your M1 Mac back to Big Sur 11.1
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.2?
Apple has released Big Sur update to version 11.2
Tackling extension problems in Big Sur
Big Sur 11.1: bug in log show command affecting Ulbow and Consolation
How Rosetta complicates call chains on M1 Macs
When you don’t have permission to run an app on an M1 Mac
Running Intel code on your M1 Mac: Rosetta 2 and OAH
System management and NVRAM on M1 Macs
Bluetooth status is worse than ever in Big Sur 11.1
A Guide to Startup Modes for Intel and M1 Macs
1 True Recovery
Is the Finder wobbly in Big Sur?
M1 Macs radically change boot and recovery
Big Sur boot volume layout
Big Sur’s icons die in the Dock
Intricacies of the boot disk
No Big Sur in Remote Recovery (Intel)
Internal SSDs can read files at extreme speed
So Santa brought you an M1 Mac: here’s what you should know
It looks like the M1 SSD is faster than those in Intel Macs, but…
Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk: it is possible
Is it not possible to boot an M1 Mac from an external disk?
Big Sur 11.1 is now available, with Security Updates for Catalina and Mojave
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.1?
Extensions, Big Sur and M1 Macs
Silently updated security data files in Big Sur
How fast is the SSD inside an M1 Mac?
How effective and safe is Preview’s redaction tool?
Cormorant now supports drag and drop, and can run ten times faster
Getting started with Time Machine to APFS in Big Sur
What happens when an M1 Mac starts up?
Can you trust QuickLook in Big Sur?
How fast is an M1 Target Disk?
Does Big Sur need a bit more Help?
Rosetta 2 won’t let the undead die
Use AppleArchive for compressing and decompressing files with Cormorant 1.0
SilentKnight 1.15 and LockRattler 4.30 do more on Big Sur and M1 Macs
Is Big Sur’s system volume sealed?
There’s more to the M1 than speed
Introducing your new M1 Mac
Startup modes for M1 Macs
Inside M1 Macs: Time and logs
Compress and decompress files using AppleArchive
How Big Sur checks Universal Apps
Upgrading to Big Sur 11.0.1: news from the surgery
SilentKnight version 1.14 for your Apple Silicon Mac
LockRattler version 4.29 should work a treat on your new M1 Mac
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 5) – for Big Sur
Still getting errors trying to upgrade to Big Sur?
The non-Universal binary: a cautionary tale
How unified memory blows the SoCs off the M1 Macs
Big Sur: Read this before upgrading
Wrangling file paths in Catalina and Big Sur
Preparing to upgrade to Big Sur
Should you upgrade to Big Sur early, or wait?
Boot volume layout
Times forgotten
Mints now tells you the (Mach absolute) time
Will Big Sur support the cloning of System volumes?
What could go wrong with apps on Big Sur and Apple Silicon?
Changing the clock in Apple Silicon Macs
Apple Silicon Macs will require signed code
macOS version numbering isn’t so simple
T2M2 version 1.15 analyses APFS backups in Big Sur and is a Universal App
Coming NeXT on Apple Silicon
Magic, lipo and testing for Universal binaries
Big Sur is both 10.16 and 11.0 – it’s official
How to tell Intel code from Universal
Tuning Apple Silicon will be complex at first
Big Sur may yet live up to its name
Should you beta-test Big Sur?
Another batch of Universal Apps, and a fixed version of Ulbow
Why Big Sur won’t stumble over version numbers
Five Universal Apps: ArchiChect, DelightEd, LockRattler, SilentKnight and Ulbow
What’s in a number: how Big Sur could break code
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more
Big Sur’s Signed System Volume: added security protection
Big Sur and Apple Silicon: interesting times ahead
Which of my apps are compatible with Big Sur?
Taccy and ArchiChect now detect apps built for macOS 11.0 Big Sur
What would an ARM-based Mac mean to us?
10.16 is all about tools and maturity

Breaking

Would you like to Comment or Finder Comment?
Crashes, panics, freezes and other unexpected events
Saturday Mac riddles 205
Firmware updates with macOS 13.4, 12.6.6 and 11.7.7
Not a Twitter quitter
Are macOS updates getting larger?
When your Mac can’t get to the login window
Identifying the state of your Mac: is it dead or alive?
Systematic troubleshooting
Making a dial-up Internet Connection in Mac OS 8
A detailed record of macOS and its security updates
COW and clones: how they save space and SSD wear
Secret security, pulled XPR update
Connecting to the Internet via a phone 21 years ago
APFS hard links, symlinks, aliases and clone files: a summary
Where does macOS get its volume free space figures from?
Freeing space on your boot disk
Should you remove duplicate files?
When it doesn’t work, try it again in Safe mode
How well do USB 3 SSDs work on a Thunderbolt hub?
What is purgeable disk space?
Will your new SSD support TRIM and SMART?
Tackling problems with permissions, ACLs and other access controls
Storage stories, selecting SSDs
Thanks for the Memory in Mac OS 8.6
How to check whether an SSD gets trimmed
How APFS mounts encrypted volumes, snapshots, cryptexes and more
How to maintain your Desktop in Mac OS 8 and 9
Why you should enable FileVault
How APFS mounts an external disk: 1 Basics
macOS Ventura 13.3, Monterey 12.6.4 and Big Sur 11.7.5 bring firmware updates for all supported Macs
Fixing firmware update problems
Dive into APFS in Mints version 1.11
Apple’s big gamble: the 6th birthday of APFS
Should you trim external SSDs?
How does an Apple silicon Mac mount a Thunderbolt disk?
Fast user switching: how it works and when to use it
How connecting your SSD to a Thunderbolt hub can slow it to a crawl
Providence and provenance
loginwindow does more than log you in
Log Literacy: Hunting bugs with Ulbow’s Chart View
Why is Apple so reluctant for the offline Mac?
Who’s managing my apps?
Log Literacy: Extending Ulbow with predicates, filters & styles
Removing privacy censorship from the log
KeySteal, Honkbox and BadGacha
Custom Finder icons, resources and Mac OS history
Getting best performance from Thunderbolt on Apple silicon Macs: a practical guide
Thunderbolt 4 hub performance with 3 SSDs
Complexities of Thunderbolt hubs
What are those XProtects?
How to get the Trash working properly
It pays to be a winner: How a fast SSD can slow others down
Thunderbolt 4 hubs can slow down fast SSDs
Getting help from ChatGPT and AI
What are all those extensions?
Should apps and command tools be notarized?
What are Ventura’s system privacy settings?
Log literacy: the power of message types, and Ulbow 1.10
Children, animals and TCC
Permissions, SIP and TCC: who’s controlling access?
Privacy: what TCC does and doesn’t
Should you reset its database or delete it? The woes of TCC
Log literacy: all about the log
Gaining control over the log with a new version of Ulbow
How a security update threw errors in XProtect Remediator
Caches, buffers and swap
Log Literacy: Navigation
Scheduled activities: 3 launchd or DAS?
Backing up to network storage: checks and balances
Log literacy: Reducing log entries shown
Scheduled activities: 2 Running the activity
Knowing your limitations – techniques for studying macOS
Log literacy: an essential skill for advanced users
How QuickLook Preview doesn’t tell Apple about images
Do Thunderbolt hubs impair performance?
Is it more secure to be a normal or admin user?
Scheduled activities: 1 Scheduling by DAS
The evolution of Apple silicon – M2 Pro/Max
How macOS schedules background activities
Demonstrating causal connections using the log
How APFS trims a disk image to size
How to write to the log from a script
Which disk image format?
How plain disk images went sparse in Monterey
Sparse disk images in virtual machines
The trouble with better security
Should you use a disk image or a volume?
Recovery mode problems and how to solve them
Lightweight VMs are sparse files, and how to keep them compact
Inside APFS: from containers to clones
Ultra chips and cryptexes – round up of 2022
What happens when XProtect Remediator discovers real malware?
Free space on an APFS volume is an illusion
Checking macOS malware scans: Endpoint Security or the log?
From resource forks to quarantine, ResEdit to Gatekeeper
Can I have a Yule log?
How does macOS tell the type of a file?
Gaining control over your Mac’s log
Rolling logs and anti-malware scans
Text file formats
All you need to know about Safe mode
Bypassing Gatekeeper
Panaceas: which general fixes still work well?
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard commands
Estimating the remaining life of a Mac’s internal SSD
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard layouts
Similar hardware but different by design – iPad Pro v Mac
Explainer: Rosetta 2
Spotlight problems: mds_stores and mdworker in trouble
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Input methods
How to estimate an SSD’s working life
The mobile virtual Mac
Finder can’t create an alias inside a package or bundle
Tracking swap space: is it wearing out your SSD?
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Startup and login
How much Unified memory does your Apple silicon Mac need?
Can you game core allocation on Apple silicon?
I told you so! – new Apple silicon Macs
Booting two Apple silicon Macs from one external disk
Changing preferences isn’t so simple
Dealing with a dysfunctional Desktop
Which external disk?
Booting macOS on Apple silicon: Multiple boot disks
Booting macOS on Apple silicon: LocalPolicy
Some boot, but others don’t – booting Apple silicon Macs from an external disk
How to get updates when they’re still fresh
Repairing Home folder permissions: a mystery
What to do when your Mac has a kernel panic
Fortnightmare – updates
What makes an external disk bootable?
Ventura’s updates have got faster for some
Does Apple maintain APFS in older macOS?
Why is my Mac’s firmware version wrong, and what to do about it?
Home truths about macOS
Getting the most from SilentKnight: a tutorial
Everything you need to know about XProtect’s malware protection
A quiet word about help
Troubleshooting keychains
Explainer: Passwords and passkeys
When SIP status is unknown, SilentKnight and silnite can be foxed
Explainer: Keychain basics
It either works or it doesn’t, Content Caching server and updates
XProCheck 1.2 checks macOS malware scans better
SilentKnight version 2 is designed for Catalina to Ventura
Time for a fresh SilentKnight
Is Apple scanning the images on my Mac?
Firmware and macOS upgrades
Do you still need that external bootable disk?
Copy, clone, backup: is there a difference?
Where to find Gatekeeper?
Paradoxical undressing (disabling security features)
What does SilentKnight check and why?
SnowDrift warnings: are they malware?
How to check an app’s signature
How macOS leaves users vulnerable, and unaware of their vulnerability
XProCheck 1.1 can now run XProtect Remediator scans on demand
Interpreting XProCheck’s results and problems
How to report macOS crashes to Apple
App first run, quarantine and translocation
Don’t run that app where it landed: how translocation can cause crashes
XProCheck: a new utility to inspect anti-malware scans
Breaking the silence – performance cost and reporting
Monitor macOS anti-malware scans with Mints version 1.9
Hunting malware protection in the log
Does a macOS update change the Data volume?
How can I bring my Mac up to date with firmware and system updates?
macOS now scans for malware whenever it gets a chance
Are command tools getting out of their depth?
Security updates are down again
Explainer: subsystems
Unified log structure and available data
Has Apple broken Content Caching server updates again?
Mints now lists firmware and recovery versions, and more
Software Update and serendipity
Recent security updates: how unusual?
An atlas of recovery and boot volumes: High Sierra to Monterey
How to find full Software Update information
Not a PC
Why won’t that sparse bundle compact?
MRT and XProtect Remediator: an update
Activity Monitor: meanings and misleadings
Getting more from Activity Monitor: Memory
Using macOS versions beyond local volumes
Is your Mac still secure from malware?
Has Apple fixed recent Software Update problems?
How macOS versions help you recover from errors
How to recover old versions of Xcode source
Obfuscating errors
Explainer: Pixel density and display resolution
Preparing your Mac for Trade In or passing on
The State of Mac Security
How to find it in the log: 2 Navigation
How can you tell whether your Mac is up to date?
Explainer: The arithmetic of snapshot size
Why did that app crash?
How to find it in the log: 1 An introduction
What can you do with Time Machine backups on APFS?
How virtualization is important to the future of macOS
Explainer: Machine learning
Startup disk surgery in recent macOS: fixing bigger problems
A user’s guide to Disk Images
Updates and open loops
Persisting problems with Content Caching and failed security updates
Dismal write performance of Disk Images
Why are Disk Images so slow at writing?
Changing anti-malware tools in macOS
How should you save web pages in Safari?
Dealing with the insomniac Mac
Biome isn’t about biometrics, but suggestions
Apple to kill all support for Sierra and earlier
Putting the insomniac Mac to sleep: help is at hand
Explainer: Archiving isn’t backing up
Explainer: network ports
Maintaining the integrity of important files
What to do when an update won’t install correctly
Explainer: Error-correcting files
Which are more reliable: hard disks or SSDs?
Explainer: Non-lossy compression
Efficient resilient storage
How to make more use of your backup disk
How hard disks get slower as they fill up
Should you continue using HFS+?
Explainer: Compression
How to transfer files between Macs
Deleting the SSV to free space
Mac Studio Max and Studio Display: impressions and future
Interpreting and using disk performance data
Does it matter which Thunderbolt ports you use?
Explainer: Thunderbolt
Are Thunderbolt SSDs more consistent than USB?
Opening Pandora’s SSD
Explainer: FileVault
What performance to expect from SSDs
Which external storage?
Explainer: Benchmarks
The kernel and extensions 1: To Mojave
The kernel and extensions 2: Secure Boot
How should security data updates work?
Does your Mac keep installing the same MRT updates?
Explainer: S.M.A.R.T. and disk health
When an SSD becomes wobbly
Explainer: The ‘bricked’ Mac
A brief history of APFS in honour of its fifth birthday
Updating your Mac using softwareupdate, SilentKnight and silnite
Understanding digital audio
Explainer: Whatever happened to QuickTime?
Firmware on the change: 1 Out with the old
Firmware on the change: 2 In with the new
Which NAS?
Explainer: Parallel computing
What’s in an app’s signature?
Explainer: TLS, VPN and Private Relay
How to back up and archive iCloud data
Securing your data in iCloud
How Apple should help Ukraine by fulfilling its promises
Does removing I/O throttling make backups faster?
Explainer: Cloud storage
CPU percentage is misleading on M1 Macs
How to prevent errors on SSDs
Can you back up iCloud documents?
Do we have custom access?
Command tools – alisma, blowhole, cintch, cmpxat and unorml – updated
Explainer: WindowServer
How can you trust a disk to write data?
Permissions and ACLs
Understanding and managing Time Machine snapshots
SSD wear and IORegistry
Still struggling with snapshots
Managing snapshots: how to stop them eating free space
Explainer: kernel panics and crashes
What should you do when your Time Machine backups go awry?
Why do installer packages expire, but apps don’t? Signing certificate and notarization oddities
When clouds break the sun doesn’t shine
Should you ever repair permissions?
Things that go bump in SilentKnight: serious security failures
The Last 7 Years on My Mac: an anniversary
Explainer: Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM)
Why doesn’t Apple formally support old macOS?
Did someone forget their password? Getting access to a locked Mac
On-board diagnostics
Explainer: Metal
Ruby text in Pages
Has Time Machine slowed?
Explainer: Logging out and in
Looking back at 2021 on my Mac: articles worth reading again
Explainer: Links, Aliases and Bookmarks
A strategy for tackling NAS problems
CoreServices apps: Wireless Diagnostics
CoreServices apps: the rest
CoreServices apps: Directory Utility
Explainer: Open Directory
How to get an old version of macOS, OS X and Xcode
Using SilentKnight to download updates
What’s in that app? A guide to app internal structure
When the Internet caught fire
Explainer: Quarantine
How macOS reports crashes
Hidden files and folders on APFS volumes
Explainer: Disk free space
What to do when iCloud gets stuck
What to do when your Mac slows to a crawl
How can you check the integrity of backed up files?
Are malware defences changing again?
Explainer: .DS_Store files
Copying a Mac volume to another file system (and back)
Snapshot hostages – backups to APFS and their repair
Explainer: defragmentation
How should you check an APFS backup store?
Why won’t that Help book open?
How Safari’s tab groups consume memory
Who needs a desktop Mac?
Will Apple honour its promises on OCSP certificate checks?
Explainer: chipsets and Fabric
Memory leaks
M1 Pro First Impressions: 1 Setting up
M1 Pro First Impressions: 2 Core management and CPU performance
How to deal with a site with a broken certificate
Migrating to a new Mac
Who started that Mac up? How Macs can start up on their own
Improving the performance of Time Machine backups to network storage
Passwords and patchwork quilts
Explainer: file types
MacSysAdmins presentation on Time Machine: slides
Juggling with HFS+ and APFS partitions and volumes: a primer
Explainer: caching
Brolly 1.1 now does its own testing of secure connections
Taming the App Store: getting timely updates
How Safari 15 checks a secure connection
Web woes worsen
Explainer: Security certificates
Why won’t Safari open that web page?
How to undelete a file simply
Silence isn’t golden – Apple’s unspoken update policy
How long does Apple support macOS?
SilentKnight: how to install just one update, rather than all
Explainer: Logs
The silence of the BoMs: why you don’t know what macOS updates
El Capitan and older Mac OS X are about to have a security certificate problem
Explainer: the Recovery Partition
Cleaning out old preference settings and other housekeeping
How to run an app or tool at startup
Running software automatically using launchd
Explainer: macOS scheduled background activities
Looking back in time at backing up with Time Machine
Explainer: the macOS versioning system
Troubleshooting macOS versioning
How to recover a Mac from a kernel panic
What to do when a volume can’t be ejected or unmounted
Powering your Mac: power filters and UPS
Explainer: System Management Controller (SMC)
Dual-booting macOS: Disk structure and Recovery
Disk encryption, FileVault and hardware encryption
Trust Apple
How to compare two PDF documents
How colours get hacked by the web
Is Apple keeping its promises over online OCSP certificate checks?
Analysing natural languages with Nalaprop
How Apple intends checking images for CSAM
Where’s the accelerator? – documentation and more or less
Explainer: File systems
There/their/they’re goes the Cupertino – teach your spell-checker
Knowing what not to back up, and how
Forming unusual characters using Unicode and typography
Explainer: Snapshots
How to customise keyboard layouts
A Short History of Malware Protection in macOS
Preparing your Mac for someone else to own
Explainer: Property lists and preferences
Time has run out on Time Capsules
How to share large files without using your iCloud allowance
Explainer: checksums, CRCs, hashes and cryptography
Finder’s metadata puzzles
How to recognise and diagnose kernel panics
Explainer: xART and nonces
When you can’t send mail: fixing SMTP problems
Volume names are still a Unicode mess
Making a good Recovery: Installing a different macOS in Recovery
From assembly to Shortcuts
When your backups vanish
Hardware legacies
Explainer: version and build numbers
Inside the Content Caching server: performance and troubleshooting
Tango for Two Macs: cached system and App Store updates
The elephant at WWDC
Firmware and Recovery upgrades and downgrades on different Macs
Explainer: what makes a volume bootable?
Apple has finally posted standalone updaters for Catalina and Mojave Security Updates
Explainer: deduplication
How WordPress comments and Property Lists can trip you up
Adding more Thunderbolt ports using a Kensington SD5700T Dual 4K Dock
Getting more from Activity Monitor: CPU
Explainer: secure boot and boot security
Explainer: Unicode, normalization and APFS
Inside the App Store: how it delivers your apps
When an app can’t connect to AppleID-linked services
How to get the best out of the App Store
That macOS update has caused havoc. What do I do next?
Floating-point numbers aren’t evenly distributed
Explainer: numbers in macOS
How some log entries vanish sooner than others
Death by SMB
Optimising performance with EtreCheckPro and Ulbow
Explainers: Sparse things
APFS and pursuit of the free lunch
Bugs and problems in the log: updates for 6 apps
Exploring sparse files and potential clones with Sparsity 1.2
How can you tell whether a file has been ‘cloned’ in APFS?
Troubleshooting macOS: Observation and the log
How your Mac changed its clocks to Summer Time
macOS at 20, APFS at 4
Sparse files are common in APFS
How sparse files can explode backups
The trouble with snapshots: how can you copy them?
How to update your Mac’s firmware
Can you trust Numbers with numbers?
Hyperinflation: comparing update sizes from Mojave to Big Sur
iCloud Secure Backup comes to macOS
How to check the integrity of your backups and iCloud files
Why is firmware so troubled?
You may notice something odd with the latest version of iMovie
Going forward with backups
Why is my Mac’s Gatekeeper data so out of date?
Running custom storage benchmarks using Stibium
What has changed in macOS, and why it matters
How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling
Should you switch to Thunderbolt 4 cables?
How to run apps in private
More App Store update problems
Swallowing a fly – benchmarking SSDs and more
Spotlight on search: How to diagnose and fix problems
Why reporting bugs to Apple may harm software quality
Spotlight on search: Four different Spotlights
Diagnosing a Spotlight bug in Big Sur: failure to index RTF content
Apple’s scorched update policy
Could this fix firmware updating in the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1)?
How to test Spotlight out in 30 seconds with Mints 1.0b11
Spotlight on search: In-app search (Core Spotlight)
Spotlight on search: Better and different, 3rd party apps
Finding not hiding – access -v- privacy
Why your laptop Mac may not be recharging
Spotlight on search: Search and you might be lucky
Spotlight on search: How Spotlight works
Obsolescent preferences
Bluetooth utilities to help diagnose disconnections
Publishing code in WordPress articles
Lightweight diagramming with Scapple
A Guide to Startup Modes for Intel and M1 Macs
Preference settings and Finder misbehaviour
Help! My Mac is innumerate
Boot disk layout on Intel and M1 Macs: High Sierra to Big Sur
Notarisation: privacy controls
Notarization: the hardened runtime
Notarization: is a notarized app ‘safe’ to use?
How to benchmark your storage using Stibium
Disk read and write tests go random in Stibium 1.0b6
Fessing up – should developers declare vulnerabilities and privacy policies?
Macs of the past and the future
Let’s make 2021 the year of Disk Utility
Getting SSD performance data which make sense
Securing sensitive data
Last Year on My Mac: There must be a pony
Give your Mac (imaginary) unlimited storage thanks to Disk Utility’s bug
Can a Content Caching Server compensate for lost standalone updates?
What stops your Mac running incompatible extensions?
Begging from Apple
Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates
Measuring performance of different SSDs using Stibium 1.0b3
Comparing SSD performance between T2 and M1 Macs with Stibium
How did that update eat so much free disk space?
Drag racing SSDs
Controlling processes and environments
Who decides when to quit an app?
Bad design makes macOS a Tower of Babel
Rosetta 2 won’t let the undead die
macOS has checked app signatures online for over 2 years
How big is Xcode?
Backstage heroes – third-party developers and Big Sur support
How to move Apple Installers around via AirDrop
Getting unnotarized apps out of quarantine
macOS version numbering: I’m already eating my hat
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 5) – for Big Sur
Checks on executable code in Catalina and Big Sur: a first draft
Making essential services fail-safe
Wrangling file paths in Catalina and Big Sur
No secret
Extended attributes as a vulnerability
Finder Comments: worth avoiding
Guarding against buggy security updates: a new version of SilentKnight
Code signatures: 3 Fixing signature problems
Controlling metadata: Tricks with persistence
Support, dependence, control
Finder Tags: commonplace metadata
Code signatures: 2 How to check them
Quarantine and the quarantine flag
Code signatures: 1 How they work, and stop working
XProtect: What do we know about it?
What happened with security updates and HP printer software?
Are silent security updates a vulnerability?
Why have my HP printers stopped working? How to check their software signature
MRT: what do we know about it?
There’s more to files than data: Extended Attributes
There’s more to files than data: Attributes
There’s more to files than data: Structure and data forks
Background activity scheduling with CTS in Catalina
Miss Havisham Syndrome – accessing hardware info
How does your Mac know when Apple revokes a developer certificate?
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 1
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 2
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 3
What happens when background scheduling fails
Mints now provides better volume info, and looks at task scheduling
Inside the file system: 4 Summary and references
SilentKnight and LockRattler: A Masterclass
Inside the file system: 1 Disks and partitions
Inside the file system: 2 HFS+ volumes
Inside the file system: 3 APFS containers and volumes
How to tell Electron and Catalyst apps
Pretend it never happened
What does Disk Utility’s First Aid really check in Catalina?
Why clicking on some Apple links fails: URIs and ITMSS
Diagnosing an abnormal startup: what that screen means
Were Apple’s system updates less frequent and more reliable?
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong (macOS 10.13-11.0)
What went wrong with Mojave Security Update 2020-005, and Catalina 10.15.7?
Change challenged or champion?
What is responsible for persistent firmware update failures?
What’s right at the end of the menu bar, and how it’s changing
Firmware and the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1): a hardware fault?
Mints can now reveal your Mac’s logic board ID
Two thousand yard stare (iOS 14)
A brief guide to disk image files
Fitting a quart into a pint pot with sparse bundles
Boot volume layout
Firmware fundamentals
Imaging APFS storage in Disk Utility, and size of the VM volume
New freeware menu: all the apps that are fit for Big Sur and Apple Silicon
Measuring performance of code using RouteMap, now a Universal App
How quickly can apps and scripts write to the log?
Has notarization burned?
Tackling keychain problems with KeychainCheck 2, now a Universal App
Checking signatures on apps
Achieving the CIS Apple macOS 10.15 Benchmark
Is macOS becoming unmaintainable?
How notarization works
Building and notarizing command tools as Universal binaries
SilentKnight, LockRattler and silnite: which should you use?
When you shouldn’t use unconventional Unicode text
Quarantined documents, Pratique and Sandstrip
How can you rebuild or repair an APFS Volume Group?
Dead divers, security exploits, and Swiss cheese
Where privacy protection fails
Exploring natural languages with Nalaprop
Fun and confuddling with Unicode
The vulnerability in Remote Login (ssh) persists
Recover a broken document using versions, and clean versions up
Getting more from document versions in macOS
Apple leak
Which version is that command tool?
The life cycle of a kernel panic
How a kernel zone memory leak can panic macOS
Reading a Panic Log in Catalina
Understanding ‘crashes’ and kernel panics
Heavy hand on the kill switch
Why can’t my iPhone or Mac tell me how hot it is today?
Putting the text back into mail
Catalina 10.15.6 is prone to kernel panics from a memory leak
Calling time on High Sierra
Unsticking stuck preference settings
How should you clean re-install Catalina?
System 8 runs again – in macOS 10.15
Apps on the ultimate diet: beyond stripping Universals
Instant weight loss: how to strip Universal Apps
Time Machine and snapshots
Universal Binaries: inside Fat Headers
Time Machine 17: Using utilities to solve problems
How Apple told us about Apple Silicon 2 years ago
Firmware updates and the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1)
Mints can now check folders for Universal Apps
ArchiChect 2.4 goes Universal and improves detection of Universal code
Malware detection games
Time Machine 16: Reading a normal backup in Catalina using Mints
Do you want to explore or diagnose a problem? Try Mints
When the Finder’s arithmetic fails with an error of 139 TB
Control-Space – control of snapshots
How macOS overrides app behaviour, including quarantine
Will macOS protect you from ransomware like ThiefQuest?
What to do if you find a security problem in macOS
Protecting yourself against malware
Finding your way around the log using Ulbow
More pieces in Apple’s jigsaw puzzle
Controlling what’s written to the unified log
Limits to size of sparse bundles, and bugs fixed in Spundle 1.2
Lock down your mind – pandemic, WWDC, App Stores
How your Mac may talk in its sleep thanks to HID
Why did that app crash? Getting to the bottom of the log with Ulbow
Selecting sizes for sparse bundles
What caused that kernel panic? How to use the log in diagnosis – tutorial using Ulbow
EFI System Partitions: a hidden problem?
Console, the vital tool that Apple abandoned
How to get more detail in the log
What to do when a process is using excessive CPU
New Mac troubleshooting page
WindowServer: display compositor and input event router
Did your Mac crash, freeze or panic?
WindowServer-GPU crash: different from a kernel panic
Safari 13.1.1 and the lost pages
QuickLook thumbnails don’t always render JPEGs right
Is MacKeeper bad for your Mac?
Is it safe to upgrade to Catalina 10.15.5?
It’s about user choice
Battery health management in Catalina 10.15.5
Software Update and SilentKnight after Security Update 2020-003
A user’s guide to code signatures and notarization
cintch checks file integrity from the command line
How to make Time Machine backups to an APFS disk
How to reveal ‘private’ messages in the log
Nobbled and hobbled by notarization
How come someone notarized my app?
Bookmarks, a type of Alias: their access and use
Metadata editing made easy with Metamer version 1
Spundle: a new utility for creating and adjusting sparse bundles
The tragic case of audiobooks
Snug sparse bundles work better, but…
Sparse bundles leak space
Audiobooks in the Books app
Cut-Copy-Paste: Inside the Pasteboard/Clipboard
Night terrors
How to check the integrity of files in a Time Machine backup
Getting more out of metadata
What happens when you double-click a document? Processes, problems and solutions
Too many apps
File Integrity 12 : Error correction for large files
File Integrity 11 : Which RAID levels enable file recovery?
How to find apps using metadata
Using Finder Item Groups
Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs
File Integrity 10 : Effects of length of corruption on images and ECC recovery
Why file integrity is important
File Integrity 9 : How error-correcting codes work
Why is kernel_task eating my CPU?
File Integrity 8 : Compression, encryption and disk images
Time to update updating
File Integrity 7 : Which other file formats are resilient?
File Integrity 6 : Which image format is most resilient?
File Integrity 5 : How well does error-correcting code work?
Vandalism
How to unshorten a URL
How apps save changed files
File Integrity 4 : Error-correcting code is available for macOS
Copy, move and clone files in APFS, a primer
What to do when a T2 Mac suffers a problem updating its firmware
Surprise Supplemental Update
Origins of the Mac human interface, and starting macOS coding
The way ahead with integrity checks, and Dintch 1.1 adds timestamps
A break in the clouds: when cloud services won’t work
Where did all that free space go on my APFS disk?
File Integrity 3 : Where to store digests?
File Integrity 2 : Which digest?
File Integrity 1 : Why bother?
How Preview mangles annotations
SilentKnight & LockRattler: security & firmware updates
The strangeness of Photos libraries, and tagging them with Dintch
Some Macs don’t update their firmware when they should
How Time Machine backups waste space
Apple has changed resetting permissions again
App Store updates get more unreliable
What changes a file’s modification date, and what doesn’t?
Burning to Blu-ray
No thanks for the memories
Should we take bit rot seriously?
Viewing macOS events live using Crescendo
Beyond Time Machine: 5 Archiving
Which extended attributes does iCloud preserve, and which get stripped?
What has Accessibility got to do with me?
Backing up the future
When should you upgrade from an older macOS?
Beyond Time Machine: 4 Offsite backups
Beyond Time Machine: 3 Hourly backups
Beyond Time Machine: 2 Infrequent backups
Deceived by the Finder
Working around the Finder column width bug
18 months on and Dark Mode still doesn’t work properly
Should Mac users worry about ransomware?
How macOS 10.14 and later overrides write permission on some files
Learn (almost) everything about an app with lsappinfo
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 5 Location
Time Machine 15: Large files including VMs
Virus pandemics
Disk, drive, HD: does it really make any difference?
Finder still thinks this Mac’s got a hard disk, and won’t set Preview Options
Beyond Time Machine: 1 Deciding what you need
Apple is working on a developer cloud
A more complex algorithm should make PermissionScanner 1.6 more reliable
Quantum permissions?
How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
What does the Move To command do in Pages, Numbers & Keynote?
Checking backup transfer rates using T2M2 version 1.13
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
Time Machine 14: Diagnosing and working around slow backups
Duff disk or normal behaviour?
Why privileged commands may never be allowed
How to keep, or lose, a document’s previous versions
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
Time Machine in Catalina 10.15.3 has serious bugs
Ulbow now helps you solve log problems in version 1.1b2
When you can’t run an app because its extension(s) won’t load
SSD it
Time Machine 12: Backups that never complete
How long does your Mac keep its log for?
Making your own logarchive from a backup
Orphaned snapshots: a growing problem?
Errors in the night and snapshot problems
Hardening and notarization finally arrive in Catalina
Is Catalina a good upgrade yet?
Apple has released macOS Catalina 10.15.3, and security updates for Mojave and High Sierra
Quarantine, SIP, and MACL: macOS per-file security controls
What’s this new AppleInternal folder then?
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 4 tccutil
What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
When more security subverts security
Preventing external displays from sleep can be crucial
Catalina Boot Volumes
Testing iCloud using Cirrus
Time Machine: 10 Tools
Time Machine: 11 tmutil
Time Machine: 9 Inside backup support files
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 3 New protected locations
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 2 Controlling privacy settings
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 1 Principles and structure
Time Machine: 8 Preventing problems
Key macOS and related documentation from Apple
Protecting folders and volumes is too blunt
Diagnosing privacy protection problems in Catalina
Using and understanding some AppKit controls, examples from Ulbow
When apps show mirror-writing upside down in Catalina
Catalina’s privacy protection backfires again: why you can’t save a logarchive there
When did my Mac last start up, and why? An exploration with Ulbow
Consolation 3 and Ulbow: Saving a logarchive in Catalina
‘Erase Mac’ doesn’t?
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Explanations required – end of year review
Publishers determined to kill electronic books
Network security can block updates, notifications, and more
Flaws in re-installing Catalina
Opening documents, SIP and quarantine flags in Catalina
Making sense of Disk Utility and disk structure in macOS 10.13-10.15
How clean re-installs change in Catalina
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong (Catalina edition)
Why does my Mac keep waking up?
Dictation changes in Catalina – for the worse?
Can you still use AFP sharing?
Apple invents a new procedure to fix MacBook Pro 13-inch 2019 models
Are you having weird problems with Catalina?
What happens when you run an app in Catalina?
All aboard for Catalyst: how macOS runs iPadOS apps
How to encrypt files and folders in APFS
Reset and maintain your SMC and NVRAM
Which startup mode?
Time Machine has changed again in Catalina
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
Safe Booting in Catalina has changed
Starting up in Catalina: sequence and waypoints in the log
Are you experiencing panics or problems with USB-C external displays?
A plain guide to Mac firmware and its problems
Support articles for Catalina, and macOS download links
How can security data get so out of date?
AirPlay streaming can stop App Store apps from running
Catalina crashes non-notarized command tools with a quarantine flag
Firmware update failure in iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 with Catalina
Should you enable defragmentation on APFS hard drives?
Beware Apple security certificates after 24 October: they may have expired
Security data files: how they’ve changed in Catalina
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Does Safe Mode check and repair disks?
How Catalina handles app first run
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 4) – for Catalina
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Opening the log
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
Will Gatekeeper let me run that app in Catalina?
How to preserve metadata stored in a custom extended attribute
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Which Recovery Mode?
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
More About This Mac: where to find that UUID, MAC address, etc.
Hardware diagnostics
Why has Apple put snapshots in a straitjacket?
What’s that file then? How to identify unknown file types
Volume recovery using an APFS snapshot
The problem with APFS snapshots
Is a VM a good answer for running 32-bit apps in Catalina?
If you’re still running Sierra, what do you do next?
Preparing to upgrade to Catalina
How to tell if an app will run in Catalina
macOS Mojave Boot Volume Layout
Are you running macOS before Mojave 10.14.4? Do you use command tools?
Prepare to upgrade to Catalina
Caring for SSDs: TRIM, wear levelling and APFS
Preference settings: where to find them in Mojave
Working safely and effectively with preferences in Mojave
Global defaults in macOS Mojave
APFS tools suck
Hitting the limits of APFS is both easy and confusing
The ‘hardened runtime’ explained
Spotlight search can skip files
SilentKnight and silnite: FAQ
Metadata and iCloud
What makes macOS updates more complex: T2 firmware updates
How do the Finder, Terminal and Spotlight handle extended attribute flags?
How to save file metadata in iCloud, and new info on extended attributes
How to save your file metadata – implementation isn’t simple
studentd and its self-signed certificate are permanent fixtures in Mojave
How to add a custom icon to an app without breaking its signature
How do you get a security update to work?
Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
Should you pay the high price of a high-speed external SSD?
Does replacing internal storage cause EFI updating problems?
A primer on code signing errors
Why Catalina has got a read-only system volume
What is SIP and when is it safe to turn it off?
Notarization made a bit simpler
Making notarization as hard as possible
What to do when you can’t launch an app
Will my app/tool/extension run on Catalina?
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Time Machine: past, present and future
Notarization in Mojave and Catalina
Finder security errors opening documents: a summary
Tackling sleep and wake problems
Why is my system update history wrong?
🎗 Quarantine: Apps
🎗 Quarantine: Documents
Sandboxing makes quarantine flags almost meaningless
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
Why can’t I open that document? Troubleshooting LaunchServices
Finder Aliases and Bookmarks: a summary
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
A lexicon of Mac power adaptors, from MagSafe to USB-C
No Entry ⛔️: access controls in Mojave
Four serious security errors which are easily made on a Mac: how to fix them

Saturday Mac Riddles

Saturday Mac riddles 205
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Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 204
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Christmas Mac riddles 183
Solutions to Christmas Mac riddles 183
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New Year Mac riddles 132
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Christmas Mac riddles 131
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Christmas Mac riddles (79)
Solutions to Christmas Mac riddles (79)
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Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 1

Coronavirus, COVID-19

Whatever happened to Exposure Notifications?
How should vaccination against Covid-19 work?
What’s the cost of acquiring herd immunity to Covid-19?
Some selected reading about Covid-19 and pandemics
Covid-19 cases continue to rise in England
How do you lose 16,000 cases of Covid-19?
Covid-19 cases in England are out of control
Watching the second wave: Covid-19 wins yet again
Can QR codes be used to control Covid-19 transmission?
Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere
The road ahead with Covid-19 isn’t as swift or simple
Face masks, face screens, and breathing
Are cases of Covid-19 growing exponentially in the USA?
Making the most of technology
Does Covid-19 spread that rapidly? Figures from England, New York City and Brazil examined
Good online charts can confuse not clarify: Covid-19 examples
Is it possible to trace contacts using Bluetooth on smartphones?
How many cases of Covid-19 was that?
Public health, private data
How’s the smartphone contact tracing going then, or is it dead?
Test results aren’t necessarily as meaningful as you think
Trials of the UK’s Covid-19 app: where next?
The UK’s answer to Covid-19: Testing the iOS app
Can you trace contacts with a smartphone?
Smartphone contact tracing without Apple or Google
Covid-19 testing and diagnosis: where privacy stops
Problems with FaceTime video on macOS or iOS?
Origins of the Mac human interface, and starting macOS coding
Uncertain times
Caring for well-washed hands
Disinfecting your Mac and devices
How to clean Macs and other Apple hardware

Booting the Mac

How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
Which startup mode?
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Diagnosing a Mac which can’t complete booting
Booting the Mac: Visual Summary
Booting the Mac: Will my Mac boot from this disk? A visual guide
Before boot.efi: the Mac’s initial self-test routines
Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot
Booting the Mac: EFI ‘firmware’
Booting the Mac: the kernel and extensions
Booting the Mac: macOS 10.14 Mojave, and shutdown
What’s stored in NVRAM?
Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable
macOS Mojave Boot Volume Layout

Setting up a new or repurposed Mac

How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
Choosing your new iMac: picking the best storage compromise
1 Destinations
2 Migration Assistant
3 Manual migration
4 Test, tweak, Time Machine
5 Examples
6 Fitting a quart into a pint pot
7 Choices diagrammed
8 The problem of updating firmware

Preparing to part with your Mac

Prepare your Mac for service
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
Preparing your Mac for disposal (Catalina edition)
Preparing your Mac for disposal

Finding and converting legacy movies and other media

Getting 64-bit clean: now is the time
Apple is killing QuickTime 7 in macOS 10.15: convert old media now
1: still images
2: Embedded in Keynote presentations
3: Movies and more
4: Using Compressor

PDF without Adobe

1 At the heart of macOS
2 Why PDF is so odd
3 Building your own PDF reader 1
4 Building your own PDF reader 2
5 Building your own PDF reader 3
6 Quartz and Preview
7 Adding a PDF Help book
8 Security, integrity and forensics
9 Bizarre bug in macOS
10 PDF Expert
11 PDFpenPro 10
Synchronised Scrolling: a brief movie on PDF
Searching PDF documents: a new feature in Podofyllin
12 Vulnerabilities in digital signing
Recovering a damaged document
13 PDF documents can readily leak data
14 PDF is inherently not secure
15 macOS can sanitize your PDFs
16 Reading PDF source
17 Unredacting Manafort’s documents and recovering PDF versions
18 Seeing inside PDF more clearly
Further improvements to Podofyllin’s Source window
19: Seeing inside PDF with Podofyllin
DelightEd now opens the rich text content of PDFs, as well as HTML, RTF and text files
Printing without tears in Dark Mode (and exporting to PDF)
Inside the Mueller Report with Podofyllin: can it be deredacted?
20: Outlines, Bookmarks and Preview
21 PDF Annotations
22 The fractious PDF
23 The nightmare of forms
28 years after Unicode, we still can’t handle accents: PDF + macOS + URL = chaos
24: Accessibility with PDF/UA
25: If at first you don’t succeed, try OCRing again
26: A PDF protection racket
How Preview mangles annotations

Quick Actions

1 Introduction
2 Making your own in Automator
3: The problem of Undo
4: How they work
5: Third-party solution

Code Signing for the Concerned

What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
How to check signatures on apps, installers, and packages
Apple’s Notary Service can’t compete with a supermarket restroom
Catalina crashes non-notarized command tools with a quarantine flag
The ‘hardened runtime’ explained
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Checking whether apps are notarized using Signet
Can you tell whether code has been notarized?
There’s more to notarization than that
Macs move closer to compulsory notarization
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
1 Why?
2 Creating a personal certificate
3 Signing an app
4 Results and testing
5 Signing and privacy control
6 Signing scripts and command tools
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Making notarization as hard as possible
Entitlements: how apps get back what they’ve given up
When does Mojave check an app’s signature? The answer isn’t entirely consistent
What is Gatekeeper, and where can I see it?
How to bypass Mojave 10.14.5’s new kext security
Damaged apps can run normally: signature checks are complex
A primer on code signing errors
Understanding signature checks on notarized apps in Mojave 10.14.5: 1
Understanding signature checks on notarized apps in Mojave 10.14.5: 2
How apps can check integrity better than macOS

Signposts

Interested in performance? Updated Signpost tools now available
Quantum mechanics and Mojave – performance measurement, Signposts, and the log
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
Signposts for performance: 1 introduction
Signposts for performance: 2 Instruments
Updates all round to Blowhole, RouteMap, and the Signpost Kit
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way

App signatures are always checked on launch, but serious errors may be ignored
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 1: identification
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 3: Launch

Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Browse your log with Ulbow 1.0b2, with many new features
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Capturing the moment in your log: how to identify a problem
macOS Unified log: 1 why, what and how
macOS Unified log: 2 content and extraction
macOS Unified log: 3 finding your way
What to do when your log returns an error
Unified but not uniform: how the log has changed
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
How to browse the log on an iOS device

Essentials

Disinfecting your Mac and devices
Updated freeware menu
Getting the best out my apps’ auto-update system
A Mac Troubleshooting Summary
Which startup mode?
Hardware diagnostics
Which Recovery Mode?
Conventions and Standards for Mac Articles
When should you upgrade from an older macOS?
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Essential Reading: *OS Internals, Vol I, User Space, by Jonathan Levin
Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Playing with fire: dealing with slow hot Macs
How to use the unified log to see what’s going wrong
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Welcome to your new Mac: living with the T2 chip
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
Aliases, hard links, symlinks, and copies in Mojave’s APFS
Links and aliases beyond local files: advanced file system techniques
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better
Don’t trust update aggregators
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Hazel catches a silent Adobe update red-handed
Safari offline reader is rapidly becoming functionless
Why are there problems backing up Photos Libraries?
Using T2M2 to diagnose and treat Time Machine problems
Startup and shutdown key combinations for macOS Sierra
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
Why can’t I download and install macOS Sierra any more?
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
My Mac starts up in the wrong language or keyboard
How to tell whether a problem is in your Home folder
Fixing problems with preference files
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Permissions, preferences, problems, and two updates
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
When an app or its installer won’t run after download
Solving update problems with softwareupdate
What to do when a disk image won’t mount
Disk Utility: An ever-changing tool
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Was that a crash, freeze, panic, or spinning beachball?
Did that Mac just restart itself? About kernel panics
Are you experiencing panics or problems with USB-C external displays?
Why the spinning beachball?
Before boot.efi: the Mac’s initial self-test routines
Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot
A plain guide to Mac firmware and its problems
Booting the Mac: EFI ‘firmware’
Reset and maintain your SMC and NVRAM
What makes macOS updates more complex: T2 firmware updates
What to do when a T2 Mac suffers a problem updating its firmware
Recovering from failed T2 firmware updates and related problems
Don’t try reverting a T2 to older firmware
Startup tones, EFI, and fixing failed firmware updates
How High Sierra checks your EFI firmware
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 3)
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 2)
Restoring order to EFI firmware
There’s trouble in that firmware: EFI chaos
Why are my Mac’s fans running at full blast?
Diagnosing a Mac which can’t complete booting
The universal panacea for macOS problems: install the Combo updater
Hasn’t macOS changed? How it doesn’t work like it used to
When should you re-install macOS?
Re-installing macOS: clean or what?
How clean re-installs change in Catalina
Reinstalling macOS changed with 10.12.4
Tackling sleep and wake problems
Why does my Mac keep waking up?
My Bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work properly
Diving deeper into drive health: SMART utilities compared
Code signing: confusing and weak?
Losing your Ethernet port unverifies your Mac
Java and macOS: what you should know
Did that app quit, or is it just napping?
Return of the zombie app: is it a feature or bug?
How to prevent zombies
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
Who’s in control of your Mac? Notifications
Revealing the Finder’s hidden depths
Dual boot: two versions of macOS on one external SSD
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
Watching folders – 1 for users
Document Versioning
Making macOS versions more usable
Inside QuickLook previews with qlmanage
What’s that file then? How to identify unknown file types
What’s that? Using magic on your Mac to identify files
When is an update?
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files
How to check that a file really is a faithful copy
How to check that a file really is a faithful copy: Take 2, archives
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat
It’s not about the speed, not entirely: Mac mini, iMac Pro, iPad Pro and benchmarks
Do you need a replaceable SSD?
Can you upgrade or repair a Mac with a T2 chip?
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
A lexicon of Mac power adaptors, from MagSafe to USB-C
Recovering a damaged document
Clipping files: copying through the Finder
When the wrong copy/version of the right app opens a document
Which Safari extensions do you use?
Apple’s guidance on backing up your Mac revisited
lsregister: a valuable undocumented command for LaunchServices
Kickstarting and tearing down with launchctl
What’s in a macOS installer app? An exploration with ArchiChect
How to check quarantine, 64-bit, signature, and notarization for almost anything
Find My Mac and Activation Lock
‘Erase Mac’ doesn’t?
Learn (almost) everything about an app with lsappinfo
Beyond Time Machine: 4 Offsite backups

Startup modes

Playing Safe: what does Safe mode do?
My Mac only runs properly in Safe mode
Recovery mode and its tools
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
Important changes to Recovery mode
Hardware diagnostics
Diagnosing diagnostics and Apple Hardware Test
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better

Finding information and tools

Making it easier to keep my utilities up to date
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Essential Reading: *OS Internals, Vol I, User Space, by Jonathan Levin
Running a command tool or app results in an error ‘dyld: Library not loaded’
Hidden caches in macOS: where your private data gets stored
More About This Mac: where to find that UUID, MAC address, etc.
Where is that app? – a brief index to bundled tools in Sierra
Which version was that? How to check which version you’re using
32-bitCheck 1.3 has an improved interface
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better
Why is my system update history wrong?
Re-installing macOS: clean or what?
A tale of two Disk Utilities: Sierra and High Sierra
Disk Utility: An ever-changing tool
Preference settings: where to find them in macOS Sierra (v2)
Preference settings: where to find them in El Capitan
Customising it all: global defaults in macOS Sierra and High Sierra
What are all those hidden folders then?
Mac shutdown and sleep cause codes
Booting the Mac: Visual Summary
Sleep, Wake, and Startup: Hardware and ACPI
Self-starting Macs, startup chimes, and other secrets of NVRAM
What’s stored in NVRAM?
Does replacing internal storage cause EFI updating problems?
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 3)
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 2)
Restoring order to EFI firmware
There’s trouble in that firmware: EFI chaos
Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable
Just what do XProtect and MRT protect your Mac from?
Solving update problems with softwareupdate
Running repairs: Sierra’s handy tools, from Disk Utility to Storage Management
Interchangeability of Finder, Terminal, and AppleScript
What are those Us? A journey with UTIutility version 1.0 – UUIDs and UTIs
Identifying file types: UTIs, filename extensions, and another free app
Spotlight and iCloud Drive in Sierra
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
Panics, Pegasus, and Recovery
What’s a UUID?
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Getting going with HEIF/HEIC and HEVC image and movie formats
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
What to do when iCloud Drive is slow to update
Solving problems with iCloud Drive
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
Apple’s free mobile Wi-Fi scanner
Tools to work with keychain problems
Revealing the Finder’s hidden depths
What got installed? How to learn exactly what a package contains/ed
Spotlight: using metadata to improve local searches
Search Perfect: hitting it off with SearchKey 1.0b1
Where did that metadata come from?
At your service: Services menus
File types, the UTI, and even more metadata
Why can’t I open that document? Troubleshooting LaunchServices
How big is that file? How Finder and Terminal file sizes can mislead
Do Sierra or High Sierra report incorrect free disk space?
APFS tools suck
Don’t trust update aggregators
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Disks, partitions, volumes, containers
What to do when a disk image won’t mount
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Using macOS Bookmarks as enduring references: Precize and Preciziun
How macOS tracks your files: inside the inode
Open Recent, inodes, and Bookmarks: How macOS remembers files
Bookmarks, APFS, and enduring file references
What’s that? Using magic on your Mac to identify files
Can macOS tell how large a file really is?
Document Versioning
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Making macOS versions more usable
Permissions in the Finder and command line
Owners and groups in the Finder and command line
Find files fast with locate
Free conversion of text files with textutil
Did you cancel a software update by mistake?
Mixing Terminal with GUI apps
Inside QuickLook previews with qlmanage
Comparing files: FileMerge, opendiff, and BBEdit
Looking directly at iCloud’s files and folders with Cirrus 1.0b4
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
The Joy of ssh: remote control and quick copying
Should you use shutdown or reboot in the command line?
User account Advanced Options: shortcut to hell
When is an update?
Is it time to buy an eGPU?
How much is that external SSD cable?
Pick a Mac, any Mac so long as it has…
When you can’t get macOS to forget
Should you buy a Mac with a T2 chip? Costs, benefits, and problems
AirPrint or you’re on your own: macOS printing changes
Look it up in Dictionary
The App Store by numbers, and Wikipedia wherever you want
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Using and hacking styles in TextEdit and DelightEd
Go64, and keyboard layouts for Unicode obfuscation
Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
What is this ‘Compatibility Notification Data’ which Apple has just updated?
How to add a custom icon to an app without breaking its signature
Rich Text documents: RTF and RTFD
Using and understanding some AppKit controls, examples from Ulbow

Security

Deceived by the Finder
Should Mac users worry about ransomware?
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 5 Location
Virus pandemics
Quarantine, SIP, and MACL: macOS per-file security controls
What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
When more security subverts security
Watch that space: More fun with Unicode in file names
Network security can block updates, notifications, and more
Catalina 10.15.2 has changed Gatekeeper’s dialogs to confuse notarization status
What happened to XProtect? Has it been forked?
XProtect version 2109 for macOS Catalina 10.15.2 only
How to encrypt files and folders in APFS
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
How can security data get so out of date?
How to check signatures on apps, installers, and packages
Beware Apple security certificates after 24 October: they may have expired
Security data files: how they’ve changed in Catalina
Apple has added a new security database to Catalina, bringing 3 updates
Has Apple just pushed the first Catalina-only security update?
How Catalina handles app first run
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
Will Gatekeeper let me run that app in Catalina?
How has XProtect changed?
Hollywood’s lessons – an automatic update that went badly wrong brings lessons for us all
macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update 2 (actually 3), plus Sierra and High Sierra Security Update 2019-005
Informed Security
Changing security makes privacy protection confusing
How to recognise properly-notarized apps with Taccy 1.3
Notarization devalued?
macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update take 2 is now available (updated)
Human frailty – 3fun security breach and more
Firewalls, phoning home and whitelists
Mojave’s privacy consent works behind your back
Privacy protection can pay off when it’s allowed to
How to check that your Mac is free of Zoom and similar web servers
How apps can check integrity better than macOS
What happened when MRT was updated, and what MRT does
Apple has pushed an update to MRT to remove Zoom’s hidden web server
Zoom videoconferencing could expose your Mac
Checking whether apps are notarized using Signet
A primer on code signing errors
Damaged apps can run normally: signature checks are complex
Why Catalina has got a read-only system volume
What is SIP and when is it safe to turn it off?
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Notarization in Mojave and Catalina
Can you tell whether code has been notarized?
How to bypass Mojave 10.14.5’s new kext security
Is a “Mac OS X GateKeeper bypass” what it says?
Apple updates AirPort Base Station Firmware to 7.9.1
Notarization arrives in 10.14.5
Mojave 10.14.5 changes kernel extension security
What is Gatekeeper, and where can I see it?
Finder security errors opening documents: a summary
When does Mojave check an app’s signature? The answer isn’t entirely consistent
Checking your app’s own signature
PDF is inherently not secure
PDF documents can readily leak data
Vulnerabilities in digital signing
AMFI: checking file integrity on your Mac
How can Mojave let you open an app with signature errors?
App signatures are always checked on launch, but serious errors may be ignored
How thoroughly does Gatekeeper check existing apps?
Mojave happily runs apps with revoked signatures, and more
Why does macOS keep downloading the incompatible app list?
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
Where do Apple’s recent security updates leave macOS?
What does the TCC Compatibility database do?
Notarization, security and older macOS
RIP XProtect and MRT?
Is Mojave’s privacy protection still vulnerable in 10.14.1?
New Mac malware: CoinTicker for cryptocurrency traders
Can you keep a secret?
Mojave fixes QuickLook cache vulnerability
Launching apps in Mojave: how it has changed
Has that app been notarized, and what are the benefits to the user?
How XProtect now leaves Safari 12 open to Flash and other exploits
Updates to macOS security software data: what has happened?
The Price of Free Software: Trend Micro’s apps exfiltrate your browser history
App Store Eavesdroppers
XProtect: Missing presumed dead?
Security, privacy, and why XProtect won’t stop apps reading your email
Mojave’s privacy protection and command tools: a collision in which the user is the loser
Running apps with Mojave’s privacy protection
Notarization: a big step forward for users and developers
Four serious security errors which are easily made on a Mac: how to fix them
Is XProtect dead, or about to be replaced?
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Recent High Sierra and Security Updates patched a serious Bluetooth bug
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
LockRattler 4.10 is a recommended update for all users
New Apple support articles about MacBook Pro 2018 model with the T2 chip
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Hidden caches in macOS: where your private data gets stored
Control your QuickLook cache with Aquiline Check 1.0b2, and Aquiliner for your menubar
Scrub goes into its first beta: improved privacy for sensitive documents
Just taking a Quick Look – privacy vulnerability
What does the MRT 1.35 update remove?
macOS High Sierra 10.13. update, Sierra and El Capitan Security Updates 2018-003 now available
The UUID conspiracy
More cryptomining malware, and a threat to routers and NAS
Do you use email encryption at all? macOS 10.13.4 update may help
Do you use PGP/GPG and S/MIME email encryption? They’re vulnerable
POPSS, vulnerability by documentation
Apple adds a third fix in Security Update 2018-001 for High Sierra
What do Security Updates actually fix?
APFS encryption, ghost guest users, and odd UUIDs
Insights through a vulnerability
Encryption passphrases are still left in logs: how Apple abuses its unified log
macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 fixes APFS encryption password disclosure bug
macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text
Should Apple have warned users of a vulnerability?
Another gaping security hole in High Sierra APFS disk encryption
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
Talking the same language
A bug in signature-checking weakens most anti-malware tools
Avast and AVG anti-virus are returning false positives
What to do when a secure connection fails
Hazel catches a silent Adobe update red-handed
Supply and demand
New Mac malware, OSX.CreativeUpdate, distributed by MacUpdate site
Don’t trust update aggregators
Restoring order to EFI firmware
Well-kept secrets, macOS malware protection
Further spurious ‘security’ updates, and who is com.apple.mac.install?
How your Mac can download an old ‘security’ update by accident
Biometric security and AI: dangerous partners
macOS code signing and Gatekeeper ignore extended attributes
A silent silent security update
Just what do XProtect and MRT protect your Mac from?
New macOS malware: MaMi
Apple has updated Safari 11.0.2, High Sierra 10.13.2, and iOS 11.2.2
The ‘app’ you can’t trash: how SIP is broken in High Sierra
WD My Cloud drives need urgent firmware update
A short trip with rootless: what you can and cannot do
Apple has released Time Capsule and AirPort updates for KRACK vulnerabilities
Off to a good start, then – Meltdown, Spectre, and more
How can you tell what Apple software has been installed/updated?
The correct and current version of MRT can be either 1.26 or 1.27
Apple has released Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra
Major vulnerability in High Sierra 10.13.1: anyone can gain elevated privileges
Beware the bogus Symantec blog which will infect you with Proton D
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
What happened at Eltima, and how can you stay safe?
FileVault: Making your Mac more secure
Mac malware gets more professional: DOK.C fakes the App Store
Did you download HandBrake recently? You might have got malware instead
Malware: OSX/Dok isn’t done yet
New macOS Malware: OSX/Dok
Apple pushes silent update to XProtect and MRT for OSX/Dok malware
More new malware: OSX.Dok.B or OSX.Bella, but we’re already protected
More new Mac malware expected soon: OSX.Snake?
Key security tools for Sierra and El Capitan
Malware has got the upper hand
Securing your router: keeping intruders out
How secure is your VPN?
What to do when your account might have been compromised
Unicode spoofing: when an аррӏе isn’t an apple at all
Just got a new Mac? You should check that its security protection is enabled
Silent Sierra night: security settings files in macOS Sierra (version 2)
Silent High Sierra night: security settings files in macOS High Sierra
What should you do when LockRattler returns a worrying error?
Inside the OS X blacklist: XProtect
Sierra’s System Integrity Protection (SIP): beyond root
What malware does XProtect you against?
Blocked kernel extensions – analysis of those blocked by XProtect
LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons: Closing the vulnerability
Logging in and out in Sierra’s log
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Code signing: confusing and weak?
The High Sierra 10.13 problem with security data files may now be fixed
Invisible security is no security
Java and macOS: what you should know
Eltima’s Elmedia Player has been infected with malware
Behind the Scenes: Open Directory and Kerberos
AirPlay streaming can stop App Store apps from running

Online

What to do when a secure connection fails
Preparing or downloading? iCloud’s odd interface
Don’t trust update aggregators
Safari offline reader is rapidly becoming functionless
Review: MarsEdit 4, the blogger’s world
A break in the clouds: what to do when a cloud service plays up – including links to service status for iCloud, Adobe CC, etc.
A storm in the digest: why services will be going down
Prepare for IPv6: it’s on its way
Never download a Flash installer from anywhere except its official site
News feeds for this blog: getting less eclectic
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
iCloud Drive has user modes, and tags transferred apps
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files

General

Preventing external displays from sleep can be crucial
Should you pay the high price of a high-speed external SSD?
Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Is this the end of the line for Mac servers?
iOS 11.2.5 may harm the Watch-iPhone relationship
How your Mac can download an old ‘security’ update by accident
Are you being pestered to upgrade to High Sierra?
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
What to do when told to pay VAT due on a completed purchase
My Pointer/Cursor Keeps Disappearing: what can I do?
Parental Controls: Safeguarding the vulnerable
Don’t die in the bath: mains power and mortality
Why you shouldn’t use cleaning or housekeeping apps
AppleCare and warranty cover for Macs
Apple Support in 140 characters – Apple Support on Twitter
Prepare your Mac for service/repair, and restore it later
Shutting down and restarting your Mac
Power Management in detail: using pmset
Forgetting Facebook and annulling notifications
Controlling privacy in macOS Sierra
Living with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act
FileVault: Making your Mac more secure
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to FileVault
What to do when the App Store doesn’t work properly
Teaching an old Finder new tricks: batch rename and Quick Look
Regex: searching with regular expressions
When Recent Items vanish: a possible bug in Sierra 10.12.6?
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists
Launch Services database problems: correcting and rebuilding
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
A Mac on the Edge of Europe – working in remote locations
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Losing your Ethernet port unverifies your Mac
Did that app quit, or is it just napping?
Return of the zombie app: is it a feature or bug?
How to prevent zombies
Who’s in control of your Mac? Notifications
Undead apps, and opting out of App Nap
Where did that metadata come from?
Hazel and SearchKeyLite bring order to your documents
Getting better document thumbnails and previews
Common packages: documents which are folders in drag
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
How LaunchServices builds the Open Recent menu, and outsmarts Aliases
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
Don’t believe the box: Thunderbolt 3 to 2/1 isn’t so simple

iCloud

Which extended attributes does iCloud preserve, and which get stripped?
Testing iCloud using Cirrus
How to back up your iCloud Keychain
Exploring and testing iCloud Drive using Cirrus 1.6
Living with Desktop & Documents in iCloud
iCloud queues
Versions in iCloud are still a mess, made worse by Handoff
Can you rely on iWork apps sharing versions in iCloud Drive?
Editing iCloud documents is far from seamless
Document versions are now preserved by iCloud, unreliably
Bailiff 1.0 now available: take control of iCloud Drive
Cirrus version 1.0 release: the iCloud tool is ready for general use
Inside iCloud with Cirrus 1.0b5: Paths and containers
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Is the macOS command line doomed?
Solving problems with iCloud Drive
What to do when iCloud Drive is slow to update
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files
Looking directly at iCloud’s files and folders with Cirrus 1.0b4
The trouble with iCloud Drive
Problems with iCloud shared data: how to tackle them
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Consistency and iCloud
Trying to make sense of iCloud: Progress with Cirrus
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
Inside iCloud Drive: uploading a file
Inside iCloud Drive: Pushed updates, that syncing feeling
Inside iCloud Drive: Downloading
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Test and check iCloud with Cirrus
Diagnosing iCloud problems using brctl, sync budgets and throttles
Preparing or downloading? iCloud’s odd interface
A break in the clouds: what to do when a cloud service plays up – including links to service status for iCloud, Adobe CC, etc.
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
iCloud Drive has user modes, and tags transferred apps
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Lost in iCloud Translation? When PNGs suddenly become JPEGs
iOS 11, or maybe 11.2.6, may change Photos’ handling of screenshots

Permissions and Extended Attributes

What changes a file’s modification date, and what doesn’t?
Deceived by the Finder
How macOS 10.14 and later overrides write permission on some files
Quantum permissions?
Reset/repair permissions using PermissionScanner
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
How to preserve metadata stored in a custom extended attribute
How to save file metadata in iCloud, and new info on extended attributes
How to save your file metadata – implementation isn’t simple
How do the Finder, Terminal and Spotlight handle extended attribute flags?
Metadata and iCloud
🎗 Quarantine: Apps
🎗 Quarantine: Documents
Sandboxing makes quarantine flags almost meaningless
Why all those quarantine flags?
Repairing permissions diagrammed
An introduction to extended attributes, xattrs
There’s something wrong with that file: could it be a xattr issue?
Which file systems and Cloud services preserve extended attributes?
macOS code signing and Gatekeeper ignore extended attributes
Documenting the hidden – xattr documentation project
Extended attributes: surprisingly common, and information-rich
Where are all those extended attributes?
Extended attributes in High Sierra 10.13.2
Drag and drop files to open them in xattred 1.0b6
Off to a good start, then – Meltdown, Spectre, iCloud filtering xattrs, and more
Where did that metadata come from?
A short trip with rootless: what you can and cannot do
The mystery of repairing permissions
Fixing problems with preference files
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Customising it all: global defaults in macOS Sierra and High Sierra
Something odd you can’t fix? Sierra re-introduces repairing permissions
Permissions repair tools updated for compatibility with High Sierra
Should you repair permissions on your Home folder, and how?
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Finder Info: how Sierra and High Sierra remember Classic Mac OS
Inside Finder Tags
xattr: org.openmetainfo: and org.openmetainfo.time: families, third-party metadata
Hazel and SearchKeyLite bring order to your documents
How macOS tracks your files: inside the inode
Can macOS tell how large a file really is?

Versioning and revisions

What does the Move To command do in Pages, Numbers & Keynote?
How to keep, or lose, a document’s previous versions
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
Document versions, copying, and iCloud in Mojave, and a new version of DeepTools
Versions in iCloud are still a mess, made worse by Handoff
Editing iCloud documents is far from seamless
Making macOS versions more usable
DeepTools 1 released: preserve document versions wherever they go
Revisionist version 1 is now released, with an extensive Help book and more
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Document Versioning
Busting myths about macOS versions and versioning
The Current Version: fixing macOS versioning
Trusting management
Tools for working with document versions/revisions
Documents and versioning

Scheduled Events

The awesome power of the Duet
Reliability of macOS Sierra: scheduled and background activities
An Incomplete List of Sierra’s Dispatched Services
How macOS manages tasks on cores: a draft
How macOS runs background activities: 1 From within an app
How macOS runs background activities: 2 Time Machine backups
How macOS runs background activities: 3 When things go wrong
How macOS runs background activities: 4 Using XPC Activity
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 2 Dispatch
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log, 2 DAS and CTS
Sierra 10.12.6 doesn’t fix the Time Machine bug, but changes it
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
App Nap, Battery Endurance, and Grand Central Dispatch
DispatchView and DispatchRider updated for High Sierra
Two ways to run background tasks: comparing launchd and GCD
Watching Grand Central Dispatch at Work
How timely are scheduled events in Sierra?
Instrumenting macOS Sierra to investigate irregular backups and log problems
Blowhole command tool 3: new version should be compatible with High Sierra
Looking inside WebKit and the macOS dispatching systems using log data
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon

Installers

Installing and removing software in Sierra
Making an Installer package the easier way
macOS Sierra will break many installers and updaters – Gatekeeper gets better, but also more intrusive
Bundle, package, library, or folder?

Apple’s New File System, APFS

Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs
Watch that space: More fun with Unicode in file names
Making sense of Disk Utility and disk structure in macOS 10.13-10.15
Should you enable defragmentation on APFS hard drives?
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Why has Apple put snapshots in a straitjacket?
Volume recovery using an APFS snapshot
The problem with APFS snapshots
Card tricks with TextEdit, and saving files safely to SSD
APFS, safe saves, inodes and the volfs file system
Why isn’t APFS fully supported yet in macOS?
APFS tools suck
Hitting the limits of APFS is both easy and confusing
The Quest for Sparse Files in APFS: do they exist?
Quantum computing and APFS: free and used space
Happy birthday APFS
Disk Utility can’t resize APFS disk images, but hdiutil can
Should you add a new APFS Container or Volume?
Finder can’t total file sizes correctly: how hard links confuse
How big is that folder: what happened to APFS Fast Directory Sizing?
Refreshing Aliases isn’t so simple: a cautionary tale with Alifix
Finder Aliases and Bookmarks: a summary
How to inspect the details of an Alias without changing them, and Precize 1.7
Aliases and Bookmarks are smarter than you think
Serious Finder bug in Mojave 10.14.2 with broken aliases
Inside Mojave’s Aliases and Bookmarks
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
Aliases, hard links, symlinks, and copies in Mojave’s APFS
Links and aliases beyond local files: advanced file system techniques
How to build an APFS bootable clone in Terminal
Apple finally releases APFS reference documentation
Two command tools updated for Mojave: alisma and unormal
APFS comes to Fusion Drives, but there’s no sign of Time Machine 2
APFS will finally be supported on Fusion Drives – in macOS 10.14 Mojave
Disks, partitions, volumes, containers
Is APFS fully supported yet?
APFS encryption, ghost guest users, and odd UUIDs
APFS, File Reference URLs, inodes and Finder Syncs
macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text
Another gaping security hole in High Sierra APFS disk encryption
Enduring file references in macOS
Accessing Finder aliases from the command line: alisma
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Open Recent, inodes, and Bookmarks: How macOS remembers files
Bookmarks, APFS, and enduring file references
Inspect the deepest details of your files with Precize 1.0b6
Using macOS Bookmarks as enduring references: Precize and Preciziun
Preview any file from a macOS Bookmark, and an oddity in Quick Look
The extent of APFS’s problems
Taking Stock: Using APFS in High Sierra 10.13.1
Time Machine and APFS
Starting up in High Sierra 10.13.1: an initial log exploration
APFS and High Sierra in trouble
High Sierra: APFS “not supported” on Fusion Drives
Forensic analysis for APFS volumes
APFS: iOS 11 and High Sierra will fix normalisation problems
High Sierra and filenames: Apple is relenting
macOS High Sierra 10.13 and APFS
The return of the volume
What is ‘copy on write’, and how is it good?
Next Week on My Mac: All the fun of WWDC – macOS 10.13 and APFS
Apple File System: what it means, what it brings
APFS and macOS 10.13: many apps and tools will need to be revised
How to make your own APFS volume
How to normalise strings, and a new command tool to help
APFS is currently unusable with most non-English languages
File problems in iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.13: What’s in a name?
Untangling file names and normalisation with Apfelstrudel
Unicode spoofing: when an аррӏе isn’t an apple at all
Why we can’t keep stringing along with Unicode
Dystextia: a platform for exploring Unicode encoding problems, obfuscating text, and spoofing
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra
What’s a UUID?
Watching macOS file systems: FSEvents and volume journals

Time Machine

How Time Machine backups waste space
Backing up the future
Time Machine 15: Large files including VMs
Checking backup transfer rates using T2M2 version 1.13
Time Machine 14: Diagnosing and working around slow backups
Duff disk or normal behaviour?
Time Machine in Catalina 10.15.3 has serious bugs
Time Machine: 1 How it works, or fails to
Time Machine: 2 What it writes in the log
Time Machine: 3 Analysing automatic backups
Time Machine: 4 Problems with backups
Time Machine: 5 Changing Macs and more
Time Machine: 6 Networked storage
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Time Machine: 8 Preventing problems
Time Machine: 9 Inside backup support files
Time Machine: 10 Tools
Time Machine: 11 tmutil
Time Machine 12: Backups that never complete
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
The arithmetic of backing up
Can you still use AFP sharing?
Time Machine travels
Time Machine has changed again in Catalina
Time Machine and backing up in Catalina
Time Machine beaten by the clock: backup fails due to bug
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Are we ready for Time Machine 2.0 yet?
Time Machine: past, present and future
Apple’s guidance on backing up your Mac revisited
Investigating Time Machine errors with T2M2 and Consolation 3
Mojave’s Time Machine 1.5: Working well but small quirks
How Time Machine makes backups
Time Machine backups of APFS volumes
What can you do inside your Time Machine backups?
Checking Time Machine in Mojave (and High Sierra) using T2M2 1.4
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Run The Time Machine Mechanic from a regular user account
Why are there problems backing up Photos Libraries?
Sierra’s Time Machine irregular backup bug: prevention and treatment
How iCloud Drive can break Time Machine backups
How to speed up Time Machine backups
Time Machine and APFS
This is what happens when Sierra’s backups become irregular
Sierra 10.12.6 doesn’t fix the Time Machine bug, but changes it
Why did my Mac stop making Time Machine backups? An investigation with Woodpile 0.6a1
Fixing Sierra’s Time Machine + bug: does macOS get overtired?
Mobile Time Machine and its transformation in High Sierra
New version of The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2)
Using T2M2 to diagnose and treat Time Machine problems
Looking in the log: predicates, filters, regex, and find
Taking Charge of Time Machine Backups: backing up on demand
Why have my Time Machine backups stopped or become irregular?
Troubleshooting Time Machine: stuck preparing backup, and the deep event scan
Watching macOS file systems: FSEvents and volume journals
Advanced Time Machine backups: multiple sources, multiple destinations
Removing all your old backups: a tortuous tale of permissions and links
Diagnosing and treating Time Machine problems in Terminal
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
How macOS runs background activities: 2 Time Machine backups
How macOS runs background activities: 3 When things go wrong
How to check that Time Machine is working properly
iCloud, Spotlight, and Time Machine
Has Apple fixed the bug which made Time Machine backups irregular?
The Time Bomb Ticking in Sierra: Grand Central Dispatch is broken
How Time Machine backups are launched in Sierra
Time Machine problems in macOS Sierra
Irregular Time Machine backups: is this a launchd bug?
FlexiTime Machine: how Sierra changes backups
Has Sierra’s Time Machine changed to backup on demand?

Keychains

How to back up your iCloud Keychain
Checking your keychains using KeychainCheck2
More information about your keychains in KeychainCheck 2.0a3
Tools to work with keychain problems
Inside the iCloud keychain, and its problems
Checking keychain access using Woodpile: a tutorial
Vanishing keychains
Fixing iCloud Keychains, and backing them up
Why do I have to keep entering my keychain password in Sierra?
How to repair your keychain by making a fresh one
Tackling keychain problems in Terminal
How does your keychain work?
KeychainCheck 1.3: new version should run on El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
More keychains than meets the eye

Help Services

Adding a PDF Help book
Finishing off
How High Sierra has changed Help
High Sierra’s new improved Help system diagrammed
High Sierra has changed Help, and broken HelpHelp
HelpHelp updated for High Sierra compatibility
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Help Help: 3 What the docs don’t tell you

Console, Ulbow, Consolation, log, and reading logs

How to reveal ‘private’ messages in the log
Spring Forward: how the log copes with summer time clock change
Viewing macOS events live using Crescendo
Want to access log files directly, or analyse logarchives? Try Ulbow 1.2b1
Making your own logarchive from a backup
How long does your Mac keep its log for?
Errors in the night and snapshot problems
Ulbow 1.0, my new free unified log browser, is released
When did my Mac last start up, and why? An exploration with Ulbow
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
‘private’ – the problem of censorship in macOS unified log
Consolation 3.5 tells you how many log entries, and more
Catalina’s log can’t be unprivatised
Starting up in Catalina: sequence and waypoints in the log
What’s the time, Mr Mac? How summer time confuses macOS
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Opening the log
Capturing the moment in your log: how to identify a problem
What happened when MRT was updated, and what MRT does
Which log fields should be accessible in Consolation?
eForensics Magazine publishes first full description of macOS unified log
Investigating Time Machine errors with T2M2 and Consolation 3
Investigating a crash using Consolation 3
How to use the unified log to see what’s going wrong
What to do when your log returns an error
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Did it freeze? Missing 50 minutes of log
How Mojave changes the unified log
Where next with the log?
Consolation 3: log browser of choice for macOS 10.12-10.14
macOS Unified log: 1 why, what and how
macOS Unified log: 2 content and extraction
macOS Unified log: 3 finding your way
Unified but not uniform: how the log has changed
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
Quantum mechanics and Mojave – performance measurement, Signposts, and the log
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
Signposts for performance: 1 introduction
Signposts for performance: 2 Instruments
Updates all round to Blowhole, RouteMap, and the Signpost Kit
Signposts for performance: alpha release of RouteMap
Blowhole, RouteMap, and a Signpost Kit
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way
Watching Mojave’s privacy protection at work
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 1: identification
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 3: Launch
How to browse the log on an iOS device
Should you use shutdown or reboot in the command line?
The unified log in macOS Mojave: Signposts and Instruments
The log command in High Sierra 10.13.5: Signposts are already supported
WWDC and macOS 10.14
Consolation now supports Mojave’s Signposts in High Sierra and more
How a New MacBook Pro borked an older iMac’s Bluetooth
Encryption passphrases are still left in logs: how Apple abuses its unified log
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Bug-hunting in Consolation and Woodpile: success in obscurity
Does Woodpile crash on you when trying to start? This should fix it
Now you can filter with regular expressions in Woodpile
The unified log in High Sierra 10.13.1
Starting up in High Sierra 10.13.1: an initial log exploration
See when your Mac starts or wakes up, using Woodpile
Checking keychain access using Woodpile: a tutorial
Vanishing keychains
Why did my Mac stop making Time Machine backups? An investigation with Woodpile 0.6a1
This is what happens when Sierra’s backups become irregular
Browsing your log with Woodpile: Clarity and detail
Diagnosing a macOS problem of a month ago
Inside the macOS log: logd and the files that it manages
What’s your Mac been up to for the last 3 months? Inside macOS’s hidden activity records
Woodpile gets informative ToolTips in its bar chart
First steps to a new type of log browser: Woodpile 0.1a1
New insights into process performance: log load analysis
Looking inside WebKit and the macOS dispatching systems using log data
High Sierra: security files, internals and some bugs
Why can’t I find anything useful in Sierra’s logs?
Getting more out of Sierra’s logs
Brilliant but
How the new tools in Consolation 3 help to explore Sierra’s startup
Looking in the log: predicates, filters, regex, and find
Regex: searching with regular expressions
Display of dense text information – colour styles in Consolation 3
How to read Sierra’s unified log as a normal user
Sierra’s unified log evolves: more persistent, and a valuable log log
MakeLogarchive can now catalogue any well-formed logarchive
Browsing the unified log in difficult circumstances
Apple’s new reality distortion field
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Next Weeks on My Mac: Where to go with the log?
Consolation 3, and Mac Geek Gab
Useful filter terms for Sierra’s logs
Bugs in the documentation of the log command, and in its handling of predicates
New and existing bugs in the unified log in Sierra 10.12.4
How far back does Sierra’s new log go?
Sierra’s log is now locked away from normal users
Blowhole command tool 3: new version should be compatible with High Sierra
Bugs in the logs: Sierra’s new logging system is a game of chance
Drift in the timing of log entries in Sierra
Sierra Log Tutorial: Getting started, Time Machine errors, and restarts – basic level
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 1
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 2 Dispatch
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log 1
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log, 2 DAS and CTS
Sleep, Wake, and Startup: Hardware and ACPI
When Recent Items vanish: a possible bug in Sierra 10.12.6?
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists
Logging in and out in Sierra’s log
What’s a UUID?
Sierra Log Tutorial: Exploring a startup – medium level
A phrasebook for LogLogger4 and log
Using the logs in Sierra: some practical tips
Bugs in the logs: Sierra’s new logs are far from perfect
log: a primer on predicates
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
Sierra’s Console: promising but incomplete
Reading logs: shutdown and startup
Reading logs: waking from sleep and backing up
Getting El Capitan to run clean – using Console and guesswork to stop repeated service crashing
Lost in the log
Error numbers: the final hurdle – how to find out what they mean
Log race – understanding and using Console’s logs
Using Consolation’s log extracts
R as a platform for data conversion: JSON to Excel for log extracts
The Time Bomb Ticking in Sierra: Grand Central Dispatch is broken
Waking your Mac from sleep: log highlights
Mac shutdown and sleep cause codes
Transforming the log to a user tool
Adding Timing Features to an App: Tinderbox and Storyspace
Masterly account of Sierra’s new log system
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
Further spurious ‘security’ updates, and who is com.apple.mac.install?

Last Week on My Mac – a weekly review

Not a Twitter quitter (21 May 2023)
Systematic troubleshooting (14 May 2023)
All in the numbers – macOS version numbering (7 May 2023)
Secret security, pulled XPR update (30 April 2023)
When the numbers don’t add up – purgeable and available space (23 April 2023)
Finder or loser? – Finder’s volume size bugs (16 April 2023)
Storage stories, selecting SSDs (9 April 2023)
fsck status 65 – Disk Utility errors (2 April 2023)
Are you ready for 13.3 or 9.1? (26 March 2023)
Providence and provenance (19 March 2023)
Why is Apple so reluctant for the offline Mac? (12 March 2023)
KeySteal, Honkbox and BadGacha (5 March 2023)
Complexities of Thunderbolt hubs (26 February 2023)
Getting help from ChatGPT and AI (19 February 2023)
Children, animals and TCC (12 February 2023)
Why are security updates still so unreliable? (5 February 2023)
Knowing your limitations – techniques for studying macOS (29 January 2023)
The evolution of Apple silicon – M2 Pro/Max (22 January 2023)
How APFS trims a disk image to size (15 January 2023)
The trouble with better security (8 January 2023)
Ultra chips and cryptexes – round up of 2022 (1 January 2023)
Can I have a Yule log? (25 December 2022)
Bypassing Gatekeeper (18 December 2022)
Similar hardware but different by design – iPad Pro v Mac (11 December 2022)
The mobile virtual Mac (4 December 2022)
I told you so! – new Apple silicon Macs (27 November 2022)
Some boot, but others don’t – booting Apple silicon Macs from an external disk (20 November 2022)
Fortnightmare – updates (13 November 2022)
Home truths about macOS (6 November 2022)
Did you jump or were you pushed?, Ventura upgrade (30 October 2022)
A quiet word about help (23 October 2022)
It either works or it doesn’t, Content Caching server and updates (16 October 2022)
Time for a fresh SilentKnight (9 October 2022)
Do you still need that external bootable disk? (2 October 2022)
Paradoxical undressing – disabling security features )25 September 2022)
Passkeys and biometrics (18 September 2022)
Apple harvest is coming (11 September 2022)
Breaking the silence – performance cost and reporting (4 September 2022)
Security updates are down again (28 August 2022)
Software Update and serendipity (21 August 2022)
Not a PC (14 August 2022)
Is your Mac still secure from malware? (7 August 2022)
Obfuscating errors (31 July 2022)
How can you tell whether your Mac is up to date? (24 July 2022)
How virtualization is important to the future of macOS (17 July 2022)
Updates and open loops (10 July 2022)
Changing anti-malware tools in macOS (3 July 2022)
Apple to kill all support for Sierra and earlier (26 June 2022)
Stuck together or flourishing apart? macOS, iPadOS and iOS (19 June 2022)
Introducing XProtect Remediator, successor to MRT (12 June 2022)
The magic is how not what – Live Text and Visual Look Up (5 June 2022)
Watch the ANE (29 May 2022)
Will Disk Utility ever work properly? (22 May 2022)
The slim hope of recovery – M1 Recovery Mode and external boot disks (15 May 2022)
Deleting the SSV to free space (8 May 2022)
Do M2 Macs need better storage support? (1 May 2022)
Opening Pandora’s SSD (24 April 2022)
kextermination is coming (17 April 2022)
Why M1 Macs don’t have full support for USB-C (10 April 2022)
Trial ethics (3 April 2022)
When Visual Look Up fails (27 March 2022)
Is Look Up destined for CSAM? (20 March 2022)
CPU % (27 February 2022)
Do we have custom access? (20 February 2022)
Still struggling with snapshots (13 February 2022)
Core allocation in M1 chips (6 February 2022)
There’s still a hole in my bucket, Monterey’s memory leak (30 January 2022)
The Last 7 Years on My Mac: an anniversary (23 January 2022)
On-board diagnostics (16 January 2022)
Has Time Machine slowed? (9 January 2022)
On M1 chips 1 + 1 = 4 (2 January 2022)
Maintaining macOS has changed (26 December 2021)
Shrinking macOS updates (19 December 2021)
When the Internet caught fire (12 December 2021)
A Christmas Core Carol – overview of multiple cores on Apple systems (5 December 2021)
Are malware defences changing again? (28 November 2021)
Snapshot hostages – backups to APFS and their repair (21 Novermber 2021)
It’s the tiddly bits – changes in Monterey (14 November 2021)
Who needs a desktop Mac? (7 November 2021)
The pioneers are winning – Monterey early adoption (31 October 2021)
MacBook Pro scoresheet (24 October 2021)
Passwords and patchwork quilts (17 October 2021)
Marking time (10 October 2021)
Web woes worsen (3 October 2021)
Silence isn’t golden – Apple’s unspoken update policy (26 September 2021)
The macOS update problem (19 September 2021)
When we’re almost twelve – the coming of Monterey (12 September 2021)
Hurricane and Icestorm – AMP, power, and background tasks (5 September 2021)
Queue-jumping, hints and deep integration – inside M1 integration (29 August 2021)
Throw caution to the wind – upgrading to Monterey (22 August 2021)
Trust Apple (15 August 2021)
Where’s the accelerator? – documentation and more or less (8 August 2021)
Squeezing a thimbleful of update into a ten-gallon can (1 August 2021)
Is that a thunderstorm coming? macOS 11.6, 12, and Apple Silicon Macs (25 July 2021)
The perils of M1 Ownership (18 July 2021)
A tendency to panic (11 July 2021)
Better beta-testing (4 July 20121)
From assembly to Shortcuts (27 June 2021)
Hardware legacies (20 June 2021)
The elephant at WWDC (13 June 2021)
In the recovery position (Recovery on M1 Macs) (6 June 2021)
How it took 6 months for M1 Macs to work properly (30 May 2021)
Feeling fast, the psychology of computer performance (23 May 2021)
Changing updating habits (16 May 2021)
Would you regret an M1 iMac? (9 May 2021)
When will macOS updates hurt less? (2 May 2021)
Looking for the killer app (25 April 2021)
Death by SMB (18 April 2021)
Big Sur’s broken clock (11 April 2021)
APFS and pursuit of the free lunch (4 April 2021)
macOS at 20, APFS at 4 (28 March 2021)
Whatever happened to Exposure Notifications? (21 March 2021)
Next phase of the Apple Silicon transition (14 March 2021)
Going forward with backups (7 March 2021)
Users are losing out against Big Sur’s sealed System (28 February 2021)
Swallowing a fly (21 February 2021) – benchmarking SSDs and more
Big Sur 11.2.1 update is broken (14 February 2021)
Apple’s scorched update policy (7 February 2021)
Finding not hiding (31 January 2021) – access -v- privacy
Obsolescent preferences (24 January 2021)
1 True Recovery (17 January 2021)
Intricacies of the boot disk (10 January 2021)
Fessing up (3 January 2021) – should developers declare vulnerabilities and privacy policies?
Last Year on My Mac: There must be a pony (27 December 2020)
Begging from Apple (20 December 2020)
Drag racing SSDs (13 December 2020)
Who decides when to quit an app? (6 December 2020)
There’s more to the M1 than speed (29 November 2020)
Backstage heroes (22 November 2020) – third-party developers and Big Sur support
Making essential services fail-safe (15 November 2020)
No secret (8 November 2020), Big Sur and Apple Silicon Event
Support, dependence, control (1 November 2020)
Are silent security updates a vulnerability? (25 October 2020)
Miss Havisham Syndrome (18 October 2020) – accessing hardware info
How do you lose 16,000 cases of Covid-19? (11 October 2020)
Pretend it never happened (4 October 2020)
Change challenged or champion? (27 September 2020)
Two thousand yard stare (iOS 14) (20 September 2020)
Times forgotten (13 September 2020)
Has notarization burned? (6 September 2020)
Is macOS becoming unmaintainable? (30 August 2020)
Where privacy protection fails (23 August 2020)
Apple leak (16 August 2020)
Heavy hand on the kill switch (9 August 2020)
Coming NeXT on Apple Silicon (2 August 2020)
How Apple told us about Apple Silicon 2 years ago (26 July 2020)
Malware detection games (19 July 2020)
Control-Space (12 July 2020) – control of snapshots
Making the most of technology (5 July 2020)
More pieces in Apple’s jigsaw puzzle (28 June 2020)
Lock down your mind (21 June 2020) – pandemic, WWDC, App Stores
Console, the vital tool that Apple abandoned (14 June 2020)
10.16 is all about tools and maturity (7 June 2020)
It’s about user choice (31 May 2020)
Nobbled and hobbled by notarization (24 May 2020)
The tragic case of audiobooks (17 May 2020)
Night terrors (10 May 2020)
Too many apps (3 May 2020)
Why file integrity is important (26 April 2020)
Vandalism (19 April 2020) – effects of file corruption
Surprise Supplemental Update (12 April 2020)
Changing the future (5 April 2020)
How Time Machine backups waste space (29 March 2020)
No thanks for the memories (22 March 2020)
Backing up the future (15 March 2020)
Deceived by the Finder (8 March 2020)
Virus pandemics (1 March 2020)
Quantum permissions? (23 February 2020)
Duff disk or normal behaviour? (16 February 2020)
SSD it (9 February 2020)
Is Catalina a good upgrade yet? (2 February 2020)
When more security subverts security (26 January 2020)
Things don’t always ‘just work’ (19 January 2020)
When time fails you (12 January 2020) – unusual bugs appearing in DatePicker and Ulbow
Catalina users caught in a game of chance (5 January 2020)
Explanations required (29 December 2019) – end of year review
Flaws in re-installing Catalina (22 December 2019)
Dictation, resources, and change (15 December 2019) – problems with change, particularly in macOS
The arithmetic of backing up (8 December 2019)
Help revised (1 December 2019) – documentation debt and crisis
‘private’ (24 November 2019) – the problem of censorship in macOS unified log
Time Machine travels (17 November 2019)
Welcome to the managed environment? (10 November 2019) – RunningBoard
Macco’s Beard, Occam’s Anti-Razor (3 November 2019) – find one bug and you should look for more
Time management (27 October 2019) – Apple’s expired security certificate fiasco
The worst macOS upgrade ever? (20 October 2019)
More than adventurous (13 October 2019) – changes in Catalina
Opening the log (6 October 2019)
Hollywood’s lessons (29 September 2019) – an automatic update that went badly wrong brings lessons for us all
Why has Apple put snapshots in a straitjacket? (22 September 2019)
Informed Security (15 September 2019)
Notarization devalued? (8 September 2019)
The minor update that took 5 weeks (1 September 2019)
Prepare to upgrade to Catalina (25 August 2019)
Why isn’t APFS fully supported yet in macOS? (18 August 2019)
Human frailty – 3fun security breach and more (11 August 2019)
Apple Remote – what went wrong with Mojave 10.14.6 Update and two Security Updates (4 August 2019)
Metadata and iCloud (28 July 2019)
The log is the wrong place (21 July 2019)
Does anyone here know about MRT? (14 July 2019)
Useless information (7 July 2019)
Last of the Mojave (30 June 2019)
More haste, less upgrade (23 June 2019)
Making notarization as hard as possible (16 June 2019)
Homage to Catalina (9 June 2019)
WWDC 2019 (2 June 2019)
Unglamorous utilities (26 May 2019)
Notarization arrives in 10.14.5 (19 May 2019)
Language wars (12 May 2019)
Finder lost (5 May 2019)
Taking text further (28 April 2019)
App Store graffiti (21 April 2019)
The hard road to macOS 10.15 (14 April 2019)
Struggling with macOS 10.15 already (7 April 2019)
The best update since El Capitan? (31 March 2019)
Don’t tell anyone, but we’re about to ship new iMacs (24 March 2019)
Happy birthday APFS (17 March 2019)
The importance of document repair (10 March 2019)
Keyboard shortcuts killed by bug (3 March 2019)
Apple quietly pre-announces major change in macOS 10.14.4 (24 February 2019)
Problems of PDF (17 February 2019)
Mojave’s half-baked Quick Actions (10 February 2019)
The secrecy of privacy (3 February 2019)
Mid-life mistakes (27 January 2019)
Breaking the link (20 January 2019)
The changing aesthetics of macOS (13 January 2019)
AppKit, TextKit, Core Data – signs of disease (6 January 2019)
Last year’s hardware, next year’s promises 31 December 2018 (extra)
Out with the old, in with the new (30 December 2018)
Weed control in the walled garden (23 December 2018)
What is Apple up to? (16 December 2018)
Crippling Rich Text with Dark Mode (9 December 2018)
Where will all those coders go? (2 December 2018)
Migration is like blisters (25 November 2018)
Notarization, security and older macOS (18 November 2018)
What firmware version is that? (4 November 2018)
Can you keep a secret? (28 October 2018)
iCloud queues (21 October 2018)
The big upgrade (14 October 2018)
Editing iCloud documents is far from seamless (7 October 2018)
Successful release (30 September 2018)
Those who are about to upgrade to Mojave (23 September 2018)
Apple could change the world (16 September 2018)
App Store Eavesdroppers (9 September 2018)
Growing the Apple crop – Mojave, privacy protection, and why problems are only surfacing now (2 September 2018)
Apple’s Cloud of Unknowing – Support Notes and Back to My Mac (26 August 2018)
Quantum mechanics and Mojave – performance measurement, Signposts, and the log (19 August 2018)
Where next with the log? – the next log browser (12 August 2018)
Internet search isn’t fit for purpose (5 August 2018)
The mystery of the Supplemental Update for the 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (29 July 2018)
Is XProtect dead, or about to be replaced? (22 July 2018)
Marzipan isn’t icing on the cake (15 July 2018)
Beyond mere coding (8 July 2018)
In memoriam High Sierra (1 July 2018)
Just taking a Quick Look – privacy vulnerability (24 June 2018)
Is Dark Mode overdesigned? (17 June 2018)
Reinventing the Mac (10 June 2018) – WWDC 2018 report
WWDC and macOS 10.14 (3 June 2018)
The UUID conspiracy (27 May 2018)
Finishing off – Help books and more (20 May 2018)
POPSS, vulnerability by documentation (13 May 2018)
Is the macOS command line doomed? (6 May 2018)
Consistency and iCloud (29 April 2018)
Apple Support and Demand (22 April 2018)
Apple’s calendar (15 April 2018) – High Sierra, APFS, Time Machine, and updates
The trouble with iCloud Drive (8 April 2018)
Insights through a vulnerability – (1 April 2018) – the leak of APFS encryption passphrases in High Sierra
Should Apple have warned users of a vulnerability? (25 March 2018)
Talking the same language (18 March 2018)
Enduring file references in macOS (11 March 2018)
What emergency? We’ve got serious photos (4 March 2018) – rainfall radar and other important information on the internet
Trusting management (25 February 2018) – versioning system, APFS
Supply and demand (18 February 2018)
Here comes macOS 10.14 (11 February 2018)
Don’t trust update aggregators (4 February 2018)
Apple still loves us (28 January 2017)
Well-kept secrets, macOS malware protection (21 January 2018)
A silent silent security update (14 January 2018)
Off to a good start, then (7 January 2018) – Meltdown, Spectre, iCloud filtering xattrs, and more
Last Year on My Mac: Accident-prone (31 December 2017)
The awesome power of the Duet (24 December 2017)
Time out of joint (17 December 2017) – UTC and local times
Documenting the hidden (10 December 2017)
Getting to the root of High Sierra’s problems (3 December 2017)
Vanishing keychains (26 November 2017)
The extent of APFS’s problems (19 November 2017)
Brilliant but (12 November 2017) – zombie apps and the unified log
Unfinished business (5 November 2017) – why won’t Apple finish any version of macOS?
Time Machine and APFS (29 October 2017)
In search of the missing HEIF (22 October 2017)
Invisible security is no security (15 October 2017)
Apple’s new reality distortion field (8 October 2017)
How not to release a macOS upgrade (1 October 2017)
Updates, updates (24 September 2017) iOS 11, iTunes 12.7, Xcode 9, Swift 4.0
Deciding about High Sierra (17 September 2017)
APFS and High Sierra in trouble (10 September 2017)
Should we relocate? (3 September 2017)
Taking a break (27 August 2017)
Forks and other system cutlery (20 August 2017)
We need to document macOS (13 August 2017)
Personas, flavours and settings (6 August 2017)
Display of dense text information (30 July 2017)
Withering automation (23 July 2017)
Back to the future – (16 July 2017) markup languages and LaTeX
Making a mess of preferences (9 July 2017)
Next Weeks on My Mac: Where to go with the log? (2 July 2017)
Testing trust in system upgrades and updates (25 June 2017) – did Apple install alpha-test software in iOS 10.0-10.2?
The mystery of repairing permissions (18 June 2017)
Last Week Off My Mac: A1 and AI – issues from WWDC 2017, including ML/AI (11 June 2017)
Next Week on My Mac: All the fun of WWDC (4 June 2017) – macOS 10.13 and APFS
Making more sense of the log (28 May 2017)
Sierra 10.12.5, a shoddy update (21 May 2017)
Malware has got the upper hand (7 May 2017)
Going back to the book – search engines and how best to present complex information (30 April 2017)
New Macs and bad characters – coming iMacs and Unicode problems (23 April 2017)
No normal user – why should we all be admin users? (16 April 2017)
Summer’s coming, mostly – new Macs coming, and the new files system for macOS 10.13 (9 April 2017)
What the eye does see, Apple doesn’t grieve over – Sierra mid-term report, and Apple’s blindness to bugs (2 April 2017)
Compromised, or conned? – security threats from hackers and the CIA, or maybe not (26 March 2017)
Still looking for help, inside Apple Help (19 March 2017)
Loose ends and details, Apple Help, Installers, and whether Apple is doomed (12 March 2017)
Transforming the log to a user tool (5 March 2017)
Moving with the times and the data, JSON to Excel and Numbers, Tinderbox 7, Dash 4 (26 February 2017)
The value of log access (19 February 2017)
Stories of gods and Grand Central Dispatch (12 February 2017)
A Swift breeze blowing (5 February 2017)
Setapp and software rental (29 January 2017)
Silence is not golden – why silent security updates are bad (22 January 2017)
Workflow efficiency (15 January 2017)
Creaky old internet – ASCII still reigns in URLs (8 January 2017)
Last Year on my Mac: For better or worse? – review of 2016, looking forward to 2017 (31 December 2016)
The life you cannot foretell – forecasting battery ‘life’ (25 December 2016)
The fate of Yahoo! (18 December 2016)
More work needed – Swift’s potential as a scripting language (11 December 2016)
A tragedy to freedom in two Acts (4 December 2016)
The devil in the detail – Xcode and Sierra documentation and fixes (27 November 2016)
Ethel & Ernest and change – taking advantage of change (20 November 2016)
Apple hasn’t really changed in 25 years (13 November 2016) – broken websites and customer service
Try turning it off and back on again (6 November 2016) – rapid app development
Should Apple give up and go Windows? (30 October 2016)
Adobe and Canon in the firing line (23 October 2016)
Upgrade uptake (16 October 2016)
The strangeness of Time Machine, and App Store conflict (9 October 2016)
Changing diagnostics (2 October 2016)
Sierra, early impressions (25 September 2016)
How to report non-linear progress (18 September 2016)
It all rests on October now (11 September 2016)
Tracking and privacy, and the hidden OS X update (4 September 2016)
Where the law fails to protect (28 August 2016)
More flaws in the kernel (21 August 2016)
Hypertext for almost all, and fault-tolerant XML (14 August 2016)
Pistols at dawn (7 August 2016)
Finder fluff, and FileMaker (31 July 2016)
Does 10.11.6 cut the mustard? (24 July 2016)
Who remembers HyperCard, and a ban on encryption? (17 July 2016)
A new surge in malware? (10 July 2016)

Swift snippets and tips

How apps can check integrity better than macOS
Checking and downloading updates automatically in Swift
Checking your app’s own signature
When a window closes as soon as it has opened
macOS coding beyond the books: basic menu control
Making documents look good in both appearance modes
Notarization: a big step forward for users and developers
Mojave’s privacy protection: informing users
A new Xcode project for scripting in Swift 4.0: ScriptBase
Swift Snippets 0: Introduction and Contents
1: Strings, Attributed Text, Arrays
2: Interface, NSDocument, Files
3: Preference Files, Property Lists, JSON
4: Numbers, Dates, Unified log, Objective-C
5: Bundles, Process, Background activity, Shell commands
Easy access to xattrs from Swift 4: Martin R’s URL extension
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Making an Installer package the easier way
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: A preference sheet
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences with and without UserDefaults
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Exploring and using extended attributes with xattred
Xcode 9: A big step forward, and some important steps back
Code signing: confusing and weak?
Accessing Finder aliases in your own code: a walk through alisma’s source
A simpler way to control an app’s Login Item
In the Dark Mode: a tortuous journey without a map
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
What can that app do? Entitlements, authorisation, and privacy

Scripting macOS using Swift

Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
Time to notarize apps: 108 notarizations analysed
Notarization made a bit simpler
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Making notarization as hard as possible
Apple’s Notary Service: ten months experience
Printing without tears in Dark Mode (and exporting to PDF)
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
Process deprecations
Where will all those coders go?
Performing keyhole surgery on Info.plist
Preparing to upgrade to Mojave: Scripting, commands, and development
Privacy + Scripting = Problems
Is the macOS command line doomed?
Inside iCloud with Cirrus 1.0b5: Paths and containers
A new Xcode project for scripting in Swift 4.0: ScriptBase
Last Week on my Mac: More work needed – Swift’s potential as a scripting language
Programming playgrounds: Swift on an iPad?
Withering automation (23 July 2017)
Goodbye AppleScript
Resources to help the non-novice learn and use Swift on macOS
Scripting in Swift: Scriptarian, take 1.2.1
Scriptarian: Swift scripting for macOS?
Xcode Swift playgrounds 1: freezing and failing
Xcode Swift playgrounds 2: Scripting files
Xcode Swift playgrounds 3: shell scripts, droplets, and actions
Xcode Swift playgrounds 4: running scripts without Xcode
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 1
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 2 – more lessons in Swift learned the hard way
Making a better app to check your Mac’s security systems
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: the signature shuffle
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: cheating with AppleScript
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: alerts and file save
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: max factoring
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Swift Documentation Markup
LockRattler 3, LogLogger 5d, and signature silliness
If you’re still running El Capitan, Apple doesn’t care about you – Xcode 8 and El Capitan support
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: quirky commands
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Radio buttons and more
Developing Consolation in Swift 3: mostly a breeze
A Swift breeze blowing (5 February 2017)
Instrumenting macOS Sierra to investigate irregular backups and log problems
Blowhole advanced: writing a command tool in Swift 3, and more
Beyond Scripting in Swift: turning Consolation into a full-blown app
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences
Beyond Scripting in Swift: JSON and the Golden NSDictionary
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Implementing JSON to CSV conversion
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Help Help: 3 What the docs don’t tell you
Making an Installer package the easier way
Exporting HTML from Tinderbox 7: Using CSS for a Help Book
Using HTML from Tinderbox 7 to make a Help Book
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Reading Plists, building popups, and more
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Sorting with a closure
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Finding apps, and calls that don’t fail
Xcode 8.3: better in parts, more confusing in others
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Keychains lost in translation
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Who’s afraid of the big, bad buffer?
Normalising strings in Swift: scripting Apfelstrudel and beyond
How to normalise strings, and a new command tool to help
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: opening docs and converting text
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: huge popups, and strings too smart
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Encoding conversion without tears
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Running background activities
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Reading and writing property lists
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app in a couple of hours
More Scripting in Swift: Styling Attributed Text
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Dates, Steppers, and parsing log entries
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Sets, Lies, and Videotape
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Of characters and closures
More fun scripting in Swift with Xcode: files and deep traversal
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Beyond Scripting in Swift: A preference sheet
Scripting in Swift: Any perils – type safety and checking
More Fun Scripting with Swift in Xcode: String search
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences with and without UserDefaults
More Fun Scripting with Swift in Xcode: extended attributes
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Direct access to xattrs, calling C, and converting Data to Strings
Beyond Scripting in Swift: When xattrs are not like files
More Scripting in Swift: Shuffling files and writing a property list
More Scripting in Swift: Looking it up in a dictionary
Beyond Scripting with Swift: Bar charts and ToolTips
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Sharing and syncing data throughout an app
More fun scripting in Swift: working around an Xcode 9 bug
Bug-hunting in Consolation and Woodpile: success in obscurity
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Decoding a property list
Scripting in Swift: Casting, Any, and implicit mutability
Scripting in Swift: Key characters, or what character can’t be key
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Scripting in Swift: Checking free disk space
Watching folders – 1 for users
A Swift 4 ‘droplet’ scripting prototype, Dropsy
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Putting a browser window in your app
Adding new menu commands to perform a quick copy
Beyond scripting in Swift: the popup menu that won’t validate
One small change which might break a lot of older apps
Why privileged commands may never be allowed

Advanced troubleshooting tools

The ultimate diagnostic tool: sysdiagnose
Activity Monitor, ps and top: probing processes
More useful information gleaned from sysdiagnose
Running tools within sysdiagnose individually
iCloud: some explainers, and how to diagnose its problems
Checking your drives with DriveDx

Building a cheap, large, fast external SSD

1 – Thunderbolt
2 – USB 3
3 – Performance and conclusions

More troubleshooting

Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Reviving the hopeless Mac: what to try before visiting the Genius Bar
My Mac don’t work – troubleshooting tools and techniques
Generic troubleshooting: how to fix something that doesn’t work
After the crash: replaying the journal to prevent disk errors
What to do when your Mac starts up all wrong
Restoring firmware after interrupted firmware update
The Eclectic Light flickers: my iMac might be dead
My network connection is not unplugged: a KEXT, a MAC, and an almost dead Mac
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
Service with a Smile – advanced troubleshooting of services and the startup process
Thanks for the Memory
Crash crash – Crash Reporter and ReportCrash, the crash handlers
Recovering from a hard crash – when your startup drive is missing or damaged
Why the spinning beachball?

Storage

When you’ve got more USB-C devices than ports
Why a Fusion Drive won’t last as long as an SSD
Which Hard Disk? Selecting modern hard drives
Cause of Death – how disks become corrupted and crash
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to FileVault
How long will the SSD (in my Fusion Drive) last?
Monitoring SSD wear and ageing
Choosing drives: which type, manufacturer, and capacity?
Which hard drive? 160,000 years experience analysed
Q&A – Dead Mac recovery – recovering files from a dead Mac
S.M.A.R.T.ypants – hard drive failure detection
Checking your drives with DriveDx
How to check and repair your drives in El Capitan
From disaster back to normal: rebuilding the RAID
From a broken Promise to an even bigger Promise
Keeping your Promise: upgrading a Promise Pegasus R4 RAID
Which disks can you install in an external RAID drive such as a Promise Pegasus?
Updating the firmware of a Promise Pegasus R4 RAID
How it took 2 days to upgrade my RAID, thanks to a bug in Disk Utility, and tired old HFS+
How can you tell whether it is a hard drive or an SSD?

Inside OS X / macOS

Asleep on the job – problems with sleep and wakening
What happens when you run an app?
How to uninstall complex software
How to uninstall OS X Server 5
Jack of all tasks: launchd, and how to run periodic tasks
Permissions: the heart of access control
Personal Preference – preferences from resources to XML
Diving even deeper into preferences
Preference lists, a running sore in OS X
Preference settings: where to find them in macOS Sierra (v2)
Preference settings: where to find them in El Capitan
Bundle, package, library, or folder?
Common packages: documents which are folders in drag
Comfortable Computing – sitting and working in comfort and safety
Click, Tap, or Stroke? – alternative input devices including touchscreens, trackpads, and graphics tablets
What to do when your Magic Trackpad 2 fails
Is your iPad Pro a pain in the neck?
Printing without tears
Under The Spotlight: local search
iCloud, Spotlight, and Time Machine
Obscured by clouds: how to lose your audiobooks – info on restoring previous purchases from the iTunes Store
In the Dock – custom shortcuts
Dusting down – cleaning a dusty Mac
Someone’s been using my Mac – what to do when there’s been an intrusion
Magsafe compatibility – which power supplies can be used with which laptops?
How to uninstall an app
How to rename batches of files
How to unscramble a downloaded file
Q&A: El Capitan keeps beachballing
How to run an old version of OS X
Which password? When to enter your user password, and when to use your Apple ID
Q&A: Disappearing disk space
The Font of All Knowledge – fonts for the non-specialist user
Macs, hum, and unintended aerials
An unwarranted login: things that go bump in the night
The 501 orphan problem: why you shouldn’t delete the primary admin user
Error numbers: the final hurdle – how to find out what they mean
Wireless headphones and lip sync
File system funnies in Sierra: folders that aren’t, and altered aliases
So many times: the clocks in your Mac
Should you repair permissions on your Home folder, and how?
Has anyone got the time? How High Sierra has changed time synchronisation
Undead apps, and opting out of App Nap
Behind the Scenes: Open Directory and Kerberos
What are all those hidden folders then?

Network and internet issues

Network hardware – shifting packets
Securing your router: keeping intruders out
Securing your router: protecting your network
Small Networks Without Big Headaches – setting up and diagnosing a small network
Tackling network problems
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
airport: a hidden Wi-Fi tool in macOS Sierra
Checking a Wi-Fi connection, in the UK
What do you do when your broadband goes down?
The medium of the message – email clients and types
My email is broken – how to diagnose and fix mail problems
eMail without tears or fears
Protecting your Mac against malware and intrusion
Checking signatures with WhatsYourSign
Firewalls – Keeping Your Network Safe
Human aspects of security: what the software vendors don’t always tell you
When the backups stop – unravelling wireless backups
Which advertising companies are tracking your online activity?
Broken Clouds, or why you won’t find my embarrassing photos
Using Google Advanced Search
How to report phishing to Apple
Share and share alike: sharing docs from your Mac
How secure are your secure connections?
Don’t get cached out: the perils of cached data
If Twitter still seems all @#. to you… – a guide for beginners and experts alike
Multiple Apple IDs, multiple users, and Family Sharing
Scanning your Macs for security problems with Nessus
Banned browser extensions – how XProtect keeps adware etc. away
How fix a URL which breaks because of Unicode content
Creaky old internet – ASCII still reigns in URLs
USB 3 devices can cause problems with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

Data and its protection

There must be some mistake – preventing and detecting errors in data, in spreadsheets, databases, etc.
Guaranteeing Data Integrity
Layout to database 1 – Out of beauty comes forth structure – rescuing data from laid out pages
Layout to database 2 – Building a Database by Script – scripting automated data input to FileMaker
Keychain Cops – getting the most out of your keychain
Backing Up, Time Machine, and the Cloud – Managing risks for the Individual
Backing up your laptop: Time Machine local snapshots
Protecting Vulnerable Data – how to protect personal and other sensitive information on your Mac
Lost in the Cloud – Securing Protected Data in a Mobile World
Steganographic Slips – how Word can release removed content
High quality hash – using hash keys for one-way anonymisation
Who was first: 1 robust timestamping of documents
Who was first: 2 using OriginStamp via its RESTful interface
Documents and versioning
How secure are your secure connections?
Where are your off-site backups?
Tucking it away safely: archival media
Using hibernation to secure a Mac with FileVault
How’s your Personal Digital Archive?
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat

Accessibility

The Accessibility pane in El Capitan – a guided tour of what it has to offer all users
VoiceOver, spoken and Braille guidance – assistance for those with impaired vision, in particular
Entering text without a keyboard – Dictation and other tools to help those with RSI and other problems with keyboards.
Wrise, a different word processor – superb app for those with reading and word problems, and many others too.
Text ↔︎ Speech, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text
KeyStrokes: the ultimate assistive keyboard
Touchy feely: haptic input
Making the most of your Magic Trackpad 2
Digging deeper into Force Touch and the Magic Trackpad 2
Unintended consequences of SIP
New products for new species
It’s about the interface, not the technology
Wireless headphones and lip sync
Watch the other hand: Apple’s evolving input devices
How the new Touch Bar can open access for those with visual impairment

Colour Management for the Non-Professional

1 – introduction, why we need it
2 – rendering and rendering intents
3 – colour calibration
4 – changing and using colour profiles, and posting to the internet
5 – close control over colour, for giclée printing, etc.
Fixing another X-Rite ColorMunki problem
Should Macs start a Night Shift?

Data formats and conversion

Free conversion of text files with textutil
From text to documents – formats and tools for working with text documents
Words of old – opening old Word documents
XML – Lingua Franca or Lost Cause?
Movie Formats and Conversion
Help me access my PNG movies – when a file format is no longer supported in QuickLook
Data compression – lossy and non-lossy
Open Government UK
Planning ahead: archiving for retrieval
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra

Hardware upgrade and disposal

The uninterruptible power of a cat: replacing my UPS
AppleCare and warranty cover for Macs
Prepare your Mac for service/repair, and restore it later
Upgrade or Replace? – hardware upgrades to improve performance
Hard decisions – criteria for selecting hard drives
Drive safely: testing hard drives the hard way
Unsupported – how to re-use your old Macs safely
How to run an old version of OS X
Preparing your Mac for disposal
Disposing of a dead hard drive

Hypertext – Storyspace and Tinderbox

Take notes: Tinderbox 8 is the bee’s knees
Storyspace and hypertext: index to articles (version 2)
Storyspace: the original hypertext app
Some selected readings on hypertext
Getting started with Storyspace 3 – beginner’s tutorial, part 1
Storyspace 3: using guards to structure reading – tutorial, part 2
Storyspace 3: building an interactive timeline – tutorial, part 3
Storyspace 3: digging a bit deeper with attributes, prototypes, and actions – tutorial, part 4
Storyspace 3: structuring hypertext using rules instead of links – tutorial, part 5
Storyspace 3: appearance attributes, covers badges, captions, and more
Structure in non-fiction
Storyspace 3: handling notes and references, how to implement notes and references in hypertext
Storyspace 3: More on references, using References attributes properly, and backlinking without tears, to result in proper references
Storyspace 3: timelines, outlines, and linked windows
Storyspace 3: exploding poetry, and progress bars, and Summary Tables
Telling the story: narrative across media, including spoken, written, movies, graphic novels, paintings, photos, and music
Structure in narrative (non-fiction) text
Making First Impressions: 1 Content and structure
Making First Impressions: 2 Prototypes and containers
Making First Impressions: 3 Joining up
Making First Impressions: 4 Ready for early test
Tools for making timelines
Marking Time: introducing the timeline
Marking Time: Timeline 3D
Marking Time: Aeon Timeline
Marking Time: Storyspace and Tinderbox
Marking Time: other routes to timelines
Marking Time: making good timelines
The Story Story – narrative, VR, and computers
Storyspace 3: Space and Time, more from the Map view
Analysing narrative paintings of Icarus and Daedalus
Storyspace 3.1: a world of difference
From database to hypertext: exporting from FileMaker Pro to Storyspace
Alternative methods of importing into Storyspace and Tinderbox
Developing content for Storyspace and Tinderbox on your iPad using FileMaker Go
Storyspace 3.1.2 and Tinderbox 6.6.0: details updated
QuarkXPress 2016, Storyspace/Tinderbox, and HTML5
Who remembers HyperCard, and a ban on encryption?
Storyspace 3.2 and Storyspace Reader for OS X
Hypertext for almost all
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 1
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 2
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 3
Dynamic stories: text substitution and stretchtext in Storyspace (and Tinderbox)
An illustrated glossary of links in Storyspace 3
Stretchtext: a hidden gem in real hypertext
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 1: imports and prototypes
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 2: links and stretchtext
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 3: alt stories and references
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 4: sidethreads and projections
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 5: galleries and timelines
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 6: glossary and index
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 1
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 2
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 3
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 4
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 5
How fix a URL which breaks because of Unicode content
The Salome Story: analysing and telling changing narrative on your Mac
The Salome Story: first full release version for Storyspace and Tinderbox
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 1
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 2, including a full Latin and English version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 1 in Tinderbox/Storyspace format
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 3, includes the illustrated version of Book 1 in Tinderbox/Storyspace format
Parallel Text in Tinderbox 7: Porting Metamorphoses Book 1
The Best of Both Worlds: making hypertext for both Tinderbox and Storyspace
Adding Timing Features to an App: Tinderbox and Storyspace
Exporting HTML from Tinderbox 7: Using CSS for a Help Book
Using HTML from Tinderbox 7 to make a Help Book
Improving HTML from Tinderbox to Make a Better Help Book
Building a text database using Tinderbox
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Troubleshooting Macs
Going back to the book – search engines and how best to present complex information
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Progress and tidying up
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Guiding decisions
A Tinderbox Scrapbook for Source Code: exporting in WordPress markdown
A Tinderbox Scrapbook for Source Code: plain text and public order
Completing and using a Swift Scrapbook in Tinderbox
LaTeXport: writing LaTeX documents using Tinderbox
LaTeXport: loose ends
LaTeXport: revenge of the templates, and on to Tufte Book
Tennyson, Pre-Raphaelites, and Storyspace: a rewarding combination
Adding ‘parallel’ text and a timeline to the Lady of Shalott, in Tinderbox and Storyspace

SDR (Software-defined radio)

The quiet but pervasive revolution in communications – software-defined radio
Getting started with SDR on a Mac
Radio reinvented: how SDR works
Getting started with an ELAD SDR: the FDM-S2 on a Mac – with audio samples
Tuning antennas with a Sark-110 VIAA
New book and learning resources
Variable voltage: how 12 V batteries are not
Variable voltage: a lighter alternative
The ELAD FDM-DUO, an HF transceiver for all – first impressions and a round-up of portable HF transceivers
The Code lives on: how Morse is still not dead

Polyglot programmer – lots of lesser-known languages

AppleScript – 21 years old and still going it alone on OS X – also Automator and visual programming
Some excellent programming environments for OS X
Which languages support the GUI?
Safe from prying eyes: a free script app for robust encryption – an AppleScript example worked through
Visual programming with Marten (Prograph)
Which languages generate standalone apps?
Playgrounds and generators – code playgrounds and apps which generate code for you
Script Debugger version 6
RIP APLX, and welcome Dyalog APL for OS X
Recognition by eponym, and maths on the meter
Writing SparkleCheck in AppleScript: don’t read the manual
Programming playgrounds: Swift on an iPad?
Writing LogLogger2 in AppleScript: dialog and advanced shell scripting
Try turning it off and back on again – rapid app development
Goodbye AppleScript
Resources to help the non-novice learn and use Swift on macOS
Scriptarian: Swift scripting for macOS?
Xcode Swift playgrounds 1: freezing and failing
Xcode Swift playgrounds 2: Scripting files
Xcode Swift playgrounds 3: shell scripts, droplets, and actions
Xcode Swift playgrounds 4: running scripts without Xcode
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 1
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 2 – more lessons in Swift learned the hard way
Making a better app to check your Mac’s security systems
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: the signature shuffle
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: cheating with AppleScript
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: alerts and file save
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: max factoring
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Swift Documentation Markup
If you’re still running El Capitan, Apple doesn’t care about you
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: quirky commands
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Radio buttons and more
Developing Consolation in Swift 3: mostly a breeze
A Swift breeze blowing (5 February 2017)
Blowhole advanced: writing a command tool in Swift 3, and more
Beyond Scripting in Swift: turning Consolation into a full-blown app
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Making an Installer package the easier way
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Reading Plists, building popups, and more
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Sorting with a closure
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Finding apps, and calls that don’t fail
Xcode 8.3: better in parts, more confusing in others
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Keychains lost in translation
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Who’s afraid of the big, bad buffer?

Words on Macs – text processing and problems on Macs

Ending Mojibake with Rosettavert 1.3
Rich Text documents: RTF and RTFD
Should you use document metadata?
The recursive RTFD document: a seriously weird problem
Implementing interlinear text in macOS
Making interlinear composite text using DelightEd 2.0b1
Taking text further
Using and hacking styles in TextEdit and DelightEd
Liquid | Author: well worth writers trying
Making documents look good in both appearance modes
Analysing your writing interactively and better word frequency lists: Nalaprop 1.0b8
Making Sense of Text: How good is Mojave’s linguistic support?
Beyond mere appearance: Dark Mode, the semantics of colour, and text without print
Using Unicode better
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat
LaTeX and MathML equations come to iWork, as well as iBooks Author
Comparing files: FileMerge, opendiff, and BBEdit
Back to the future – (16 July 2017) markup languages and LaTeX
LaTeXport: writing LaTeX documents using Tinderbox
Compositor’s attempt on the Holy Grail of document processing
1 – Code-Breaking with Unicode – working with Unicode text in OS X
2 – Every Keystroke Counts – keyboard input and more
3 – From text to documents – formats and tools for working with text documents
4 – Command and control – version control and writing environments
5 – Spot the difference – compare and merge tools
XML – Lingua Franca or Lost Cause?
Beyond Unicode – lightweight fonts for language documentation
Easier than the Georgian verb – text encoding problems solved
Inside Dictionaries and Keyboards
The Font of All Knowledge – fonts for the non-specialist user
Terminology WordNet dictionary for OS X
Under The Spotlight: local search
Two centuries, two authors, two platforms – concordance tools for OS X
Concordancers for OS X – updated
Open Government UK
Opening PageMaker documents
Steganographic Slips – how Word can release removed content
Mark my words – Flesch-Kincaid reading grades and Word
Translation aids for OS X
Support for Celtic and other languages in OS X
Which font to help the dyslexic?
Wrise, a different word processor – superb app for those with reading and word problems, and many others too.
Weird characters in a newsletter
Holding down keys: accents or repeat?
I’m learning Google: no logic in translation
Why we need consistent content-sensitive selection of text
Building a text database using Tinderbox
Introducing Rosettavert: first beta-release of a text encoding conversion tool
Why we can’t keep stringing along with Unicode
Dystextia: a platform for exploring Unicode encoding problems, obfuscating text, and spoofing
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra
Regex: searching with regular expressions

External links

iTunes Store policies and how-tos for past purchases (also see regional versions if outside the UK)
Phishing and other security concerns – Apple’s advice and details of how to send phishing messages to reportphishing@apple.com as attachments
AFP548 – Mac sysadmin and server related
Objective-See – security tools and information
MacScripter – AppleScript, Automator
Alan Wood’s Unicode resources
Multilingual Mac – language support and issues