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Intel

How to change lid behaviour on MacBook Air and Pro

Apple silicon laptops start up (if not asleep) when you open their lid or connect power. Now you can change that behaviour by setting their NVRAM.

February 3, 2025 Macs, Technology

Create an external bootable disk for Apple silicon and Intel Macs

T T Read More

Two important catches that can cause a macOS installation to fail in Apple silicon: using the DFU port, and not setting up ownership correctly. Both are explained here.

January 15, 2025 Macs, Technology

Last Week on My Mac: How Apple silicon came so quickly

It’s September 2016. Apple has just released the iPhone 7, with its first big.LITTLE CPU cores, then 4 days later macOS 10.12 Sierra. How does it transition from there to release the M1 in four years?

January 5, 2025 Macs, Technology

How your Intel Mac can use USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 drives at full speed

Did you think your Intel Mac doesn’t support the 20 Gb/s speed of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2? It can do, with a little extra hardware support, just as it will a USB4 SSD.

December 25, 2024 Macs, Technology

Will that hub or dock slow your SSDs, or even make them faster?

T T Read More

How to connect a USB4 SSD to get better performance from an Intel Mac. Should you buy a Thunderbolt 4 hub, or a Thunderbolt 5 dock? Do any of these live ‘up to’ their claimed performance?

December 23, 2024 Macs, Technology

Has Apple stopped updating EFI firmware?

Did you spot the change that didn’t take place as expected in the 15.2 update this week? It marks the end of the Intel era for Macs.

December 13, 2024 Macs, Technology

Tune for Performance: Activity Monitor’s CPU view

The CPU view in Activity Monitor is the starting point for tuning the performance of software. Here are its virtues, and a few vices to beware of when using it.

December 11, 2024 Macs, Technology

Managing kernel extensions

It’s time to review old kernel extensions, and uninstall those no longer needed. Here’s how to do that, using uninstallers or manually.

December 3, 2024 Macs, Technology

A brief history of Mac CPUs

From the first 8 MHz Motorola 68000, through PowerPCs reaching 2.5 GHz and more in up to 4 cores, and Intel x86 with up to 28 cores, to Apple’s M4 Max with 12 P cores at 4.5 GHz.

November 23, 2024 Macs, Technology

How Macs boot securely, or can’t

T T Read More

How Intel Macs without a T2 chip boot, and how Secure Boot works in those with T2 or Apple silicon chips. How the latter can still enjoy Secure Boot when starting up from an external disk.

October 24, 2024 Macs, Technology

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