How can you run an app in a language different to that set for your system? Why doesn’t that work for command tools? And how difficult can a tool make controlling its environment?
XPC
SilentKnight was producing some results in a mixture of English and Dutch. Its environment settings needed correction. When that didn’t fix it, I looked deeper to find language-unfriendly design in a command tool.
CTS now schedules many important services, including syncing Calendar, Contacts, Messages, running weekly firmware checks with eficheck, and more.
CTS scheduling and dispatch of background tasks has no user interface, and no controls. How can you tell that there’s a problem, and what to do about it?
What does it take for an app to have ‘activities’ managed for efficiency by CTS? Not a lot – but in return, the management is a black box.
In the first article in this series, I explained how a great many background activities in macOS, including […]
Rather than using cron or launchd, many background services in macOS are now run using Centralized Task Scheduling (CTS). This is how it works.
Jeff Johnson of @lapcatsoftware has just published an excellent technical article looking at controversial issues over hardening, sandboxing, […]
A detailed examination of what happens during the first few minutes after starting your Mac up. Vital for anyone trying to diagnose problems in that period.
Scheduling background activities like making backups has moved from cron to launchd, and now to a more complex system. This has reduced the reliability of macOS and made it harder to support.
