If you’re updating MacOS 10.13 High Sierra to 10.14 Mojave and you get booted into Recovery during the upgrade with a “the installer resources were not found” error message, make sure you don’t have a secondary SSD or HDD with the same name connected to your computer. My main drive is called “Macintosh SSD” and since I also had my clone connected, which has the exact same name, the installer could not figure out what to do.
High Sierra
Use True Tone on Your MacBook Pro →
Apple Support:
True Tone can also adjust these external displays when they’re connected to your MacBook Pro:
- Apple Thunderbolt Display, using the Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adapter
- LG UltraFine 5K Display
- LG UltraFine 4K Display
I assume this won’t function if you’re working in clamshell mode, but otherwise this is great.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Update Available
This macOS update finally adds AirPlay 2 support for iTunes, while fixing a few bugs and security related issues.
Safari Technology Preview 58 With Safari 12 Features →
You can enable showing website icons in tabs in Safari’s Tabs preferences.
In case you really want icons in tabs but aren’t running Mohave.
My First macOS Crash on My Macbook Pro Escape (Late 2016)
I don’t believe I mentioned this for a while, but I still absolutely adore my late 2016 13″ MacBook Pro Escape1 despite people having problems with the keyboards. The screen is especially gorgeous.
- This is the one without the Touch Bar. I had two of those. I did not like them one bit — the Touch Bar and battery life were the sole reasons for my negative attitude towards them. ↩
macOS May Lose Data on APFS-Formatted Disk Images →
Mike Bombich, creator of Carbon Copy Cloner:
This week we reported to Apple a serious flaw in macOS that can lead to data loss when using an APFS-formatted disk image. Until Apple issues a macOS update that resolves this problem, we’re dropping support for APFS-formatted disk images.
Note: What I describe below applies to APFS disk images only — ordinary APFS volumes (e.g. your SSD startup disk) are not affected by this problem. While the underlying problem here is very serious, this is not likely to be a widespread problem, and will be most applicable to a small subset of backups. Disk images are not used for most backup task activity, they are generally only applicable when making backups to network volumes. If you make backups to network volumes, read on to learn more.
Another day, another serious High Sierra bug.
macOS High Sierra Has Yet Another Password Bug →
Matt Birchler (via Michael Tsai):
This one event isn’t the end of the world, but this is how reputations degrade over time. Apple needs a software win soon, because it’s really just been a streak of bad news for them for months.
I keep on wondering what else is broken — security-wise— that we don’t yet know about.
Measuring macOS Meltdown Patches Performance →
fG, writing for Reverse Engineering Mac OS X:
My tests demonstrate that the syscall interface is definitely much slower in High Sierra 10.13.2. This could lead to some drama, that in most cases, is not justified (I witnessed some minor drama because I released an early chart to see what happened). What my tests appear to point to is that some workloads will be slower but they are probably not relevant unless you are doing millions of iterations. Maybe a 10% impact on your build times is not reasonable at all or you don’t even notice it. The most important thing that users and systems administrators need to do is to measure their specific situation. It’s the only way to be sure if this patch is a problem or not, and build their threat case under this new assumption. One thing is sure, this appears to be here to stay in the medium to long term until all hardware is replaced.
Interesting and varying results, depending on the workload, tested on a MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, running Sierra and High Sierra.
Add New Emoji From High Sierra to macOS 10.12 Sierra
I am still holding off and not updating to High Sierra due to all the bugs. This is the first time that I have taken so long to do so, but seeing all the issues that my friends are having, I’ll wait until 10.13.3 or 10.13.4 drops. In the meantime, I got frustrated by not seeing all the new emoji that people are using…
Repair File Sharing After Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1
Apple pushed a security update for the huge High Sierra vulnerability yesterday, introducing a bug while they were at it. You should install the update as soon as possible and then do this, if File Sharing isn’t working:
Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- Type
sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDCand press Return.- Enter your administrator password and press Return.
- Quit the Terminal app.
John Gruber summarized the problem, which seems to have been around for a few months now:
So the exploit was floating around, under the radar, for weeks at least, but it seems as though no widespread harm came of it.
Personally, I’d call this much too optimistic — people could have been hacked without them even realizing it.
macOS High Sierra Has a Huge Vulnerability — Change Your Root Password ASAP
Lemi Orhan Erhin disclosed a huge vulnerability in macOS High Sierra yesterday, allowing anyone to log onto a Mac with root access.
Dear @AppleSupport, we noticed a *HUGE* security issue at MacOS High Sierra. Anyone can login as "root" with empty password after clicking on login button several times. Are you aware of it @Apple?
— Lemi Orhan Ergin (@lemiorhan) November 28, 2017
Please follow the instructions here to enable the root account and set its password to something complicated1, which you should safely save in 1Password (or whatever password manager you’re using).
- Please don’t use
passwordor123456. ↩
macOS Sierra & High Sierra — Apps Can Dump Passwords From Keychain
on High Sierra (unsigned) apps can programmatically dump & exfil keychain (w/ your plaintext passwords)??? vid: https://t.co/36M2TcLUAn #smh pic.twitter.com/pqtpjZsSnq
— patrick wardle (@patrickwardle) September 25, 2017
This applies to older versions of macOS too, as well as signed apps.
Patrick submitted everything needed for a fix to Apple. I wonder if they’ll also patch older versions of macOS. Hope they do, since I’m not planning on updating to High Sierra anytime soon.
APFS on SSDs Mandatory in macOS High Sierra →
Apple Support:
Apple File System (APFS), is the default file system in macOS High Sierra for Mac computers with all flash storage. APFS features strong encryption, space sharing, snapshots, fast directory sizing, and improved file system fundamentals.
When you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems with all flash storage configurations are converted automatically. Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won’t be converted to APFS. You can’t opt-out of the transition to APFS.
Please make sure to create a good backup (or three!) before upgrading to High Sierra, because Shit Happens™ when you don’t have one (or three!).
Quick Thoughts on WWDC 2017
I haven’t had enough time to think about all the WWDC 2017 announcements yet — there were so many — so I’ll most likely voice my thoughts and perhaps even come to some conclusions on a future podcast episode, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of my thoughts and worries.