The IT Nerd

A reader of this blog pointed me towards a Reddit thread and a MacRumors thread where people are complaining about this:

Given that Apple Intelligence and a better Siri experience are part and parcel of macOS Sequoia, and the Mac mini is Apple’s gateway into getting more Macs into the hands of more people, this is really bad.

Another data point. The same reader who tipped me off to this has confirmed that on his M4 Mac mini, when Apple Intelligence is on, he has to click on the Siri/Apple Intelligence button, then the mic icon, and then he can talk to Siri.  If Apple Intelligence is off, he clicks Siri and he can talk right away. That implies bug to me.

What I am guessing is that Apple only likely tested this on the Studio Display and figured that it was job done at that point. I say that because some people with Mac mini’s and Studio Displays have confirmed that this is working as intended. Clearly Apple needs to do better QA before releasing stuff to their customers. The bottom line is that you can add this to the growing list of bugs with macOS Sequoia which includes Time Machine issues, and display issues which appear to be a design choice that Apple didn’t tell anyone about.

Apple really has lost the plot when it comes to software quality.

TechCrunch is reporting that law enforcement is apparently concerned over a new feature that Apple seems to have added that makes it way harder for them to get into iPhones that are in their possession:

404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that phones being stored for forensic examination seemed to be rebooting themselves — something that security experts confirmed in a follow-up story. After the reboot, it’s harder for those phones to be unlocked by password-cracking tools.

Apple did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

This reboot appears to take place after iPhones with iOS 18.1 have not been unlocked for a set period of time. According to Chris Wade, founder of mobile analysis company Corellium, iPhones seem to reboot after their fourth day of in a locked state.

So if you’re running iOS 18.1 right now, you have this feature. Now, am I surprised that Apple not only hasn’t commented on this, but also has seemingly slipped this feature in under the cover of darkness? Not really. Apple has had a bit of a history getting into fights with law enforcement over unlocking iPhones. And given the current climate in the US where there is a massive potential for the surveillance state to really ramp up, some people might consider this a feature. I for one am fine with this because the data on my iPhone is my data. And nobody that I don’t want to have access to it should have access to it. That doesn’t make me a criminal. It makes me someone who wants their privacy to remain intact.

I was recently asked by a friend what he should look out for when buying a used Mac. His main concern was that the Mac would be stolen as there are a lot of cases that have popped up online where someone buys a used Mac and it turns out that it was stolen. I had to think about that for a second because I have never been asked that question before, nor have I bought a used Mac. But I did come up with two things that anyone wanting to buy a used Mac should watch out for:

1. Is it Activation Locked?: Activation Lock is a feature that Apple introduced with the iPhone, but has since expanded to pretty much every Apple device, where the device is “locked” to an owner via their iCloud or Apple Account. As a result, if you wanted to factory reset it for example, you’d need the password of that account. Here’s how you tell if the Mac that you want to buy is still Activation Locked:
   • If the Mac boots and you see the “Hello” screen, that usually indicates that macOS has been reinstalled. You should go through the setup to get to the point where you are able to enter an iCloud/Apple Account to make sure it isn’t activation locked to ensure that it isn’t Activation Locked
   • If you see a login window, be aware that the Mac is still likely linked to the old owner. This means that macOS Activation Lock is likely still enabled. If the owner of the Mac can’t or won’t deactivate Activation Lock on the spot, you should run in the other direction.
2. Is it MDM or ADE locked?: MDM stands for Mobile Device Management and corporations, schools among others use MDM software to not only manage the Mac, but remotely access as well in some cases. Finding out if MDM software is installed can be difficult, but this Reddit thread has some really good advice on that front. There’s another version of this called ADE or Automated Device Enrolment. This used to be called the Device Enrolment Program but in either case, this was a program run by Apple themselves to allow companies to manage their Macs in a variety of ways. And this can be really problematic as this will be present even if you erase and reinstall macOS. If you want to check this for yourself, this Reddit thread can help you with seeing if the Mac that you want to buy is ADE locked. Why this matters is that if you come across a Mac with either of these installed, the Mac has likely been stolen. And if you buy it, you might not only be completely out of luck as it might be locked down in whole or in part. There’s also the possibility that some forms of MDM do location services, meaning that someone may end up knocking on your door looking for their stolen Mac as they could hunt you down.

There’s some other things to consider beyond the question of if it is stolen or not, like is the Mac in perfect working order for example. For that I will point you towards the Rocket Yard blog as that blog post has a lot of good tips in it. Another thing that you might want to consider is that you might want to go the refurbished route from Apple. I spoke about that here and I have personally used that route to save a few bucks. Not as much as you might save by going used, but any cash saved is a good thing.

Do you have any additional tips that I might have missed? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Over the last few days, I’ve been poking around trying to figure out what is going on with variable refresh rates on macOS Sequoia. And I have come across something interesting. In previous versions of macOS, Sonoma for example, variable refresh rates would be available throughout the operating system. So no matter what you were doing, you would benefit from having a refresh rate that fit the situation. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Sequoia. I’ve observed the following:

• Simply being in the Finder which for those of you who are on the Windows side of the fence is the macOS version of Windows Explorer, won’t trigger variable refresh rate support.
• Being in a full screen video on YouTube on Safari will trigger variable refresh rate support.
• Being in a full screen Microsoft RDP session will trigger variable refresh rate support.
• Not all applications seem to support variable refresh rates when in full screen mode. For example, my copy of Microsoft Office 2019 doesn’t seem to trigger variable refresh rate support. I need to update it to the latest version as it is end of life, so if I can get around to doing so in the next few days, I’ll retest this scenario.
• When variable refresh rate isn’t supported, my display is locked at 144 Hz.

In case you’re wondering how I can tell that it’s working, I turned on the FPS counter on the monitor so that it would report what refresh rate that it was getting from the computer.

Thus this implies that what Apple has done is made a conscious decision to alter how variable refresh rate support works in certain scenarios within macOS on external monitors. I say that because everything that I have written above is somewhat consistent with how I understand Apple’s version of variable refresh rate support which is called ProMotion works. Let me go into the weeds a bit on that.

The way ProMotion works on a MacBook Pro with its built in screen for example is that when the MacBook Pro is performing tasks that don’t require a high refresh rate, such as reading a static webpage or viewing a photo, the refresh rate can be scaled down to conserve battery life. However, when engaging in activities that benefit from a high refresh rate, such as gaming or watching videos, ProMotion ramps up to provide the best possible experience. Or it can vary on the fly to provide the best possible experience. What I am observing is that there’s no attempt to scale back performance in scenarios that don’t require a high refresh rate. As a result, you’re locked in to 144 Hz or whatever the max refresh monitor of your monitor happens to be. Which makes sense as you’re typically using an external monitor while your laptop is plugged in, or you’re using a desktop. Thus there’s no battery life to persevere.

Why they have done this? I have no definitive idea. While you can make an argument that this is a regression, I don’t think that’s the case. I am thinking that that this is a “refinement” of sorts by Apple. It would be nice if Apple came out with a support document that explains this behaviour in greater detail than this one that I found that simply provides a top level overview of variable refresh rates, or as they call it “adaptive sync”. But that’s not the type of company that Apple is and I’ve given up expecting them to do something different a long time ago. Regardless, I consider this to be a closed issue and I will move on with my life unless Apple changes this behaviour again. Which in turn forces me to write about this again.

I am beginning to think that I should have stayed on macOS Sonoma. I say that because that hot off posting this issue with Sequoia comes a new issue. If you have a monitor that has the ability to do variable refresh rates, this may not work on Sonoma. For example my new BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX Monitor which had no issues doing variable refresh rates when I was running Sonoma can no longer do variable refresh rates in Sequoia. Instead, I found it to be locked to 144Hz in my case.

Now I know that it’s not the monitor because I grabbed a PC laptop that I had in my office and tested variable refresh rate support, and it worked fine. I also tested the same scenario on my wife’s Mac which runs Sonoma, and that worked fine as well. And while researching this, I found a single post that sounds similar to what I am experiencing.

And:

Reading through this, it seems like this is some sort of regression as this apparently worked in Sequoia 15 and 15.0.1 which implies that this might be a regression. But it could also be Apple deliberately limiting support for variable refresh rates and HDR along with it as described here and here. At this point, it’s not clear which it is. But as more people discover this, more people will not be happy. Especially if they have a MacBook Pro and are used to ProMotion which is Apple’s implementation of variable refresh rates. To work around this, I have set my refresh rate to 100 Hz at 2560×1440 resolution which gives me the added advantage of being able to use the option of having my MacBook Pro render slightly sharper text while using HDR. And I will be retesting this when Sequoia 15.2 comes out as I am hoping that it will address this issue.

Have you experienced this issue? If so, post a comment below and share your experience.

Immediately after updating to macOS Sequoia, specifically the 15.1 version I noticed two problems with Apple’s Time Machine utility:

1. Scheduled backups would fail to back up with the error message “Time Machine couldn’t complete the back up to <INSERT THE NAME OF MY NAS HERE>”. What made this interesting is that my wife’s Mac which is still on Sonoma backs via Time Machine up without an issue. It’s only the Macs that I have that are running Sequoia that have this issue. Basically implying that Apple broke Time Machine on Sequoia rather than the NAS being the issue.
2. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the “preparing to back up” phase of backing up on one of my Sequoia Macs can take over 30 minutes. Again, my wife’s Mac doesn’t seem to have this issue which implies that this is a Sequoia issue.

I seem not to be alone in having problems with Time Machine on Sequoia. I have found post after post after post after post after post on this. Implying that issues with Time Machine is a widespread problem that Apple has yet to address. Now after looking through all of these posts, along with others that I have not linked to, I noted some common themes among them:

• For some, disabling the macOS firewall seems to fix these issues. Especially if you are on Sequoia 15.0 or 15.0.1. I say that because whatever this firewall issue is appears to have been fixed in Sequoia 15.1 for some but not for all. My take on this is that the firewall is on for a reason and you should not mess with it. Thus a better course of action is to try updating to Sequoia 15.1 and see if your issues go away.
• For some who back up over WiFi to something like a NAS, Apple has a feature that obfuscates the MAC (Media Access Control) address of your WiFi adapter to stop third parties from tracking you if you are using public WiFi. Turning this feature off has resolved these issues for some. The way you do that is as follows:
  • Go to System Settings
  • Go to WiFi
  • Choose the WiFi network that is used to back up to the NAS and click on the three dots on the right hand side and choose network settings.
  • Under “Private WiFi Address” set it to Off and click okay.
• For some, deleting the backup volume from Time Machine and re-adding it fixes this issue. If you want to test that, here’s what you do (Note: This will NOT delete your backup data in case you are worried about that):
  • Go to System Settings
  • Go to General
  • Go to Time Machine
  • Highlight the backup volume and click on the “-“
  • Click on the “+” and add the backup volume back. It will ask you if you want to retain the existing backup history or delete it. Choose the option to retain the backup history.

Now I am testing removing and re-adding the Time Machine volume now on both my Sequoia Macs along with trying the WiFi suggestion as well. It will take me a few days to get a sense if either of those resolves the issue. But what I have tested and can give you feedback on is the slow speed in terms of “preparing to back up”. I dug out an old trick from my memory banks to test a theory (more on that theory in a moment) and found that it does validate my theory. But there’s a catch to doing what I am about to tell you that I will get to in a minute. First, this is what I did:

1. I went to the Applications folder.
2. Then I went to the Utilities folder.
3. I started the Terminal application.
4. I then typed this command: sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0
5. I pressed enter and then it prompted me for the password for user account on my Mac. I entered that and hit Return.
6. I then closed the Terminal.

What this command does is disable throttling for Time Machine because Apple’s use case for Time Machine is that you’re backing up every hour by default. As a result of that your Mac by default will throttle how fast it backs up so that it doesn’t negatively affect anything else that you might be doing. However by disabling throttling, your Mac will back up as fast as it can. When I tested this by turning off throttling, it would take about 10 minutes to start backing up my Mac. When I turned throttling back on, it would take 30 minutes or so as I mentioned above. Beyond that, the back up was faster overall with throttling turned off.

Now turning throttling off has the side effect of making your Mac slower because it’s going as fast as it can to back up data and affecting everything else you might be doing as a side effect of that. You may not want that, especially if you’re still on an Intel Mac. But in my case, I use a third party utility called TimeMachineEditor which I wrote about here to schedule my backups to happen when I am asleep. Thus throttling has no negative effect for me and my use case. And it really doesn’t seem to affect anything on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Though I will also admit that may put it back to the default setting once everything is sorted and Time Machine works as expected as I try to run my Macs in as close to a default state as possible. Having said all of that, this test validates the theory that I had which was that Apple for reasons that I do not understand has changed the behaviour of Time Machine in Sequoia to more aggressively throttle backup speed. Because on a Mac with an earlier versions of macOS, this process of “preparing to back up” happens much faster.

Like I said earlier, I will report back in terms of how this works, or doesn’t work as I suspect that it may take a week or so before I get an idea on that front. But if you rely on Time Machine and you’re thinking of updating to macOS Sequoia, you may want to hold off until Apple officially fixes whatever they broke. And if you have any insight on these issues, feel free to leave a comment below and share your thoughts.