The IT Nerd

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.

One thing that I have been asked a lot since Apple Silicon became a thing is how long can someone hold onto their Intel based Mac. Now I don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but based on the fact that the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon isn’t Apple’s first rodeo when it comes to changing chip technology, you can make some intelligent guesses based on Apple’s prior history:

First, though Apple doesn’t say it, the company typically supports its products with five or more years of software updates. Specifically security updates. So one can reasonably expect that once the Intel Macs that are supported by Apple reach that five year mark, it’s game over for those Macs. Let’s put that into practice. This is the list of Macs that are supported by macOS Sequoia:

The oldest Mac on this list is the iMac Pro which is way beyond the 5 years of software support that Apple typically provides. The MacBook Pro’s, Mac mini, from 2018-2020 are the next oldest. Followed by the Mac Pro and iMac from 2019. All those Macs are within the 5+ year window that I spoke of earlier in terms of software support. MacBook Air owners who have Intel processors are already out of luck as the 2020 model was the first Apple Silicon model. So based on that, I anticipate that the 2026 version of macOS will be the first one with only Apple Silicon support.

If we look at history, my theory holds water. Consider the following sequence of events from the last time Apple changed processor technology. When they went from IBM’s PowerPC to Intel, this happened:

• Apple announced the move from PowerPC to Intel in June of 2005.
• January 2006 had the first release of an Intel Mac. Specifically the iMac and the PowerBook Pro.
• By August of that year, every computer in Apple’s lineup transitioned to Intel.
• In August of 2009, macOS Snow Leopard was the first version of macOS that only worked on Intel. Though this version still supported PowerPC applications via the “Rosetta” translation layer that was built into the operating system.
• Rosetta was yanked in July 2011 when macOS Lion came out

All of that was a roughly 5 year timespan. That makes 2026 as a date for the demise of Intel Macs plausible. More so if you consider that Apple Silicon was announced in June of 2020 and the first Macs to have Apple Silicon showed up in November of that year.

So what should you do if you have an Intel Mac? Well, now is the time to plan your transition to Apple Silicon. This is especially true if you have a Mac that isn’t getting software updates of any sort from Apple right now. Because with no software updates from Apple, and software companies to likely not support these computers, the usefulness of these computers will nosedive pretty dramatically. Thus planning out your move to Apple Silicon in a calm manner is the way to go. That way you don’t hit 2026 and wonder what your options are.

Apple is expected to release their latest OS which is macOS Sequoia today. Before we go on, here’s a list of what macOS Sequoia will run on:

• iMac 2019 and later
• Mac Pro 2019 and later
• iMac Pro 2017
• Mac Studio 2022 and later
• MacBook Air 2018 and later
• Mac mini 2018 and later
• MacBook Pro 2018 and later

You should note that some features won’t work on Intel Macs. Apple Intelligence is one of those features as that feature will only work on an Apple Silicon Mac. I am also sure that this is a backhanded way for Apple to “encourage” you to replace your Intel Mac with an Apple Silicon Mac. Which to be frank you should consider as Intel Macs are on their last legs from a support standpoint. In any case, here’s list of features that Sequoia includes.

If your Mac isn’t on this list, you’re out of luck. But assuming that it is, here’s some tips on what you might want to do before you pull that trigger and upgrade. And a couple reasons why you shouldn’t.

1. Don’t Upgrade… At least not yet. Part 1 : The reason why you shouldn’t upgrade is that Apple’s initial releases tend to be buggy. But they get better after they release an update or two. So you may want to wait until at least the .1 update hits the streets before making the jump. Or better yet, wait until the .2 release to be extra safe. 
2. Don’t Upgrade… At least not yet. Part 2: Your apps that you depend upon may not be ready for Sequoia. Thus out may be a better strategy to confirm whether they are ready or not. And if they’re not, wait for them to be compatible with Sequoia before you upgrade.
3. If you Must Upgrade, Make A Backup: Needless to say, making a backup of your current setup is vital before upgrading. That way you have a way to go back to where you were if things don’t work out. There’s plenty of backup solutions out there from Apple’s own Time Machine to third party utilities such as Carbon Copy Cloner that can be used for this purpose.
4. Upgrade Your Software BEFORE You Upgrade: Assuming your apps are going to be compatible with Sequoia, you should ensure that all your apps are up to date before you pull the trigger on upgrading. That will reduce the risk that something might go sideways during the upgrade.
5. Run Disk Utility BEFORE You Upgrade: The last thing I would do is boot of the Recovery Partition and run Disk Utility to verify the volume that you plan to install the upgrade on. It likely wouldn’t hurt to do a permission repair as well.

At this point you should be good to go. Key word being SHOULD. Upgrading an operating system isn’t a trivial process. But if you take these steps beforehand, you should reduce the risk of any issues. Or you can take my first couple of suggestions which is to wait for a bit before upgrading. Then follow the rest of my advice. In my case, I need to do a few upgrades of software before making the jump to Sequoia. As a result, I will not be upgrading this afternoon. But I will be in the coming weeks.

iPhones for a long time now have had something called Activation Lock. What that does is it basically locks the phone so that if the phone gets stolen, it cannot be sold and reactivated. That’s led to two things. One is scams such as this one, or this one that are meant to get you to remove activation lock so that the thief can resell your phone. The second thing are phones being dismantled for their parts since individual parts aren’t affected by activation lock.

Apple is going solve the latter problem, or at least try to. And to their credit, they did announce this months ago. Though that announcement did fly under the radar at the time:

Apple will also extend its popular Activation Lock feature to iPhone parts in order to deter stolen iPhones from being disassembled for parts. Requested by customers and law enforcement officials, the feature was designed to limit iPhone theft by blocking a lost or stolen iPhone from being reactivated. If a device under repair detects that a supported part was obtained from another device with Activation Lock or Lost Mode enabled, calibration capabilities for that part will be restricted.

Enter BetaProfiles who noted that the RC (Release Candidate) of iOS 18 had this feature enabled. Thus everybody who updates their iPhone to iOS 18 will get this feature. And in the process, make their phones less valuable to thieves. I suspect that there will be a further increase in scams as thieves who want to cash in on stealing iPhones will try to go that route to cash in on their ill gotten gains. But any deterrent to stop phone thefts is a good thing.

Something that I noticed yesterday is that Apple Maps transit support has quietly been improved. It now has the ability to see transit options like buses in real time relative to your location. This was rolled out in Tokyo a month ago, but it now seems to be live in the Greater Toronto Area.

Let me demonstrate.

Let’s say that I want to go from my current location which is a client’s office in Mississauga Ontario to the nearest Home Depot. I enter that into Maps and here’s what I get:

You’ll note what looks like a WiFi icon next to the words “Bus departs at 1:51 PM.” That indicates that it is getting live updates about the location of the bus from the relevant transit operator. In this case, MiWay which also known as Mississauga Transit. If I click on that I get this:

If you look at the third item from the top where it tells me to board the MiWay 39 bus, it has the same icon with the word “More” next to it. Clicking more takes me here:

According to this the bus is “on time”. But there’s one more party trick that I noticed:

If you see the blue bus icon that has the text “50s ago”, that’s a semi live look at where the bus is as I watched it move on the Map. That way, you know roughly where the bus is so that you can ensure that you are at the right stop when it arrives. Alternately you can also see if the bus is running late for whatever reason, which would allow you to make alternate arrangements. That’s pretty cool. I’ve only tested this with MiWay and TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), but it is possible that this also works with other Greater Toronto Area transit operators. If you try this, feel free to drop a comment below and share what you’ve discovered.

The only bad news in this is that apps like Citymapper and Transit may have had their careers ended by this move. But that would depend on how good this addition to Apple Maps really is. Time will tell on that front.