Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on November 2, 2024 by itnerd
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.
Posted in Tips with tags Apple on October 12, 2024 by itnerd
If you use a computer for any length of time, it’s going to get dirty. Especially something like a MacBook Pro where the keyboard will touch the screen and leave all sorts of skin oil on it. And given that the MacBook Pro screen is glossy, it is really noticeable. So the question becomes, how do you keep it clean? Well this is what I do to keep my MacBook clean:
I bought a pack of Amazon Basics microfibre cloths which I talked about here. I did that because one pack of 24 costs as much as the Apple Cloth. Then I do this:
I have a battery powered duster that I use to blow out the keyboard and the space around the hinge.
I spray Whoosh on one cloth to make it damp and clean the screen.
I use a dry microfibre cloth to polish the screen.
I use the damp cloth to clean the keyboard, trackpad and top case. To help with that I use a utility called KeyboardCleanTool to stop the keyboard from responding while I clean it.
That seems to work well for me. I do that maybe once every two weeks. Sometimes once a week if my MacBook is really dirty. And you can use this technique with any notebook and not just Macs.
Do you have any additional tips on how to keep your Mac clean? Or perhaps you have alternate advice that works just as well as this. Please leave a comment and share your wisdom.
Posted in Products with tags Apple on September 26, 2024 by itnerd
Since moving my desk setup to having my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode, I’ve missed having a trackpad. The reason being that Apple’s trackpads support gestures that can make doing a lot of things way faster than using a mouse. So after months of stalling, I finally bit the bullet and handed over $169 CDN to Apple to get this:
Meet the Apple Magic Trackpad. It supports both Force Touch which is the ability for the touchpad to react to how hard you press it. That’s handy for apps that actually support this feature. It also has zero moving parts like the touchpads on Apple’s MacBooks. Thus everything you feel is simulated via Apple’s haptic feedback tech. So if you’re used to that, you’ll feel right at home. Finally, it supports multi touch gestures. More on that in a bit. It’s available in white or in the black that you see here. I don’t know about the white version of this, but the black version attracts fingerprints like crazy.
On the back is an on/off switch, as well as a Lightning port for recharging the trackpad seeing as it’s wireless. Much like the Magic Keyboard, I have to ask why do we not have USB-C on this in 2024? I guess that the EU needs to force Apple to get with the times as this is just dumb. For what it’s worth, the battery inside the trackpad lasts just over a month, and it comes with one of these:
It’s a USB-C to Lightning cable that is pretty good quality.
Back to why I got this for myself. Over the years I have come to rely on the multi touch gestures that Apple has offered in their notebooks to navigate and do things in macOS. If you’re interested in learning what these gestures are, this can help you. And that fact that this trackpad supports them immediately makes me way more productive at my desk. For example I often use apps in full screen and swipe between them using the trackpad. And doing that takes far less effort with the trackpad than it does with a mouse. Having said that this trackpad will not completely replace a mouse as it is simply not as accurate as a mouse. Thus I always have a mouse on standby should I need to do something that requires some level of accuracy. Color correcting a photo would be an example of that.
Here’s one thing that makes this trackpad worth considering. Unlike the Magic Mouse which for reasons only Apple understands requires you to flip the over to charge it, rendering it useless in the process, you can use the trackpad while you charge it. It makes me think that these two devices were designed by two groups of people who clearly didn’t talk to each other.
So would I recommend the Apple Magic Trackpad? If you want to accelerate your workflow and don’t mind spending spending some time to learn the multi touch gestures, then yes. If you’re used to how your MacBook behaves and you want to replicate that on your desktop, then yes for that as well. Just don’t throw away your mouse as that will come in handy from time to time.
Oh, I have a message for Apple. You need to move these accessories to USB-C. It’s 2024 and you really have no excuse anymore.
Over the last week, I’ve gotten four calls that seem to have the same pattern:
The client uses the built in Mail app on their iPhone or iPad
The client also gets email from Rogers/Yahoo
After updating to iOS 18/iPadOS 18, they can no longer send or receive email
Now one of these calls is a fluke. But I’ve gotten four so there’s something clearly going on here. This could be a bug in iOS 18/iPadOS 18. But what makes me think that this is a Rogers problem is that if you try to delete the account and re-add it, that doesn’t work. When you get to the section that requires you to enter the Rogers credentials for your email account, which is a redirect to rogersmembercentre.com, nothing ever loads. Thus leaving you stuck. It gets interesting as I’ve been able to get all the affected clients working by using Yahoo Mail from the Apple App Store. So if you’re in this situation, you could try that as it has worked for me so far.
And what doesn’t help the situation is that Rogers and their co branded Rogers/Yahoo email service has been a train wreck next to a dumpster fire for a while now. You can get the details here on that. But what that does is cloud the issue because you can make valid arguments that either Apple or Rogers could be at fault here. Regardless, I’m going to reiterate my official advice for any issues related to Rogers email. Abandon it. Details as to why I feel that way can be found here. But it’s pretty clear that you cannot rely on Rogers to provide their users with reliable email. And that’s independent of who’s at fault when it comes to this specific issue. Thus you need to do what you need to do to get reliable email that works for you.
If I find out any additional details or fixes for this, I’ll be sure to post an update.
Posted in Tips with tags Apple on September 17, 2024 by itnerd
HomeKit users who have been around for a while have had one major complaint about how HomeKit operated. And I outline that complaint here when I covered my HomeKit setup two years ago:
Another thing to point out about home hubs is that if you have more than one, they are used in an “Active/Standby” configuration. As in if you have two home hubs, one is actively controlling everything. But if something happens to it, the second one will take over.
And:
You can’t choose which HomePod Mini is the one that is the “connected” one. Which seems at first glance to be a #Fail. But what I believe that Apple is doing behind the scenes is picking the home hub with the best reception and performance to the router. I’ve observed that it tends to gravitate towards making the living room Home Pod Mini the connected one. I suspect that’s due to the fact that it is connected to an ASUS mesh WiFi node that is in close proximity (as in two feet away) to the Home Pod Mini in question which has direct access to the Internet. That would make that one the logical choice to be the one that runs the show. The HomePod Mini in the den is physically closer in proximity to the ASUS mesh WiFi node that’s in the den versus the one in the living room. But because the node in the den has to connect to the node in the living room to get out to the Internet, it’s not as good of a choice to be the connected Home Pod Mini as it has to make a extra hop to the Internet that the HomePod in the living room doesn’t have to make. And the one in the bedroom is the worst choice of the three as it is a room away from the ASUS mesh WiFi node in the den which is where it connects to the Internet from. All of that means that its reception isn’t as great as the first two HomePod Mini units on top of the fact that it has to make an extra hop to get to the Internet.
That’s a lot to take in. But let me boil this down for you and tell you why you should care. If you have more than one device that could be a Home Hub, as in a HomePod, HomePod mini, or Apple TV, one of them will get nominated by HomeKit to be the “active” Home Hub. Any others will be on standby in case that one fails. And you can’t define which one is the “active” Home Hub. Here’s a couple of examples of why you might want to do that:
Let’s say you have a HomePod and an AppleTV that is wired into your network. Seeing as the HomePod is always going to wireless, the AppleTV that is wired will provided better performance for HomeKit. So you should be able to choose that as your “active” Home Hub for that reason.
Let’s take my use case of four HomePod mini units, all on WiFi. The one that is closest to the WiFi access point that is connected to my Internet connection should be the “active” home hub as that will get better performance to and from the Internet as it will make less hops to get to and from the Internet.
When iOS 18 rolled out yesterday, Apple finally gave you the means to set your own Home Hub. Which to be frank, is long overdue. Here’s how you do that:
NOTE: Your HomePods and AppleTVs need to be running HomePod Software 18 and tvOS 18 respectively.
Open the Home app on your iPhone that is running iOS 18
Tap the “hamburger menu” which is the three dots with a circle around them.
Choose Home Settings
Choose Home Hubs And Bridges
You’ll be taken to this screen:
Now you’ll note that in my case, the Den HomePod is the active Home Hub. In this case, that HomePod mini needs to connect to the WiFi access point in the den, then use that to get to the WiFi access point in the living room that is connected to my Internet connection. That’s three hops. So I’m going to change it to the one in the Living room by turning off Automatic Selection.
Here’s where Apple could make a minor improvement. The HomePods in the living room are a stereo pair. The one that is the left channel in the stereo pair lives two or three feet above the living room WiFi access point that is connected to my Internet connection. The one that is the right channel in the stereo pair is about seven feet to the right of the first one. That means that the HomePod mini that is the left channel is the “correct” choice to be the “active” Home Hub. Realistically, it likely makes zero difference which one I pick as they both connect to WiFi via the same access point, and they are both on UPS units which will keep them powered in the event of a power outage, and whatever speed difference that the left one has over the right one is likely irrelevant because its so small. Having said that, it would be nice if Apple did identify which was which for those who care about this sort of thing. In any case, I chose the first living room HomePod so that the checkmark was next to it:
You can then hit the back arrow and you’re done. Now I was wondering what would happen if I unplugged both of the HomePods in the living room to simulate them losing power during a power outage, or being disconnected from the Internet. Here’s what I discovered:
First of all I got this notification to let me know that the HomePod that I set as “active” was no longer responding. And to test to see if I could still access my HomeKit devices from outside the home, I turned off WiFi on my iPhone to simulate yours truly being outside the home. I was able to access all my HomeKit devices just fine.
This is further validated by the fact that the “active” HomePod is now the Den HomePod. From here, I plugged in one of the two HomePods, and it turned out that I chose the one that was furthest away from the WiFi access point. So I switched which living room HomePod was active and declared victory.
So, will you be using this functionality? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Posted in Tips with tags Apple on September 16, 2024 by itnerd
At 1PM EST on Monday, Apple will release iOS 18 to the public. As long as you have a supported device, it will bring you new features and improvements to your iDevice experience. One thing that will be an exception is Apple Intelligence. Unless you buy an iPhone 16, the only existing iPhones that will get Apple Intelligence are the 15 Pro and the 15 Pro Max.
If you want to see a full feature set, click here.
Speaking of supported devices, here’s what iOS 18 will run on:
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhone 14 Plus
iPhone 14 Pro
iPhone 14 Pro Max
iPhone 13
iPhone 13 mini
iPhone 13 Pro
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 12
iPhone 12 Pro
iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 12 Mini
iPhone 11
iPhone 11 Pro
iPhone 11 Pro Max
iPhone XS
iPhone XS Max
iPhone XR
iPhone SE (Second Generation Or Later)
If your phone isn’t on this list, then it’s not supported. And the following phones will come with iOS 18 out of the box:
iPhone 16
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max
If you are wondering why there are no iPads on the list, that’s because Apple has spun off the iPads into a separate OS called iPadOS which is due out at the same time. Having said that, this advice applies to iPads as well.
Now, since this is a major upgrade there is always a chance, no matter how remote that something can go sideways. To make sure that you’re not caught out by something unexpected, here’s what you can do:
1. Update your Apps: Make sure that all your apps are up to date before upgrading by opening the App Store app and seeing if any updates are required. This is important because it is possible that the changes that Apple has made on areas like privacy and performance could break an app that you rely on. Thus I find that it is always a good idea to check for updates and install them before a new version of iOS hits the streets.
2. Dump any uneeded photos, videos or apps: iOS updates tend to need a fair amount of free space to allow for a successful installation. Thus if you have anything less than 8GB of free space, consider deleting unused apps or photos/videos. In terms of the photos and videos you want to keep, you can move them to the cloud or a computer so that they’re safely stored without taking up space on your iPhone. I personally use iCloud myself, but Google Photos is another option.
At this point you should be good to go to upgrade to iOS 18. 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 that you might encounter.
One other thing before I go, you may want to consider not upgrading to iOS 18 and instead wait for iOS 18.1 to hit the streets before you upgrade as that’s likely to have additional bug fixes and also fix issues that hit the streets when iOS 18 comes out. Plus that’s the version that is going to bring Apple Intelligence to the table. I’ll be upgrading later today and I will let you know how it goes.
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on September 16, 2024 by itnerd
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on September 15, 2024 by itnerd
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.
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on September 10, 2024 by itnerd
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.
Cisco’s Talos Intelligence group has a very interesting blog post that any macOS user that runs Microsoft apps should read. First the bad news from said blog post:
Cisco Talos recently conducted an analysis of macOS applications and the exploitability of the platform’s permission-based security model, which centers on the Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework.
We identified eight vulnerabilities in various Microsoft applications for macOS, through which an attacker could bypass the operating system’s permission model by using existing app permissions without prompting the user for any additional verification. If successful, the adversary could gain any privileges already granted to the affected Microsoft applications. For example, the attacker could send emails from the user account without the user noticing, record audio clips, take pictures or record videos without any user interaction.
All of that is pretty bad. Now here’s what’s worse:
Microsoft considers these issues low risk, and some of their applications, they claim, need to allow loading of unsigned libraries to support plugins and have declined to fix the issues.
Lovely. I can say with confidence that someone will look at this and say “that’s a great way to get into a Mac and use it for my evil purposes.” Then this will become a major problem. And you have to wonder what Microsoft will do at that point. Though there’s always the possibility that Apple will force Microsoft to do something as it is their platform after all. I would love to be a fly on the wall when that conversation happens. In the meantime, there’s no mitigations for these vulnerabilities at present. So you’ll just have do your best to be careful out there.
Hot Take: Expect Apple To Stop Supporting Intel Macs In 2026
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on November 2, 2024 by itnerdOne 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:
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.
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