After seemingly not being mentioned in yesterday’s Apple event, Apple’s upcoming operating system El Capitan has a launch date according to several sources including Engadget. You see, it was mentioned after all, but in a very sneaky way. During the announcement of the iPad Pro, sharp eyes might have noticed this:
As you can see, the ship date is September 30th and it is marked “Apple Confidential” and “Super Secret.” Thus I would classify this as an Easter Egg.
Apple today had one of their press events today and I took the time to watch it so that I can report all the details to you. Here’s what was announced and when you can get your hands on it:
I’ll update this post as I get more info and links.
UPDATE: The event video can be found here. I have also added links.
UPDATE #2: El Capitan has a launch date.
After writing this article to give readers a overview of FileVault 2, I noticed something on my MacBook Pro. I was missing the Guest Account which is a special type of user that has very limited access to your Mac. That was a bit of a fail because that’s actually a good security feature as it allows a thief who steals your Mac to connect to the Internet, which in turn allows you to find your Mac using the functionality found in Find My Mac and you then have the option of sending the cops to get it, locking it, sending a message to it (example: “If found, please return it. Reward offered”) or erasing the contents remotely.
When I looked in System Preferences and Users And Groups, I found that the Guest Account was activated.
I was left scratching my head for a bit as that should mean that everything should be working. So I decided to try an experiment by deactivating and reactivating the guest user. That worked. I can only conclude that when I transferred my data over from my old MacBook Pro (which had the Guest Account working) to my new MacBook Pro, something must have gotten trashed. Thus turning it off (which kills the account) and back on (which creates a new account) would cure that. Weird.
Hopefully this is the last thing that I have to fix on either of the MacBook Pros. But at least this experience is giving me all sorts of topics to share with you in case you hit similar problems. That way you don’t have to make a trip to the Genius Bar to get them solved.
My wife noticed that a function that I take for granted on my MacBook Pro wasn’t available on her new to her MacBook Pro. The Instant Hotspot feature which is part of the larger Continuity feature set. This allows a MacBook Pro for example to use a iPhone that is in Bluetooth range to surf the net using the data plan of the iPhone. It’s a handy feature to have if you have a MacBook, and it should “just work” but it wasn’t in her case. So I spent some time diagnosing the issue and here are the things that I tried that I hope will help you if you encounter this issue:
In my case, I got as far as item three before things started working again. But sometimes when I get calls from clients, I have to use some or all of these before I get things working.
If you have any other tips that help fix Instant Hotspot problems, please leave a comment below and share your knowledge.
I got a few questions asking me to explain what FileVault 2 is and why I decided to go with using it on both MacBook Pros in my home.
FileVault 2 is a full disk encryption system offered by Apple in OS X that encrypts the entire hard disk using XTS-AES [Warning: PDF] 128 encryption and performs encryption and decryption on the fly in a transparent manner. Now this isn’t the absolute strongest form of encryption as there is a 256 bit variant of this, but it is strong enough to keep 99% of the universe away from your data. It also takes away the most common way of breaking into Macs which is to use Recovery Mode that is built into every Mac to change the password to your user account.
The advantages beyond encrypting your data include the fact that you can use Find My Mac to silently wipe your drive in seconds remotely if your Mac is stolen (just make sure you always have a current backup). Or you can issue a command to remotely lock the Mac. But you need to keep this in mind. Once you’ve used the Remote Lock option, the Remote Wipe action is no longer available. Another thing that I should point out is that you should always enable the Guest Account option so that it entices a thief to use the Mac. By doing so, he’d have to connect to the Internet and that will allow the Mac to report its location as well as allow you to send commands to lock or wipe the Mac.
Another thing to note is that FileVault 2 works with all your backup software and with utilities like DiskWarrior. So all that means is that you’re protecting your data and your life doesn’t change at all.
Enabling it is easy. The link that I have included on FileVault 2 shows how easy the process is. But there’s a couple of things to keep in mind:
When it comes to who should use it, here are my thoughts:
The next thing that I will highlight is speed. In the past, speed has been an issue when it comes to encryption because the process of encrypting and decryption data would slow the computer down to such a degree that some would ditch encryption to make the computer perform they way they wanted it to. But in the age of fast processors and SSD storage, this is a non-issue. Even with mechanical hard drives this is a non-issue as well. I have FileVault 2 turned on both my wife’s MacBook Pro which I put a 7200 RPM hard drive into it, as well as my new MacBook Pro that has a SSD. I cannot tell on either that FileVault 2 is enabled. Though I will admit that it took almost 6 hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro to do the initial encryption 90GB of data. By contrast it took about 90 minutes on my MacBook Pro to do the initial encryption of 225 GB of data. But once that was done, there is no speed penalty that we can detect.
The final thing to highlight is that there is one thing that you should be aware of when you use FileVault 2. Some law enforcement types aren’t thrilled with FileVault 2 because that they can’t get into it at will. Thus if you travel and customs decides to search your MacBook for whatever reason, they might want you to hand over your encryption keys or de-crypt your drive. That’s a big hint that there aren’t any backdoors (that we know of) in FileVault 2. But for that reason, it could cause you some grief if you travel. My best advice is to follow this piece of advice that I wrote in regards to US customs and avoid any conversation about the fact that the drive is be encrypted.
Mac users beware. According to Malwarebytes, a new version of the Genieo adware has brought with it something that is extremely dangerous. It can access the OS X Keychain without user intervention. This could pave the way for other more deadly malware to do anything from steal information to pwn your Mac.
Here’s an video that shows this in action:
That video is short and quick. So I’ll explain what happened:
It happens so fast that most users would never notice. That’s the point. And what’s worse is that this isn’t exploiting an OS X flaw. Which means that preventing this from being a major threat is a bit problematic. It’s not sure if Apple is aware of this and if they are going to do anything about it at this point. But seeing as El Capitan is on the horizon, that may be Apple’s best chance of dealing with this threat. In the meantime, users should follow the usual common-sense security practices. Such as don’t download files from unknown sources and be wary of e-mails or websites that seem suspicious.
A lot of you might be wondering what I did with my old MacBook Pro now that I have this new one in my hands. I was going to Craigslist it. But then my wife suggested that I give it to her as it is still under AppleCare and she wanted a portable computer. I did point out the three hard drives failures as well as a failed screen as a reason to not go that route. Her response was that there was not a whole lot of risk because of the fact that it was still under AppleCare and she could use it as an upgrade from her late 2012 Mac Mini which was no longer under AppleCare. Then she could sell the Mac Mini on Craigslist. Since my wife is always right, I decided to go for it.
First, I had to move the data off of my old MacBook Pro to my new one. Fortunately, Apple has a piece of software called the Migration Assistant that allows you to move data from one Mac to another easily. You can do it over a network, via a Time Machine backup, via FireWire, via Thunderbolt, or from a Windows computer. In my case, I chose to use Thunderbolt as I thought that would be the fastest way to get this done. Here’s what I did:
At this point, all the data was on my new MacBook Pro. I then had to do a few more things:
At this point I was up and running on my new MacBook Pro. Once I checked out everything to make sure I was in good shape, I then had to erase and reinstall OS X on my old MacBook Pro. Here’s what I need to do on that front:
After 45 minutes, I had a fresh install of OS X Yosemite. Now I could move on to my wife’s Mac Mini. I followed the 9 step process above and it didn’t quite work. When I got to step 6, the Migration Assistant hung up at the end of the process. It sat there saying “about 1 minute remaining” for 20 minutes. After thinking about what to do next, I reminded myself that the Migration Assistant was just another application. So I decided to use Command and “Q” to exit the application.
It worked!
The rest of the process unfolded as I described above, with the exception of having to update to 10.10.5 as I suspect that when reinstalling OS X on this MacBook Pro, it pulled down the latest version. I did some checks to make sure all the data was intact, which it was. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m thinking that this is a bug.
I then moved on to the “few more things” that I had to do on my MacBook Pro, but this time I had to do them on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro. After that, the only thing that was left to do after was to let FileVault 2 do its thing. On my new MacBook Pro, this process took about an hour. But on my wife’s MacBook Pro it took 6 hours, likely because of the mechanical hard drive in it.
Something that I didn’t expect was that I had to pair my new MacBook Pro to my iPhone 6 so that it would forward text messages as I noted that it broke when I made the swap. The quick way to fix this is to turn off iMessage on the iPhone and the MacBook Pro, then turn them on. Then you follow these instructions, specifically the ones under the SMS section to pair them. Strangely, I did not have to do this on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro.
Finally, I ran Diskwarrior on both computers to make sure the data was fine by optimizing the directory and repairing permissions as well as checking all the files. No problems were found. Then I rebuilt the mailboxes in Apple Mail to make sure that they were as efficient as possible from a space perspective and were generally healthy.
Net result, both my wife and I have upgraded to a faster (in my case) or migrated to a (in her case) MacBook Pro. I call that a win-win.
Does anyone want to buy a mid-2012 Mac Mini by chance? It’s got 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HD and comes with Yosemite. Ping me if you’re interested.
UPDATE: The Mac Mini has been sold.
I finally replaced my mid 2012 MacBook Pro with a new one that I hope that is more reliable given the bad luck that I have had with it over the last year or so. That meant a trip to the Apple Store to a look at the 15″ models that were on offer (as I wanted a MacBook Pro that could handle everything that I throw at it). After some conversation with a specialist (the Apple Store term for their salespeople), I chose the 15″ Apple MacBook Pro W/ Retina Display with the following specs:
From the outside, it looks like every other Retina MacBook Pro that has come before it. It is thin, light (as in 4.5 pounds which I will appreciate the next time I travel as that shaves a pound off of what I usually carry through airports), and lacks an optical drive and Ethernet. But there are some differences versus previous generations that will be important to buyers.
First off, the screen is glossy and you don’t get the option to get a matte display. Previous Retina displays suffered from a fair amount of glare that made them unusable for me. This one is very usable in almost every lighting condition that I tried it in with minimal glare as long as it was plugged into power so that the screen was at maximum brightness. Even if it wasn’t plugged in, the screen was very usable. After sourcing a previous generation MacBook Pro with Retina display, I can say that this display is a bit less prone to glare than ones from previous generations. I also found the display to be extremely sharp with crisp text and vibrant colors which is clearly a product of the retina display technology that Apple pioneered. One note that I have is that you might want to keep a microfibre cloth handy as the screen does attract fingerprints.
Next is the inclusion of the AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics processor that spools up when graphic intensive applications are being used on this MacBook Pro. If you’re just surfing the net, this MacBook Pro will use the Iris 5200 Pro graphic processor which helps to limit power consumption and increase battery life. The AMD graphics processor is FAST. I was able to play Team Fortress 2 at 1440×900 at 32 bit color with all the texturing maxed out which was not possible on my mid 2012 MacBook Pro, and I was able to do so at greater than 36 frames per second. Not only that, Photoshop on this computer performed like I was using a Mac Pro as I was able to move all around high resolution pictures with ease with no waiting. If you need to edit video, render graphics, touch up photos, or simply want to pwn your friends in the video game of your choice, this MacBook Pro has to be your choice. One note for those who like to use external monitors, it can power an external 5K display at 60Hz via two DisplayPort cables.
The big news is the storage. Like other MacBook Pros with Retina displays, it has solid state storage rather than a mechanical hard drive. But this iteration puts the solid state storage on a PCIe 2.0 x4 interface which means that it is over twice as fast as the previous generation MacBook Pro and it absolutely destroys and humbles anything with a mechanical hard drive. To give you an idea of how fast it is over a mechanical hard drive, my math says it is 22 times faster than a 5400 RPM hard drive. Booting the MacBook Pro only takes seconds. Starting any application is a double click and it appears affair. Plus starting virtual machines takes seconds and not a minute or two. Trust me, this change makes a massive difference to anyone who wants a speedy computer. One note, unlike the RAM which you cannot upgrade, the SSD is in a slot that allows you to remove it and upgrade it. When someone decides to provide compatible upgrade parts, you’re set.
Finally, there’s the Force Touch trackpad. The main benefit of Force Touch is the ability to perform a force click, which activates special functions when you press extra hard on the trackpad. For example, force clicking a link on a website lets you preview that page in a small window. You can customize what the trackpad does and I am sure that applications will eventually be written to leverage this new functionality. One thing to note is that the trackpad actually doesn’t move. It senses the force you apply to it and uses haptic feedback to simulate a click. I couldn’t tell that the click was fake which is pretty impressive. Thus to borrow a Star Wars reference, I will be using the force frequently.
Here’s some other things that I found to be big difference makers for me, or are worth noting:
Do I have anything to criticize? Not really. But I will deal with the elephant in the room that some of the more technically inclined people will have noticed. Some readers of this review will note that the “Haswell” Intel Core i7 processor that is used in this and other MacBook Pros happens to be around 2 years old and Apple didn’t choose to use something newer. That’s a valid point. Apple could have gone with the “Broadwell” series of Intel processors which would have given them slightly faster CPU performance, but much faster integrated graphics in the form of the Iris Pro 6200 graphics processing unit that the “Broadwell” series of processor comes with. That would help with the entry level MacBook Pro which only comes with integrated graphics. But I’m guessing that the changes in terms of putting the SSD on a PCIe 2.0 x4 interface and using a AMD GPU in the more upscale MacBook Pro resulted in greater performance gains for them. Which in turn would have made putting in a processor that would have only provided a modest performance bump moot in their eyes. Plus I’m also guessing that Apple is waiting for Intel’s “Skylake” series of processors to appear which will provide a significant boost overall from a CPU and a GPU perspective.
The total price for all of this is $3049 CDN. Your do have some upgrade options though. You can go to a 1TB SSD for $600 extra and you can bump the processor to 2.8 Ghz for an extra $250. Or, if you want to save a few bucks and don’t mind a MacBook Pro with a 2.2 Ghz processor and only the Iris 5200 Pro graphics adapter installed, you can get one of those for $2449. However you decide to configure it, Apple’s latest MacBook Pro has to be considered to be one of the fastest notebooks on the market and power users will love it.
Apple put out a press release today announcing that they have entered a partnership with Cisco to create a “fast lane” for iOS business users through the optimization of Cisco networks for iOS devices and apps:
“iOS is the world’s best mobile platform, and nearly every Fortune 500 and Global 500 company today has put iOS at the center of their mobile strategy,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone and iPad have become essential tools for the modern workforce and are changing the way work gets done. Together with Cisco, we believe we can give businesses the tools to maximize the potential of iOS and help employees become even more productive using the devices they already love.”
There are likely some execs at Google who are none to happy about this. That’s because they’ve been trying to get into the enterprise using Google For Work. But Apple seems to have neutralized this with this partnership and a partnership with IBM. This may be the beginning of Apple becoming the player in the enterprise space.
iPhone 6s/6s Plus Pre-Orders Begin
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple on September 12, 2015 by itnerdIf you want the new iPhone 6s or 6s plus, pre-orders began at midnight today. Here’s the options from be big three Canadian carriers:
Another option is to go directly to Apple and order online there. The phones will be unlocked and you’ll be paying the full cost rather than a subsidized cost. But if you travel frequently or don’t want to be tied to a particular carrier, this is your best option.
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