macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good (opens in new tab)

    #!/bin/zsh
    ip addr | grep $localNetworkPrefix
    ping $localGateway
    ping 1.1.1.1
    ping $DNS01
    ping $DNS02
    open -a Safari https://downdetector.com/status/%1

Edit: Thanks @Shared404

   ping -c 1 -n 1.1  2>/dev/null | awk -F '/' 'END {printf "%.2f ms\n", $5}'

   GATEWAY=$(netstat -nr | grep '^default' | grep en0 | grep -o '[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}')
   ping -c 1 -n -q $GATEWAY 2>/dev/null | awk -F '/' 'END {printf "%.2f ms\n", $5}'

That gives a more realistic expectation of how Netflix, and in this case Apple downloads, will actually perform. And it can't be artificially boosted by the ISP.

That being said, I assume both Netflix and Apple have very special CDNs with ISP co-located content servers in many cases so it is still not a realistic measurement of generic Internet performance (but Speedtest is even worse, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I get back:

  {
    "version": 1,
    "urls": {
      "small_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
      "large_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
      "https_upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp"
    },
    "test_endpoint": "ausyd2-edge-bx-006.aaplimg.com"
  }

- .../small gives me 0 bytes

- .../large gives me 4 gigabytes (!!) which I presume I am expected to range-request parts of

- .../slurp accepts input and gives me some stats back.

Upload tests are simple:

  $ head -c 1048576 /dev/zero | curl -vvv -F 'test=@-' https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp
  [...]
  {"DurationMs":11373,"Bytes":1048729,"BPS":92212}

The above is on Linux but I expect the effort to port that to macOS would be low. By all means post any needed modifications if you figure that out.

Preview's simply amazing and I miss it very much on every other platform, including iOS, but probably doesn't count as a hidden gem.

One that took me way too long to discover was the Digital Color Meter. It's a color picker that comes up instantly (much of what's so great about Apple's software is that they give at least half a shit about performance, unlike seemingly everyone else these days—it shouldn't be impressive that a color picker window comes up instantly from a cold start, but in the current software environment, it kinda is) and works for everything on your screen.

The biggest drawback is it affects the entire machine, you can’t enable the conditioner on a per-process basis, so it can be a bit rough on the other “normal” usage of the machine.

There’s also a version on iOS.

When you're taking a screenshot of a portion of the screen you can hold the spacebar to move the rectangle around.

https://twitter.com/danieldekok/status/1420093244894031874

As an example, I have shell aliases setup to cd into the folder(s) open in Finder or reference files selected in Finder.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsmutab...

Pretty lame mistake to let slip through review and testing and a common enough error that Apple calls it out in its documentation:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsmutab...