I also can't write any files to /, even with SIP disabled, and during the Monterey upgrade, Apple deleted all files and directories in / that they didn't recognize, including my system backup. I had to recover that from Backblaze. Can't say I'm a fan of recent MacOS. If you think you are in control of your Apple machine, think again.
/dev/disk3s3s1 on / (apfs, sealed, local, read-only, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3s6 on /System/Volumes/VM (apfs, local, noexec, journaled, noatime, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3s4 on /System/Volumes/Preboot (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3s2 on /System/Volumes/Update (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s2 on /System/Volumes/xarts (apfs, local, noexec, journaled, noatime, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s1 on /System/Volumes/iSCPreboot (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s3 on /System/Volumes/Hardware (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3s1 on /System/Volumes/Data (apfs, local, journaled, nobrowse, protect, root data)
map auto_home on /System/Volumes/Data/home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
/System/Volumes/Data/Users/Shared/Previously Relocated Items/Security/hbbackup
I don't know how people are supposed to know this. Plus it is taking up 50GB of space!
You can still use printers from the 90's on modern Windows, meanwhile MacOS seems to break support for recent printers between minor updates.
It's not like they're a cash-strapped start-up, if Microsoft can afford to invest in maintaining backwards compatibility, so can Apple.
Sounds like Apple is just lazy and doesn't care what it breaks treating their desktop OS like their mobile OS where app devs need to keep pace with them, and fans will die on the hill defending them.
What about backwards compatibility?
nc your_printer_ip 9100 < /path/to/your/pdf/fileMaybe .ps would be better, but even that isn't universally accepted.
It did exactly what it was programmed to do. It was not a malfunction, it was intentional:
Why does my MacBook which isn’t enrolled in an mdm ping Apple for mdm config and policies? Why is accountsd phoning home when I’m not signed into an Apple account? Why does the Mac generate absurd amounts of app analytics which you can view in the console app yet can’t delete despite the fact that you turned off all analytics when setting up the machine? Why regardless of if I have WiFi logging enabled or disabled is it still spitting out WiFi velocity reports.
The OS used to be damn near perfect and it’s gone down hill since the first version to introduce iCloud signin. Every new feature they add is something I’ll never be interested in using. Disabling services you don’t want running so they stop phoning home or consuming resources is almost impossible anymore, requiring a dance of booting into recovery mode, disabling every single system protection mechanism, and then booting completely vulnerable into normal mode to then pray that the launchagent gods actually let you turn off mediaanalysisd or if nothing else that sudo has permission (sudo!!) to delete the plist file, and often you get permission denied errors or the process comes back after a reboot. It’s a shit show. The frustrating part is sip and all those things that prevent us from tuning our machines don’t even stop rootkits or the numerous zero days in the wild since it came out
And yes, I’m using USB hubs, printers and even Java.
> Write XOR execute (W^X)
> Apple Silicon Macs will enforce a restriction called “write XOR execute” (W^X). This means that chunks of memory will be designated as writable, or as executable, but never as both at the same time. Many macOS apps contain performance optimization programs that require memory to be both writable and executable, but this can lead to serious security issues. By enforcing W^X, Apple will harden Mac security at the memory level. App developers, however, won’t be left out in the cold — if they still need those optimization programs for their apps, they can use a new macOS API that provides a way to switch between write and execute permissions quickly and safely.
And the nature of W^X - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX
> W^X ("write xor execute", pronounced W xor X) is a security feature in operating systems and virtual machines. It is a memory protection policy whereby every page in a process's or kernel's address space may be either writable or executable, but not both. Without such protection, a program can write (as data "W") CPU instructions in an area of memory intended for data and then run (as executable "X"; or read-execute "RX") those instructions. This can be dangerous if the writer of the memory is malicious. W^X is the Unix-like terminology for a strict use of the general concept of executable space protection, controlled via the mprotect system call.
---
See also Porting just-in-time compilers to Apple silicon - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/port...
And W^X now mandatory in OpenBSD (8 years ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11789169 )
It's still often a good idea to wait a few days or weeks before updating just in case you're caught by the bugs, but the rates of errors are usually much lower than the mainstream media reporting would lead you to believe.
In fact, I used to get kernel panics from time to time with USB hubs until a couple of major revisions ago.
What I’m running now, in part via monitor USB hub, is so far beyond the scope of what I expect to be part of QA and intended support that I’m surprised it’s not giving me any issues.
Speculation about why: Apple had to push out a major iOS update before March 6 for the EU DMA deadline. They had almost two years to prepare, but they figured out fairly late that they could not negotiate (most of) their way out of it. So the weeks/months before the release, probably most of the focus of the OS (and infrastructure) teams was on the March 6 deadline.
I imagine that they had all security updates rolled into the macOS 14.4 and iOS 17.4 branches already. Then when March 6 came around, they released iOS 17.4 and they had to rush out macOS 14.4 as well (macOS 14.4 was already a day later than iOS 17.4, which is untypical for Apple), to avoid that bad actors find macOS vulnerabilities by looking at iOS changes.
“macOS Sonoma 14.4 Bug 'Destroys Saved Versions in iCloud Drive'”
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/19/sonoma-bug-destroys-sav...
> BankID on card and macOS
> A change was introduced by Apple in macOS 14 where one consequence is that BankID on card stops working for some users. We have reported to Apple and hope they fix the error in an upcoming update. Recommendation: Wait to update to macOS 14 to avoid problems when using BankID on card.
Doesn't affect me as I use BankID on file (and I'm on 12.4), but the caution message sure surprised me, in the wrong sort of way.
E.g., how does this compare to the rate of equivalent problems with large Windows releases?
I use EndeavourOS on all my old Mac hardware and update without fear literally every couple of days. It “just works”. So, a “long tail” of hardware is no excuse anyway.
Apple is in the middle off a platform transition from Intel to their own silicon. Some of these problems could be a de-emphasis on the Intel experience. Some of it though seems to be lees quality and more philosophy ( such as the claim it actively deleted files from root ).
If you are going to play in the Apple garden, you have to play the way they want you to.
And people give Microsoft shit for not supporting Windows 10 more than 10 years when Apple only does 5.
>I use EndeavourOS on all my old Mac hardware and update without fear literally every couple of days
That's incredibly brave (or foolish) to have no fear of upgrading Arch, considering Arch does indeed break, it's not a question of IF, it's a question of WHEN.
Also had EndeavourOS for a while when I attempted to switch to Linux and, gave up on it when an update left me without sound. It's a great "batteries included" Arch distro, but can't tolerate such risks on a daily driver machine that I need it to work 100% of the time, every time.
For daily driving without update anxiety I'd go for something boring like Ubuntu/Debian based OSs, Fedora if you want more up-date, or even OpenSUSE if you want a sane rolling distro, but I'd stay away from Arch if you want your computer to just-work(TM) and don't wanna be your own part-time sys-admin.
It's officially considered "vintage" 5 years after it is last sold, but that doesn't mean it won't receive OS updates. Apple considers hardware to be obsolete 7 years after sale ends, but is still likely to receive security updates for a while longer.
Their phones enjoy an even longer support window than their desktops/laptops if you consider security updates, the iPhone 5s (2013) just received a security update last year.
Unlikely since several of the issues seem to happen only on Apple Silicon.
I'm still more than bitter, after buying some nice 27" 4K HDR 144Hz monitors that Apple actively broke (and may still be broken) Display Stream Compression 1.4 for the Pro Display XDR.
When it was released, there were questions about how Apple was managing to drive that display.
Well, the answer is because they absolutely nerfed/bastardized DSC 1.4 from Big Sur to make it happen with some proprietary magic: those same screens could now only be driven at 60Hz in HDR10 or 95Hz in SDR.
Proof in the pudding was that my monitors (LG27GN950-B) actually allowed you to change the advertised/supported DSC version, and when I "downgraded" the monitors to DSC 1.2, performance actually improved, and allowed 120Hz SDR and 95Hz HDR.
This happened with many many users, across many screen types.
And if you downgraded to Catalina? Boom, back to 144 Hz.
Apple studiously ignored it, and may still be. They simply don't care if you're not using an Apple display.
Do you have any more info/links about this? I’m curious, since I do have a Pro Display XDR, and I’ve been trying to understand for some time how exactly it’s able to reach its bandwidth, which is definitely a rabbit hole.
You ask any long time macOS/OSX user and they will point to Apple software quality worsening well before anything comes up in the news media.
Heck, I'm in the camp that thinks Apple OSX software quality peaked at Snow Leopard and it has been all downhill since then, and this camp is massive.
I doubt we're being influenced by the "media".
So I don't know if older macs are intentionally crippled or they're just ignored during QA, but I don't believe they're actually intentionally supported
More likely neither. Software just becomes larger and more complex and thus slower on older hardware.
(My 2021 MacBook Pro 14" is still lightning-fast though, I never wait for anything.)
How much have they /really/ added to the OS (which is enabled on my hardware) and consuming extra resources?
It’s amusing to compare the comments here to the comments on windows update threads. As nobody else has, let me add the reminder for everyone to switch to <different OS>.
One of the reasons MS introduced "patch Tuesday" in 2003 was because Windows updates until then had been notorious for years for causing issues randomly, which their corporate users hated firefighting without warning. By rolling out their updates on a predictable schedule, corporate IT depts could set their calendar to keep a day (or two) per month clear to do post-update firefighting, or (if they were really on the ball) to make time for their own QA before releasing the update to the rest of the org.
So unless the QA firing you're talking about was more than a quarter-century ago, Windows updates have always been issue-laden shitshows.
I wish they performed some sort of automatic regression testing on stuff like this.
Just like that my monitor's built in KVM stopped working in a reasonable manner. Can use it to drive the web camera which sometimes works normally and sometimes with shitty frame rate. Microphone now appears and then gets evicted (rode USB mic), my headphone preamp will crackle like mad so it is useless...
I got this monitor specifically to be able to work with the stupid m1 limitation of 1 external screen and to be able to switch seamlessly to my secondary rig. And it could be connected using one cable as it does power delivery.
Now I have an expensive montor that is useless for the purpose I got it for. Not sure whether to blame dell or apple but do not remember many instances of issues like this in my life. Being a PC guy forever and now got forced to use apple for work.
Really don't understand why it's being pushed so much in corporate env. lately? Maybe I am just weird.
I have to open up System Settings, change the resolution for the monitor, and change it back every time I leave my macbook and come back.
I use it in combination with Stream Deck/Keyboard Maestro to toggle the resolution of second monitor during Teams screen sharing to provide a lower resolution for display challenged colleagues.
I have one in my setup and toggling it off and then back (via button) is a quicker way to solve freak-outs.
I've always been amazed that what I think of a dumb switch (wiring) USB hubs, have connectivity problems solved by such... its a protocol handling problem. Not a circuitry issue, and there should be a command to reset USB/Peripherel reboots.
Invoking a reconnect via CLI / cmd would be great.
Apart from me not liking XFCE (and X11 in general) and that I'll re-provision it with KDE instead, I am very happy with the result. This laptop puts my iMac Pro to shame.
Nothing I've done so far to stop the overwrite in the first place has worked.
In any case, / root and /etc (to an extend) are part of the system volume (or rather the system volume snapshot if we want to be pedantic). With some exceptions Apple considers that fair game.
There’s a bunch of symlinking and firmlinking done to make it look like one coherent whole but only the stuff on the data volume is safe.
That said, if for whatever reason you need to put something in root you can create your own synthetic firmlink[0] with /etc/synthetic.conf.
I believe some also reported success by simply making a subdirectory under /etc and use that instead but YMMV.
hoakly goes into extensive detail with what changed with volumes on macOS (back in 2019 I believe): https://eclecticlight.co/2021/01/13/big-sur-boot-volume-layo...
0: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/creating-root-l...
> The solution is to do path initialization in ~/.zprofile on macOS. This file is loaded after /etc/zprofile and before ~/.zshrc.
To be clear I'm talking about Keyboard shortcuts -> Keyboard -> Move focus to next window.
[0] I was running Big Sur because none of the recent MacOS updates really offered anything of interest to me, since I don't use most Apple software. But Homebrew and Element stopped working so I had to upgrade. I should've just upgraded to a newer, not to the newest version (which I tend to avoid due to issues like these that might come up). Lesson learned.
I've resolved both issues. Still not happy to have to waste two hours of my life on it.
Wait what? So 10 screens of bangers like "An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges" and "An attacker with arbitrary kernel read and write capability may be able to bypass kernel memory protections. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited." are not considered smoking guns?
Why is preventing trapping on an illegal memory access a sensible security practice?
Preventing the access, sure, but I'm not seeing what force killing a process does for security, especially given there are perfectly reasonable reasons why one might want to trap the signal.
The signal raised for page faults should be (and actually was, before 14.4) SIGSEGV, and not SIGKILL. This behaviour is even defined by POSIX.
There is no reason why this should change, specially not in the final release instead of in the public betas and early access releases (where the change was not present).
