This is not new - every time I update macOS, some of the system settings are changed to default including some in the firewall. And I have to painstakingly go through all of it and change it. Also, the few times I've reinstalled or updated macOS, I've always noticed that it takes longer for the installation if your system has access to the internet - so now I've made it a practice to switch of the router while installing or updating macOS or ios. (With all the AI bullshit being integrated everywhere in Windows, macOS and Android etc., I expect this kind of "offloading" of personal data, and downloading of data, to / from AI servers to keep increasing, especially during updates, to "prepare" for the new AI features in the newer OS updates. No internet means the installer is forced to skip it for later, saving you some valuable time, and hopefully you get to change the default setting before it starts up again. Whatever the claims of AI processing done on the Mac or iDevices itself, some "offloading" to their servers, will still happen, especially if the default settings - which you can change only after the OS is installed - also enables analytics and data collection.)
(More here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26418809 and on this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26303946 ).
Why are you still using those OSes? That seems like a lot of work for something you paid for.
(Two decades on DOS/Windows home series and NT, at least for gaming and sometimes work, twelve years with Linux as my main desktop OS, started on Android for smartphones, before finally giving Apple a fair chance around 2011 or 2012… because I was issued a MacBook at work and was doing dual-platform mobile dev—FWIW I was rooting for BeOS back when it was still a thing, it was great)
MacOS may not even be the best (that's subjective), let alone "by far" the best. How can you make this claim when you haven't used Linux in a decade?
The hardware is amazing though and no other OS can predictably wake the laptop when opening the lid and not wake it when it's closed, which is kinda a deal breaker for a laptop, so I still use it. Not particularly excited about it, would prefer a Linux laptop if it could sleep reliably. (Seen pictures of a framework laptop with a kernel panic after wake, and I was seriously considering getting one.)
This is code words for "Im emotionally invested into my choice for non logical reasons and its very hard for me to admit I have made the wrong choice".
Plus, little snitch is basically state-of-the-art in terms of ease-of-use if you're willing to put the money into it.
For years, I can not do the automatic updates, because it always fails with an error message along the lines of "Failed to personalise software, check your internet!", even though I have a perfectly working Internet connection. The only way to update is with a live USB and an ethernet connection. Everything else fails.
Windows has also been doing that for some time now. Only Linux is relatively "clean" from that perspective, but even now some distros are beginning to sneak in spyware. The enshittification of OSes continues...
Citation needed. I remember Ubuntu sneaking in some stuff a couple of years ago[0], but most of the mainstream distros have a clean track record. What are you referring to exactly?
0: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/ubuntu-data-collection-o...
Companies have tried buying floss software specifically to add spyware, such as audacity.
It’s not a big fraction of what proprietary OS does, but the threat grows steadily each year.
Everytime I upgrade my iPhone it turns on Bluetooth. Phreaking annoying.
Apple clearly wants their customer base to use certain features so they simply enable them at upgrade. It's gross.
I highly recommended sniffing the traffic on the wire and piping it through wireshark. You can do this with a router, or a passive Ethernet tap. You’ll see a bunch of packets going to places other than your VPN entrypoint. If you use a router, you can check your mobile for leaks too. (Did you know if you have WiFi calling enabled, then your phone makes a TCP connection to a sensor server controlled by your ISP every 30 seconds? So if you’ve got T-Mobile and you’re abroad, not even using it as your default SIM, they’ll get a nice log of every exit IP you use.)
Apple’s seeming embrace of support for VPN and network filtering extensions is a red herring, because they’ll happily disable it for their own traffic.
On iOS, the App Store will skip any VPN, and similarly Apple will even block you from downloading updates if you’re on a VPN. I only realized this when I used my wireless router with VPN on it and updates failed to download.
On Mac, there are a bunch of issues, especially on first boot. It seems like the Mac will refuse to establish the VPN until it can make one connection outside of it. I encounter this when my computer wakes from sleep and the on-demand wireguard tunnel (using Cloudflare Warp) fails to send packets. I unplug my Ethernet, disable always-on, wait 30 seconds (for some timeout?), re-enable always-on, and then plug in the Ethernet and in connects. But I’m not actually sure this isn’t leaking, I need to investigate more.
Even though I had disabled all 'restore' applications features, macos sometimes decides to 'start' browsers BEFORE logging in after a restart AND those start auto-playing audio from whatever was paused before the reboot (or many days before).
Since then I went rather deep disabling that feature, but I never trusted it.
In the long run, they barter this goodwill for "Safari is shit" credit until they and Google force the internet until a browser-turned App-Play-Store war.
Both companies win, and can blame the other company - all while incentivising anti-competition behavior and benefiting from their own organizational, yet altruistic, self-interests happening to coincidentally collude in similar, yet distinctly more complicated cases of creating monopolies spanning multiple domains.
The internet was captured, gamified, commoditized, and vertically integrated into a handful of giga-Corps.
your mobile devices are essentially tracking devices you are addicted to, and the government is too interested in these shiny grandiose things and their use in facilitating government functions without any real consequence, they fail to see the systematic risks that they themselves have allowed to proliferate by not enforcing stricter laws for systematically - exploitable intersections of law, technology, and business.
Or they also fail at providing a solution. Would you prefer diletantic government intervention in this area instead?
No, I would like a competent government intervention. Those happen, even if some would rather believe otherwise.
>"they fail to see the systematic risks"
Or they also fail at providing a solution.
Since it's not "Safari" that's broken (since iPhones cost a lot of money, they cant break), the users will lie blame at the fault of the web developers, since they had gotten cozy within the comfortable, flexible, expected behaviors of Chrome, having enjoyed a hiatus from IE11 EOL pollyfills and jquery.
Apple then made it easier to roll out an app than to grapple with the pitfalls, nuances, foot-guns, and gabbling documentation that Safari has carefully mal-compiled to shepherd both developers and their users into the Walled Garden.
It's just the browser wars, but with higher stakes. And Microsoft already won.
what kind of answer is that exactly?
I would much prefer they fix the issue, yes, the stuff I'm using is provided by Apple and it's been paid off in full, I don't know what made people believe that it's ok if software sucks...
If a train company causes an accident they are considered liable if a software company leaks my data they should be considered liable, it's as simple as that, no need for this anti government stands that frankly make adults look like angry teenagers with a bad bladder
Speak for yourself. Sent from my Librem 5.
Having short startup times is bad now? ...because of "instant gratification"? The rest of your rant might make sense in the broader context of what big tech is doing, but bringing it up in this thread and implying that it's part of a conspiracy where "The internet was captured, gamified, commoditized, and vertically integrated into a handful of giga-Corps" is unhinged.
and SleepWatcher by bernard-baehr.de
To clarify, because commenters seem to be misunderstanding my point: I’m not defending the functionality, I think it’s wrong. My sole quarrel is with the characterisation that Apple is selling it as a feature, when they’re not. Let’s not ascribe wrong (or at best unknown) motivations to behaviours, as that makes is less likely they will be fixed.
I've had Windows do something similar, a media player deciding to unpause when coming up from hibernate (this was before Windows seemingly broke hibernate) and for some reason being at full volume, and it was a fair few seconds before I was able to login, get to that app, and hit pause again. It didn't leak anything sensitive (Hey everyone, this guy watches Stargate!) but it made me “that guy we all hate” on the train… Again it is the app that is responsible for making the sound, but I think at that point the OS shouldn't let it.
<glasses tint="rose">I miss the times when laptops had physical volume sliders…</galsses>
To me this has the feeling of making a mountain out of a molehill, but I don't think there is any denying that the molehill itself exists and to others it might be more than the very minor irritation it could be to me.
> I bet that if you configured the browser to never auto-play, this wouldn’t happen.
I bet that no matter how tightly you try to control that, some advertiser will find a way to override it to make sound play, and sods law says that will happen when you most want your waking laptop to be quiet. Blocking audio while not signed in at the OS level is a safer gate.
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[0] Actually, there is an exception there: if the machine has locked due to input inactivity, I want audio I'm listening to continue and notification pips to come through. There is a distinction between OS restarting (from [re]boot, wake, etc.) and local console not logged in due to input timeout, in how I'd prefer things to behave.
What RIGHT does it have to create processes with a user BEFORE I authenticate to the machine ?
Seems like a huge security bug. This isn’t being exploited? Wild stuff.
Reminds me of when you could hear a FaceTime call coming through but if you chose not to answer it, no worries! Your iPhone will turn on your camera anyway! And send your video to the calling party!
if macbook_has_only_one_account():
preloadapps()
But apparently it does! shrug
So why tell the user that they need to log in first? If they are the only user account on the system and the OS can access the user's files and apps without logging in, why have the user event set a password in the first place? It seems like a fake login, a false sense of security. And a massive security issue. If the user can just open the lid and that means that code is now running under their own account but they have not authorized a log in, that's just dangerous.
I was under the impression that until you provide the password after a reboot, the system should know nothing about you as all user data should be encrypted, so it should not know what apps you had open before reboot let alone start playing sound.
This is really about the checkbox on the reboot modal that says "reopen windows when logging back in." An OS update defaults to yes, for whatever reason.
If you're choosing "reboot" rather than "shut down", presumably you intend to continue using the machine, so it's reasonably safe to keep credentials around. AFAIK windows has the same feature.
This is the last thing I would expect. Quite the contrary, when I reboot (rather than log out or sleep), I expect the machine to clear it's memory completely.
There's a way to block that entirely for "secure' apps, but iOS could be smarter about this, and cache some stripped down view or expire that cache quicker.
The only explanation is that you restarted whilst having the "Open All Previous Application" checkbox enabled. And yes it will launch processes after you have logged in but before the Desktop is shown.
Either that you or you have some launch daemon that is opening a browser.
> The only explanation is that [...]
Please show some more imagination.
Which is that it could be a launch daemon. It's very common for third party apps to use their imagination and do dumb things on startup.
That said, there should probably be a checkbox in system settings to disable login “prewarming”.
> During the macOS 14 Sonoma beta period Apple introduced a bug in the macOS firewall, packet filter (PF). This bug prevents our app from working, and can result in leaks when some settings (e.g. local network sharing) are enabled. We cannot guarantee functionality or security for users on macOS 14, we have investigated this issue after the 6th beta was released and reported the bug to Apple. Unfortunately the bug is still present in later macOS 14 betas and the release candidate.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/bug-in-macos-14-sonoma-prevents-...
Was fixed September 22, 2023 it seems (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/macos-14-sonoma-firewall-bug-fix...).
Seems like Apple's product/engineering department doesn't agree with the marketing department about how important their users privacy is.
What? NixOS runs GUIs just fine. (This comment sent from a browser on NixOS)
Insane. Why even have one or expose it to the user if it's just suggestive fiction?
Vendors really need to stop privileging themselves on users machines.
I'm not sure what this setting does. The amount of times mac will jsut reopen everything anyway is frustration. I go look up how to stop it and the answer is always "Turn off this setting you already have off".