HiWire

Happy Birthday!

Blue Lines – Massive Attack Referencing the Sony Boodo Khan headphones Heart Still Beating – Roxy Music

Walkman hacks (no soldering)... for a player I don't own:

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny A genius book. I get the feeling that books as disparate as Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos (and Ilium / Olympos, of course), Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon trilogy, Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi, and even David Brin's Kiln People (and so many more), were directly inspired by Lord of Light.

Happy Birthday!

And it looks like the new MacBooks are reviewing well: MacBook Air: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/macbook-air-m1-2020 MacBook Pro: https://www.laptopmag.com/apple-macbook-pro-13-inch-m1

Gene, it sounds like you need a local record store where you can sample the records. It sounds old-fashioned, but that's the only way to be sure when you're spending so much money. I've noticed a bunch of negative online reviews in the same vein over the last few years – it sounds like some of the labels are pushing records out without any kind of quality control – perhaps they are outsourcing the operation.

Exit Planet Dust – The Chemical Brothers

That would explain why my App Store updates weren't working. Thanks for keeping us updated. I think I'll try to download it tomorrow or later.

Good luck! The Ars Technica review of macOS Big Sur is out: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/ There's nothing specifically in there that I would classify as a must-have feature, but I imagine there might be a few performance and security enhancements that will pay off in the long term. I'll be installing it to a test volume this afternoon.

As suspected, there aren't a lot of differences between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro: https://www.macworld.com/article/3596752/apple-m1-chip-13-inch-macbook-pro-macbook-air-performance-battery-design-display-price.html The MacBook Air is a better pick for most people. I don't think the slightly brighter screen or higher clock speeds make any difference to the average user. The 512GB version of the MacBook Air has an 8-core GPU instead of the 256GB's 7-core, so that would be a good place to start. Also, I've decided to revert the 2010 MacBook Air to macOS 10.13 (unofficial patch) as it runs too slowly on 10.15 to be useful. I found out the hard way that it's cleaner to remove the Data partition when you're still running macOS 10.15 – boot to the Recovery Volume and delete from Disk Utility. Otherwise, the Data partition remains if you install 10.13 to the Macintosh HD partition. It doesn't seem to affect anything, but I'd rather have the system run without it.

It's not particularly compelling to me, either. A bigger battery, slightly better FaceTime camera, and a bit more thermal capacity than the Air. Its Intel predecessor could be upgraded to 32GB RAM and 4TB of storage. I'm thinking about moving to Catalina now (it's running on quite a few of the old spare Macs) and I'll be installing Big Sur on a test system when it releases on Thursday. DeaDBeeF may be a weird name, but I found out there is a fine (deeply nerdy) tradition behind it (Wiki): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Debug_values "Magic debug values are specific values written to memory during allocation or deallocation, so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted, and to make it obvious when values taken from uninitialized memory are being used. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common..." "DEADBEEF (hexadecimal number 3735928559)... Famously used on IBM systems such as the RS/6000, also used in the classic Mac OS operating systems, OPENSTEP Enterprise, and the Commodore Amiga. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory (KMEM_FREE_PATTERN)" Looks like a good music player. I'm getting tired of iTunes bloat (the PC versions stopped playing my movies until the latest update).

It turns out the RAM may be part of the whole SOC package, so no DIMMs. The people who are screaming the loudest about Boot Camp compatibility probably own multiple computers. This finally gives Apple an edge while the unwritten mantra for the Intel era has been "It's just like a PC, but thinner and more expensive and the ports keep disappearing!" That being said, I may need to buy a few Intel refurbs for work before the new era fully begins.

One More Thing Boo-urns to Intel and some bold claims on the new Apple silicon in the new Macs. The claimed performance and battery life improvements are compelling – the ball is in the developers' court to develop native apps to maximize these gains. To me, the only fly in the ointment is the 16GB RAM on the 13" MacBook Pro – the older Intel MBP can be configured with up to 32GB (they probably have a lower than 5% takeup rate on that configuration, though). It's really great to see the Mac Mini get some love – they're super handy for HTPC, developers, and all sorts of people. And it's great that they are holding the line on the prices. Some of the Macs were starting to look like a really poor value with mediocre performance/features and old silicon.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

I am impressed by how well-researched the videos are and how she's able to keep the presentation fun for more casual fans. Definitely one of my favorite channels in the last while... my last purchase was a Swatch, so I'm not even close to being in the main demographic.

This watch is over the top. First time I've heard of a Zenith El Primero:

Stand On Zanzibar – John Brunner

I think I spent several hours on and off trying to get Migration Assistant to run on Catalina (it kept signing out)... I thought it was because I had upgraded an unsupported Mac, but maybe there is a bug in the current version. Some of the macOS install problems come from expired certificates. I've had to install older versions of macOS on some computers and I got the "Install macOS application is damaged" error – deleting one of the .plist files can fix it as described here (Method 2): https://osxdaily.com/2019/10/24/fix-install-macos-application-damaged-cant-be-used-error-mac/ I left a 2010 MacBook Air installing the dosdude1 10.15.7 patch over the weekend (it was stuck at the blank grey screen with the black bar) – by the time I checked it this morning, the Apple symbol was there and the bar was just about done, so I did a hard shutdown and restarted it (this happened before with one of the other MacBooks). Then it continued to install macOS and booted up successfully. It tried twice to install Safari 14.0 and claimed that the installer failed, but when I started Safari it was updated and runs without a problem. So you might experience some irregularities with 10.15.7 on some of the unsupported Macs, but generally they run fine. This particular MacBook Air has 2GB of RAM, so it is struggling as Activity Monitor shows the operating system uses about 1.6GB RAM with no apps running and it creates a 2GB swap file on the SSD. In general, I wouldn't recommend installing Catalina on a Mac with less than 4GB of RAM. If anyone is curious, Howard Oakley at the Eclectic Light Company has drawn up some diagrams showing how the boot volumes are laid out in recent versions of macOS, including Big Sur: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/09/16/boot-volume-layout/ P.S. If you're having problems launching third-party applications after installing Catalina with the following error message: Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (Code Signature Invalid) Open Terminal and run the following command: sudo nvram boot-args=amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1 This will disable an AMFI (Apple Mobile File Integrity) check that prevents exotic apps like Microsoft Word from launching. Reference link: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-28325409

I agree. It's good to have another computer in case things go wrong and especially if there isn't an urgent reason to upgrade. I did a lot of research before I decided to upgrade and I performed the first upgrade on a computer that I could afford to lose (i.e., one that nobody wants). The upgrade process itself doesn't take much longer than a normal macOS upgrade, but you want to be sure your data is safe before proceeding. I haven't tried doing the upgrade version of the process, only erasing drives completely and installing a fresh copy of macOS (and then migrating data back in afterward using Migration Assistant) as I think it has the best chance of completing without complications.

I'm lucky enough to have several spare Macs at work. So far, I've upgraded a 2009 MacBook (white plastic), a 2010 13" MacBook Pro, and a 2008 MacBook (aluminum unibody) to macOS 10.15.7 without problems. In this case, I did it as an experiment and there was no risk as the previous user had upgraded to a newer Mac (i.e., complete drive erase and new macOS install for each of the Macs), but I haven't done any kind of benchmark testing after updating to macOS Catalina. macOS 10.15 seems to have some GUI optimizations that make Catalina feel snappier as well as background security and stability optimizations, so those are part of the reason for me to upgrade. I would definitely recommend a full backup of your system and apps using Time Machine before installing the dosdude1 patched update. You can also install a full version of macOS on an external drive and migrate your internal drive's data to that system to boot from USB (or Thunderbolt) as a backup system. The main reason to upgrade macOS is software compatibility: I noticed that the latest version of Adobe apps no longer work on macOS 10.13 this week, for example. Microsoft has officially announced there will be no new updates for Office apps running on 10.13 as well. Apple itself is even more ruthless: Safari, the newest versions of the iWork apps (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers) as well as free apps like GarageBand, iMovie (and paid apps like Logic, Final Cut Pro, and FileMaker) often require the latest or next-last version (Mojave) of macOS, so it leads to a never-ending hamster wheel of upgrading hardware and macOS. Apple often removes easy access to old versions of macOS and its apps online, but the dosdude1 tool allows you to download macOS from a repository. The biggest caveats to the dosdude1 patches for unsupported Macs are the AMD Radeon 5XXX and 6XXX series of GPUs. Specifically, these GPU models are in the 2010-2011 iMacs and the 2011 15" MacBook Pros – if you have one of those, you should stay on macOS 10.13 (which works with most contemporary software but support is being withdrawn). They can't be run with graphics acceleration in the 10.14 and 10.15 patches, so they are almost unusable with the new OS versions. And to be clear, the dosdude1 patches (for 10.13, 10.14, 10.15) do work with graphics acceleration on the rest of the supported Macs, so whether you have an integrated Intel or discrete Nvidia or AMD GPU, it will continue to work with macOS apps with full acceleration. If you use graphics-heavy applications, support is probably patchier. The major graphics apps and games moved to Metal graphics years ago, so I would hesitate to use OpenGL-era Macs to do any kind of heavy lifting. The dosdude1 patcher installs updates to address hardware issues after installing macOS: these include fixes for the display backlight, trackpad, USB, wi-fi, iSight/FaceTime camera, APFS booting, Night Shift, and more. Definitely watch the Tutorial Video to get an idea of the install process. Make sure to find out exactly which model of Mac you are working with (for example, a 2010 15" MacBook Pro is a MacBookPro6,2 – you can find the model number for your Mac on https://everymac.com) as the hardware patches are specific to each model. There are good reasons to keep old Macs running the latest macOS versions – some of them have FireWire ports for example, and not everybody has transitioned to Thunderbolt 3 equipment. Apple removes support for old Macs for specific reasons – old Macs don't have some of Intel's security hardware or SGX media controls (for Ultra HD Blu-ray playback, for example). These checks have been disabled in the patches to keep macOS happy and capable of installing updates, so keep that in mind regarding system security. If you're thinking about trying the patched macOS update, it might be a good idea to consult a friend who is experienced with Macs. The dosdude1 patches are fairly well known in the community by now, and most people working with Apple computers on a professional basis have probably tried installing them on old Macs. Carefully read all the notes on dosdude1's page (linked below), and also check out the accompanying forum thread at MacRumors (also linked): http://dosdude1.com/catalina/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/

Beastie Boys "Sabotage" Interview on CIAO LA

Forget Me Nots – Patrice Rushen

Happy Birthday!