Old articles up to Big Sur: a listing

For older articles about previous versions of OS X, see this article

macOS 11 Big Sur and Apple Silicon

See also my specialist M1 listing.

Power on Tap: Dynamic control of P cores in M1 chips
How macOS copes with heavy workloads on M1 cores
Running tasks on E cores can use a third of the energy of P cores
Don’t trust Activity Monitor on M1 Macs
M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2
Benchmarking the Mac Studio (Max) and M1 Pro MacBook Pro
The hunt for the M1’s neural engine
How to pick memory and storage for an M1 Mac
Making sense of M1 memory use
CPU %
WindowServer is hungry for memory on M1 Macs
A guided tour of M1 Recovery
Can you change lid behaviour of M1 MacBook Pros?
When an M1 Mac mini is faster than an M1 Pro: contention and core allocation
Core allocation in M1 chips
What shouldn’t you use an M1 series Mac for?
Scheduling of Threads on M1 Series Chips: second draft
How you can’t promote threads on an M1
How macOS manages many processes on M1 cores
How macOS controls performance: QoS on Intel and M1 processors
On M1 chips 1 + 1 = 4
Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win
Anomalies in base performance of M1 cores
Explainer: Vectors, Accelerate and poor performance on M1 Macs
Do M1 Pro and Max CPUs run slower on battery?
Comparing performance of M1 chips: 4 Icestorm
A Christmas Core Carol – overview of multiple cores on Apple systems
Comparing performance of M1 chips: 3 P and E
How can you compare the performance of M1 chips? 2 Core allocation
How can you compare the performance of M1 chips? 1 Geekbench
Using an M1 Mac: some basic principles
Monterey 12.0.1, Big Sur 11.6.1 and Catalina Security Update 2021-007: a summary
AsmAttic 4 gives insight into M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max performance
MacBook Pro scoresheet
Explainer: Unified memory
Backing up to network storage in Big Sur and beyond
Upgrading to Big Sur or Monterey: migrating Time Machine backups
Going beyond T2M2 with Mints: grokking Time Machine to APFS
Why you shouldn’t delete one of a Volume Group in macOS 11 or later
The macOS update problem
Biggest Sur by far
Inside macOS installer apps and disks
What has changed in macOS 11.6?
Apple has just released macOS Big Sur 11.6, a Catalina Security Update, and MRT 1.84
How to run commands and scripts on Efficiency cores
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Where’s my Data volume? Navigating boot volumes in macOS 10.15, 11 & 12
Hurricane and Icestorm – AMP, power, and background tasks
M1 Icestorm cores can still perform very well
How to create a bootable external disk in macOS 11 or 12
What’s ugliest about M1 Macs and needs improvement
Queue-jumping, hints and deep integration – inside M1 integration
What’s in an M1 chip, and what does it do differently?
What else changed in Big Sur 11.5.2 update?
What has changed in macOS 11.5.2?
Code in ARM Assembly: 14 Lanes and loads in NEON
Accelerating the M1 Mac: 13 an introduction to SIMD
When idiomatic code is slower, and how to Accelerate
Squeezing a thimbleful of update into a ten-gallon can
Why nothing else can back up to APFS like Time Machine does
Why are Big Sur updates so large?
Apple has released macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 update
Is that a thunderstorm coming? macOS 11.6, 12, and Apple Silicon Macs
Six years on from Yosemite to Big Sur
What has changed in macOS 11.5?
Owners and users: Primary and secondary systems on M1 Macs
The perils of M1 Ownership
Is it safe yet to upgrade to Big Sur?
Are there flaws in some ARM64 instructions?
A tendency to panic
Extensions are moving away from the kernel
Making a good Recovery: So many tools
Making a good Recovery: Installing a different macOS in Recovery
Rethinking recovery and re-installing macOS
Is there still something amiss in the M1 firmware?
Code in ARM Assembly: 12 Rounding and arithmetic
Code in ARM Assembly: 11 Floating point registers and conversions
Code in ARM Assembly: 10 Conditions without branches
Code in ARM Assembly: 9 Bit operations
Code in ARM Assembly: 8 Integer arithmetic
Code in ARM Assembly: 7 Moving data around
Code in ARM Assembly: 6 Flow, pipelines and performance
Code in ARM Assembly: 5 Conditional loops
Code in ARM Assembly: 4 Controlling flow
Code in ARM Assembly: 3 Working with pointers
Code in ARM Assembly: 2 Registers explained
Code in Assembly for Apple Silicon with the AsmAttic app (1)
Are macOS updates easier than ever?
Why you can’t make a snapshot of Big Sur’s System volume to roll back
In the recovery position (Recovery on M1 Macs)
How to make macOS betas and upgrades safer
Launching Recovery on an M1 Mac: Booting and control in 11.4
Booting an M1 Mac: external disks and local boot policy in macOS 11.4
M1 Macs have a third Recovery mode
How it took 6 months for M1 Macs to work properly
Why cloning Big Sur isn’t as useful for an M1 Mac
M1 Macs running Big Sur 11.4 support external disks fully
Big Sur 11.4 brings LocalPolicy and recovery access to M1 Macs
Can you create an external bootable disk by cloning an M1 Mac?
What has changed in Big Sur 11.4?
Feeling fast, the psychology of computer performance
M1 Secure Boot, morphine and self-destruction
Dealing with a kernel panic during M1 startup
How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS
Changing updating habits
Cores shouldn’t all be the same: M1 Macs do better
How to restore Spotlight search of Rich Text files
Booting an M1 Mac: external disks and local boot policy
How to boot an M1 Mac into an older version of Big Sur
Time Machine to APFS: When a network backup goes wrong
Would you regret an M1 iMac?
Apple has released Big Sur 11.3.1 update (updated)
AirTags, Big Sur and your privacy and safety
External bootable disks work better with M1 Macs in Big Sur 11.3
When will macOS updates hurt less?
Big Sur 11.3 bug tracker
Apple has released Big Sur 11.3 update
What has changed in macOS Big Sur 11.3?
How macOS launches an iOS app
Looking for the killer app
Can you trust floating-point arithmetic on Apple Silicon?
How macOS manages iOS apps: RunningBoard comes of age
iOS apps are translocated when run in macOS
How abysmal SMB performance can choke networked backups
Time Machine to APFS: Using a network share
Time Machine to APFS: First full backup
Are external boot disks a thing of the past?
Big Sur’s broken clock
Should you back up to APFS or HFS+?
Time Machine to APFS: How efficient are backups?
Big Sur has changed how macOS formats time
Big Sur’s Dock & Menu Bar pane remains a mess
Big Sur can prevent Ulbow, Mints and T2M2 from browsing its log
Time Machine to APFS: Changing disks
Essential reading for M1 Mac users
How big should the memory and SSD be in your next M1 Mac?
Time Machine to APFS: Maintenance and repair
Time Machine to APFS: Backup structure and access
Window controls in Big Sur
Time Machine to APFS: How processes have changed
Time Machine to APFS: Backing up
How to slip ‘unsigned’ apps past Gatekeeper in Big Sur
Next phase of the Apple Silicon transition
Big Sur’s Tower of Babel
Time Machine to APFS: Understanding backups
Time Machine to APFS: Initiating an auto backup
Apple has released Big Sur 11.2.3
Time Machine to APFS: Evolution
Back to measuring the performance of M1 Mac internal storage
Is APFS doing its job? Big Sur edition
Users are losing out against Big Sur’s sealed System
Big Sur 11.2.2 still doesn’t fix bugs with M1 external bootable disks
Apple has released Big Sur 11.2.2, an urgent fix for some MBP and MBA models (updated)
Checking disks on an M1 Mac
More M1 mysteries: Boot Recovery Assistant
Why your M1 may not have Fallback Recovery yet
M1 Macs have another hidden boot mode
Code-signing requirements for scripts and apps in Big Sur
Updating external disks and 1 True Recovery on an M1 Mac
Big Sur 11.2.1 update is broken
Big Sur, Software Update, Content Caching Server and M1 Macs
External boot disks still don’t work properly with M1 Macs
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.2.1?
How to roll your M1 Mac back to Big Sur 11.1
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.2?
Apple has released Big Sur update to version 11.2
Tackling extension problems in Big Sur
Big Sur 11.1: bug in log show command affecting Ulbow and Consolation
How Rosetta complicates call chains on M1 Macs
When you don’t have permission to run an app on an M1 Mac
Running Intel code on your M1 Mac: Rosetta 2 and OAH
System management and NVRAM on M1 Macs
Bluetooth status is worse than ever in Big Sur 11.1
A Guide to Startup Modes for Intel and M1 Macs
1 True Recovery
Is the Finder wobbly in Big Sur?
M1 Macs radically change boot and recovery
Big Sur boot volume layout
Big Sur’s icons die in the Dock
Intricacies of the boot disk
No Big Sur in Remote Recovery (Intel)
Internal SSDs can read files at extreme speed
So Santa brought you an M1 Mac: here’s what you should know
It looks like the M1 SSD is faster than those in Intel Macs, but…
Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk: it is possible
Is it not possible to boot an M1 Mac from an external disk?
Big Sur 11.1 is now available, with Security Updates for Catalina and Mojave
What’s changed in Big Sur 11.1?
Extensions, Big Sur and M1 Macs
Silently updated security data files in Big Sur
How fast is the SSD inside an M1 Mac?
How effective and safe is Preview’s redaction tool?
Cormorant now supports drag and drop, and can run ten times faster
Getting started with Time Machine to APFS in Big Sur
What happens when an M1 Mac starts up?
Can you trust QuickLook in Big Sur?
How fast is an M1 Target Disk?
Does Big Sur need a bit more Help?
Rosetta 2 won’t let the undead die
Use AppleArchive for compressing and decompressing files with Cormorant 1.0
SilentKnight 1.15 and LockRattler 4.30 do more on Big Sur and M1 Macs
Is Big Sur’s system volume sealed?
There’s more to the M1 than speed
Introducing your new M1 Mac
Startup modes for M1 Macs
Inside M1 Macs: Time and logs
Compress and decompress files using AppleArchive
How Big Sur checks Universal Apps
Upgrading to Big Sur 11.0.1: news from the surgery
SilentKnight version 1.14 for your Apple Silicon Mac
LockRattler version 4.29 should work a treat on your new M1 Mac
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 5) – for Big Sur
Still getting errors trying to upgrade to Big Sur?
The non-Universal binary: a cautionary tale
How unified memory blows the SoCs off the M1 Macs
Big Sur: Read this before upgrading
Wrangling file paths in Catalina and Big Sur
Preparing to upgrade to Big Sur
Should you upgrade to Big Sur early, or wait?
Boot volume layout
Times forgotten
Mints now tells you the (Mach absolute) time
Will Big Sur support the cloning of System volumes?
What could go wrong with apps on Big Sur and Apple Silicon?
Changing the clock in Apple Silicon Macs
Apple Silicon Macs will require signed code
macOS version numbering isn’t so simple
T2M2 version 1.15 analyses APFS backups in Big Sur and is a Universal App
Coming NeXT on Apple Silicon
Magic, lipo and testing for Universal binaries
Big Sur is both 10.16 and 11.0 – it’s official
How to tell Intel code from Universal
Tuning Apple Silicon will be complex at first
Big Sur may yet live up to its name
Should you beta-test Big Sur?
Another batch of Universal Apps, and a fixed version of Ulbow
Why Big Sur won’t stumble over version numbers
Five Universal Apps: ArchiChect, DelightEd, LockRattler, SilentKnight and Ulbow
What’s in a number: how Big Sur could break code
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more
Big Sur’s Signed System Volume: added security protection
Big Sur and Apple Silicon: interesting times ahead
Which of my apps are compatible with Big Sur?
Taccy and ArchiChect now detect apps built for macOS 11.0 Big Sur
What would an ARM-based Mac mean to us?
10.16 is all about tools and maturity

Coronavirus, COVID-19

Whatever happened to Exposure Notifications?
How should vaccination against Covid-19 work?
What’s the cost of acquiring herd immunity to Covid-19?
Some selected reading about Covid-19 and pandemics
Covid-19 cases continue to rise in England
How do you lose 16,000 cases of Covid-19?
Covid-19 cases in England are out of control
Watching the second wave: Covid-19 wins yet again
Can QR codes be used to control Covid-19 transmission?
Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere
The road ahead with Covid-19 isn’t as swift or simple
Face masks, face screens, and breathing
Are cases of Covid-19 growing exponentially in the USA?
Making the most of technology
Does Covid-19 spread that rapidly? Figures from England, New York City and Brazil examined
Good online charts can confuse not clarify: Covid-19 examples
Is it possible to trace contacts using Bluetooth on smartphones?
How many cases of Covid-19 was that?
Public health, private data
How’s the smartphone contact tracing going then, or is it dead?
Test results aren’t necessarily as meaningful as you think
Trials of the UK’s Covid-19 app: where next?
The UK’s answer to Covid-19: Testing the iOS app
Can you trace contacts with a smartphone?
Smartphone contact tracing without Apple or Google
Covid-19 testing and diagnosis: where privacy stops
Problems with FaceTime video on macOS or iOS?
Origins of the Mac human interface, and starting macOS coding
Uncertain times
Caring for well-washed hands
Disinfecting your Mac and devices
How to clean Macs and other Apple hardware

Booting the Mac

How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
Which startup mode?
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Diagnosing a Mac which can’t complete booting
Booting the Mac: Visual Summary
Booting the Mac: Will my Mac boot from this disk? A visual guide
Before boot.efi: the Mac’s initial self-test routines
Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot
Booting the Mac: EFI ‘firmware’
Booting the Mac: the kernel and extensions
Booting the Mac: macOS 10.14 Mojave, and shutdown
What’s stored in NVRAM?
Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable
macOS Mojave Boot Volume Layout

Setting up a new or repurposed Mac

How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
Choosing your new iMac: picking the best storage compromise
1 Destinations
2 Migration Assistant
3 Manual migration
4 Test, tweak, Time Machine
5 Examples
6 Fitting a quart into a pint pot
7 Choices diagrammed
8 The problem of updating firmware

Preparing to part with your Mac

Prepare your Mac for service
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
Preparing your Mac for disposal (Catalina edition)
Preparing your Mac for disposal

Finding and converting legacy movies and other media

Getting 64-bit clean: now is the time
Apple is killing QuickTime 7 in macOS 10.15: convert old media now
1: still images
2: Embedded in Keynote presentations
3: Movies and more
4: Using Compressor

PDF without Adobe

1 At the heart of macOS
2 Why PDF is so odd
3 Building your own PDF reader 1
4 Building your own PDF reader 2
5 Building your own PDF reader 3
6 Quartz and Preview
7 Adding a PDF Help book
8 Security, integrity and forensics
9 Bizarre bug in macOS
10 PDF Expert
11 PDFpenPro 10
Synchronised Scrolling: a brief movie on PDF
Searching PDF documents: a new feature in Podofyllin
12 Vulnerabilities in digital signing
Recovering a damaged document
13 PDF documents can readily leak data
14 PDF is inherently not secure
15 macOS can sanitize your PDFs
16 Reading PDF source
17 Unredacting Manafort’s documents and recovering PDF versions
18 Seeing inside PDF more clearly
Further improvements to Podofyllin’s Source window
19: Seeing inside PDF with Podofyllin
DelightEd now opens the rich text content of PDFs, as well as HTML, RTF and text files
Printing without tears in Dark Mode (and exporting to PDF)
Inside the Mueller Report with Podofyllin: can it be deredacted?
20: Outlines, Bookmarks and Preview
21 PDF Annotations
22 The fractious PDF
23 The nightmare of forms
28 years after Unicode, we still can’t handle accents: PDF + macOS + URL = chaos
24: Accessibility with PDF/UA
25: If at first you don’t succeed, try OCRing again
26: A PDF protection racket
How Preview mangles annotations

Quick Actions

1 Introduction
2 Making your own in Automator
3: The problem of Undo
4: How they work
5: Third-party solution

Code Signing for the Concerned

What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
How to check signatures on apps, installers, and packages
Apple’s Notary Service can’t compete with a supermarket restroom
Catalina crashes non-notarized command tools with a quarantine flag
The ‘hardened runtime’ explained
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Checking whether apps are notarized using Signet
Can you tell whether code has been notarized?
There’s more to notarization than that
Macs move closer to compulsory notarization
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
1 Why?
2 Creating a personal certificate
3 Signing an app
4 Results and testing
5 Signing and privacy control
6 Signing scripts and command tools
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Making notarization as hard as possible
Entitlements: how apps get back what they’ve given up
When does Mojave check an app’s signature? The answer isn’t entirely consistent
What is Gatekeeper, and where can I see it?
How to bypass Mojave 10.14.5’s new kext security
Damaged apps can run normally: signature checks are complex
A primer on code signing errors
Understanding signature checks on notarized apps in Mojave 10.14.5: 1
Understanding signature checks on notarized apps in Mojave 10.14.5: 2
How apps can check integrity better than macOS

Signposts

Interested in performance? Updated Signpost tools now available
Quantum mechanics and Mojave – performance measurement, Signposts, and the log
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
Signposts for performance: 1 introduction
Signposts for performance: 2 Instruments
Updates all round to Blowhole, RouteMap, and the Signpost Kit
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way

App signatures are always checked on launch, but serious errors may be ignored
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 1: identification
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 3: Launch

Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Browse your log with Ulbow 1.0b2, with many new features
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Capturing the moment in your log: how to identify a problem
macOS Unified log: 1 why, what and how
macOS Unified log: 2 content and extraction
macOS Unified log: 3 finding your way
What to do when your log returns an error
Unified but not uniform: how the log has changed
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
How to browse the log on an iOS device

Essentials

Disinfecting your Mac and devices
Updated freeware menu
Getting the best out my apps’ auto-update system
A Mac Troubleshooting Summary
Which startup mode?
Hardware diagnostics
Which Recovery Mode?
Conventions and Standards for Mac Articles
When should you upgrade from an older macOS?
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Essential Reading: *OS Internals, Vol I, User Space, by Jonathan Levin
Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Playing with fire: dealing with slow hot Macs
How to use the unified log to see what’s going wrong
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Welcome to your new Mac: living with the T2 chip
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
Aliases, hard links, symlinks, and copies in Mojave’s APFS
Links and aliases beyond local files: advanced file system techniques
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better
Don’t trust update aggregators
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Hazel catches a silent Adobe update red-handed
Safari offline reader is rapidly becoming functionless
Why are there problems backing up Photos Libraries?
Using T2M2 to diagnose and treat Time Machine problems
Startup and shutdown key combinations for macOS Sierra
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
Why can’t I download and install macOS Sierra any more?
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
My Mac starts up in the wrong language or keyboard
How to tell whether a problem is in your Home folder
Fixing problems with preference files
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Permissions, preferences, problems, and two updates
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
When an app or its installer won’t run after download
Solving update problems with softwareupdate
What to do when a disk image won’t mount
Disk Utility: An ever-changing tool
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Was that a crash, freeze, panic, or spinning beachball?
Did that Mac just restart itself? About kernel panics
Are you experiencing panics or problems with USB-C external displays?
Why the spinning beachball?
Before boot.efi: the Mac’s initial self-test routines
Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot
A plain guide to Mac firmware and its problems
Booting the Mac: EFI ‘firmware’
Reset and maintain your SMC and NVRAM
What makes macOS updates more complex: T2 firmware updates
What to do when a T2 Mac suffers a problem updating its firmware
Recovering from failed T2 firmware updates and related problems
Don’t try reverting a T2 to older firmware
Startup tones, EFI, and fixing failed firmware updates
How High Sierra checks your EFI firmware
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 3)
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 2)
Restoring order to EFI firmware
There’s trouble in that firmware: EFI chaos
Why are my Mac’s fans running at full blast?
Diagnosing a Mac which can’t complete booting
The universal panacea for macOS problems: install the Combo updater
Hasn’t macOS changed? How it doesn’t work like it used to
When should you re-install macOS?
Re-installing macOS: clean or what?
How clean re-installs change in Catalina
Reinstalling macOS changed with 10.12.4
Tackling sleep and wake problems
Why does my Mac keep waking up?
My Bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work properly
Diving deeper into drive health: SMART utilities compared
Code signing: confusing and weak?
Losing your Ethernet port unverifies your Mac
Java and macOS: what you should know
Did that app quit, or is it just napping?
Return of the zombie app: is it a feature or bug?
How to prevent zombies
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
Who’s in control of your Mac? Notifications
Revealing the Finder’s hidden depths
Dual boot: two versions of macOS on one external SSD
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
Watching folders – 1 for users
Document Versioning
Making macOS versions more usable
Inside QuickLook previews with qlmanage
What’s that file then? How to identify unknown file types
What’s that? Using magic on your Mac to identify files
When is an update?
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files
How to check that a file really is a faithful copy
How to check that a file really is a faithful copy: Take 2, archives
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat
It’s not about the speed, not entirely: Mac mini, iMac Pro, iPad Pro and benchmarks
Do you need a replaceable SSD?
Can you upgrade or repair a Mac with a T2 chip?
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
A lexicon of Mac power adaptors, from MagSafe to USB-C
Recovering a damaged document
Clipping files: copying through the Finder
When the wrong copy/version of the right app opens a document
Which Safari extensions do you use?
Apple’s guidance on backing up your Mac revisited
lsregister: a valuable undocumented command for LaunchServices
Kickstarting and tearing down with launchctl
What’s in a macOS installer app? An exploration with ArchiChect
How to check quarantine, 64-bit, signature, and notarization for almost anything
Find My Mac and Activation Lock
‘Erase Mac’ doesn’t?
Learn (almost) everything about an app with lsappinfo
Beyond Time Machine: 4 Offsite backups

Startup modes

Playing Safe: what does Safe mode do?
My Mac only runs properly in Safe mode
Recovery mode and its tools
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
Important changes to Recovery mode
Hardware diagnostics
Diagnosing diagnostics and Apple Hardware Test
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better

Finding information and tools

Making it easier to keep my utilities up to date
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Essential Reading: *OS Internals, Vol I, User Space, by Jonathan Levin
Running a command tool or app results in an error ‘dyld: Library not loaded’
Hidden caches in macOS: where your private data gets stored
More About This Mac: where to find that UUID, MAC address, etc.
Where is that app? – a brief index to bundled tools in Sierra
Which version was that? How to check which version you’re using
32-bitCheck 1.3 has an improved interface
Telling which apps are 32-bit: 32-bitCheck does it better
Why is my system update history wrong?
Re-installing macOS: clean or what?
A tale of two Disk Utilities: Sierra and High Sierra
Disk Utility: An ever-changing tool
Preference settings: where to find them in macOS Sierra (v2)
Preference settings: where to find them in El Capitan
Customising it all: global defaults in macOS Sierra and High Sierra
What are all those hidden folders then?
Mac shutdown and sleep cause codes
Booting the Mac: Visual Summary
Sleep, Wake, and Startup: Hardware and ACPI
Self-starting Macs, startup chimes, and other secrets of NVRAM
What’s stored in NVRAM?
Does replacing internal storage cause EFI updating problems?
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 3)
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 2)
Restoring order to EFI firmware
There’s trouble in that firmware: EFI chaos
Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable
Just what do XProtect and MRT protect your Mac from?
Solving update problems with softwareupdate
Running repairs: Sierra’s handy tools, from Disk Utility to Storage Management
Interchangeability of Finder, Terminal, and AppleScript
What are those Us? A journey with UTIutility version 1.0 – UUIDs and UTIs
Identifying file types: UTIs, filename extensions, and another free app
Spotlight and iCloud Drive in Sierra
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
Panics, Pegasus, and Recovery
What’s a UUID?
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Getting going with HEIF/HEIC and HEVC image and movie formats
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
What to do when iCloud Drive is slow to update
Solving problems with iCloud Drive
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
Apple’s free mobile Wi-Fi scanner
Tools to work with keychain problems
Revealing the Finder’s hidden depths
What got installed? How to learn exactly what a package contains/ed
Spotlight: using metadata to improve local searches
Search Perfect: hitting it off with SearchKey 1.0b1
Where did that metadata come from?
At your service: Services menus
File types, the UTI, and even more metadata
Why can’t I open that document? Troubleshooting LaunchServices
How big is that file? How Finder and Terminal file sizes can mislead
Do Sierra or High Sierra report incorrect free disk space?
APFS tools suck
Don’t trust update aggregators
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Disks, partitions, volumes, containers
What to do when a disk image won’t mount
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Using macOS Bookmarks as enduring references: Precize and Preciziun
How macOS tracks your files: inside the inode
Open Recent, inodes, and Bookmarks: How macOS remembers files
Bookmarks, APFS, and enduring file references
What’s that? Using magic on your Mac to identify files
Can macOS tell how large a file really is?
Document Versioning
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Making macOS versions more usable
Permissions in the Finder and command line
Owners and groups in the Finder and command line
Find files fast with locate
Free conversion of text files with textutil
Did you cancel a software update by mistake?
Mixing Terminal with GUI apps
Inside QuickLook previews with qlmanage
Comparing files: FileMerge, opendiff, and BBEdit
Looking directly at iCloud’s files and folders with Cirrus 1.0b4
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
The Joy of ssh: remote control and quick copying
Should you use shutdown or reboot in the command line?
User account Advanced Options: shortcut to hell
When is an update?
Is it time to buy an eGPU?
How much is that external SSD cable?
Pick a Mac, any Mac so long as it has…
When you can’t get macOS to forget
Should you buy a Mac with a T2 chip? Costs, benefits, and problems
AirPrint or you’re on your own: macOS printing changes
Look it up in Dictionary
The App Store by numbers, and Wikipedia wherever you want
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Using and hacking styles in TextEdit and DelightEd
Go64, and keyboard layouts for Unicode obfuscation
Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
What is this ‘Compatibility Notification Data’ which Apple has just updated?
How to add a custom icon to an app without breaking its signature
Rich Text documents: RTF and RTFD
Using and understanding some AppKit controls, examples from Ulbow

Security

Deceived by the Finder
Should Mac users worry about ransomware?
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 5 Location
Virus pandemics
Quarantine, SIP, and MACL: macOS per-file security controls
What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
When more security subverts security
Watch that space: More fun with Unicode in file names
Network security can block updates, notifications, and more
Catalina 10.15.2 has changed Gatekeeper’s dialogs to confuse notarization status
What happened to XProtect? Has it been forked?
XProtect version 2109 for macOS Catalina 10.15.2 only
How to encrypt files and folders in APFS
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
How can security data get so out of date?
How to check signatures on apps, installers, and packages
Beware Apple security certificates after 24 October: they may have expired
Security data files: how they’ve changed in Catalina
Apple has added a new security database to Catalina, bringing 3 updates
Has Apple just pushed the first Catalina-only security update?
How Catalina handles app first run
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
Will Gatekeeper let me run that app in Catalina?
How has XProtect changed?
Hollywood’s lessons – an automatic update that went badly wrong brings lessons for us all
macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update 2 (actually 3), plus Sierra and High Sierra Security Update 2019-005
Informed Security
Changing security makes privacy protection confusing
How to recognise properly-notarized apps with Taccy 1.3
Notarization devalued?
macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update take 2 is now available (updated)
Human frailty – 3fun security breach and more
Firewalls, phoning home and whitelists
Mojave’s privacy consent works behind your back
Privacy protection can pay off when it’s allowed to
How to check that your Mac is free of Zoom and similar web servers
How apps can check integrity better than macOS
What happened when MRT was updated, and what MRT does
Apple has pushed an update to MRT to remove Zoom’s hidden web server
Zoom videoconferencing could expose your Mac
Checking whether apps are notarized using Signet
A primer on code signing errors
Damaged apps can run normally: signature checks are complex
Why Catalina has got a read-only system volume
What is SIP and when is it safe to turn it off?
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Notarization in Mojave and Catalina
Can you tell whether code has been notarized?
How to bypass Mojave 10.14.5’s new kext security
Is a “Mac OS X GateKeeper bypass” what it says?
Apple updates AirPort Base Station Firmware to 7.9.1
Notarization arrives in 10.14.5
Mojave 10.14.5 changes kernel extension security
What is Gatekeeper, and where can I see it?
Finder security errors opening documents: a summary
When does Mojave check an app’s signature? The answer isn’t entirely consistent
Checking your app’s own signature
PDF is inherently not secure
PDF documents can readily leak data
Vulnerabilities in digital signing
AMFI: checking file integrity on your Mac
How can Mojave let you open an app with signature errors?
App signatures are always checked on launch, but serious errors may be ignored
How thoroughly does Gatekeeper check existing apps?
Mojave happily runs apps with revoked signatures, and more
Why does macOS keep downloading the incompatible app list?
Cleaning up sensitive files: How to sanitise storage
Where do Apple’s recent security updates leave macOS?
What does the TCC Compatibility database do?
Notarization, security and older macOS
RIP XProtect and MRT?
Is Mojave’s privacy protection still vulnerable in 10.14.1?
New Mac malware: CoinTicker for cryptocurrency traders
Can you keep a secret?
Mojave fixes QuickLook cache vulnerability
Launching apps in Mojave: how it has changed
Has that app been notarized, and what are the benefits to the user?
How XProtect now leaves Safari 12 open to Flash and other exploits
Updates to macOS security software data: what has happened?
The Price of Free Software: Trend Micro’s apps exfiltrate your browser history
App Store Eavesdroppers
XProtect: Missing presumed dead?
Security, privacy, and why XProtect won’t stop apps reading your email
Mojave’s privacy protection and command tools: a collision in which the user is the loser
Running apps with Mojave’s privacy protection
Notarization: a big step forward for users and developers
Four serious security errors which are easily made on a Mac: how to fix them
Is XProtect dead, or about to be replaced?
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Recent High Sierra and Security Updates patched a serious Bluetooth bug
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
LockRattler 4.10 is a recommended update for all users
New Apple support articles about MacBook Pro 2018 model with the T2 chip
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Hidden caches in macOS: where your private data gets stored
Control your QuickLook cache with Aquiline Check 1.0b2, and Aquiliner for your menubar
Scrub goes into its first beta: improved privacy for sensitive documents
Just taking a Quick Look – privacy vulnerability
What does the MRT 1.35 update remove?
macOS High Sierra 10.13. update, Sierra and El Capitan Security Updates 2018-003 now available
The UUID conspiracy
More cryptomining malware, and a threat to routers and NAS
Do you use email encryption at all? macOS 10.13.4 update may help
Do you use PGP/GPG and S/MIME email encryption? They’re vulnerable
POPSS, vulnerability by documentation
Apple adds a third fix in Security Update 2018-001 for High Sierra
What do Security Updates actually fix?
APFS encryption, ghost guest users, and odd UUIDs
Insights through a vulnerability
Encryption passphrases are still left in logs: how Apple abuses its unified log
macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 fixes APFS encryption password disclosure bug
macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text
Should Apple have warned users of a vulnerability?
Another gaping security hole in High Sierra APFS disk encryption
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
Talking the same language
A bug in signature-checking weakens most anti-malware tools
Avast and AVG anti-virus are returning false positives
What to do when a secure connection fails
Hazel catches a silent Adobe update red-handed
Supply and demand
New Mac malware, OSX.CreativeUpdate, distributed by MacUpdate site
Don’t trust update aggregators
Restoring order to EFI firmware
Well-kept secrets, macOS malware protection
Further spurious ‘security’ updates, and who is com.apple.mac.install?
How your Mac can download an old ‘security’ update by accident
Biometric security and AI: dangerous partners
macOS code signing and Gatekeeper ignore extended attributes
A silent silent security update
Just what do XProtect and MRT protect your Mac from?
New macOS malware: MaMi
Apple has updated Safari 11.0.2, High Sierra 10.13.2, and iOS 11.2.2
The ‘app’ you can’t trash: how SIP is broken in High Sierra
WD My Cloud drives need urgent firmware update
A short trip with rootless: what you can and cannot do
Apple has released Time Capsule and AirPort updates for KRACK vulnerabilities
Off to a good start, then – Meltdown, Spectre, and more
How can you tell what Apple software has been installed/updated?
The correct and current version of MRT can be either 1.26 or 1.27
Apple has released Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra
Major vulnerability in High Sierra 10.13.1: anyone can gain elevated privileges
Beware the bogus Symantec blog which will infect you with Proton D
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
What happened at Eltima, and how can you stay safe?
FileVault: Making your Mac more secure
Mac malware gets more professional: DOK.C fakes the App Store
Did you download HandBrake recently? You might have got malware instead
Malware: OSX/Dok isn’t done yet
New macOS Malware: OSX/Dok
Apple pushes silent update to XProtect and MRT for OSX/Dok malware
More new malware: OSX.Dok.B or OSX.Bella, but we’re already protected
More new Mac malware expected soon: OSX.Snake?
Key security tools for Sierra and El Capitan
Malware has got the upper hand
Securing your router: keeping intruders out
How secure is your VPN?
What to do when your account might have been compromised
Unicode spoofing: when an аррӏе isn’t an apple at all
Just got a new Mac? You should check that its security protection is enabled
Silent Sierra night: security settings files in macOS Sierra (version 2)
Silent High Sierra night: security settings files in macOS High Sierra
What should you do when LockRattler returns a worrying error?
Inside the OS X blacklist: XProtect
Sierra’s System Integrity Protection (SIP): beyond root
What malware does XProtect you against?
Blocked kernel extensions – analysis of those blocked by XProtect
LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons: Closing the vulnerability
Logging in and out in Sierra’s log
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Code signing: confusing and weak?
The High Sierra 10.13 problem with security data files may now be fixed
Invisible security is no security
Java and macOS: what you should know
Eltima’s Elmedia Player has been infected with malware
Behind the Scenes: Open Directory and Kerberos
AirPlay streaming can stop App Store apps from running

Online

What to do when a secure connection fails
Preparing or downloading? iCloud’s odd interface
Don’t trust update aggregators
Safari offline reader is rapidly becoming functionless
Review: MarsEdit 4, the blogger’s world
A break in the clouds: what to do when a cloud service plays up – including links to service status for iCloud, Adobe CC, etc.
A storm in the digest: why services will be going down
Prepare for IPv6: it’s on its way
Never download a Flash installer from anywhere except its official site
News feeds for this blog: getting less eclectic
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
iCloud Drive has user modes, and tags transferred apps
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files

General

Preventing external displays from sleep can be crucial
Should you pay the high price of a high-speed external SSD?
Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Is this the end of the line for Mac servers?
iOS 11.2.5 may harm the Watch-iPhone relationship
How your Mac can download an old ‘security’ update by accident
Are you being pestered to upgrade to High Sierra?
What is ‘macOS Installer Notification’, and why did I get it?
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
What to do when told to pay VAT due on a completed purchase
My Pointer/Cursor Keeps Disappearing: what can I do?
Parental Controls: Safeguarding the vulnerable
Don’t die in the bath: mains power and mortality
Why you shouldn’t use cleaning or housekeeping apps
AppleCare and warranty cover for Macs
Apple Support in 140 characters – Apple Support on Twitter
Prepare your Mac for service/repair, and restore it later
Shutting down and restarting your Mac
Power Management in detail: using pmset
Forgetting Facebook and annulling notifications
Controlling privacy in macOS Sierra
Living with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act
FileVault: Making your Mac more secure
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to FileVault
What to do when the App Store doesn’t work properly
Teaching an old Finder new tricks: batch rename and Quick Look
Regex: searching with regular expressions
When Recent Items vanish: a possible bug in Sierra 10.12.6?
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists
Launch Services database problems: correcting and rebuilding
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
A Mac on the Edge of Europe – working in remote locations
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Losing your Ethernet port unverifies your Mac
Did that app quit, or is it just napping?
Return of the zombie app: is it a feature or bug?
How to prevent zombies
Who’s in control of your Mac? Notifications
Undead apps, and opting out of App Nap
Where did that metadata come from?
Hazel and SearchKeyLite bring order to your documents
Getting better document thumbnails and previews
Common packages: documents which are folders in drag
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
How LaunchServices builds the Open Recent menu, and outsmarts Aliases
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon
Don’t believe the box: Thunderbolt 3 to 2/1 isn’t so simple

iCloud

Which extended attributes does iCloud preserve, and which get stripped?
Testing iCloud using Cirrus
How to back up your iCloud Keychain
Exploring and testing iCloud Drive using Cirrus 1.6
Living with Desktop & Documents in iCloud
iCloud queues
Versions in iCloud are still a mess, made worse by Handoff
Can you rely on iWork apps sharing versions in iCloud Drive?
Editing iCloud documents is far from seamless
Document versions are now preserved by iCloud, unreliably
Bailiff 1.0 now available: take control of iCloud Drive
Cirrus version 1.0 release: the iCloud tool is ready for general use
Inside iCloud with Cirrus 1.0b5: Paths and containers
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Is the macOS command line doomed?
Solving problems with iCloud Drive
What to do when iCloud Drive is slow to update
Mail Drop, iCloud, and large files
Looking directly at iCloud’s files and folders with Cirrus 1.0b4
The trouble with iCloud Drive
Problems with iCloud shared data: how to tackle them
New, updated and useful links to Apple support articles
Consistency and iCloud
Trying to make sense of iCloud: Progress with Cirrus
Inside iCloud Drive: Optimize Storage, and its bugs
Inside iCloud Drive: uploading a file
Inside iCloud Drive: Pushed updates, that syncing feeling
Inside iCloud Drive: Downloading
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Test and check iCloud with Cirrus
Diagnosing iCloud problems using brctl, sync budgets and throttles
Preparing or downloading? iCloud’s odd interface
A break in the clouds: what to do when a cloud service plays up – including links to service status for iCloud, Adobe CC, etc.
iCloud Drive can strip (meta)data from your documents
iCloud Drive has user modes, and tags transferred apps
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Lost in iCloud Translation? When PNGs suddenly become JPEGs
iOS 11, or maybe 11.2.6, may change Photos’ handling of screenshots

Permissions and Extended Attributes

What changes a file’s modification date, and what doesn’t?
Deceived by the Finder
How macOS 10.14 and later overrides write permission on some files
Quantum permissions?
Reset/repair permissions using PermissionScanner
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
How to preserve metadata stored in a custom extended attribute
How to save file metadata in iCloud, and new info on extended attributes
How to save your file metadata – implementation isn’t simple
How do the Finder, Terminal and Spotlight handle extended attribute flags?
Metadata and iCloud
Quarantine: Apps
Quarantine: Documents
Sandboxing makes quarantine flags almost meaningless
Why all those quarantine flags?
Repairing permissions diagrammed
An introduction to extended attributes, xattrs
There’s something wrong with that file: could it be a xattr issue?
Which file systems and Cloud services preserve extended attributes?
macOS code signing and Gatekeeper ignore extended attributes
Documenting the hidden – xattr documentation project
Extended attributes: surprisingly common, and information-rich
Where are all those extended attributes?
Extended attributes in High Sierra 10.13.2
Drag and drop files to open them in xattred 1.0b6
Off to a good start, then – Meltdown, Spectre, iCloud filtering xattrs, and more
Where did that metadata come from?
A short trip with rootless: what you can and cannot do
The mystery of repairing permissions
Fixing problems with preference files
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Customising it all: global defaults in macOS Sierra and High Sierra
Something odd you can’t fix? Sierra re-introduces repairing permissions
Permissions repair tools updated for compatibility with High Sierra
Should you repair permissions on your Home folder, and how?
Show me your metadata: extended attributes in macOS Sierra
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Finder Info: how Sierra and High Sierra remember Classic Mac OS
Inside Finder Tags
xattr: org.openmetainfo: and org.openmetainfo.time: families, third-party metadata
Hazel and SearchKeyLite bring order to your documents
How macOS tracks your files: inside the inode
Can macOS tell how large a file really is?

Versioning and revisions

What does the Move To command do in Pages, Numbers & Keynote?
How to keep, or lose, a document’s previous versions
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
Document versions, copying, and iCloud in Mojave, and a new version of DeepTools
Versions in iCloud are still a mess, made worse by Handoff
Editing iCloud documents is far from seamless
Making macOS versions more usable
DeepTools 1 released: preserve document versions wherever they go
Revisionist version 1 is now released, with an extensive Help book and more
Workthrough: Using the macOS version system to recover lost content
Document Versioning
Busting myths about macOS versions and versioning
The Current Version: fixing macOS versioning
Trusting management
Tools for working with document versions/revisions
Documents and versioning

Scheduled Events

The awesome power of the Duet
Reliability of macOS Sierra: scheduled and background activities
An Incomplete List of Sierra’s Dispatched Services
How macOS manages tasks on cores: a draft
How macOS runs background activities: 1 From within an app
How macOS runs background activities: 2 Time Machine backups
How macOS runs background activities: 3 When things go wrong
How macOS runs background activities: 4 Using XPC Activity
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 2 Dispatch
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log, 2 DAS and CTS
Sierra 10.12.6 doesn’t fix the Time Machine bug, but changes it
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
App Nap, Battery Endurance, and Grand Central Dispatch
DispatchView and DispatchRider updated for High Sierra
Two ways to run background tasks: comparing launchd and GCD
Watching Grand Central Dispatch at Work
How timely are scheduled events in Sierra?
Instrumenting macOS Sierra to investigate irregular backups and log problems
Blowhole command tool 3: new version should be compatible with High Sierra
Looking inside WebKit and the macOS dispatching systems using log data
Running at startup: when to use a Login Item or a LaunchAgent/LaunchDaemon

Installers

Installing and removing software in Sierra
Making an Installer package the easier way
macOS Sierra will break many installers and updaters – Gatekeeper gets better, but also more intrusive
Bundle, package, library, or folder?

Apple’s New File System, APFS

Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs
Watch that space: More fun with Unicode in file names
Making sense of Disk Utility and disk structure in macOS 10.13-10.15
Should you enable defragmentation on APFS hard drives?
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Why has Apple put snapshots in a straitjacket?
Volume recovery using an APFS snapshot
The problem with APFS snapshots
Card tricks with TextEdit, and saving files safely to SSD
APFS, safe saves, inodes and the volfs file system
Why isn’t APFS fully supported yet in macOS?
APFS tools suck
Hitting the limits of APFS is both easy and confusing
The Quest for Sparse Files in APFS: do they exist?
Quantum computing and APFS: free and used space
Happy birthday APFS
Disk Utility can’t resize APFS disk images, but hdiutil can
Should you add a new APFS Container or Volume?
Finder can’t total file sizes correctly: how hard links confuse
How big is that folder: what happened to APFS Fast Directory Sizing?
Refreshing Aliases isn’t so simple: a cautionary tale with Alifix
Finder Aliases and Bookmarks: a summary
How to inspect the details of an Alias without changing them, and Precize 1.7
Aliases and Bookmarks are smarter than you think
Serious Finder bug in Mojave 10.14.2 with broken aliases
Inside Mojave’s Aliases and Bookmarks
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
Aliases, hard links, symlinks, and copies in Mojave’s APFS
Links and aliases beyond local files: advanced file system techniques
How to build an APFS bootable clone in Terminal
Apple finally releases APFS reference documentation
Two command tools updated for Mojave: alisma and unormal
APFS comes to Fusion Drives, but there’s no sign of Time Machine 2
APFS will finally be supported on Fusion Drives – in macOS 10.14 Mojave
Disks, partitions, volumes, containers
Is APFS fully supported yet?
APFS encryption, ghost guest users, and odd UUIDs
APFS, File Reference URLs, inodes and Finder Syncs
macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 still leaks encryption passwords in plain text
Another gaping security hole in High Sierra APFS disk encryption
Enduring file references in macOS
Accessing Finder aliases from the command line: alisma
Aliases, links, clones, and Bookmarks
Open Recent, inodes, and Bookmarks: How macOS remembers files
Bookmarks, APFS, and enduring file references
Inspect the deepest details of your files with Precize 1.0b6
Using macOS Bookmarks as enduring references: Precize and Preciziun
Preview any file from a macOS Bookmark, and an oddity in Quick Look
The extent of APFS’s problems
Taking Stock: Using APFS in High Sierra 10.13.1
Time Machine and APFS
Starting up in High Sierra 10.13.1: an initial log exploration
APFS and High Sierra in trouble
High Sierra: APFS “not supported” on Fusion Drives
Forensic analysis for APFS volumes
APFS: iOS 11 and High Sierra will fix normalisation problems
High Sierra and filenames: Apple is relenting
macOS High Sierra 10.13 and APFS
The return of the volume
What is ‘copy on write’, and how is it good?
Next Week on My Mac: All the fun of WWDC – macOS 10.13 and APFS
Apple File System: what it means, what it brings
APFS and macOS 10.13: many apps and tools will need to be revised
How to make your own APFS volume
How to normalise strings, and a new command tool to help
APFS is currently unusable with most non-English languages
File problems in iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.13: What’s in a name?
Untangling file names and normalisation with Apfelstrudel
Unicode spoofing: when an аррӏе isn’t an apple at all
Why we can’t keep stringing along with Unicode
Dystextia: a platform for exploring Unicode encoding problems, obfuscating text, and spoofing
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra
What’s a UUID?
Watching macOS file systems: FSEvents and volume journals

Time Machine

How Time Machine backups waste space
Backing up the future
Time Machine 15: Large files including VMs
Checking backup transfer rates using T2M2 version 1.13
Time Machine 14: Diagnosing and working around slow backups
Duff disk or normal behaviour?
Time Machine in Catalina 10.15.3 has serious bugs
Time Machine: 1 How it works, or fails to
Time Machine: 2 What it writes in the log
Time Machine: 3 Analysing automatic backups
Time Machine: 4 Problems with backups
Time Machine: 5 Changing Macs and more
Time Machine: 6 Networked storage
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Time Machine: 8 Preventing problems
Time Machine: 9 Inside backup support files
Time Machine: 10 Tools
Time Machine: 11 tmutil
Time Machine 12: Backups that never complete
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
The arithmetic of backing up
Can you still use AFP sharing?
Time Machine travels
Time Machine has changed again in Catalina
Time Machine and backing up in Catalina
Time Machine beaten by the clock: backup fails due to bug
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Are we ready for Time Machine 2.0 yet?
Time Machine: past, present and future
Apple’s guidance on backing up your Mac revisited
Investigating Time Machine errors with T2M2 and Consolation 3
Mojave’s Time Machine 1.5: Working well but small quirks
How Time Machine makes backups
Time Machine backups of APFS volumes
What can you do inside your Time Machine backups?
Checking Time Machine in Mojave (and High Sierra) using T2M2 1.4
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Run The Time Machine Mechanic from a regular user account
Why are there problems backing up Photos Libraries?
Sierra’s Time Machine irregular backup bug: prevention and treatment
How iCloud Drive can break Time Machine backups
How to speed up Time Machine backups
Time Machine and APFS
This is what happens when Sierra’s backups become irregular
Sierra 10.12.6 doesn’t fix the Time Machine bug, but changes it
Why did my Mac stop making Time Machine backups? An investigation with Woodpile 0.6a1
Fixing Sierra’s Time Machine + bug: does macOS get overtired?
Mobile Time Machine and its transformation in High Sierra
New version of The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2)
Using T2M2 to diagnose and treat Time Machine problems
Looking in the log: predicates, filters, regex, and find
Taking Charge of Time Machine Backups: backing up on demand
Why have my Time Machine backups stopped or become irregular?
Troubleshooting Time Machine: stuck preparing backup, and the deep event scan
Watching macOS file systems: FSEvents and volume journals
Advanced Time Machine backups: multiple sources, multiple destinations
Removing all your old backups: a tortuous tale of permissions and links
Diagnosing and treating Time Machine problems in Terminal
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
How macOS runs background activities: 2 Time Machine backups
How macOS runs background activities: 3 When things go wrong
How to check that Time Machine is working properly
iCloud, Spotlight, and Time Machine
Has Apple fixed the bug which made Time Machine backups irregular?
The Time Bomb Ticking in Sierra: Grand Central Dispatch is broken
How Time Machine backups are launched in Sierra
Time Machine problems in macOS Sierra
Irregular Time Machine backups: is this a launchd bug?
FlexiTime Machine: how Sierra changes backups
Has Sierra’s Time Machine changed to backup on demand?

Keychains

How to back up your iCloud Keychain
Checking your keychains using KeychainCheck2
More information about your keychains in KeychainCheck 2.0a3
Tools to work with keychain problems
Inside the iCloud keychain, and its problems
Checking keychain access using Woodpile: a tutorial
Vanishing keychains
Fixing iCloud Keychains, and backing them up
Why do I have to keep entering my keychain password in Sierra?
How to repair your keychain by making a fresh one
Tackling keychain problems in Terminal
How does your keychain work?
KeychainCheck 1.3: new version should run on El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra
I can’t log in: what to do when you forget your password, or its doesn’t work
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
More keychains than meets the eye

Help Services

Adding a PDF Help book
Finishing off
How High Sierra has changed Help
High Sierra’s new improved Help system diagrammed
High Sierra has changed Help, and broken HelpHelp
HelpHelp updated for High Sierra compatibility
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Help Help: 3 What the docs don’t tell you

Console, Ulbow, Consolation, log, and reading logs

How to reveal ‘private’ messages in the log
Spring Forward: how the log copes with summer time clock change
Viewing macOS events live using Crescendo
Want to access log files directly, or analyse logarchives? Try Ulbow 1.2b1
Making your own logarchive from a backup
How long does your Mac keep its log for?
Errors in the night and snapshot problems
Ulbow 1.0, my new free unified log browser, is released
When did my Mac last start up, and why? An exploration with Ulbow
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
‘private’ – the problem of censorship in macOS unified log
Consolation 3.5 tells you how many log entries, and more
Catalina’s log can’t be unprivatised
Starting up in Catalina: sequence and waypoints in the log
What’s the time, Mr Mac? How summer time confuses macOS
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Opening the log
Capturing the moment in your log: how to identify a problem
What happened when MRT was updated, and what MRT does
Which log fields should be accessible in Consolation?
eForensics Magazine publishes first full description of macOS unified log
Investigating Time Machine errors with T2M2 and Consolation 3
Investigating a crash using Consolation 3
How to use the unified log to see what’s going wrong
What to do when your log returns an error
What to do when T2M2 or another log-based app returns an error
Did it freeze? Missing 50 minutes of log
How Mojave changes the unified log
Where next with the log?
Consolation 3: log browser of choice for macOS 10.12-10.14
macOS Unified log: 1 why, what and how
macOS Unified log: 2 content and extraction
macOS Unified log: 3 finding your way
Unified but not uniform: how the log has changed
Is the unified log private, or a vulnerability?
Quantum mechanics and Mojave – performance measurement, Signposts, and the log
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
Signposts for performance: 1 introduction
Signposts for performance: 2 Instruments
Updates all round to Blowhole, RouteMap, and the Signpost Kit
Signposts for performance: alpha release of RouteMap
Blowhole, RouteMap, and a Signpost Kit
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way
Watching Mojave’s privacy protection at work
What happens when you open a quarantined app?
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 1: identification
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 2: Security check
Open a document: how it works, and where it can go wrong, 3: Launch
How to browse the log on an iOS device
Should you use shutdown or reboot in the command line?
The unified log in macOS Mojave: Signposts and Instruments
The log command in High Sierra 10.13.5: Signposts are already supported
WWDC and macOS 10.14
Consolation now supports Mojave’s Signposts in High Sierra and more
How a New MacBook Pro borked an older iMac’s Bluetooth
Encryption passphrases are still left in logs: how Apple abuses its unified log
Inside iCloud Drive: In the log in Sierra and High Sierra
Bug-hunting in Consolation and Woodpile: success in obscurity
Does Woodpile crash on you when trying to start? This should fix it
Now you can filter with regular expressions in Woodpile
The unified log in High Sierra 10.13.1
Starting up in High Sierra 10.13.1: an initial log exploration
See when your Mac starts or wakes up, using Woodpile
Checking keychain access using Woodpile: a tutorial
Vanishing keychains
Why did my Mac stop making Time Machine backups? An investigation with Woodpile 0.6a1
This is what happens when Sierra’s backups become irregular
Browsing your log with Woodpile: Clarity and detail
Diagnosing a macOS problem of a month ago
Inside the macOS log: logd and the files that it manages
What’s your Mac been up to for the last 3 months? Inside macOS’s hidden activity records
Woodpile gets informative ToolTips in its bar chart
First steps to a new type of log browser: Woodpile 0.1a1
New insights into process performance: log load analysis
Looking inside WebKit and the macOS dispatching systems using log data
High Sierra: security files, internals and some bugs
Why can’t I find anything useful in Sierra’s logs?
Getting more out of Sierra’s logs
Brilliant but
How the new tools in Consolation 3 help to explore Sierra’s startup
Looking in the log: predicates, filters, regex, and find
Regex: searching with regular expressions
Display of dense text information – colour styles in Consolation 3
How to read Sierra’s unified log as a normal user
Sierra’s unified log evolves: more persistent, and a valuable log log
MakeLogarchive can now catalogue any well-formed logarchive
Browsing the unified log in difficult circumstances
Apple’s new reality distortion field
Reliability of macOS Sierra: diagnostics
Next Weeks on My Mac: Where to go with the log?
Consolation 3, and Mac Geek Gab
Useful filter terms for Sierra’s logs
Bugs in the documentation of the log command, and in its handling of predicates
New and existing bugs in the unified log in Sierra 10.12.4
How far back does Sierra’s new log go?
Sierra’s log is now locked away from normal users
Blowhole command tool 3: new version should be compatible with High Sierra
Bugs in the logs: Sierra’s new logging system is a game of chance
Drift in the timing of log entries in Sierra
Sierra Log Tutorial: Getting started, Time Machine errors, and restarts – basic level
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 1
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 startup in the log 2 Dispatch
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log 1
Exploring Sierra 10.12.5 sleep and wake in the log, 2 DAS and CTS
Sleep, Wake, and Startup: Hardware and ACPI
When Recent Items vanish: a possible bug in Sierra 10.12.6?
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists
Logging in and out in Sierra’s log
What’s a UUID?
Sierra Log Tutorial: Exploring a startup – medium level
A phrasebook for LogLogger4 and log
Using the logs in Sierra: some practical tips
Bugs in the logs: Sierra’s new logs are far from perfect
log: a primer on predicates
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
Sierra’s Console: promising but incomplete
Reading logs: shutdown and startup
Reading logs: waking from sleep and backing up
Getting El Capitan to run clean – using Console and guesswork to stop repeated service crashing
Lost in the log
Error numbers: the final hurdle – how to find out what they mean
Log race – understanding and using Console’s logs
Using Consolation’s log extracts
R as a platform for data conversion: JSON to Excel for log extracts
The Time Bomb Ticking in Sierra: Grand Central Dispatch is broken
Waking your Mac from sleep: log highlights
Mac shutdown and sleep cause codes
Transforming the log to a user tool
Adding Timing Features to an App: Tinderbox and Storyspace
Masterly account of Sierra’s new log system
Watching a Mac losing its grip: background services are vital
Further spurious ‘security’ updates, and who is com.apple.mac.install?

Swift snippets and tips

How apps can check integrity better than macOS
Checking and downloading updates automatically in Swift
Checking your app’s own signature
When a window closes as soon as it has opened
macOS coding beyond the books: basic menu control
Making documents look good in both appearance modes
Notarization: a big step forward for users and developers
Mojave’s privacy protection: informing users
A new Xcode project for scripting in Swift 4.0: ScriptBase
Swift Snippets 0: Introduction and Contents
1: Strings, Attributed Text, Arrays
2: Interface, NSDocument, Files
3: Preference Files, Property Lists, JSON
4: Numbers, Dates, Unified log, Objective-C
5: Bundles, Process, Background activity, Shell commands
Easy access to xattrs from Swift 4: Martin R’s URL extension
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Making an Installer package the easier way
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: A preference sheet
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences with and without UserDefaults
Quarantined: more about the quarantine extended attribute
Exploring and using extended attributes with xattred
Xcode 9: A big step forward, and some important steps back
Code signing: confusing and weak?
Accessing Finder aliases in your own code: a walk through alisma’s source
A simpler way to control an app’s Login Item
In the Dark Mode: a tortuous journey without a map
Working around a bug recently introduced into Mojave: When Signposts point the wrong way
Taking macOS to the end of time: nanoseconds count
What can that app do? Entitlements, authorisation, and privacy

Scripting macOS using Swift

Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
Time to notarize apps: 108 notarizations analysed
Notarization made a bit simpler
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Making notarization as hard as possible
Apple’s Notary Service: ten months experience
Printing without tears in Dark Mode (and exporting to PDF)
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
Process deprecations
Where will all those coders go?
Performing keyhole surgery on Info.plist
Preparing to upgrade to Mojave: Scripting, commands, and development
Privacy + Scripting = Problems
Is the macOS command line doomed?
Inside iCloud with Cirrus 1.0b5: Paths and containers
A new Xcode project for scripting in Swift 4.0: ScriptBase
Last Week on my Mac: More work needed – Swift’s potential as a scripting language
Programming playgrounds: Swift on an iPad?
Withering automation (23 July 2017)
Goodbye AppleScript
Resources to help the non-novice learn and use Swift on macOS
Scripting in Swift: Scriptarian, take 1.2.1
Scriptarian: Swift scripting for macOS?
Xcode Swift playgrounds 1: freezing and failing
Xcode Swift playgrounds 2: Scripting files
Xcode Swift playgrounds 3: shell scripts, droplets, and actions
Xcode Swift playgrounds 4: running scripts without Xcode
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 1
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 2 – more lessons in Swift learned the hard way
Making a better app to check your Mac’s security systems
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: the signature shuffle
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: cheating with AppleScript
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: alerts and file save
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: max factoring
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Swift Documentation Markup
LockRattler 3, LogLogger 5d, and signature silliness
If you’re still running El Capitan, Apple doesn’t care about you – Xcode 8 and El Capitan support
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: quirky commands
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Radio buttons and more
Developing Consolation in Swift 3: mostly a breeze
A Swift breeze blowing (5 February 2017)
Instrumenting macOS Sierra to investigate irregular backups and log problems
Blowhole advanced: writing a command tool in Swift 3, and more
Beyond Scripting in Swift: turning Consolation into a full-blown app
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences
Beyond Scripting in Swift: JSON and the Golden NSDictionary
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Implementing JSON to CSV conversion
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Help Help: 2 What has happened to Help?
Help Help: 3 What the docs don’t tell you
Making an Installer package the easier way
Exporting HTML from Tinderbox 7: Using CSS for a Help Book
Using HTML from Tinderbox 7 to make a Help Book
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Reading Plists, building popups, and more
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Sorting with a closure
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Finding apps, and calls that don’t fail
Xcode 8.3: better in parts, more confusing in others
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Keychains lost in translation
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Who’s afraid of the big, bad buffer?
Normalising strings in Swift: scripting Apfelstrudel and beyond
How to normalise strings, and a new command tool to help
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: opening docs and converting text
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: huge popups, and strings too smart
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Encoding conversion without tears
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Running background activities
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Reading and writing property lists
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app in a couple of hours
More Scripting in Swift: Styling Attributed Text
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Dates, Steppers, and parsing log entries
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Sets, Lies, and Videotape
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Of characters and closures
More fun scripting in Swift with Xcode: files and deep traversal
Diving even deeper into preferences
Sticky preferences: why trashing or editing them may not change anything
Beyond Scripting in Swift: A preference sheet
Scripting in Swift: Any perils – type safety and checking
More Fun Scripting with Swift in Xcode: String search
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Preferences with and without UserDefaults
More Fun Scripting with Swift in Xcode: extended attributes
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Direct access to xattrs, calling C, and converting Data to Strings
Beyond Scripting in Swift: When xattrs are not like files
More Scripting in Swift: Shuffling files and writing a property list
More Scripting in Swift: Looking it up in a dictionary
Beyond Scripting with Swift: Bar charts and ToolTips
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Sharing and syncing data throughout an app
More fun scripting in Swift: working around an Xcode 9 bug
Bug-hunting in Consolation and Woodpile: success in obscurity
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Decoding a property list
Scripting in Swift: Casting, Any, and implicit mutability
Scripting in Swift: Key characters, or what character can’t be key
How iCloud marks the place of documents stored remotely
Scripting in Swift: Checking free disk space
Watching folders – 1 for users
A Swift 4 ‘droplet’ scripting prototype, Dropsy
Going for iCloud Drive, or the whole way with Desktop & Documents Folders?
Putting a browser window in your app
Adding new menu commands to perform a quick copy
Beyond scripting in Swift: the popup menu that won’t validate
One small change which might break a lot of older apps
Why privileged commands may never be allowed

Advanced troubleshooting tools

The ultimate diagnostic tool: sysdiagnose
Activity Monitor, ps and top: probing processes
More useful information gleaned from sysdiagnose
Running tools within sysdiagnose individually
iCloud: some explainers, and how to diagnose its problems
Checking your drives with DriveDx

Building a cheap, large, fast external SSD

1 – Thunderbolt
2 – USB 3
3 – Performance and conclusions

More troubleshooting

Pick your Panacea: how to select a generic fix
Reviving the hopeless Mac: what to try before visiting the Genius Bar
My Mac don’t work – troubleshooting tools and techniques
Generic troubleshooting: how to fix something that doesn’t work
After the crash: replaying the journal to prevent disk errors
What to do when your Mac starts up all wrong
Restoring firmware after interrupted firmware update
The Eclectic Light flickers: my iMac might be dead
My network connection is not unplugged: a KEXT, a MAC, and an almost dead Mac
Starting up in Sierra: a fuller account for troubleshooting
Service with a Smile – advanced troubleshooting of services and the startup process
Thanks for the Memory
Crash crash – Crash Reporter and ReportCrash, the crash handlers
Recovering from a hard crash – when your startup drive is missing or damaged
Why the spinning beachball?

Storage

When you’ve got more USB-C devices than ports
Why a Fusion Drive won’t last as long as an SSD
Which Hard Disk? Selecting modern hard drives
Cause of Death – how disks become corrupted and crash
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to FileVault
How long will the SSD (in my Fusion Drive) last?
Monitoring SSD wear and ageing
Choosing drives: which type, manufacturer, and capacity?
Which hard drive? 160,000 years experience analysed
Q&A – Dead Mac recovery – recovering files from a dead Mac
S.M.A.R.T.ypants – hard drive failure detection
Checking your drives with DriveDx
How to check and repair your drives in El Capitan
From disaster back to normal: rebuilding the RAID
From a broken Promise to an even bigger Promise
Keeping your Promise: upgrading a Promise Pegasus R4 RAID
Which disks can you install in an external RAID drive such as a Promise Pegasus?
Updating the firmware of a Promise Pegasus R4 RAID
How it took 2 days to upgrade my RAID, thanks to a bug in Disk Utility, and tired old HFS+
How can you tell whether it is a hard drive or an SSD?

Inside OS X / macOS

Asleep on the job – problems with sleep and wakening
What happens when you run an app?
How to uninstall complex software
How to uninstall OS X Server 5
Jack of all tasks: launchd, and how to run periodic tasks
Permissions: the heart of access control
Personal Preference – preferences from resources to XML
Diving even deeper into preferences
Preference lists, a running sore in OS X
Preference settings: where to find them in macOS Sierra (v2)
Preference settings: where to find them in El Capitan
Bundle, package, library, or folder?
Common packages: documents which are folders in drag
Comfortable Computing – sitting and working in comfort and safety
Click, Tap, or Stroke? – alternative input devices including touchscreens, trackpads, and graphics tablets
What to do when your Magic Trackpad 2 fails
Is your iPad Pro a pain in the neck?
Printing without tears
Under The Spotlight: local search
iCloud, Spotlight, and Time Machine
Obscured by clouds: how to lose your audiobooks – info on restoring previous purchases from the iTunes Store
In the Dock – custom shortcuts
Dusting down – cleaning a dusty Mac
Someone’s been using my Mac – what to do when there’s been an intrusion
Magsafe compatibility – which power supplies can be used with which laptops?
How to uninstall an app
How to rename batches of files
How to unscramble a downloaded file
Q&A: El Capitan keeps beachballing
How to run an old version of OS X
Which password? When to enter your user password, and when to use your Apple ID
Q&A: Disappearing disk space
The Font of All Knowledge – fonts for the non-specialist user
Macs, hum, and unintended aerials
An unwarranted login: things that go bump in the night
The 501 orphan problem: why you shouldn’t delete the primary admin user
Error numbers: the final hurdle – how to find out what they mean
Wireless headphones and lip sync
File system funnies in Sierra: folders that aren’t, and altered aliases
So many times: the clocks in your Mac
Should you repair permissions on your Home folder, and how?
Has anyone got the time? How High Sierra has changed time synchronisation
Undead apps, and opting out of App Nap
Behind the Scenes: Open Directory and Kerberos
What are all those hidden folders then?

Network and internet issues

Network hardware – shifting packets
Securing your router: keeping intruders out
Securing your router: protecting your network
Small Networks Without Big Headaches – setting up and diagnosing a small network
Tackling network problems
Why can’t I connect to that website? Simple tests with Network Utility
airport: a hidden Wi-Fi tool in macOS Sierra
Checking a Wi-Fi connection, in the UK
What do you do when your broadband goes down?
The medium of the message – email clients and types
My email is broken – how to diagnose and fix mail problems
eMail without tears or fears
Protecting your Mac against malware and intrusion
Checking signatures with WhatsYourSign
Firewalls – Keeping Your Network Safe
Human aspects of security: what the software vendors don’t always tell you
When the backups stop – unravelling wireless backups
Which advertising companies are tracking your online activity?
Broken Clouds, or why you won’t find my embarrassing photos
Using Google Advanced Search
How to report phishing to Apple
Share and share alike: sharing docs from your Mac
How secure are your secure connections?
Don’t get cached out: the perils of cached data
If Twitter still seems all @#. to you… – a guide for beginners and experts alike
Multiple Apple IDs, multiple users, and Family Sharing
Scanning your Macs for security problems with Nessus
Banned browser extensions – how XProtect keeps adware etc. away
How fix a URL which breaks because of Unicode content
Creaky old internet – ASCII still reigns in URLs
USB 3 devices can cause problems with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

Data and its protection

There must be some mistake – preventing and detecting errors in data, in spreadsheets, databases, etc.
Guaranteeing Data Integrity
Layout to database 1 – Out of beauty comes forth structure – rescuing data from laid out pages
Layout to database 2 – Building a Database by Script – scripting automated data input to FileMaker
Keychain Cops – getting the most out of your keychain
Backing Up, Time Machine, and the Cloud – Managing risks for the Individual
Backing up your laptop: Time Machine local snapshots
Protecting Vulnerable Data – how to protect personal and other sensitive information on your Mac
Lost in the Cloud – Securing Protected Data in a Mobile World
Steganographic Slips – how Word can release removed content
High quality hash – using hash keys for one-way anonymisation
Who was first: 1 robust timestamping of documents
Who was first: 2 using OriginStamp via its RESTful interface
Documents and versioning
How secure are your secure connections?
Where are your off-site backups?
Tucking it away safely: archival media
Using hibernation to secure a Mac with FileVault
How’s your Personal Digital Archive?
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat

Accessibility

The Accessibility pane in El Capitan – a guided tour of what it has to offer all users
VoiceOver, spoken and Braille guidance – assistance for those with impaired vision, in particular
Entering text without a keyboard – Dictation and other tools to help those with RSI and other problems with keyboards.
Wrise, a different word processor – superb app for those with reading and word problems, and many others too.
Text ︎ Speech, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text
KeyStrokes: the ultimate assistive keyboard
Touchy feely: haptic input
Making the most of your Magic Trackpad 2
Digging deeper into Force Touch and the Magic Trackpad 2
Unintended consequences of SIP
New products for new species
It’s about the interface, not the technology
Wireless headphones and lip sync
Watch the other hand: Apple’s evolving input devices
How the new Touch Bar can open access for those with visual impairment

Colour Management for the Non-Professional

1 – introduction, why we need it
2 – rendering and rendering intents
3 – colour calibration
4 – changing and using colour profiles, and posting to the internet
5 – close control over colour, for giclée printing, etc.
Fixing another X-Rite ColorMunki problem
Should Macs start a Night Shift?

Data formats and conversion

Free conversion of text files with textutil
From text to documents – formats and tools for working with text documents
Words of old – opening old Word documents
XML – Lingua Franca or Lost Cause?
Movie Formats and Conversion
Help me access my PNG movies – when a file format is no longer supported in QuickLook
Data compression – lossy and non-lossy
Open Government UK
Planning ahead: archiving for retrieval
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra

Hardware upgrade and disposal

The uninterruptible power of a cat: replacing my UPS
AppleCare and warranty cover for Macs
Prepare your Mac for service/repair, and restore it later
Upgrade or Replace? – hardware upgrades to improve performance
Hard decisions – criteria for selecting hard drives
Drive safely: testing hard drives the hard way
Unsupported – how to re-use your old Macs safely
How to run an old version of OS X
Preparing your Mac for disposal
Disposing of a dead hard drive

Hypertext – Storyspace and Tinderbox

Take notes: Tinderbox 8 is the bee’s knees
Storyspace and hypertext: index to articles (version 2)
Storyspace: the original hypertext app
Some selected readings on hypertext
Getting started with Storyspace 3 – beginner’s tutorial, part 1
Storyspace 3: using guards to structure reading – tutorial, part 2
Storyspace 3: building an interactive timeline – tutorial, part 3
Storyspace 3: digging a bit deeper with attributes, prototypes, and actions – tutorial, part 4
Storyspace 3: structuring hypertext using rules instead of links – tutorial, part 5
Storyspace 3: appearance attributes, covers badges, captions, and more
Structure in non-fiction
Storyspace 3: handling notes and references, how to implement notes and references in hypertext
Storyspace 3: More on references, using References attributes properly, and backlinking without tears, to result in proper references
Storyspace 3: timelines, outlines, and linked windows
Storyspace 3: exploding poetry, and progress bars, and Summary Tables
Telling the story: narrative across media, including spoken, written, movies, graphic novels, paintings, photos, and music
Structure in narrative (non-fiction) text
Making First Impressions: 1 Content and structure
Making First Impressions: 2 Prototypes and containers
Making First Impressions: 3 Joining up
Making First Impressions: 4 Ready for early test
Tools for making timelines
Marking Time: introducing the timeline
Marking Time: Timeline 3D
Marking Time: Aeon Timeline
Marking Time: Storyspace and Tinderbox
Marking Time: other routes to timelines
Marking Time: making good timelines
The Story Story – narrative, VR, and computers
Storyspace 3: Space and Time, more from the Map view
Analysing narrative paintings of Icarus and Daedalus
Storyspace 3.1: a world of difference
From database to hypertext: exporting from FileMaker Pro to Storyspace
Alternative methods of importing into Storyspace and Tinderbox
Developing content for Storyspace and Tinderbox on your iPad using FileMaker Go
Storyspace 3.1.2 and Tinderbox 6.6.0: details updated
QuarkXPress 2016, Storyspace/Tinderbox, and HTML5
Who remembers HyperCard, and a ban on encryption?
Storyspace 3.2 and Storyspace Reader for OS X
Hypertext for almost all
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 1
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 2
Storyspace Reader: a tutorial, 3
Dynamic stories: text substitution and stretchtext in Storyspace (and Tinderbox)
An illustrated glossary of links in Storyspace 3
Stretchtext: a hidden gem in real hypertext
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 1: imports and prototypes
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 2: links and stretchtext
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 3: alt stories and references
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 4: sidethreads and projections
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 5: galleries and timelines
Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 6: glossary and index
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 1
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 2
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 3
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 4
Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 5
How fix a URL which breaks because of Unicode content
The Salome Story: analysing and telling changing narrative on your Mac
The Salome Story: first full release version for Storyspace and Tinderbox
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 1
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 2, including a full Latin and English version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 1 in Tinderbox/Storyspace format
Parallel hypertext: Storyspace metamorphosed 3, includes the illustrated version of Book 1 in Tinderbox/Storyspace format
Parallel Text in Tinderbox 7: Porting Metamorphoses Book 1
The Best of Both Worlds: making hypertext for both Tinderbox and Storyspace
Adding Timing Features to an App: Tinderbox and Storyspace
Exporting HTML from Tinderbox 7: Using CSS for a Help Book
Using HTML from Tinderbox 7 to make a Help Book
Improving HTML from Tinderbox to Make a Better Help Book
Building a text database using Tinderbox
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Troubleshooting Macs
Going back to the book – search engines and how best to present complex information
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Progress and tidying up
Moving a blog to Tinderbox: Guiding decisions
A Tinderbox Scrapbook for Source Code: exporting in WordPress markdown
A Tinderbox Scrapbook for Source Code: plain text and public order
Completing and using a Swift Scrapbook in Tinderbox
LaTeXport: writing LaTeX documents using Tinderbox
LaTeXport: loose ends
LaTeXport: revenge of the templates, and on to Tufte Book
Tennyson, Pre-Raphaelites, and Storyspace: a rewarding combination
Adding ‘parallel’ text and a timeline to the Lady of Shalott, in Tinderbox and Storyspace

SDR (Software-defined radio)

The quiet but pervasive revolution in communications – software-defined radio
Getting started with SDR on a Mac
Radio reinvented: how SDR works
Getting started with an ELAD SDR: the FDM-S2 on a Mac – with audio samples
Tuning antennas with a Sark-110 VIAA
New book and learning resources
Variable voltage: how 12 V batteries are not
Variable voltage: a lighter alternative
The ELAD FDM-DUO, an HF transceiver for all – first impressions and a round-up of portable HF transceivers
The Code lives on: how Morse is still not dead

Polyglot programmer – lots of lesser-known languages

AppleScript – 21 years old and still going it alone on OS X – also Automator and visual programming
Some excellent programming environments for OS X
Which languages support the GUI?
Safe from prying eyes: a free script app for robust encryption – an AppleScript example worked through
Visual programming with Marten (Prograph)
Which languages generate standalone apps?
Playgrounds and generators – code playgrounds and apps which generate code for you
Script Debugger version 6
RIP APLX, and welcome Dyalog APL for OS X
Recognition by eponym, and maths on the meter
Writing SparkleCheck in AppleScript: don’t read the manual
Programming playgrounds: Swift on an iPad?
Writing LogLogger2 in AppleScript: dialog and advanced shell scripting
Try turning it off and back on again – rapid app development
Goodbye AppleScript
Resources to help the non-novice learn and use Swift on macOS
Scriptarian: Swift scripting for macOS?
Xcode Swift playgrounds 1: freezing and failing
Xcode Swift playgrounds 2: Scripting files
Xcode Swift playgrounds 3: shell scripts, droplets, and actions
Xcode Swift playgrounds 4: running scripts without Xcode
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 1
Building a better console replacement: an exercise in Xcode 2 – more lessons in Swift learned the hard way
Making a better app to check your Mac’s security systems
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: the signature shuffle
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: cheating with AppleScript
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: alerts and file save
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: max factoring
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Swift Documentation Markup
If you’re still running El Capitan, Apple doesn’t care about you
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: quirky commands
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Radio buttons and more
Developing Consolation in Swift 3: mostly a breeze
A Swift breeze blowing (5 February 2017)
Blowhole advanced: writing a command tool in Swift 3, and more
Beyond Scripting in Swift: turning Consolation into a full-blown app
Help Help: 1 Help Crafter – help authoring tools (HAT) for Sierra
Making an Installer package the easier way
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Reading Plists, building popups, and more
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Sorting with a closure
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: Finding apps, and calls that don’t fail
Xcode 8.3: better in parts, more confusing in others
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Keychains lost in translation
More fun scripting with Swift and Xcode: An app scaffold
Beyond Scripting in Swift: Who’s afraid of the big, bad buffer?

Words on Macs – text processing and problems on Macs

Ending Mojibake with Rosettavert 1.3
Rich Text documents: RTF and RTFD
Should you use document metadata?
The recursive RTFD document: a seriously weird problem
Implementing interlinear text in macOS
Making interlinear composite text using DelightEd 2.0b1
Taking text further
Using and hacking styles in TextEdit and DelightEd
Liquid | Author: well worth writers trying
Making documents look good in both appearance modes
Analysing your writing interactively and better word frequency lists: Nalaprop 1.0b8
Making Sense of Text: How good is Mojave’s linguistic support?
Beyond mere appearance: Dark Mode, the semantics of colour, and text without print
Using Unicode better
Redact and obscure: how to release or publish without leaks
Redacting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat
LaTeX and MathML equations come to iWork, as well as iBooks Author
Comparing files: FileMerge, opendiff, and BBEdit
Back to the future – (16 July 2017) markup languages and LaTeX
LaTeXport: writing LaTeX documents using Tinderbox
Compositor’s attempt on the Holy Grail of document processing
1 – Code-Breaking with Unicode – working with Unicode text in OS X
2 – Every Keystroke Counts – keyboard input and more
3 – From text to documents – formats and tools for working with text documents
4 – Command and control – version control and writing environments
5 – Spot the difference – compare and merge tools
XML – Lingua Franca or Lost Cause?
Beyond Unicode – lightweight fonts for language documentation
Easier than the Georgian verb – text encoding problems solved
Inside Dictionaries and Keyboards
The Font of All Knowledge – fonts for the non-specialist user
Terminology WordNet dictionary for OS X
Under The Spotlight: local search
Two centuries, two authors, two platforms – concordance tools for OS X
Concordancers for OS X – updated
Open Government UK
Opening PageMaker documents
Steganographic Slips – how Word can release removed content
Mark my words – Flesch-Kincaid reading grades and Word
Translation aids for OS X
Support for Celtic and other languages in OS X
Which font to help the dyslexic?
Wrise, a different word processor – superb app for those with reading and word problems, and many others too.
Weird characters in a newsletter
Holding down keys: accents or repeat?
I’m learning Google: no logic in translation
Why we need consistent content-sensitive selection of text
Building a text database using Tinderbox
Introducing Rosettavert: first beta-release of a text encoding conversion tool
Why we can’t keep stringing along with Unicode
Dystextia: a platform for exploring Unicode encoding problems, obfuscating text, and spoofing
Dystextia, Apfelstrudel, Rosettavert and unorml updated for High Sierra
Regex: searching with regular expressions

External links

iTunes Store policies and how-tos for past purchases (also see regional versions if outside the UK)
Phishing and other security concerns – Apple’s advice and details of how to send phishing messages to reportphishing@apple.com as attachments
AFP548 – Mac sysadmin and server related
Objective-See – security tools and information
MacScripter – AppleScript, Automator
Alan Wood’s Unicode resources
Multilingual Mac – language support and issues