Since the release of Big Sur (Version 11) in 2020 your system is locked, with a read-only file system separate from the user files, although it does not appear like that to you, the user. We have lost control of our computers. Apple systems are now so locked down and filled with security codes and devices (T1, T2 Security Chip) that we no longer understand or can even control what they are doing. This is security by obfuscation. Release Notes for upgrades typically include just a tiny portion of the actual changes, bug-fixes, and possible regressions that Apple has done. Passwords multiply and dual factor authentication has become the norm. Without the correct passwords your computer has to be physically returned to Apple Support, you only normally get 10 attempts to enter the correct one. After 50 attempts to guess your own password in “Recovery” you are permanently locked out of your own machine. Many updates are now covert, even though they have caused serious damage on several occasions. Everything is sandboxed and apps no longer have access to your own disks, files and folders, without explicit permission. System updates are now only available online, through Software Update. Applications which are not officially approved by Apple are highly unlikely to work. Starting up your computer from another external disk is essentially no longer possible. With Apple Silicon you can no longer replace or upgrade your hard disk, increase the amount of RAM, never mind attempt to service your own machine (there are no service manuals).

So all that may seem pretty awful, but maybe we are just reaching forward to the time when the computer just becomes an appliance, which runs without needing to be “serviced”. In due course it will self-upgrade and run without user interference. This is already happening in the world of phones, which are of course now very powerful computers themselves. It must also be remembered that soon nearly all the high street banks will close, your computer will become your bank and hence must be secure. Once everything is run in solid state, system on a chip, reliability increases and it either works or doesn’t. Neither you, or anybody else, can break your OSX System, it is locked. Your modern computer is already self healing, it will try and help you, that is machine learning aka AI. I already have a computer which has been used and run for nearly a year, without ever restarting, now that is an appliance.

I come from a time when computers regularly crashed on a daily basis, involving loss of unsaved work and regular restarts. There was a voodoo knowledge required to run a computer, involving selecting extensions, repairing permissions, defragmenting hard disks, clearing viruses, checking memory usage, updating again and again. All this knowledge is now redundant and soon all these problems will have evaporated. Still I would like to mention a few of the crazy computer glitches I have seen. The worst is a hard disk so full it cannot even start up. A computer needs some space to write files when it starts, without any available space you must start up from an external disk. In short, never let your your system hard disk become more than 80% full. Apple now lets you “manage “ your files in iCloud Drive, although I do not recommend this as you will soon be paying them even more money. One of the best resources in the old days was Disk Warrior, which could recover lost hard disks (HFS+ format) by rewriting the Directory, when it worked it was just like magic. Once when I was asked to install a new hard disk, I was surprised to find the new disk was in fact a book, they hadn’t opened the Amazon package! Embarrassment and wasted journeys all round. In a previous blog article I detail the folder found on an iMac which claimed to be larger than a million gigabytes (1.13 Petabytes). Best of all, I was called out to fix a computer which had stopped working. It had crashed and they didn’t know how to switch it back on!

Apple still have some way to go in their search for a perfect locked system. Some key applications such as Soft Raid, Drive DX and many others may require Kexts (Kernel extensions) to function and currently require you to run Reduced Security (available in Recovery Mode / Startup Security Utility). It is also difficult to install many third party apps without Reduced Security / Allow all apps. To access this on Apple Silicon Macs, press and hold the Power button until the display shows Loading Startup Options, then release it. This takes you to the Startup Options screen, select the Options icon, then click Continue underneath it. On Apple Silicon all the old ways to access startup commands have changed or disappeared. There are currently no third party apps to repair APFS disks (since it is not documented), you must use Disk Utility, which is slowly improving. The reported available space on APFS disks can also be wrong or misleading. I recommend switching off iCloud Drive, it can become confusing unless you really need it. You no longer need anti-virus software, switch it off. Buy a cheap external disk for Time Machine to safeguard your data, although it no longer backs up your System. Please remember your computer login password and Apple ID, they are vital, use the Passwords app for everything else. Check everything in Security and Privacy. This is the modern Apple world of computing, there is no Trash only a Bin, things work differently now.

Useful Information

Mac Attorney – Slow Macintosh?

Eclectic Light – Mac Troubleshooting

Mr Macintosh – Old System Installers

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Well the idea of all your files on all your devices sounds great, but it is a chimera. Firstly they are not necessarily on your device, but can be in the cloud. Secondly you will soon be paying for this privilege, Thirdly they are not always accessible, in effect they cannot be relied upon.

If you have a small hard disk, files are “evicted” to iCloud. Soon you can no longer download them all and you become a Prisoner of iCloud. Keep paying the ransom! This may sound like a bad joke, but your old unused files can be deleted by Apple after 6 months. The terms Apple sets for iCloud specifically exclude any liability for loss of data. Also iCloud doesn’t work perfectly all the time, so do check Apple’s service status page.

My personal advice is never to use iCloud for data backup, although it can be useful for sharing and syncing data between devices. iCloud is not Time Machine, which backs up data to a local hard disk. You cannot backup an entire Mac to iCloud, but you can use it for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. You will be paying for this, since you will soon use up the free 5GB allocation.

Much better value is to buy a 2TB hard disk for about £55, like the Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive, USB 3.2, and store or backup your data on this. You will no longer be a prisoner or have to pay the ransom. Apple will charge you over £80 per year to backup this amount of data to iCloud.

To delve a bit deeper, if you are using iCloud Drive (which Apple encourages, it earns them money) beware of this symbol:

This means the data is stored in the cloud and you do not have full control of it. If it is a large item like a video, it may take hours to download. You may also see this icon in iTunes, where there are 6 possible iCloud icons. Unfortunately you have very little control over items that may suddenly go to the cloud. Your only control is basically on or off, but do not play around with this, since it may take hours or even days to re-sync an iCloud Drive.

So some advice, since there many options about what you can sync. I personally sync Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Safari, Notes, Find my Mac. Reminders, Siri and Keychain may also be useful to sync via iCloud. These are all small items and should be free to sync. Since I am a photographer I do not sync Photos, that would be an expensive nightmare. For some people it may be useful, but you will soon be paying for more storage. Also do not sync items you may not use like Stocks, News, Home. If you use iCloud for i-device backups remember they are a space hog, and to delete out of date or unused devices. Obviously I do not use or recommend iCloud Drive. Do not “Manage” your files in About this Mac / Storage, unless you are aware of the consequences, it switches on iCloud Drive. Before deleting anything from iCloud, be sure you won’t need it again. Once it’s deleted from iCloud, it’s gone forever.

Do NOT tick all these boxes!

My favourite article on iCloud problems is by Howard Oakley, it is quite long and there is no magic bullet. To conclude, keep in mind that the Italian antitrust regulator has found that Apple’s iCloud terms and conditions are unreasonable and unfair to consumers, and may breach consumer protection laws. Best of luck navigating the modern world of cloud computing!

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Update 14/11/24
Apple accused of trapping and ripping off 40m iCloud customers says BBC article.

 The Future is Apple Silicon

The new M1 Macs are blistering fast at every level. An M1 MacBook Air is now as fast in many scenarios as an Intel iMac Pro which costs five times as much. There is no doubt that the Apple M1 Silicon, replacing the old Intel chips, is a masterstroke and a huge step forward for computing. This new generation of processors are System on a Chip (SOC), integrating the CPU, GPU and RAM, a big step forward. They were inspired by by the A14 bionic chip found in iPhones and iPads, this is an evolutionary technology. Soon it will no longer matter which computer you have, they will all be incredibly fast. Computers have finally become a mature technology. Just like a kettle.

The sweet spot at the moment appears to be a 512GB 13 inch MacBook Air with the 8 core chip, which retails for £1,249. The new unified memory appears to make RAM less important, but as usual Apple are still charging a premium for it, 16BG costs an extra £200. This machine is faster and more efficient than any previous laptop – full stop. If you don’t need a laptop the M1 Mac mini starting at £699 is excellent value, just as fast as the base £5449 Mac Pro. In the meantime, Apple are not making too much fuss about all this – they still have to sell off their inventory of old Intel machines. The transition to the new silicon architecture will take some time.

The only downside is that you have to run Big Sur Mac OS, which prevents old 32 bit apps from running and conceals the actual user interface. Obviously Windows, designed for Intel processors, will no longer run in Boot Camp on these new chips. Another consideration may be that we are now awaiting an M2 processor for the new iMac and MacBook Pro 16”, which should be even better, who knows. Meanwhile apps that have not been optimised for Apple Silicon appear to run well under Rosetta 2, and eventually they will all be translated to the new processor.  Let’s face it, Apple Silicon is now the future of computing.

Just one example, you can now seamlessly edit 8k video on a MacBook Air, which previously required a high end workstation where the video card alone cost as much as one of these new M1 Macs. Meanwhile we await the new iMacs which should have more Thunderbolt  / USB-C ports. The current machines only have 2, although they can be expanded with cheap USB-C adaptors. As we wait, there is no doubt that Apple has once again made a transformative leap in the world of computing.

Update 25 October 2021
The new M1Pro and M1Max chips now available for 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pro laptops are showing the amazing potential of these new system on a chip (SOC) designs. They are so far ahead of the game that Intel must be quaking in their oversize (14nm) boots. The highly reputed AnandTech has this to say about the latest M1 (5nm) iterations:

The M1 Pro and M1 Max change the narrative completely – these designs feel like truly SoCs that have been made with power users in mind, with Apple increasing the performance metrics in all vectors. We expected large performance jumps, but we didn’t expect the some of the monstrous increases that the new chips are able to achieve.
The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

Update January 2023
If on a budget buy this machine, it can do everything you need!
Mac Mini – 512GB – £1049
Apple M2 with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
16GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage (256GB is never enough)
Gigabit Ethernet
Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB-A ports, headphone jack

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Well after a decade long wait Apple has finally produced a new high end computer which can be customised until it costs nearly £50,000. It looks a magnificent machine in the tradition of the original 2005 cheese grater Mac Pro, rather than the pointless 2013 black “trashcan” Mac Pro with no PCIe expansion slots or drive bays, which proved to be a dead end. The return of the PCIe Mac has also proven to be a boon for the old 2009-2012 Mac Pro, of which more later.

The 8 core base model of the 2019 Mac Pro costs £5,500 and would be a particularly pointless purchase if you do not intend to upgrade it. You can buy an apparently faster 2019 16” MacBook Pro for nearly half the price, while the entry level iMac Pro at £4,900 is much better specified with a great screen. The minimum configuration for a 2019 Mac Pro would be the 12 core version, after all we had 12 cores in 2010, and the memory runs at the intended high speed of 2933MHz, while the Turbo Boost speed of 4.4GHz is also faster. The base machine comes with only a paltry 256GB SSD, which would soon cause problems, I would regard the next step of a 1TB SSD as the minimum. As for the video card there is not much choice until the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16GB becomes available. The stock video card AMD Radeon Pro W580X 8GB has only 2 HDMI ports and is lower specified than the Vega card in the iMac Pro. Unfortunately the the current next step is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32GB, costing an extra £2,160. For me, a worthwhile and expandable 2019 Mac Pro would have a starting price of about £7,500 for the 3.3GHz 12 core, 1TB SSD, 32GB Ram and currently unavailable AMD 5700X.

Of course, as stated this is only a starting point. There would have to be other additions to make a Mac Pro worthwhile. Firstly I would purchase an additional 64GB Ram Memory from OWC at $400 (less than half the price Apple charges) to make 96GB total. It also may be worth keeping in mind that Mac Pro’s seem to prefer all the memory to be of the same size, so it might be worthwhile chucking the Apple memory and installing 32GB or larger modules, especially if you want to get nearer to the previously unheard of 1TB limit. Apparently it is also relatively easy to upgrade the processor, Intel sell the 28 core Xeon W-3275 for about £3,500.

A total of 8 PCI Express Gen 3 slots are available in the 2019 Mac Pro

Next on the list is internal storage, and here we have seen a real revolution. While processor speeds have not greatly increased in 10 years, access to data is now 50 times faster in real world terms. To put this in perspective the read rate of a good SATA hard disk in 2010 was 120 MB/s, now with NVMe SSD’s in a fast PCIe slot, read speeds are at 6,000 MB/s or more. Wow. This can be accomplished with 16 lane PCIe cards like the OWC Accelsior 4M2 or Sonnet M.2 4×4, which use up to 4 NVMe modules in a RAID 0 configuration. They are available in sizes up to 8TB, from £500 upwards, but keep in mind that Apple does not recommend installing the startup system on a RAID drive. If that all sounds a bit much, then simple 4 lane PCIe NVMe cards are available for only £25 with a fast M2 drive (from £100 for 1TB) which will give you 1500 MB/s, at least three times faster than the best SATA SSD. However in this case make sure you use a heatsink, NVMe modules can run very hot. For reference, the speed of the 2019 Mac Pro internal NVMe SSD is roughly 3000 MB/s, the same as in a recent iMac and MacBook Pro. If speed is not a necessity then you can still install good old hard disks, now available as large as 14TB and filled with helium, using a Promise Pegasus storage enclosure for the 2019 Mac Pro.

After all that wishful thinking where money grows on trees, back in the land of taxes and insurance, I am here with my 2010 Mac Pro and will be for some time. The good news is that the release of the 2019 Mac Pro has in fact extended the life of my 2010 machine, since all the new PCIe cards mentioned above can be installed in my old warhorse. In addition, the development by Apple for this new machine led to important improvements in  firmware for all PCIe Macs. Finalised in OSX Mojave, Boot Rom 144.0 allows for the use of bootable NVMe disks on these types of computers. So yes, I have a Samsung Evo Plus SSD (latest firmware) running at 1500 MB/s as my startup disk. In order to install Mojave I had already purchased the AMD Radeon Pro RX 580 8GB video card, as used in the stock 2019 machine. A new Sonnet Allegro Pro PCIe card gives me USB-C 3.1 speeds for external drives and accessories. Meanwhile RAM for this old machine is now dirt cheap, so I have 96GB, which cost half as much as the 24GB I installed in 2011. Performance wise, the single core performance of my dual 3.46GHz Xeon X5690 processors is now relatively poor, but as a 12 core machine the multi core result (Geekbench 5: 6954) is close enough to the base model Mac Pro 2019 (Geekbench 5: 7929) for me to use it happily for many years to come. Of course the next step will be to invest in one of the 16 lane PCIe M2 RAID 0 cards. Where’s that money tree?

Update 20 February 2020: 
Apple Mac Pro Technology Overview PDF

Warning ! Do Not Install Catalina, the new system software from Apple. Go to System Preferences / Software Update (if using Mojave, other systems may differ) and switch updates off, especially macOS updates.

• The new macOS Catalina (10.15) will break old 32 bit software, which you are using now.
• It is very hard, if not impossible, to go back to an older system.
• If you use iTunes it’s gone, the newer version called Music will be different and designed to promote Apple Music. Most DJ software no longer works.
• Old format videos will no longer play.
• If you sync your phone to your computer, prepare for everything to change – again.
• Your MacOS will now be on a Read-Only system partition. A lot of non Apple apps will have problems because of this.

There are many other changes, the only current benefit will be full compatibility with iOS 13.2 (already patched twice in a week) and new apps like Sidecar.

If you only ever use Apple Apps or have a new computer, think about upgrading to Catalina in a month or two, when it has settled down. Otherwise do not update until you are fully aware of all the changes.

The current system Mojave 10.14.6 works well on most computers made since 2013.

Catalina beta testers said:
• I continue to be stunned by Apple’s failure to significantly announce to its millions of users that lots of their software will simply stop working if/when they “upgrade” to Catalina.
• The new security features are incredibly annoying. Apps are constantly asking for permission to see various folders.
• This is the first OS X version I won’t upgrade until I’m forced to.
• Apple’s documentation says “Beginning in macOS 10.15, notarization is required by default for all software.”
• Ars Technica says give Apple a couple of months to patch Catalina before you install it.

FYI – just my opinion !

Update 12 November 2019
Following lengthy discussions on MacInTouch due to Apple Installers now having out of date security certificates and the disappearance of important software, this is where you can find the hidden Mojave installer on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

If you find an Apple software installer giving you the misleading information that it is “damaged and can’t be used”, try this solution: Reset the date on your computer to 2016 after quitting all apps. Install the software as usual and reset the date back to normal as soon as possible.

The version linked to above is now working, but last week it was not. Apple have not changed either the version number 14.6.06 or the creation date 19 September 2019, yet I now have 2 apparently identical Apple installers for Mojave of different sizes (the slightly larger one at 6,051,048,165 bytes is the new one). One of them works, the other is “damaged and can’t be used to install macOS”. Shameful – and not even true!

Update 29th May 2020
With the latest Security Update 2020-003 Apple is making it harder not to update to Catalina. I now recommend turning off all updates in System Preferences / Software Update. If you are running Mojave 10.14.6 do not keep your Mac up to date!

If you are careful you can apply security and other updates manually. However a safer way of doing this is to use SilentKnight or LockRattler.

This is making life much tougher for Mac Administrators, since it is easy to upgrade accidentally. Apple must be getting desperate, as we have to put up with more nagware without any opt-out. We are losing control of our computers and I find their attitude unnecessary and abusive. This is Apple being hostile to their own users, never a good strategy.

In addition, the latest update to Catalina has a nasty bug which prevents making a bootable backup disk. Remember you cannot easily revert to a previous system, or even update, yet updates with bugs are being forced upon us..

For more information and a list of installers try this Diskmaker X page.
Meanwhile here is a revised list of previous system installers, now hidden in the App Store:

Get macOS Mojave 10.14

Get macOS High Sierra 10.13

Get macOS Sierra 10.12

PS Download installers with Safari browser. These installers are still not reliable and often spawn random errors. Keep trying!

Update 27th October 2020
Well I hope you followed my advice, since Apple are now issuing rogue MRT files which are supposed to protect your computer. These are “invisible” files and are not supposed to affect your own usage, just protect you. However MRT 1.68 has caused serious damage and has been withdrawn, but you cannot replace it.

In addition the last security update 2020-005 caused serious issues for many users, it was also withdrawn and replaced with an update with the same name, so who knows where you are! Apple as usual refuses to comment on any of these issues.

Meanwhile to quote Ric Ford of MacInTouch:
Apple is now secretly hiding its phone-home connections from firewall software, which is completely and totally unacceptable and will cause some customers and partners to abandon the Mac platform.

David Dudok de Wit says starting with macOS Big Sur, users can’t:

1. View a full, uncensored list of apps trying to access the Internet on their Mac — as Apple is hiding 56 of its own apps.
2. Know how much data these Apple apps upload or download.
3. Know which domains or IP adresses these Apple apps interact with.
4. Block or allow traffic from these Apple apps.

Security by obscurity is not a thing, never has been.

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As of 2017 Apple now sells 23 different dongles, that’s more than this:

Buy them all for only £700 !

 So after 15 years MacOS is back
Marketing don’t ya love it

The 1984 Mac OS became OS X in 2001
In 2016 it will become macOS with the release of Sierra

Yes I found this 1.13 Petabyte file while repairing an iMac
There had been backup problems….

A Petabyte is 10¹⁵ (1000000000000000) or a thousand billion bytes to you and me.
If this data were mp3 files it could playback for over 2000 years…

Did not have more than a million gigabyte drives spare, so took alternative action.

After some grief, the disk was repaired and the data (c.250mb) recovered.