Apple Things
Productivity things
Launch applications and find files on your Mac or on the web. Alfred learns how you use your Mac and prioritises results.
More than an application launcher.
My most used Alfred things beyond launching apps/files:
* Clipboard history (screenshots on clipboard in the history is extra useful)
* Snippets using the date placeholders {datetime:short} for various file naming and email workflows
* Snippet shortcuts for things I always forget like the shortcut for → and ™ or my zoom meeting link that I paste into meeting invites
* Launching simple shell scripts by keyword
* Workflow for opening Jira tickets in my browser quickly
* Search notes workflow for quick access to everything in the Notes app
* Soulver workflow for using the Soulver engine in Alfred for doing quick calculations
I was a Quicksilver user that never quite got into Spotlight. I'm betting these days some of these workflows can be accomplished with Spotlight and other apps but Alfred has worked very nicely for me.
Control Plane
https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane
ControlPlane, a fork of MarcoPolo, brings context and location sensitive awareness to OS X. With ControlPlane you can intelligently reconfigure your Mac or perform any number of actions based on input from a wide variety of evidence sources including but not limited to available WiFi networks, current location, connected monitors, connected and nearby bluetooth devices, currently running apps and other configurable sources. You will find a full feature list at http://www.controlplaneapp.com/feature-list.
iCloud Quality of Life
Three small QoL tips for people who have issues with their iCloud sync
-
In Finder, enable the Status bar. This shows the current iCloud progress.
-
If iCloud sync is stuck, run
killall birdto restart the iCloud drive sync process. -
Disable
Optimized Mac Storagein the iCloud system preferences. This forces your mac to always upload and download files.
One thing I haven't figured out is how to see iCloud sync status without having to open Finder, e.g. for a custom menu bar item.
MacOS Quality of Life tips
- Add a “folder..noindex” to disable files in the folder from getting indexed
- Using the force touchpad on your Macbook to watch a preview of the website. (Click on the url)
- Hard to discover tips and apps for making macOS pleasant by Tristan Hume https://thume.ca/2020/09/04/macos-tips/
- Mouse keys -- as an anti-feature. (press option 5 times)
- Show hidden files (dotfiles) inside any finder window or file open dialog: Cmd + Shift + .
MacOS Gatekeeper
Gatekeeper and runtime protection in macOS
macOS offers the Gatekeeper technology and runtime protection to help ensure that only trusted software runs on a user’s Mac.
By default, Gatekeeper helps ensure that all downloaded software has been signed by the App Store or signed by a registered developer and notarised by Apple. Both the App Store review process and the notarisation pipeline are designed to ensure that apps contain no known malware. Therefore, by default all software in macOS is checked for known malicious content the first time it’s opened, regardless of how it arrived on the Mac.
System files, resources and the kernel are shielded from a user’s app space. All apps from the App Store are sandboxed to restrict access to data stored by other apps. If an app from the App Store needs to access data from another app, it can do so only by using the APIs and services provided by macOS.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sec5599b66df/web
https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_GB/apple-platform-security-guide-b.pdf
Credits
"Hard to discover tips and apps for making macOS pleasant" by Tristan Hume. https://thume.ca/
Dont update to Ventura if you care about diskspeed
The good
Why use exFAT in the first place? The most cited reason is that you have, or might someday have, a customer that's on Windows while you're on Mac, or vice versa.
True, it's the only filesystem that works on both Windows and macOS. Cross-platform compatibility is a really great feature - when done properly.
The downsides, however, are greater. Ejecting an exFAT drive without properly un-mounting it first can and will kill the partition table. 100% data loss guaranteed.
And there's more:
The bad
ExFAT is a lot slower than other file systems. Even with all of Hedge's new speed gains in place, there's still some overhead left. That's a lot of time lost for the sake of a potential Windows customer.
But what's going on with Ventura?
The Ugly
ExFAT has a major speed regression in macOS Ventura; Hedge performs about 40% less than on previous macOS releases, and it's worse for the other apps in the space - up to 60% speed loss. This is unfortunately something only Apple can fix, and we're in talks with them to find a solution.
If you need to use exFAT, don't update to Ventura.
The Best
The solution to all of this is simple: for your destinations, stay away from exFAT. It's best to use AFPS instead, and give your customers a Paragon for APFS license to use on Windows. Best way to spend $49, we'd say. It'll save you countless hours.
If your camera or recorder gives you the option to use a different file system besides exFAT, it's likely HFS+; Apple's old file system. That's perfectly fine too - Paragon has a driver for that as well. If it's NTFS, you're in the opposite situation, as it natively works on Windows but requires a Paragon driver on macOS.
https://blog.hedge.video/speed-2dot0/amp/
macOS Containers
Containers have fundamentally changed the way that modern software is developed and deployed. Containers are supported by a wide range of operating systems including FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux and even Windows, but are not natively supported by macOS. Until now.
We’re announcing initial 0.0.1 release of macOS native containers. Yes, you can now run macOS inside macOS, build images using Docker and distribute them using registries.
Installation is available via Homebrew.
Virtualbox Apple support
Installing macOS test builds
*The test builds are not going through Apple's notarization (would be too much effort to do this for every test build we upload). This means if you're using macOS 10.14.5 or later the kernel extensions will not load if you're using the default security settings. If you really want to use such a test build, you need to disable System Integrity Protection (as long as you're running test builds, we're strongly encouraging you to re-enable SIP once you're back to using an official release of VirtualBox).
The test builds for macOS/ARM64 work in principle on Macs with M1 or M2 CPU. However, they are developer previews with known issues (including serious performance ones) with all recent guest operating systems.
Flaky support
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds
SilentKnight, silnite, LockRattler, SystHist & Scrub
First a big shoutout to: The Eclectic Light Company https://eclecticlight.co/
SilentKnight – fully automatic checks of firmware and security systems
LockRattler – a quick check of your security systems
Scrub – cleans folders and volumes of potentially leaking sensitive data
Downloads are available at: https://eclecticlight.co/lockrattler-systhist/