macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Why don't they just dust off the iPod HiFi?

I mean, put an iPod with Siri on it and call it a day.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 23:18

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 12:09

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Waltzing Along posted:

I just installed Mojave and now I can't find a feature. I used to three finger swipe left to pull up the local weather and a couple other tools. Anyone know where this went?

Holky loving poo poo, I�m not the only one!!!

Are they sending the white van people to wrap us in comfy jackets and give us a nice padded room to stay in now?

And yes, I use Spaces too. (I miss X11R5)

# ¿ Sep 29, 2018 22:32

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Proteus Jones posted:

Since I can�t stand multiple monitors (except for reference/Stack Exchange when using PyCharm full screen on laptop), I make *extensive* use of Spaces. I�m more miffed that Total Spaces will no longer work, so I can�t stack them in a grid and swipe in arbitrary directions with wrap-around.

Now I�m sad to learn that Total Spaces existed in the first place...

# ¿ Sep 30, 2018 03:22

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Last Chance posted:

Mojave should upgrade Fusion Drives automatically upon upgrade. Did it not upgrade yours automatically?

I think there was a weird case where 3tb Fusion Drives were screwed up and won't allow an upgrade to Mojave if you have a Bootcamp partition, but other than that, I think it should be happening automatically.

In all fairness the 3Tb Fusion drives have had more problems than just that.

I feel lucky it didn�t all come unglued software wise during the 6 hour upgrade process.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2018 21:07

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Small White Dragon posted:

What other issues have there been? (That's what I have in my iMac.)

I had first and second gen 3T fusion drives and both have had very low level software issues. Basically the two drives becoming unglued at the driver level required a vacation at the fruit stand to get fixed. It�s not a regular occurrence but now that I type this I�m sure I will be taking it in within a week.

I think the most recent time one employee actually has a magic script on a usb stick that was able to pair them back up.

Of course restore from backup was required.

Maybe don�t use file vault on the 3T fusion is the answer, but I�m paranoid.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2018 17:20

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Clark Nova posted:

So what�s the best thing to do about ad blocking? I�m currently using ublock because I�m used to using it with chrome/firefox, but it comes with a �this will slow down your browser� warning, though it seems to run fine.

I�m strongly considering a PiHole

# ¿ Oct 18, 2018 03:23

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

FCKGW posted:

I'm using a PiHole, it's pretty nice.
You'll spend the first week or two running into weird issues with certain sites until you know what to whitelist though.
(For some reason the "add to cart" button on the Lowes website is completely broken with PiHole running )

What Pi did you put it on? Is the newest full size one with onboard wired Ethernet the way to go?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2018 04:55

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Jan posted:

Is anyone familiar enough with APFS to confirm this assessment?

The tl;dr is that my partner's work iMac shat itself while upgrading to Mojave. Since it's a fusion drive, that means this would be the update where it converts to APFS rather than High Sierra. Whatever went wrong (or right, in the case of APFS) split the CoreStorage group for the Fusion drive.

Here's the dumb part: The failsafe backup the Mac installed was El Capitan, which doesn't do APFS. Not realising this, I saw the drive didn't show any partitions in diskutil, so I created HFS+ ones in-place (to no avail). Nothing was written to the drive besides this.

I've imaged both the SSD and the HDD and hosed around with it a bit on a separate (Linux) box. Peeking at the data partitions, I can find what appears to be valid APFS block headers (NXSB marker, 4096 block size, followed by block count that matches the partition size). But mounting it gives me an empty filesystem.

Now, because the HFS+ drive was encrypted, I imagine the APFS it converted to would also be encrypted. However, it doesn't ask for decryption when mounting it--either because the GPT is off or because it created a clean APFS. Taking random slices of the actual drive data shows near perfect entropy, and scanning it for known file patterns is turning up zilch.

This forensics blog post seems to indicate that it's pretty much impossible to decrypt an APFS data without the matching volume encryption key, even with the passphrase.

Is there still a remote chance that an APFS partition could be recreated on top of the existing one to decrypt it? Even if the fusion group can't be recovered, that's still a good start--at this point, our main priority is to salvage some small (~5-20kB) files with a very predictable format.

e:

When I last had a mac of my own, Disk Utility showed some options to secure erase (1 time, 7 times, 20+ or so times) when formatting, is that no longer there?

e: vvvvvv
Fair point. When I had a Mac, SSDs were also not a thing yet.

I had something similar happen with a prior failed OS upgrade. It required a fruit stand technician to boot and run some secret scripts on to basically rebuild the Fusion drive stuff.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 00:28

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Pivo posted:

He's not just looking to rebuild the drive, he's looking to decrypt and potentially recover data from an encrypted APFS volume with a fubar partition table.

I would very much bet that without the volume key, it's completely a lost cause. But I can't say for certain.

Yeah, that�s not likely. If it�s a fusion drive it�s basically impossible.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 04:08

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Last Chance posted:

I upgraded a 2013 27" iMac with a Fusion Drive to Mojave and it runs like gangbusters. 32GB of upgraded RAM though

Same. The upgrade took like 4 hours but it runs great. I want 32Gb of ram in everything I use.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2018 06:10

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Small White Dragon posted:

On an unrelated topic for the 3 of you that might care, apparently Office is getting dark mode.

Yes!

Now if chrome can do it without extensions that mostly don�t work my life will be complete.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 05:06

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Nude posted:

Anyone know of the website that lists out all of osx/Activity Monitor processes and what they do? I swear this site existed.

Google?

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 06:38

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Bob Morales posted:

Add to cart button was hidden, couldn�t check out...

Yeah, I�ve had that happen too. Only on Safari(tm)

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 05:47

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

Is there still a way to turn off Spaces, and the behavior in which maximizing a window makes it full-screen in a new Space?

And here I am lamenting that its not a full X11 implementation.

Question: Big Sur: Too Soon?

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 07:08

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Ziploc posted:

All computers are bullshit.

Bad Mac, No Ram

# ¿ Dec 10, 2020 02:58

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Quackles posted:

I miss Charcoal, too.

Bring back window blinds.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2020 06:47

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 12:09

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Small White Dragon posted:

Wait, so you can't wipe/install the OS from a USB stick anymore? That's lame-sauce.

Do they make thunderbolt sticks? That would be pretty cool.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2020 05:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!