Apple

New MacBook Air 15-inch I recently decided to buy one of the new 15" MacBook Air M2 models announced at WWDC this year. Nothing was wrong with my M1 MacBook Air aside from the fact that I’ve always wanted a bigger screen and more RAM. The 15-inch MacBook Air delivers on both fronts with its larger screen. But, only being able to put 24 GB of RAM in the MacBook Air 15-inch shows Apple is scared of a solid Air model cannibalizing the MacBook Pro line....

Screensavers, you say? They’re more art than function these days. But, why not inject something either beautiful or useful into this mundane task of screen locking. Yes, it would be best if you still were locking your screen unless you want your four-year-old Slack messaging your co-workers. I have used a hot corner to the lower left to start my screen saver, locking the screen after a few seconds (if I accidentally trigger it)....

Since the release of Apple’s iOS 9, iPhone and iPad owners are able to install content blockers. These content blockers are often referred to as ad blockers. Providing content blocking functionality through third party apps is a reasonable request. Apple has had this functionality in iOS since 16 September 2015. As a user of content blockers on the desktop, I jumped at the opportunity to install one on my mobile devices....

On June 1, 2016, Microsoft released an update to it’s Remote Desktop client for Mac OS X via the Mac App Store. The update to version 8.0.32 broke some functionality for people. The most commonly reported error I have seen is “Connection reset to peer” before authentication. Sadly, unless you have a Time Machine backup to grab the old version from you are likely going to have to find an alternative....

I happen to be someone that finds themselves setting up new systems for myself often. I have to remind myself there are tools that I need installed before the scenario in which I need to use them (on an airplane, during a crisis, etc.). I use a Mac so this list of software and setup is going to be very Mac OS X centric. From the web: Google Chrome Evernote - My brain lives here Google Drive - I keep some ....

Like a lot of systems folks I use sed, a lot. It is probably an unhealthy amount of sed use but so be it. I operate on a lot of Linux servers but my desktop environment of choice is Mac OS X which means BSD tools (not the Linux-y GNU tools). The differences are relatively subtle between BSD sed and GNU sed. However, most of my work is done through iTerm (a literal black box)....

Apple has introduced a new security feature in Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11) called System Integrity Protection (sometimes referred to as rootless). What is System Integrity Protection? According to Apple’s documentation: A new security policy that applies to every running process, including privileged code and code that runs out of the sandbox. The policy extends additional protections to components on disk and at run-time, only allowing system binaries to be modified by the system installer and software updates....

I had some Apple Keychain issues after upgrading to Mac OS X El Capitan yesterday. Apple provided a reasonable resolution (blow away the login Apple Keychain and re-create it). As it turns out, my issues weren’t limited to just the El Capitan upgrade. The Juniper Networks’ VPN client, Junos Pulse, has some pretty awful issues. The behavior went something like this: Save a password for a VPN connection in Junos Pulse VPN client The first use of the VPN connection will be fine Disconnect VPN connection Close Junos Pulse VPN client Open VPN client Attempt to connect to recently created VPN (with saved password) All hell breaks loose; Apple Keychain issues galore....