by fossislife on 10/25/21, 5:39 PM with 628 comments
by crawrey on 10/26/21, 6:28 AM
After panicking, the 3rd Apple Support Representative and I endeavoured to try and reset the System Management Controller (SMC) [1] once again. At this point I had realised that the first few times that I tried this with a previous support representative would not have worked, as I was holding shift on the left-hand side of the keyboard (the previous support representative did not specify) and not the right-hand side as outlined in the support article for Macs with the T2 chip.
Good luck!
by MrWiffles on 10/25/21, 10:26 PM
Is there any application forced sandboxing feature yet?
Something users can control to forcibly stop bad behavior from certain “must have” apps. Chrome, for example, has been caught doing entire drive scans on Windows, and I’m not sure I entirely trust Zoom either. So I’d like to lock down what they can access in terms of files, paths, devices and so on and be fully confident that even if my employer demands I run some software installer provided by their “partners” that it hasn’t installed some creepy daemon and configured launchd to keep it running after I kill the app or even kill -9 the process.
Yes we can use VMs for this, but Mac laptops aren’t generally beefy machines, so that’s not an optimal solution.
There used to be sandbox_exec, but I’ve heard they removed it entirely from this version. We’re now supposed to get things from the (cr)App Store, which guarantees the app will only have entitlements that Apple approves. But vendors are abandoning the App Store in droves for many good reasons, and after recent events I don’t totally trust Apple to prevent malicious use piggybacking on top of a legit entitlement.
by concinds on 10/25/21, 9:46 PM
Also, Safari has a bug that ignores your setting to not reopen non-private windows, and reopens them anyway, so if that's important to you, you may want to temporarily switch to another browser.
And yes, it still has the "occasionally laggy trackpad cursor" bug on M1 for me.
But other than that, it seems quite a bit faster than Big Sur, and so far (past 2 weeks), very stable on the core stuff.
by Waterluvian on 10/25/21, 9:45 PM
But what I ran into that I LOVE is making EVERY app full-screen, pretending there is no desktop or window management, and just swiping right/left among them.
I wish there was a way to smooth out the UX so that this feels first-class and I stop accidentally breaking this illusion at times.
by EamonnMR on 10/25/21, 10:39 PM
by ehakan on 10/25/21, 9:43 PM
I've been dealing with `kernel_task` hitting 900% CPU usage and the entire window server running at 2 FPS when using external monitors since I got the mbp 16" a year ago. Good riddance.
[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an...
by ksec on 10/25/21, 8:55 PM
Big Sur on M1 was fine ( if not great ), mostly because M1 is extremely fast. But Big Sir on x86 was slow, really slow. I am in the group that reported Big Sur was slower than Catalina, and Catalina was slower than Mojave. That is with both the OS itself and Safari. So Big Sur was not a smooth experience for me.
Monterey so far brings back the speed / snappiness of Mojave. Safari feels so much more responsive under normal use and under heavy tab usage. Lots micro-pause ( Jank ) and lag are gone. As if they put back all the optimisation for x86 previously left out.
Far less Kernel_Task CPU usage and stupid disk write for whatever reason. My guess this is mostly a Safari problem given they have implemented Tab Groups they have at least taken into account of heavy tab usage in mind. This is also apparent when they fix the long standing Tab Overview bug, where it will load ( and reload ) every single Tabs you have trying to generate thumbnail. Imagine you accidentally press the Tab Overview button in the tool bar, or three finger swap in Safari when you have hundreds of tabs. You will instantly get a few hundreds GB of Disk Write paging trying load everything. It is literally a feature that kills your SSD. I have reported this bug for over three years, it is finally fixed. Cloudd and Bookmark / History / Tab Sync pause / Jank is still not fix though. That is 3 years+ and counting.
Still wish they do a list of tabs like Chrome instead of Thumbnails when it is over certain Tabs Number. It is easier to track when you have lots of Tabs. Easier to do Manual Garbage Collection of Tabs.
Bug that causes IINA to crash when viewing video in portrait mode is gone. One of the biggest complain when updating to Big Sur.
WindowsServer also uses far less CPU. It used to hover over 30% for no apparent reason. Now it is back to a normal 5-15% in most cases.
Safari "classic" tabs are back. Along with a very long list of webkit improvement. Far from perfect but at least things are moving.
I am also feeling Apps that are using Swift and SwiftUI are snappier than before and uses less memory. An observation mostly from using Stocks App.
Many other minor details, may be worth reading Ars' review [1]. It is solid release, which along with M1 MacBook Pro sadly dampens my motivation to move away from Apple.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/macos-12-monterey-th...
by dkdk8283 on 10/25/21, 8:38 PM
by kitsunesoba on 10/25/21, 9:30 PM
For me at least it's much better than the implementation Chrome has gone for which tries to shoehorn groups into an already overburdened tab bar.
by moooo99 on 10/25/21, 8:51 PM
Edit: Apparently some features are indeed M1 only. Those features are
- portrait mode in FaceTime
- apparently the new Apple Maps design
- the interactive globe
Seems like the most important features (for me it's livetext) are available on both architectures.
by joconde on 10/25/21, 9:16 PM
Have there been expert opinions about how private this is? I understand they built a Tor-light, by hopping through one Apple server, then one external server, with some sort of anonymisation between the two?
by RussianCow on 10/25/21, 8:17 PM
by paxys on 10/25/21, 9:36 PM
by systemvoltage on 10/25/21, 9:59 PM
by awestroke on 10/25/21, 8:08 PM
by mrgalaxy on 10/25/21, 7:45 PM
Ironically I just upgraded to Big Sur yesterday from Catalina. I think I'll probably wait again to let 3rd-party apps catch up.
by smasher164 on 10/26/21, 4:04 AM
by hajile on 10/25/21, 8:30 PM
by beermonster on 10/25/21, 9:28 PM
by joshka on 10/25/21, 8:09 PM
by 8fingerlouie on 10/27/21, 8:49 AM
With the recent years push to store "everything in the cloud", macOS sorely needs a way to backup cloud content. Currently the only way to do so, is to create a "server" machine that pulls everything from the cloud and stores it locally, which you can then backup.
Since most modern computers are sold with harddrives size equivalent of a USB Stick, and cloud storage is typically 2-10 times larger, this means you need to add even more hardware just to hold the data you just want to backup.
Considering that Apple is pretty vague with regards to exactly how protected your iCloud data is, and they themselves strongly recommend that you backup your iCloud data, i find it an odd omision that the only way to do it is part manual process, part synchronize stuff locally before backing it up.
All it would take (on the UI end) was an option in Time Machine to include "mac optimized storage". Third party support gets a bit more complicated. Where Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox all use placeholder files, iCloud placeholders apparently only exists inside "Finder", so most third party backup software won't be able to see these files.
by kappuchino on 10/26/21, 9:48 AM
by sam_goody on 10/25/21, 10:54 PM
In the next major update (High Sierra), Apple switched to APFS, which has issues with Fusion drives.
It often shows as having no empty space, even with 40% empty.
Much, much worse, it stops writing to disk without giving any indication (the non written items show in finder, etc.) - for some ten hours or more - and then suddenly crashes and you find that the entire days worth of work is completely gone. Not on disk, not on external backup, not in Time Machine.
This happens EVERY DAY, at least once a day, when using heavy programs such as Photoshop.
There are many threads about the issue, and the only solution is to get a new non-Fusion drive and copy over everything. Much easier said than done.
I cannot even begin to describe how much aggravation Apple has caused, and how little faith I have in them testing their upgrades.
And of course, the whole play with searching my hard drive for something their algorithm thinks goes against my local government [which plays for keeps, thank you] - doesn't help.
by aserdf on 10/25/21, 7:48 PM
by renewiltord on 10/25/21, 7:55 PM
by sneak on 10/26/21, 7:58 AM
I'm not really sure what this says about macOS product management decisions, but I don't think it's a good thing.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/10/fucking-apple-4/
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/10/can-light-gray-text-on-ligh...
by markdown on 10/25/21, 9:02 PM
by Apocryphon on 10/25/21, 9:08 PM
by hank_z on 10/26/21, 10:06 AM
Has Anyone found a solution yet?
by TerNerss on 10/26/21, 11:38 AM
1) Downloaded Monterey update. In the end appeared error message that some package with strange name can't be unpacked
2) Downloaded Big Sur 1.16.1 update, because information about Monterey disappeared and there were not any button to install new OS.
3) System was automatically rebooted after 2), started update screen in few minutes and macbook completely turned off with no signs of power.
Resseting SMC, NVRAM didn't help. Battery was 73% when started updates.
by wffurr on 10/25/21, 11:18 PM
That's been making me crazy for the last few macOS releases.
by xyst on 10/26/21, 11:43 AM
(this is roughly $28K by the way)
by nitins_jakta on 10/26/21, 6:12 AM
It causes a minority of people eyestrain, vertigo and migraines. See LEDstrain.org.
by spurgu on 10/28/21, 1:54 PM
by megablast on 10/25/21, 11:30 PM
by 5ersi on 10/26/21, 9:54 AM
So that's a big improvement in my book.
by jabl on 10/26/21, 7:02 AM
Yes, it was deprecated ages ago in favor of Metal, but Apple still shipped an OpenGL implementation. However, I read some rumors that in Monterey they have finally ripped it out.
Can anyone confirm or deny?
by eweise on 10/26/21, 3:47 AM
by subset on 10/26/21, 4:57 AM
by beders on 10/25/21, 9:43 PM
With the advances in AI and the ridiculous compute power of modern CPUs, we should be able to have OSs that are Digital Assistants.
Just one example:
- file management: Why even? Why expose most regular users to this metaphor in the first place. Mobile OSs have been rather successful in getting rid of this implementation detail. If I write a lot of documents and need to come up with names for them, I expect that to be sufficient. My Assistant will sort/group/maintain them for me and if I want to open the "status report to vendor X from last week", then that should be enough. Make sure my documents are safely stored, encrypted and all that jazz. Don't make me pick between "iCloud" or "OneDrive" or "C:\" or "Document" or "Desktop". Index all the content I'm producing semantically. Just DoWhatIMean? (tm) Have this be consistent throughout the applications I'm using - including web apps. (And why even make that distinction. Who here doesn't have relatives who have trouble understanding the differences between locally installed applications, apps on their phone and web apps in the browser?)
Regular users are consistently struggling with low-level concepts like 'files' and similar remnants of trying to emulate desktop metaphors from the workplaces of the 80ies.
"Do you want to change the extension to .doc or change it to .txt"? What?!? "Do you want to overwrite file "xyz.xls"? Overwriting sounds bad, what happens if I say no though?
That is just the tip of the iceberg where we are somehow tied to ideas of HCI that are rooted in the 70s/80s.
I do appreciate being able to tell my phone "Set a timer for 10 minutes", but where is "Plan a trip to Dallas for next week Friday" - and the Digital Assistant knowing exactly what to do (since that ain't its first rodeo)?
by moretti on 10/26/21, 2:04 AM
by rpmisms on 10/26/21, 12:33 AM
by vletal on 10/26/21, 6:34 AM
Is none at Apple actually using FaceTime? I remember seeing group FaceTime for the first time approx a year ago. It looked like a 90' screen saver. I was completely astonished. Like 10 years ago was late for this kind of update.
by snug on 10/25/21, 9:26 PM
by Synaesthesia on 10/26/21, 5:25 AM
by louissm_it on 10/26/21, 7:40 AM
by soheil on 10/26/21, 12:24 AM
by elSidCampeador on 10/26/21, 5:15 AM
by TameAntelope on 10/25/21, 9:28 PM
by endisneigh on 10/25/21, 10:05 PM
Is this a hardware or software limitation?
by bowmessage on 10/25/21, 9:38 PM
by smoldesu on 10/25/21, 7:42 PM
by NaN1352 on 10/25/21, 7:51 PM
They’ve got it completely backwards.
by henvic on 10/25/21, 7:47 PM
by lghh on 10/25/21, 7:50 PM
by baby on 10/26/21, 4:26 AM
by evanmoran on 10/25/21, 8:04 PM
by psychometry on 10/25/21, 7:53 PM
I'm not really sure what I'd want out of a new MacOS, though. It's been stable and (for my purposes) feature-complete for many years now. I don't remember the last time a MacOS upgrade added a feature I wanted but didn't yet have, nor the last time they added a feature I didn't realize I wanted because I'd never imagined it. The latter used to be what made Apple products stand out to me.
by amelius on 10/25/21, 9:45 PM
by blondie9x on 10/25/21, 9:35 PM
by billiam on 10/25/21, 9:56 PM
by fnord123 on 10/25/21, 11:06 PM
Pretty sure this is illegal.
by Shadonototra on 10/25/21, 8:26 PM
it has native unix environment, is fast and efficient
by fleddr on 10/26/21, 12:33 AM
If you insist, we can do a 2 min review after the show. During the show, you stay quiet. Don't ask questions, I didn't see the show either. You're allowed a laugh, a silent tear or a brief "wow", keep deeper reflections on how the footage makes you feel to yourself.
When you watch, you pay full attention, or leave the room.
It would be factually incorrect to say "I must be fun at parties" due to a lack of data.
by IceWreck on 10/26/21, 5:03 AM
I have no interest in using your locked down operating systems. On the other hand, your M1 based hardware is excellent. Please open up your drivers so I can run Linux on it at full performance (instead of using reverse engineered drivers which will probably never reach the performance levels of the proprietary drivers).
Thank You