Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

Apple seems to do all kinds of weird networking _stuff_. For instance, during wakeup, your T2 equipped Macbook will wait for a DNS response and then use said DNS response to synchronize time via NTP before letting the user use the keyboard. Probably checking timestamps on signatures for the keyboard firmware, or something stupid like that. This only happens if it happens to have a default route.

Similarly, all macOS machines will test a DHCP supplied default route before applying it by trying to reach something on the internet. So if you happen to have some firewall rules that block internet access, no default route will be applied until the internet check times out.

I won't share the other sentiments about the above, but is it really that hard to document these behaviors?

Apple touted the T2 chip as the bee's knees in security. Now, we have a vulnerability that cannot be defended against. However, Apple went all in on the security of this T2 chip so that you cannot replace the SSD (besides the method to manufacture). I appreciate the desire at making a device difficult for a bad actor to get to your data, but they epicly failed and ultimately only made an user-hostile device. Oh, and the laptops with these chips also had the world's worst keyboard. Absolute trash.

Additionally charging on the left side ports makes the T2 chip overheat and crashes the machine on occasion.

REALLY?

Okay, I'm going to test this.

I noticed odd hangings and cpu hitting high temps on a MBP 2018' w/ dell usb C dock on left side, meanwhile right side is fine but I had to reboot randomly and sometimes it will just crash.

And this is a MBP on a laptop stand.

Docks on the left side, or similar devices which provide both power and send data, seem to be particularly problematic. On advice of my employer's IT department I went from "spinning up new VMs in VirtualBox reliably leads to thermal excess, CPU throttling, and total system shutdown" to a system that actually works -- just by moving the dock connection to the right side.

It's a little funny because the advice used to be you should use the left-side USB-C ports first because they were faster (both for data and charge, IIRC?)

On one of the older MacBookPros, the left hand USB port was USB3 while the one on the right hand side was USB2