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MacOS sometimes leaks traffic after system updates

(mullvad.net)
400 points dulvui | 13 comments | 16 Oct 24 08:37 UTC | HN request time: 1.025s | source | bottom
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thisislife2 ◴[16 Oct 24 11:58 UTC] No.41858057[source]▶
> In this scenario the macOS firewall does not seem to function correctly and is disregarding firewall rules ... Some examples of apps that do this are Apple’s own apps and services since macOS 14.6, up until a recent 15.1 beta.

This is not new - every time I update macOS, some of the system settings are changed to default including some in the firewall. And I have to painstakingly go through all of it and change it. Also, the few times I've reinstalled or updated macOS, I've always noticed that it takes longer for the installation if your system has access to the internet - so now I've made it a practice to switch of the router while installing or updating macOS or ios. (With all the AI bullshit being integrated everywhere in Windows, macOS and Android etc., I expect this kind of "offloading" of personal data, and downloading of data, to / from AI servers to keep increasing, especially during updates, to "prepare" for the new AI features in the newer OS updates. No internet means the installer is forced to skip it for later, saving you some valuable time, and hopefully you get to change the default setting before it starts up again. Whatever the claims of AI processing done on the Mac or iDevices itself, some "offloading" to their servers, will still happen, especially if the default settings - which you can change only after the OS is installed - also enables analytics and data collection.)

(More here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26418809 and on this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26303946 ).

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hypeatei ◴[16 Oct 24 12:34 UTC] No.41858347[source]▶
> I've made it a practice to switch of the router while installing or updating macOS or ios.

Why are you still using those OSes? That seems like a lot of work for something you paid for.

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vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 13:56 UTC] No.41859079[source]▶
Because all operating systems are terrible but the rest are so incredibly bad that Apple’s are still by far the best, once you add up time saved by features and capabilities and subtract time lost to pain-in-the-ass brokenness.

(Two decades on DOS/Windows home series and NT, at least for gaming and sometimes work, twelve years with Linux as my main desktop OS, started on Android for smartphones, before finally giving Apple a fair chance around 2011 or 2012… because I was issued a MacBook at work and was doing dual-platform mobile dev—FWIW I was rooting for BeOS back when it was still a thing, it was great)

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1. MichaelZuo ◴[16 Oct 24 14:18 UTC] No.41859280[source]▶
The real question is why is every other company with a consumer OS even more incompetent and/or malicious?
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2. idunnoman1222 ◴[16 Oct 24 14:24 UTC] No.41859372[source]▶
“ Every other company “
3. fsflover ◴[16 Oct 24 14:29 UTC] No.41859448[source]▶
What's incompetent about Linux? Have you tried to buy preinstalled?
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4. MichaelZuo ◴[16 Oct 24 14:32 UTC] No.41859484[source]▶
Have you ever tried to compare something like Ubuntu or RHEL on a per feature per function basis with Mac OS?

There are literally thousands of possible combinations of accessibility features alone, that are vastly more difficult to impossible to access. Or simply don’t exist in any form. Once you add in all the default apps and functions of Mac OS, there’s likely millions of possible combinations that would take a fortune in time and effort and knowledge to replicate maybe a quarter of, on a hypothetical laptop installed with Linux.

Not to mention many peripheral manufacturers for many of their product lines simply don’t officially support any version of Linux released in the past few years.

Edit: Of course 99% of these combinations are irrelevant to any particular individual, but they are all relevant to at least a few small groups.

Linux promoters don’t seem to understand that alienating a few thousand users each time is a big deal if that alienation process happens thousands of times…

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5. justin66 ◴[16 Oct 24 14:57 UTC] No.41859833[source]▶
Power management.
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6. talldayo ◴[16 Oct 24 15:11 UTC] No.41860012{3}[source]▶
> Have you ever tried to compare something like Ubuntu or RHEL on a per feature per function basis with Mac OS?

Yes? Why would people recommend it as an alternative otherwise?

I used MacOS for 5 years, left after Mojave and came back when an employer made me support MacOS. The current software experience on Mac is genuinely insufferable. Advertisements in your news, notifications begging you to try Safari, zero support for common and Open Source filesystems, constantly broken software packaging, zero useful APIs (what am I supposed to do with Metal???) and a $99/year tax to compensate for the displeasure of supporting developers. You really want to argue Apple cares about you?

As a software developer, what pushed me over the edge was Docker. It runs absolutely terrible on MacOS, consumes resources/battery and makes your CPU hot as satan's taint. Native development is a nightmare on MacOS and you just have to settle with that if you want to defend it as your home. Don't even get me started on how bad Brew is.

> Not to mention many peripheral manufacturers for many of their product lines simply don’t officially support any version of Linux released in the past few years.

If your peripheral manufacturer can't support USB class compliance, they do not deserve money in the first place. I produce music on Linux and haven't ever had a MIDI device or DAC fail to register. It's a standard that even Apple isn't "courageous" enough to reject.

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7. vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 15:12 UTC] No.41860039{3}[source]▶
Windows is still bad at this, too, incredibly. Was initially issued a Lenovo Win10 machine at my current job, decided to give it a shot because I hadn’t used Windows for work in a long time, might have gotten better.

It was using 40% of its battery while “sleeping” over night, and even at full charge wouldn’t get me through a light work day on battery—not even close. Straight back to the battery-anxiety I hadn’t felt since back when I used Windows and Linux on laptops years and years ago. Plus the touchpad is still ass (sorry, never got any good at aiming with the track point, even though I used an IBM Thinkpad for years and years)

Luckily this place will issue a MacBook if you ask nicely. My god, that was a rough few weeks.

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8. justin66 ◴[16 Oct 24 15:22 UTC] No.41860165{4}[source]▶
> Windows is still bad at this, too, incredibly.

I couldn't agree more. And yet, Linux manages to be worse, since the "at least I can just hibernate" backup plan doesn't even work properly.

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9. vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 15:32 UTC] No.41860278{5}[source]▶
The only time I’ve ever seen Linux disk hibernation actually work about 100% of the time was on an IBM Thinkpad I used to have, and only if I did some arcane magic with a specially-sized-and-designated partition in just the right partition order, because that triggered something in the hardware that let it handle things directly.
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10. fsflover ◴[16 Oct 24 15:48 UTC] No.41860491{6}[source]▶
I saw people being happy with hibernation on Librem 14 (I use Qubes OS, which doesn't support it).
11. vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 15:53 UTC] No.41860569{4}[source]▶
Yeah Docker’s non-native and runs under a virtualized Linux everywhere but… on Linux, so that’s a little rough. I’ve found some of the alternative VM hosts for that to be a ton faster and more power efficient, as they make better use of MacOS’ built-in virtualization system, but YMMV. I’ve also found that Apple’s lead on power management is so great that I can be using a power-sucking thing like Docker and still come out ahead, which is really lame :-/

I hear that “Docker Desktop” is especially bad on MacOS, but I’ve used docker almost as long as it’s existed and still haven’t used that (I don’t really even know what the point of it is?) so dunno about that part.

12. airstrike ◴[16 Oct 24 16:56 UTC] No.41861267{4}[source]▶
> As a software developer, what pushed me over the edge was Docker. It runs absolutely terrible on MacOS, consumes resources/battery and makes your CPU hot as satan's taint.

Thanks for saying this. I own an M2 Max Macbook, which is my very first Macbook, and I tried Docker the other day only to find it was literally unplayable.

I then recalled running Docker forever ago on a much shittier Windows laptop and it was sort of a breeze? I was confused as to why I couldn't have the same experience now.

Thanks to you, at least I know this is unlikely to be a case of PEBKAC

13. westtan ◴[18 Oct 24 06:43 UTC] No.41876917{4}[source]▶
Many developers do encounter similar problems when using macOS, especially when developing and running tools like Docker. macOS's resource management and performance issues are often frustrating, especially when you need to do a lot of development work. In fact, you can use other tools instead of Docker instead of Linux. As far as I know, [Servbay](https://servbay.com) does a much better job than Docker on Mac.