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MacOS sometimes leaks traffic after system updates

(mullvad.net)
400 points dulvui | 3 comments | 16 Oct 24 08:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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freedomben ◴[16 Oct 24 14:44 UTC] No.41859646[source]▶
If you've been on a MacBook since 2011 or 2012, it's definitely time to give modern Linux a try. It has come in enormously long way since then. I am not exaggerating when I say, I have a better out of the box experience with Fedora. Then I do with Mac OS. Mac OS certainly has a lot of features, and visually has a great deal of Polish, but it also increasingly has a lot of bugs.
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vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 15:01 UTC] No.41859868[source]▶
I try every couple years. I tried KDE on Fedora last time (I hate gnome since 3) and could still crash various KDE apps with drag-n-drop operations—I’d trained myself never to use those outside narrow situations on Windows and Linux years ago because they usually broke things or did something stupid, but am now accustomed to them both working and doing something reasonable, so I spot those issues in a hurry when I use other environments now, and no longer accept that as just the way things are. Among other jank and poor stability, that’s just an example.

IIRC making caps another control anywhere I was logged in—not just in KDE—was weirdly hard, too.

Five or six years ago my Ubuntu tv-attached old desktop forgot how to decrypt the root disk its own installer had encrypted, after an OS upgrade.

My Debian server required manual intervention (busting out my rusty Gentoo chroot grub-installing skills) to install its bootloader. The manual version went the same aa usual and had no problems so no clue WTF the installer was trying to do, but it consistently failed, and this was boring, old business-class Lenovo workstation hardware. That was four or five years ago.

Basically when I try to go back I’m missing lots of features and it’s less stable than what I’m now accustomed to, so end up wasting a bunch of time and regretting it.

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aunty_helen ◴[16 Oct 24 15:41 UTC] No.41860382[source]▶
Hard in this camp too. The OS tinkering that is as requirement of Linux racks up a massive time investment. When you use your computer for work, that bill gets big quick and sometimes it's an inconvenience you just can't afford.

MacOS, for all it's faults, can be tamed with little snitch and a slower update cycle, and then you have a relatively solid system. There's still some things to hate, like when I take my airpods out if I accidentally click one of the buttons Apple Music opens (no one wants to use Apple Music, ever). But, that little frustraition pales in comparison to the build your own experience a poweruser in Linux faces on a weekly basis.

This randomly came front of mind last night when I thought, I can't remember the last time something broke on my laptop. It's been literal months since I've had anything weird or unwanted that I've _had_ to deal with. Contrast that to the last time I tried to daily Linux, about 2 years ago when I bought a framework and couldn't even log in due to trackpad issues, sleep / hibernate issues, screen resizing issues, issues issues issues.

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1. consteval ◴[16 Oct 24 18:36 UTC] No.41862252[source]▶
The reason you have to tinker with MacOS and not Linux is because you're fine with how MaxOS is set up. So you waste your time in Linux getting it to behave like MacOS.

Obviously if you go into it with the assumption MacOS is correct and the more like MacOS you are, the better, then Linux distros will fail horribly.

People do this with Windows, too. If you go into it expecting Windows-isms you're gonna be very disappointed. And such "isms" aren't actually good at all - usually they suck. But because you already know them, they aren't "isms" anymore, they're now expectations.

If you go back to the very first few times you used MacOS (or OSX at the time), you'll realize there was a lot of shit that surprised you. You adapted, and in some cases have actually come to PREFER functionality that sucks. And now you expect it, and that's the problem.

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2. aunty_helen ◴[16 Oct 24 19:07 UTC] No.41862647[source]▶
I had macos forced on me when I joined a company writing forex software. You’re right, it sucked learning all the different keyboard shortcuts, learning to use an extra modifier key (now one of my favorite things) and just little things like double clicking a file renames it :/

I thought it was crazy using the butter knife (from the meme) to write serious software. Previously I was a windows admin at a 500 computer site and dealt with Microsoft, debugging issues in their kernel. Throughout this time I’ve also use Linux extensively from Ubuntu when it came with pc mags to raspberry pi home security projects to servers and boxes. I even compiled gentoo one time for fun.

I have enough experience to know the differences between all of the operating systems from ‘95 through to 22.04LTS. No, macOS can’t be beaten for desktop experience, except for gaming which is now starting to come around also.

Happy to die on this hill.

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3. vundercind ◴[16 Oct 24 20:07 UTC] No.41863285[source]▶
The modifier key choice is (among popular solutions) simply correct. I had twoish decades of Windows/Linux shortcuts in my head so it took a few months to get comfortable with a Mac keyboard, but it’s simply better. The cmd key location is excellent, you can feel how much less strain there is in your hand hitting cmd+c vs ctrl-c, and your fingers aren’t pulled away from the home row. Between that and not conflicting with terminal signal shortcuts, it’s the right way to do it (among common choices, anyway—I’m sure someone out there has some custom solution that’s better).

It’s weirdly hard to get Linux to use that keyboard layout and shortcut set, which is a shame. There’s demand for it, and some attempts to make it happen, but it must be really tough to achieve.

Their default English layout is also easily the best of the major options I’ve seen, as far as simply typing English-language text goes. I don’t get why other platforms don’t clone it and use it for their default. No way it can be covered by patents, I think it’s been mostly the same since before OSX. Linux has one alternative layout that’s close to as good, but never seems to be the default English keyboard, for some reason—you have to know you want it.