MacOS sometimes leaks traffic after system updates

> 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 ).

> 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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

I don't get why people still spread the lie that you have to tinker with Linux. Like right now, I can give you a laptop with a clean Linux Mint install, and you never have to touch the terminal for anything system config to do work.

Seriously, its not that hard to say that you prefer MacOS because you like the feel of it. It does a lot of handholding for you, unlike Linux, which makes it way less likely for you to mess something up. You don't have to go the extra lengths to justify it lol.

I’ll put this out there, currently there’s no better platform than macOS on apple silicon for developing ai systems.

I’m not a stranger to Linux or the command line. I own, use, configure servers as part of my business, including the dreaded on metal cuda install. In fact, the terminal integration in macOS is one of the biggest things over windows for me.

But, every time I try linux desktop, for the past 20 years, it’s been a horrible time sink and has driven home the point that building a competent and most importantly consistent gui based os is harder than everyone gives it credit for.

I stopped using Linux mint after installing it on my desktop and having the screen saver require a hard reboot -sometimes- when trying to wake.