My original shadowbox idea finally realized in all its glory!

Apple Mouse Shadowbox

This was actually the idea that started it all!  It took me a while to finally complete it.  I know that i am missing the serial mouse from the original Macintosh and 128.  Despite having one, i decided to keep my 128 with all its pieces.  Besides, i never touched one until after college.  The mice represented here had my hands all over them most of my life.  I am very happy with how it came out.

Status update:

Big Sur install on desktop

I’ve played with Big Sur, but i’ve had serious reservations about running it on one of my primary machines. Apple backpedaled a bit on some of their decisions and i decided i didn’t have enough problems in my life. So tonight i’m jumping in with both feet to see how it goes and what breaks.  This may turn out to be a huge mistake.  We’ll soon see.

big sur beach ball

Not off to a great start so far.  Upgrades beget upgrades.  After a few rounds of up updating my 3rd party software my system is humming even better than before.  Finder is still clunky and has a tendency to hang in the most annoying ways, but they’ve added a few new tricks and an updated look.  Am i the only one who misses the brushed metal phase of UI?

New security updates overtake jailbreak advantages.

There are just so many privilege escalation fixes in the latest iOS 12.2 update. I finally removed the jailbreak from my primary device and updated.  Privilege escalation is when an unprivileged or user process (like an app from the app store or even a web page*) gets root or even kernel authority.  This is when bad turns to worse because it can do and see anything with any of the device’s data or sensors.   Since even the big trusted apps have been caught tracking or stealing data, I simply couldn’t leave myself unprotected any longer.

I’ll still of course keep a development device jailbroken on 12.1.2 for all of the reasons. It was a wonderful experience, only slightly beta. I appreciate all the hard work by everyone in the scene. I think i am going hate seeing the home bar again the most.

* web pages are often sandboxed separately from the app itself. Some might argue that a webpage would first have to escape the sandbox before it could escalate privileges. this is true, but i would respond that sandbox escape is just another form of privilege escalation, only one level down. There are also over a dozen webkit fixes in this update.

Open source artisanal iOS Jailbreak released using only grass fed locally sourced exploits.

Cydia - Package management system for Jailbroken iOS.

A long time in the works, this is the first completely open source jailbreak to be released for an almost current version of iOS (11-12.1.2).  This is an interesting jailbreak.  It is semi-tethered, but unlike previous jailbreaks, this can at least be untethered from the device itself.  Using Cydia Impactor, you can side load the unc0ver app and install the jailbreak directly from the app.  it also allow the easy rejailbreak upon reboot or battery drain. Great work all around despite the remaining bugs and instability (it is still beta. Huge thanks to the efforts of @pwn20wnd and @sbingner).  To be honest, there are very few tweaks and apps that are ready for iOS 12, but i am excited to see the tradition of jailbreaking continue.  I have cydia again!  For the first tine since I closed down my own cydia repo.  C’mon developers, do you thing!

iOS jailbreak 12 unc0ver iOS 12 jailbreak -Cydia on iPad Pro
In truth, i never got it going on my phone, only my iPad.  I get a crash on my phone immediately after this dialogue comes up.  It took a few passes to get a picture (this one extracted from a screen record).  Not sure exactly what went wrong, but “Unexported kernel task port” is my best clue.  With my phone cashing as soon as it becomes untethered, i am never actually able to run Cydia. On my iPad, instead of rebooting, it resprings.  either way, it is very hard to read the final message.

iPhoneX iOS 12 unc0ver jailbreak fail

UPDATE:  This problem was resolved in b38.

It’s finally fixed!

 

As you can see, it did turn out to be hardware, a GPU and CPU (ouch!).  The flash storage was not it, but I figured that out eventually. This has been an issue since October!  With many fixes attempted.  It was a bit of a blow to my pride eventually having to turn to Apple, but they stepped up and got it done with only mild frustration on my part.   Plus, they picked up the tab as my warranty is certainly expired.  There comes a time when you realize that a fix would require more parts then you had at hand.  I have been enjoying my functional desktop again, just in time for the new iMac Pro to make it obsolete.

Sometimes I feel like the cobbler with no shoes

High Sierra InstallI upgraded my Mac Pro to High Sierra.  For the most part it was seamless.  The installer automatically migrated the HFS+ file system to AFPS and everything appeared to be working great.  As it turns out. . . I have a new intermittent problem that causes the computer to become unresponsive while idle.

It presents primarily as a failure to wake from sleep (backlit black screens instead).  Display sleep is actually all that is required to present and of course it is not every time.  It is often enough for me to return to the 90s habit of shutting down my computer after I finish using it lest I cause irreparable harm to my mounted file systems.  Here are some things i have discovered while trying to resolve.  Sometimes i can access the computer remotely, other times not, never graphically.  Sometimes the system hangs as soon as it goes idle, sometimes it continues to operate.  Sometimes it restarts from “sudo reboot” from an ssh session, other times it just hangs completely when i try.  The console logs are useless.  Nothing at all before the reboot.  When unresponsive, there is nothing to do but hold the power button.

The difficulty i am having at discovering the core of the issue combined with the fact that my remote backup has gotten stale is driving me crazy.  There seems to be people complaining about this on every Apple forum there is.  I am not alone:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8085995
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/300199/mac-pro-on-high-sierra-doesnt-wake-up
https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/73094p/mac_pro_2013_high_sierra_wont_wake…
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/high-sierra-causing-blank-screen-macpro.2073218/

UPDATE:  It’s finally fixed!

iOS 11! installed!

looking good with exciting new Control Center and loads of other features. my favorite is 5x sleep to disable touch ID (instantly and temporarily). I am looking forward to the new Augmented Reality features built into ARkit. I cannot wait to see what developers do with it.

There are a few sticky wickets (i.e. Apple changed the bluetooth and wifi toggle functionality in Control Center). For example, if you “turn off” wifi it actually just disassociates you from your current network leaving your wifi radio on and functioning. i don’t mind because i wanted exactly this feature. if you actually want to turn off a radio, you need to go to your Settings app or turn on Airplane mode.

Apple maps is stepping up their game with indoor maps of malls, airports and others allowing navigation without GPS or even a view of the sky. Easy trick to share your complex wifi password with other apple devices and of course native animated GIF support!

Continue reading “iOS 11! installed!”

Remember when Migration Assistant worked with Disk Images?

Apple Disk Image IconI don’t exactly recall when Apple’s Migration Assistant started logging out the user (10.9ish), but since then it has been a little more irritating to migrate from a dmg or other image format (as opposed to a source hard drive or time machine backup).  Here is a simple Terminal command to mount the image as root and thus keep it mounted after logout.

sudo hdiutil attach diskimage.dmg

This process does require running a checksum, and for larger images that could take a while.  Once you run this command and it completes its verification of the disk image, simply run Migration Assistant and complete the migration.  After migration and a restart, the image is unmounted and you are ready to work on your newly migrated mac. (note: migration can also take quite a while depending on the amount of data)

Note:  to skip verification, use -noverify (only do this if time is critical.  You will want the cleanest possible start to your newly migrated computer).

exFAT vs exFAT!

No exFATThe interoperable file system that is nearly impossible to interoperate.  Introduced in 2006 by Microsoft, it eventually gained compatibility from XP to Windows 10.  Apple introduced support in 10.6.5.  Even Linux got to play thanks to Fuse.  It turns out that any reasonable sized drive prepared in windows will not be compatible with Mac and unable to mount. This is because Apple’s implementation of exFAT requires less then 1048576 bytes per cluster, where as Windows varies it’s cluster size depending on the capacity of the volume.  Best advise for mac people is to format it on windows, but set the block size to 1024. Can we get a new file system now please?