Yesterday, my wife wanted to use Discord on her Apple laptop. It was right there in the applications folder. But MacOS couldn't find it. Launching it manually took several minutes, for some reason.
We wanted to download a clip using yt_dlp (a Python program). Terminal told us, this would require dev tools (which it doesn't). So we installed Python from python.org instead, which worked. Except, that non-blessed python could not access the internet because of some MacOS "security" feature.
Another "security" feature requires all apps on Apple computers to be notarized, even the ones I built myself. This used to have a relatively easy workaround (right click, open, accept the risk). Now it needs a terminal command.
I maintain a python library for playing and recording real-time audio from the system's sound cards. On some Apple systems, this fails to show any audio devices, "for security reasons".
I live and work in a multi-lingual environment, and regularly switch between the German and English keyboard layout. Lately, the keyboard layout no longer sticks. It resets to English when I press shift. Sometimes it does work, sometimes it doesn't.
The German keyboard layout for MacOS on non-Apple keyboards is insane. So I made my own layout. This is relatively easy, and worked well. Except, every few OS updates, it reinstates Apple's insane layout.
Sometimes my Mac does not wake from sleep. Pressing the power button does nothing. Hitting keyboard keys does nothing. Only a long-press of the power button eventually reboots it. The power button on the Mac Studio is in an insane place of course.
There is no indication anywhere that the hard drive is getting full.
There is no simple way to reset the computer to factory conditions.
Gaming is largely impossible, even though the hardware is very capable.
... continue reading