Linked List: November 22, 2019

Friday, 22 November 2019

My thanks to 1Password for sponsoring this week at Daring Fireball. 1Password is a powerful password manager trusted by the world’s leading companies.

1Password keeps your business safe online by securing passwords and other important information. Fill passwords and credit card details with a single click — they sync automatically between your devices and can be shared immediately with select colleagues. Once 1Password is part of your employees’ workflow, good security habits become second nature.

1Password Business gives you the power to create security policies, reduce threats, and monitor your team’s access. When everyone uses 1Password, your risk goes down and productivity goes up.

It’s a great app and a great service that you can trust with your most valuable information.

MacOS Catalina Boot Volume Layout ★

Howard Oakley, writing at The Eclectic Light Company:

When you upgrade to macOS 10.15 Catalina, your boot volume will effectively be split into two. Assuming it’s the standard internal storage, your existing boot volume will be renamed to Macintosh HD — Data, and a new read-only system volume created and given the name Macintosh HD. However, when your Mac starts up in Catalina, you won’t see the Data volume, as it’s hidden inside the System volume, in what Apple refers to as a Volume Group.

Although new to macOS, this scheme is already in use in iOS, and specifies the read-only system volume as having the role APFS_VOL_ROLE_SYSTEM, and the writeable user volume has the role APFS_VOL_ROLE_DATA. In that, the volume with the System role is normally mounted at the root /, and that containing both user and mutable system data is then mounted in /System/Volumes and accessed from there using several firmlinks.

Nice explanation of a complex change in 10.15 Catalina.

For the most part, in the Mac UI (like the Finder), it all just works. You open /Applications and you’ll see all your applications. But when you poke around in Terminal you have to know what’s going on or it won’t make sense. ls in /Applications will show only the contents of the writeable Applications folder; ls in /System/Applications will show you only the system applications on the read-only boot volume.

Gurman: Apple Has Changed Development Process for iOS 14 in Wake of iOS 13’s Buggy Launch ★

Nice scoop from Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:^*

Software chief Craig Federighi and lieutenants including Stacey Lysik announced the changes at a recent internal “kickoff” meeting with the company’s software developers. The new approach calls for Apple’s development teams to ensure that test versions, known as “daily builds,” of future software updates disable unfinished or buggy features by default. Testers will then have the option to selectively enable those features, via a new internal process and settings menu dubbed Flags, allowing them to isolate the impact of each individual addition on the system. […]

The new development process will help early internal iOS versions to be more usable, or “livable,” in Apple parlance. Prior to iOS 14’s development, some teams would add features every day that weren’t fully tested, while other teams would contribute changes weekly. “Daily builds were like a recipe with lots of cooks adding ingredients,” a person with knowledge of the process said.

* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true.

Tesla Cybertruck ★

I don’t love the look of it, but I don’t hate it, either. And the more I look at it the more it grows on me. It has a DeLorean vibe that goes beyond the stainless steel frame. But mainly I’m just delighted that Tesla has finally unveiled a car that doesn’t look like a regular car. The Cybertruck is different. That’s exciting.

Unfortunate demo failure with the glass, but Musk recovered well. If handled well, demo failures are endearing.