Archive for November 16, 2020

Monday, November 16, 2020

Safari 14.0.1 Is Missing Icons

FrakeTrain:

Still on Catalina 10.15.7 SuppUp and just installed Safari 14.0.1 (15610.2.11.51.10) over 14.0 today, and all my .webloc icon previews are blank. That includes desktop icons, folder icons, and Get Info Preview icons.

Both my .webloc and .webarchive files now show only generic document icons. I’ve heard from others that the files no longer even open, but I’m not seeing that problem. On my Mac, it seems likely purely an icon display issue.

Safari 14.0.1 does fix the services bug that I was seeing, but only for some services.

Previously:

Update (2020-12-08): bazaarsoft:

I have a standard web form which has a file selector form field. This has worked for well over 10 years as it’s the standard UI presented by Safari. Just noticed today after Safari upgraded to 14.0.1 (on the latest Mojave) that the button is dead: clicking does nothing. This same form continues to work in Chrome.

Update (2020-12-18): The icons are still missing in Safari 14.0.2.

Update (2021-01-01): Mr. Macintosh:

The Safari 14.0.1 upload issue is not fixed in 14.0.2.

A simple example of this is using Gmail in Safari. If you update to Safari 14.0.1 or 14.0.2 you will be unable to attach anything to an email The only work around right now is to use Chrome or Firefox.

New workaround = drag and drop the file into the window.

Big Sur Bricking MacBook Pros

Hartley Charlton (tweet, Hacker News):

A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines. A MacRumors forum thread contains a significant number of users reporting the issue, and similar problems are being reported across Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread.

Chris Eidhof:

I tried a number of the things that were advised below, but so far, none worked. I’ll try an install from USB next, I guess. It won’t be the end of the world if my data on this machine is lost, but still… makes me sad for my non-developers friends who have to deal with this.

[…]

this is machine is only 2 years old I think.

Previously:

Update (2020-11-17): Becky Hansmeyer:

I still get emails from my college (because I used to work there and they didn’t take me off the mailing list). Got this one from the Help Desk today about Big Sur. 😳

Pol23 (via Hacker News):

Then I closed the screen but the black light was still illuminating the apple on the back of my 2014 13' MBP. I opened it back up andpowered it down. Then tried restareing but got nothing but the black screen, no apple logo..

[…]

All of that lead to nothing. Genius Bar Reservations are hard to obtain during covid times.

Update (2020-11-20): Mr. Macintosh (also: MacRumors):

macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 (20B50) is Live

The only change?

The 2013-14 13" MacBook Pro’s have been removed from the Big Sur Installer compatibility list

Owners complained that the upgrade caused their Mac to boot to an unrecoverable black screen

Juli Clover:

Apple has now addressed this issue in a new support document that provides instructions on what to do if macOS Big Sur can’t be installed on a 2013 or 2014 MacBook Pro machine. Apple suggests Mac owners experiencing these issues unplug external devices, attempt restarting, reset the SMC, and reset NVRAM or PRAM.

[…]

To be safe, those with older MacBook Pro models from 2013 or 2014 should avoid installing the macOS Big Sur update at this time until a more definitive fix becomes available.

Where Is TestFlight for Mac?

Chance Miller:

Apple has updated its TestFlight beta testing application for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV to version 3.0. The update brings support for automatic updates, as well as stability improvements and bug fixes.

Craig Hockenberry:

New version of TestFlight that’s NOT on the Mac.

After five years of promises, I can only conclude that there’s some underlying issue that’s preventing the release. I’m guessing there’s a vulnerability in one of the services that would be exposed with a debugger/analyzer.

It sucks for every developer who wants to get their products onto the Mac, and hurts Apple’s initiatives like Catalyst.

Previously:

Performance of Rosetta 2 on Apple M1

Frank McShan (tweet, Hacker News):

The new Rosetta 2 Geekbench results uploaded show that the M1 chip running on a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM has single-core and multi-core scores of 1,313 and 5,888 respectively. Since this version of Geekbench is running through Apple’s translation layer Rosetta 2, an impact on performance is to be expected. Rosetta 2 running x86 code appears to be achieving 78%-79% of the performance of native Apple Silicon code.

Despite the impact on performance, the single-core Rosetta 2 score results still outperforms any other Intel Mac, including the 2020 27-inch iMac with Intel Core i9-10910 @ 3.6GHz.

Chris Randall:

On the whole, our general opinion is that as a producer you won’t really notice (or even be able to tell) whether a plugin or host is running native ARM or in Rosetta 2. The CPU load should be more or less the same; the ARM version may be slightly lower, but this is difficult to measure consistently.

Previously:

Update (2020-11-19): Joe Rossignol:

Microsoft this week indicated that when launching any of its Mac apps for the first time on Apple Silicon Macs, the apps will bounce in the dock for approximately 20 seconds while the Rosetta 2 translation process is completed, with all subsequent launches being fast.

Brendan Shanks:

We’re making it official: @codeweavers CrossOver/Wine runs 32- and 64-bit Windows apps/games on Apple Silicon Macs! And it works today!

Big thanks to the Rosetta folks at Apple and everyone at CodeWeavers for their hard work on this.

Colin Cornaby:

Stuff like this makes me hope that Rosetta sticks around in some form for a very long time. PowerPC wasn’t a bit industry force that required long term compatibility. But the x86 platform will be with us for a long while, even if Apple leaves it.

Update (2020-11-27): Robert Graham:

So Apple simply cheated. They added Intel’s memory-ordering to their CPU. When running translated x86 code, they switch the mode of the CPU to conform to Intel’s memory ordering.

With underlying architectural issues ironed out, running x86 code simply means translating those instructions to the Arm equivalent. This is very efficient and results in code that often runs at the same speed.

Intel’s Disruption Is Now Complete

James Allworth (via Marcelo P. Lima, Hacker News):

Indeed, that deal between Apple and Intel was more important for Intel than it could have ever possibly realized. But it wasn’t because Intel had sewn up the last of the desktop computer processor market. Instead, it was because Intel had just developed a relationship with a company that was thinking about what was coming next. And when Apple were figuring out how to power it — and by it, I’m talking about the iPhone — they came to their new partner, Intel, for first right of refusal to design the chips to do.

[…]

Here’s what Otellini decided to do, when presented with the option to power the iPhone:

We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we’d done it,” Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. “The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.

[…]

What about this chart is interesting? Well, it turns out, it bears a striking resemblance to one drawn before — actually, 25 years ago. Take a look at this chart drawn by Clayton Christensen, back in 1995 — in his very first article on disruptive innovation.

SoSoRoCoCo:

As someone who worked on Intel’s phone chip: we definitely didn’t win it. We fucked it up twelve ways to Sunday. Why: giant egos. There were turf wars between Austin, Santa Clara and Israel over who would design it, and the team that won out had long since lost its best principle engineers and had no clue how to spin the architecture to meet the design win. Otellini’s hindsight hedge is pure spin: we knew the landing zone, we just didn’t know how to get there. And the aforementioned turf war guaranteed we didn’t get access to other teams’ talent. I’m bitter because it was a really fun team when I moved from Motorola to Intel Austin, and then it just corroded over political battles.

John Gruber:

It remains to be seen if other ARM chip vendors will surpass the x86 platform in performance and efficiency. But it’s starting to look like that’s inevitable — Apple is just far ahead of the pack.

Tony Fadell:

  • ’92 - Started working w/ ARM at General Magic
  • ’01 - Bought ARM back to Apple by choosing SoC w/ Dual ARMs for the iPod
  • ’08 - Solidified ARM as the future of the iPhone & iPad w/ a showdown vs. Intel “Intel is what Steve wants!” was the refrain by my peers then

Mike Dauber:

Bob Mansfield, Jeff Dauber, and Lynn Young were the ASIC leadership team that came over from Raycer Graphics in ’99. Later augmented by PA Semi. I believe Bob convinced Jobs that Apple needed their own ASIC team. He was right.

Previously:

Update (2020-11-27): Stephen Shankland (via Hacker News):

Losing Apple’s business will sting. New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu estimated in a Wednesday report that 4% to 5% of Intel’s revenue comes from Apple. But it’s just one of the concerns Intel will need to address.

Intel said it’s “relentlessly” focused on building leading chips. “We welcome competition because it makes us better,” Intel said in a statement. “We believe that there is a lot of innovation that only Intel can do,” including supplying chips that span the full price range of PCs and that can run older software still common in businesses.