Archive for March 15, 2022

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

macOS 12.3

John Voorhees:

macOS 12.3 Monterey has arrived, delivering Universal Control, the long-awaited feature that allows users to transition between Macs and iPads with a single set of input devices.

[…]

For the past several weeks, I’ve had my iPad Pro sitting on my desk in a Twelve South HoverBar Duo stand right next to my Mac’s display. I’ve tried this sort of setup in the past using the ability of Logitech’s MX Keys and MX Master 3 mouse to flip between devices, but it was just cumbersome enough that the setup never stuck.

In contrast, Universal Control makes moving back and forth between my Mac and iPad Pro seamless. It’s not a setup that’s for everyone, but this sort of hybrid Mac-iPad approach is something I’ve done for a long time, just not as efficiently. Now, I have my choice of iPadOS and macOS apps all constantly, and quite literally, at my fingertips. It’s not that I couldn’t accomplish most of the things I do on just one platform without Universal Control. I could, but the difference is that Universal Control gives me the freedom to pick the best tool or the tool I prefer for every task, which is a level of flexibility I love.

[…]

Although scrolling works immediately, you can’t control the apps on a platform until you click somewhere inside the destination device’s UI. I thought this would be something I would get used to with time, but after weeks of using Universal Control, I haven’t.

Apple:

This document describes the security content of macOS Monterey 12.3.

Apple:

Learn about the enterprise content that Apple has released for macOS Monterey.

Howard Oakley:

I am shocked to report that two most obvious bugs still haven’t been fixed. The more serious of them is the gaping memory leak in the Finder’s Find command, which has made this major feature next to useless since the first release of Monterey, and was reported to Apple last November (at least).

The other is the inability of the Bluetooth menubar item to report the charge level for Apple wireless keyboards and trackpads when they’re being recharged.

Dan Allen:

WARNING: it turns on iCloud Drive w/o giving you a choice! Bad Apple.

Kaleidoscope:

macOS 12.3 adds four daemons (dtfetchsymbolsd, remotepairingdeviced, cryptexd, nearbyd) and has over 100 changes to existing man pages. Mostly improving them by adding usage examples.

See also: Mr. Macintosh, MacRumors.

Previously:

Update (2022-03-17): Sami Fathi:

The latest macOS Monterey update, released to the public this week, is bricking Macs that have had their logic boards replaced, causing panic among customers who are unable to get their Mac back to a working state, according to a cluster of user reports posted on social media and Apple’s support forums.

Meek Geek:

AirPlay to non-M1 Mac mini actually works but Apple killed it in macOS 12.3.

Update (2022-03-23): Damien Petrilli:

Also it seems that 12.3 kills GPU performance with some cards

Armin Briegel:

I remembered that the Kaleidoscope app team had posted a script that allows me to compare man pages between versions of macOS. They published this back when macOS 12 was released to track the changes of the plutil command line tool. With the help of this tool I determined a few more interested changes in macOS 12, the most interesting of which I will summarize here.

Update (2022-04-12): Sami Fathi:

Following the latest macOS Monterey 12.3 update, users are reporting several problems when using external monitors, ranging from Macs not detecting displays at all to inaccurate screen output, according to posts on the Apple Support and MacRumors forums.

In the ten days since the update became available to the public, users have already reported issues with the update bricking Macs that have had logic board replacements and problems with using game controllers. Adding to the list of issues, users are now reporting that the update is causing problems with external monitors.

Previously:

iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4

Juli Clover:

iOS and iPadOS 15.4 are huge updates that bring quite a few useful new features to the iPhone and the iPad.

With iOS 15.4, there is now an option to unlock your iPhone while wearing a mask with no additional hardware like the Apple Watch required. […] It works with glasses, but it is not compatible with sunglasses, and you must be looking at the iPhone to unlock it with a mask on.

This is an improvement, but I still think it hasn’t been well thought through and there should be a different approach, e.g. based on time. A much smaller Apple famously developed the iPod in less than a year. We’ve now had more than two years of COVID-19, and Apple has done shockingly little to address this issue that affects the basics of using its most popular product. This is too little too late, and there is still no solution for iPhone 11 and earlier. I’m approaching the conclusion that Face ID should be scrapped. It’s so slow, doesn’t work with winter gear on (even with an Apple Watch), and now it’s less secure.

The update introduces support for Emoji 14, adding 37 emoji and 75 skin tone additions for a total of 112 new characters.

[…]

With this option, you can choose not to be notified when a Shortcut activates, something that wasn’t possible with earlier versions of iOS 15.

[…]

By default, Emergency SOS now uses the Call with Hold feature to place an emergency call. To initiate an emergency call, press and hold the side and volume buttons until a countdown begins.

Federico Viticci:

Universal Control is finally here and, despite its long gestation, it’s labeled as a beta feature.

Previously: