Egg Freckles

My Ephemeral nature does not stop at blogging. I delete my old tweets automatically using a service called TweetDelete.

Protect your privacy by automatically deleting posts older than a specified age from your Twitter feed. This allows you to delete all your tweets all at once (up to 3,200 tweets), and helps make it easier to delete multiple tweets in one go.

According to the website most people use Tweet Delete to improve their privacy.

TweetDelete is useful for people who want to reduce the amount of old data in their Twitter account (perhaps because of other apps they use on it) or people who want to limit the amount of data about themselves they expose online. Tin foil hats are optional!

I don’t wear a tin foil hat, and I don’t think deleting my old tweets protects my privacy. I use TweetDelete because I treat Twitter like a form instant messaging.

Twitter is important to me because of the personal interactions it provides, but I am never going back to relive those old conversations. If I feel strong enough about a topic I will write it down keep and publish it on a website I control. Using TweetDelete is my way of telling Twitter you don’t own me.

I am not a good writer. Words rarely flow for me. Compared to other people it takes me a lot longer to write a meaningful sentence. I spend far too much time editing when I should be writing. Combined with a touch of perfectionism, and you can understand why I am wary when it comes to publishing. I only want to show my best work.

One of the ways I have learned to get past these fears is by accepting the ephemeral; nothing lasts forever. Just because our computers and content manangement systems are capable of archiving everything doesn’t mean we have to save it all.

Egg Freckles is a ephemeral blog. I choose what I keep. I’ll only show you my best work, and leave the rest for the Internet Archvive. Breaking links is a terrible way to blog; it’s bad for the Internet. But I am okay with that; this is my place.

The Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE Cellular promises to free Apple Watch owners from the shackles of their iPhones. Allowing them to receive notifications, place calls, stream music, and ask Siri on the go while leaving their phone at home. But despite these freedoms the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE Cellular is still a prisoner. It cannot be used without first being paired to its owner’s iPhone.

This makes the $399+ Apple Watch with LTE Cellular a companion device. Second fiddle to the functionally superior iPhone every Apple Watch owner already choose to put in their pockets. Purchasing an Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE Cellular means you are willing to spend $70 more at checkout and up to $120 annually for the privilege of leaving your $700 iPhone at home. ANd that doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

But what about exercise? People like to run, play sports, or workout at the gym while leaving their phone at home. To those people I say keep exercising. Your iPhone was never a good fit for exercise, and the Apple Watch with LTE Cellular isn’t one either. Save money and get a better workout without notifications buzzing on your wrist. You didn’t need a wrist phone before, and you don’t need one now.

September is a busy time of year. Summer vacations are ending. Back-to-school season has begun, Apple is putting the finishing touches on Mac OS High Sierra, and system administrators are getting their first glimpse of the new documentation.

Mac OS High Sierra brings several exciting features to the Macintosh platform, but for System Administrators who image and maintain hundreds of Macs there are a few important features you need to know about.

Security

Mac OS High Sierra includes the following changes to TLS connections:

• Removes support for TLS connections using SHA-1 certificates. Administrators of TLS services should update their services to use SHA-2 certificates.
• Removes trust from certificates that use RSA key sizes smaller than 2048 bits across all TLS connections.
• Uses TLS 1.2 as the default for EAP-TLS negotiation. You can change this default setting with a configuration profile. Older clients might still need 1.0.

These security restrictions should not be a problem for System Administrators who keep their fleet of Mac's system software up-to-date.

Filesystem

• When you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems with all flash storage configurations are converted automatically.
• Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won't be converted to APFS.
• You can't opt-out of the transition to APFS.

Apple is making the migration to APFS mandatory for modern Macs with solid state storage. You can't opt-out of the transition, so make sure your clients have a good backup. Systems with hard disk drives and Fusion drives won't be migrated automatically. but could be converted to APFS later this year with a future update. Systems with custom partitions or secondary solid state storage are undocumented We will just have to wait an see how High Sierra deals with these edge cases.

Boot Camp is supported when upgrading to macOS High Sierra, unless the Boot Camp volume is greater than 3 TB and resides on a Fusion Drive. Boot Camp doesn't support Read/Write to APFS-formatted Mac volumes.

Apple is not providing a Boot Camp Windows driver for APFS like they did for HFS+. Boot Camp users will have to come up with their own solution for sharing files between their Mac and Windows desktops. Virtualization solutions like Parallels and VMWare, which rely on local networking to share files, will not be effected.

• AFP can’t share files on Apple File System (APFS). If you need to share files, switch to SMB. If you have network home directories shared via AFP on an APFS volume, update the mount records and user records to use SMB.

  AFP was depreciated years ago. If you need to share files on a APFS volume switch to SMB. No one should be using networked home directories in 2017.

Kernel Extensions

• macOS High Sierra introduces a feature that requires user approval before loading new third-party kernel extensions. This feature requires changes to some apps and installers in order to preserve the desired user experience.

Your documentation may need to be updated to include an extra step when installing software that requires a kernel extension.

Directory Services

• macOS High Sierra supports binding to Active Directory domains running with a domain functional level of 2008 or later. Windows Server 2003 isn’t supported.
• macOS High Sierra removes support for NIS.

Make sure your Windows Active Directory is running a domain function level of 2008 or later. You would be surprised how many older domains are running on newer servers and operating systems. Who still uses NIS?

Software Deployment

You must be connected to the Internet when you upgrade your macOS. After your Mac confirms your connection, the Installer uses the model number of your Mac to locate and download a firmware update specific to only that Mac.

Only the macOS Installer can download and install the firmware update. Firmware updates can't be done on external devices, like those connected via Target Disk Mode, Thunderbolt, USB, or Firewire.

Monolithic system imaging can only be used to re-install macOS, not to upgrade to a new macOS version.

If you try to use a monolithic system image, required firmware updates will be missing from the installation. This causes the Mac to operate in an unsupported and unstable state. You can use system images to re-install the existing operating system on a Mac.

Monolithic imaging died years ago. If you are doing it now, you are doing it wrong. Installing the operating system on one Mac using the Target Disk Mode of used to be a neat trick, but it was never supported by Apple and can now only be used for reinstalling High Sierra.

Content Caching

• You won't be able to run Content Caching on a virtual machine. This action has never been supported in previous versions of macOS, but is explicitly disallowed in macOS High Sierra.

Client-side content caching seems like a neat trick to save bandwidth, but the returns mostly benefit Apple servers. I have a hard time imagining any Macintosh System Admin deploying client-side Content Caching. Use a centralized Mac OS sever.

Configuration Profiles

• In macOS High Sierra, /var/db/ConfigurationProfiles is now protected by SIP. Admins should now use the profiles(1) command to install startup configuration profiles. See the profiles(1) manual page for more information.

Just one more way Apple is protecting it's users' and the hard work of ever Macintosh System Admin out there.

Mac OS High Sierra looks like an exciting release. I look forward to seeing it on September 25th.

If two things are glued together using “industrial adhesive” they were not meant to be pulled apart. And if one of those two things is a MacBook Pro lithium-ion battery that releases “toxic smoke” when punctured, you should think twice before trying to save a buck.

iFixit, everyone’s favorite pull-it-apart online repair guide is at it again. This time with a “glue-busting battery kit” that comes with all of the tools you need to replace your MacBook Pro battery. For somewhere between $89 and $120 iFixit promises to save you money over the Apple Store.

And while iFixit’s kit comes with everything you need to replace your MacBook battery, they fail to tell you that Apple’s battery service comes with a replacement trackpad, topcase, and keyboard (provided these components are in good working order), plus professional installation with a 90-day warranty all for $199.99. With iFixit you get a do-it-yourself project with more risk and less value than if you brought your MacBook to the Genius Bar.