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Apple Releases macOS Mojave Featuring Dark Mode and Other Features; Earlier Today a Security Researcher Published 0Day Bypass For a Privacy Bug in the new OS
Apple on Monday made available to the public macOS Mojave -- aka macOS 10.14, the latest major update to its desktop operating system. From a report: Though Mojave is substantially focused on under-the-hood improvements, it includes several major changes to the Mac's Finder, as well as a small collection of apps that were ported from iOS. On the Finder side, Apple has introduced a system-wide Dark Mode, which optionally reskins the entire user interface with black or dark gray elements. Dark Mode pairs up with Dynamic Desktop, which can automatically adjust certain desktop images in sync with time of day (morning, afternoon, and evening) changes. Minutes ahead of the release, Patrick Wardle, chief researcher officer at Digita Security, tweeted a video of an apparent privacy feature bypass that's designed to prevent apps from improperly accessing a user's personal data. From a report: For years, Macs have forced apps to ask for permission before accessing your contacts and calendar after some iOS apps were caught uploading private data. Apple said at its annual developer conference this year that it would expand the feature to include apps asking for permission to access the camera, microphone, email and backups. Wardle told TechCrunch that his findings are "not a universal bypass" of the feature, but that the bug could allow a malicious app to grab certain protected data, such as a user's contacts, when a user is logged in.
I'm pretty happy that Apple occasionally does releases meant more to improve speed and stability than just pile on features.
This is one of those releases, it makes my older MacBook Pro feel a bit faster, especially along with improvements to speed made in Xcode 10.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OS 9.x was way more buggy than you remember. Being built on bsd code makes OS X way more stable (at least after 10.2). Now, it may have reached its peak somewhere between Snow Leopard and Lion, but that's another debate. Breaking compatibility with their own pro apps just to force you to their app store versions is one of the worse things to come since.
Yeah, who cares if it uploads all your contacts to anyone who asks for it?
IDK, why not ask every Android user?
BURN
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Come on, you didn't even need to RTA! It's right there in the summary:
system-wide Dark Mode, which optionally reskins the entire user interface with black or dark gray elements
If you don't want Dark Mode, just turn it off. You don't have to install a "Light Theme".
you don't have to turn it off, you just have to not turn it on
I used to use Macs in the 9.xx days. Cooperative multitasking, where one program could completely hang the system unless it calls WaitNextEvent() resulted in a relatively unstable OS build, especially if you used a lot of programs.
I don't know... Thinking back on things, I'd actually say that I tended to have *more* applications (though not background services) running at a time then than I do now, but that's partly because the promise of the Browser-As-Platform is way more a possibility now than then.
I had been a Mac user since System 6 though, and I think Mac OS 8.6 was actually pretty damn stable for me. Cooperative multitasking can't fight against application bugs, but the generally slower rate of change for apps meant that those with bugs were more liable to be identified. Of course, flaky extensions could still ruin your day, but that was really always the case, and we all knew that things like Kalidescope could cause problems.
On the whole, I suspect apps' requirement for WNE loops (or, heaven forbid, GNE) forced some to always consider the need to relinquish control on a shared system. Nowadays it feels like apps ignore that complete and demand the kernel figure it out -- safer, no doubt, but I'm not sure it's completely *better*.
In any event, I left Mac world just as the OS X made it from Rhapsody to release, and after ages in Windows/Linux re-introduced myself to it in 2011. A different world. Not better; just meeting different needs.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
"Dark" is the new "flat". Can't wait for green text to become all the rage, too.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Did some project manager at Apple fire up their 25-year old 486 running Windows 3.1, play with theme settings, and think "How can we market this today"?
Apple really is running out of ideas.
Dark Mode lasted about three minutes. It's garbage and hurt my eyes.
Give me proper skins like Gnome.
This reminds me of that time that Apple released a version of iMacOSx that allowed people to gain root by just pressing enter with no password.
I love Apple's new beta-testing program... where they release beta software as if it's release-ready, to find the bugs they used to find and crush BEFORE releasing their new OS to the general user populace.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.