How To: Disable El Capitan's System Integrity Protection

After running Apple’s latest version of OS X (10.11, El Capitan) on a couple of my Macs for about two months, I’ve become completely enamored with it. Now that the “Gold Master” seed is out for developers I updated all my Macs including my main production machine.* Even though El Capitan contains a few new features, it is (by Apple’s own admission) a “stability release”. By every measure OS X 10.11 is rock-solid stable…

…and fast!

To further this notion of stability, Apple has introduced a new feature called System Integrity Protection that prevents changes to key OS components and critical applications like Mail and Safari even if you’re logged in with administrator credentials.

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It Pays to Buy Quality

Well, my year-and-a-half wait is finally over...almost.  When I saw my first Retina MacBook Pro last year, I knew I had to have one, but just didn’t want to lay out the money at the time. I’ve been completely spoiled by the retina displays on my iPhone and iPad, so my 2009 17" MBP's 1920 X 1200 display just wasn't doing it for me any more. It's a bit like having Flounder Almandine for lunch then coming home to fish sticks for dinner. But it's more than just the display showing signs of age. In a little over four years, Apple (and the rest of to computer industry) has progressed light years beyond the Core2 Duo, USB 2, no Thunderbolt seventeen-incher that was top-of-the-line in July of '09. Like back then, as soon as Apple refreshed the MBPs last week, I ordered the most powerful model available with all the options.

The shiny, new 15.4" Retina MBP should arrive Wednesday with the fastest Intel Haswell CPU, discreet graphics, as much RAM (16 GB) as Apple will install and a full terabyte of flash storage. It's not because I'm spoiled. Well, maybe a little bit, but after 30 years in this business I've come to understand that the only way to get four years use out of a computer is to buy the latest model stuffed with as much speed, memory, graphics and storage as you can get. This strategy is even more important today given Apple's propensity to make fewer and fewer of their laptop's components user-upgradeable. This latest MBP model has no user-replaceable parts and iFixIt.com gives the new Retina MacBook Pros a score of 1 out of 10 for ease of repair (with 10 being easiest). In other words, don't buy what you need, buy what you think you may need four or five years from now. Another take-away from all this: Buy quality. It's worth it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my current MBP. It has served me well for 51 months, but it’s getting just a bit dated for my professional needs. I plan to give it to my wife who will likely be very happy with it for three of four more years given her more typical use demands. After all, it does have 8 gigs of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and I just updated it to Mavericks with all the new iLife and iWork apps and it runs them all great. You can never expect to do that with a "BestBuy special" PC. This example speaks volumes in favor of buying quality. Mr. Shawn Blanc codifies this philosophy quite succinctly.

Yes, I’m spending what some PC people would think is an eye-popping amount for my new MacBook Pro. A similarly-equipped Dell or HP would cost 15 - 20% less, but after adding Office, a good photo manager and movie maker (like what comes included with iWork and iLife) the savings are much less and you still end up with a Windows computer at the end of the day. In my opinion, that fact alone makes it inferior.

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How to Ward Off Flashback and Its Cousins

I've been getting a lot of questions from friends and neighbors about Flashback and its derivitives. Since these bugs made the mainstream media, even the most non-techie Mac user is getting the jitters. I planned to write a comprehensive how-to to help these folks avoid all these Java-based bugs, but while doing my research I ran across this article by Cory Bohon at Mac|Life that sums it up completely. I could have plagerized his article, but I'm too ethical (er, uh, lazy) for that. To get a complete step-by-step for protecting your Mac from Flashback and other Java-based vermine, check out Cory's article. Nice job, Mr. Bohon.

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Protect Your Mac From Flashback...FOR FREE!

If you pay any attention to tech journalism at all then you've heard of the most prolific trojan to hit the Mac platform in years: Flashback. At first, it tricked users into "upgrading" their Adobe Flash player by presenting a realistic looking dialog complete with Adobe logo and color scheme. Now it has morphed and a Mac can be infected by simply visiting a malicious Web site with some sneaky Java code. To see if you may be hosting this bug, you can download the free app Flashback Checker. The good news is, you can protect yourself by using OpenDNS. Get the low-down here. The big OpenDNS button at the top of this post will tell you if you already use OpenDNS. If you don't, click the button to learn how to install the free service on your computer or router (or both). In the immortal words of John "Bluto" Blutarsky, "Why not? It don't cost nuthin'."

How to Run iPhoto on an Original iPad (No Jailbreak Required)

iPhoto runs just fine on the original iPad.  I think Apple just wants to keep us motivated to buy new hardware. I've been running iPhoto for a few days now with no bad behavior or crashes. Installing it is simple and doesn't require a jailbreak. I put together a brief how-to here.