Top all-time · #121
Howard Oakley
Personal blog · eclecticlight.cohardwareprogramming
Howard Oakley writes The Eclectic Light Company, a personal blog at eclecticlight.co about hardware and programming. Since 2016, 304 different Hacker News readers have linked it 996 times, most often “Is Apple keeping its promises over online OCSP certificate checks?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Howard Oakley's posts for in-depth explanations of macOS internals: code signing, notarization, Gatekeeper, APFS and file system behaviour, and privacy controls. Commenters also recommend him as a go-to source for Mac problem-solving.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- one commenter: "always worth a read, on art or Macs"; another: "legit, probably one of the top power-users of macOS"
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Macs & painting – 🦉 No AI content
Most-linked posts?
- Is Apple keeping its promises over online OCSP certificate checks?8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-08-12
- Virtualisation on Apple Silicon6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-07-10
- Apple Silicon Macs will require signed code5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-08-22
- Is Apple checking images we view in the Finder?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-01-18
- /2021/05/08/explainer-unicode-normalization-and-apfs/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-07-01
- A Brief History of Defragging5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-10-05
- macOS has become more reliable5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-10-29
- macOS has become more private4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-01-02
- How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-05-17
- macOS Catalina Boot Volume Layout4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-11-23
What Hacker News says?
Directory hard links are not available in APFS. Even though your internal drive is APFS, your Time Machine backup drive is probably still HFS+. https://eclecticlight.co/2020/05/26/how-to-make-time-machine...
Comment linking /2020/05/26/how-to-make-time-machine-backups-to-an-apfs-disk/
on “macOS unable to open any non-Apple application”Submitted macOS has checked app signatures online for over 2 years as a story · 614 points
HN discussionFirst they restricted execution of unsigned binaries unless you run in a substantially-unprotected mode: https://github.molgen.mpg.de/pages/bs/macOSnotes/mac/mac_pro... Then they disabled execution of all unsigned binaries. To run on a default Mac, you either pay Apple or compile on the user's own machine which is obviously unsustainable. https://eclecticlight.co/2020/08/22/apple-silicon-macs-will-... They've also r…
Comment linking /2020/08/22/apple-silicon-macs-will-require-signed-code/
on “macOS unable to open any non-Apple application”Submitted How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS as a story · 512 points
HN discussionFor anyone looking for more information on what happens on the first run of an app in Catalina, see [0]. Here's a direct link to the diagram [1]. [0]: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/01/27/what-could-possibly-go-w... [1]: https://eclecticlightdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/appf...
Comment linking /2020/01/27/what-could-possibly-go-wrong-on-an-app-first-run/
on “MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?”Submitted The Elephant at WWDC as a story · 470 points
HN discussionPerhaps related: "How come someone notarized my app?"[0] It mentions that anyone with an apple developer ID can notarize a qualifying app and submit this notary to the Apple Notary Service. However, the proof of notarization—the notarization ticket—might not be stapled to the application. In the case of no stapled ticket, Catalina contacts the notary service to see whether a ticket exists. If so, the app is good to…
Comment linking /2020/01/27/what-could-possibly-go-wrong-on-an-app-first-run/
on “MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?”Submitted Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence as a story · 441 points
HN discussionMy source was bad, scanning is related to antivirus and is better explained on here: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/08/28/how-notarization-works/
Comment linking /2020/08/28/how-notarization-works/
on “Apple’s Mistake”Submitted macOS Tahoe brings a new disk image format as a story · 382 points
HN discussionThe certificate is only checked on initial load. If the application gets changed afterwards then it will still load. It is not an integrity check. More details here: https://eclecticlight.co/2019/07/09/understanding-signature-...
Comment linking /2019/07/09/understanding-signature-checks-on-notarized-apps-in-mojave-10-14-5-1/
on “Can't you just right click?”Submitted The Perils of M1 Ownership as a story · 350 points
HN discussionThat is untrue for native arm apps. The OS actually requires signing. If you are running an x86 app through Rosetta you can currently avoid code signing requirement. https://eclecticlight.co/2020/08/22/apple-silicon-macs-will-...
Comment linking /2020/08/22/apple-silicon-macs-will-require-signed-code/
on “Open-Sourcing our Firmware”Submitted M1 Macs have another hidden boot mode as a story · 348 points
HN discussionmacOS knows when files and directories are moved via inodes: https://eclecticlight.co/2018/03/03/how-macos-tracks-your-fi... so I can't see any conceptual reason to keep .DS_Store.
Comment linking /2018/03/03/how-macos-tracks-your-files-inside-the-inode/
on “Dotfile madness”Submitted APFS is not safe to use with names which have Unicode normalisation issues as a story · 338 points
HN discussionYep - Apple wound up adding a “Redact” tool to Preview.app for PDFs, likely in response to all the people who just drew shapes over selectable sensitive text. https://eclecticlight.co/2020/12/11/how-effective-and-safe-i...
Comment linking /2020/12/11/how-effective-and-safe-is-previews-redaction-tool/
on “NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts”Submitted Users are losing out against Big Sur’s sealed System as a story · 310 points
HN discussionAt least some kernel log messages imply that the M1 might support ECC: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/12/09/what-happens-when-an-m1-...
Comment linking /2020/12/09/what-happens-when-an-m1-mac-starts-up/
on “ECC matters”Submitted Why are Apple Silicon VMs so different? as a story · 308 points
HN discussionAdditionally gatekeeper OCSP checks on app launches serve as telemetry in practice, and this has no preference or setting to disable it. This is just a check that the developer's certificate hasn't been revoked or expired. I wouldn't call it telemetry. Apple has said they're working on allowing users to opt-out of Gatekeeper checks if that's what people want. Details— https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/16/checks-on-ex…
Comment linking /2020/11/16/checks-on-executable-code-in-catalina-and-big-sur-a-first-draft/
on “Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery”Submitted The ‘app’ you can’t trash: how SIP is broken in High Sierra as a story · 294 points
HN discussionAccording to this article macOS does do a network request to check the notarization ticket: https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/09/how-does-ventura-check-a... They also check the developer certificate in the OCSP stage. Both of these are mechanisms where apple can effectively lock out developers from having a smooth install experience for their software at their discretion.
Comment linking /2023/03/09/how-does-ventura-check-an-apps-security/
on “M4 MacBook Pro”Submitted Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates as a story · 289 points
HN discussionIt's because of this. Adobe hates us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA Further reading: https://eclecticlight.co/2019/06/18/pdf-without-adobe-23-the...
Comment linking /2019/06/18/pdf-without-adobe-23-the-nightmare-of-forms/
on “Security Flaws in Adobe Acrobat Reader Allow Gaining Root on macOS Silently”Submitted The Anatomy of a macOS App as a story · 281 points
HN discussionMy use case is making lots of highlights in textbook PDFs and I usually can't highlight for long before it beachballs. PDF Expert is a huge upgrade in this respect. Readdle just needs to add exact phrase searching/finding; then it'll be wholly better than Preview imo. You can read more about Preview's struggles with annotations here https://eclecticlight.co/2020/04/07/how-preview-mangles-anno...
Comment linking /2020/04/07/how-preview-mangles-annotations/
on “Security Flaws in Adobe Acrobat Reader Allow Gaining Root on macOS Silently”Submitted M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2 as a story · 272 points
HN discussion[I was wrong, see below.—cw] It doesn't do the same thing. An APFS clone/copy-on-write clone is not the same as a hard or soft link. https://eclecticlight.co/2019/01/05/aliases-hard-links-symli...
Comment linking /2019/01/05/aliases-hard-links-symlinks-and-copies-in-mojaves-apfs/
on “Hyperspace”Submitted What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space? as a story · 262 points
HN discussion
