Please tell me your convenient life hacks in using a MacBook

Little snitch and micro snitch. It's a great inbound/outbound firewall and alert program.

micro snitch alerts you if your mic or camera are being switched on.
 
My reference is that nearly every MacBook I've fixed for friends were fixed by removing Little Snitch. It requires networking and firewall knowledge beyond the average user.
 
Here is a interesting video of some who repairs macs for a living.

*** video removed due to swearing ***
 
ChrisD. said:
My reference is that nearly every MacBook I've fixed for friends were fixed by removing Little Snitch. It requires networking and firewall knowledge beyond the average user.
Click to expand...

Ok granted, yes in can look abit daunting to the average user but there are easy settings already configured like "allow all silent mode" .

To give an extreme example of how it's helped me. I use makemkv a lot to convert videos to the mkv container and put them in my plex server. Makemkv is great program, dead easy to use but I am suspicious of it because its always in beta and has some functionality that circumvents some copy protection (for which I don't use) hence its very popular with a certain crowd. The application itself is very popular because it does what is says on the tin very well and the company that makes the app charge a fee after the trial period but free keys are given in the forums. Now I hear you say "thats dodgy as hell and I don't put that *** swearing should be fully starred out *** on my computer" and you'd be right. Using little snitch alerted me to it calling home in Moscow the kremlin lol and now that is stuff is blocked. All good!
Having said this it looks like some of the functionality is borked in big sur. I'll be staying on catalina for a while.
 
sg0 said:
Ok granted, yes in can look abit daunting to the average user but there are easy settings already configured like "allow all silent mode" .

To give an extreme example of how it's helped me. I use makemkv a lot to convert videos to the mkv container and put them in my plex server. Makemkv is great program, dead easy to use but I am suspicious of it because its always in beta and has some functionality that circumvents some copy protection (for which I don't use) hence its very popular with a certain crowd. The application itself is very popular because it does what is says on the tin very well and the company that makes the app charge a fee after the trial period but free keys are given in the forums. Now I hear you say "thats dodgy as hell and I don't put that *** swearing should be fully starred out *** on my computer" and you'd be right. Using little snitch alerted me to it calling home in Moscow the kremlin lol and now that is stuff is blocked. All good!
Having said this it looks like some of the functionality is borked in big sur. I'll be staying on catalina for a while.
Click to expand...
You're surprised an app developed by someone who lives in Moscow, is calling home to Moscow?
 
Little Snitch can be extremely destructive prior to Big Sur. It's far too easy to block traffic which is neither dangerous and/or essential for the OS/genuine apps to operate. Just don't install dodgy software, cracks for games/apps etc and you absolutely don't need it.
 
ChrisD. said:
You're surprised an app developed by someone who lives in Moscow, is calling home to Moscow?
Click to expand...

You're missing the point. It's the straw that broke the camels back. The functionality of the software enabled me to track outgoing data so I can make an informed decision about my data

ChrisD. said:
Little Snitch can be extremely destructive prior to Big Sur. It's far too easy to block traffic which is neither dangerous and/or essential for the OS/genuine apps to operate. Just don't install dodgy software, cracks for games/apps etc and you absolutely don't need it.
Click to expand...

there is an allow all button! Just tick it. The program Is like 90% tick or cross you choose . Apps that are talking are at the top of the list.

Even "Legitimate" software does illegitimate snooping, there is history of apps in the playstore and app store that have proven this.

I used to use VOX music player on ios, it's excellent at what it does. Have had it for years. When I updated to ios 14, every time I opened vox ios notified me that vox copied from the clipboard board wtf! Could be a bug i suppose but I didn't like it one bit. There is no need for it to do that.

the link I posted to the video was deleted but in short Louis Rossman a right to repair activist and tech repair shop owner in New York (highly recommend his vids on you tube) explains about an article (from a person I can't remember) illustrating how apps on Mac hardware were not opening or were crashing because of a apple server outage. Normally The apps call the server if you're online and your usage getts logged, and everything just works but with the server issue things went pear shaped and apps that people had purchased couldn't be used. Now You could've turned the internet off on your machine or set little snitch to block that traffic thus keeping you online for everything else and use your paid for apps.

Now this topic is called "
Please tell me your convenient life hacks in using a MacBook"

All due respect just because you couldn't or didn't know how to use it doesn't mean it's not useful life hack for others. Objective development have been around a long time and their snitches are very popular with a lot of windows users wanting the same functionality.

I've said all I have to say in this topic. Good luck to everyone in these strange times.
 
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