11 ms·
Apple isn’t patching all the security holes in older versions of macOS
- sschueller 5y agoThey also never bothered to implement the 2 factor code popup on old systems but forcing user to use 2fa. So you now get to explain to grandma that she needs to enter her icloud password, get a password error, click on approve on her iPhone, then enter her password again with the 6 digit code shown on the iphone appended to the end of her password.
- uneoneuno 5y agoWHAT! How did I not know the append-the-code trick
- sschueller 5y agoI spent some time searching the web in my frustration thinking that 2fa was impossible on this MacBook. I think it was a stackoverflow comment somewhere that said to try this...
- dzhiurgis 5y agoIt's a common hack, i.e. Salesforce does same for the security token, IIRC same with github.
- qwertox 5y agoThat's a neat hack if you only have one input box. But all the extra code on the backend needed to differentiate between a normal password and a password+pin sounds like something which could accidentally weaken security.
- mc32 5y agoMaybe they’re leveraging radius for some of of that?
- Fnoord 5y agoOr PAM, or BSD_Auth, or AD, or ... there's a lot of options. Supposedly they can also see which capabilities the client has, allowing the fix server side. Why they did that we can only speculate, same with why its not well known. I can imagine an engineer with a kid who got a handmedown from mom/pop, and they silently fixing it this way because its within their expertise. I'd like to hear the authentic story behind it. Hopefully one day!
- dzhiurgis 5y agoIt's really not that complicated given it's a fixed 6 digit appendage
- garmaine 5y agoA secure app shouldn’t be sending passwords in the clear though.
- hn_throwaway_69 5y agoI made the mistake of reinstalling macOS on my late 2015 rMBP using internet recovery. I found myself locked in a loop where I couldn't upgrade to the latest macOS because it required 2FA. I called Apple Support and didn't tell me this information and simply said they can't bypass or disable 2FA. It was only by researching that I discovered this workaround. This was one of the worst user experiences I have experienced on an Apple product.
- easton 5y agoI feel like they patched in an error message explaining this on older versions of OS X, because I definitely was prompted to do it this way. Maybe just in iTunes?
- eyelidlessness 5y agoOddly, this is explicitly spelled out in old versions of iOS. I learned of it recently because my aging iPhone 8 died and I tried to revive my iPhone 5 while waiting for a replacement. (It did start up but was basically useless otherwise.)
- bmarquez 5y agoI've also seen the "append the 2fa code at the end of your password" trick work for other older products that only have one input box. An example is the discontinued Amazon Kindle Windows UWP app.
- gordeh 5y agoFrom memory, the error message it gives says this is what you do. Though I've long since accepted that no one ever reads what the message says.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- satellite2 5y agoThey are not even shipping root certificates in El Capitan (os from 5 years ago) and there is no way to update them safely without another computer. This is arguably the most important aspect of the trust ecosystem and there is no way to browse safely without those.
- gordeh 5y agoI did this exact thing for a client last week. No need for another computer I just downloaded the installer from the app store and run it as normal. Maybe they have tweaked things.
- afandian 5y agoThis caught out a family member. Until you said that I thought it was user error. Gone are the days of recommending apple because 'it just works'.
- tuxone 5y agoTo be fair El Capitan has been replaced by Sierra which is compatible with machines that are more than 10 years old.
- Toutouxc 5y agoAFAIK the youngest machine stuck on El Capitan (released 6 years ago, not 5) is a MacBook Air released 11 years and one month ago. Anything newer is at least on High Sierra (relased 4 years ago).
- Lamad123 5y agoThey want to force us to update to their much worse Bug Spyware
- traceroute66 5y agoYawn. More Apple bashing that is not backed up by any facts. Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum. Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows. Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies. Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy. You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions. Promising your users you will patch all historical versions forever is not feasible, because it means you are promising you will patch all dependencies forever, and that will require a lot of massive teams of developers doing nothing all day but patching legacy software.
- ccouzens 5y agoThe problem is they don't allow the latest MacOS on not very old hardware. If they allowed the latest OS there would be less call to keep the older versions patched. > Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum. > Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows. > Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours. But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices. I extended the life of a 2011 iMac which stopped recieving updates from Apple by installing the latest Fedora. Most Linux distributions draw the line at 32 bit hardware. Windows 11 was controversial in that it dropped support for older computers. But this shows what the expectations are.
- traceroute66 5y ago> But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices. So is OS X Big Sur[1] and Monterey[2] For the majority of people all they need to do is pull their finger out and upgrade the OS from Catalina to Big Sur or Monterey. [1]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238 [2]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212551
- ccouzens 5y agoThose show about 8 years. My 2011 iMac was dropped by Mojave (7 years). Modern computers should last a lot longer than that, especially if you can pass them on to users with less demanding requirements. And fortunately Macs do last longer than that, but you have to install Linux or Windows to keep them up to date.
- azalemeth 5y agoI'd love to know the "true" histogram of MacOS versions. I'm currently typing this on a machine running Mojave as it is the last one to support 32-bit code. I bet I am not the only one – 10.14 happens to match up with the last "perpetually licensed" adobe suite, for example, as well as older versions of Office. I'm sure Apple know exactly how many people they inconvenience at any given point, and make a calculated decision about support.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago>I'm sure Apple know exactly how many people they inconvenience at any given point, and make a calculated decision about support. Each Apple laptop gets upgrades to newest for roughly 6-7 years.
- timeon 5y agoThis was exactly my case especially with the Adobe. Then my MBP died just few days before deadline. So I got new one with M1 chip. And I had to go with Adobe subscription. Not only it was bloatware it was also buggy. Then Affinity had sale and I bought three Affinity apps for the price of three months with Adobe. Affinity Designer is better for my needs then combination of Photoshop/Illustrator. However Adobe Indesign is still much better then Affinity publisher. I could live with that but there is not good compatibility between Indesign and Publisher (unlike Affinity Designer where you can easily import/export .psd). But I will have to find workaround not because subscription sucks (I do not use Indesign daily but still almost every month). It sucks because Creative Cloud is bloatware.
- ungamed 5y agoThe subscription still sucks.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoWelcome to the world of big-tech commercial software. You either pay a subscription fee in money or your private information for ad targeting. Sometimes even both.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoThey are offering free upgrades to newer versions of operating system instead. The only case where you're not getting it is when your laptop has been EOLed by Apple, which is effectively the same thing.
- makeitdouble 5y agoTo note, 32bit compat has been discontinued with Catalina, so people who kept an old version around for that purpose are SOL. Moving to a virtualized instance is an option, but then I wonder how PITA it is to keep the virtual one secure.
- diebeforei485 5y agoWhat are these 32-bit apps people seem to keep running? If they are games, Boot Camp is an option on Intel macs, and CrossOver [1] is an option on Apple Silicon. https://applesilicongames.com/games https://applesilicongames.com/games
- makeitdouble 5y agoI personally gave up on an old Lightroom version that was pre-CS cloud, and could see more professional people clinging to specific version of apps for whatever reason (private plugins, specific Apple scripts, standardized manual procedures etc.). There must also be enterprise software that still weren’t recompiled or the vendor went under or threw the towel. Those are a minority, but sadly we see that on every breaking change.
- wl 5y agoWXtoImg is what I miss the most. There’s a long tail of unsupported old software with unique capabilities.
- diebeforei485 5y agoI see it's no longer being updated. Does the Windows version[1] work on macOS using Wine/CrossOver? 1. https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/downloads/ https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/downloads/
- sgt 5y agoI'm still running Mojave. Never found the time to upgrade. Ridiculous, I know. Anyone else in the same boat?
- lwouis 5y agoI find fewer and fewer new features motivating an upgrade. These days it's integration or fluff like tracking the time you spend on each app. I'm on Catalina and have no incentive to upgrade, but have many incentives not to (e.g. breaking compatibility)
- xfitm3 5y agoOne aspect I find infuriating is UX changes. I like the way things were, change for change's sake is annoying.
- deergomoo 5y agoI don’t mind visual spruce ups to keep things fresh, but over the last few years at Apple there has been a trend in “hiding things in drawers”. Buttons are removed from UIs and moved to hover actions or put inside overflow menus (which is basically a misnomer at this point as there are not enough buttons to fill a toolbar, let alone overflow one). It’s awful, because you end up with software that is pretty in a screenshot but is objectively less simple to use, because discoverability drops like a lead balloon. It seemed to start when Forstall was ousted and Jony Ive’s team took over software design as well as hardware. Their recent laptops have shown you can give up a little form in favour of a lot of function, so hopefully the software teams are (re-)learning the same lessons.
- lordnacho 5y agoIt would be good to just have a choice. The designers can go nuts every year, just give me a drop down and I'll pick the skin I like.
- cgufus 5y agoEven worse: Sierra. Ouch. 10 years ago I used to go for every upgrade immediately (even .0’s). IMO new versions since maybe 10.8 added mostly data collecting bloat. macOS moved far away from the OS I once loved (peaked at Snow Leopard IMO). Funnily, macOS became “free” after Snow Leopard, so you’ve probably paid with your data ever since.
- hyperstar 5y agoNaive question: why is it that the newest version of macos doesn't run on older machines? (The solution is, of course, to install Linux on them.)
- Laforet 5y agoLack of drivers, or the newer OS may require a specific instruction set or feature not present on older hardware.
- hyperstar 5y agoBut why don't they just keep the drivers etc. from the previous version? This doesn't seem to be a problem for Linux.
- Laforet 5y agoLinux would also require drivers to be recompiled for a new kernel. This is not an option for most proprietary drivers for products long abandoned by the manufacturer. For the more common and popular hardware there is a good chance that open source drivers can be maintained by the community but if your laptop relies on a somewhat obscure chipset or microcontroller then your mileage will vary...a lot. Look up "Intel GMA500 Linux driver" if you need an example of the pain. Sometimes the decision could be entirely commercial. Most notably, OSX dropped support for all nVidia GPUs from Mojave onwards despite nVidia going on record saying they are happy to continue providing drivers but Apple won't sign them.
- thrower123 5y agoMicrosoft has spoiled us these many decades by providing patches for out-of-support operating systems.
- newsclues 5y agoIf I recall ms was forced to do so because of the atrocious security of windows
- sys_64738 5y agoIt’s their responsibility as they programmed allowing these flaws to begin with. Companies that write software and EOL it have a moral obligation to support it until the end of times, or provide an upgrade path to keep it supported.
- acd10j 5y agoI am still on Majove, and do not want to upgrade to Montery due to Bugs like Memory leaks reported by people. I only have 4 gb ram on macbook air. Will Montery work with 2015 macbook air with only 4 gb ram without issue ?
- paul_h 5y agoI have pals that work at Apple, but they're not saying: I wonder what branching model they are running for macOS/iOS.
- godDLL 5y agoPlease anyone, someone, does anyone think that these are all the same company? Same culture? Same quality of software? Apple releasing 10.4 Apple releasing 10.6 Apple releasing 10.11 Apple releasing 10.15
- sneak 5y agoThe amount of phone-home in the macOS these days is also absolutely astounding. My new mbp16 has at least 4 different processes talking to Apple Maps servers even with location services disabled, and if you press F8 it sends the machine's unchangeable hardware serial number to Apple (linking it to your IP) without consent. (FWIW it also says on screen that it is doing this when you press F8.)
- godDLL 5y agoIt that Maps functionality, or OS functionality? Can it be remapped in Keyboard Shortcuts? And most importantly, what the actual fuck?..
- gbolcer 5y agoI know one of the reasons for this (as an outsider). Over the years, the security patch codebase included other bugs that had been fixed in later code. Apple ios particularly when they are getting ready to launch a new iphone fork their code and try to keep security patches in sync, but by doing so "unfix" a lot of bugs. This has been an observed pattern for 6 or 7 major upgrades now. The bottom line, software used by tens of millions of people is hard.
- sneak 5y agoI'll say it: macOS is in decline. It used to be we would pay a premium for slightly less good hardware, just to run the macOS. Now, we buy hardware that is world-leading, and sponsor people to try to get Linux running on it so we can flee the mess that is macOS.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 5y ago> The simple solution for this problem is that Apple should actually provide all of the security updates for all of the operating systems that it is actively updating That's circular reasoning. The older operating systems are only getting security updates, as the article notes, so their definition of "actively updating" is "getting security updates". When Apple isn't issuing security updates, it is not "actively updating". Maybe what the author wants to say is something along the lines that Apple should provide timely security updates for all operating systems released over the past 10-15 years.
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoIncredibly short sighted when they shipped so many laptops with 128GB drives even till quite recently where upgrading is almost impossible once you've been using the machine because even basic apps and a few files push you beyond the limit required to update. Most of these laptops run at 2-4GB free space because MacOS already takes up a ton of space and throw on a few electron apps and its full.
- smoldesu 5y agoI pity the people who bought one of those thinking they could install Xcode and still have room for a couple movies afterwards.
- salamandersauce 5y agoIt's not even much better with 256GB. I thought I'd be fine as I used to run Linux with 128GB and had loads of room. MacOS has been very tight with 256GB
- hmrr 5y agoI’m running a 256Gb mini. I have 100Gb free. That includes 25 years of carefully curated photos and videos. Depends what you do with it and how wasteful you are with storage.
- captn3m0 5y ago>Apple should spell out its update policies for older versions of macOS, as Microsoft does, rather than relying on its current hand-wavy release timing. I maintain endoflife.date/iphone and endoflife.date/macos, and this has been a continuous problem - Apple doesn't provide a document that notes supported OS releases anywhere. The closest we got was in the iOS 15 releases notes which confirmed Apple would provide iOS14 with security updates (something that they clearly failed at). Apple also released an emergency security fix for iOS12 when it was unsupported, which was nice - but Apple needs to clearly document when can users expect such fixes. The only pages Apple does provide is list of supported devices, which only covers the latest OS, and is unreliable as a result. https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/ios https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/io...