3 ms·
You can power on a Mac remotely
- TopHatHipster 5mo agoStill a shame macOS doesn't support full Wake-on-LAN. This holds me back from properly repurposing my M1 Mac Mini as a remote development machine or CI/CD agent with turning it on and off via WoL+SSH. It hurts even more to see the "turn power on whenever power is detected" feature is locked to Mac hardware from 2024 or newer. I don't see a reason why not all Apple Silicon machines can support this feature.
- m463 5mo agoI vaguely recall wake on lan actually worked with macs... but when powered on by an airport/airport extreme. I might be wrong.
- dcrazy 5mo agoYou’re thinking of the Bonjour sleep proxy. Normally if you tried to ssh to `mymac.local`, but your Mac was asleep, nothing would respond to the mDNS broadcast for `mymac.local`. If it had been long enough that your local mDNSResponder cache had expired, you’re out of luck. The AirPort would take over for your Mac and respond to mDNS queries on behalf of its hostname. (I believe it would also repeat the service records.) So your lookup of `mymac.local` would resolve to your Mac’s last IP address, and the AirPort would send the WoL packet to your Mac’s MAC, hopefully in time for your TCP connection to succeed.
- duskwuff 5mo agoWake-on-LAN works fine, but only wakes the machine from sleep. It won't boot a machine that's fully powered off.
- butvacuum 5mo agodepends on the implementation. which kind of embodies why WoL is so useless.
- victorbjorklund 5mo agoWe are of course talking about the Mac implementation
- thomassmith65 5mo agoXserve had LOM hardware 20 years ago. LOM enables power management even if the Xserve is off, and even if it lacks an installed operating system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Monitor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Monitor Edit: Xserve was an Apple rack mounted server that ran a special version of Mac OS X
- dcrazy 5mo agoThis isn’t quite lights-out, and Xserve ran the same version of Mac OS X Server you could install on any other Mac.
- thegagne 5mo agoHow is it not lights-out? You could remotely power on/off the servers (XServe only). Other Macs could not do this, as they did not have the separate LOM network interfaces, etc. I managed a bunch of XServes for a while, they were incredibly good hardware. The Mac Server software kinda sucked (not the LOM stuff, it was as good as any of the LOM from Dell, which is to say, not amazing, but workable).
- dcrazy 5mo agoSorry, I was referring to the automatic power-on feature described in the linked article.
- geerlingguy 5mo agoOnly on the Xeon models. The G4 and G5 didn't have any kind of LOM :(
- thomassmith65 5mo agoMy original comment was to add context to the article's first line: Apple FINALLY lets you turn on your Mac remotely, without having to press the power button. To you and me, that sentence needs the word "again" appended to it.
- 0011010111 5mo ago[dead]
- adrianmonk 5mo ago> Three decades later, with the release of macOS 26.5, Apple caught up: you can finally set your Mac to 'Always' boot whenever power is restored, regardless of how it was shut down. Back in the 1990s, a Mac sysadmin showed me a clever trick for this. Get one specific Apple Desktop Bus keyboard that has a soft power key on it, I believe the Apple Extended Keyboard[1]. Then get a Bic pen[2]. Push down the power key on the keyboard, and while it's still down, wedge the pen cap between the key and the keyboard case. The pen cap is the perfect size and shape to hold the key down, and Bic pens are easy to find. There are no ill effects from having the power key down all the time, and the Mac will boot up after a power failure. So you don't have to drive to work just to push the power button. This was especially handy considering you sometimes needed to use Macs as servers (file server, printing, certain Mac-only applications, etc.), but Apple did not make servers. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_Cristal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_Cristal
- woadwarrior01 5mo agoIsn't it easier to scotch tape or better yet, duct tape it down?
- geerlingguy 5mo agoTape gets weaker, mechanical wedge would stay a bit longer.
- olelele 5mo agoDuct tape gets real nasty after a while
- rzzzt 5mo agoThe power button on the Macintosh IIsi could be turned with a flat-head screwdriver to achieve the same thing you describe (locking it in the permanently-powered state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIsi#/media/File:Macintosh_IIsi_Ports.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIsi#/media/File:Mac...
- LeoPanthera 5mo agoThis is an aside, but I really hate clickbait culture. You can find it anywhere, but the YouTube video embedded in that page is a really good example. The title is: "Apple FINALLY lets you do this!" The thumbnail shows someone plugging in (or unplugging) the power cable from a Mac Mini. Neither is relevant to the video. Neither tells you what it's about. I'm sure this kind of clickbait works, because otherwise it wouldn't exist, but I am never going to click on that kind of slop. Never.
- threecheese 5mo agoUnfortunately, any “creator” who wants to be searchable on YouTube needs to optimize for that algorithm. I have the same feelings as you - and it includes pictures of their face pointing to something, with a particular expression of surprise. I give Jeff a pass though, and make sure I send alternate goodness signals like liking his YT videos after I watch them. He’s one of us.
- geerlingguy 5mo agoI publish the blog posts for the technical audience, and the YouTube videos for a living. And unfortunately, I and all the other YT creators I've talked to have experienced the same thing: a more technical title will give you half or worse in terms of views. You have to play YouTube's game if you want to have any kind of audience. I find a ton of channels that are buried not because they don't have great content, but more because they don't 'package' it well. It's something I learned in my programming career: no matter how much I despise marketing, marketing is necessary. And on YouTube marketing is almost entirely the thumbnail and title. I always take real pictures, show the exact subject and topic covered in the video, etc. — but I stretch the title a bit because that's an immediate way to get 2x-3x the views (and they're not click-away views, either, it's a large portion of the audience who would simply not click at all otherwise).
- LeoPanthera 5mo agoHave you considered who is clicking on your videos? Is the audience that clicks on "You won't believe!" different to "You can do this"? Or do you only care about eyeballs, and not who is behind the eyeballs?
- CrimsonCape 5mo agoCorrect me if you have more experience, but I have mostly avoided using smart plugs for computers because the PSU capacitors generate a large inrush current which tends to weld the relay contacts over time, causing the plugs to fail prematurely. Maybe ok in a power loss scenario, but not good to use for remote waking regularly...
- jaggederest 5mo agoModern ones that are rated for it are fine, you might need to replace it after a few years, but they're cheap. Thousands of cycles for a 15 amp device.
- bombcar 5mo agoIf you have as many devices as he does and a rack, getting a real APC managed power distribution unit is worth it.
- jaggederest 5mo agoTotally true, I bet you can get one that has a service interface to hook into whatever automation you're using, as well.
- mannyv 5mo agoPower on after a power failure has been a Mac feature for decades. Did it stop working at some point? Of course, it didn't work if you set your Mac to shut down if the UPS is running out of power, which was always quite annoying. You want a clean shutdown, but you also want it to come back up. I think I got around this by using shutdown hook scripts to unmount everything then just stop.
- geerlingguy 5mo agoNo this is power on after clean shutdown ("Always" is the new option Apple added, in addition to "never" and "after power failure")