2026-03-18 00:40:01
Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, in a post reviewing the MacBook Neo, makes this observation about how Apple got the ARM transition right and why Microsoft got it wrong:
Apple’s software secret was this constant upgrading of the OS and the ecosystem (from drivers up). Microsoft’s secret was “run everything forever”. As is almost always the case in business and product development, your greatest strength (in any of the 4 Ps) becomes your greatest weakness. The pull and push of forever compatibility was not just “Windows DNA” but it was the soul of what made Windows successful and was sacred. But it was obvious then and now that it was the part that needed to change.
This is absolutely right. It’s not that Microsoft didn’t know where it needed to go with Windows and PC designs—it absolutely did. For years, you could watch what it was doing and see it trying to push things forward—only to be dragged backward by its entire business being built on stability, legacy, and compatibility. The thing that made Windows so sticky also made it almost impossible to effect real change.
Apple, on the other hand, has never shied away from pushing compatibility changes and breaking old software and forcing users to new OS versions. That can be annoying, for sure, but it’s also gotten the Mac to where it is today, with Apple silicon in general and a product like the MacBook Neo in particular.
2026-03-17 05:34:14
Myke has MacBook Neo FOMO and we have reviews of both Studio Display models. Also: Apple starts celebrating 50; App Store fees are lowered in China; Somehow, AirPods Max returned; Apple’s AI crisistunity; and Jason in Jeopardy!?
2026-03-17 05:00:25
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2026-03-17 00:30:29
A powerful tool in the Finder arsenal is a simple checkbox: “Ignore ownership on this volume.” This option appears when you select any locally connected volume on your Mac that isn’t the startup volume and choose File: Get Info. Permissions controls who and, more importantly for this column, what can access data.
When you check the box, you override the normal permissions settings for a volume, which otherwise may restrict reading, writing, and viewing of folder contents to specific users or groups. Even if you’re the only user of your Mac, this can still cause problems, because your logged-in user doesn’t have permission to read and write everything.
While you can typically override a prohibited operation by entering your administrator password when prompted, that doesn’t always work. And any software that needs unattended access to a folder or volume can be denied, sometimes silently. I discovered a problem with this when Time Machine told me on my laptop that it couldn’t perform a backup to a Time Machine-designed folder on my Mac Studio’s external volume.1
When I checked this external volume, it was marked as read-only. Using Get Info, I saw that the “Ignore ownership” checkbox had been… ignored! It was now unchecked. Permissions are divided into owners and groups, and the owner was system, which is a privileged user, and allowed Read & Write. One group was listed as wheel, which is a special group that system belongs to, and marked as “Read only.” The everyone group was also included, and also set to “Read only.”
Peculiar.
Looking at log data, the only clue appeared to be a lot of errors with Panic’s Transmit file-transfer app:
2026-02-27 08:55:06.561417-0800 0x1ed4930 Error 0x0 0 0 kernel: (Sandbox) System Policy: Transmit(16376) deny(1) file-read-xattr /Volumes/EvoLution 8TB/.Spotlight-V100
It looked like Transmit couldn’t read a number of files on the external volume in question during some routine operation. I had a tab open in Transmit passively displaying that volume’s contents, as I had downloaded a remote file to a folder on it. Apparently, Transmit polls local volumes in the background to check contents.
The answer was found in macOS’s app privacy controls, which prevent apps without permission from accessing all kinds of data, organized into categories in System Settings: Privacy & Security. I’d recently updated Transmit, and this apparently reset access in the Full Disk Access section of Privacy & Security, even though I know I had previously granted access.
Another clue was in the /var/db/volinfo.database file, which I didn’t know existed before researching this problem. This file contains a list of volumes by their Volume UUID (Universally Unique Identifier), which is how macOS ensures that two identically named volumes don’t conflict, as they have unique IDs at the system level. A 00000001 indicates permission is not ignored; a 00000000 means it is ignored!
You can find this datum most easily in Disk Utility: select the volume, then click Info. Under “File system UUID,” you’ll see the number. This may be a short string of hexadecimal (base 16) digits for an HFS+ or Apple RAID volume, or a long one for APFS volumes. For instance, one APFS volume I was having trouble with has the UUID 92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2.
The volinfo.database file isn’t updated when “Ignore ownership” changes; instead, it’s appended. Only the last state is referenced at startup, but it’s a strange way to manage this file. When I examine it, I can see the thrashing of the ownership state:
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000001
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000000
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000001
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000000
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000001
92EA5511-1DD7-3881-84B9-ED0637645FC2: 00000000
When I looked at the Full Disk Access panel, sure enough, Transmit was disabled. I enabled it and expected to now be rewarded with the read-only status no longer mysteriously appearing.
Sadly, it wasn’t that easy.
The next day, the volume is back to read-only. This time, however, I notice that, even though there’s no datestamp in the volinfo.database file, it updates whenever it’s modified. So, using ls -l /var/db/volinfo.database in Terminal, I could see that at 11 p.m., it changed back to read-only. After a little bit of contemplating what might be running at that time, I realized it was Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner.
While I use Time Machine and Backblaze, I also perform a clone of my startup volume using CCC as extra duct tape on top of my suspenders and belt.
I looked through CCC’s settings and found “Don’t preserve permissions” under Troubleshooting Settings. That certainly seemed like it could be the issue. I also found that I could use a Postflight option to set a shell (or bash) script that could run after the clone update was complete.
#!/bin/bash
sleep 5
vsdbutil -a /Volumes/EvoLution\ 8TB
mount -u -o noowners /Volumes/EvoLution\ 8TB
That script uses the vsdbutil utility to restore the volume’s status to the correct value. And then the mount operation reloads permissions in place. It worked!
But in the meantime, I sent an email to Bombich and heard back from the eponymous Mike Bombich, who said that I had created a backup job that had a conflict: CCC has to enable specific ownership (not “ignore”) on the volume it’s writing to because I was backing up a startup volume. Without ownership enabled, a full restore wouldn’t work. The issue of “preserving permissions” is about the permissions on the source volume, not the destination volume.
The short answer was that I needed to check the “Don’t preserve permissions” box after enabling “Ignore ownership” on the external volume to prevent the external volume from becoming read-only. I don’t know why this just started to crop up, but this is clearly the issue.
Mike also helpfully noted that my backup wasn’t restorable for a variety of reasons, and I’d be better off repartitioning my striped RAID external drive to create a standalone APFS volume that CCC could clone directly to. Mike’s been at this a long time!
If you’d like to learn more about using commands in the Terminal app, I’ll be darned, but Joe Kissell has a freshly updated book on the topic, Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal, revised January of this year.
[Got a question for the column? You can email [email protected] or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
2026-03-16 21:43:26
One way to celebrate your company’s upcoming 50th anniversary: the release of a product update nobody had on their bingo card.
Apple on Monday announced AirPods Max 2, the successor to its high-end over-the-ear headphones. The new models use the H2 chip found in Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 4 line, getting many of the same benefits, including Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, and Live Translation. They come in the same colors as the most recent model of AirPods Max—midnight, starlight, orange, purple, and blue—and continue to come with the same Smart Case as the original model.
Apple says the improved Active Noise Cancelling is 1.5x more effective than the previous version, due to the H2 chip and improved algorithms. There’s also a new high dynamic range amplifier, which Apple claims will provide even cleaner audio, improved latency to help gaming performance, and the ability to use Siri Interactions, nodding or shaking your head to give feedback to the virtual assistant.
The company’s also aiming the Max 2 at music creators, by pointing out that, with the USB-C cable, they can create and mix their music in Personalized Spatial Audio with head tracking.
This update’s been a long time coming—so long, in fact, that many had given up believing it ever would. The original AirPods Max debuted in December 2020, and then received only a meager update in September 2024, swapping out the original model’s Lightning connector for a USB-C port.
I did note one interesting details while perusing the comparison page between AirPods Max and AirPods Max 2: while Apple says that the 20 hours of listening time with ANC enabled remains constant from the previous model to this one, it has declined to provide a similar benchmark for movie playback, as it did for the last generation of AirPods Max. Likewise, the previous generation cited 5 minutes of charge time providing 1.5 hours of listening time, a stat that is not listed for the AirPods Max 2. I’ve reached out to Apple to ask if there are comparable stats available and will update this story if I get a response.
One thing that hasn’t changed? The AirPods Max 2’s price tag of $549. They’ll go on sale next Wednesday, March 25, and arrive early next month.
2026-03-14 09:24:38
Every year we make an original design and offer it exclusively to Six Colors members. Then sometime the next year, we make it available for everyone. I’m happy to announce that our shirt from last year is now available for everyone.
This one is a winner. I call it “The Ascent of iPhone,” and it tracks from the original iPhone all the way to the Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro. John Moltz outdid himself with this design.
Also available, anytime:
And numerous other things from Six Colors and The Incomparable are available on demand at our Cotton Bureau store.
