Detnator

jdb8167 said:

MacQuadra840av said:

jdb8167 said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

There are bugs with installing on external drives and running Big Sur on an external boot drive. I can't get it to work at all on my M1 MacBook Air. But Big Sur seems pretty solid for day to day use. Better than Catalina in my opinion. 

Wrong. I ran all beta versions and final versions of Big Sur from my external USB 3.0 SSD drive.  Worked perfectly.  The problem you are encountering is Apple's security changes that started with T2 Macs.  You must boot into recovery mode using Command-R, if that is even still possible on an M1 Mac, and disable all the new security imposed by the T2 Macs.  Namely, the new security 'feature' that prohibits installing or booting from ANY external drive.  You should also disable the macOS security features that prohibit installing any version of macOS that is not downloaded at the time of install.  Those are likely the reasons why you cannot install or boot from an external drive.  Has nothing to do with any version of macOS.  

I’ve tried all that. It simply doesn’t work. Have you tried making an external USB drive boot an M1 Mac? There are people who have gotten it to work but I’m not one of them. I’ve tried a half dozen different things and I get an error every time. 

• Startup Security Utility: Set the security policies for your Mac. In the Recovery app, choose Utilities > Startup Security Utility. ... See Set the security policy.

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Ever had an update get stuck? That's when it reports some error but does not say what it is or how to fix it. The only suggestion is to try again later, which never ever works. You will get no further updates since all the later ones require the stuck update to complete first. The only solution is to manually download and install a standalone update, which no longer exists. Thanks Apple!

MacQuadra840av said:

Apple has continued to make everything more and more difficult to manage their product.  Removing delta and combo updaters that people used to manage their Macs makes no sense.  So now you have download a full 12GB installer and wait an hour to do a re-install if you are troubleshooting something strange?

The worst was the introduction of the T2 chip which by default prohibits you from installing macOS on your own system, without jumping through hoops (when you want to do a clean-install).  The default is to only allow a macOS install from the Command-R recovery mode, requiring a long download.  By default, you cannot boot from any external drive, unless you specifically disable the restriction that prohibits external drives.  Also, you have to allow macOS install from any source.  If you do not change those settings and you wipe the drive to re-install from an external USB boot disk, you can brick your Mac if you do not have internet access to re-install macOS.

Also, the creator of Diskmaker X has 'retired' the product because he does not have the time to re-write the program to figure out how to make a Big Sur boot disk with all of Apple's changes.  He never could get it to work running Catalina.  So the only way to make a Catalina boot disk is to run it from Mojave.  So I am guessing it is nearly impossible to make a USB boot disk of Big Sur.

gatorguy said:

Marvin said:

verne arase said:

Perhaps even more scary for Facebook and all the ad sellers selling targeted ads is if the collapse of their entire business model in the iOS arena doesn't cause havoc, and the emperor suddenly appears naked in public.

I've always had serious doubts about the efficacy of targeted ads - I tend to see them primarily after I've bought an item (and am no longer in the market).

I suppose if you're the type who hems and haws and takes days or weeks to make a purchase this could have an effect on you, but once I've decided to pull the trigger I go in, visit a few sites, and simply do it.

It's not like all those targeted ads get you a better deal or something.

Similar things have been said about billboard or TV advertising. There's no direct interaction to get to the product purchase so they appear ineffective. Billboard and TV ads know very little about the viewer and they will show Gillette ads to women, female hygiene products to men. If the TV or billboard knew some info about the viewer and could adapt the ad to the most suitable audience, at the very least it would be more cost-effective as the advertiser isn't paying for ad impressions for an audience that will never buy the product. It can cut ad costs significantly, even if it doesn't increase the number of buyers.

There will be cases where it makes little to no difference such as showing ads for games on a game site. The ad context alone is a huge step in narrowing down the target audience and DuckDuckGo has said that tracking isn't necessary to show effective ads as they base it on the search terms. However, the places where ads are shown don't always have that context. A persistent profile from tracking allows ads to be more effective everywhere they are shown.

It seems like there there should be more effective ways to achieve the same goal though and tracking people online should be either made illegal or restricted. If government agencies have to get approval to access browser history, there's no reason ad companies should be able do what is close to surveillance so easily.

People would likely prefer ads to show them deals on products they are looking for. Perhaps there could be an open standard device API that allows users to build a profile themselves and they can enter actual products they are looking for. At Christmas, they can put in that they want headphones, PS5, pressure cooker, Mac software and the ads on mobile apps and the web can adjust to what they are actually looking for. There are always deals on things ( https://www.retailmenot.com https://www.groupon.com ) but they are hard to keep track off at the time of purchase. Users would be able to choose how detailed or not they wanted it to be and companies would be allowed to add their own user data to it if the user agrees to it. This profile would likely have less volume than tracking everyone but a higher conversion rate. Someone could put in that they want Airpods Max but only at $450 and ads will show deals when it matches their price or comes close or they show competing products.

There will be dozens of wishlist type apps but they won't be linked to advertisers on a large-scale or standard way and the wishlist/profile wouldn't need to be sent to the server, the server can send the ad-list to the client to match the closest ads and choose randomly if there's no match. The device profile can be as detailed as needed and for kids, it can have their age so websites can comply better with regulations.

As far as Facebook is concerned, they only care about the revenue they make, not the businesses who use their services. The following suggests they make around $30 per user per year on ads:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average-advertising-revenue-per-user/

Ad-supported services are necessary for there to be things like Youtube, social networks, forums etc. People just aren't willing to pay for the services, mostly because they serve average quality, crowd-sourced content and they are monetizing kids who have no easy way to pay. But they could have a system that allows people to topup or subscribe to remove all ads online and use tokens for revenue. They'd need to charge a flat fee like 0.1c per context so $5 would get 5,000 ad-free contexts (pages), which should be around 2 months of browsing without ads. They can have family plans that kids can use. The browser context would be able to alert misuse, if a context charges for ad-removal and the client detects ads, it can flag misuse and avoid sending tokens. News sites can use the same setup. It can be bundled into a broader subscription so people don't just see it as an ad-removal payment.

Facebook is treating this like an attack on their business but ad companies have to start acting respectfully towards users. Their public appeal to be able to track users without their consent is crazy. There's no reason they can't get consent from users to understand what they want to buy and put the privacy controls in the hands of the users. It's long past time for governments to start reigning in what ad companies are allowed to do with people's private data.

Marvin, there was (maybe still is?) Google Contributor which had the goal of removing ads from your favorite websites in return for a monthly fee. Few people are willing to pay for it tho, so most websites weren't opting in even tho the intent was admirable. 

The only way I can see it being viable is if there's not any other good options. People in general want free IMO, even those who say they'd happily pay for it. If they can't see an obvious cost to the "free" then it's fine. End of story. 

Marvin said:

verne arase said:

Perhaps even more scary for Facebook and all the ad sellers selling targeted ads is if the collapse of their entire business model in the iOS arena doesn't cause havoc, and the emperor suddenly appears naked in public.

I've always had serious doubts about the efficacy of targeted ads - I tend to see them primarily after I've bought an item (and am no longer in the market).

I suppose if you're the type who hems and haws and takes days or weeks to make a purchase this could have an effect on you, but once I've decided to pull the trigger I go in, visit a few sites, and simply do it.

It's not like all those targeted ads get you a better deal or something.

Similar things have been said about billboard or TV advertising. There's no direct interaction to get to the product purchase so they appear ineffective. Billboard and TV ads know very little about the viewer and they will show Gillette ads to women, female hygiene products to men. If the TV or billboard knew some info about the viewer and could adapt the ad to the most suitable audience, at the very least it would be more cost-effective as the advertiser isn't paying for ad impressions for an audience that will never buy the product. It can cut ad costs significantly, even if it doesn't increase the number of buyers.

There will be cases where it makes little to no difference such as showing ads for games on a game site. The ad context alone is a huge step in narrowing down the target audience and DuckDuckGo has said that tracking isn't necessary to show effective ads as they base it on the search terms. However, the places where ads are shown don't always have that context. A persistent profile from tracking allows ads to be more effective everywhere they are shown.

It seems like there there should be more effective ways to achieve the same goal though and tracking people online should be either made illegal or restricted. If government agencies have to get approval to access browser history, there's no reason ad companies should be able do what is close to surveillance so easily.

People would likely prefer ads to show them deals on products they are looking for. Perhaps there could be an open standard device API that allows users to build a profile themselves and they can enter actual products they are looking for. At Christmas, they can put in that they want headphones, PS5, pressure cooker, Mac software and the ads on mobile apps and the web can adjust to what they are actually looking for. There are always deals on things ( https://www.retailmenot.com https://www.groupon.com ) but they are hard to keep track off at the time of purchase. Users would be able to choose how detailed or not they wanted it to be and companies would be allowed to add their own user data to it if the user agrees to it. This profile would likely have less volume than tracking everyone but a higher conversion rate. Someone could put in that they want Airpods Max but only at $450 and ads will show deals when it matches their price or comes close or they show competing products.

There will be dozens of wishlist type apps but they won't be linked to advertisers on a large-scale or standard way and the wishlist/profile wouldn't need to be sent to the server, the server can send the ad-list to the client to match the closest ads and choose randomly if there's no match. The device profile can be as detailed as needed and for kids, it can have their age so websites can comply better with regulations.

As far as Facebook is concerned, they only care about the revenue they make, not the businesses who use their services. The following suggests they make around $30 per user per year on ads:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average-advertising-revenue-per-user/

Ad-supported services are necessary for there to be things like Youtube, social networks, forums etc. People just aren't willing to pay for the services, mostly because they serve average quality, crowd-sourced content and they are monetizing kids who have no easy way to pay. But they could have a system that allows people to topup or subscribe to remove all ads online and use tokens for revenue. They'd need to charge a flat fee like 0.1c per context so $5 would get 5,000 ad-free contexts (pages), which should be around 2 months of browsing without ads. They can have family plans that kids can use. The browser context would be able to alert misuse, if a context charges for ad-removal and the client detects ads, it can flag misuse and avoid sending tokens. News sites can use the same setup. It can be bundled into a broader subscription so people don't just see it as an ad-removal payment.

Facebook is treating this like an attack on their business but ad companies have to start acting respectfully towards users. Their public appeal to be able to track users without their consent is crazy. There's no reason they can't get consent from users to understand what they want to buy and put the privacy controls in the hands of the users. It's long past time for governments to start reigning in what ad companies are allowed to do with people's private data.