I don't use OS X/macOS anymore, but around 2015 I remember Apple finally killed Cocoa's horrible mouse input lag. The worst obstacle to fast FPS gaming on macOS is now Quartz's Vsync/beam sync. Originally posted by Huntlol. It's very fair to say that Star Trek The Video Game is the worst Trek game ever made ā you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would argue the point. The game was a buggy mess with zero variation, terrible graphics, and bad level design that which will frustrate as much as it will bore you. 1 Best: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.
Yesterday (October 22, 2007) Oobject published a list of the 16 worst Apple products ever (since updated to 18) ā and we just have to disagree with some of them.
We have no clue how Oobject picked its list. One of the 16 computers wasnāt even made by Apple, and some seem to be on the list because theyāre kinda ugly, while others are there because they were hardware disasters (the Apple III) or only on the market for four months (the Mac IIvi).
They missed some obvious choices.
Itās certainly a way to get attention for your website, as Mac users tend to be opinionated, vocal, and hate seeing their favorite computer line unfairly maligned. Anyhow, once they had their initial list, they let visitors to their website vote on them. Hereās the list as seen on the Oobject website this morning:
Weāre less concerned about poor aesthetics than poor hardware, and since this is Low End Mac, weāll ignore the Newtons and iPods. We will say this about the Apple III: It deserves to be first or second on the list. See The Ill-Fated Apple III by Jason Walsh and Apple III Chaos: What Happened When Apple Tried to Enter the Business Market for details.
Oobject completely missed the worst Macs ever, the Performa/LC x200 series, which included the 5200-5300 all-in-ones and the 6200-6320 modular models. These Macs were so bad that they are the one and only reason we came up with the Road Apple label. They are also the only Macs bad enough to deserve a four Road Apple rating.
In brief, Apple took the successful Performa/LC 630, a computer designed around the 68040 CPU, and cobbled a PowerPC processor onto it. (Unlike Oobject, we think the 630 was one of Appleās best designs ever*) Anyhow, Apple put a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus and created a monstrosity that worked okay as long as you didnāt use the modem or a network connection.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Oobject names the Mac IIvi as one of Appleās worst ever, completely missing its far worse sibling, the Performa 600. After all, the 16 MHz IIvi performed exactly as well as youād expect a 16 MHz Mac to perform.
The accelerator/cache slot in the Performa 600 was deliberately crippled so it couldnāt use a Level 2 cache card, thus the 32 MHz CPU on its 16 MHz system bus was always hungry for data. BYTE low-level benchmarks show the 20 MHz Mac IIsi outperforms the 32 MHz Performa 600 in five of six CPU tests ā and the 16 MHz SE/30 even beat it in one.
The 32 MHz Mac IIvx is better than the Performa 600 for precisely two reasons, as they are virtually identical in all other respects. The Mac IIvx includes a math coprocessor and has a Level 2 cache, which made it much better than the Performa 600 ā but still slower overall than the 25 MHz Mac IIci it was supposed to replace.
Likewise, thereās no mention of the black Macintosh TV on Oobject. This computer took an LC 550, added a TV tuner and remote control (along with a cable TV connector on the back) and then crippled the Macintosh side of things by leaving out the math coprocessor and absolutely limiting maximum RAM to 8 MB. (The LC 550 supports up to 36 MB.)
Another curiosity is that the Mac TV supports 16-bit video when watching TV, but the Mac side is limited to 8-bit graphics.
Take a great hardware design, eliminate the very important Level 2 cache, and youāve got the idea behind the PowerBook G3 Series I 233 MHz. The 250 MHz model had only two important differences from the cacheless āMainStreetā PowerBook: a 7% faster CPU and 1 MB level 2 cache. That was enough to let it benchmark twice as high as the MainStreet model.
The later PowerBook G3 Series II 233 MHz, which includes a 512 KB level 2 cache, benchmarks 70% higher. Itās amazing how one little cost saving decision can cripple an otherwise good computer.
All four of these Macs suffer from the same fundamental flaw: They put a 32-bit 68020 CPU on a 16-bit data bus and arbitrarily limited maximum usable RAM to 10 MB. The biggest challenge is choosing which order to list them in.
This family of Macs began with the Macintosh LC in October 1990. It was the first low cost (hence LC) color Mac designed for the consumer market. It was the smallest desktop Mac prior to the Mac mini, and it was probably designed with the same idea: How small can we make a desktop computer?
Measuring 12.2ā³ wide, 15.3ā³ deep, and 2.9ā³ high, it was only a bit bigger than necessary to make room for two 3.5ā³ floppy drives (or one floppy and one 3.5ā³ hard drive), a power supply, a logic board, and a processor direct slot (PDS). It was a bit taller than necessary so users could access the floppy drive with a keyboard in front of the computer.
The LC was one of the first Macs with a microphone jack for audio input, and it had 2 MB of RAM, just barely enough to run System 7, which was just around the corner. And with a pair of 4 MB SIMMs, it could reach 10 MB.
Apple introduced a new graphics mode with the LC, 512 x 384 pixels, along with a 12ā³ RGB monitor that only supports that resolution. With the stock 256 KB of video memory, it supports 8-bit color (256 colors) at 512 x 384 and 4-bit color (just 16 colors) at the more traditional 640 x 480 resolution. With VRAM upgraded to 512 KB, it supports 8-bit color at 640 x 480 and 16-bit color (65,000+ colors) at 512 x 384.
The LC was designed for the home and education markets, and a dual floppy version was available only to educators. To help the Mac gain traction in schools, Apple produced an Apple IIe card for the LCās lone processor direct slot (PDS). The card works with an Apple II 5.25ā³ floppy drive and requires running the LC at its 512 x 384 resolution.
The original LC performed adequately (itās rated at about 75% the power of the 16 MHz Mac II because of itās narrow data bus), and Apple reportedly sold a half-million.
The LC II, Color Classic, and Classic II are all designed around the same logic board, but they use the 68030 CPU and have 4 MB of RAM on the motherboard. Although they can have 12 MB of RAM installed, they can only access 10 MB.
The Classic II (October 1991) is the worst of this family for one reason: Itās the only one of these models with no expansion slot. It was the last Mac to use the āclassicā form factor with a 9ā³ 1-bit black and white display, and it was intended as a replacement for the beloved SE/30, which has a 32-bit data bus, a PDS expansion slot, supports up to 128 MB of RAM, and offers far better overall performance.
The Color Classic (February 1993) takes the next spot, although it has features that commend it. It was the first Mac with a built-in microphone, the first with buttons to control contrast and brightness (software controlled), and the first compact all-in-one with a color display. Itās 10ā³ Trinitron CRT runs at 512 x 384 resolution, and there was no way to use the 640 x 480 resolution the computer was otherwise capable of short of hacking the Color Classicās hardware and making 512 x 384 unavailable. A dual scan display supporting both resolutions would have been sweet. The Color Classic made a great classroom machine, as it supported the Apple IIe card.
The LC II (March 1992) edges past the Color Classic primarily because it supports 640 x 480 resolution without a hardware hack.
Picking the tenth model on this list wasnāt easy. In terms of compromised hardware, the first nine are fairly straightforward. Other ā10 worst Macā lists suggest the PowerBook 150 (no video out, no ADB port, murky video), PowerBook 5300 (dead motherboards, cracked cases and hinges, a slow hard drive, no Level 2 cache, and Sonyās first flaming lithium-ion battery fiasco), Performa/LC/Quadra 630 (very poor hard drive performance, but otherwise quite nice), Power Mac 4400 (Appleās attempt to out-cheap the Motorola StarMax clones), the original 128 KB Macintosh (not enough RAM to do much real work), Mac Portable (16 pounds?), the Mac Classic (8 MHz in 1990?), and others.
Most of these have already been given the Road Apple label, and the 20th Anniversary Mac (more or less a PowerBook 3400 reconfigured for desktop use) could be a contender as well.
Iām going out on a limb to suggest that the Mac mini rounds out this list ā the only post-2000 Mac to make the list. I know that choice will be controversial, and Iām torn between the two versions of the Mac mini, G4 and Intel.
I wonāt deny the attraction of the Mac mini: Itās small, cute, and affordable for a Mac. But itās also seriously compromised because of its size.
The G4 Mac mini gets additional ābadnessā points because if you didnāt order the base version with AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth from the factory, Apple provided no way to incorporate those features down the road; youād have to buy USB devices. The Intel Mac mini includes AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth as standard features, but it replaces the altogether decent ATI Radeon 9200 graphics of the G4 Mac mini with Intel GMA 950 graphics that eats up 80 MB of system memory and provides only passable performance.
Of all the Mac mini versions made [remember, this was written in October 2007], the most compromised has to be the original 1.5 GHz Core Solo version. Not only does it sacrifice 80 MB of its stock 512 MB (thatās 15.6% of base RAM) and ship with an OS (Mac OS X 10.4.4 Tiger) that really wants more than 512 MB of system memory to begin with, but it was the only Mac ever built around Intelās Core Solo CPU and the only Intel-based Mac to run at under 1.66 GHz.
Primate Labs created its Geekbench software to benchmark different computing platforms: Windows, Linux, and both PowerPC and Intel Macs. The second-lowest Geekbench score for any Intel Mac is for the 1.66 GHz Mac mini Core Duo, which rates 2121. By contrast, the 1.5 GHz Core Solo model rates a paltry 1407 ā less than 2/3 as high. Thank Jobs that Apple never again put the Core Solo in a Mac!
* Editorās note: The 630 was later included in our list of The 25 Most Important Macs
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Apple patched what noted Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle described to SC Media as āthe worst macOS bug in recent memory.ā An adware group had already been using the bug in the wild.
The bug, patched in macOS 11.3, allowed hackers to circumvent much of Appleās built-in malware detection for programs downloaded from the internet. MacOS knows to apply additional scrutiny to downloads by activating the ācom.apple.quarantineā attribute. When all goes well, programs with that attribute trigger Appleās suite of system warnings and outright blocking of suspicious applications ā File Quarantine, Gatekeeper, and notarization. Apple released macOS 11.3 on Monday.
The problem stemmed from how Macs install programs. Macs have the ability to wrap a normal installation bundle around a script instead of a traditional program. When a developer uses that technique, and when those bundles lacked a metadata file called āInfo.plistā or a suitable alternative, macOS ignores the com.apple.quarantine attribute. In short, a user could double click on a sketchy program and install it without any of the roadblocks Apple designed to get in the way.
A representative for Apple acknowledged the bug had been patched in the newest macOS update, noting that malware bypassing the quarantine system still had to contend with Appleās built-in XProtect malware detection.
āApple devices are designed with multiple layers of security in order to protect against a wide range of potential vulnerabilities, and we work constantly to add new protections for our usersā data,ā the representative said.
Apple has also updated XProtect to block malware that exploited the technique.
The researchers who uncovered the vulnerability say that it could be used to devastating effect in unpatched systems.
āIāve been red-teaming against Mac environments for the past few years now. From an attackerās perspective, this is the best payload that Iāve ever seen or used against Mac,ā said Cedric Owens, a red-teamer by day who discovered the bug doing after-hours tinkering.
Owens said it took only five days for a patch to appear in a macOS beta version.
ā[I think] this is likely the worst or potentially most impactful bug to everyday macOS users (who, letās be honest, arenāt going to be targeted by nation-states wielding pure remote zero days),ā Wardle said via electronic chat.
āAlso, as a logic bug, itās 100% reliable.ā
After Owens discovered the bug, Wardle did additional research on the bug on his ObjectiveSee website. Wardle contacted software company Jamf to use its Mac EDR to hunt down payloads and apps that matched the signature. Jamf, in turn, found what Wardle describes as āan aggressive strain of adware that installed second-stage payloads.ā
Wardle said it was not uncommon to see Mac zero-days being used for adware, warning enterprise users to treat Macs like computers and not devices immune to malware, hacking or other ill-purpose.
āDonāt count on Appleās built-in protection, as time and time again they prove buggy, bypassable or insufficient,ā he said. āA third-party security tool probably makes sense.ā