After the debacle that was MacOS Big Slow I decided that once I had Catalina installed I would stick with that and its security updates, and let Ventura brew for a while before I tried it. I finally took the leap to MacOS 13.3.1 last week. For the most part it's been working well. Two things to discuss...
1. FIXED: The Mic no longer shows sound activity while its muted.
For years I've been complaining here about something that crept into OS X 'round about the Mavericks releases, though it may have been earlier. During a routine privacy checkup I saw that with my Mic set to no input in the Sound pane, the Mic display would register any noise in the room. I found that I had to keep the Audio MIDI control panel open, and make sure the Mute box was checked. At random times it would unselect itself and the Mic would return to listening to the room. No longer. Now with the volume at the lowest point the Mic is blocked and I no longer have to keep Audio MIDI and the Sound prefs open on my desktop. Or at least thats what it's reporting. For all I know, Apple heard so much from people like me who were concerned about the thing listening all the time they decided to stop letting us know the Mic was listening in.
Also, I'm happy to see that Apple went back to the earlier volume slider that had been in MacOS way back in the System 7/8 and early OS X days. It's a minor change but welcome.
2. BROKEN: Mail worked perfectly on Ventura for the past week, but this morning I checked my email and none of the graphics were loading.
Across the top of the mail viewer window there's a message: "Your network preferences prevent content from loading privately". There's no mention of what those network preferences are, and I had no idea that I had any kind of privacy enabled on Mail that would prevent images from loading. I do recall that when Apple allowed us to block image loading to prevent possible image macro viruses or pixel trojans or whatever those was called, and I used to use that, but I seem to remember they did away with that because they found some way to prevent the issue. A version of the "load remote images" button that came with that feature is once again sitting in the upper right hand corner, though now it says "load content directly".
I did a search for info on the "loading content privately" message, and saw that a lot of Monterey people were having trouble with it back in 2021. I never experienced that issue. I haven't found anyone complaining about it with Ventura.
1. FIXED: The Mic no longer shows sound activity while its muted.
For years I've been complaining here about something that crept into OS X 'round about the Mavericks releases, though it may have been earlier. During a routine privacy checkup I saw that with my Mic set to no input in the Sound pane, the Mic display would register any noise in the room. I found that I had to keep the Audio MIDI control panel open, and make sure the Mute box was checked. At random times it would unselect itself and the Mic would return to listening to the room. No longer. Now with the volume at the lowest point the Mic is blocked and I no longer have to keep Audio MIDI and the Sound prefs open on my desktop. Or at least thats what it's reporting. For all I know, Apple heard so much from people like me who were concerned about the thing listening all the time they decided to stop letting us know the Mic was listening in.
Also, I'm happy to see that Apple went back to the earlier volume slider that had been in MacOS way back in the System 7/8 and early OS X days. It's a minor change but welcome.
2. BROKEN: Mail worked perfectly on Ventura for the past week, but this morning I checked my email and none of the graphics were loading.
Across the top of the mail viewer window there's a message: "Your network preferences prevent content from loading privately". There's no mention of what those network preferences are, and I had no idea that I had any kind of privacy enabled on Mail that would prevent images from loading. I do recall that when Apple allowed us to block image loading to prevent possible image macro viruses or pixel trojans or whatever those was called, and I used to use that, but I seem to remember they did away with that because they found some way to prevent the issue. A version of the "load remote images" button that came with that feature is once again sitting in the upper right hand corner, though now it says "load content directly".
I did a search for info on the "loading content privately" message, and saw that a lot of Monterey people were having trouble with it back in 2021. I never experienced that issue. I haven't found anyone complaining about it with Ventura.
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