Sophos Cloud Optix
Depending on whom you ask, Apple’s latest OS X update, 10.10.1, may be the most anxiously-awaited ever.
OS X 10.10 Yosemite didn’t introduce big technological changes.
Despite working much the same as earlier versions of OS X, its visual tweaks were probably the biggest differences.
Out went the 3D shadow-edged visual flavour of the Steve Jobs era.
In came Sir Jony Ive’s preferred “flat canvas” look introduced in iOS 7.
So, if the visual shock-and-awe came in the original release of Yosemite, why were at least some people, this writer included, waiting on the edges of their seats for the first point update?
The main reason was the unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable, problems that many users had with Wi-Fi.
The network would stay up, and would even send and receive traffic such as pings, but UDP and TCP packets would suddenly vanish without trace.
That was almost worse that being cut off completely: your applications saw the network as “up”, and therefore couldn’t tell that it was dead and probably not going to recover without the intervention of a human (or a shell script).
Ironically, at least for me, taking the interface down and back up almost always recovered the situation, but at considerable cost to the general reliability of the average cloud application.
In the end, I fell back on using an Android 3G access point connected via USB tethering instead of by Wi-Fi, which was significantly more reliable, if modestly less convenient.
Others had equally frustrating and mystifying problems, with Naked Security’s report about Yosemite’s Wi-Fi woes turning into one of our most commented articles.
Indeed, no sooner had Apple’s OS X 10.10.1 update notification dropped into my own email box than someone asked on Naked Security:
So Paul, has Yosemite 10.10.1 fixed the Wi-Fi problems?
Oh, boy, I hoped so!
Apple certainly implied things would be getting better:
It was half an hour or so until the App Store actually offered me the update, and another half and hour or so until my request to carry out the update (which is 311MB, by the way) was accepted.
Then it was about five minutes of downloading; seven minutes of pre-reboot update process; seven minutes of post-reboot update processing; and there I was:
So, has Yosemite 10.10.1 fixed the wifi problems?
I’ll come back to that.
OS X 10.10.1 security fixes
There are pure-play security fixes in OS X 10.10.1 as well as the claimed Wi-Fi betterment, and they’re quite interesting.
At least one can be considered critical: a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Apple’s core browser technology, WebKit.
RCEs in browsers almost always mean “click-to-own”, where a maliciously-crafted web page can escape from your browser and infect your computer even if all you do is look at that page.
No need to click any “Yes, I want to download this suspicious-looking file” or to agree to “Open a program from an unheard-of-developer.”
Another vulnerability, one that didn’t put your Mac at risk of being hacked, so can’t be considered critical, nevertheless raises a raft of privacy-related questions.
Spotlight, Apple’s search-and-indexing engine that helps you find things on your Mac, now includes a Spotlight Suggestions option that will call home to Apple’s servers, including your location if you have Location Services turned on.
Apparently, even with Location Services off, the first call home by Spotlight or Safari included your location anyway.
Bad luck if you were at home and had expressly configured your Mac not to tell Apple where you lived.
According to Apple:
This issue was addressed by removing [location] information from the initial connection and only sending the user's approximate location as part of queries.
It would be nice to hear that Apple also planned deliberately to discard any location information collected incorrectly, but if that’s what the company intends to do, it isn’t saying..
What do you think?
Imagine that a company has collected even tiny shreds of personal data, like location, due to a bug.
Should the company be obliged to erase that data, even from users who would otherwise have consented, and say that it has done so, on the grounds that consenting users will soon re-supply the information anyway?
Or is it good enough just to fix the bug and stop collecting that information in future?
(Let us know what you think in the comments.)
Recommended settings
By the way, our recommended settings for Spotlight and Location sharing are to turn off Spotlight Suggestions (and not to index your online searches, either) in System Preferences|Spotlight|Search Results, and to disable Location Services in System Preferences|Security & Privacy|Privacy:
Two other privacy-leakage bugs were fixed: cookies and cached data left behind incorrectly after switching Private Browsing off; and information leaked by mistake when you used About This Mac.
I’d say that OS X 10.10.1 is worth it for those fixes alone, even if it is already too late to stop Spotlight’s “first time” data leakage.
Are we there yet?
But the biggie, as we said at the start, is, “Has Yosemite 10.10.1 fixed the Wi-Fi problems?”
Well, Apple isn’t giving any scientific or engineering detail, and (if the truth be told), it isn’t actually claiming to have fixed anything.
It’s saying no more than that 10.10.1 “improves Wi-Fi reliability.”
I haven’t had the update very long, of course, so I can’t give you any scientific or engineering detail, either.
My only comment so far is, “It’s no worse.”
That’s all I’m saying.
Crazy catch22 situation where in order to fix your Wi-Fi you need your Wi-Fi working to download the update. Time to create a Wi-Fi hotspot with your mobile and hope the 311MB download doesn’t take you over your data allowance.
Connecting via Wi-Fi using your phone as a hotspot is no different from using any other access point. It’s your Mac that gets its knickers in a knot, not the hotspot/access point 🙂
You can download 10.10.1 as a standalone installer (click on the URLified word “downloading” above), so you could always use your mobile phone to download it over your regular Wi-Fi connection, thus not incurring 3G/LTE charges.
Then copy the DMG to your Mac and update from it.
Don’t forget, no-one is promising you a fix. It “improves Wi-Fi reliability” in some unspecified way. That’s all I’m saying.
I’m sorry but from my experience the issue is with the Wi-Fi settings that your Mac has remembered before the update. I had absolutely no Wi-Fi at all despite following various posts about how to fix it. Connecting to my mobile hotspot for the first time was not affected and I had internet access, albeit a bit slower than normal.
Fixes Wi-Fi but breaks your SSD. That is unless Apple sold it to you. Typical…
Could you explain? What does it mean to say “it breaks your SSD”?
I think the user is saying that he had replaced his spinning magnetic-media hard drive with a plug-compatible Solid-State Drive (SSD) which worked with the prior OS version. Something in the update was incompatible with the SSD and it ceased to work (wouldn’t boot, couldn’t find files, something else?).
It would have been a simple matter for the user to swap back to the rotating drive and install the update. If it was successful, that supports the argument that the update was incompatible with the SSD.
What @Nick means, is that Apple has apparently locked their approved drivers list with Yosemite. Anyone using third party “Apple unapproved” drivers (in this case any TRIM applications being used to reallocate empty SSD space, resulting in keeping the computer from booting) won’t be able to run them. I have not yet tried to update myself, so I do not have first hand experience.
Ah. I got the impression that he meant that 10.10.1 broke SSD support as well as fixing Wi-Fi. In fact, the kernel driver “breakage” was already in 10.10, and 10.10.1 doesn’t necesarily “fix” your Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi fixed? Forget it! It’s better, but by me, it disconnects every hour instead of every 10 minutes. Better, but still too much!!!
Similar here. Like I said, “it’s not worse.” It kinda feels better, and it’s not every hour instead of every ten minutes. More like every ten minutes instead of every two. I have to admit, some of that might be down to other factors than Yosemite, but the symptoms are post-10.10.
I am also still having the problem intermittently with 10.10.1 installed…I I have done all the things in the OSX Daily article (http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/25/fix-wi-fi-problems-os-x-yosemite/) but still I get the problem…… any other/more/better suggestions yet?
Duck has written: “Imagine that a company has collected even tiny shreds of personal data, like location, due to a bug.
:Should the company be obliged to erase that data, even from users who would otherwise have consented, and say that it has done so, on the grounds that consenting users will soon re-supply the information anyway?
Or is it good enough just to fix the bug and stop collecting that information in future?”
Glad you asked! Suppose a company had a bunch of cars taking streetside pictures as part of a data-gathering project. Since the cars would cover the globe, suppose they decided to piggy-back a second project: the cars would record the SSIDs of all the Wi-Fi networks they encountered so they could be used for location data, similarly to location data derived from the nearest cellphone tower.
Now, continuing this hypothetical exercise, suppose a “programming bug” caused the cars to record packets from those Wi-Fi networks which happened to be unencrypted. The question Duck has asked was “Should the company be obliged to erase that data…and say that it has done so?”
Now suppose the company has a corporate motto of “Don’t be evil,” and is (or at least was) generally respected. And suppose the company did claim to have erased the data. And after being caught retaining the data, claimed a second time to have erased the data.
Naaah, forget this mental exercise. It’s really not at all realistic. 🙂
Seriously, which country’s government would let a private company drive everywhere and take pictures of everyone’s property in every metro area without asking, and then commercialise it on a truly global and industrial scale?
As you say, not at all realistic. No-one would stand for that.
Duck wrote “which country’s government would let a private company…?”
Not _A_ private company, Duck. Dozens and dozens of them.
–Google Street View (everyone knows this one)
–Microsoft Bing Streetside (Heard of it? Remember, they bought Nokia which had a huge database.)
–Cyclomedia
–Mapquest 360 View (closed now)
–Yahoo HERE
–Mapillary (crowd-sourced)
–Tencent map.qq.com (China)
Er, I was being ironic. (Or do I mean satirical?)
this is another Apple up-date thing. Yesterday when checking my settings I found a new update from Apple for 8.1.1. This was for older equipment ie ipad 2 and iPhone 4. I checked out why I was offered the update as my iPad was less than one year old. I understand that because I am using an iPad mini that this was the reason.
I am a senior citizen but check out Naked Security daily…..you have taught me so much.
I was a bit wary for some reason about the update but woke up today and decided to go for it. The who,e lot started around 7.30 ish and was done and dusted by 7.48. HOWEVER……..all seems OK with one exception …….when I send an email the keyboard on the iPad mini DOES NOT retract…….Diabolical so I guess a new update might not be far away.
Thanking you for your great work
Well, then. We remain hoist upon Apple’s supplied petard. Which is, in it’s own way, our own.
Lovely.
Time to pull the trashed HDD from the PC and see if I can save any data and then toss in a new one. Maybe with a dual boot for Win7 and Mint.
I really had hopes for this macbook Pro. Should have known better.
Ye gods, the amount of time to be spent on updating!
With a Linux and Windows dual boot, you’re going to be doing lots of updating, so Apple’s sporadic fixes will have been good practice 🙂
What still isn’t clear: are you saying that your disk was actually trashed, i.e. physically ruined? And that this happened because of 10.10.1?
As a previous commenter pointed out, there were changes in Yosemite (i.e. the original 10.10 release) that stopped third-party TRIM drivers working and thus prevented you booting off the sisk. But turning off checking of driver signatures apparently “fixed” the problem (albeit with the new security feature completely disabled) and you could boot again. So that problem was neither new nor permanent, for all that it was a real problem. Your symptoms sound different…
apologies to you for my previous post under…anonymous…..I intended to attempt to properly send off the email when the diabolical now non retracting keyboard on my iPad mini got in the way and bumped me off part way.
I only discovered my comment just now as I did not think it had been sent.
Anyway I do not wish to be totally anonymous as I try to have manners on the Internet.
With regard to the 8.1.1 update I contacted Apple and spoke to a very helpful young man who checked to see if others had yet lodged a complaint about the keyboard….nothing yet but maybe early days.
One problem could be that I did this update straight from where it was offered in my settings and maybe sometimes a page could be left out according to Apple. Maybe I might have to access a computer with iTunes and re-do?
Anyway Thankyou again for all your excellent work….you have made a real difference for me. Please enjoy your week ahead……and maybe there is still another update yet to do………..keeps me learning new things!
Thank you Apple – you broke my MacBook Air! I now have a Black Screen of Death as a result of Apple’s patches for Yosemite. Resetting the PRAM and SMC as suggested in the forums has not helped me. Restarting the Mac, I can see the boot progress bar get to about 25%, then the screen flickers, then goes to black with only a mouse pointer. If I wind up having to reimage, you can bet it won’t be with Yosemite!
No improvement here. ASUS RT-AC87U & 10.10.1. 2.4GHz has always worked reliably. 5GHz has never worked under Yosemite for more than 20 seconds and 10.10.1 did not fix the problem. As you’ve stated, according to logs the wireless signal is fine, but any transport layer traffic just seams to disappear. Anyone wiresharked the problem yet? I had to whack Xcode and thus X11 for space but its getting to the point this is starting to feel like a personal mission.
Yes may be better but not solve. I have a Mac Pro (fin 2013), a MacBook Pro (15″ fin 2008) both under 10.10.1 now and a iPad4 (8.1.1) all connected to the same wifi router.
No problem with the iPad but the two Macs still disconnect.
Relax, you all just need to continue to “Think Different”, this is actually a new feature to get you out exercising more. It fits right in with Apple’s new iPhone fitness products and the upcoming smart watch.