Comment by soulofmischief
3 days ago
Which tweaks? This is stock macOS 27 on a stock machine, with of course my development stack on top. I have already tried reinstalling the OS. Besides that, everything else has been configured appropriately in system settings and profiles using Ansible, so that I know exactly what configuration state my machine is in. There's nothing weird I am doing to the system processes other than now using App Tamer to prevent the processes from continuing to use multiple cores while I'm trying to use my machine.
I do feel like my complaints go to the void, and honestly I have seen the kind of responses people get on the Apple support forums and it gives me the same ick that Microsoft's does. And lately I'm just going to get someone's canned, patronizing LLM-generated resume-building response. My only hope out of this mess is Gravity Linux catching up and adding full SEP and thunderbolt support. Once that happens, I'm gone.
I do wonder about the prevalence of my experience vs yours. I can quickly find hundreds of threads across various platforms which confirm my experiences. From what I have been able to ascertain, my experience is increasingly common if not more common than yours. Hard to tell.
You said you were running App Tamer, and I presumed it was doing something unusual, however looking into it, it appears to be using public APIs, so it shouldn't be causing issues.
There's a lot of Macs out there. I would be surprised if that's the common experience for users, however, I fully admit that my sample size is small.
And I totally hear you on the frustration for reports these days. I set my expectations to be that it's a tally mark in some database somewhere with the hope that enough tally marks means a human looks at it, but it's so disheartening when you've spent such a large amount of money on something.
Well this is a software issue, all of the Macs out there run the same operating system, the same software. This can't an issue of a defective Mac. I also have an M2 which is giving me the same issues.
I am right now using my M5, on low power mode on a flat surface and it's almost too hot to type on. I have Codex open, just idling, Firefox and Logseq.
All of the offending processes at the top of activity manager are currently system processes: duetexpertd, mediaanalysisd, MenuBarAgent, WindowServer, Spotlight Engine, Time Machine, etc. A lot of these deal with caches, files, indexes. I suspect the root problem is a shared internal philosophy which regards the owner of the machine as a second-class citizen to the system.
It is bewildering given that I do not want the majority of "features" this tangled mess is providing. Issues such as bad caches, misbehaving files or directories, etc. are likely not the culprit since I experience this on fresh OS installs across two MacBooks. In the sense that if it is those issues, it's a system issue which needs addressing, and not PEBCAK. I have Siri disabled, Time Machine off, iCloud off, all iPhone integrations I can adjust are off, etc. Yet these processes increasingly dominate my computer.
I do appreciate you engaging with me on this and I hope I haven't come across as confrontational.
> Well this is a software issue,
> You don't know that for sure.
> all of the Macs out there run the same operating system,
Wrong. Lots of Mac users skipped the Liquid Glass OSes. I was one until I bought an M5 that came with it. In fact, I was two versions behind on my M1 because the one before Tahoe also offered nothing that I wanted.
> the same software.
This referring to third-party software (my interpretation) is also wrong. People have wildly different setups, at least among us nerds.
> This can't an issue of a defective Mac.
Again, you don't know that. But your comment later on about two models having said issue is concerning. That said, there's a high likelihood that you run the same software on each.
> I am right now using my M5, on low power mode on a flat surface and it's almost too hot to type on.
If that's the case, I begin to suspect that the physical sensitivity that you mentioned in a different comment is the source. If that's the case, I'm empathetic cause it'd really suck to have that reaction. I can only make my M1 hot enough to noticeably warm up (or get hot) when slamming the CPU / GPU. I would hate for it to feel that way to me during normal use and you have my genuine sympathy if that's your experience on a machine running at normal levels. And if that's it, then get an external kbd and mouse. Not an ideal solution, but it sounds like the best option. Not portable. I know. But I'm looking for solutions here and there may be some compromise needed.
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Have you tried not fucking about with all the processes? All my Mac’s run fine and I haven’t fucked with their settings. You’ve fucked with your settings and they all run fucked. “it’s a fresh install”. No you just acknowledged it’s a fresh install that you have immediately put in a very non default state.
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