Thread

1. hypfer · 1791146416 · focus · HN ↗

   This is stuff on the level of O&O ShutUp10. Which is a good tool, but also, a Windows tool for very (back in the day) Windows-specific nonsense.

   What's going on at Apple product strategy?

   1. userbinator · 1791147289 · focus · HN ↗

      It's interesting to see more customisation tools appearing for macOS, as just a few years ago I was looking for ways to strip down the OS (CI related), and while such info was widely available in the Windows world, to the point that customised "distros" are available, it was nearly nonexistent for macOS; only the Hackintosh community had some useful articles on how things worked.

      Could the rise of LLMs and vibe-coding have motivated people who otherwise wouldn't bother?

      1. gumby · 1791147901 · focus · HN ↗

         It’s hard to strip it down these days as the OS image and its core, immutable filesystem cannot be edited. Admittedly this helps keep idiots from destroying their filesystem and also blocks many malware attacks on the system, but, for example. I don’t believe you can delete the chess program.

         1. codys · 1791157018 · focus · HN ↗

            The sealing of the filesystem can be disabled trivially, though, via a command line tool that Apple ships with MacOS that you run from recovery mode.

            And then you can remount `/` as read-write, and create a new blessed snapshot with your changes made to it.

            This doesn't actually delete the signed snapshot though, so the space consumed by `/System/Applications/Chess` still is consumed. I'm not sure if MacOS will allow deleting the final sealed snapshot for `/`. It might, I don't know that anyone is clamoring for it though.

            1. userbinator · 1791159774 · focus · HN ↗

               I don't have my detailed notes from when I did this, but I believe you should be able to copy everything you want to keep to a new filesystem.

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