getifaddrs never specifies broadcast addresses

Apple “Feedback” #12149764. According to man 3 getifaddrs: The ifa_dstaddr field references the destination address on a P2P interface, if one exists, otherwise it contains the broadcast address. In my testing the ifa_dstaddr field is never non-null. I’m not sure I have any suitably configured P2P interfaces, but I definitely have interfaces with broadcast capabilities… Read more

getifaddrs returns truncated sockaddr_in’s for AF_INET ifa_netmasks

Apple “Feedback” #12149675. Some netmasks returned by getifaddrs have family of AF_INET yet a length less than sizeof(sockaddr_in), e.g. 5, 6, 7, or 8. On macOS Ventura 13.3.1, at least. It looks like it’s actually allocating only eight bytes for the ifa_netmask (not the 16 that is the size of sockaddr_in per MacOSX13.3.sdk/usr/include/netinet/in.h), as it… Read more

Apple Watch Ultra is a poor dive computer

Note: this was written in 2021 (and updated in 2022) based on version 1 of the Oceanic+ app. In September 2023 version 2 of that app was released, and it appears to have fixed quite a few limitations (e.g. you can finally export your log book, as a standard UDDF file). Once I’ve gathered some… Read more

Preventing system sleep in Ventura

Ventura’s new System Settings app, replacing System Preferences, removes the ability to control quite a few important things. One of those is whether or not the system goes to sleep automatically. Well, it does let you control this setting but only for when the system is on mains power: By default the system will sleep… Read more

Performing a delayed and/or repeating operation in a Swift Actor

Say you want to perform some operation after a delay, and/or at regular intervals, inside a Swift actor – maybe your actor represents a weather station and you want to periodically fetch the latest weather information, automatically. How do you do that? You could punt the problem to some other code, outside the actor –… Read more