Apple, what are you doing?

The reason I switched from Windows to Mac, was because of instability and unreliable features in the earlier Windows versions. Building OS X on Unix seemed like a good idea, if you want a stable foundation to a secure operating system on.

It has served me well, since a lot of applications that are a hassle to install on Linux, are available on macOS.

However, for a while, I’ve discovered poor performance on my network shares. I always thought it was due to my old and trusty, but slow 2009 MacBook Pro.

After spending a pile of cash on the new 2016 model, the poor performance continued. Time to do some investigation.

A quick google showed that from OS X 10.11.5, Apple decided to fix a bug (Badlock), which allow for a “Man in the middle” attack. The “fix”, or should I say – quick and dirty hack – in the SMB implementation, gave a lot of users trouble with SMB / CIFS transmission speed.

If you trust your network enough to disable signing (Badlock fix), the speed should be back to normal. Se discussion on Apple.com. Alternatively, use AFP for transmission.

This is exactly the kind of architectural insanity I tried to escape from when switching to the Apple camp.


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