My 2017 Macbook Pro developed a problem whose sole remedy, according to a routine of troubleshooting, turned out to be a tabula rasa reinstallation of the OS (v13.6 Ventura). In setting it up anew for use, I realized that, in doing so, the majority of these changes to the settings are to things I don't want going on:
- Automatic software and OS updates
- Direction of trackpad scrolling
- Transparency of menu and menu bars (less readable; more use of CPU)
- All of Siri stuff
- Half of the Spotlight stuff
- Almost all of the Notifications stuff
- Power, screen dimming, and display-sleep, lock screen, and drive-sleep settings
- Sounds settings (all to "off")
- Analytics & Improvements (routine privacy compromises)
- Control Center Modules (somehow, to the opposites of their defaults)
- Booting-up when the lid of the Macbook is opened (a stupid idea; requires a command-line tweak to prevent this, after which startup is a bit buggy)
- Accent and selection highlight colors (to yellow-orange and red, respectively)
- Tape over the webcam
I also have to set "Privacy & Security" to permit applications downloaded from "App Store and identified developers" rather than just "App Store," though I usually end up having to command-line it in Terminal to accept applications from "Everywhere."* With this "security" setting a default in Mac OS, why is the Firewall not?
I'm currently installing on the Macbook version 10.8 of Logic Pro X, which has added some interesting new features. I hope to get it on my iMac soon, after I've completed a musical project. Frankly, I don't use or know much about a lot of the features added to LPX in recent years, and some of those which I have tried haven't had much of an influence upon my workflow. I could even have been using Garageband for many of my productions, but the interface of LPX is so much more accommodating, easier to navigate and manipulate. I try to keep arrangements as simple as possible, or as complex as necessary, as I focus upon nuance or complexity of the sounds. I don't have 100 tracks going. Not only could my 2017 iMac not handle that load, I start to get lost when the tracks number more than 20. Adding tracks and tracks of incidental bits, stabs, toppers, rises, tripled unison lead vocal tracks, multiple guitars playing the same part, and other stuff that no one's really going to hear or notice, seems like a dick-measuring contest. As a born contrarian and provocateur, however, I like how people react when I say that I don't have a big dick: perceived self-deprecation in brutal candor delivered matter-of-factly puts one above or beyond ridicule; they are obliged to accept that one drily accepts oneself for one's arbitrary deficiency; potential drama is neutralized. I actually have an immense dick, but it quickly shuts-up the guys with big dicks who always talk about how big their dicks are when I tell them that my nickname is "Microsoft." (But you can call me "Meaty Sweetie.")
Regarding the current project, which consists mostly of songs, with three instrumentals, it surprised me that I was writing these songs entirely within LPX – and not only that, but writing the lyrics to fit, or along with, the music that I'd created in the application, in cases when the music and the lyrics didn't arrive at the same time. I even composed the lyrics in the Notes pane in the application. In previous projects this year, I'd come up with a lot of the songs while walking down the street, or with music or lyrics sparked from the other, but all in advance of sitting down to realize them in sound. Some of the other songs had lyrics which I'd already written, a few months or a few years beforehand. In those cases, I either then came up with their melodies and chords or just slapped 'em onto the music and they stuck. I find that when I change the methods of composition it's like rotating crop fields – a new method or workflow can be more fertile than the same old way of going about it. In the previous century (millennium, in fact), I almost always wrote songs on guitar, and the forms were dictated, and limited, by my style or (lack of) proficiency in playing that instrument. However, songs that had come to me in dreams or just popped into my head while out in public tended to be distinct in flavor. Until it became too dangerous to ride a bicycle in my city, I'd have an entire song – lyrics, melody, chords, et al. – composed just during an afternoon ride or an errand to another part of town. Unlike the computers on which I rely to purvey my genius, there is no default setting for creative inspiration.
(*) Not to mention the inevitable applications that require Mac's System Integrity Protection to be defeated, by command-line while in Recovery mode.