> Three decades later, with the release of macOS 26.5, Apple caught up: you can finally set your Mac to 'Always' boot whenever power is restored, regardless of how it was shut down.
Back in the 1990s, a Mac sysadmin showed me a clever trick for this.
Get one specific Apple Desktop Bus keyboard that has a soft power key on it, I believe the Apple Extended Keyboard[1]. Then get a Bic pen[2]. Push down the power key on the keyboard, and while it's still down, wedge the pen cap between the key and the keyboard case.
The pen cap is the perfect size and shape to hold the key down, and Bic pens are easy to find. There are no ill effects from having the power key down all the time, and the Mac will boot up after a power failure. So you don't have to drive to work just to push the power button.
This was especially handy considering you sometimes needed to use Macs as servers (file server, printing, certain Mac-only applications, etc.), but Apple did not make servers.
This was a neat hack in many of the early Macs between the 'big switch' ones (like the Mac Plus and SE) and the 'pushbutton' ones (like the Performas and Quadras).
You could even do it with your fingernail; just push in and twist the power button, and it would stay in forever, and the Mac would automatically boot when you plug it in.
My memory from classic Mac OS is that pushing the keyboard soft-power key brought up a system-modal dialog asking if you wanted to shut down, restart, or cancel, a dialog with exactly the same design as: <http://www.christianboyce.com/page25/files/tipofthedayjulyth...>
That would obviously not be compatible with a server, maybe if soft power was just constantly held down starting from boot that dialog wouldn't show up?
Any implication that OS X Server could only run on Xserve was inadvertent. I mentioned the special OS to preempt discussion of whether Xserve was, strictly speaking, part of the Mac product line.
How is it not lights-out? You could remotely power on/off the servers (XServe only). Other Macs could not do this, as they did not have the separate LOM network interfaces, etc.
I managed a bunch of XServes for a while, they were incredibly good hardware. The Mac Server software kinda sucked (not the LOM stuff, it was as good as any of the LOM from Dell, which is to say, not amazing, but workable).
Correct me if you have more experience, but I have mostly avoided using smart plugs for computers because the PSU capacitors generate a large inrush current which tends to weld the relay contacts over time, causing the plugs to fail prematurely. Maybe ok in a power loss scenario, but not good to use for remote waking regularly...
Modern ones that are rated for it are fine, you might need to replace it after a few years, but they're cheap. Thousands of cycles for a 15 amp device.
Still a shame macOS doesn't support full Wake-on-LAN. This holds me back from properly repurposing my M1 Mac Mini as a remote development machine or CI/CD agent with turning it on and off via WoL+SSH.
It hurts even more to see the "turn power on whenever power is detected" feature is locked to Mac hardware from 2024 or newer. I don't see a reason why not all Apple Silicon machines can support this feature.
This is an aside, but I really hate clickbait culture. You can find it anywhere, but the YouTube video embedded in that page is a really good example.
The title is: "Apple FINALLY lets you do this!"
The thumbnail shows someone plugging in (or unplugging) the power cable from a Mac Mini.
Neither is relevant to the video. Neither tells you what it's about. I'm sure this kind of clickbait works, because otherwise it wouldn't exist, but I am never going to click on that kind of slop. Never.
Unfortunately, any “creator” who wants to be searchable on YouTube needs to optimize for that algorithm. I have the same feelings as you - and it includes pictures of their face pointing to something, with a particular expression of surprise.
I give Jeff a pass though, and make sure I send alternate goodness signals like liking his YT videos after I watch them. He’s one of us.
I publish the blog posts for the technical audience, and the YouTube videos for a living.
And unfortunately, I and all the other YT creators I've talked to have experienced the same thing: a more technical title will give you half or worse in terms of views. You have to play YouTube's game if you want to have any kind of audience.
I find a ton of channels that are buried not because they don't have great content, but more because they don't 'package' it well.
It's something I learned in my programming career: no matter how much I despise marketing, marketing is necessary. And on YouTube marketing is almost entirely the thumbnail and title.
I always take real pictures, show the exact subject and topic covered in the video, etc. — but I stretch the title a bit because that's an immediate way to get 2x-3x the views (and they're not click-away views, either, it's a large portion of the audience who would simply not click at all otherwise).
You’re thinking of the Bonjour sleep proxy. Normally if you tried to ssh to `mymac.local`, but your Mac was asleep, nothing would respond to the mDNS broadcast for `mymac.local`. If it had been long enough that your local mDNSResponder cache had expired, you’re out of luck.
The AirPort would take over for your Mac and respond to mDNS queries on behalf of its hostname. (I believe it would also repeat the service records.) So your lookup of `mymac.local` would resolve to your Mac’s last IP address, and the AirPort would send the WoL packet to your Mac’s MAC, hopefully in time for your TCP connection to succeed.
> Three decades later, with the release of macOS 26.5, Apple caught up: you can finally set your Mac to 'Always' boot whenever power is restored, regardless of how it was shut down.
Back in the 1990s, a Mac sysadmin showed me a clever trick for this.
Get one specific Apple Desktop Bus keyboard that has a soft power key on it, I believe the Apple Extended Keyboard[1]. Then get a Bic pen[2]. Push down the power key on the keyboard, and while it's still down, wedge the pen cap between the key and the keyboard case.
The pen cap is the perfect size and shape to hold the key down, and Bic pens are easy to find. There are no ill effects from having the power key down all the time, and the Mac will boot up after a power failure. So you don't have to drive to work just to push the power button.
This was especially handy considering you sometimes needed to use Macs as servers (file server, printing, certain Mac-only applications, etc.), but Apple did not make servers.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_Cristal
The power button on the Macintosh IIsi could be turned with a flat-head screwdriver to achieve the same thing you describe (locking it in the permanently-powered state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIsi#/media/File:Mac...
This was a neat hack in many of the early Macs between the 'big switch' ones (like the Mac Plus and SE) and the 'pushbutton' ones (like the Performas and Quadras).
You could even do it with your fingernail; just push in and twist the power button, and it would stay in forever, and the Mac would automatically boot when you plug it in.
My memory from classic Mac OS is that pushing the keyboard soft-power key brought up a system-modal dialog asking if you wanted to shut down, restart, or cancel, a dialog with exactly the same design as: <http://www.christianboyce.com/page25/files/tipofthedayjulyth...>
That would obviously not be compatible with a server, maybe if soft power was just constantly held down starting from boot that dialog wouldn't show up?
Isn't it easier to scotch tape or better yet, duct tape it down?
Tape gets weaker, mechanical wedge would stay a bit longer.
Xserve had LOM hardware 20 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_MonitorEdit: Xserve was an Apple rack mounted server that ran a special version of Mac OS X
This isn’t quite lights-out, and Xserve ran the same version of Mac OS X Server you could install on any other Mac.
Any implication that OS X Server could only run on Xserve was inadvertent. I mentioned the special OS to preempt discussion of whether Xserve was, strictly speaking, part of the Mac product line.
How is it not lights-out? You could remotely power on/off the servers (XServe only). Other Macs could not do this, as they did not have the separate LOM network interfaces, etc.
I managed a bunch of XServes for a while, they were incredibly good hardware. The Mac Server software kinda sucked (not the LOM stuff, it was as good as any of the LOM from Dell, which is to say, not amazing, but workable).
Only on the Xeon models. The G4 and G5 didn't have any kind of LOM :(
My original comment was to add context to the article's first line:
To you and me, that sentence needs the word "again" appended to it.Correct me if you have more experience, but I have mostly avoided using smart plugs for computers because the PSU capacitors generate a large inrush current which tends to weld the relay contacts over time, causing the plugs to fail prematurely. Maybe ok in a power loss scenario, but not good to use for remote waking regularly...
Modern ones that are rated for it are fine, you might need to replace it after a few years, but they're cheap. Thousands of cycles for a 15 amp device.
Still a shame macOS doesn't support full Wake-on-LAN. This holds me back from properly repurposing my M1 Mac Mini as a remote development machine or CI/CD agent with turning it on and off via WoL+SSH.
It hurts even more to see the "turn power on whenever power is detected" feature is locked to Mac hardware from 2024 or newer. I don't see a reason why not all Apple Silicon machines can support this feature.
This is an aside, but I really hate clickbait culture. You can find it anywhere, but the YouTube video embedded in that page is a really good example.
The title is: "Apple FINALLY lets you do this!"
The thumbnail shows someone plugging in (or unplugging) the power cable from a Mac Mini.
Neither is relevant to the video. Neither tells you what it's about. I'm sure this kind of clickbait works, because otherwise it wouldn't exist, but I am never going to click on that kind of slop. Never.
Unfortunately, any “creator” who wants to be searchable on YouTube needs to optimize for that algorithm. I have the same feelings as you - and it includes pictures of their face pointing to something, with a particular expression of surprise.
I give Jeff a pass though, and make sure I send alternate goodness signals like liking his YT videos after I watch them. He’s one of us.
I publish the blog posts for the technical audience, and the YouTube videos for a living.
And unfortunately, I and all the other YT creators I've talked to have experienced the same thing: a more technical title will give you half or worse in terms of views. You have to play YouTube's game if you want to have any kind of audience.
I find a ton of channels that are buried not because they don't have great content, but more because they don't 'package' it well.
It's something I learned in my programming career: no matter how much I despise marketing, marketing is necessary. And on YouTube marketing is almost entirely the thumbnail and title.
I always take real pictures, show the exact subject and topic covered in the video, etc. — but I stretch the title a bit because that's an immediate way to get 2x-3x the views (and they're not click-away views, either, it's a large portion of the audience who would simply not click at all otherwise).
Have you considered who is clicking on your videos? Is the audience that clicks on "You won't believe!" different to "You can do this"?
Or do you only care about eyeballs, and not who is behind the eyeballs?
It's not about being searchable, it simply gets more clicks because of our stupid human brain. That's why there is a surprised face on half of them.
It makes a noticeable financial difference for creators and almost everyone seems to have accepted it.
Unfortunately, I agree.
I vaguely recall wake on lan actually worked with macs... but when powered on by an airport/airport extreme.
I might be wrong.
You’re thinking of the Bonjour sleep proxy. Normally if you tried to ssh to `mymac.local`, but your Mac was asleep, nothing would respond to the mDNS broadcast for `mymac.local`. If it had been long enough that your local mDNSResponder cache had expired, you’re out of luck.
The AirPort would take over for your Mac and respond to mDNS queries on behalf of its hostname. (I believe it would also repeat the service records.) So your lookup of `mymac.local` would resolve to your Mac’s last IP address, and the AirPort would send the WoL packet to your Mac’s MAC, hopefully in time for your TCP connection to succeed.
Wake-on-LAN works fine, but only wakes the machine from sleep. It won't boot a machine that's fully powered off.
depends on the implementation. which kind of embodies why WoL is so useless.
We are of course talking about the Mac implementation