Commit e872e20 - Changes

It's been a really long time since I last pushed a post to this blog. What can I say, I've been a lot busier lately - let me get you guys some updates.

TL;DR

In case you don't feel like reading all of this (it's a long one), here's a very condensed copy of what this post contains:

• 11.01.2025 - OpenXR on macOS, again????
• 11.04.2025 - The results of accidentally winning a giveaway for an iPhone 17 Pro, a trade-in, and "Amy Upgrade Program" - an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
• 11.04.2025 - SideStore's organization account became a non-viable, so I had to subscribe to Apple Developer again.
• 11.09.2025 - We moved again. Not nearly as far or complicated as the last two times, and it's made things a bit calmer and more relaxed.
• 11.23.2025 - Having various issues with app IDs, bundle IDs, etc. in my Apple Developer account...
• 11.29.2025 - Started working on OCLP with the other developers, to hopefully help it along through one more year.
• 12.17.2025 - The Belkin eGPU Dock Saga begins, with blog posts incoming.
• 12.22.2025 - After bouncing from the DTK back to the 2014 mini to a Ryzentosh, I now have an M4 Mac mini. That one's getting a blog post too.
• 01.24.2026 - iPadOS 18 on the J120AP.
• 02.21.2026 - In preparation for this blog post, I overhauled this blog site!

OpenXR + macOS = A Love story

A few years ago, CADIndie got a copy of monado, the Vulkan SDK, and some samples to get OpenXR running on his Mac and connected to a Quest 3 - hand and head tracking enabled. Not much came out of it though, since he left the Mac scene shortly after and it sat in a folder on my external drive for a long time, waiting to be used.

Well I used it again. To make things easier for the people that actually know what they're doing here, though, I'm going to write a post on how we got here.

The accidental upgrade

Not really, I was partly planning to upgrade already - just in a different way.

Stella let me know of this carrier called "Helium Mobile" that previously provided 100% free cellular service to anyone who wanted it. 3GB of data, 100 calls, and 100 texts - all for free - was quite an interesting package. I signed up on October 7th, 2025, using it exclusively on my iPad Pro with a VPN to make sure I wasn't contributing my data to a farm.

A few weeks later, I got an email that looked suspiciously like a scam: by signing up for Helium Mobile, I had entered a giveaway for an iPhone 17 Pro in Cosmic Orange - and had won. I checked email headers and names to make sure it was legitimate, and... well.

ASentientBot had sent me another year's worth of "Amy Upgrade Program" (as we call it) to grab a 17 Pro Max for Malachite reasons - so I reallocated some of that, traded in my 16 Pro Max, and used the giveaway balance to now fully own my Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro Max. Sweet.

• I had actually grabbed a silver one originally, because I despised the orange color. Warmed up to it after a bit though, and swapped it out.

The SideStore debacle

It's been long enough that I can talk about it now.

Directly after getting my iPhone 17, I tried to add it to the SideStore Developer account - I had planned to get to work on Malachite immediately after... but those sections were not available to me. In fact, I was no longer able to work on anything related to that account... at all. I hopped onto Discord and checked out what the team was talking about behind the scenes, and what I had thought was true: the account was terminated by Apple for (supposedly) violating the Apple Developer Program Terms Of Service.^[1]

This meant that I needed to figure something out to keep Malachite up and running, or risk sidelining the project altogether due to concerns of usage with the complications of sideloading in a post-iOS 26 world.

I decided that paying the $100 fee is a necessary evil in order to keep doing what I want to be doing, and that's how I've ended up with an Apple Developer account again.

Getting Malachite back on TestFlight

Update on March 5, 2026

mlchtCamera got rejected from beta app review for violating 4.3(a) of the App Review Guidelines. This is because of the above - I can't access the SideStore account to remove the old app record... at least, that's what I think currently. Hopefully I can get this resolved... I don't know what I'll do with mlchtCamera if it doesn't.

Update right as this post went public

Hiatus is over and I'm working on mlchtCamera again - just working through TestFlight being a dumbass right now (it's also 2 in the morning, I'll probably have it done in a few hours.)

A much needed update for those who were part of my TestFlight rings - I'm working on getting it back up. I had to deal with Apple being a bit stickly about bundle identifiers and names, so I can't use the existing "Malachite" name, and already knew that I was SOL for the bundle identifier.

Luckily, I've solved the problem: Malachite is now mlchtCamera. It fits in better with the direction that I want to take naming projects and myself in the future anyway, and this whole debacle was a pretty good way to actually get me doing it.

That being said, I'm taking a break from mlchtCamera development right now. I'm a bit burned out from non-stop work on it for a few weeks at a time, and have hit the temporary hiatus point.

Move 3 in 3 years

Yeah, we moved again. The TL;DR basically sums up what I wanted to say here, aside from my thoughts on being tired of moving. Hopefully we don't have to do it again.

OCLP + Tahoe

When I was still dealing with Apple Developer Support on trying to get Malachite's old name back, I stepped into shoes that I had previously left unfilled since 2021: working on OCLP's Python codebase.

Internally, there were some changes that had been asked for that went unanswered - I decided to fulfill them, and also curate good ideas from the community where I could. I still need approval from the higher-ups to implement them, but I hope to bring new features and bugfixes to OCLP where possible.

Since then, I've also been playing around with the idea of helping the process of writing patches themselves as my experience with macOS internals is significantly better than it was all those years ago. That's still something I need to think about and discuss with the others that remain on the team after EduCovas' resignation on MacRumors a few weeks ago.

Making my own eGPU dock

I mentioned in a tweet (yes) on Twitter (I don't call it X) that I had ditched the Surface Pro 9 for a MacBook Pro. Purchased as a birthday gift for myself, that 2019 16-inch served me well as a guinea pig machine - bridgeOS hacking and exploration, some Labradorite work, blob saving because I'm weird, the works.

When I put two braincells together (seriously rare occurance), I attached a GTX 1080 to it, and gamed at 60 FPS locked on the internal display's native resolution - all using the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD.

A blog post on what I did, how I did it, and where I'm taking it is coming very soon - just in time for my new GPU to arrive.

Going more mini

Notice how I said "had" when referring to the 2019 16-inch for the eGPU dock section? That's because Stella didn't like the plans I had back then - so much that she pitched in to help me upgrade from my 2014 Mac mini to a shiny new 2024 Mac mini, directly from the Apple Store. I traded in the 2019 16-inch to do it, which is best for the long run. (I still miss it, though...)

Nothing special - it's just the base model 16/256 variant (I've paired it with some hard drives in RAID 1) - but it provides a much needed speed boost over the two Haswell-ULT cores I was doing my personal serverly needs on.

• I also paid Stella back after my on-call work caught up to my debts.

I want to write a review on this little guy in the future - I've had it for two months now, and have some opinions I'd like to share as a long-time Mac user and Apple developer.

Doing things Apple doesn't like

Update on March 5, 2026

Nick got iPadOS 18 booted on his iPad (6th generation) in June - the iPad Pro (10.5-inch) was a few weeks before my story. I'm leaving the original messaging below for historical context.

Back in June of last year, Nick Chan got iPadOS 18 booted on his iPad Pro (10.5-inch).

In January of this year, he helped me get iPadOS 18 booted and usable on my iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (2nd generation) - I tweaked some of the original instructions to jump to iPadOS 18.0.1 and conserve some space.

I'll be writing a blog post on this unit running iPadOS 18 - how it feels to use, the known drawbacks, a little bit about what I've learned, my thoughts on modern Apple decisions, and announce a slight pivot back to my early years in the scene.

Before anyone asks or keeps asking, neither Nick Chan or I are going to be sharing any files, methods, or information on how to get this working on your own units. There's a few important reasons for this that I am not inclined to share either.

Overhauling the blog site

If you didn't already notice, this site has gotten a facelift since the last time I posted to it. I worked on it a decent amount for this blog post, and it lets me do some Cool Stuff™️, like:

• Use emojis
• Create footnotes and way, way more markdown
• Have nice QoL features built-in without needing to do much work (so I can focus on the content)

Currently, there is a regression: there's no more search functionality. That requires some extra configuration with the theme I'm using, and I haven't done it yet.

Honorable mentions (that will probably get blog posts)

• The 2014 Mac mini got repurposed as our new router running OPNSense!
• I somehow found a Dell UltraSharp 5K (UP2715K) at a local pawn shop for $38 after taxes...
• The EliteDesk-variant of Blossom Server has been retired due to unfortunate SAS card issues, and it's now back in the original build from 2022-2023.

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1. Developers and sideloaders beware! This is probably due to something called "PPQ". A brief explanation: when sideloading an app with a Developer account that was first created on or after June 6th, 2021, your device will connect to ppq.apple.com to verify that the bundle identifier isn't the same as one for an App Store app. Apple's been banning accounts that haven't violated any other terms, leading to PPQ being the probable cause. If your account meets this criteria, it might be a good idea to hold off on forcing original bundle identifiers for a bit! ↩︎