Thursday, October 16, 2025

How to Turn Liquid Glass Into a Solid Interface

Adam Engst (Hacker News):

Apple’s new Liquid Glass interface design brings transparency and blur effects to all Apple operating systems, but many users find it distracting or difficult to read. Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable. Although the relevant Accessibility settings are quite similar across macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, I separate them because they offer different levels of utility in each.

[…]

For those who take a lot of screenshots, like I do, Reduce Transparency is essential because it ensures that all screenshots have a consistent background. It would be highly distracting if screenshots had noticeably different colors due to being taken over different wallpapers or windows.

[…]

I find the Increase Contrast setting jarring, but it might be a significant help for those with low vision.

[…]

I can’t recommend turning off Liquid Glass entirely in this way. Although it does make macOS 26 look more like macOS 15, it suffers from several glaring mistakes that Apple has no incentive to fix. Stick to Reduce Transparency and add Increase Contrast if your eyes would appreciate it.

There are lots of good comparison screenshots.

John Gruber:

A useful guide for today — and, I bet, a useful look back at the first versions of Liquid Glass for the future.

Nick Heer:

A notable issue with these settings is that some properties of Liquid Glass are not truly the fault of transparency. Instead, a Liquid Glass element — like Control Centre — might be reflecting the colours around it, giving the impression of translucency without actually being translucent. This effect does not appear in window-specific screenshots when you have “Reduce Transparency” turned on so, as Engst writes, it makes it better for creating screenshots for documentation. But it does mean that, while the “Reduce Transparency” setting is literally true, it feels dishonest.

Rosyna Keller:

Don’t forget you can override and set Reduce Transparency on a per-app basis[…]

Craig Hockenberry:

If you think that turning on Reduce Transparency will fix all the problems with Liquid Glass, you’re wrong.

Here’s a standard bar button item drawn with reduced transparency. It goes from being dark (the system setting) to light the first time you use it.

Howard Oakley:

This still has no effect on controls below the toolbar, and fails to demarcate text entry fields or the list view below.

Mario Guzmán:

Ewww. When you enable reduce transparency in iOS accessibility settings, certain things are just so bad. Look how the back button touches the background border at the bottom now.

Sigh.

Apple really said “you don’t get world out class design if you enable any of the accessibility options.”

Der Teilweise:

It’s almost comical if you think about Apple marketing Liquid Glass to bring “more focus to content” and switch between [on] and [off].

The later one shows more content or the same content bigger in almost all parts of the screen: Look at the calendar in the top left (even the iCal icon shows the more useful “Wed” instead of “Oct”) or the sidebar.

Event the main content gets a few pixels extra space – obscured content behind the sidebar does not count IMHO.

Previously:

Liquid Glass Is Cracked

Raluca Budiu (Hacker News):

One of the oldest findings in usability is that anything placed on top of something else becomes harder to see. Yet here we are, in 2025, with Apple proudly obscuring text, icons, and controls by making them transparent and placing them on top of busy backgrounds.

[…]

And then comes Apple’s boldest (or dumbest) experiment: text on top of text.

[…]

In iOS 26, controls insist on animating themselves, whether or not the user benefits. Carousel dots quietly morph into the word Search after a few seconds. Camera buttons jerk slightly when tapped. Tab bars bubble and wiggle when switching views, and buttons briefly pulsate before being replaced with something else entirely. It’s like the interface is shouting “look at me” when it should quietly step aside and let the real star — the content — take the spotlight.

[…]

Apple has also decided it’s time to crowd and shrink touch targets. The long‑standing guideline of at least 0.4cm between targets (and 1cm × 1cm tap areas) seems to have been tossed out the window. Either Apple believes our fingers are getting smaller, or it assumes years of practice with smartphones have magically trained us to hit tiny targets with perfect precision.

[…]

This signals another transition (this time for the worse) to Android-style design, where page titles are left-aligned (instead of center-aligned), thus displacing the breadcrumb next to the back button.

Nick Heer:

However, I found the argument against the more prominent Search button in many apps unconvincing[…]

Me, too. I don’t like that it floats on top of content, but I think people did have trouble discovering it when you had to swipe down. Maybe the placement at the bottom also makes it easier to tap.

What is disappointing is that the hidden search field still exists in a handful of places. Most notably, Music on iOS 26 still has two different kinds of Search: the one you can get to by tapping on the button in the bottom-right, and the locally-scoped one you will find at the top of views like Playlists.

Previously:

Liquid Glass: Content vs. Controls

Adam Engst:

Here’s where I take exception to Liquid Glass, and to Apple’s positioning of content as the most important aspect of our digital devices, and thus of our digital lives. Yes, many people are largely passive consumers of content, whether we’re talking about Web pages, podcasts, or streaming videos. For those people, there is little beyond content, and Liquid Glass’s deprecation of controls may allow them to continue their consumption with less distraction. But that’s not a lifestyle to aspire to, reminiscent as it is of the humans in WALL-E—perpetually reclined in floating chairs, mindlessly consuming entertainment.

[…]

But there’s an important point to make here: controls are not tools. Controls allow you to adjust settings—change channels, select colors, pause playback, and more. Tools enable you to create, modify, delete, or give a performance. It’s the difference between a volume knob and a violin.

[…]

So, no, I don’t want tools that “give way to content” or “shrink to bring focus to the content.” When I’m cooking, I want my knives, spatulas, measuring spoons, and the like exactly where they belong, so they’re instantly at hand.

Nick Heer:

Engst pointedly differentiates “productivity apps — real tools” from apps permitting a more passive consumption of media. It may make more sense for controls to fade away in something like a media player. In most of the apps I use every day, however, I want to have obvious and immediate access to the tools I need.

Here is another cooking analogy: a minimum requirement, for me, for a stove is for it to be equipped with physical knobs. I do not want to be hunting for the magic capacitive spot or pressing a +/– toggle to change a burner’s setting. The latter options seem more elegant; they give the impression of refinement. But they are less effective for the same job because they do not allow for real-world practicality.

Nick Heer:

Apple justifies these decisions by saying its redesigned interfaces are “bringing greater focus to content”. I do not accept that explanation. Instead of placing tools in a distinct and separated area, they bleed into your document, thus gaining a similar level of importance as the document itself. I have nothing beyond my own experience to back this up. Perhaps Apple has user studies suggesting something different; if it does, I think it should publicly document its research. But, in my experience, the more the interface blends with what I am looking at, the less capable I am of ignoring it. Clarity and structure are sacrificed for the illusion of simplicity offered by a monochromatic haze of an interface.

Jeff Johnson (Mastodon):

A customer recently contacted me to report that the “Show native video controls” feature makes videos darker on macOS Tahoe, and I was able to reproduce the issue myself. At first I believed that the phenomenon was some kind of Liquid Glass nonsense, because I couldn’t reproduce it on macOS Sequoia. On further testing, however, I noticed that the darkening of videos also occurs on iOS 18, which my iPhone still runs (for as long as I can hold out). Indeed, the darkening of videos has nothing in particular to do with StopTheMadness Pro and occurs even when the extension is disabled entirely. Safari itself darkens videos on iOS 18, iOS 26, and now macOS 26 when its native video controls are displayed.

[…]

Seriously, why??? I thought Liquid Glass was supposed to “bring greater focus to content”? Darkening videos brings less focus to content!

Previously:

Tahoe Window Corners

Mario Guzmán:

I can’t stop laughing at how comically large the corner radii are on #macOSTahoe windows. Clownish.

Dominik Wagner:

Preview? These are white, A4 PDF pages, they don’t have round corners. We are not on battlestar galactica. I need my pdf preview to show me my paper as it is, not with different rounded corners based on my zoom factor 😡

Marcin Krzyzanowski:

after I upgraded to macOS26 literally the only thing that annoys me the most is hikarious windows curvature. no content really fits in.

Rui Carmo:

I can see four five different sizes of window corner radius on my Mac desktop. The overall visual design for menus and dialogs is still a joke, and is so badly executed that Apple should be ashamed of shipping it.

See also: Rob Jonson.

Nick Heer:

Perhaps I am taking this too literally. Then again, Apple is the one saying application windows are no longer “configured for rectangular displays”, and that they now fit the “rounded corners of modern hardware”. Regardless of the justification, I quite like the roundness of these windows. Perhaps it is simply the newness, but they make applications seem friendlier and softer. I understand why they are controversial; the large radius severely restricts what can be present in the corners, thus lowering the information density of an application window. It seems Apple agrees it is more appropriate in some apps than in others — app windows in System Information and Terminal have a much smaller corner radius.

[…]

Even on a device with four rounded display corners, this dedication to concentricity is not always executed correctly. My iPhone 15 Pro, for example, has corners with a slightly smaller radius than an iPhone 16 Pro. The bottom corners of the share sheet on my device are cramped, nearly touching the edge of the display at their apex.

[…]

Then there are the issues caused by this dedication to concentricity. Look again at that Finder window screenshot above and pay attention to the buttons in the toolbar. In particular, notice how the icon in the item grouping button — the solitary one between the view switcher, and the group that includes the sharing button — looks like it is touching the rounded edge.

Previously:

On Liquid Glass

Nick Heer (Mastodon):

I do not think all these effects necessarily help legibility, which is as poor as it has ever been in translucent areas. The degree to which this is noticeable is dependent on the platform. In iOS 26, I find it less distracting, I think largely because it exists in the context of a single window at a time (picture-in-picture video being the sole exception). That means there is no expectation of overlapping active and inactive windows and, so, no chance that something overlapping within a window’s area could be confused with a different window overlapping.

[…]

Though these animations are not nearly as fluid as they were first shown, they seem like they help justify the “liquid” part of the name, and are something Apple has enough pride in to be called out in the press release. Their almost complete absence on MacOS is therefore notable. There are a handful of places they appear, like in Spotlight, but MacOS feels less committed to Liquid Glass as a result. When menus are summoned, they simply appear without any dramatic animation. Buttons and menus do not have the stretchy behaviour of their iOS counterparts. To be sure, I am confident those animations in MacOS would become tiresome in a matter of minutes. But, so, if MacOS is better for being less consistent with iOS in this regard, that seems to me like a good argument against forcing cross-platform user interface unification.

[…]

I am spending an awful lot of words on the MacOS version because I think it is the least successful of the two Liquid Glass implementations I have used. MacOS still works a lot like MacOS. But it looks and feels like someone dictated, context-free, that it needed to reflect the redesign of iOS.

[…]

I kept asking myself “why?” as I used iOS 26 and MacOS 26 this summer. I wanted to understand the rationale for a complete makeover across Apple’s entire line of products. What was the imperative for unifying the systems’ visual interface design language? Why this, specifically?

[…]

These new operating systems do not feel like they are achieving that level of consistency despite being nominally more consistent across a half-dozen platforms. MacOS has received perhaps the most substantial visual changes, yet it is full of workarounds and exceptions. The changes made to iOS feel surface-level and clash with the visual language established since iOS 7. I am hopeful for the evolution of these ideas into something more cohesive. Most software is a work-in-progress, and the user interface is no exception. But all I can reflect upon is what is before me today. Quite simply, not only is it not ready, I am concerned about what it implies about Apple’s standards.

Eric Schwarz:

This is one of those posts that I recommend taking some time (perhaps cozy up with a coffee?) and simply enjoying the thoughtful analysis provided.

[…]

I’ve upgraded all of my devices, with the sole exception being my Mac at work. I’ll get around to it, but waiting for a lull. For the most part, everything works about the same and there isn’t a jarring change from when I’m at my desk at work and my desk at home. Contrast that with someone adapting from Windows 10 to Windows 11 across devices, as many interface elements work differently. Yes, there are visually differences between macOS 15 and macOS 26, and I think the changes to macOS 26 are my least favorite of all the updates. I’ve grown to actually enjoy the iOS/iPadOS 26 changes, especially the added depth in icons and buttons and little animations to make the entire operating system feel more fluid—it’s interesting and a bit of a shift away from the minimalism trend that we’ve had over the past decade and change.

Adam Engst:

I highly recommend reading Heer’s extensively documented criticisms of Liquid Glass. He offers numerous examples of what he likes and doesn’t like about Liquid Glass, though there is much more of the latter, leading to this delicious line, “I could keep going with my nitpicks, so I shall.” Nevertheless, it’s essential to acknowledge that Liquid Glass is here to stay, while also offering constructive criticism that can help push Apple to improve the user experience.

[…]

I’m also intrigued by Heer’s idea that Liquid Glass might signal a broader “Apple OS” branding, since I’ve been using OS as a shorthand for Apple’s stable of operating systems for some time now.

Nick Heer:

Twenty-five years after alpha channels began appearing in our user interfaces, I think many of us have taken for granted the soft shadows and smooth corners enabled by translucent pixels. Back then, there were plenty of people who were worried about the performance impact of all these effects, just as there are now about Liquid Glass.

Nick Heer:

This try-hard justification made me think of Johnson’s post. It is over a thousand words and I do not believe I view these icons differently after finishing it. The new icons are fine — very Microsoft, in that the company has produced some spectacular-looking 3D renders and illustrations completely unrelated to the actual icons I will be seeing on my desktop when this update is released.

Previously:

Shipping Liquid Glass

Jason Kottke:

I’m usually pretty go-with-the-flow as far as OS updates go, but iOS 26 / Liquid Glass is terrible: incoherent, ugly, and difficult to use. Obviously a massive design effort, but they missed the mark IMO.

Juli Clover:

It’s been two days since iOS 26 was released, and Apple’s new Liquid Glass design is even more divisive than expected.

Any major design change can create controversy as people get used to the new look, but the MacRumors forums, Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and social media sites seem to feature more criticism than praise as people discuss the update.

Craig Hockenberry:

Here’s my guess what happened in the lead up to WWDC25:

Apple realized it was deep in the weeds with Apple Intelligence (and associated PR) and needed a tentpole feature that wasn’t AI.

Liquid Glass was in development for some upcoming edgeless hardware. It needed another year of work, but management/marketing was fucked.

A thing that wasn’t ready got moved up. Bug fixing took a back seat. Everyone grabbed paint brushes, not screwdrivers.

The next year is going to be rough for EVERYONE.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

My review of Liquid Glass: generally, I love it.

It’s gorgeous on the right device in the right circumstances. iPadOS, in particular, on a large screen in windowing mode is, by far, my favorite.

But it also has a ton of problems with real-world content that weren’t fully accounted for in concepts before announcement, which has lead to a pile of fixes and hacks to try to make it work for all the edge cases. It’s this which brings the majority of bugs and major issues into all areas of the UI.

DaveyGravy:

What is the design thinking here for displaying the time over my wallpaper? Letting the wallpaper bleed through in this way makes it hard to see and in no way pleasant.

What is going on here exactly?

Also, what effect is the highlighting/shading meant to be achieving? I don’t see it - if it is a layer of something liquid I don’t feel it works at a basic level. What am I missing?

Norbert Heger:

Liquid Glass now also ruins screenshots under some circumstances. Compare the left margin of these two screenshots, which just include a slightly different portion of the sidebar.

Matt Gemmell:

I’ll say this for the macOS Liquid Arse update: the Finder windows are nicer to look at. Somehow they have more contrast rather than less. And coloured folders again; what a time to be alive and trapped in a Kaleidoscope theme.

Jeff Johnson:

Liquid Glass is not an aberration. It’s continuation of everything Apple has been getting wrong about UI for more than a decade.

Apple was never perfect, but they used to get things right more often than anyone else, and right or wrong they sweated over the details.

Louie Mantia:

Liquid Glass is perhaps the most getting-in-the-way user interface I’ve experienced in my lifetime. It never shuts up. It’s constantly vying for attention. Because it’s constantly animating, it never lets the content be the focus.

I don’t think I realized until now that UI could be so narcissistic.

Jesse Grosjean:

Are any of Apple’s larger productivity apps updated for Liquid Glass yet? Pages doesn’t seem to be.

Mario Guzmán:

I’ve been wondering when iLife, iWork, and Pro Apps are going to be released with Liquid Glass updates.

Or are they unable to ship something… suitable with the new design language? 🤭

Steve Troughton-Smith:

The Pro apps shipped with the new SDK, but they’ve opted out of the design language…

Mindaugas Rudokas:

Cultured Code’s Things says “no thank you” to the Liquid Glass’ sidebar and toolbar style.

Brent Simmons:

We’re hearing from folks eager for the Liquid Glass update to NetNewsWire. The bad news is that it’s not coming this week or next (who knows when, really) — but the good news is that it is very much in progress.

[…]

If you’d like a sneak peak of what NetNewsWire 7 will look like, check out these posts [1, 2] by Stuart Breckenridge, who’s done great work on our Liquid Glass adoption[…]

MacStories:

Today, we wanted to share some of our favorite implementations of Liquid Glass and other features debuted this fall by indie developers.

Pasi Salenius:

As far as I can tell all major iOS apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Spotify just enabled the compatibility Info.plist flag for Xcode 26 and went on with their life.

While indie devs sweated all summer trying to make Liquid Glass UI work in their apps, telling themselves they “need to be ready on day one”. The iOS dev echo chamber repeated this message to death.

I don’t think the general public cares one bit. Nobody gives a 5 star review because an app supports the new iOS UI. Nobody buys an app because of that.

Adam Whitcroft:

I think it’s sad we can’t make macOS icons like this anymore.

Sebastiaan de With:

I have seen very little grief for this but the sadness is very real. It’s the end of a really special era.

Louie Mantia:

So here’s my question: a lot of these things were pointed out for months—and besides how I don’t think Apple should be outsourcing bug reporting to the rest of us—do they just not have a good QA team anymore? Or is it just that they don’t care about the bugs they ship anymore?

JuniperPhoton:

Instead of spending the whole summer reworking my apps’ designs, I recently adopted the new design in some of my apps while maintaining the same look on older platforms. I’ve learned a few lessons and pitfalls along the way that might help.

Howard Oakley:

Even a few minutes exposure to a screenful of macOS Tahoe’s windows demonstrates how its new design goes out of its way to ignore those essential insights, and present us with controls that are either bleached- or blacked-out depending on our choice of appearance mode.

In light mode, with default transparency, tool icons and text are clearly distinguished tonally, as are some controls including buttons and checkboxes. However, text entry fields are indistinguishable from the background, and there’s a general lack of demarcation, particularly between the controls and the list view below.

Oddly, dark mode outlines some controls better than light mode, but text entry fields and the list view below still lack demarcation.

Mario Guzmán:

The inconsistency of Apple Music’s toolbar in #macOSTahoe is annoying. Sometimes you get the blur, sometimes you get the solid toolbar, and other times you get nothing.

Chris Pirillo:

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Jeff Johnson:

The debate over Liquid Glass needs to be put into context. It’s not just an isolated incident. Apple has been systematically wrecking the Mac UI for many years: System Settings, Big Sur, Catalyst, etc. To evaluate Liquid Glass “on its own merits” is to ignore history.

Any theory you formulate that Apple has some unstated “good” reasons for its UI choices now has to account for ALL of the data, i.e., the historical data, the history of obviously bad UI choices.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Statistically, nobody cares about Liquid Glass. There has been no user revolt, no viral TikToks, no nothing. Nobody’s even complaining about the Music app. On the flipside, nobody is proclaiming its virtues, either. It just kinda… is, and everybody is moving on with their lives.

The only thing anybody seems to care about is transparent & tinted icons — which a certain kind of person seems to love

Previously:

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

MacBook Pro (M5, 2025)

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, Slashdot):

With M5, the 14-inch MacBook Pro gets even faster, more capable, and delivers a huge leap in AI performance.

[…]

Additionally, it offers phenomenal battery life of up to 24 hours, so users can take their pro workflows anywhere. With the latest storage technology, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 brings faster SSD performance than the previous generation for tasks like importing RAW image files or exporting large videos.

[…]

Altogether, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 delivers an industry-leading combination of capabilities for the same starting price of $1,599 — making it an even better value and upgrade for current and new Mac users.

[…]

Up to 2.1x faster build performance when compiling code in Xcode when compared to the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with M1, and up to 1.2x faster than the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4.

Andrew Cunningham:

But unlike the last couple MacBook Pro refreshes, Apple isn’t ready with Pro and Max versions of the M5 for higher-end 14-inch MacBook Pros and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Those models will continue to use the M4 Pro and M4 Max for now, and we probably shouldn’t expect an update for them until sometime next year.

[…]

Aside from the M5, the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro has essentially identical specs to the outgoing M4 version. It has a notched 14-inch screen with ProMotion support and a 3024×1964 resolution, three USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and a 12 MP Center Stage webcam. It still weighs 3.4 pounds, and Apple still estimates the battery should last for “up to 16 hours” of wireless web browsing and up to 24 hours of video streaming. The main internal difference is an option for a 4TB storage upgrade, which will run you $1,200 if you’re upgrading from the base 512GB SSD.

John Voorhees:

Although I’m impatient to see what an M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro are capable of, and I’m dying to see a Mac Studio configured with the M5 generation of chips, I’m glad Apple didn’t wait to release the M5 in the 14” MacBook Pro. If the chip is ready, why not?

Marcin Krzyzanowski:

MacBook Pro M5 comes without a charger in the Europe (not eu), and with a charger in the US. for the same base price 🤡

Tobi:

EU requires that buyers have the option to buy products without a charging brick. Apple just decided to remove it entirely to fulfill that requirement.

Rosyna Keller:

The new iPad gets the N1 but the MBP is stuck with Bluetooth 5.x?!

Previously:

Update (2025-10-16): John Gruber (Mastodon):

The base 14-inch model, with the no-adjective M-series chip, is for people who probably would be better served with a MacBook Air but who wrongly believe they “need” a laptop with “Pro” in its name.

These days, I think the base MacBook Pro seems less like an odd duck and more like a natural fit between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with the Pro processor. Compared with the MacBook Air, you get a larger and better display, longer battery life, more ports, an SD card slot, better sound, HDMI. If you need one or more of these things, but don’t need more RAM or CPU cores, you can save $400.

Here’s a timeline of no-adjective M-series chips and when they appeared in the 14-inch MacBook Pro[…]

iPad Pro (M5, 8th Generation)

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, MacStories):

M5 unlocks the most advanced iPad experience ever, packing an incredible amount of power and AI performance into the ultraportable design of iPad Pro.

[…]

N1, the new Apple-designed wireless networking chip, enables the latest generation of wireless technologies with support for Wi-Fi 7 on iPad Pro. The C1X modem comes to cellular models of iPad Pro, delivering up to 50 percent faster cellular data performance than its predecessor with even greater efficiency, allowing users to do more on the go. Available in space black and silver, iPad Pro comes in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, and features the Ultra Retina XDR display for an unparalleled viewing experience.

Dan Moren:

Other than the new processor and networking chips, the specs of the M5 iPad Pro remain largely identical to its predecessor, including its accessory support, physical dimensions and weight, color options (space black and silver, naturally), and 10-hour battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi or watching video. The M5 model, however, does support fast charging of up to 50 percent in 30 minutes with Apple’s 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max or other compatible adapter.

Ryan Christoffel:

This year, it’s a similar story in terms of differentiated models, but Apple is actually disclosing all the details of the M5 iPad Pro SKUs up front.

[…]

As you can see, the two lower-tier storage options include only 12GB of memory and 9-core CPUs.

But if you go with a 1TB model or higher, you get a full 16GB of memory and 10-core CPU.

One other detail worth noting: just like on the M4, you can only order a nano-texture M5 iPad Pro if you opt for a 1TB version or higher.

Matt Birchler:

I couldn’t help but be struck by the hero image Apple used in their M5 iPad Pro announcement. In several ways, it laughs in the face of core tenets of the traditional iPad experience.

  1. It’s explicitly sold as a device you will use in a laptop form factor.
  2. Touch input may be implied, but the use case they’re demonstrating is keyboard and mouse.
  3. There are many windows.
  4. Those windows are overlapping each other.
  5. Several windows clip off the screen.

BasicAppleGuy:

Looks like Apple has removed the “iPad Pro” branding from the back of the iPads which appeared in 2022 with the M2 iPad Pro.

Previously:

Apple Vision Pro (M5, 2025)

Apple (Hacker News, MacStories):

Apple today introduced Apple Vision Pro with the powerful M5 chip that delivers a leap forward in performance, improved display rendering, faster AI-powered workflows, and extended battery life. The upgraded Vision Pro also comes with the soft, cushioned Dual Knit Band to help users achieve an even more comfortable fit, and visionOS 26, which unlocks innovative spatial experiences, including widgets, new Personas, an interactive Jupiter Environment, and new Apple Intelligence features with support for additional languages. There are over 1 million apps and thousands of games on the App Store, hundreds of 3D movies on the Apple TV app, and all-new series and films in Apple Immersive with a selection of live NBA games coming soon.

Victoria Song:

But aside from the chip upgrade, nothing about the Vision Pro’s design has changed. Instead, Apple’s press release claims that the M5 chip will bring faster processing and more detailed image rendering. Specifically, the M5 renders 10 percent more pixels on the OLED displays and can increase refresh rates up to 120Hz. Previously it maxed out at 100Hz. As for processing, AI-powered features like a Persona or spatial photos are up to 50 percent faster. Battery life is also improved by about 30 minutes, up to 2.5 hours of general use and three hours of video playback.

Dan Moren:

Those hoping for a price change will be disappointed: it still starts at $3,499 with storage tiers in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB at the same prices as before. In addition to the new Dual Knit Band, it includes the same Light Seal, pair of Light Seal Cushions, cover, polishing cloth, battery, and USB-C cable. However it also includes Apple’s recently announced 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max, though it seems like an expensive way to get that if you want it.

Joe Rossignol:

The new Dual Knit Band comes in small, medium, and large sizes. It is available to purchase separately for $99, and it is compatible with the previous-generation Vision Pro. You can find your preferred size by using the Apple Store app on the iPhone.

Apple says the Dual Knit Band features two straps knitted into a single piece. The upper strap goes across the top of the head, and the lower strap goes across the back of the head. The lower strap has tungsten inserts that provide a counterweight for additional comfort, balance, and stability. You can adjust the fit of both of the straps with the Fit Dial.

Another new accessory is the Logitech Muse spatial stylus, and Apple will begin selling the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller starting Tuesday, November 11.

Federico Viticci:

They literally did an official version of the custom "dual-knit" accessory for the Vision Pro from Etsy last year!

Mark Gurman:

The M5 Vision Pro is advertised as quite a bit heavier than the M2 Vision Pro -- Likely because of the new strap (which is clearly heavier but solves the comfort problem).

Jeff Johnson:

0.3% of Vision Pro apps are built for visionOS. And this is Apple’s own marketing!

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Vision Pro is rapidly coming on 2 years old now and Apple still hasn’t ported Pages or Numbers to it, and half the built-in apps on the OS are emulated iPad apps. It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so very desperately sad. They effectively halted all in-box-app progress the moment it was shown off at WWDC23 — nothing new has been announced since

Steve Troughton-Smith:

2 years on and Apple still hasn’t figured out a deal with Netflix for the Vision Pro?

Previously:

Update (2025-10-16): Matt Birchler:

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here, but it seems like the original model was unable to take full advantage of the displays, otherwise how would we be getting better display “specs” with the same hardware?

John Gruber:

It’s a tacit acknowledgement that physical comfort has been a real problem for many people who’ve tried Vision Pro. (Me, personally, I find using it with the Solo Knit Band comfortable for as long as I care to use it — which is typically just 2–3 hours, tops.)

[…]

No price drop, no change to the form factor. But Apple’s interest in the platform is very much alive.

Apple M5

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):

Built using third-generation 3-nanometer technology, M5 introduces a next-generation 10-core GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, enabling GPU-based AI workloads to run dramatically faster, with over 4x the peak GPU compute performance compared to M4. The GPU also offers enhanced graphics capabilities and third-generation ray tracing that combined deliver a graphics performance that is up to 45 percent higher than M4. M5 features the world’s fastest performance core, with up to a 10-core CPU made up of six efficiency cores and up to four performance cores. Together, they deliver up to 15 percent faster multithreaded performance over M4. M5 also features an improved 16-core Neural Engine, a powerful media engine, and a nearly 30 percent increase in unified memory bandwidth to 153GB/s.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-16): Dimitri Bouniol:

M5 seemingly only supporting Thunderbolt 4 ruins the hope I had that the base M5 Mac mini would support Thunderbolt 5 next year 😔

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Neo Network Utility 2.0

Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann:

Here’s Neo Network Utility 2.0 with a refreshed yet familiar design for macOS Tahoe, including menu icons, pill-shaped buttons, and a modern tab view. It actually looks good in Liquid Glass.

Of course we didn’t just touch it up a bit. The new version lets you open multiple windows and run commands in all the tabs simultaneously. Switch between the tools from the menu or via key commands. On the Info tab, a visual link status indicator immediately tells you that the network connection is active, and with location services enabled, you can now see the interface’s SSID and BSSID. For looking up DNS data, Neo Network Utility uses the ICANN’s latest RDAP implementation.

This is a free replacement for Apple’s discontinued Network Utility.

Previously:

Juice Jacking Protection Setting Broken in iOS 26

Ric Ford (PDF):

Researchers at Graz University of Technology discovered severe, unpatched vulnerabilities in iPhones, Android phones and other devices that facilitate attacks and data theft via malicious USB chargers. Previously known and addressed as “juice jacking,” the effective new technique has been titled “ChoiceJacking.”

Adam Engst:

This vulnerability exists because USB ports can simultaneously transfer both power and data, potentially allowing a compromised charging station in an airport, hotel, or other public place to attack a connected iPhone.

Although there are no reports of juice jacking attacks in the wild, Apple added protection against this vulnerability years ago with a setting that explicitly prompts you to allow wired accessories to connect. You can configure iOS to handle accessories in four ways: ask every time, ask only for new accessories, automatically allow connections when the device is unlocked, or always allow connections.

[…]

Unfortunately, as a post on a private mailing list alerted me, there’s a bug in iOS 26.0.1 related to the accessory protection controls in Settings > Privacy & Security > Wired Accessories. The bug also affects iPadOS 26. For some iPhones and iPads, including both my iPhone 17 and fourth-generation iPad Air, the accessory connection control is locked to Always Allow, and a note below says, “This setting is managed by your organization and cannot be changed.”

Previously:

Apple TV, Apple TV, Apple TV, and Apple TV

Eric Slivka:

Buried in its announcement about “F1: The Movie” making its streaming debut on December 12, Apple has also announced that Apple TV+ is being rebranded as simply Apple TV.

[…]

Apple of course offers its set-top box hardware under the Apple TV name while also offering the Apple TV app across various platforms as a hub for Apple TV + and other content. As a result, offering Apple’s streaming service itself under the same name may lead to some confusion, and the reason for the change is unclear.

Christina Warren:

lol so I can watch Apple TV on the Apple TV app on Apple TV

Benjamin Mayo:

No normal person ever referred to it as “Apple TV+”. Most people just called it Apple TV, and now that’s what it is called. Way better.

I thought “Apple TV+” made sense in that there are other “+” services like Disney+ and Apple News+. But, as with iCloud+, I don’t think the name really caught on. People just call them “Apple TV” and “iCloud” and then maybe mention that they’re subscribed or which plan they have.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

Like, if you’re telling someone how much you enjoy Slow Horses and they ask how to watch it, it’s more natural and conversational to just say “It’s on Apple TV”. That’s what most people say.

[…]

But right there in Apple’s own “About Apple TV” description, you see just how overused “Apple TV” now is. You can watch Apple TV in Apple TV on Apple TV — the paid service in the free app on the set-top box. But you can watch any streaming service you want on the box, in that service’s own app. But many of those services are also available in the Apple TV app. And the Apple TV streaming service is also available on just about all other popular set-top hardware platforms. So you don’t need an Apple TV to watch Apple TV.

If anything, it’s the hardware that feels like it needs a new name now. But, as with the app, I guess people will just add a suffix (“box”) when they need to disambiguate.

Adam Engst:

While “Apple TV+” may not have been the most inspired name, removing the “+” hardly qualifies as creating a “vibrant new identity.” Craig Federighi’s WWDC jokes about Apple’s “crack product marketing team” being “fully baked” are starting to feel less like humor and more like accurate commentary.

I guess the “vibrant” is meant to refer to the new icon, but Apple did not make this clear.

Zac Hall:

The Apple TV app only just got a refreshed icon with iOS 26 and Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign.

Starting with iOS 26.1, Apple is adding a splash of color to the recently updated icon.

They’re also changing the hard drive icon again.

Previously:

Cultivated Task Cancellation

Max Seelemann (on his new blog):

So how do you tell if a task supports cancellation? That’s tricky to answer per-se because cancellation is voluntary behavior and needs to be represented in the task’s value or error type. If you’re lucky, cancellation support (or lack thereof) is documented.

[…]

The designated way to check for cancellation is to use static properties like Task.isCancelled. Using static properties may seem odd at first, but it’s clever: APIs called inside the task can check for cancellation without knowing where they’re running or taking task handles as arguments. In fact, such APIs are probably the best way to handle cancellation, as we’ll see shortly.

[…]

You might be thinking, “okay, nice and all. But why go to all this effort to explain something that’s baked into the system anyway?” Well, I fear here comes an inconvenient truth. Not many things in the Standard Library and Foundation have cancellation support built in. In fact, as far as I know, it’s just three.

Update (2025-10-15): Max Seelemann:

  • The Task initializer is declared as @discardableResult, which means you can create a task and let go of its handle without a warning, like Task {…}. This makes it too easy to unintentionally set up a task that’s forgotten and runs forever.
  • It’s too easy to forget to call the cancel method. Especially when the task is stored in an array or dictionary rather than a single instance variable. Every task handle would need to be cancelled individually when removed or replaced.

[…]

To solve number 2, we wrote a little wrapper called ScopedTask, which handles cancellation automatically.

[…]

I published the source for ScopedTask on GitHub—feel free to use or adapt it to your needs.

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Clips Discontinued

Eric Slivka:

Apple has essentially discontinued Clips, its video-editing app designed to allow users to combine video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters, and graphics to create enhanced videos that can be shared on social media sites.

The app has been removed from the App Store, and a support document on Apple’s site says that the app is no longer being updated and would no longer be available for download for new users as of yesterday.

Deeje Cooley:

I never understood who Clips was for.

Joe Rosensteel:

I would like someone at Apple to explain how the company that has the best smartphone video recording experience can’t make any good video editing apps for smartphones.

Alex Gollner:

The effects, transitions and even transcribing titles in Clips were made in Motion.

Apple didn’t enable third-party toolmaking for Clips.

Benjamin Mayo:

speaking of Apple video editors, iMovie hasn’t received new features for like three years …

Nick Heer:

Before it was pulled offline, it was most recently updated in May 2024.

I am truly curious about the likely lifespan of a few recent Apple apps. How much longer will Invites last? Sports seems like it could be around for longer, but I am a little worried about Classical, which still does not have a Mac app.

Steven Aquino:

I remember covering Clips at the time of its introduction because, as ever, there were accessibility ties. To wit, Apple was boastful of the fact the app could generate real-time captions for its short-form videos; the captions were useful, of course, to Deaf and hard-of-hearing people so as to make dialogue more accessible and inclusive. Back then, I remember thinking how inspired it was given TikTok and Instagram Reels had yet to pervade the mainstream consciousness. Nowadays, the vast majority of these videos I see all have live captions enabled by default, and it’s heartening to notice the change as a lifelong disabled person who, coincidentally, has a level of congenital hearing loss.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-14): Craig Grannell:

I always rather liked Clips. It was fun, simple and creative. I used it for a few YouTube shorts. But then I liked Music Memos too – another smart little app that was also unceremoniously canned.

Adam Engst:

I apparently recorded 19 seconds of test video in Clips in 2017, when it was introduced, but haven’t thought about it since editing Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s review (see “Apple’s New Clips App Is iMovie for the Social Age,” 26 April 2017). Although Julio liked Clips at the time, it didn’t seem to resonate with users, perhaps because it was never clear what you were supposed to do with the videos you created.

NSO Group Acquired

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (via Hacker News):

NSO spokesperson Oded Hershowitz told TechCrunch on Friday that “an American investment group has invested tens of millions of dollars in the company and has acquired controlling ownership.”

Confirmation of the deal came soon after Israeli tech news website Calcalist reported Friday that a group led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds agreed to purchase the surveillance tech maker in a deal valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

[…]

NSO has long claimed that its spyware is designed to not target U.S. phone numbers, likely to avoid hurting its chances to enter the U.S. market. But the company was caught in 2021 targeting about a dozen U.S. government officials abroad.

Soon after, the U.S. Commerce Department banned American companies from trading with NSO by putting the spyware maker on the U.S. Entities List.

Previously:

AI in Chrome, Neon, and Dia

Juli Clover:

Google today said that Gemini AI is being integrated into the Chrome browser for the Mac and PC. Chrome users in the U.S. will get the functionality first, with Gemini able to clarify complex information on any webpage.

There will be a small Gemini symbol in the upper right side of the browser that will offer options like learn about the page or explore a topic when clicked. By default, the Ask Gemini interface will answer questions about the tab that you have open.

There’s also a big AI Mode button in the address bar to initiate searches.

Tim Hardwick:

Opera today launched its subscription-based, AI-focused Neon browser, which joins a growing field of companies touting agentic browsing capabilities.

[…]

Available to early access users at $19.99 per month, Neon aims to go beyond traditional browsing by using AI to execute tasks directly within the browser. Neon can open and close tabs, compare information across multiple sources, and even complete transactions on a user’s behalf.

Central to Neon’s design is the Tasks feature, which creates self-contained workspaces for different projects. Each Task functions like a mini-browser with its own context, allowing the AI to act across multiple sources without accessing information from other parts of the browser.

Tim Hardwick:

The Browser Company’s Dia app is now open to anyone on Mac. It’s the first time the AI-powered browser has been widely available since its beta launch in June.

Dia is another AI-first browsing experience that’s centered around tab-based chat functionality. The browser includes Skills, which are a mix of user-created and built-in shortcuts for everyday tasks like planning, learning, writing, and coding. Current Skills include summarization, fact-checking, browsing history analysis, outlining, and productivity planning.

Previously:

Script to Detect Slow USB-C Cables

Kaushik Gopal (via Hacker News):

You have a drawer full of USB cables. Half are junk that barely charge your phone. The other half transfer data at full speed. But which is which?

[…]

The script parses macOS’s system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType command, which produces a dense, hard-to-scan raw output[…]

[…]

The first version was a bash script I cobbled together with AI. It worked, but was a mess to maintain. Because I let AI take the wheel, even minor tweaks like changing output colors were difficult.

But then he asked Claude to rewrite it to be easier to maintain.

That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-14): Ben Fry:

Quick hack to detect the speed of plugged-in USB devices on macOS, then write a simple HTML page with the info and open it in a browser. Very basic Python script now posted as a GitHub gist.

Friday, October 10, 2025

Evolution of Apple Security Bounty Program

Apple (Wired, MacRumors):

We’re doubling our top award to $2 million for exploit chains that can achieve similar goals as sophisticated mercenary spyware attacks. This is an unprecedented amount in the industry and the largest payout offered by any bounty program we’re aware of — and our bonus system, providing additional rewards for Lockdown Mode bypasses and vulnerabilities discovered in beta software, can more than double this reward, with a maximum payout in excess of $5 million. We’re also doubling or significantly increasing rewards in many other categories to encourage more intensive research. This includes $100,000 for a complete Gatekeeper bypass, and $1 million for broad unauthorized iCloud access, as no successful exploit has been demonstrated to date in either category.

They’re referring to a Gatekeeper bypass “with no user interaction,” but I don’t really understand what that would mean. Doesn’t Gatekeeper only come into play when there is user interaction? If there’s no user interaction, that seems like it would be a zero-click exploit, which should be worth way more than $100K.

In addition to increasing reward amounts and expanding bounty categories, we’re making it easier for researchers to objectively demonstrate their findings — and to determine the expected reward for their specific research report. Target Flags, inspired by capture-the-flag competitions, are built into our operating systems and allow us to rapidly review the issue and process a resulting reward, even before we release a fix.

When researchers demonstrate security issues using Target Flags, the specific flag that’s captured objectively demonstrates a given level of capability — for example, register control, arbitrary read/write, or code execution — and directly correlates to the reward amount, making the award determination more transparent than ever. Because Target Flags can be programmatically verified by Apple as part of submitted findings, researchers who submit eligible reports with Target Flags will receive notification of their bounty award immediately upon our validation of the captured flag. Confirmed rewards will be issued in an upcoming payment cycle rather than when a fix becomes available, underscoring the trust we’ve built with our core researcher community.

Jeff Johnson:

A major evolution would be if Apple actually paid people who submitted bugs instead of arbitrarily deciding “nope”

The changes sound good, but this was my first thought, too. I think the problem with the bounty program wasn’t that it didn’t claim to pay enough or in enough categories. It was that Apple has a history of not counting exploits that seem like they should count, downgrading them to lower categories, delaying fixes and thus payments, and withholding payments until after being called out in the press. If you discover an exploit, it should be a no-brainer to write it up and submit it through the proper channels because you trust that Apple will take it seriously and that you’ll get paid. But that’s not the case from what I’ve seen.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-15): See also: Bruce Schneier.

DEICER Removed From the App Store

Pablo Manríquez:

Apple has quietly removed DeICER, a civic-reporting app used to log immigration enforcement activity, from its App Store after a law enforcement complaint — invoking a rule normally reserved for protecting marginalized groups from hate speech.

[…]

Apple told developer Rafael Concepcion that the app violated Guideline 1.1.1, which prohibits “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content” directed at “religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups.”

Some people are upset about this part because government officers aren’t normally considered a protected class. But that’s not the language the guideline uses. And I see no reason to allow this sort of content targeted at any group, be it teachers, Supreme Court justices, people who look a certain way or live in a certain state, whatever. Apple’s reasoning isn’t bogus because it’s protecting the wrong people; it’s bogus because that’s not what the app is doing.

But Apple’s justification went further. “Information provided to Apple by law enforcement shows that your app violates Guideline 1.1.1 because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group,” the company wrote in its removal notice.

Since that’s not the stated (or designed) purpose of the app, the “that” should have been a “which.” And then Apple’s justification doesn’t make any sense.

Concepcion’s appeal to Apple emphasized that DeICER was “a tool for education and lawful civic engagement, not the targeting or tracking of law enforcement.”

“Users cannot follow, locate, or monitor officers in real time,” he wrote in his memo to Apple’s App Review Board. “Any observation entered in the app represents a single moment in time, not a persistent or live tracking function.”

Via John Gruber (Mastodon):

There’s not one story about any of these apps being used to harm ICE agents. And even if such an attack happened, that wouldn’t imply it’s the purpose of these apps.

I haven’t seen such a story, either. The Dallas gunman is reported to have used the app, but he didn’t it need to find the agents, as the attack took place at their office.

Mike Masnick:

And, yes, I’ll be the first to tell you that content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and that applies to app stores as well. But when you see a pattern this consistent—and this convenient for state power—pointing to scale problems feels inadequate. This looks less like algorithmic confusion and more like Apple systematically bending its policies to accommodate government preferences while trying to maintain plausible deniability.

This reasoning is deeply problematic on multiple levels. First, it treats documentation of public officials’ public actions as equivalent to hate speech against marginalized groups. Second, it accepts law enforcement’s own assessment of what constitutes “harm” to them without any independent review. Third, it creates a precedent where any app that allows citizens to track government activity could be banned as “discriminatory” against public officials.

Reece Rogers and Lily Hay Newman:

While gone from Apple’s App Store, DEICER is also still available via Google Play and a website.

Previously:

Qualcomm Acquires Arduino

Qualcomm (Hacker News):

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced its agreement to acquire Arduino, a premier open-source hardware and software company. The transaction accelerates Qualcomm Technologies’ strategy to empower developers by facilitating access to its unmatched portfolio of edge technologies and products.

[…]

By combining Qualcomm Technologies’ leading‑edge processing, graphics, computer vision, and AI with Arduino’s simplicity, affordability, and community, the Company is poised to supercharge developer productivity across industries. Arduino will preserve its open approach and community spirit while unlocking a full‑stack platform for modern development—with Arduino UNO Q as the first step.

Andrew Cunningham:

Qualcomm didn’t disclose what it would pay to acquire Arduino. The acquisition also needs to be approved by regulators “and other customary closing conditions.”

The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller “to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control.”

David Groom:

During a press briefing last night, their commitment to remaining agnostic (i.e. not removing support for other silicon) was made clear, although my question of “for how long?” did not have a definitive answer. Optimistically, the new resources, access to other acquisitions like Edge Impulse, and ability to leverage Qualcomm’s own IP (the €44 retail price tag on the Q was another clue before the announcement that Qualcomm had a particular interest in this board!) may indicate an exciting new era for the now two-decade-old project.

Rui Carmo:

Lots of mixed feelings. Qualcomm has been promoting quite a few new development kits over the past year or so, and of course Arduino has tremendous mindshare, but that was built upon pretty agnostic and far-reaching microcontroller support, so it will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Hernando Barragán:

The history of Arduino has been told by many people, and no two stories match. I want to clarify some facts around the history of Arduino, with proper supported references and documents, to better communicate to people who are interested, about Arduino’s origin.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Synology Reverses Ban on Third-Party Hard Drives

Hilbert Hagedoorn (via Hacker News):

Synology has backtracked on one of its most unpopular decisions in years. After seeing NAS sales plummet in 2025, the company has decided to lift restrictions that forced users to buy its own Synology hard drives. The policy, introduced earlier this year, made third-party HDDs from brands like Seagate and WD practically unusable in newer models such as the DS925+, DS1825+, and DS425+. That change didn’t go over well. Users immediately criticised Synology for trying to lock them into buying its much more expensive drives. Many simply refused to upgrade, and reviewers called out the move as greedy and shortsighted. According to some reports, sales of Synology’s 2025 NAS models dropped sharply in the months after the restriction was introduced.

Now, with the release of DSM 7.3, Synology has quietly walked the policy back. Third-party hard drives and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs can once again be used without triggering warning messages or reduced functionality. Drives from Seagate, WD, and others will work exactly as they did before—complete with full monitoring, alerts, and storage features.

John Voorhees:

The change of direction was revealed in a Synology press release announcing DiskStation Manager 7.3, the OS that runs the company’s Plus line of NAS hardware.

This is great news for Mac users who felt betrayed by Synology’s previous announcement. However, as Linder also points out it does not change the fact that the same “Plus” series of 2025 NAS hardware does not include hardware-accelerated transcoding of H.264 and HEVC video, which previous models supported.

Rui Carmo:

I’m happy that sanity prevailed, although not in time to prevent me from getting a second (non-Synology) NAS–which I suspect is what many serious customers went out and did, if only to test the waters.

This was an amazingly bad own goal, especially it being absurdly obvious that their target audience would be knowledgeable enough to see through a lock-in strategy[…]

Previously:

Eyes Up Removed From the App Store

Joseph Cox (Bluesky, Reddit):

Apple removed an app for preserving TikToks, Instagram reels, news reports, and videos documenting abuses by ICE, 404 Media has learned. The app, called Eyes Up, differs from other banned apps such as ICEBlock which were designed to report sightings of ICE officials in real-time to warn local communities. Eyes Up, meanwhile, was more of an aggregation service pooling together information to preserve evidence in case the material is needed in the future in court.

[…]

“Our goal is government accountability, we aren’t even doing real-time tracking,” the administrator of Eyes Up, who said their name was Mark, told 404 Media. Mark asked 404 Media to only use his first name to protect him from retaliation.

I’ve not seen an official statement from either Apple or the government. Perhaps there was a direct government request/demand about Eyes Up, but it’s also possible that there was a copyright concern (since the app collected content already uploaded to other platforms) or that Apple just took down everything related to ICE without specifically considering Eyes Up.

Wes Hilliard and Mike Wuerthele:

So, it’s not as if you can switch to another product or service in hopes of escaping these issues or voting with your wallet without going totally off grid. The problem doesn’t lie with the companies — it lies with those in power taking the actions, and making the “requests.”

Again, I think there’s a double standard here. If the government were requesting private customer data stored on Apple’s servers, you would blame the government (if the request were in fact unreasonable) but also blame Apple for not storing it securely. But design a system tailor-made for the government to control app distribution and it’s only the government’s fault for (ab)using it? This is not a recently discovered vulnerability. It was obvious in theory from the dawn of the App Store, and governments have been putting it into practice for almost as long.

Paul Haddad:

At the rate things are going, I expect an “Apple provides government with list of users who downloaded ICEBlock app” headline in a few more weeks.

It’s also a flaw in the system that Apple gets a list of all the apps everyone’s installed, even for free apps.

Richard Hyde:

It won’t just be a list of users though, thanks to “Find My” they’ll have their current location too.

Kyle Hughes:

I am complicit for having spent my career trying to make this platform attractive to users—drawing them out of places where their rights had more resilience.

[…]

I fixate on clear examples that make it easy to think about nuanced topics.

That it is federally illegal to distribute TikTok, yet it remains in the App Store, and that it is not illegal to host or share videos of law enforcement activity, yet these apps are being removed, is one such example.

Warner Crocker:

The Eyes Up website is still up and can be used for the same video archiving purposes with content uploaded from TikTok, Instagram or X and include “a mix of professional media reports and user-generated clips of ICE arrests.”

Previously:

Complying With Texas Age Verification

Apple (MacRumors, Slashdot):

Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas — SB2420 — introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers. While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores.

[…]

Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older. All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple’s In-App Purchase system by the minor. This will also impact developers, who will need to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law. Similar requirements will come into effect later next year in Utah and Louisiana.

The way Apple wrote this, it sounds like they aren’t going to require verification of existing accounts. They also don’t say which “sensitive” information they’ll need to collect, and the legislation leaves this vague. I don’t like the idea of being forced to give Apple my driver’s license (or whatever), but neither do I like the longstanding system where Apple gets to see which apps I’ve installed on my iPhone or launched on my Mac.

Previously:

French Siri Spying Lawsuit

Océane Herrero:

The investigation, led by the country’s cybercrime agency OFAC, follows a complaint in February by the French NGO Ligue des droits de l’Homme, based on the testimony of a whistleblower and former employee of an Apple subcontractor Thomas Le Bonniec.

As an employee of Globe Technical Services in Ireland in 2019, Le Bonniec analyzed recordings made by Siri to improve the quality of the voice assistant’s responses. That involved listening to thousands of user recordings, which Le Bonniec said could reveal intimate moments and confidential information, and could be used to identify users.

[…]

The February complaint also paved the way for an ongoing class action in France. That was inspired by a class action in the United States, which saw Apple accused of recording private conversations without consumers’ knowledge. Apple agreed in December 2024 to settle the case for $95 million. The company denied any wrongdoing.

Via John Gruber:

Sending recorded Siri voice interactions to Apple is opt-in, and the opt-in screen is very clear and cogent.

That’s the case today, but it seems like this investigation is based on the same time period as the American lawsuit. Back then, it was not clear to customers that the recordings were retained and used outside of Apple, and the generic iOS opt-out control did not affect Siri recordings. Apple later added a Siri-specific opt-out switch, and then made it opt-in. Here Apple’s response from January. I wish Apple had not settled the lawsuit then because it made them look like they had something to hide. Le Bonniec is called a whistleblower. Does he have any new information, or is the French lawsuit just piggybacking and trying to get its own settlement?

Previously:

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Customer Support Scams

Daniel Jalkut:

I’m seeing more of a scam directed at customer support addresses, where the scammer pretends to be a customer who is having trouble with the app, and asks you to look at a screenshot of the problem, which is a link to a page that coaxes you into running a nefarious program on your computer.

John Brayton:

I just got this one yesterday. It initially asked about a cookie consent dialog on my website. (Of course my websites do not have cookie consent dialogs.)

Other Mac developers have reported this, too. I haven’t gotten this one yet, but I’ve seen some targeted messages that seem to be AI-generated.

Previously:

Evolving AltStore PAL

Riley Testut:

In April of last year, we launched AltStore PAL in the European Union as one of the first official alternative app marketplaces on iOS thanks to the Digital Markets Act. We launched with just 2 apps — my Nintendo emulator Delta and clipboard manager Clip — yet Apple immediately changed their App Store rules to allow emulators worldwide for the first time ever.

[…]

By far our number one request, we’re planning to launch AltStore PAL in more countries later this year in response to various regulatory changes around the world. Specifically, we plan to launch in Japan, Brazil, and Australia before the end of the year, with the UK to follow in 2026.

[…]

Using ActivityPub, we plan to federate apps, app updates, and news alerts from AltStore to the open social web. Each AltStore source will receive its own ActivityPub account, which can then be followed by any other open social web account. You’ll be able to like, boost, and reply to everything, and most importantly all these interactions will appear natively in AltStore.

[…]

Pace Capital is investing $6 million USD in AltStore in exchange for 15% equity. We will use this money to hire a few employees and build out a team, giving us the necessary bandwidth to finalize Fediverse integration and expand AltStore worldwide, while also releasing betas and app updates on a more regular basis.

[…]

Alternative app marketplaces are needed more than ever now, with new reasons for them popping up every week. If there’s one constant though, it’s that Apple simply cannot be trusted to be the sole distributor of apps on the iOS platform.

Even with app marketplaces, though, Apple still controls distribution through code signing and notarization. There is no equivalent of the Mac’s Gatekeeper override.

Previously:

Lessons From San Bernardino and ICEBlock

Wiley Hodges:

I used to believe that Apple were unequivocally ‘the good guys.’ I passionately advocated for people to understand Apple as being on the side of its users above all else. I now feel like I must question that.

[…]

The event that represented a turning point for that skeptical view of Apple was the stand against the FBI over the San Bernardino case. You took a risky stand that was in keeping with the principles you had articulated for the company. The result was bigger than the one case: that act of lawful, principled defiance of government intimidation and jawboning helped to convince people that Apple’s actions and stated ideals were in alignment; that the company was walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

[…]

Acceding to a government ‘demand’ without demanding that the government follow legal process in order to back up its request (or at least shedding light on how the government did follow such process) raises the question of how easily Apple will accede to other requests.

[…]

Will Apple give data on the identities of users who downloaded the ICEBlock app to the government? Will Apple block podcasts that advocate points of view opposed to the current US administration? I imagine and hope that these are ridiculous questions, but without a clearer demonstration of Apple’s principled commitment to lawful action and due process, I feel uncertain.

Via John Gruber:

But, exactly as many critics of the App-Store-as-exclusive-distribution-point-for-native-software model have long warned, it’s proven to be a choke point that Apple was unwilling to defend.

I don’t think the problem is really Tim Cook or whoever at Apple made the ICEBlock decision last week. The current situation is just the symptom of a decision made long ago: for Apple to be a choke point for app distribution. If your solution to government overreach is to depend on the right person being in charge, who will say no, you’ve already lost.

Apple understands this with customer privacy. If you don’t want to have to give up user data, you design the system to store as little of it as possible, and you try to store everything else in such a way that you can’t actually access it. There have been flaws in the execution, but Apple has clearly articulated this principle and worked towards it. What you don’t do is upload the user’s most private data to iCloud, encrypt it with a password that only Tim Cook knows, and hope that he’ll never access it, because you trust him. Maybe he wouldn’t, but he won’t be there forever, and ultimately there’s not much Apple can do if it gets a legally valid request for something it can easily provide.

Yet that’s what Apple’s done with app distribution. They designed a system with a kill switch, and now people are surprised and upset that they used it. The problem is not that they pressed the button this one time when you didn’t want them to. The problem is that there is a button and Apple likes having it. They value it more than your right to use your own device as you see fit. They justify it by saying that the button is there for your protection.

Hodges is asking Tim Cook and his team to “more clearly explain the basis on which” they pressed the button, but I don’t think that’s the right question at all. If we were talking about privacy, would you be satisfied with a secure golden key accompanied by an essay about when it would be OK to use it? Would you even take such a proposal seriously?

The lesson of San Bernardino is not really that Tim Cook said “no.” It’s that he could say “no” because asking Apple to exploit an iPhone/iOS backdoor (build an “entirely new operating system,” as Apple put it) was different from asking Apple for data that it already had. (The FBI asked for that, too, and Apple provided it, as I believe it should have.) But Apple realized that the backdoor made the system insecure and removed it in subsequent iPhones. Now, at least in theory, no one has to rely on Cook saying “no” because he can’t say “yes.” Obviously, the analogy with app distribution is that the only way to prevent the kill switch from being used is to remove it.

Previously:

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

ToothFairy 2.8.8

ToothFairy 2.8.8 is a maintenance update of my Bluetooth menu bar utility.

As annoying as Bluetooth is as a user, it’s even more so as developer. Seemingly straightforward APIs don’t work as advertised. I don’t just mean that they can fail with an error. They can fail but say that they succeeded. They can succeed but say that they failed. Sometimes the synchronous API will work when the asynchronous one doesn’t or vice-versa. Sometimes the async API never calls back.

With each major new macOS release, I hope it will fix some of this, but each seems to add its own new wrinkle that requires a workaround. With Tahoe, the issue is that IOBluetoothDeviceSelectorController sometimes doesn’t show devices even though they are paired with the Mac. They work and show up in System Settings but not in the Bluetooth chooser dialog to add them to a third-party app. This never seems to happen with AirPods, perhaps because their pairing is handled differently and syncs via iCloud, but it seems to be reasonably common with third-party headphones and input devices (and even Apple’s own Magic mouse/keyboard/trackpad).

Previously:

iOS 26.1 Alarm Buttons: Slide to Stop

Juli Clover:

With the second beta of iOS 26.1, Apple updated the design of alarms set on the iPhone, making them harder to dismiss than before.

Stopping an alarm in iOS 26.1 beta 2 requires a new Slide to Stop gesture rather than a simple tap. You can continue to tap to snooze an alarm, but if you want to turn it off entirely, you need to use a swipe.

[…]

The new Slide to Stop button is still as large as the Snooze and Stop buttons, so Apple keeps its updated design, while solving the problem that it introduced.

Marco Arment:

The Alan Dye era: a new design creates problems, requiring more hacks and complexity to evade, ending up less usable and elegant than the old design.

Wensh:

Hard disagree, new design is much better than the old design. Makes it easier to hit the buttons, adding a slide action is good to avoid accidental hits.

Happy Striker:

Honestly, I hate the snooze feature and I wish for a setting, that will disable snooze for all new alarms i create once and for all 😅

zkarj:

I thought the old design was worse because I couldn’t read either button! I thought maybe I’d learn not to hit the bright orange thing, but no, I never did. I vastly prefer what we have in 26.0. Even if I can only read the orange button through bleary, just-woken eyes, I know it’s the wrong one to hit.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-09): Pierre Igot:

Why is there some kind of shadow that makes “slide to stop” almost impossible to read?

Testing CarPlay Ultra

Michael Teo Van Runkle:

Connecting to Ultra via Bluetooth takes a minute or two longer than traditional CarPlay and includes more consent screens to cover the additional legal ramifications of the operating system sharing data with the car, and vice versa. […] Once initiated, though, Ultra fired up straightaway every time. Much faster than the typical lag to boot up traditional CarPlay.

[…]

Call me old-fashioned, but I still enjoy seeing a tachometer, speedometer, drive modes, and fuel level versus range remaining and a digital speed—especially on an engaging performance vehicle like the DB12 Volante. Apple might be skilled at making new tech easy to use, but it’s hard to beat the power of millions of minds adapting to analog gauges over the past century or so. And in this case, Ultra’s tach(s) showed a bit of latency or lag while ripping that 671-hp twin-turbo V8 up through the revs, something I never noticed in the native UI.

[…]

Ultra’s biggest improvements over preceding CarPlay generations are in the center console infotainment integration. Being able to access climate controls, drive modes, and traction settings without leaving the intuitive suite of CarPlay makes life much easier.

[…]

Plus, over the course of my eight days with Ultra, I experienced one moment where both the infotainment and gauge cluster went totally black.

Fahadx:

Finally, someone tested what would happen to the CarPlay Ultra UI when your iPhone restarts or is shut down.

It’s what I expected, but a reboot still has annoying connectivity issues[…]

TheStraightPipes:

Yuri and Jakub Test Drive the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster[…]

They find that CarPlay Ultra is laggy, both switching between different modes and also just updating the gauges. They ask Siri to play music from channel 9, but it plays channel 18 instead.

William Gallagher (9to5Mac, The Verge, MacRumors):

The Ford Motor Company has previously committed to staying with the basic Apple CarPlay, but it won’t be adopting the newer CarPlay Ultra. Speaking to Joanna Stern on the Decoder podcast, CEO Jim Farley says he’s talked with Tim Cook many times about the future of integrated systems, but expects Ford may decide to make its own custom software.

Malcolm Owen:

Referring to a so-called “CarPlay myth” that drivers use it considerably, BMW SVP of UI/UX Development Stephan Durach insists that it is not true. Instead, BMW drivers really prefer using the car maker’s system.

[…]

Durach refers to BMW’s in-car data, collected from 10 million cars, as proof to bust the myth. “We can see what our customers are doing,” he adds.

Joe Rossignol:

On the latest episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told guest host Joanna Stern why the EV maker continues to pass on Apple’s CarPlay — both the standard version and the more advanced CarPlay Ultra.

Echoing his previous comments on the matter, Scaringe said Rivian is focused on offering a “seamless digital experience,” where customers do not need to switch between its own software and CarPlay. Instead, he said Rivian prefers to provide an à-la-carte selection of built-in apps, such as Apple Music, Google Maps, Spotify, and YouTube.

Casey Liss (Mastodon):

RJ is wrong: customers do not want a seamless digital experience within the apps on their car. Customers want a seamless digital experience with their smartphones. Everywhere.

CarPlay is the way you get it.

[…]

But what if RJ is wrong? There’s no reason Rivian can’t have their bespoke and seamless experience for those that prefer it, and offer CarPlay for those that want it.

Previously:

CarPlay in iOS 26

Jonathan Reed:

Apple brings much more customization to our in-car displays, mainly by letting the much heralded features of CarPlay Ultra trickle down to regular CarPlay.

[…]

CarPlay has taken on the visual qualities of Liquid Glass. Since CarPlay is essentially a mirror for your iPhone, this is to be expected, but it’s been done in a way that hasn’t created any legibility issues.

[…]

Legibility issues can be further improved with a new Large Text option. Quite simply, it makes text larger system-wide in 100, 110, 120, and 135% increments. While this is good to have, what’s stopped me from increasing my text size is that very implementation: system-wide.

I want to decrease the font size.

Lastly, Smart Display Zoom aims to resize elements of the UI to better fit your car’s screen. It’s unclear how it determines this, and I’ve seen as many people have their UI reduced as have their UI increased in size, which is what happened to me. Unfortunately, this made apps like Maps difficult to use, so I turned it off. It’s certainly worth checking out, but as with mine, you might not get the result you want.

[…]

CarPlay has created a new screen that you can access by swiping right from the multi-view layout. On this screen, you can have either one or two stacks of widgets (depending on your screen size).

This seems cool because it lets you see content from iOS apps that don’t have CarPlay versions.

Collin Allen:

Nothing but improvements here, particularly the adjustments to UI sizing. More like this, please.

On my particular display size, they got bigger and are much more tappable 😍

[…]

I think Smart Display Zoom is the feature that’s making the most difference for me.

Mario Guzmán:

Things on my display got way smaller and there’s way more density it seems.

Ric Ford:

Oligo Security discovered severe security flaws in Apple’s AirPlay and CarPlay software and Apple’s code embedded in third-party products. Apple eventually patched its own software after Oligo responsibly disclosed the security flaws to the company, but many millions of unpatched Apple devices and third-party devices remain vulnerable to wireless zero-click attacks and more.

Previously:

Monday, October 6, 2025

Epic Games Sees Benefits From Streamlined Install Flow

Epic Games (Tim Sweeney, MacRumors, The Verge, TechCrunch):

In response to ongoing Digital Markets Act enforcement, Apple has significantly improved the process for installing alternative app stores from the web in the European Union with iOS 18.6 in July. They’ve reduced the install flow from 15 steps to 6, eliminating their former scare screen and its misleading message, and eliminated a dead-end that left the user stranded in iOS Settings. As a result, we’ve seen a stunning 60% decrease in player drop-off during attempts to install the Epic Games Store.

Prior to Apple’s update, around 65% of users attempting to install the Epic Games Store on iOS were thwarted by Apple’s deceptive design. After the update, the drop-off rate has gone from 65% down to around 25%, and continues on a downward trend as users upgrade to the new version of iOS.

For the first time, we are starting to see iOS users install the Epic Games Store with a success rate approaching Windows users and Apple’s own Mac users.

They have screenshots of the new and old iOS install flows, as well as the Android one, which remains at 12 steps. Epic still doesn’t like Apple’s business terms for App Marketplaces.

Previously:

Helm 2.0

Modum (tweet):

The all-in-one iOS and macOS app that enhances App Store Connect, supercharging your app updates, localization, and ASO with AI-powered tools.

[…]

Using Helm is up to 12x faster than using the App Store Connect website.

[…]

It’s easier than ever to respond using templates, translations, and AI assistance. Additionally, Helm will automatically translate the review and generate a quick pros and cons list, so you’ll know exactly what to work on next.

[…]

Easily arrange & replace screenshots, auto-remove alpha channels, visionOS simulator support and Magic upload!

It’s $9.99/month or $49.99/year.

Helm 2.0:

The Launch List is one of our most used and loved features, as it gives users a quick overview of all the work they need to do before submitting their app. It also reduces friction with Apple’s services as you no longer need to keep trying to submit to see what’s missing.

[…]

Along with Screenshots, we have also taken the opportunity to improve the experience of one of our most used features, TestFlight. This is still an ongoing effort, but we have already made some wins in stability and streamlining the user experience.

[…]

More importantly, we didn’t just want to “support” iOS 26 and macOS 26. We wanted to rethink Helm for the new era of Apple’s platforms. The design system, the APIs, and the platform capabilities introduced in 26 have shaped how we approached this update. Starting fresh on the new baseline lets us focus on delivering the best possible experience without the complexity of maintaining older OS versions.

In fact, they’ve dropped support for previous OS versions.

Previously:

Bartender 6

Applause Group:

We’ve re-built Bartender from the ground up to be beautiful, performant, and reliable. Bartender has been a staple of Mac users for years, and that brought with it lots of old hacks & tricks. We’ve modernised everything, from the algorithms used to move your items, through to the design of the entire app.

The design seems to have been inspired by System Settings.

We’ve also brought our new movement system to Bartender 5, so you’ll get all the speed & reliability improvements for free on Sequoia. And yes, we’ve fixed the Apple menu bug.

[…]

We’ve maintained a strict commitment to privacy throughout the new Bartender. We know that granting screen recording permissions can be intimidating, so we’ve maintained our policy of the app not sending anything anywhere. Your menu item images are stored in memory to show them in Bartender Bar or the layout screen, and they aren’t persisted. We’ve also reduced the amount of times Bartender has to capture the bar too, so you’ll see the purple dot even less. For people who don’t want this at all, you can re-arrange your items once, then disable screen recording permissions and use Bartender in a locked-down mode.

I saw lots of speculation that after the acquisition it would switch to a subscription, but the new version is still a regular purchase at $20 ($12 for upgrades) vs. $16 ($8) for Bartender 5.

Roustem Karimov reports high energy use.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-09): Tommy Weir:

I don’t know if others on the latest Tahoe (non beta) have issues with Bartender 6, but it’s been the sole problem I’ve had since the upgrade. Endlessly re-indexing the apps, and slowing the Mac down to a crawl, only fixable by quitting.

Apple Files Another Anti-Steering Appeal

Juli Clover:

Startup accelerator and venture capital firm Y Combinator (YC) today filed an amicus brief supporting Epic Games in Epic’s continued legal fight with Apple. Y Combinator says that Apple’s “anti-steering restraints” have long inhibited the growth and development of technology companies that monetize goods and services through apps.

The company calls on the court to deny Apple’s appeal and uphold the order that required Apple to change its App Store linking rules in the United States.

Juli Clover (Hacker News):

The court order that required Apple to collect no fees from developers who link to purchases outside of the App Store is unconstitutional, Apple said today in a reply brief directed at Epic Games and filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Apple argues that it has been stripped of its rights to be compensated for its intellectual property in a ruling that sets a dangerous precedent for all companies.

[…]

Should the Ninth Circuit Court find the updated injunction lawful, Apple suggests that the recent Trump v. Casa Supreme Court ruling [PDF] needs to be considered. The ruling said courts do not have the authority to issue universal injunctions that are “broader than necessary to provide complete relief” to the plaintiffs in the case. Epic Games is the only plaintiff in the case, so Apple also argues that the injunction changing the App Store rules for all developers is too broad. Apple says that the injunction should be tailored to Epic and Epic’s interests alone.

Marcus Mendes:

The company also says that while the new injunction should be reversed because it relies on privileged documents (which we covered here)[…]

Previously:

Friday, October 3, 2025

SpamSieve 3.2.1

SpamSieve 3.2.1 is a maintenance release of my Mac e-mail spam filter.

Previously:

EagleFiler 1.9.19

EagleFiler 1.9.19 is a maintenance release of my Mac digital filing cabinet and e-mail archiving app.

Previously:

ICEBlock Removed From the App Store

Ashley Oliver (Hacker News, MSN, The Verge, 9to5Mac):

Apple dropped ICEBlock, a widely used tracking tool, from its App Store Thursday after the Department of Justice raised concerns with the big tech giant that the app put law enforcement officers at risk.

[…]

Controversy surrounding ICE tracking apps intensified after last month’s deadly shooting at an ICE field office in Dallas, Texas, the latest in a series of attacks that appeared to be targeting immigration enforcement officers.

[…]

Apple said in a statement it removed ICEBlock and other apps like it.

“We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps. Based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store,” Apple said.

I’m surprised it lasted this long, since Apple also doesn’t allow apps for crowdsourcing DUI checkpoints, even though to my knowledge neither type of app is actually illegal. This is pretty much exactly how the HKmap Live situation played out, except that there Apple noted that the Web site could still be added to an iPhone user’s home screen. ICEBlock has no Web site (or Android app), so removing it from the App Store will eventually kill the service. I guess if you’ve already downloaded the app you can keep using it, but it won’t get any updates and can’t be transferred to new devices.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-04): John Gruber (Mastodon):

Fox, in its opening paragraph, describes Bondi as having “asked” Apple to remove ICEBlock from the App Store, but Bondi’s own statement uses the verb “demand”. The difference is not nitpicking. No one, not even Bondi, is claiming any aspect of ICEBlock is illegal.

[…]

Reporting and publishing where police are policing is free speech and fundamental to the civil rights and liberties of a free society.

[…]

We can all wish Apple had fought this “demand”. I certainly do. […] But I can also see why it’s not. Pick your battles.

You could look at this as a story about the Trump DoJ, and I don’t think that would be wrong. And you could argue that ICEBlock is more in the public interest than the DUI checkpoint apps, even though both are legal and both are free speech. But, zooming out, this is the same government-Apple pattern as before. Here, there were months of complaints from the administration about the app, then the recent shooting provided the justification for AG Bondi’s “demand,” after which Apple caved. Back in 2011, a group of Democrat senators, including the Majority Leader, “ask[ed]” Apple to remove DUI checkpoint apps from the App Store. Apple’s position at the time was that these apps were a “net positive” in terms of public safety. Then the government brought Bud Tribble before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, where Senator Schumer “demanded” and Senator Udall “lambaste[d],” and Apple changed its mind and banned the apps. The throughline is that Apple will stand up for customer privacy, unless that conflicts with a local law or Apple already has the requested data. But when it comes to apps that governments don’t like, it generally seems to remove them (as does Google).

dmitriid:

Imagine if there were independent stores on iOS or that users could install these apps from different sources.

Users should be able to just download and install the apps they want to run on their devices. Once, this was normal and expected, but now there’s a scary term for it: sideloading. The Web is sort of an escape hatch, but even its openness is in question, as both Apple and Google are working on attestation, which limits what users can do with their browser.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-06): Brent Simmons (Mastodon):

I can picture a future, as I bet you can, where RSS readers aren’t allowed on any app store, and we’re essentially required to use billionaire-owned social media and platform-owned news apps.

But there are issues with making NetNewsWire a web app.

[…]

A world where everything is on the web and nothing is on the machines that we own is a sad world where we’ve lost a core freedom.

[…]

What I want to see happen is for Apple to allow iPhone and iPad users to load — not sideload, a term I detest, because it assumes Apple’s side of things — whatever apps they want to. Because those devices are computers.

Cory Doctorow (Hacker News):

Apple does not permit its iPhone customers to install software unless it is delivered via their App Store. They claim they do so in order to protect their customers from their customers’ own bad choices about which apps to install. But time and again, Apple has shown that they exercise this control over their users to pursue their own ends, blocking:

  • A dictionary (because it contained swear words);

  • A game that simulated working in an Apple sweatshop;

  • An informative app that cataloged civilian casualties of US drone strikes;

  • The Tumblr app because some Tumblr blogs contained adult content; and

  • Working VPN apps for the entire nation of China.

Jeff Johnson:

Should anyone in the world be able to distribute iPhone apps? Yes.

Should anyone in the world be able to distribute iPhone apps with the explicit backing of Apple? No. Absolutely not.

[…]

The only reason this totally fucking nutty situation exists is that the purpose of the iOS App Store lockdown is NOT to protect Apple users but rather to extract money from developers.

I’ve always thought it was a mix of wanting money and control. But, in a way, Apple ends up with less control because, with no alternative distribution, it can’t really make the store the highly curated experience that you’d imagine it would want. Instead, the store is missing some apps that customers (and maybe Apple) would want but that governments don’t, and the store is also full of junk apps that customers don’t really want but that don’t really violate any rules so Apple kind of has to let them through.

Update (2025-10-08): John Gruber:

The only content ICEBlock contains is the location of law enforcement activity. Waze — and more notably, Apple’s own Maps app — do the exact same thing for highway speed traps.

This gets back to my earlier point that Apple has gone down a slope of policing apps based on how people choose to use them vs. based on what the binary actually does.

Previously:

Web Apps in iOS 26

Jen Simmons et al. (Mastodon):

For the last 17 years, if the website had the specific meta tag or Web Application Manifest display value in it’s code, when a user added it to their Home Screen on iOS or iPadOS, tapping its icon opened it as a web app. If the website was not configured as such, tapping its icon opened the site in a browser. Users had no choice in the matter, nor visible way to understand why some sites behaved one way while others behaved another.

On Mac, we took a different approach. When introducing Web Apps on Mac in Sep 2023, we made the decision to always open websites added to the Dock as web apps. It doesn’t matter whether or not the website has a Web Application Manifest. Users get a consistent experience. Add to Dock creates a web app.

Now, we are revising the behavior on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. By default, every website added to the Home Screen opens as a web app. If the user prefers to add a bookmark for their browser, they can disable “Open as Web App” when adding to Home Screen — even if the site is configured to be a web app. The UI is always consistent, no matter how the site’s code is configured. And the power to define the experience is in the hands of users.

Previously:

Thursday, October 2, 2025

How to Export a Mac .icon File With the Proper Margins

Tahoe Mac app icons are supposed to have margins/padding so that there’s empty space around the edge of the squircle. The opaque pixels don’t touch the edge of the canvas. Icon Composer and Xcode handle this detail for you. You design your icon without having to worry about the margin, and Xcode automatically adds it when compiling your asset catalog.

The issue is, how do you get the proper margin on icon images used in other contexts (documentation, marketing, etc.)? If you export from Icon Composer, it generates PNG files with no margin, so the icon appears too large, even though the outer pixel dimensions are the same. For example, on the SpamSieve screenshots page, the Light icon is generated by Xcode, and the Dark/Clear/Tinted variants are exported from Icon Composer. The difference is substantial.

I posted about this on Mastodon and also found an old post in the Apple Developer Forums, but no one seemed to know the answer.

Back in June, I learned from John Brayton that you don’t have to manually export from the Icon Composer app. It has a command-line tool called ictool (formerly icontool) that can convert .icon files to .png. So I have a Makefile that generates all the different sizes and variants for all my apps using commands like this:

"/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Icon Composer.app/Contents/Executables/ictool" AppIcon.icon --export-preview macOS Light 128 128 1 AppIconLight.iconset/icon_128x128.png

Unfortunately, ictool, like Icon Composer itself, does not add the transparent margin.

I checked Xcode’s build log to see if there were other options it was passing but didn’t find anything. It looks like it’s not using ictool and instead compiles the icon directly into the asset catalog.

So far, the only solution I’ve found is to actually build my app with Xcode and then extract the icons it generated. You can view the contents of an asset catalog using Samra, but it doesn’t export. Asset Catalog Tinkerer has some export problems—it shows constituents of the .icon as having the same name and only exports one of them—but it’s fine for the purposes of extracting the fully rendered icons.

The method I prefer is to take the .icns file in the .app package and use iconutil to convert it to a folder of PNGs:

iconutil -c iconset -o AppIcon.iconset AppIcon.icns

Note that, by default, Xcode only generates the .icns file with sizes up to 256px. To get the larger sizes, you need to add to your .xcconfig file:

ASSETCATALOG_COMPILER_STANDALONE_ICON_BEHAVIOR = all

Unfortunately, relying on Xcode to apply the margins only works for the standard (Light) icon. This is the only one that it pre-generates. If you know how to get it to compile Dark/Clear/Tinted variants—or how to properly export those directly without using Xcode—please let me know.

Previously:

Sora App

OpenAI:

Today we’re releasing Sora 2, our flagship video and audio generation model.

The original Sora model from February 2024 was in many ways the GPT‑1 moment for video—the first time video generation started to seem like it was working, and simple behaviors like object permanence emerged from scaling up pre-training compute. Since then, the Sora team has been focused on training models with more advanced world simulation capabilities. We believe such systems will be critical for training AI models that deeply understand the physical world. A major milestone for this is mastering pre-training and post-training on large-scale video data, which are in their infancy compared to language.

With Sora 2, we are jumping straight to what we think may be the GPT‑3.5 moment for video. Sora 2 can do things that are exceptionally difficult—and in some instances outright impossible—for prior video generation models: Olympic gymnastics routines, backflips on a paddleboard that accurately model the dynamics of buoyancy and rigidity, and triple axels while a cat holds on for dear life.

Prior video models are overoptimistic—they will morph objects and deform reality to successfully execute upon a text prompt. For example, if a basketball player misses a shot, the ball may spontaneously teleport to the hoop. In Sora 2, if a basketball player misses a shot, it will rebound off the backboard.

Juli Clover:

The Sora app for iOS is available to download now, and it can be used in the United States and Canada. Those invited to the app will be able to use Sora 2 on the Sora website.

Amanda Silberling:

People on Sora who generate videos of Altman are especially getting a kick out of how blatantly OpenAI appears to be violating copyright laws. (Sora will reportedly require copyright holders to opt out of their content’s use — reversing the typical approach where creators must explicitly agree to such use — the legality of which is debatable.)

[…]

Aside from its algorithmic feed and profiles, Sora’s defining feature is that it is basically a deepfake generator — that’s how we got so many videos of Altman. In the app, you can create what OpenAI calls a “cameo” of yourself by uploading biometric data. When you first join the app, you’re immediately prompted to create your optional cameo through a quick process where you record yourself reading off some numbers, then turning your head from side to side.

Each Sora user can control who is allowed to generate videos using their cameo. You can adjust this setting between four options: “only me,” “people I approve,” “mutuals,” and “everyone.”

M.G. Siegler:

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this sucked into an app. Such was the situation I found myself in last night with OpenAI’s new version of Sora. Once I got access, I found it nearly impossible to put it down. I just kept wanting to remix everything I scrolled past. Yes, it was incredibly dumb. Yet highly amusing! And technically, very interesting, albeit in mildly troubling ways. But everyone else will write about that aspect, and rightfully so. My angle here is simply that OpenAI remains so good at creating these types of viral products. Underlying tech aside, that team continues to seem to know how to productize better than anyone else in the space.

Case in point: Meta launched a similar foray just days before in the form of “Vibes”. Now, did they rush it out the door to get ahead of this Sora 2 launch? Hard to say for sure, but it sure feels that way. The product, if you even want to call it that, is so half-baked and obtuse to use that it’s more like an employment quiz.

Dare Obasanjo:

Started using the Sora app and it’s like TikTok for AI generated videos.

I used to think it would take a year or two for AI videos to become as popular as influencer content on social media but I can see this app causing that to happen by the end of the year.

John Gruber:

Sora, though invitation-only at the moment, is currently #3 in the U.S. App Store.

[…]

Also, I’m sure Sora will eventually come to Android. But, to play with it now, you need an iPhone.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-06): Sam Altman:

First, we will give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.

[…]

Second, we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.

Nano Banana

Wikipedia:

Nano Banana (officially Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) is an artificial intelligence image generating and editing tool created by Google. “Nano Banana” was the codename used on LMArena while the model was undergoing pre-release testing, allowing the community to evaluate its performance on real-world prompts without knowing its identity. When the company publicly released it in August 2025, it was part of their Gemini line of AI products. The model became known for its editing skills and for starting a social media trend of styled “3D figurine” photos.

Google:

Imagine yourself in any world you can dream up. Our latest AI image generation update, Nano Banana, lets you turn a single photo into countless new creations. You can even upload multiple images to blend scenes or combine ideas. And with an improved understanding of your instructions, it's easier than ever to bring your ideas to life.

There are tons of apps called Nano Banana in the App Store, some of them with Google-style icons, but none seems to be an official Google app. Neither is the nanobanana.ai Web front-end from Google.

PicoTrex (via Hacker News):

We present Nano-consistent-150k — the first dataset constructed using Nano-Banana that exceeds 150k high-quality samples, uniquely designed to preserve consistent human identity across diverse and complex editing scenarios. A key feature is its remarkable identity consistency: for a single portrait, more than 35 distinct editing outputs are provided across diverse tasks and instructions. By anchoring on consistent human identities, the dataset enables the construction of interleaved data that seamlessly link multiple editing tasks, instructions, and modalities around the same individual.

Fstoppers (via Hacker News):

Google Just Made Photography Obsolete

Google (tweet):

Our state-of-the-art image generation and editing model which has captured the imagination of the world, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image 🍌, is now generally available, ready for production environments, and comes with new features like a wider range of aspect ratios in addition to being able to specify image-only output.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image empowers users to seamlessly blend multiple images, maintain consistent characters for richer storytelling, perform targeted edits with natural language, and leverage Gemini’s extensive world knowledge for image generation and modification. The model is accessible through the Gemini API on Google AI Studio and on Vertex AI for enterprise use.

Previously:

Meta Ray-Ban Display

Meta (Hacker News):

The wait is over. Meta Ray-Ban Display hits shelves in the US today! Priced at $799 USD, which includes the Meta Neural Band, these breakthrough AI glasses let you interact with digital content while staying fully present in the physical world.

[…]

Today at Connect, Mark Zuckerberg debuted the next exciting evolution of AI glasses: the all-new Meta Ray-Ban Display and Meta Neural Band.

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are designed to help you look up and stay present. With a quick glance at the in-lens display, you can accomplish everyday tasks—like checking messages, previewing photos, and collaborating with visual Meta AI prompts — all without needing to pull out your phone. It’s technology that keeps you tuned in to the world around you, not distracted from it.

Juli Clover:

Meta placed the display off to the side to prevent it from obstructing the view through the glasses, and the display is also not designed to be on constantly. It is meant for short interactions.

The AI glasses are meant to be used with the Meta Neural Band, a wristband that interprets signals created by muscle activity to navigate the features of the glasses. With the band, you can control the glasses with subtle hand movements, similar to how Apple Vision Pro control works.

[…]

The AI glasses have a six hour battery life, but that can be extended to up to 30 hours with an included charging case. The Neural Band has an 18-hour battery life.

Juli Clover (Hacker News, Slashdot):

Apple has decided to stop work on a cheaper, lighter version of the $3,499 Vision Pro to instead focus its resources on smart glasses, reports Bloomberg. Apple wants to speed up development on a glasses product to better compete with Meta.

There were rumors that Apple was developing a a much lighter, more affordable “Vision Air” for launch in 2027, but Apple is now transitioning engineers from that project to its smart glasses project.

[…]

While work on a lighter version of the Vision Pro has been paused for now, Apple still plans to refresh the current model with an M5 chip later this year.

M.G. Siegler:

Anyway, admitting – again, even if implicitly – that the Vision Pro strategy to date has been a mistake is a good first step here. It’s too bad because they were starting to seesome success, making the device actually start to make some sense. But the hardware reality remains what it is. And what it is, remains far away.

[…]

With Meta now seemingly continuing to back off their VR strategy as well in favor of smart glasses, they’re sort of forcing Apple’s hand here. And Meta remains dangerous because they need this market to happen, whereas Apple does not.

Previously:

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

UK Again Wants iCloud Backdoor

Jess Weatherbed (Hacker News, Reddit, MacRumors, 9to5Mac):

The UK government is reportedly once again demanding that Apple provide it with backdoor access to encrypted iCloud user data, following claims that the effort had been abandoned in August. The Financial Times reports that a new technical capability notice (TCN) was issued by the UK Home Office in early September, this time specifically targeting access to British citizens’ iCloud backups.

[…]

While US officials raised concerns about the order during President Trump’s state visit to the UK last month, according to The Financial Times, the publication reports that two senior British government figures said the UK was no longer facing US pressure to drop its demands.

Matt Henderson:

Just returned from the UK, where a digital ID is about to be enforced on all adults. Soon, my Signal messages may be scanned. Financial policing co-opted to the institutions with KYC and draconian source-of-funds investigation.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-04): Nick Heer:

Reporters like Tripp Mickle, at the New York Times, and Annabelle Timsit and Joseph Menn, of the Washington Post, were too eager to claim the U.K. would wholly abandon its pursuit of customer data. Neither allowed for different interpretations of Gabbard’s tweet. Journalists like these have sources who could have offered clarity. It is unclear in either article whether they did reach out to their contacts; if they did, their stories were misleading even with — or perhaps because of — that information.

Apple:

Withdrawing Advanced Data Protection from the UK will not affect the 15 iCloud data categories that are end-to-end encrypted by default. Data like iCloud Keychain and Health remains protected with full end-to-end encryption.

Our communication services, like iMessage and FaceTime, remain end-to-end encrypted globally, including in the UK.

We’re back to the same situation as before, where Apple insists that iMessage is E2EE, which is technically true for the iMessage service. But unless you and everyone you message with opts out of iCloud Backup, Apple stores the encryption key and can access all of your message data.

For users in the UK who already enabled Advanced Data Protection, Apple will soon provide additional guidance. Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users. Instead, UK users will be given a period of time to disable the feature themselves to keep using their iCloud account.

So Apple is currently not complying in full, but it plans to.

0x0.boo:

󠀁󠁿It’s probably the TCN’s that are in place, that you don’t know about, that are the current biggest threat.

That’s not to take away anything from this new TCN, or make light of it, it’s a big deal.

But think about what’s likely already in place with other companies as you go about your business.

Previously:

Adobe Premiere for iOS and iPadOS

Adobe:

Adobe announced that the company is bringing its industry leading Adobe Premiere video editor to mobile in a powerful new iPhone app that empowers creators to make pro-quality video on the go. The Adobe Premiere mobile app makes it fast, free and intuitive for creators to edit their videos with precision editing on a lightning-fast multi-track timeline, produce studio-quality audio with crystal clear voiceovers and perfectly timed AI sound effects, generate unique content and access millions of free multimedia assets, and send work directly to Premiere desktop for fine tuning further on a larger screen. The new mobile app offers all the video editing essentials for free, with upgrades available for additional generative credits and storage.

This makes it sound like the upgrades are à la carte, but in the App Store listing there seems to just be a generic subscription available for different terms ($7.99/month or $69.99/year).

It’s unclear whether it has the same limitation as Final Cut Pro, where you can bring files from mobile to desktop but not back to mobile.

Hartley Charlton:

Adobe has also built in a speech enhancement tool that removes background noise to isolate voices, as well as automatic captioning with stylized subtitles. The app supports 4K HDR export and allows direct one-tap publishing to platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Users can also generate sound effects and other creative assets using Adobe Firefly AI, the company's generative AI platform, which is fully integrated into the app.

[…]

The app is positioned as a replacement for Premiere Rush, the company's previous lightweight mobile editor. Existing Rush users will retain access only on devices where it is already installed until the service is fully discontinued on September 30, 2026.

Previously:

Electronic Arts Acquired by Private Equity

Juli Clover (2022):

Apple is one of several companies that have held talks with Electronic Arts (EA) about a potential purchase, according to a new report from Puck.

EA has spoken to several “potential suitors,” including Apple, Amazon, and Disney as it looks for a merger arrangement.

Nicholas G. Miller and Lauren Thomas (Hacker News, MacRumors):

Videogame maker Electronic Arts said it would go private in a $55 billion deal with a group of investors including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, private-equity firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners.

[…]

Electronic Arts publishes The Sims, football game Madden NFL and FIFA, the soccer videogame now known as FC. It has been boosted by sales of its marquee sports games and is expected to release “Battlefield 6,” the latest edition of its popular shooting game.

Electronic Arts (Hacker News):

PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners bring deep sector experience, committed capital, and global portfolios with networks across gaming, entertainment, and sports that offer unique possibilities for EA to blend physical and digital experiences, enhance fan engagement, and create new growth opportunities. The transaction represents the largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history, with the Consortium partnering closely with EA to enable the Company to move faster and unlock new opportunities on a global stage.

Previously:

Kindle Scribe 2025

Andrew Liszewski (Hacker News):

Amazon announced new versions of the Kindle Scribe today, including the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, which features a larger version of the customized E Ink screen technology that Amazon uses in its color e-reader. The new Scribes feature a major redesign that does away with the asymmetrical chin on one side, making the devices look sleeker and more like a tablet.

The new Scribes feature larger 11-inch, glare-free E Ink screens — up from 10.2 inches previously — but Amazon has managed to make the new versions lighter than the first two. They now weigh just 400 grams compared to 433 grams for last year’s version, and at 5.4mm thick, they’re thinner than the iPhone Air.

[…]

A new quad-core processor and additional memory improve the performance of the new Kindle Scribes, which now offer a writing experience and page turns that feel 40 percent faster than previous versions.

[…]

All three of the new Kindle Scribes come with steeper price tags. Last year’s Kindle Scribe started at $399.99, but the cheapest of the new additions is the Scribe without a front light, which will start at $429.99 when available early next year. If you plan to write or read at night, then you’ll want the standard Kindle Scribe, which starts at $499.99, and if you want a splash of color, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft starts at $629.99, with both arriving later this year.

Aisha Malik:

The devices feature a new Home experience that lets users jot something down, and open recently opened and added books, documents, and notebooks. Amazon anticipates both devices being used for handwritten notes, and the devices include significant product integrations to enhance that experience. One feature will let users search their notes across their notebooks and get simple AI summaries. Next year, users will be able to send their notes and documents to Alexa+ and have a more involved conversation about them.

[…]

The devices will also feature new AI reading features. A new “Story so Far” feature will let users catch up on the book they’re currently reading up until where they have read. An “Ask this Book” feature will let users highlight any passage of text while reading a book and get spoiler-free answers to questions about things like a character’s motive or the significance of a scene.

These features will be available on books users have purchased or borrowed on the Kindle iOS app later this year and on Kindle devices early next year.

Previously:

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Explaining Regex Locally With Xcode

Paul Samuels:

My approach when needing to figure out what an old regex was doing was to paste it into whatever the top search result for “Explain regular expression” was.

Something that I’ve been doing for a while but hadn’t really thought about was using Xcode’s Refactor > Convert to Regex Builder as a way to explain a regular expression without having data leave my machine. Yes, it’s a shocker but one of Xcode’s refactoring tools actually works for me. It works surprisingly well and as a bonus gets those endorphins flowing knowing that my data is safe from some AI drivel.

[…]

Depending on your level of experience with regex you might think this is actually more wordy/overkill (in this case I’d agree) but the point is each part of the regex is broken out into smaller parts that have names explaining what they are doing.

And you can manipulate it using Code Folding.

Previously:

Electron Apps Causing System-Wide Lag on Tahoe

ToxicLand (via Hacker News):

Using an M1 Max MacBook Pro, having Electron-based apps open / not minimized causes a huge lag.

CPU and GPU usage remains low, but if I have Discord and VS Code open, moving windows, scrolling is stuttery. It happens even when only Discord is open but it gets worse if I open a second Electron app.

This is kind of weird because while having Discord open and I’m in Chrome, the lag still occurs, but it’s fixed if I minimize.

avarayr:

After a lot of digging, I believe I’ve found the root cause of the WindowServer GPU spike on macOS 26 when shadows are enabled.

It turns out Electron was overriding a private AppKit API (_cornerMask) to apply custom corner masks to vibrant views.

This method is called by WindowServer to calculate the shadow of the window. I’m speculating that Apple uses some sort of memoization by reference, and this method breaks the memoization and forces WindowServer to repeatedly recalculate and repaint the shadow.

🤔 What’s particularly funny is that even a simple override that does nothing but call super still presents the issue.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-01): Tomas Kafka:

This script detects apps with not yet updated versions of Electron.

See also: Hacker News.

Update (2025-10-06): shamelectron (via Hacker News):

Tracking problematic Electron apps macOS Tahoe.

Craig Hockenberry:

I took that script, updated some parts that required Xcode to be installed, and wrapped it up in an Apple Script applet that’s easy to download and run[…]

[…]

We’re hearing from customers that some of our apps are running slowly on Tahoe and I suspect that this bug has something to do with it.

Update (2025-10-14): Michael Burkhardt:

Now, the Electron team has fixed the issue, and said fix is beginning to roll out in popular third party apps that utilize the framework.

[…]

There are also a lot of major apps that haven’t yet updated their Electron version, including 1Password, Bitwarden, Cursor, Dropbox, Windsurf, and more. You can check out the tracker for a more comprehensive list.

Monday, September 29, 2025

iOS 26.0.1 and iPadOS 26.0.1

Juli Clover (iOS/iPadOS release notes, security, enterprise, no developer):

According to Apple’s release notes for the update, iOS 26.0.1 addresses a bug that could cause aberrations in photos captured with the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro models. It also fixes ongoing cellular and Wi-Fi issues that iPhone 17 owners have been dealing with, and addresses a bug with tinted icons.

Previously:

macOS 26.0.1

Juli Clover (release notes, security, enterprise, no developer, full installer, IPSW):

According to Apple’s release notes, macOS Tahoe 26.0.1 addresses a bug that was preventing Mac Studio machines with an M3 Ultra chip from being upgraded to macOS Tahoe. A failed hardware check was causing macOS Tahoe installation attempts to be aborted, with Mac Studio users ultimately stuck on macOS Sequoia.

Previously:

Update (2025-09-30): Laurent Giroud:

This is just incredible. That this bug had to be fixed in a new release means they never tested it on that Ultra configuration.

That or they knew it prevented installation and chose to kept users of that setup to bang their heads against the wall when trying to upgrade.

Ricky Mondello:

Today’s update to macOS Tahoe (26.0.1) resolves an issue in apps where AutoFill for Mac apps could make apps slow down over time due to improper handling of event taps, causing them to accumulate over time. People particularly noticed this in Chromium-based web browsers and Electron apps. If your app or framework decided to work around this issue by using an internal AppKit defaults key to turn off AutoFill, I recommend you re-test on macOS 26.0.1, then limit that workaround only to macOS 26.0.0, and remove it for macOS 26.0.1 and above.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-01): Ric Ford:

Another MacInTouch reader emailed us about a tricky Tahoe change to music file handling that continues in the 26.0.1 release.

Dragging songs from the Music library window to the Desktop (or presumably anywhere outside the app) in MacOS 26 moves the file from its iTunes Music location. In prior versions, dragging would copy the file. Note this isn’t true for the TV app – it still copies the file.

I’m traveling and discovered this while away from backups. I deleted the song that I’d moved and will have to wait until I get to backups to restore.

Update (2025-10-07): Andrew Orr:

A handful of Mac owners say they can’t add Outlook accounts to Apple Mail after recent macOS updates, but the scope and cause of the problem remain murky.

The reports in the Apple forums describe failed authentication when trying to add Outlook.com, Hotmail, or Live accounts to Mail. Errors range from “Authentication Failed” to “Unable to verify account name or password.”

ednl:

One (other) very annoying thing Safari 26.0.1 does is flash a white page when navigating to any new site, despite MacOS using dark mode and regardless of the website’s background colour. That didn’t happen in previous versions.

I now developed a habit of closing my eyes before clicking a link to a new website to avoid the bright flash :-/

Other appleOS 26.0.1 Releases

Juli Clover:

Note that watchOS is 26.0.2 because there was a watchOS 26.0.1 update designed to add Messages and Find My support to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 in Mexico.

According to Apple’s release notes, the software provides bug fixes and important security updates.

Only the visionOS update has documented security content.

Previously:

macOS 15.7.1 and macOS 14.8.1

macOS 15.7.1 (full installer, security):

This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

macOS 14.8.1 (full installer, security):

This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

Previously:

Update (2025-10-04): Jezmund_Berserker:

A few people in our company have been running into the same issue since updating to 15.7.1 and I’m curious if any of you have seen it.

The update appears to work fine and the computer reboots into macOS and then:

  • Computer runs unusually slowly
  • At some point the computer shuts itself off
  • Computer will not turn on unless you hold the power button for several seconds

Pierre Igot:

For good measure, after the very minor update from macOS 15.7 to macOS 15.7.1, macOS warns me… that a new device has been added to my Apple account!

Previously:

Update (2025-10-08): Pierre Igot:

Another very minor macOS update (from 15.7. to 15.7.1), another arbitrary reset by Apple of the destination folder setting for downloads, which, on my Mac, reverted back from my destination of choice to the default ~/Downloads.

What’s the point of giving the user a choice if you don’t respect that choice?

Patreon Autopilot

Patreon:

Autopilot is an easy and automatic way to give your fans promotional offerings to drive your growth on Patreon.

[…]

Autopilot is now automatically enabled for all creators. To change this setting, check the Autopilot section in the Promotions tab.

They’d previously sent an e-mail saying it would be activated on October 1, but I found that my Patreon already had it switched on. I turned it off.

Via Nick Heer:

As an extremely casual user, I do not love this; I think it is basically spam. I am sympathetic toward those who make their living with Patreon. I turned this off. If you have a Patreon creator page and missed this email, now you know.

And if you are a subscriber to anyone on Patreon and begin receiving begging emails next week, please be gracious. They might not be aware this feature was switched on.

Previously:

Friday, September 26, 2025

Tahoe’s Mac App Store

Mario Guzmán:

All throughout the beta of #macOSTahoe, the Mac App Store app doesn’t show me updates. I have to use Latest.app to update my Mac App Store purchases. I was hope it would only be a beta issue but it seems to affect the RC as well. Anyone else seeing this?

And no, Command + R or the Reload menu item doesn’t help or work either.

I’ve also tried rebooting and signing out/in Mac App Store.

John Siracusa:

Love to work to get all my apps updated for Tahoe only to have Apple to break the Mac App Store so badly in Tahoe that people can’t update or install my apps.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s becoming apparent that macOS Tahoe has a number of issues that completely break the Mac App Store for installing and updating apps, some of which that can only be fixed by booting to Recovery mode and using the command line 😅 That is an extraordinary state to launch an OS in.

Marvin U.:

I reported it multiple times via feedback but no response from them. It only shows me updates if I search for the app and go to the apps store page. The update tab is always empty and refreshing it doesn’t do anything.

There are also reports on Reddit of apps not installing or updating.

yonz:

I have downloaded Affinity Designer 2 from the Mac App Store under the recently launched macOS 26 Tahoe, in a M4 MacBook Pro. Mac App Store says that the app size is 2,89GB (screencap attached). Now, I have just seen that the same Affinity Designer 2 at the Mac App Store under a M2 MacBook Air at home (running macOS Sequoia) is just 546,4MB (also screencap attached). What is going on?

leyonz:

Ok, so considering that I am not the only one seeing this “size increase” in Tahoe’s Mac App Store, it is fairly safe to conclude that Apple has decided to make a few changes in how the MAS displays the estimated sizes of their apps in the new OS. I can confirm too that Whatsapp, Canvas, Lightroom and other apps appear bigger in Tahoe’s MAS as well. Or maybe all of this is just a temporary bug.

[…]

BTW, are MAS downloaded apps in not listed anymore in System Info > Applications in Tahoe? Because the ones that I have downloaded from the MAS don’t show anymore.

Tahoe’s store shows EagleFiler as slightly smaller than Sequoia’s store does, but it shows ToothFairy as more than twice as large as Sequoia’s store does.

Previously:

Update (2025-09-29): Steve Troughton-Smith:

Happy macOS Tahoe release day! 🎉🥳

Some of the reported app sizes have changed for me.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Apple’s Thoughts on the DMA

Apple (Slashdot, MacRumors):

The DMA requires Apple to make certain features work on non-Apple products and apps before we can share them with our users. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of engineering work, and it’s caused us to delay some new features in the EU:

  • Live Translation with AirPods uses Apple Intelligence to let Apple users communicate across languages. Bringing a sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either.
  • iPhone Mirroring lets our users see and interact with their iPhone from their Mac, so they can seamlessly check their notifications, or drag and drop photos between devices. Our teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a user’s iPhone at risk. And as a result, we have not been able to bring the feature to the EU.
  • We’ve also had to delay useful features like Visited Places and Preferred Routes on Maps, which store location data on device so it’s only accessible to the user. So far, our teams haven’t found a way to share these capabilities with other developers without exposing our users’ locations — something we are not willing to do.

We’ve suggested changes to these features that would protect our users’ data, but so far, the European Commission has rejected our proposals.

[…]

The DMA also isn’t helping European markets. Instead of competing by innovating, already successful companies are twisting the law to suit their own agendas — to collect more data from EU citizens, or to get Apple’s technology for free.

Some of Apple’s specific complaints above don’t make much sense to me. For example, with the Live Translation feature, are they against both using Live Translation with third-party earbuds and using third-party translation apps with AirPods? They seem to be saying that it’s not acceptable for a third-party app to have access to the same audio that Apple does, even if it’s kept on-device. And they don’t want third-parties using (potentially superior) online translation services, either. They don’t want any option besides AirPods with their model, even if the user approves of the privacy implications.

For iPhone Mirroring and Maps, they seem to be setting an impossible standard that they themselves don’t really meet. If your starting assumption is that it’s OK for Apple’s code to access the data, but not OK for anyone else’s to, obviously there’s never going to be a way for this to work. But I don’t think that’s what people are actually asking for. They know that, if they had iPhone Mirroring on Windows, the pixels from the iPhone screen would appear on non-Apple hardware. That is, in fact, the point. They’re already using third-party earbuds for their sensitive phone calls, even though in theory they could be nefariously sending the audio to other Bluetooth devices.

I find the way Apple is communicating this really frustrating. It reads like either a bad faith smokescreen or that something got lost in the translation between engineering and marketing. I would have a lot more respect if they just said that DMA compliance is too slow or too expensive or that they don’t believe in interoperability. Instead, we get this nonsense where we’re supposed to believe that their teams are actively working on a way to share data without actually sharing data, but they haven’t quite cracked it yet.

Adam Engst:

Apple’s claim of “the same standard we provide in the rest of the world” rings somewhat hollow, given that it often adjusts its technology and services to comply with local laws. The company has made significant concessions to operate in China, doesn’t offer FaceTime in the United Arab Emirates, and removes apps from the still-functional Russian App Store at the Russian government’s request. Apple likely pushed back in less public ways in those countries, but in the EU, this public statement appears aimed at rallying its users and influencing the regulatory conversation.

[…]

Ultimately, we’re witnessing a clash between two immense power structures—the European Union, a democratic federation of 27 countries representing 450 million people and the world’s third-largest economy—and Apple, one of the world’s most influential and valuable companies, with a market capitalization of about $3.7 trillion and roughly $100 billion in net income over the past 12 months.

Robert Booth (Hacker News):

Apple has called for the European Commission to repeal a swathe of technology legislation, warning that unless it is amended the company could stop shipping some products and services to the 27-country bloc.

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele:

“Apple has simply contested every little bit of the DMA [Digital Markets Act] since its entry into application,” said Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier in a statement seen by Politico. “This undermines the company’s narrative of wanting to be fully cooperative with the Commission.”

[…]

Significantly, Regnier also says that Apple has refused the European Commission’s attempts to have positive talks about complying with the DMA. That is the exact opposite of Apple’s claim that its proposals have been ignored.

Barbara Moens:

“Despite our concerns with the DMA, teams across Apple are spending thousands of hours to bring new features to the European Union while meeting the law’s requirements. But it’s become clear that we can’t solve every problem the DMA creates,” the company said.

A European Commission spokesperson said it was normal that companies sometimes “need more time to make their products compliant” and that the commission was helping companies to do so.

Ram Iyer:

“It’s been more than a year since the Digital Markets Act was implemented. Over that time, it’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU. It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together. And as new technologies come out, our European users’ Apple products will only fall further behind,” the company wrote.

[…]

“Nothing in the DMA requires companies to lower their privacy standards, or their security standards. It is just about giving our users more choice, opening up the European market and allowing companies to compete on an equal footing,” Regnier added.

Previously:

Update (2025-09-26): Emma Roth:

Apple could soon improve the interoperability between iPhones and third-party smartwatches. The latest iOS 26.1 beta hints at a new “notification forwarding” feature that could surface iPhone notifications on a non-Apple device or accessory, as spotted by Macworld.

Dan Moren:

Yes, you heard it here: Apple says that the iPhone are essentially identical to Android.

[…]

Threading the needle of “things Apple really should be doing to improve interoperability and competition” and “things that might have unforeseen consequences that actually fly in the face of the EU’s intentions” is a tricky proposition, and the mechanisms in place to challenge the rulings are, admittedly, restrictive.

Nick Heer:

I did not account for a cynical option: Apple is launching with these languages as leverage.

The way I read Apple’s press release is as a fundamental disagreement between the role each party believes it should play, particularly when it comes to user privacy. Apple seems to believe it is its responsibility to implement technical controls to fulfill its definition of privacy and, if that impacts competition and compatibility, too bad. E.U. regulators seem to believe it has policy protections for user privacy, and that users should get to decide how their private data is shared.

Jeff Johnson:

I’m starting to suspect Apple’s PR is a signal that they’re going to deliberately defy the DMA and hope for cover and pressure from the US President.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

I think Apple structured this piece exactly right, by emphasizing first that the most direct effect of the DMA is that EU users are getting great features late — or never. And that list of features is only going to grow over time.

Apple says that the DMA “is not living up to those promises [of competition and choice]. In fact, it’s having some of the opposite effects[…]” but that’s ignoring its own role in the story. Instead of choosing to comply in a way that benefits its customers, Apple is focused on trying to make the DMA look bad. This reminds me of the Microsoft antitrust case, where Judge Jackson asked Microsoft to produce a version of Windows 95 that did not have Internet Explorer preinstalled. Microsoft chose to interpret this as a directive to remove all the shared libraries that IE used and concluded that compliance meant offering an OS couldn’t boot.

If Apple were to just switch the iPhone’s OS from iOS to Android, these DMA conflicts would all go away. Apple’s not going to do that, of course, but to me it’s a crystalizing way of looking at it.

Google actually made a similar argument on the same day, saying that the DMA is forcing them to put Android users at risk.

How in the world would that increase competition? iOS’s unique and exclusive features — which, yes, in many cases, are exclusive to the Apple device ecosystem — are competition.

This really is the crux of the dispute. Does a duopoly constitute competition? Imagine a culinary world where you can only choose between a Big Mac and a Whopper, and you’re not even allowed to go to both drive-throughs to combine the flame-grilled patty with the crispy fries.

AnimeAndVisial:

I hope the EU forces Apple to allow users to install other operating systems on iPads and iPhones. Let people unlock the bootloader if they want to. Like sure keep it locked by default but let people unlock it if they want to. Old iDevices don’t have to be e-waste.

Riley Testut:

IMO if Apple’s worst, most egregious example of a harmful and dangerous app that’s now available through sideloading is checks notes porn…I think we’re doing OK

Sophia:

the pearl clutching is insane. have they seen the predatory stuff on the app store these days?

Update (2025-09-29): Nick Heer:

Like Apple, Google clearly wants this law to go away. It might say it “remain[s] committed to complying with the DMA” and that it “appreciate[s] the Commission’s consistent openness to regulatory dialogue”, but nobody is fooled. To its credit, Google posted the full response (PDF) it sent the Commission which, though clearly defensive, has less of a public relations sheen than either of the company’s press releases.

Cory Doctorow (2022):

If you think the future of technology is a battle is between Google’s approach and Apple’s, think again. The real fight is between the freedom to decide how technology works for you, and corporate control over technology.

Apple and Google are like the pigs and the men at the end of Animal Farm: supposed bitter enemies who turn out to be indistinguishable from one another. Google also has “privacy” switches in its preference panels that do nothing[…]

Jeff Johnson:

The specious defense of Apple’s iOS lockdown has two elements that ultimately come into conflict:

1. Apple has a right to do what it wants with its platform

2. If you don’t like Apple’s lockdown, just switch to Android

But following from 1:

3. Google has a right to do what it wants with its platform

“Vote with your feet” was never a good argument in a duopoly.

It depends too much on the magnanimity of the powerful, for which there is little incentive when there is little competition.

Cory Doctorow (Hacker News, Reddit):

Apple has threatened to stop selling iPhones and other devices in the European Union (home to over 500,000,000 affluent consumers) if the bloc doesn’t rescind the Digital Markets Act[…]

I’ve seen a bunch of articles stating this, but as far as I know Apple has not actually said or even really implied that its devices wouldn’t be available, just that certain features would be delayed or missing.

Juri Pakaste:

Apple’s latest PR bullshit about EU and DMA has been met with uniformly negative reaction in my circles. Apple is in a hole, imagewise, and keeps digging deeper.

Riccardo Mori:

Here’s what the Apple apologists don’t get. Apple has to comply with EU’s laws if they want to operate there. Apple keeps deflecting and framing the matter as, “But the DMA sucks and it’s hard to comply with”. The matter is, you have to follow the law. You’re not above the law. Technology should not be above the law.

The excuses are ridiculous. “We can’t do these technological changes you require! We’re a trillion-dollar big tech company with unlimited resources but these things are too hard!”

Apple thinks that removing the contested features is complying with the law. I see its statements as mostly as an attempt to change the law, which is entirely reasonable for them to lobby for, even though the strong spin is regrettable. There’s no doubt that the EU is asking Apple to do extra work, but Apple is acting like this is almost to the level of when it was asked to do the impossible—create a “secure golden key”—and I don’t think this is that.

Previously:

Xcode 26.1 Beta 1

Apple:

Xcode 26.1 beta requires a Mac running macOS Sequoia 15.6 or later.

[…]

The ‘devicectl’ command line tool now supports gathering a sysdiagnose from a connected device. To use this functionality, run ‘xcrun devicectl device sysdiagnose’

[…]

When enabling Hardware Memory Tagging under Enhanced Security (Capabilities editor -> Enhanced Security -> Memory Safety -> Enable Hardware Memory Tagging), all applications will currently run under Soft Mode irrespective of the Soft Mode for Memory Tagging option.

[…]

Fixed: If an issue is recorded during a Swift Testing test via an API such as #expect or Issue.record() in a context which is unassociated with the test, such as via Task.detached { … } or a DispatchQueue, the test process no longer unexpectedly terminates and Xcode shows the issue.

Previously:

Xcode 26.0.1

Apple:

Xcode 26.0.1 requires a Mac running macOS Sequoia 15.6 or later.

[…]

Fixed: Icon Composer documents that use “Lighten”, “Darken” or “Screen” blend modes incorrectly encode as “Normal” when compiled. Blend modes will look correct in Icon Composer, but not at runtime.

I don’t think this was affecting my icons, but I’ve seen a bunch of developers and designers distressed that their icons were not looking the same in the Dock as in Icon Composer.

Previously:

Update (2025-09-26): Avi Drissman:

I’m seeing Icon Composer not matching the Finder with Combined mode, and that’s not fixed in 26.0.1. Hopeful now that a different display bug was fixed.

Tim Schmitz:

If you used the Xcode 26 betas, make sure to go into Xcode settings and clean out the iOS 26.0 beta simulators that you no longer need. Mine didn’t get deleted automatically and each one consumed about 10 GB. 😳

Update (2025-09-29): Marcin Krzyzanowski:

I WANT TO SCREAM. Apparently #Xcode 26.0.1 has problems building Metal on macOS 26, too!

Christian Selig:

The year is 2045, robots walk among us, but connecting a new device to Xcode still prevents you from being able to do any work until it’s finished.

Nick Lockwood:

I could find absolutely no option anywhere that would make my existing (~7 years old) app project use the IconComposer.icon file in preference to the XSCAsset. In the end I just recreated the project from scratch, which worked.

I can’t meaningfully diff the project files, so I guess it will forever remain a mystery why it didn’t work before.

Update (2025-09-30): Pol Piella Abadia:

As of Xcode 26, the Metal toolchain is no longer included in Xcode’s installation by default. This means that, if your app or one of your dependencies needs to use the toolchain, you will need to install it manually before building your app.

[…]

However, if you happen to be using a CI/CD runner that is not provisioned with the Metal toolchain installed, you will get the same error as above, but this time, you will likely not have access to Xcode to be able to install the toolchain.

You might be surprised to learn that this is the case for Xcode Cloud, as I recently discovered the hard way when migrating my CI/CD workflows to use Xcode 26.

Casey Liss:

When WWDC happened, I remember thinking to myself, “Finally, Xcode tabs will make sense”.

I’m not sure what happened — nor if it’s a me-problem or an Xcode-problem — but they continue to not make any goddamn sense to me.

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Lawsuit About WhatsApp Security

Bruce Schneier:

Attaullah Baig, WhatsApp’s former head of security, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that Facebook deliberately failed to fix a bunch of security flaws, in violation of its 2019 settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.

Dan Goodin:

The suit, filed in US District Court for the District of Northern California, recites a litany of purported security and privacy flaws that Meta not only didn’t fix after becoming aware of them, but also kept secret, allegedly in violation of a $5 billion settlement then-Whatsapp parent company Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission.

[…]

During a red-team exercise designed to find and exploit security vulnerabilities so they can be fixed, Baig said he found that roughly 1,500 engineers inside the messenger division had “unrestricted access to user data, including personal information covered by the FTC Privacy Order, and could move or steal such data without detection or audit trail.”

[…]

The letter further alleged Meta leaders were retaliating against him and that the central Meta security team had “falsified security reports to cover up decisions not to remediate data exfiltration risks.”

[…]

As a result, the former WhatsApp head estimated that pictures and names of some 400 million user profiles were improperly copied every day, often for use in account impersonation scams.

He says that Meta thought the fixes would hamper user growth. Meta says his claims are distorted and that he was dismissed for poor performance.

Previously:

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