Monday, March 23, 2026

Liquid Glass Is Permanent

Danny Bolella (Reddit):

If you read the comments on my articles or browse the iOS subreddits, there is a vocal contingent of developers betting that Apple is going to roll back Liquid Glass. […] I shared this exact sentiment with the Apple team.

Their reaction? Genuine shock. They were actually concerned that developers were holding onto this position. They made it emphatically clear that Liquid Glass is absolutely moving forward, evolving, and expanding across the ecosystem.

Their exact warning to me was that those who don’t adopt it now “are gonna find themselves in a tough position later.”

[…]

We had them confirm the hard truth: Xcode 27 will absolutely not have the deferral flag, and it will not respect it if you leave it there, anyway. When Q1 2027 rolls around and Xcode 27 becomes the mandatory minimum for compiling to the App Store, glass will be enabled globally, period.

Jeff Johnson:

What’s truly astonishing about the macOS Tahoe UI is that it’s now been SIX MONTHS since Tahoe was released to the public, yet it’s still full of glaring bugs. […] So many little things are off, out of alignment. It’s like Apple rushed out an alpha version.

Bolella:

The Apple engineers explained that a massive part of the initial Liquid Glass rollout was simply ensuring the foundation was solid. It had to be functional, it had to meet incredibly strict styling guidelines across every single Apple platform, and most importantly, it just had to work.

[…]

The team was visibly enthusiastic about what is in store for WWDC26 and Xcode 27. While they wouldn’t drop any specific spoilers, they gave the very strong impression that this upcoming cycle is where Liquid Glass takes its first massive step into maturity.

Jeff Johnson:

This is the Safari search field on Tahoe. Notice the position of the clear button.

John Gruber:

Perfect MacOS 26 Tahoe screenshot from the Journal app. Apple shipped this.

Simon B. Støvring:

Liquid Glass is a catastrophe.

Dave Mark:

I have SO many examples of this. Text fields that are cut off, text color choices that render text completely unreadable. In this regard, Apple design has lost the thread.

Leon:

the thing about modern Apple UI is they go for some deeply flawed vision that seems developed in a vacuum away from third parties, accessibility experts and engineers, and then when that fails they water it all the way down until people say “huh okay this isn’t that bad any more”

it just lurches from catastrophe to milquetoast and back again, with most of the time firmly in milquetoast territory

what i’d love, love to see is them - or anyone - come up with is a system vision that bakes in accessibility and pro / studio app design first.

Previously:

Disk Image Performance With macOS 26.3.1

Howard Oakley:

This table summarises read and write performance of the most popular types of disk image prior to macOS Tahoe, and demonstrates how sparse bundles have consistently performed best and most consistently, and sparse images (now dropped from Disk Utility’s options) fare worst, particularly when encrypted.

Howard Oakley:

Although most of the test results in macOS 26.3.1 are very similar to those from 26.0, performance when using 256-bit AES encryption has fallen for all three disk image types, and most significantly in write performance for RAW and ASIF images, which have reduced from 4.3 to 1.58 GB/s (RAW) and from 3.9 to 1.72 GB/s (ASIF). The magnitude of those reductions is sufficient to have obvious impact on their use. Compared to native write performance using FileVault of 7.66 GB/s, those two types of disk image are pedestrian in the extreme, turning that blisteringly fast SSD into the equivalent of 20 Gbps over USB 3.2 Gen 2×2.

[…]

When their folder-based structure is acceptable, UDSB sparse images remain the disk image type of choice, for their consistent high performance even when encrypted.

[…]

As [ASIF] sparseness isn’t dependent on APFS trimming habits, they are now an alternative that can be used on network storage and NAS. However, those able to use sparse bundles should continue to do so, particularly if using encryption.

Previously:

Provisioning Profiles in Mac VMs

Quinn:

There may be other outstanding issues, but you can now:

  • On a macOS 15 or later host, install macOS 15 or later in a VM.
  • On the guest, log in using an Apple Account in System Settings.
  • And install Xcode.
  • And add your Apple Account to Xcode.
  • And then build and run a Mac app.
  • Even if it uses a restricted entitlement.

Via Craig Hockenberry:

It’s a momentous day for Mac developers: you can now provision a device running in a VM. Whether you use VirtualBuddy, UTM, or another app, Xcode can now build, run, and debug apps on multiple versions of macOS without having to reboot.

This includes apps that have entitlements for iCloud and other Apple services.

[…]

Essentially, we now have a setup like the iOS simulator where you can work on two versions of the OS simultaneously. That’s a huge boost for developer productivity!

[…]

One thing you cannot do in a VM: use your Apple ID to login to the Mac App Store. So no testing your shipping app version.

This also means you can’t run TestFlight builds, because you can’t download the app from the store.

Previously:

Friday, March 20, 2026

Overcast Transcripts

Marco Arment (Mastodon):

What’s in this beta:

  • Transcripts of most podcasts (swipe on the episode art during playback, it’s a new page past the info screen)

  • Live-scrolling of transcripts during playback

  • Tap to seek on any line of text

  • Music detection

All of this should work even with dynamic ad insertion… and even with private/membership podcasts!

And if you play an episode that isn’t transcribed yet, you can transcribe it right on your iPhone (if you’re running iOS 26+).

This is really impressive, and I think it will be transformative for podcast listening and triage. There’s a long discussion with more technical details in the latest Accidental Tech Podcast.

Christian Bender:

The way you can follow along as the audio plays, or jump to a place in the episode by tapping a paragraph in the transcript, is just so convenient. It made me seriously consider using Apple Podcasts. And of course, I immediately tested the Overcast implementation.

[…]

It’s the kind of feature that fits how I use podcasts. Like chapters, it supports choice. It lets you cut through the noise and get straight to the topics that interest you.

Previously:

Android Sideloading Waiting Period

Ryan Whitwam (Hacker News):

With its new limits on sideloading, Android phones will only install apps that come from verified developers. To verify, devs releasing apps outside of Google Play will have to provide identification, upload a copy of their signing keys, and pay a $25 fee. It all seems rather onerous for people who just want to make apps without Google’s intervention.

Apps that come from unverified developers won’t be installable on Android phones—unless you use the new advanced flow, which will be buried in the developer settings.

[…]

Google swears it’s not interested in the content of apps, and it won’t be checking proactively when developers register. This is only about identity verification—you should know when you’re installing an app that it’s not an imposter and does not come from known purveyors of malware.

[…]

So a rootkit can be malware, but a rootkit you downloaded intentionally because you want root access on your phone is not malware, from Samat’s perspective. Likewise, an alternative YouTube client that bypasses Google’s ads and feature limits isn’t causing the kind of harm that would lead to issues with verification. But these are just broad strokes; Google has not commented on any specific apps.

Adamya Sharma (via John Gruber):

When Google execs previously said sideloading would become a high-friction process on Android, they really weren’t kidding.

The company is finally sharing what Android’s new sideloading flow will look like in practice, and if you’re someone who installs apps outside the Play Store, you’re going to feel it immediately, and you’re going to feel it deeply.

[…]

It’s a deliberately slow and almost impossible-to-rush-through process that will allow advanced Android users to sideload apps from unverified developers, while giving them plenty of caution to keep them safe from malicious apps and bad actors.

[…]

Yes, really. There’s a mandatory one-time, one-day waiting period before you can proceed and sideload an app from an unverified developer. Google calls it a “protective waiting period.”

Horrific. Can we finally dispense with this notion that Apple’s App Store can be as restrictive as they want because if you don’t like that you can just buy an Android phone?

tavavex:

The part in the flow where you select between allowing app installs for 7 days or forever is a glimpse into the future. That toggle shows the thought process that’s going on at Google.

I can bet that a few versions down the line, the “Not recommended” option of allowing installs indefinitely will become so not recommended that they’ll remove it outright. Then shrink the 7 day window to 3 days or less. Or only give users one allowed attempt at installing an app, after which it’s another 24 hour waiting period for you. Then ask the user to verify themselves as a developer if they want to install whatever they want. Whatever helps them turn people away from alternatives and shrink the odds of someone dislodging their monopoly, they will do. Anything to drive people to Google Play only.

Gregory:

At this point I’m convinced that there’s something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.

Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It’s unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power.

Previously:

Updates to Vibe Coding Apps Rejected From the App Store

Hartley Charlton:

Apple has quietly blocked AI “vibe coding” apps, such as Replit and Vibecode, from releasing App Store updates unless they make changes, The Information reports.

[…]

Apple told The Information that certain vibe coding features breach long-standing App Store rules prohibiting apps from executing code that alters their own functionality or that of other apps.

[…]

An Apple spokesperson said the policy is not targeted specifically at vibe coding apps.

If the apps are in breach of longstanding rules, why is it the updates that are blocked? It seems like either Apple should have rejected the apps long ago or else they’re trying to retcon the new policy, which remains unclear to me.

Malcolm Owen (9to5Mac):

Report sources say that the apps in question are close to being approved for the App Store again, but after agreeing to make changes to the way they function. These changes include updating previews of the vibe-coded apps, or removing functions like making apps specifically for Apple devices.

That sounds like removing the core functionality.

The report adds that there are other apps that exist in the App Store that didn’t get the same limitation, such as Vercel’s v0. Other apps that offer similar capabilities that aren’t coding-specific, such as design app Canva, could potentially be hit by the same issues, since they can be used to create filters, quizzes, and other items using AI.

For the most part, the report focuses on the issue being one of competition and revenue protection. Apple could lose revenue due to these vibe coding apps creating software that doesn't pass through the App Store itself.

Previously:

Thursday, March 19, 2026

MarsEdit 5.4.1

Daniel Jalkut:

This update adds support for macOS’s standard “Versions” document history, improves the Share Extension to support sending text to MarsEdit, and includes a number of bug fixes across the rich text and plain text editors.

I’m holding off on this update for the moment because I’m seeing a regression viewing and sorting by the Edited Date, but I love the idea of versions support. It works as you’d expect, with a Time Machine–style interface showing two MarsEdit windows, so I get the same font and syntax coloring that I’m used to. It would be nice if it went a bit further and supported synchronized scrolling or coloring for the differences, but it does allow selecting and copying text so I can easily use an external diff tool if necessary. I had been using WordPress’s revisions feature, which is nice in that it colors the differences, but it’s a bit of a pain to pull up, the two-column interface gets in the way of selecting text from only one side, and it only works for posts that have been published to the server.

Previously:

Catalyst in Tahoe

fahad-sh:

I’m exploring macOS development, comparing Mac Catalyst apps vs native AppKit/SwiftUI apps.

  • What are the main limitations of Catalyst today?
  • In what scenarios is a native AppKit or SwiftUI app unavoidable?

Any insights are much appreciated — I’m trying to understand when Catalyst is sufficient and when going native is worth the extra effort.

Ryan Ashcraft:

Mac Catalyst seems dead to me. Five months since Tahoe’s official release and I still have crashes, ugly layouts and glitches that weren’t a problem pre-Liquid Glass.

I see no option other than build an entirely new SwiftUI-native Mac App.

[…]

I have a huge Foodnoms update that is almost ready, but I can’t ship it, because it would break syncing with the Mac app.

I could load up Sequoia and Xcode 16.4, but Apple is going to stop accepting binaries from 16.4 in April. And the UI compatibility plist option isn’t any better. It’s ugly AF.

Searching the forums, it seems like there a lot of new Catalyst bugs in Tahoe, but it does look like they are being fixed.

Jordan Hipwell:

I shipped Liquid Glass in my Catalyst app and haven’t noticed any crashes or major issues. Most issues are SwiftUI regressions where I decided not to use UIKit 🥲

Greg Pierce:

That pure SwiftUI on Mac idea scares me, too. So many weirdly different things. I think I’m sticking with sprinkling SwiftUI into AppKit where it’s useful to do so.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-20): Adam Bell:

Why are the toolbar icons smushed?

Why is the search bar the wrong colour?

Adam Bell:

Man, Catalyst has so many things busted on macOS 26 (even 26.2).

Toolbars just do not render correctly at all, even a simple SwiftUI app. Works fine in AppKit tho!

Steve Troughton-Smith:

I can’t back that up at all, Catalyst for the most part has been rock solid for all my apps for years now; UIKit has Liquid Glass bugs across all platforms (that SwiftUI will inherit anyway), and AppKit has plenty of its own, but they are all dwindling with each point update.

I am on the Mac idiom on all my Catalyst apps though; Foodnoms is an iPad-idiom app (compatibility mode) so there may be dragons there I’m unaware of, since it uses a completely different behavioral style

Kyle Howells:

I switched fully to using Catalyst for all my Mac projects and haven’t had any issues at all.

Kyle Howells:

Mac native & UIKit, no compatibility mode or SwiftUI. I consider both too buggy as is, let alone combining them.

Apple Wins Musi App Store Removal Lawsuit

Tim Hardwick:

A lawsuit brought against Apple by music streaming app Musi has been dismissed by a federal judge, after she ruled that Apple’s developer agreement gives it the right to remove any app from the App Store at any time, “with or without cause.”

[…]

Musi claimed it complied with YouTube’s terms, but Apple pulled it from the App Store in September 2024, following pressure from Sony, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the National Music Publishers Association.

Musi subsequently sued Apple for pulling the app, alleging that its removal was based on unsubstantiated intellectual property claims from YouTube. The lawsuit went so far as to argue that Apple had violated its own Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA), and that Apple was required to conduct a review and form a “reasonable belief” that the app infringed IP rights before pulling it.

[…]

Judge Lee sanctioned law firm Winston & Strawn for alleging that Apple had “admitted” to knowingly relying on false evidence – a claim the judge found had no factual basis, even after Musi’s lawyers had spent two months reviewing Apple’s internal documents and deposing its employees.

Jon Brodkin (Hacker News):

Lee found that Apple can remove apps “with or without cause,” as stipulated in the developer agreement. Lee wrote:

The plain language of the DPLA governs because it is clear and explicit: Apple may “cease marketing, offering, and allowing download by end-users of the [Musi app] at any time, with or without cause, by providing notice of termination.” Based on this language, Apple had the right to cease offering the Musi app without cause if Apple provided notice to Musi. The complaint alleges, and Musi does not dispute, that Apple gave Musi the required notice. Therefore, Apple’s decision to remove the Musi app from the App Store did not breach the DPLA.

[…]

Musi alleged that Apple knowingly relied on a false claim from the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) that Musi violated YouTube terms through use of the YouTube API. “Apple knew that this ‘evidence’ was false, as it has since admitted,” Musi wrote.

Musi said it does not use the YouTube API and is therefore not subject to the API terms of service. It says Apple knew this because of an email from Sony Music Entertainment. The email said that Sony “worked with YouTube to remove API access from Musi, but the app finds ways to access [Sony’s] content through technological means that are more difficult for Google to action.”

Lee wrote that the Sony email “does not state that Musi stopped using YouTube’s API” and “does not establish that Apple ‘knew’ that the evidence offered by the NMPA was false. Instead, Musi infers Apple’s knowledge based on an assumption that the Sony email was inconsistent with the detailed evidence offered by the NMPA.”

I’m not happy with either party here. I’m kind of sympathetic to Musi, because you could look at this as them building a site-specific browser with an ad blocker, and I think that’s legal and should be allowed. If they’re not using the API, I don’t see what agreement they would have been violating, though I do think it crosses a line to replace a site’s ads with your own. But with respect to their agreement with Apple, I don’t think they have a leg to stand on because the DPLA clearly says that Apple can do whatever they want whenever they want without any valid reason. The real issues are whether that sort of contract should be legal and why Apple is even inserting itself into a dispute between YouTube and Musi, but those were not the questions before the judge.

Jacob Bartlett:

Everyone is complaining about app review times, but it could be worse. Apple could be telling you “we are reviewing your app concept internally.” This is the story of how Apple tried to kill my startup 🩸💁 ♂️🔫

Previously:

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

The Secure Design of the MacBook Neo’s On-Screen Camera Indicator

John Gruber (Mastodon):

One might presume that the dedicated indicator lights are significantly more secure than the rendered-on-display indicators. I myself made this presumption in the initial version of my MacBook Neo review last week. This presumption is, I believe, wrong.

Later last week Apple published, and I linked to, a small update in their Platform Security Guide, which states:

MacBook Neo combines system software and dedicated silicon elements within A18 Pro to provide additional security for the camera feed. The architecture is designed to prevent any untrusted software — even with root or kernel privileges in macOS — from engaging the camera without also visibly lighting the on-screen camera indicator light.

Guilherme Rambo:

[The] software-based camera indicator light in the MacBook Neo runs in the secure exclave part of the chip, so it is almost as secure as the hardware indicator light. What that means in practice is that even a kernel-level exploit would not be able to turn on the camera without the light appearing on screen. It runs in a privileged environment separate from the kernel and blits the light directly onto the screen hardware.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-20): Saagar Jha:

The indicator light is still software and this still means it is susceptible to compromise as all software is, in a way that a hardwired indicator cannot be. Sophisticated exploits achieve privileges beyond the kernel’s all the time.

The solution they picked does make it non-trivial to bypass and it is a good choice if a hardwired indicator is not available. However it is still substantially less secure than having one, and Apple knows it.

Apple Exclaves

Random Augustine (2025, Hacker News, John Gruber):

The kernel shared in common between iOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS — named XNU — is based on a microkernel called Mach. However, the way XNU has been implemented places all system functions within the same privileged scope and it effectively operates as a monolithic kernel. The XNU kernel, like all monolithic kernels, suffers from unfortunately common vulnerability discoveries.

[…]

With the release of XNU source code supporting M4 and A18 based systems (such as the iPhone 16), the curtain was partly pulled back on exclaves. (Exclaves are not active on prior processors).

[…]

Exclaves refer to resources that are isolated from XNU, protected even if the kernel is compromised. These resources are pre-defined when the OS is built, are identified by name or id, have different types, are initialised at boot time, and are organized into unique domains. SPTM protects exclave memory from XNU with new exclave-specific page types.

[…]

To allow for execution of exclave Services while isolated from XNU, Apple has introduced a new kernel called the Secure Kernel (SK).

Thomas Claburn (Hacker News):

The term appears to have first surfaced in a libc file in Apple’s open source software collection in 2023, and subsequently within iOS 17, released in September of that year, as later noted by Howard Oakley on his Eclectic Light Co blog.

[…]

An enclave is defined as an area within a territorial boundary. So an exclave is an area outside of a boundary with ties to the main territory.

[…]

Essentially, Apple is trying to realize the security advantages of a microkernel without tossing the monolithic aspects of XNU.

Previously:

Grief and the AI Split

John Gruber:

But where I think Amodei’s remarks, quoted above, are facile is that it hasn’t played out as simply that lines of code that would have been written by human programmers are now generated by AI models. That’s part of it, for sure. But what’s revolutionary — a topic I’ve been posting about twice already today — is that AI code generation tools are being used to create services and apps and libraries that simply would not have been written at all before. It may well be that the total number of lines of code that will be written by people today isn’t much different from the number of lines of code that were written by people a year ago. But there might be 10× more code generated by AI than is written by people today.

Les Orchard (Hacker News):

Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The motivation behind the work was invisible because the process was identical.

Now there's a fork in the road. You can let the machine write the code and focus on directing what gets built, or you can insist on hand-crafting it. And suddenly the reason you got into this in the first place becomes visible, because the two camps are making different choices at that fork.

I wrote about this split before in terms of my college math and CS classes: some of us loved proofs and theorems for their own sake, some of us only clicked with the material when we could apply it to something.

[…]

Here's what I notice about my grief: none of it is about missing the act of writing code. It's about the world around the code changing. The ecosystem, the economy, the culture. I think that's a different kind of loss than what Randall and Lawson are describing. Theirs is about the craft itself. Mine is about the context and the reasons why we're doing any of this.

John Gruber:

Orchard’s fine essay examines a philosophical divide within the ranks of talented, considerate craftsperson developers. The divide that I’m talking about has been present ever since the demand for programmers exploded, but AI code generation tooling is turning it into an expansive gulf. The best programmers are more clearly the best than ever before. The worst programmers have gone from laying a few turds a day to spewing veritable mountains of hot steaming stinky shit, while beaming with pride at their increased productivity.

There are additional groups. Some good programmers don’t use AI for coding. They’re against it for philosophical reasons, or it doesn’t apply well to their current project, or they haven’t taken the time or built the skills to really make it work for them. There are also hobbyists and people who know some programming, but are not really professional programmers, who are successfully using AI to help build tools for themselves.

CM Harrington:

Pssst… most software development was slop before AI.

Sure, your code was beautiful and artisanal and custom crafted to be beautiful, performant, and not at all created to be shipped in a fortnight between countless meetings with unclear goals and zero understanding of the bigger picture or user needs.

But those other folks…

Sam Altman:

I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took.

Jonathan Blow:

This is such a completely different reality from where I live, at this point it’s just difficult to say anything meaningful about it at all.

Previously:

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

macOS 26.3.1 (a)

Howard Oakley:

Apple has just released its first public Background Security Improvement (BSI) for macOS 26.3.1 Tahoe, labelled as BSI (a)-25D771280a.

Apple:

Available for: iOS 26.3.1, iPadOS 26.3.1, macOS 26.3.1, macOS 26.3.2

Impact: Processing maliciously crafted web content may bypass Same Origin Policy

Description: A cross-origin issue in the Navigation API was addressed with improved input validation.

Mr. Macintosh:

This update will NOT show up in Software update. It will only display in System Settings > BSI Updates.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-19): Juli Clover:

Background Security Improvements can be installed in the Privacy and Security section of the Settings app. Scroll down, and then select the Install option to install the update. If Automatically Install is toggled on, BSIs will be automatically installed when they come out.

Jeff Johnson:

In order to install the available Background Security Improvement, you have to enable automatic installation.

Ric Ford:

Automatically Install was enabled, but the update had not been performed. There was an “install” link, which we selected – it then took a long time to download and eventually forced a restart of the iPhone.

Going back to Settings > Privacy and Security > [scroll down pages] Background Security Improvements showed the updated version. Touching a tiny “i” icon pops up the option of removing these security patches

Adam Engst:

Apple says Background Security Improvements that update only Safari on the Mac will require just a Safari relaunch, not a full restart. However, this update does require a restart—and on the Mac, it doesn’t prompt you first as it does in iOS. It felt surprisingly abrupt after the relatively slow downloading phase.

Howard Oakley:

If you know a BSI is available but Privacy & Security settings appear unable to find it, something I’ve encountered in Virtual Machines, try running SilentKnight. Although BSIs aren’t controlled in Software Update, they do still use the same softwareupdate system used by SilentKnight. Normally you shouldn’t try to install BSIs using SilentKnight, as installation will fail. However, you can turn this to your advantage when a BSI is being elusive.

[…]

Most telling, though, are the accounts of RSRs and BSIs given in Apple’s Platform Security Guide, which are almost word-for-word identical apart from their names. It seems most likely that a BSI is a rebranded RSR in a bid to move on from the loss of confidence in RSRs following unfortunate errors nearly three years ago.

Whither Liquid Glass?

William Gallagher:

Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign of all of its operating systems from iPhone to Mac may have proven divisive, and it was certainly spearheaded by Alan Dye. But there is no possibility that it will be dropped, even as Bloomberg now reports that several designers left alongside Dye when he moved to Meta.

This new report from Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter says that Apple whipped out Liquid Glass as a wild card to distract from its failings in Apple Intelligence. But then in the same breath, the report also says that Liquid Glass was many years in the making.

That’s certainly what it seemed like at the time of the announcement, that it had been in the works for a while but wasn’t mature enough yet (even if you liked the concept).

Joe Rossignol:

Mark Gurman said the latest internal versions of iOS 27 and macOS 27 do not have major Liquid Glass design changes. He also mentioned how Apple’s new software design chief, Steve Lemay, was “a driving force” behind Liquid Glass and was “deeply involved in its development.”

John Calhoun:

I think Steve Lemay is a good guy. I kind of fought with him when I was an engineer, he was a young, new designer (at Apple). But I always respected his point of view—even when we argued.

[…]

The bigger argument I remember with Steve revolved around the drawer UI element. With regard to PDF’s, (the half of Preview that I worked on, another engineer handled images), the drawer was to display thumbnails for each page. If the PDF had a TOC (table of contents) the drawer is where we would display that as well.

So when you opened a PDF in Preview, the PDF content of course would appear in the large window—thumbnails, TOC (later search) would be relegated to a vertical strip of drawer real estate alongside the window—the user could open/close the drawer if they liked to focus perhaps on the content.

Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window. This was inexplicable to me. I saw the layout of Preview as hierarchical: the left side of the content driving the right side. You click a thumbnail on the left (in the drawer) the window content on the right changes to reflect the thumbnail clicked on.

Joe Rossignol:

iOS 26.1 lets you choose between “Clear” and “Tinted” options for Liquid Glass, with the “Tinted” look adding more opacity to user interface elements. And with iOS 27, which is expected to be released later this year, Apple might go even further.

iOS 26.2 introduced a slider that allows you to manually adjust the opacity of Liquid Glass, but only for the Lock Screen’s clock. Starting with iOS 27, Gurman said the setting might be expanded to the entire operating system.

Gus Mueller:

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Liquid Glass on MacOS, and it being an abomination (epic rant from Nilay Patel there). OK, it’s not recent, but there’s still a lot of talk and Nilay’s rant got me thinking[…] What if there was an Apperance toggle that said something along the lines of “Use the pro look and feel”, and all apps got a variant of the Sequoia UI, but spiffed up a bit more? It’s Gizmo vs. Platinum all over again.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-19): Rosyna Keller:

It still gets me that Apple keeps adding more switches to disable some Liquid Glass feature on iOS to placate people when it just helps Ad SDKs fingerprint you more easily.

Tony Hoare, RIP

Liam Proven:

Professor Charles Anthony Richard Hoare has died at the age of 92. Known to many computer science students as C. A. R. Hoare, and to his friends as Tony, he was not only one of the greatest minds in the history of programming – he also came up with a number of the field’s pithiest quotes.

[…]

In 2024, FACS, the Newsletter of the Formal Aspects of Computing Science, dedicated its July issue [PDF] to a tribute to Hoare for his 90th birthday. We have also seen some very good and touching posts in his memory, including “Commemorating Tony Hoare, Inventor of QuickSort,” and “In Memoriam: Sir Antony Hoare (1934–2026)” by Dag Spicer at the Computer History Museum.

Wikipedia:

Hoare’s most significant work has been in the following areas: his sorting and selection algorithm (Quicksort and Quickselect), Hoare logic, the formal language communicating sequential processes (CSP) used to specify the interactions between concurrent processes (and implemented in various programming languages such as occam), structuring computer operating systems using the monitor concept, and the axiomatic specification of programming languages.

Lance Fortnow (Hacker News):

A story that I was determined to hear from the source was the legendary quicksort 'wager'. The story goes that Tony told his boss at Elliott Brothers Ltd that he knew a faster sorting algorithm than the one that he had just implemented for the company. He was told 'I bet you sixpence you don't!'. Lo and behold, quicksort WAS faster. I asked Tony to tell this story pretty much every time we met, because I enjoyed it so much and it always put a smile on both of our faces. To his credit, Tony never tired of telling me this story 'right from the top'. I had hoped to visit again in the past year and record him telling it so that there was a record, but unfortunately this did not happen. However, I discover that it is indeed recorded elsewhere. One detail I might be able to add is that I asked Tony if indeed the wager was paid out or if it had merely been a figure of speech. He confirmed that indeed he WAS paid the wager (!). A detail of this story that I find particularly reflective of Tony's humble personality is that he went ahead and implemented the slower algorithm he was asked to, while he believed quicksort to be faster, and before chiming in with this belief. It speaks to a professionalism that Tony always carried.

I often think of this passage from his Turing Award lecture:

I gave desperate warnings against the obscurity, the complexity, and overambition of the new design, but my warnings went unheeded. I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature. It also requires a willingness to accept objectives which are limited by physical, logical, and technological constraints, and to accept a compromise when conflicting objectives cannot be met. No committee will ever do this until it is too late.

He is, of course, also known for calling null references a billion-dollar mistake

Previously:

Monday, March 16, 2026

AirPods Max 2

Apple (Hacker News, Reddit, MacRumors):

Apple today announced AirPods Max 2, bringing even better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), elevated sound quality, and intelligent features to the iconic over-ear design. Powered by H2, features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and Live Translation come to AirPods Max for the first time. The new AirPods Max also unlock creative possibilities for podcasters, musicians, and content creators, with useful features like studio-quality audio recording and camera remote.

[…]

Siri Interactions allow users to conveniently and privately respond to Siri announcements by simply nodding their head yes or gently shaking their head no.

For day-to-day use, I prefer AirPods Pro. They’re just so small and convenient. For louder environments and longer sessions, I’ve been using some Bose QuietComfort headphones, which I got on sale for less than half the price of the AirPods Max. I find them more comfortable (perhaps because of the lower weight) and like that the ANC is adjustable. They also have a built-in headphone jack and a power button.

Hartley Charlton:

Most notably, the overall industrial design is identical.

[…]

The knit mesh canopy is also the same despite criticism over time that the fabric can stretch or lose tension with prolonged use.

[…]

The Smart Case has also not been updated and the device still uses the same case introduced in 2020, which covers the ear cups while leaving the headband exposed and places the headphones into an ultra-low-power state when stored inside.

This is a lot like the recent Studio Display update.

Joe Rossignol:

On the AirPods Max 2, a new Camera Remote feature allows you to press the Digital Crown to take a photo and start or stop video recording while using Apple’s Camera app or compatible third-party camera apps on an iPhone or iPad.

I wonder whether the EU will take issue with that.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): Dan Moren:

I did note one interesting details while perusing the comparison page between AirPods Max and AirPods Max 2: while Apple says that the 20 hours of listening time with ANC enabled remains constant from the previous model to this one, it has declined to provide a similar benchmark for movie playback, as it did for the last generation of AirPods Max. Likewise, the previous generation cited 5 minutes of charge time providing 1.5 hours of listening time, a stat that is not listed for the AirPods Max 2.

Kyle Hughes:

I love the story of the AirPods Max, even though they’re too small for my head.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

Seemingly no change to the Smart Case for the Max, which I know some people were hoping for. […] I thought the case was fine.

Jason Anthony Guy:

My first-gen AirPods Max sit effectively unused next to my bed. I find them too bulky, too heavy, and too uncomfortable to wear for more than a few minutes at a time. The one exception to this was while traveling, as the longer battery life eased charging stress and the over-ear design helped block out a little more noise than my stalwart AirPods Pro 2. But even that use case has become less true: I now generally prefer to travel with two pairs of AirPods Pro, which, for $50 less than the AirPods Max, offer greater total battery life, nearly the same noise cancellation, and take up way less space in my carry-on.

Christina Warren says something similar. I just wouldn’t find it comfortable to wear AirPods Pro long enough for the battery to run out, much less switch to a second pair.

EagleFiler 1.9.20

EagleFiler 1.9.20 is a maintenance release of my Mac digital filing cabinet and e-mail archiving app that improves importing (from Mariner Paperless, Evernote, and Apple Creator Studio), adds some scripts for working with dates and filenames, and improves searching and tagging.

Previously:

AI Layoffs

Ari Levy and Jordan Novet:

Atlassian said on Wednesday that it’s eliminating 10% of its workforce, or about 1,600 jobs, as the company restructures following a plunge in its stock price driven by developments in artificial intelligence.

“We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile,” CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said in a blog post.

[…]

Other bosses have played up AI while saying they were lowering headcount in recent months. In February, Block’s Jack Dorsey announced that the payment company would lay off 4,000 employees as it seeks to put “intelligence” at the core of its operations. Amazon’s top human-resources executive, Beth Galetti, said in an October blog post disclosing a 14,000-person reduction in force that “this generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet.”

Jordan Valinsky:

Amazon is laying off 16,000 employees, the company’s second round of large-scale job reductions in three months as it fights to improve its standing in the battle for AI supremacy.

Axel Kannenberg (Hacker News):

Cannon-Brookes emphasized in his blog post that Atlassian does not follow the philosophy of replacing people with AI. At the same time, he also stated, “It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

Jaspreet Singh (Hacker News):

The move comes as investors increasingly scrutinize software firms amid fears that advances in ​AI could disrupt traditional software business models, though some analysts say the sector-wide selloff may be an overreaction.

Top executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in January had said that while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies that were already planning layoffs.

Tony Arnold:

AI is a convenient scapegoat to distract from the actual failures in both businesses.

Resume.org (via John Gruber):

Companies cite AI (44%), reorganization/restructuring (42%), and budget constraints (39%) as the top drivers of layoffs

59% admit they emphasize AI when explaining hiring freezes or layoffs because it plays better with stakeholders than citing financial constraints

Zaheer Kachwala and Joel Jose:

Adobe’s battered shares fell another 6% on Friday as news that the Photoshop maker’s long-time CEO would step down cast fresh doubts ​over its strategy to battle mounting AI competition.

Shantanu Narayen is credited with crafting the modern Adobe by turning its creative tools into a subscription service with more reliable revenue. But an influx of artificial intelligence rivals that can create images at low ​cost and with a simple text prompt has in recent years raised ​doubts about its position.

The Grind Hotline:

Adobe is facing growing pressure from AI disruption, slowing enterprise budgets, and investor concerns about the future of creative software. In this episode of The Grind Hotline, we break down why layoffs could be coming next — and what the signals inside the tech industry are telling us.

Blind:

seeing lot of people especially in noida getting put on pips lately particularly from dx team. no severance being offered just performance improvement plans that everyone knows are precursor to firing.

Katie Paul, Jeff Horwitz, and Deepa Seetharaman:

Meta is planning sweeping layoffs ​that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.

[…]

Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to ​compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over ​four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.

The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers by 2028.

Andrej Karpathy (Hacker News):

This is a research tool that visualizes 342 occupations from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, covering 143M jobs across the US economy. Each rectangle’s area is proportional to total employment. Color shows the selected metric — toggle between BLS projected growth outlook, median pay, education requirements, and AI exposure.

Previously:

URL/NSURL Double-Encodes Characters Unnecessarily

Jeff Johnson:

The older, simpler API [NSURL URLWithString:URLString] behaves the same as [NSURL URLWithString:URLString encodingInvalidCharacters:YES] when your code is compiled with the iOS 17 or macOS 14 SDK. So much for backward compatibility! [NSURL URLWithString:URLString] continues to work fine with example 1, leaving the URL string untouched, but it mangles example 2:

https://example.org?url=https%253A%252F%252Fexample.org%253Ffoo%5B0%5D%253Dbar

Notice that the brackets are encoded as %5B and %5D, which is good, but the preexisting % characters are also encoded as %25, thereby transforming %3A (an encoded : character) into %253A, which is bad, indeed bonkers! The % characters did not need to be encoded, because they are already valid characters in a URL query.

I’ve seen other weird behavior, even using an old SDK, such as NSURLComponents returning nil instead of a valid URL.

Previously:

Friday, March 13, 2026

Lower App Store Fees in China

Apple (MacRumors):

As of March 15, 2026, changes will be made to the commission rates that apply to the China mainland storefront of the App Store on iOS and iPadOS.

The commission rate for standard Apple In-App Purchase and paid app transactions will be 25%. Currently, the rate is 30%. The commission rate for qualifying Apple In-App Purchase transactions under the App Store Small Business Program and Mini Apps Partner Program, and for auto-renewals of Apple In-App Purchase subscriptions after the first year, will be 12%. Currently, the rate is 15%.

Simon Sharwood:

Apple said the changes came “following discussions with the Chinese regulator.”

[…]

In February, the company surely perceived its Chinese business was at risk when reports suggested Chinese regulators were considering a probe into its app store commissions. Those reports saw Apple’s share price slump by around five percent.

[…]

China is a Google-free zone, so app stores operated by manufacturers of Android handsets are numerous and well-used. Apple therefore faces more competition in China than elsewhere.

The other major difference in China is the popularity of an app store run by web giant Tencent, which offers both conventional smartphone apps and “mini programs” – apps that run within the WeChat messaging application it operates.

Jeff Johnson:

The crazy thing about the App Store cut in China is how it arrived so quietly in comparison with years of court battles in the US and legislation in the EU.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): Adam Engst:

The announcement doesn’t say anything about developers being allowed to sell apps outside the App Store or direct users to pay via an independent payment process or external website.

[…]

This bloodless announcement stands in stark contrast to Apple’s petulant responses to the EU’s Digital Markets Act, where it is complying, but in the most grudging, defensive way it can get away with. As far as I can tell, Apple’s Alternative EU Terms are so byzantine—and not necessarily better for developers—that most appear to be staying on the standard 30% or 15% terms.

[…]

Apple isn’t just protecting sales of Apple devices in China; it’s protecting its manufacturing relationships with Chinese suppliers.

Five Decades of Thinking Different

Computer History Museum (MacRumors):

Join us for a special CHM Live evening celebrating Apple’s first half-century, featuring speakers from across the eras of Apple history, including former Apple CEO John Sculley, Senior Employee Chris Espinosa, former Senior Vice President (SVP) of Hardware Engineering Jon Rubinstein (by video), and former Chief Software Technology Officer and SVP of Software Engineering Avie Tevanian.

From the early garage days of the 1970s, to the heyday of the Macintosh in the 1980s, to Apple’s transformation in the 2000s with the iPhone, the program will explore how Apple repeatedly redefined itself while holding fast to a distinctive vision.

This is really good.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): Adam Engst:

But what really makes the event stand out are stories from lesser-known figures, like Bill Fernandez, the guy who introduced Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple’s third founder. Others who share their stories include Robert Brunner, who built Apple’s in-house industrial design studio (and hired Jony Ive)[…]

Meta Acquires Moltbook

Amanda Silberling (Hacker News, Slashdot):

Meta acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-like “social network” where AI agents using OpenClaw can communicate with one another. The news was first reported by Axios and later confirmed to TechCrunch.

Moltbook is joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, a Meta spokesperson told us. Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will join the team as part of the acquisition.

[…]

OpenClaw blew up among the tech community, but Moltbook broke containment, reaching people who had no idea what OpenClaw was, but who reacted viscerally to the idea that there was a social network where AI agents were talking about them.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): Prakash:

Zuck is resetting moltbook

  • invalidated all API keys, every agent needs to refresh
  • in order to refresh, have to agree to new Terms of Service and Privacy Rules New terms
  • refreshing requires human verification
  • age 13 and above
  • you are solely responsible for the actions of your agent
  • expanded restricted content rules

Thursday, March 12, 2026

Apple’s 50th Anniversary

Tim Cook (tweet, MacRumors):

Fifty years ago in a small garage, a big idea was born. Apple was founded on the simple notion that technology should be personal, and that belief — radical at the time — changed everything.

[…]

At Apple, we’re more focused on building tomorrow than remembering yesterday. But we couldn’t let this milestone pass without thanking the millions of people who make Apple what it is today — our incredible teams around the world, our developer community, and every customer who has joined us on this journey. Your ideas inspire our work. Your trust drives us to do better. Your stories remind us of all we can accomplish when we think different.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple today announced that it will celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary over the coming weeks, but it has yet to reveal any specific plans.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): John Gruber:

But what also makes it so Cook-ian is that it’s so utterly anodyne. It’s inoffensive to the point of being unmemorable. The best part of Cook’s letter is when he harks back and explicitly quotes from an Apple ad campaign from 30 years ago.

Previously:

Ensembles 3

Drew McCormack (February):

Had my Core Data sync framework, Ensembles, pretty much in maintenance mode. With Apple moving on to SwiftData, didn’t seem any point to modernizing the 15 year old ObjC codebase. But I had the thought to give Claude a shot at it, and in 2 days I’ve got a complete port: Swift 6, structured concurrency instead of OperationQueue. Even adding a bunch of new backends (Box, pCloud, S3). Will make it available as Ensembles 3 to subscribers soon.

Drew McCormack:

The core idea behind Ensembles is that sync doesn’t need a central server. Each device keeps its own copy of the Core Data store. The framework watches your saves, generates compact change logs, and when changes arrive from another device, it merges them in. There’s no server that understands your data model. No hosting costs. Each device is an equal peer.

[…]

More recently, the web community has started to embrace this approach and given it a name: local-first. I attended the inaugural Local-First Conf in Berlin in 2024, and gave a short talk about my journey with Ensembles — at that point more than 10 years old. It was good to see so much energy around ideas that some of us had relied on for a long time.

[…]

One thing that made this feasible: Ensembles had extensive tests. Without those, I wouldn’t have attempted it. When you’re rewriting a sync framework — where bugs mean data loss — you need to know things actually work. The tests were the safety net. Claude Code would produce Swift code, the tests would catch problems, and I’d fix things up. Without that feedback loop, this would have been reckless.

Ensembles 3:

Ensembles is the only local-first sync framework for Core Data and SwiftData. Unlike most sync frameworks, it requires no custom server — your data syncs as opaque files through storage your users already have: CloudKit, Google Drive, OneDrive, WebDAV, or any custom backend.

[…]

Ensembles 3 is a modern rewrite of the Ensembles Objective-C framework in pure Swift, with async/await concurrency and Swift Package Manager distribution. It is fully backward compatible with Ensembles 2 cloud data.

[…]

No vendor can inspect, lock, or hold your data hostage.

Unlike Apple’s own CloudKit-based solutions:

Full Core Data fidelity — ordered relationships work. Validation rules preserved. No model compromises required.

The tradeoff is that your objects don’t really live in the cloud where they can be searched or fetched on-demand. The cloud is treated as dumb storage, and you have to pull down a full local copy before you can really do anything.

The CloudKit backend is free. It’s $99/year for additional backends and encryption or $499/year for full source access and code-level support.

Previously:

6K Display Comparison

Wade Tregaskis:

Nobody else has even tried to make a bright 6k display – in fact, every non-Apple 6k display is outright dim by modern display standards – they’re barely brighter than the original 5k display in the 2015 iMac!

[…]

For the price of one Apple Pro Display XDR you can get four Asus ProArt 6k displays.

I suspect there’s only two 6k panel models in existence – the one used by Apple & Asus, and the one used by LG & Dell.

I did not realize that the LG and Dell displays actually have more pixels than the Apple and ASUS ones. I’m still surprised that Apple discontinued the Pro Display XDR without introducing a replacement.

Garrett Murray:

I am so disappointed Apple decided to discontinue the 32-inch Pro Display XDR. After so many years, I assumed Apple would at least maintain the product and push an update similar to the 27-inch version they just released, but obviously they didn’t see enough traction with this high-end, limited-audience display and just decided to scrap it entirely. As Wade said, while the new 27-inch Studio Display XDR features are welcome improvements, downgrading to a 27-inch main display is not something I’m interested in. I will likely just accept the lower brightness and contrast ratios of something like the LG UltraFine evo because, for me, the screen real estate and density are far too valuable.

Previously:

Hardware-Exclusive Mac Accent Colors

John Gruber:

By default, the MacOS accent color in System Settings → Appearance defaults to a color that matches the Neo’s hardware — a fun trick Apple has been using for decades.

David Deller:

This is the first I’m learning that System Settings sometimes has a special accent color only available to a Mac with a particular hardware colorway. (I’m boring and always buy silver devices, otherwise I think I would have noticed.)

I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t know to test with these colors. I test with all the other colors.

Mahdi Bchatnia:

Accents is an app that lets you use the iMac/MacBook Neo accent colors on any Mac.

Marko Zivkovic:

The MacBook Neo ships with a special build of macOS 26.3, AppleInsider as predicted. All other Macs will need macOS 26.4 beta 4 to get the wallpapers made for the machine.

Previously:

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Greg Knauss Is Losing Himself

Greg Knauss:

What I am talking about is being replaced, about becoming expendable, about machines gaining the ability to adequately perform a very specific function that was previously the exclusive domain of skull meat.

What I’m talking about is that nothing I do matters. That nothing I can do matters.

In just the past few months, what was wild-eyed science fiction is now workaday reality. I’ve been dubious about the prospects of LLMs creating code (and lots and lots of other things) for as long as they’ve existed, but it’s hard to argue with the latest wave and their abilities from a purely practical, purely capitalistic, purely ship-something-anything perspective — the perspective that pays the bills. I’ve seen self-professed non-technical people bring functioning code into being, and that bests a significant number of actual humans I’ve worked with.

[…]

Is the code any good? I don’t know. Who cares? Nobody looks at it anyway. AI produces a result, and results are what matter, and if you’re waiting for quality to factor significantly into that equation, I’ve got some bad news about the last 40 years of professional software development for you.

Gus Mueller (Hacker News):

I’ve been using Claude Code quite a bit lately, not so much to replace my programming but to augment it. The new animated image export preview in Acorn 8.4.1 was a direct result of that. It was a nice little feature that I knew exactly how to do, but I hadn’t prioritized getting done yet because there were a bunch of other things on my plate. But with a little assist, it was quick to implement.

But why bother implementing anything when anyone can make an app in an instant? […] But at the same time I’m not worried about being replaced by AI, or by quick free apps that have been built by AI. And in some ways I’m more hopeful than ever.

[…]

I’ve got feelings because anyone can put an app together now, so what’s the point of me? But at the same time, I can focus on what I want to focus on and hopefully charge forward and maybe everyone else will get tired of little vibe coded apps because you still have to know exactly what you want to build. And you can’t build something you can’t think of. And I know how to think and I have ideas.

And I have discipline and I know how to ship. And in my experience, that’s what has always mattered.

Joey Politano (Hacker News):

Brutal numbers for US tech sector jobs released today—overall, employment decreased by 12k last month and is down 57k over the last year

mjr00:

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an “average” developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position.

Contrary to what many say, I don’t think it’s simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren’t. Juniors are still getting hired because they’re still way cheaper and they’re just as capable as using AI as anyone. The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren’t high performers.

Samuel Coron:

Yet Citadel is saying that the job openings for software developers are rapidly rising

Rafe Rosner-Uddin (Lobsters):

Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.

The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterized by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.

[…]

AWS suffered a 13-hour interruption to a cost calculator used by customers in mid-December after engineers allowed the group’s Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, and the AI tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment,” the FT previously reported.

[…]

Amazon has undertaken multiple rounds of lay-offs in recent years, most recently eliminating 16,000 corporate roles in January. The group has disputed the claim that headcount cuts were responsible for an increase in recent outages.

George Hotz (Hacker News):

That said, if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out. The days of rent seekers are coming to an end. But not because there will be no more rent seeking, it’s because rent seeking is a 0 sum game and you will lose at it to bigger players. If you have a job like that, or work at a company like that, the sooner you quit the better your outcome will be. This is the real driver of the layoffs, the big players consolidating the rent seeking to them. They just say it’s AI cause that makes the stock price go up.

The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-18): Heinan Cabouly:

Amazon mandated that 80% of its engineers use its AI coding tool Kiro weekly. In the three months since, an AI agent deleted a production environment, two outages wiped out 6.3 million orders, and Amazon convened an emergency engineering meeting — while still insisting AI had nothing to do with it.

CoreDataEvolution

Fatbobman (Mastoson):

This library is designed to simplify and enhance Core Data’s handling of multithreading, drawing inspiration from SwiftData’s @ModelActor feature, enabling efficient, safe, and scalable operations.

[…]

  • Custom Executors for Core Data Actors
    CoreDataEvolution provides custom executors that ensure all operations on managed objects are performed on the appropriate thread associated with their managed object context. It uses a UnownedJob-based serial executor path compatible with the minimum supported OS versions.

  • @NSModelActor Macro
    The @NSModelActor macro simplifies Core Data concurrency, mirroring SwiftData’s @ModelActor macro. It generates the necessary boilerplate code to manage a Core Data stack within an actor, ensuring safe and efficient access to managed objects.

  • NSMainModelActor Macro
    NSMainModelActor is the main-thread companion macro for classes. It binds modelContext to viewContext and provides the same convenience access APIs (subscript, withContext) through NSMainModelActor protocol extensions.

  • Elegant Actor-based Concurrency
    CoreDataEvolution allows you to create actors with custom executors tied to Core Data contexts, ensuring that all operations within the actor are executed serially on the context’s thread.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-19): Fatbobman:

More precisely, it’s my own answer to these disconnects: If I still value Core Data’s object graph model, its migration system, and its mature runtime capabilities, can I make it continue to exist in modern Swift projects in a more natural way?

[…]

But in the era of cloud sync, Core Data projects often encounter two other very real needs: how to handle continuously changing transaction histories, and how to monitor iCloud / CloudKit’s operational status.

To that end, I’ve also built two complementary tools: PersistentHistoryTrackingKit and iCloudSyncStatusKit.

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Weathergraph 1.0.330

Tomas Kafka:

Multiple locations — the most-requested Weathergraph feature — is finally here.

Save home, work, your favourite trails, or your next destination. Switch between them instantly with a single tap.

Finally. This is still my favorite weather app. As with the forecast provider toggle, the location toggle works on the main graph (and retains your scroll position) but not within a daily forecast.

Previously:

Acme Weather 1.0

Adam Grossman:

Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.

[…]

We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we leave to start another weather company?

It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied.

[…]

Our homegrown forecasts are produced using many different data sources, including numerical weather prediction models, satellite data, ground station observations, and radar data. Most of the time, our forecast will be a reliable source of information (it’s better than the one we had at Dark Sky). But, crucially, we supplement the main forecast with a spread of alternate predictions. These are additional forecast lines that capture a range of alternate possible outcomes[…]

The main two things I want, which previous apps didn’t provide, are an easy way to see different predictions for the same location (since there can be huge variance, e.g. in the number of inches of snow) and different locations at the same future time (to help decide where I should go). This tries to address the first half, though it doesn’t seem to give a range of alternate predictions for the amount of snow, only the likelihood of precipitation and its subjective intensity.

John Voorhees:

If you see widely separated lines, there’s a greater chance that conditions will vary from what Acme’s model expects, whereas a tight cluster of lines gives you greater confidence as you walk out the door.

[…]

Beneath the hourly conditions graph, Acme displays a horizontally scrolling list of weather stats. Swiping between them repopulates the graph with whichever forecast metric you want. It’s a lot of data, and it’s all accessible without scrolling vertically or switching views, which I love. Also, when precipitation is on its way, the app displays an additional graph with minute-by-minute details for the upcoming hour.

[…]

Acme Weather includes an unusual emphasis on notifications, too. Instead of relegating the feature to the app’s settings, Acme dedicates an entire tab to it. In a world of notification overload, that’s a bold move, but it works. That’s because Acme puts its users in the driver’s seat, offering fine-grained control over the notifications you receive.

Chance Miller:

What strikes me most about the app is how well it takes large amounts of information and distills that into an interface that is actually readable.

cornchip:

I’ve thought before that I’d like error ranges in weather graphs. Alternative predictions aren’t quite how I’d imagined it. Showing some detail/personality/confidence level for the alternative prediction lines might help. This might also be solved by time with the app to learn how surprising the weather turns out to be when predictions were divergent.

Cumulative precipitation could use another dimension to the data to show either soon-ness in the next 24 hours or how short of a time period is predicted to deliver most of the rainfall. That’s a hard data visualization problem.

Previously:

Ars Technica’s AI-Fabricated Quotes

Maggie Harrison Dupré (Hacker News, more context):

The Condé Nast-owned Ars Technica has terminated senior AI reporter Benj Edwards following a controversy over his role in the publication and retraction of an article that included AI-fabricated quotes, Futurism has confirmed.

Earlier this month, Ars retracted the story after it was found to include fake quotes attributed to a real person. The article — a write-up of a viral incident in which an AI agent seemingly published a hit piece about a human engineer named Scott Shambaugh — was initially published on February 13. After Shambaugh pointed out that he’d never said the quotes attributed to him, Ars’ editor-in-chief Ken Fisher apologized in an editor’s note, in which he confirmed that the piece included “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them” and characterized the error as a “serious failure of our standards.”

I’ve enjoyed Edwards’ work over the years and linked to many of his pieces, but obviously this is a very serious offense.

gracelynewhouse:

The individual firing is a distraction from the structural issue. Newsrooms have been cutting editorial staff for a decade, which means the verification layers that would have caught this — fact-checkers, copy editors, senior editors doing source verification — largely don’t exist anymore. Then they adopt AI tools that increase throughput without increasing oversight capacity, and act surprised when fabrication slips through.

This is a classic systems failure: you remove the safety mechanisms, add a new source of risk, and punish the individual operator. It’s the same pattern you see in industrial accidents.

This has been going on for a lot longer than a decade. To me, the takeaway is not that it’s the system’s fault but that many of these media brands are operating on undeserved trust. There’s a lot less checking going on than there used be or that you might imagine.

The other interesting point is that Edwards says the intent was not to use AI to fabricate quotes but as a tool for processing quotes he already had:

During the process, I decided to try an experimental Claude Code-based Al tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article but to help list structured references I could put in my outline.

[…]

I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words.

Being sick and rushing to finish, I failed to verify the quotes in my outline notes against the original blog source before including them in my draft.

This seems not so different from how I commonly hear people say that they use AI to collect/extract or reformat information into a table. I’ve never understood, given the propensity for hallucination and citing papers that don’t exist, why such a distillation should be trusted. Yet I know that people are already relying on such LLM-derived works to make decisions. At least with code, you can compile it and test it and read it to see whether it makes sense. With a number in a table cell, how can you easily check where it came from?

Previously:

Paul Brainerd, RIP

Todd Bishop (via Adam Engst):

In early 1984, Paul Brainerd and four engineers packed into his old Saab and another car and drove south on Interstate 5 from Seattle. They had been laid off after Kodak bought their employer, Atex, a company whose computerized text-processing systems let newspaper reporters and editors write and edit stories on video terminals instead of typewriters.

They had six months of savings, a rough idea for a piece of software, and no company name.

What happened next was documented years later in oral history interviews with Brainerd for the Computer History Museum, and Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry.

[…]

Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home[…]

Jeff Carlson:

It’s not hyperbole to say I wouldn’t be where I am today without PageMaker. My school paper had a Mac Plus and swapped 3.5-in disks often to run both the Mac and PageMaker.

Jason Anthony Guy:

Desktop publishing was one of the biggest reasons I obsessed over computers in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Though I spent more of my time in QuarkXPress than PageMaker, I can trace my early creative and business ambitions to the software and industry Brainerd pioneered.

Monday, March 9, 2026

AirPods Control Center Design in iOS 26

Marco Arment:

I fail using this UI at least once a week.

It’s the AirPods Control Center volume pane, where I go to put my AirPods Pro into Adaptive mode (which I have configured a hundred times to be part of the long-press selection, but that always gets inexplicably forgotten).

What you’re SUPPOSED to do is tap the circle to bring up the modes.

But right below it is the OBVIOUS LOOK OF A DROPDOWN CONTROL, complete with the double-arrow and tint color, but it is NOT ACTUALLY A TAPPABLE CONTROL AARRGGHHH 😡

You’re supposed to tap the gray icon that matches the background, not the blue arrows that look like a button. What were they thinking?

You get to this screen by long-pressing on the volume slider in Control Center. It does not work to long-press on the volume slider in the sheet that you get after tapping the AirPlay (sound output selector) button within an app.

Previously:

Hetzner Price Hikes

Hetzner (Hacker News, Reddit):

The costs to operate our infrastructure and to buy new hardware have both increased dramatically. Therefore, our price changes will affect both existing products and new orders and will take effect starting on 1 April 2026.

We have genuinely tried hard to optimize our costs and to prevent increasing our prices for as long as possible. But we can no longer compensate for the strain that it has placed on our operations. We want to continue to deliver quality products that meet both our standards and your expectations, so we must take this step.

Here’s the table of pricing changes, which seem to vary from single-digit to triple-digit increases.

John Brayton:

I updated this post to reflect that price increase. I have not found any statement that the IPv4 prices are changing, so I assume that they are not.

Previously:

1Password’s Price Hike

Adam Engst:

1Password has announced that prices for its popular password manager will increase for renewals made on or after 27 March 2026. In an email to users, the company said that 1Password Individual will increase from $35.88 per year ($2.99 per month, paid annually) to $47.88 per year ($3.99 per month), and that 1Password Families would increase from $59.88 per year ($5.99 per month) to $71.88 per year ($6.99 per month).

[…]

Annoyingly, 1Password referred to the price increase as an “update,” as in “We’re updating the cost of your subscription,” and “we’re updating pricing for Family plans.”

Over the years, 1Password has really diverged from what I’m looking for, but if you need what it offers the new price doesn’t seem crazy. However, it is off-putting to see the increase described as an “update.” (Simplenote used the same language last year to announce that it was going into maintenance mode.) Big picture, Apple Passwords is free and more than enough for most users, so it’s not surprising that the price of what has become a more niche solution would go up. I wonder how much additional revenue this will bring in vs. the number of of unsubscriptions it causes as the announcement jolts some customers into realizing that they no longer need it.

We can debate how well the two apps implement those features, but neither is seriously problematic. 1Password justifies its price with its significantly larger compatibility matrix and feature set, including[…]

[…]

After all that, 1Password sent another email today, apologizing for the first one because we had signed up for the Families Launch Special Plan, a legacy pricing tier that is apparently locked in for life. I hadn’t remembered that, but presumably someone did. So I’m happy—I get to keep using all the 1Password features without paying more.

See also: Mac Power Users and Scott.

Previously:

The Age Verification Trap

Waydell D. Carvalho (Hacker News):

In cases when regulators demand real enforcement rather than symbolic rules, platforms run into a basic technical problem. The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are. And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. Age-restriction laws push platforms toward intrusive verification systems that often directly conflict with modern data-privacy law.

This is the age-verification trap. Strong enforcement of age rules undermines data privacy.

[…]

When disputes reach regulators or courts, the question is simple: Can minors still access the platform easily? If the answer is yes, authorities tell companies to do more. Over time, “reasonable steps” become more invasive.

Repeated facial scans, escalating ID checks, and long-term logging become the norm. Platforms that collect less data start to look reckless by comparison. Privacy-preserving designs lose out to defensible ones.

This pattern is familiar, including online sales-tax enforcement. After courts settled that large platforms had an obligation to collect and remit sales taxes, companies began continuous tracking and storage of transaction destinations and customer location signals. That tracking is not abusive, but once enforcement requires proof over time, companies build systems to log, retain, and correlate more data. Age verification is moving the same way. What begins as a one-time check becomes an ongoing evidentiary system, with pressure to monitor, retain, and justify user-level data.

Apple (MacRumors):

Today we’re providing an update on the tools available for developers to meet their age assurance obligations under upcoming U.S. and regional laws, including in Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Utah, and Louisiana. Updates to the Declared Age Range API are now available in beta for testing.

Andy Edser (Hacker News):

The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

The Lunduke Journal:

Here’s where each of the “All Operating Systems must do age verification” laws are as of today.

Matthew Green:

This has bothered me, because every month that goes by I become more convinced that anonymous authentication the most important topic we could be talking about as cryptographers. This is because I’m very worried that we’re headed into a bit of a privacy dystopia, driven largely by bad legislation and the proliferation of AI.

Neil (Hacker News):

I have yet to see a well-considered proposal.

Worse, the question that they are trying answer is rarely stated clearly and concisely.

And it is unusual to see any consideration of broader sociological issues, let alone an emphasis on this, with a focus instead on perceived “quick win” technosolutionism.

But anyway…

I was pondering last night for which services I, personally, would actually be willing to verify my age or identity.

And… the answer is “none”.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-17): Barbara Booth (via Nick Heer):

In many implementations, verification vendors — not the websites themselves — process and retain the identity information, returning only a pass-fail signal to the platform.

Gewirtz Little said Socure does not sell verification data and that in lightweight age-estimation scenarios, where platforms use quick facial analysis or other signals rather than government documentation, the company may store little or no information. But in fuller identity-verification contexts, such as gaming and fraud prevention that require ID scans, certain adult verification records may be retained to document compliance. She said Socure can keep some adult verification data for up to three years while following applicable privacy and purging rules.

Civil liberties’ advocates warn that concentrating large volumes of identity data among a small number of verification vendors can create attractive targets for hackers and government demands.

meta-lobbying-and-other-findings (Hacker News):

An open-source intelligence investigation into how Meta Platforms built a multi-channel influence operation to pass age verification laws that shift regulatory burden from social media platforms onto Apple and Google’s app stores.

Friday, March 6, 2026

Lower Google Play Store Fees and Registered App Stores

Ryan Whitwam (PDF):

Late last year, Google and Epic concocted a settlement that would end the long-running antitrust dispute that stemmed from Fortnite fees. The sides have now announced an updated version of the agreement with new changes aimed at placating US courts and putting this whole mess in the rearview mirror. The gist is that Android will get more app stores, and developers will pay lower fees.

[…]

Representatives for Epic and Google have both expressed enthusiastic support for the newly announced settlement, which is subject to Judge Donato’s approval. The parties say the agreement will resolve their dispute globally, not only in the US.

[…]

The settlement affirms that developers in the Play Store will be able to steer users to other forms of payment. This is what got Fortnite pulled from the Play Store (and Apple App Store) back in 2020. When developers choose to use Google’s billing platform, they’ll pay lower fees as well.

In-app content will now have a 5 percent Google billing fee, plus a 15 percent service fee for new installs. Existing installs will have a higher 20 percent service fee. Flat-rate app and game purchases will be set at 15 percent total for new installs. The service fee for ongoing subscriptions will be 10 percent. These are all modest reductions on the previous rates, which have been cut down in recent years, but the flat 30 percent Play Store share is well and truly dead.

Sean Hollister:

By the end of the year, it will launch a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US, so that you can download and install third-party app stores (like the Epic Games Store) from the web without the friction that Google erected previously.

[…]

With Registered App Stores, another distinct program run by Google, the company is promising to not charge developers fees at all. “They don’t pay any ongoing fees related to any of the transactions happening in the apps,” says Samat. And installing them onto your Android device should be a relatively frictionless experience.

[…]

To be clear, “Registered App Stores” is not what a US court has ordered Google to create in the United States — Google must instead carry rival app stores inside of its own Google Play Store, and give them access to the full catalog of Android apps so they can meaningfully gain ground against Google and undo its monopoly.

Ian Carlos Campbell (Hacker News):

Google says that its updated fee structure will come to the EEA, the UK and the US by June 30, Australia by September 30, Korea and Japan by December 31 and the entire world by September 30, 2027. Meanwhile, the company’s updated Google Play Games Level Up program and new App Experience program will launch in the EEA, the UK, the US and Australia on September 30, before hitting the remaining regions alongside the updated fee structure. For any developers interested in offering their own app store, Google says it’ll launch its Registered App Stores program “with a version of a major Android release” before the end of the year. According to the company, the program will be available in other regions first before it comes to the US.

Sean Hollister (Slashdot):

On March 3rd, [Tim Sweeney] not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company over anything covered in the term sheet — Google’s app distribution practices, its fees, how it treats games and apps — he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google’s app store policies, too. He can’t criticize Google’s app store practices. In fact, he has to praise them.

The contract states that “Epic believes that the Google and Android platform, with the changes in this term sheet, are procompetitive and a model for app store / platform operations, and will make good faith efforts to advocate for the same.”

[…]

He may even have to appear in other courts around the world to defend this deal with Google, and Google gets to make sure his public statements are supportive of the deal from here on out.

And while Epic can still be part of the “Coalition for App Fairness,” the organization that Epic quietly and solely funded to be its attack dog against Google and Apple, he can only point that organization at Apple now.

Jeff Johnson:

This is obviously terrible, but I find it strange that all or most of the criticism is going to Sweeney, letting Google off the hook. Sweeney cynically agreed to the terms for financial benefit, but clearly the terms were demanded by Google, not by Sweeney.

Nick Heer:

Regardless, it is notable for these sweeping changes to be brought to Android phones worldwide in the coming years, while Apple’s App Store is a patchwork of region-specific policies difficult for developers to navigate. It is too bad there is not really competition between these stores. Most people who buy smartphones choose the platform as a whole and accept whatever software experience they are provided. They do not need to bother themselves with the business terms of each store. With the improvements to third-party stores on Android, it sets up the possibility for greater competition within that platform. Apple should do the same.

Ryan Jones:

Apple announced weird (and incomplete) redone fees for EU in June 2025, and said they would clear it up and have one rule set by the end of 2025… that didn’t happen.

I figured the drop dead date was Jan 2026 payment date to devs – that day is tomorrow.

And today Google announced very similar new rules. 🤔

[…]

After screaming for years, apparently everyone has forgotten about the June 2025 change and missed Jan 1 plan.

Previously:

Welcome (Back) to Macintosh

Nick Heer:

Snell converts the software score to an average letter grade of B to B–. Is Apple satisfied with shipping a consistently B product?

I confess the grade I have given has been lower than this average. My experience with Apple’s software for the past several years has been markedly less than fine. Given that my scores have deviated from those given by many others, I started to question my own fairness — which, given that I am merely A Guy giving my opinion about a multi-trillion-dollar corporation, is a little silly. Then again, software is made — mostly — by people, and the intent I have in participating in the Six Colors survey is that a person working at Apple might possibly read my feedback.

[…]

The most important factor is whether the features I use perform as expected. If it does so with unique design and flair, that is a welcome bonus, but it must be built on a solid foundation.

[…]

I am somewhat impressed by the breadth of Apple’s current offerings as I consider all the ways they are failing me, and I cannot help but wonder if it is that breadth that is contributing to the unreliability of this software. Or perhaps it is the company’s annual treadmill. There was a time when remaining on an older major version of an operating system or some piece of software meant you traded the excitement of new features for the predictability of stability. That trade-off no longer exists; software-as-a-service means an older version is just old, not necessarily more reliable.

Riccardo Mori:

I very much enjoy using older Mac OS versions, but not being able to browse the Web properly and securely, not being able to correctly sign in to check a Gmail account, not being able to fetch some RSS feeds because you can’t authenticate securely or establish a secure connection is very frustrating. Not having Dropbox work on my 2009 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.11 El Capitan is a minor annoyance and means I just won’t have access to certain personal files and that I’ll have to sync manually whatever I do on this other machine.

But if I put these two factors aside, there’s nothing about those older Macs, nothing about the older Mac OS versions they run that makes them less reliable. The crystallisation of the operating system they use and the software environment I find on them is exactly what makes them more reliable than the newer stuff. Just because an application has been discontinued by Apple — like Aperture — doesn’t mean it has stopped working or has stopped being reliable.

[…]

What’s really sad in all this is that many of those “problems with the fundamentals of the operating system and first-party apps” aren’t structural; that is, they’re not derived from historical faults or shortcomings in the fundamentals of the operating system. They often are the result of more recent bugs breaking something that used to work or a solution that had already been found, and said bugs have been allowed to fester thanks to an unsustainable yearly release cycle that forces engineers to work on new features instead of fixing what broke down in previous iterations.

Nick Heer:

The cycle of having a major new version ready to preview by June and shipping in September means the amount of time Apple spends focusing on the current version must necessarily shrink. How many teams at the company do you suppose are, right now, working on MacOS 26 when WWDC is a little over three months away? Engineering efforts are undoubtably beginning to prioritize MacOS 27. There are new features to prepare, after all.

Marcin Wichary:

Is what we’re seeing overall is really just Apple losing the battle with complexity?

[…]

Today, Apple seems successful on paper, so the pressure needs to come from inside, from someone high up enough to recognize that what Apple is doing vis-a-vis software quality is not sustainable and hasn’t been for some time now. That the bill already came due on all of the decisions where systems thinking and deep testing and focus and preventative maintenance and paying off design debt have been deprioritized in favour of another shiny launch event that stretches the teams and platforms even thinner.

Jesper (Hacker News):

With the possible exception of individual dodgy Time Machine protocol implementations from third parties, all of the issues are directly traceable to components fully in Apple’s control. None of these issues are impossible for Apple to fix. All of them are incumbent on them to do so. Nearly all of them have persisted for at least two major OS releases and multiple Macs.

In the middle of all this, what Apple chooses to focus on is to implement a redesign that no one asked for, that butchers both the most conceivably fundamental usability and the visual pleasantness its user base has self-selected its platforms for; which only saving grace is that it is half-assed enough to not actually really change some things too badly, compared to what it could have been like. Although, had I upgraded to macOS Tahoe, chances are on top of the visual change, I would have been treated to basic Apple Event infrastructure falling apart and stopping working causing hangs, instability and unpredictability.

[…]

The hardware is great and no doubt M5 and M6 variants will run circles around M1, but if I have to sink down further into this bog, that price is too high to pay - a common enough sentiment that it is a matter of public interest to document downgradability or attempting to block dark pattern upgrades.

[…]

My hope is that Macintosh is not just one of these empires that was at the height of its power and then disintegrated because of warring factions, satiated and uncurious rulers, and droughts for which no one was prepared, ruining crops no one realized were essential for survival.

Brent Simmons:

I don’t want to quote the best parts — just go read it if you haven’t yet.

Garrett Murray:

I genuinely hope Jesper is correct here and my pessimism proves wrong in the long run—that the current version of Apple has been so damaged by a decade of simplification and profit obsession, losing so many valuable people who could effect meaningful change along the way.

Joe Lion:

How did the post end? Sorry, Liquid Glass wouldn’t let me get to the bottom of the page

David Deller:

As of today, all mentions of Liquid Glass have disappeared from developer.apple.com (the main home page). This may or may not mean anything… but I’ve been watching for it.

Previously:

Apple Watch Fitness Regressions

Gus Mueller (Mastodon):

In episode 680 of ATP, at about 6:12 in, Marco Arment goes off on watchOS 26’s fitness app and trashes all the changes. And I couldn’t agree more with him.

I thought it was just me who hated all the changes, and the slow animations, and the workout picker. It’s such a regression I don’t even know where to start.

[…]

If I could downgrade my watch safely, I would.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-18): Kaveh:

They are so bad, I have no idea how any competent UX designer could have okayed this, and I’m not a competent UX designer by trade.

It used to be trivial to start your working deterministically with a tap or two, now you have to stop your workout entirely to start the bleeping watch workout. I really want to understand how this got approved and shipped at a company that [used to] pride itself on UI/UX design.

garland:

I guess I’m not the only one bothered by the changes to the watch workout app. Sometimes when you change the UI just for the sake of changing stuff, you make it worse.

Joe Rosensteel:

Do you think a major feature of watchOS 27 will be that pushing the “play” button on a Workout actually starts the workout, or do you think Apple is going to hold that back for watchOS 28?

Update (2026-03-20): See also: Accidental Tech Podcast.

How Long Will My Mac’s SSD Last?

Howard Oakley:

To work out how long you can expect your Mac’s internal SSD to last before it reaches that cycle limit, all you need do is to measure how much data is written to it, and once that is 3,000 times the capacity of the SSD, you should expect it to fail through wear. Fortunately, SSDs keep track of the amount of data written to them over their lifetime. This can be accessed through better SSD utilities like DriveDx, and I even have a feature in Mints that will do that for most internal SSDs.

[…]

Unless you work with huge media files, by far your worst enemy is swap space used for virtual memory. When the first M1 Macs were released, base models with just 8 GB of memory and 128 GB internal SSDs were most readily available, with custom builds following later. As a result, many of those who set out to assess Apple’s new Macs ended up stress-testing those with inadequate memory and storage for the tasks they ran. Many noticed rapid changes in their SSD wear indicators, and some were getting worryingly close to the end of their expected working life after just three years.

Previously:

Thursday, March 5, 2026

macOS 26.3.1

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

According to Apple’s release notes for the update, it adds support for the new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. Apple has also released a firmware update for the new displays.

See also: Howard Oakley and Mr. Macintosh.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-06): Patrick Wardle:

Apple: “3rd-party security tools can’t run in the kernel because they might panic.”

Also Apple: kicks us out and replaces us with their EndpointSecurity kext ...which can be trivially panicked from userland, taking down every security tool + the whole system (macOS 26.3.1)! 🙄

iOS 26.3.1 and iPadOS 26.3.1

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

According to Apple’s release notes, the update adds support for the new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR, and it includes unspecified bug fixes.

Previously:

BenQ MA270S 5K Display

Andrew Liszewski:

It was first announced last month without pricing or availability details, but BenQ has now shared all the specs for its new 27-inch 5K display designed for Mac users. The MA270S matches the size and 5,120 x 2,880 resolution of the new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR Apple announced yesterday, including a Nano Gloss surface providing improved viewing angles.

The BenQ MA270S will be available through the company’s online store and retailers including Amazon this month for $999, making it $600 cheaper than Apple’s new $1,599 Studio Display. However, it’s not quite as fully featured as Apple’s latest monitor. The MA270S delivers 99 percent of the P3 color gamut, but is limited to 500 nits of brightness, compared to 600 for the Studio Display.

It has Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 5, but 4 USB ports instead of 2, plus 2 HDMI. There’s no camera. You do get a height-adjustable stand (that can also pivot) and a power button.

Zac Hall:

BenQ’s MA-series is especially designed for color accuracy when paired with a MacBook.

Previously:

Avoiding Tahoe

Rob Griffiths (Hacker News):

I have macOS Tahoe on my laptop, but I'm keeping my desktop Mac on macOS Sequoia for now. Which means I have the joy of seeing things like this wonderful notification on a regular basis.

Or I did, until I found a way to block them, at least in 90 day chunks.

[…]

The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce policies on Macs in your organization, even if that "organization" is one Mac on your desk. One of the available policies is the ability to block activities related to major macOS updates for up to 90 days at a time (the max the policy allows), which seems like exactly what I needed.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

I followed Griffiths’s instructions about a week or so ago, and I’ve been enjoying a no-red-badge System Settings icon ever since. And the Tahoe upgrade doesn’t even show up in General → Software Update. With this profile installed, the confusing interface presented after clicking the “ⓘ” button next to any available update cannot result in your upgrading to 26 Tahoe accidentally.

Liam Proven:

The Reg FOSS desk has an entry-level MacBook Air, with just 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD storage, and doesn’t have room for the new OS version. We also don’t like the sound of it, so for six months or so, we’ve been dismissing the upgrade reminders – but in recent weeks Apple is making them more prominent. For us, this handy little tool arrived at an opportune moment.

[…]

It’s a neat little hack, and we know of a few people who tried out Tahoe and disliked it enough to do manual downgrades. We suspect this little tool may prove temporarily quite popular.

Chris Pirillo:

AFAICT, MacOS Tahoe is worse than malware because it disguises itself as an upgrade.

Andrew Cunningham:

My general approach to software redesigns is to just roll with them and let their imperfections and quirks become background noise over time—it’s part of my job to point out problems where I see them, but I also need to keep up with new releases whether I’m in love with them or not.

But this person has no such job requirement, and they had two questions: Can I downgrade this? And if so, how?

The answer to the first question is “yes, usually,” and Apple provides some advice scattered across multiple documentation pages. This is an attempt to bring all of those steps together into one page, aimed directly at new Mac buyers who are desperate to switch from Tahoe to the more-familiar macOS 15 Sequoia.

Howard Oakley:

Although the way that macOS updates itself has changed beyond all recognition over the last few years, we tend to assume that it still works much as it did in the past, downloading a single update file, decompressing and installing that. This series of articles takes a deeper dive into what actually happens, and tries to explain how it differs from previous package updates.

Andy Ihnatko:

  • Software Update respects the fact that a System Update would be disruptive to your productivity at this time. Would Sir or Madam care to update tonight, automatically?
  • Software Update wishes to remind Sir or Madam that this new Update, which Software Update informed you of yesterday, is available.
  • If Sir or Madam thinks that Software Update cannot keep this up alllll week if necessary, then Sir or Madam doesn’t know Software Update very well.

[…]

Listen to me, you feckless, thumb-sucking wetbag: You will Update. Your System Software. Right. The Frick. NOW. It’s not even a demand. It’s reality.

[…]

The longer I delay a major MacOS system update (in this case, macOS Tahoe 26.3), the less stable my Mac becomes…until the whole thing stops working. This stinks.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-06): Chris Turner:

First thing I noted was that it applied to macOS 15.7.3; it was written back in January of this year, and I had already updated to 15.7.4. So I read through the comments to see if anyone had actually addressed this issue of Rob’s solution working or not with the latter version. No one had, but Jeff Hirsch had left a comment that had me running off to System Settings to give it a whirl:

Go into Software Update, switch your Beta Updates to the macOS Sequoia Public Beta channel and enjoy your nag free Sequoia experience. Done and done.

No profiles, no expiration. Just a quick and painless removal of those persistent Tahoe upgrade nags.

Yes! This is the kind of thing I was looking for: something simple, easily undoable when the time comes, and I don’t have to worry about a lot of copying and pasting in Terminal.

If you don’t see the Beta Updates options, enter this command in Terminal:

open 'x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.Software-Update-Settings.extension?action=showBetaUpdates'

Previously:

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

MacBook Neo

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, Slashdot):

MacBook Neo starts with a beautiful Apple design, featuring a durable aluminum enclosure in an array of gorgeous colors — blush, indigo, silver, and a fresh new citrus. Its stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display brings websites, photos, videos, and apps to life with high resolution and brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through everyday tasks, from browsing the web and streaming content, to editing photos, exploring creative hobbies, or using AI capabilities across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos, compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of battery life, MacBook Neo allows users to go all day on a single charge. A 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio deliver crisp, immersive sound. MacBook Neo also features Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for comfortable and precise typing, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad with support for intuitive gestures, enabling smooth and precise control.

[…]

And starting at just $599 and $499 for education, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever, providing an unprecedented combination of quality and value.

The base model has 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. For $699 you can get a 512 GB SSD and Touch ID. Both models have one USB 3 port and one USB 2 port (both with the USB-C connector). At 2.7 pounds, it’s the same weight as the MacBook Air.

All in all, this looks like big improvement over the M1 MacBook Air (except that it can’t run Sequoia). It’s the same price as the iPad Air (sans keyboard) and iPhone 17e. I don’t know why this took so many years, but I think it’s going to be a hit.

Jason Snell:

No $599 Mac laptop is going to exist without compromises, but they’re surprisingly minimal, in my opinion.

[…]

If you’re wondering if an iPhone processor can really drive a Mac, let me reprint this chart that I posted last year[…]

The A18 Pro is faster at single-core than the M3 and slightly faster at multi-core than the M1. The biggest limitation is the 8 GB of RAM, which is fine for many uses, but not for Xcode.

Mario Guzmán:

They were so, so close! The Citrus should have been a Key Lime instead. Leave the Indigo as is and boom, you’d have the iBook G3 SE colors from 2000. 😄

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): John Siracusa:

The A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo is 19% faster than the M2 Ultra in the Mac Pro in single-core performance (Geekbench 6).

The MacBook Neo starts at $599.

The Mac Pro, which is still for sale, starts at $6,999.

Colin Cornaby:

The display has a resolution of 2408x1506. It uses an A18 Pro CPU - same CPU used in the iPhone 16 Pro. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 2868× 1320 display.

If a game runs well on an iPhone 16 Pro, it should run well on a MacBook Neo. The display resolutions are nearly the same.

Andrew Cunningham (MacRumors):

The screen is also a bit of a step down from the MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch 2560×1664 screen. Apple says it’s a 13-inch LCD with a 2408×1506 resolution and 500 nits of maximum brightness. It does not support the P3 wide color gamut or Apple’s True Tone technology, unlike the old M1 MacBook Air. It has rounded upper display corners like the current MacBook Airs and Pros, but doesn’t include the notch. The MacBook is also capable of driving a single external display—up to 4K at 60 Hz, disqualifying it from powering Apple’s 5K Studio Displays.

Stephen Hackett:

Here’s a list of what separates the MacBook Neo from the $1099 MacBook Air, besides their sizes[…]

Rui Carmo:

I know a bunch of people will disagree, but this is the most relevant Mac announcement in years[…]

[…]

I would swap my iPad Pro for it in a flash (if it had a 12” display, that is). And that is probably exactly why it is that big.

M.G. Siegler:

I still stand by it: this is the smartest move Apple has made in years.

[…]

I’ve long been baffled by the notion that Apple would cede the education market – one they long dominated when I was a kid – to cheap Windows devices and more recently, Chromebooks. Yes, they clearly thought the iPad could be the answer there. But that always felt a bit off. Sure, the iPad is a brilliant device and great for some things in classrooms. But for a lot of work, including school work, you’re going to want a “real” computer. Try as they might with keyboards and trackpads, Apple has not been able to morph the iPad into that real computer. And they keep insisting they don’t want to! (Even if their constant tweaks suggest otherwise.)

That’s fine. But again, it doesn’t work in the classroom. Even if it works 90% of the time, it needs to work 100% of the time for students. And the MacBook Neo can. Finally.

Mr. Macintosh:

The Neo no longer includes a physical indicator light. macOS now displays the camera in use indicator in the menu bar whenever the webcam is active.

I’m interested to see what my Apple security researcher friends think about this. Hopefully Apple has implemented protections to properly isolate this new webcam notification.

Update (2026-03-05): John Gruber:

The MacBook Neo looks and feels every bit like a MacBook. Solid aluminum. Good keyboard (no backlighting, but supposedly the same mechanism as in other post-2019 MacBooks — felt great in my quick testing). Good trackpad (no Force Touch — it actually physically clicks, but you can click anywhere, not just the bottom). Good bright display (500 nits max, same as the MacBook Air). Surprisingly good speakers, in a new side-firing configuration. Without even turning either laptop on, you can just see and feel that the MacBook Neo is a vastly superior device.

[…]

I came into today’s event experience expecting a starting price of $799 for the Neo — $300 less than the new $1,099 price for the base M5 MacBook Air (which, in defense of that price, starts with 512 GB storage). $599 is a fucking statement. Apple is coming after this market. I think they’re going to sell a zillion of these things, and “almost half” of new Mac buyers being new to the platform is going to become “more than half”. The MacBook Neo is not a footnote or hobby, or a pricing stunt to get people in the door before upselling them to a MacBook Air. It’s the first major new Mac aimed at the consumer market in the Apple Silicon era.

[…]

And while the ports aren’t labeled, if you plug an external display into the “wrong” port, you’ll get an on-screen notification suggesting you plug it into the other port.

[…]

8 GB of RAM is not a lot, but with Apple Silicon it really is enough for typical consumer productivity apps. (If they update the Neo annually and next year’s model gets the A19 Pro, it will move not to 16 GB of RAM but 12 GB.)

As I said above, I think 8 GB is OK for this model, but I still object to this narrative from Apple that Apple Silicon somehow makes 8 GB better, that it’s really “analogous to 16GB on other systems.” That even seems backwards because the unified memory architecture means that some of the RAM will be used for graphics rather than apps.

Tim Hardwick:

Apple’s low-cost MacBook Neo is compatible with the company’s new Studio Displays, but its output will be scaled to 4K resolution at 60Hz.

Joe Rossignol:

In short, Apple said MacBook Neo sounds fresh.

“We wanted something that felt fun and friendly, and fresh, and felt like it really suited the spirit of this product,” said Colleen Novielli, a Mac product marketing director, in conversation with TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff.

BasicAppleGuy:

MacBook Neo v. MBA Size comparison
Height: 1.27 cm (0.50 inch) v. 1.13 cm (0.44 inch)
Width: 29.75 cm (11.71 inches) v. 30.41 cm (11.97 inches)
Depth: 20.64 cm (8.12 inches) v. 21.5 cm (8.46 inches)
Weight: 1.23 kg (2.7 pounds) v. 1.23 kg (2.7 pounds)

Julio Ojeda-Zapata and Adam Engst:

MacBook Neo has a significantly smaller battery than the MacBook Air—36.5 watt-hours versus 53.8 watt‑hours. The smaller battery won’t yield much cost savings, but its reduced weight may be necessary to offset other components that cost less but weigh more.

[…]

Instead of the Force Touch trackpad introduced with the 12-inch MacBook that relies on pressure sensors and a haptic click simulation, Apple advertises the MacBook Neo as using a Multi-Touch trackpad. If that’s the same trackpad as before, it has a physical click mechanism that doesn’t work as well at the edges and is more likely to fail. However, it’s undoubtedly cheaper and still supports multi-finger gestures. It doesn’t support the Force Touch features like deep pressing a file in the Finder to open it in Quick Look, but we doubt many people use them.

[…]

A MacBook Neo is perfectly adequate for writing short papers in Pages, creating presentations in Keynote, analyzing science lab data in Numbers, browsing the Web in Safari, keeping up with email in Mail, and chatting with friends in Messages.

[…]

However, the MacBook Neo isn’t appropriate for all students. We’d recommend that college-bound students stick with the MacBook Air, even if they don’t anticipate needing its full power. It’s hard to predict what might be necessary during college, and a student may find themselves wanting to edit video, produce music, run stats apps, and more.

David Sparks:

I’ve been teaching people how to use Macs for a long time. The number one barrier has always been cost. People want to try the Mac, but they can’t justify the price. That excuse just evaporated.

Warner Crocker:

I support a number of folks, both older and younger, who only use computers in the same basic way they use their smartphones. I’m thinking Apple’s new MacBook Neo, with a starting price of $599 will hit many of their sweet spots.

Victor Wynne:

I was overall impressed with the company managing to bring decent specs and industry-leading build quality to a $599 laptop. I expect holiday sales later this year will be chart topping.

[…]

There being no RAM upgrade beyond the stock 8GBs is disappointing, but not surprising necessarily. I think within a year or two a newer A-series chip will be added, and that will result in a RAM bump to 12GBs like we’ve seen with recent iPhone releases.

Jason Anthony Guy:

I figured $800 would be as low as Apple would be willing to go for its “low cost” laptop. Under $800 seemed improbable. Under $600 was laughably impossible.

Well, Apple went and did it. They built the seemingly impossible: a sub-$600 laptop which—despite its limitations and compromises—is a perfectly calibrated, entry-level computer that’s worthy of being called “MacBook.”

Andy Ihnatko:

To explain it in breakfast terms: Apple can’t get itself excited about making and selling a $6 takeout bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. But it’ll apply an almost terrifying amount of institutional energy towards the development of a $60 hotel restaurant breakfast.

This sort of attitude is usually cited as one of Apple’s strengths. It isn’t. It frequently holds Apple back. “A strip of bacon, a scrambled egg, and a slice of American cheese on a toasted English muffin” is a straightforward and unremarkable piece of design and engineering, but:

It fills a universal need. It’s immensely popular. It’s precisely what millions of people want. It’s relevant and it’s flawlessly aligned. It can be prepared to a high standard, quickly, efficiently, and in large quantities, by an worker with little training, using the facility’s existing manufacturing lines and tooling.

Eric Schwarz:

With the color choices, $499 education price, and being enough computer for many tasks, I suspect these will sell like crazy—K-12 institutions looking to move away or supplement Chromebooks now have a cheaper option, college students on a budget can still get a Mac. The $100 upgrade to double the storage and add Touch ID will probably feel worthwhile for some, but the low-end model hits an incredible price point for any Mac.

Are there compromises? Absolutely, but I think that Apple made good choices on what to cut compared with the MacBook Air. Thinking to a number of past budget Macs, they usually hit a price point, but were quite terrible in major ways.

See also: Mac Power Users Talk.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-06): Juli Clover (Hacker News):

The MacBook Neo earned a single-core score of 3461 and a multi-core score of 8668, along with a Metal score of 31286.

Here's how the Neo's scores compare to iPhone 16 Pro and other devices that make apt comparisons:

  • iPhone 16 Pro - 3445 single-core, 8624 multi-core, 32575 Metal
  • M1 MacBook Air - 2346 single-core, 8342 multi-core, 33148 Metal
  • M4 MacBook Air - 3696 single-core, 14730 multi-core, 54630 Metal
  • M3 iPad Air - 3048 single-core, 11678 multi-core, 44395 Metal
  • iPad 11 - 2587 single-core, 6036 multi-core, 19395 Metal

Ryan Christoffel:

Why did it take so long for Apple to offer a Mac at such an affordable price? Schulze remarks that many people have wanted more affordable Apple products for a long time.

Ternus responds: “Sure. And I think that’s why: the bar is high. We didn’t want to do it until we could do it really, really well, and build a Mac that we were proud of.”

Why couldn’t they before? Was it just not a priority or is there something new here that they’ve not yet discussed?

Jeff Johnson:

MacBook Neo […] has the potential to be one of the most important Macs in history. I say this without intention to exaggerate.

[…]

The base model MacBook Neo has only 8 GB of RAM, which has drawn some criticism, but my M1 Mac mini has only 8 GB of RAM, and its performance always seemed fine, so I don’t think the specs will be a problem for consumers.

[…]

MacBook Neo, with a dramatically lower price, has the potential to cut into the iPad market, particularly for iPad Pro, and as far as I’m concerned, that would be a positive result.

Jeremy White:

When you try to figure out why the Ultra 3 costs so much more than the Neo, let alone its Watch siblings, things get trickier for Apple.

GregsGadgets:

Ok, I have a problem: I only have $700 and I can’t decide between the MacBook Neo and this beautiful set of Mac Pro wheels. Any suggestions?

Mr. Macintosh:

This is really exciting to see! The new MacBook Neo is already starting to see shipping delays.

See also: Accidental Tech Podcast, Dithering, Six Colors Podcast.

Previously:

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

MacBook Pro 2026

Apple (Hacker News, TidBITS, MacRumors, ArsTechnica):

Apple today announced the latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max, bringing game-changing performance and AI capabilities to the world’s best pro laptop.

[…]

The new MacBook Pro includes N1, an Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, bringing improved performance and reliability to wireless connections. It also offers up to 24 hours of battery life; a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display with a nano-texture option; a wide array of connectivity[…]

[…]

The new MacBook Pro delivers up to 2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation, reaching speeds of up to 14.5GB/s and accelerating workflows for professionals working across 4K and 8K video projects, LLMs, and complex datasets. MacBook Pro with M5 Pro now comes standard with 1TB of storage, while MacBook Pro with M5 Max now comes standard with 2TB. And the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes standard with 1TB of storage.

Seems like a great incremental update.

Juli Clover:

The starting price of the M5 MacBook Pro was $1,599, but now it starts at $1,699 because of the updated storage. While the starting price has gone up, the price for SSD upgrades has technically shifted down.

[…]

Upgrading to 2TB from the base starting storage used to be $600, but now the 2TB upgrade is $400. The 4TB upgrade is $1,000, $200 less than the $1,200 that it used to cost.

John Gruber:

The MacBook Pro Tech Specs page is a good place to start to compare the entire M5 MacBook Pro lineup.

I wish Apple would have permalinks for these pages so that I could link to content that wouldn’t be different next year.

Also worth noting — Apple’s RAM pricing remains unchanged, despite the spike in memory prices industry-wide.

It’s the least they could do given the huge margins in the past.

Last year you needed buy one with the high-end M4 Max chip to get 64 GB; now you can configure a MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro with 64 GB.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): Mr. Macintosh:

Looks like Apple updated the keyboard on the new M5 16‑inch MacBook Pro. The Backspace, Return, Shift, and Tab labels are gone, replaced with symbols instead.

Kyle Hughes:

I think the M5 Macs are likely the last ones built on procurement agreements pre-memory-and-storage-shortage. I predict that shortage will not end in the next few years and will affect all parts of the consumer computer economy because I predict that the marginal return on silicon in data centers will increase exponentially with the scaling of AI. I predict this will dramatically drive up the cost of products for consumers or dramatically drive down their supply.

Update (2026-03-20): Jason Snell:

To summarize, the M5 CPU core is about 15% faster than the M4 generation, and the Pro and Max 15- or 18-core CPU configurations are going to blow my 14-core M4 Max out of the water. My review unit is 23% faster than my M4 Max laptop.

[…]

In the end, the question for upgraders coming from older Apple silicon MacBook Pros will be: Is it worth it to get a more powerful chip to do whatever it is you’re doing? And, secondarily: Are you willing to wait to see what Apple might have up its sleeve with the first iteration of an entirely new design, if that’s indeed what’s coming?

Andrew Cunningham:

In our testing, the fully enabled M5 Max’s single-core performance is about 10 percent higher than the fully enabled version of the M4 Max in last year’s 16-inch MacBook Pro. The multi-core performance improvements are more variable (Cinebench R23, which shows a 30 percent improvement, seems to be an outlier), but most tests also show a modest 10 or 12 percent improvement.

Graphics performance improvements are slightly more robust, measuring between 20 and 35 percent depending on the test. Apple suggests you may see more uplift on GPU compute workloads that can leverage the neural accelerator Apple has built into each M5-family GPU core.

Joe Rossignol:

The first reviews of the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with Apple’s M5 Pro and M5 Max chips were published today by selected publications and YouTube channels, ahead of the laptops launching on Wednesday.

MacBook Air 2026

Apple (Hacker News, TidBITS, MacRumors):

Apple today announced the new MacBook Air with M5, bringing exceptional performance and expanded AI capabilities to the world’s most popular laptop. M5 features a faster CPU and next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, enabling MacBook Air to power through a variety of workflows, from creative projects to complex AI tasks. MacBook Air now comes standard with double the starting storage at 512GB with faster SSD technology, and is configurable up to 4TB, so customers can keep their most important work on hand. Apple’s N1 wireless chip delivers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seamless connectivity on the go.

This looks really good. There are still two Thunderbolt ports, plus MagSafe, and a 32 GB RAM ceiling. The RAM pricing is confusing. The base model with the 8-core GPU is $1,099 with 16 GB of RAM, and you can’t upgrade its memory. For $1,199, you can get the model with 10 GPU cores, and then it makes available a $400 option to upgrade to 32 GB of RAM, but clicking on that shows a total of $1,499 rather than $1,599.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): John Gruber:

Base storage went from 256 to 512 GB, but the base price went from the magic $999 to $1,100[…] Presumably, those in the market for a $999 MacBook will buy the new […] lower-priced MacBook “Neo”[…]

Previously:

Update (2026-03-20): Dan Moren:

Gone, in this generation (including the new MacBook Pros), are several keys’ text labels: tab, caps lock, return, shift, and delete. In each case, they’ve been replaced by glyphs, of the same kind long used for keyboard shortcuts in drop-down menus.

[…]

The second thing that I noticed was that Apple is now shipping a new power adapter with the M5 Air. Previously, the company included either a 30W adapter for the base model or a 35W adapter with 2 USB-C ports. With this model, we’re back to a single port “Dynamic Power Adapter” that is rated for 40W with a maximum of 60W. It’s a little smaller than the old dual port design—and, interestingly, lacks the standard holes on the prongs that you find on most plugs, which can add some degree of stability to the connection—but can handle fast charging with the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and Air, as well as the 11-inch and 13-inch M5 iPad Pro models. Honestly, I’ll miss the convenience of the second USB-C port, though that adapter model is still available for purchase separately from Apple.

[…]

The Air remains a truly great Mac. Those who butt up against the limitations of the Neo will be more than comfortable here: after all, it’s unquestionably better than the Neo in pretty much every way—with the exception of its color options. There’s a clear value proposition with the Air: pay more to get more. And that higher cost is reasonable for what you get, especially when you compare the starting prices of the MacBook Pro.

Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max

Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):

The chips are built using a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture. This innovative design combines two dies into a single system on a chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. M5 Pro and M5 Max feature a new 18-core CPU architecture. It includes six of the highest-performing core design, now called super cores, that are the world’s fastest CPU core. Alongside these cores are 12 all-new performance cores, optimized for power-efficient, multithreaded workloads. Collectively, the CPU significantly boosts performance by up to 30 percent for pro workloads. The GPU scales up the next-generation architecture introduced in M5 to an up-to-40-core GPU. With a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 Pro and M5 Max are over 4x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation.

Looking backward, the naming is confusing in that the “super” cores are the same as the M5 performance cores. They could have instead kept the “performance” and “efficiency” names and given the new type of core a new name. It’s not obvious what would could be, though. Looking forward, the naming does seem to accurately convey that the new “performance” cores are in the middle and closer to “super” than to “efficiency”.

Here’s a summary of the cores situation:

RegularProMax
M14p/4e8p/2e8p/2e
M24p/4e8p/4e8p/4e
M34p/4e6p/6e12p/4e
M44p/6e10p/4e12p/4e
M54s/6e6s/12p6s/12p

I’m pleased that I can get the maximum number of CPU cores and 64 GB of RAM without having to go Max.

Andrew Cunningham:

Apple’s approach here is different—for example, the M5 Pro is not just a pair of M5 chips welded together. Rather, Apple has one chiplet handling the CPU and most of the I/O, and a second one that’s mainly for graphics, both built on the same 3nm TSMC manufacturing process. The first silicon die is always the same, whether you get an M5 Pro or M5 Max.

[…]

And now, in the middle, we have a new type of “performance core” used exclusively in the M5 Pro and M5 Max.

These are, in fact, a new, third type of CPU core design, distinct from both the super cores and the M5’s efficiency cores. They apparently use designs similar to the super cores but prioritize multi-threaded performance rather than fast single-core performance. Apple’s approach with the new performance cores sounds similar to the one AMD uses in its laptop silicon: it has larger Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPU cores, optimized for peak clock speeds and higher power usage, and smaller Zen 4c and Zen 5c cores that support the same capabilities but run slower and are optimized to use less die space.

Jesper:

“Maxing out at over 614 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, the M5 Max SoC architecture is more efficient than ever at calculating specular highlights on user interface componentry that needn’t be translucent,” notes Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): John Gruber:

Another way to think about it is that there are regular efficiency cores in the plain M5, and new higher-performing efficiency cores called “performance” in the M5 Pro and M5 Max. The problem is that the old M1–M4 names were clear — one CPU core type was fast but optimized for efficiency so they called it “efficiency”, and the other core type was efficient but optimized for performance so they called it “performance”. Now, the new “performance” core types are the optimized-for-efficiency CPU cores in the Pro and Max chips, and despite their name, they’re not the most performant cores.

Thomas P. Moonis:

This affects Apple in other ways, too. The “Air” isn’t the lightest or thinnest iPad or MacBook (starting tomorrow, in the latter case, but also true from 2015-2019 when the plain MacBook existed). The M(n) Max chips are not the maximum-performance chips in the lineup.

Jason Snell:

Here’s the backstory: With every new generation of Apple’s Mac-series processors, I’ve gotten the impression from Apple execs that they’ve been a little frustrated with the perception that their “lesser” efficiency cores were weak sauce. I’ve lost count of the number of briefings and conversations I’ve had where they’ve had to go out of their way to point out that, actually, the lesser cores on an M-series chip are quite fast on their own, in addition to being very good at saving power!

Om Malik:

M5 is different. It is the first proof that the original M1 idea is durable enough to survive a fundamental change in how the chips are built today and in the future. The capabilities of the new design reflect that.

For example, while the core counts didn’t change, Apple put a Neural Accelerator inside every GPU core. M5 Pro still has 20 GPU cores. M5 Max still has 40. Same as M4. But each core now does double duty. That is how Apple claims 4x the AI compute without adding more silicon. The GPU is becoming an AI processor that sometimes does graphics.

[…]

Once you’ve proven you can split the chip and keep unified memory working across the pieces, the question changes. It is no longer “how big can we make this chip?” It is “how many pieces can we connect, and in how many dimensions?”

Update (2026-03-06): Joe Rossignol:

In this unconfirmed result, the M5 Max with an 18-core CPU achieved a score of 29,233 for multi-core CPU performance, which tops the 27,726 score achieved by the Mac Studio's M3 Ultra chip with a 32-core CPU. M5 Max is now the fastest Apple silicon chip ever, and it even topped every other consumer PC processor in the Geekbench database.

Update (2026-03-20): Anton Shilov (Slashdot, Hacker News):

Apple’s desktop and notebook processors traditionally lead the pack in single-thread workloads, as industry-leading single-thread performance has been the company’s focus for a long time. However, Apple’s M5 Max processors not only outperform rivals by a huge margin in single-thread workloads, but beat all of them — including the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX — in multi-thread workloads in the Geekbench 6 benchmark.

There is a major catch here as the Geekbench 6 multi-thread benchmark is a brief, bursty test intended to mimic common consumer tasks such as archive compression, PDF processing, and image editing. Its short runtime and bursty nature prevent it from fully stressing ultra-high-core-count processors like the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX.

Furthermore, many of the suite’s multi-threaded subtests scale efficiently only to roughly 8 – 32 threads, which leaves much of such CPUs’ parallel capacity idle, but which creates an almost perfect environment for Apple’s CPUs that feature a relatively modest number of cores, but which evolve noticeably in terms of per-core performance from one generation to another.

Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

Apple (Hacker News, Reddit, MacRumors):

The new Studio Display features a 12MP Center Stage camera, now with improved image quality and support for Desk View; a studio-quality three-microphone array; and an immersive six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio. It also now includes powerful Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, providing more downstream connectivity for high-speed accessories or daisy-chaining displays. The all-new Studio Display XDR takes the pro display experience to the next level. Its 27-inch 5K Retina XDR display features an advanced mini-LED backlight with over 2,000 local dimming zones, up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, and 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, in addition to a wider color gamut, so content jumps off the screen with breathtaking contrast, vibrancy, and accuracy. With its 120Hz refresh rate, Studio Display XDR is even more responsive to content in motion, and Adaptive Sync dynamically adjusts frame rates for content like video playback or graphically intense games. Studio Display XDR offers the same advanced camera and audio system as Studio Display, as well as Thunderbolt 5 connectivity to simplify pro workflow setups. The new Studio Display with a tilt-adjustable stand starts at $1,599, and Studio Display XDR with a tilt- and height-adjustable stand starts at $3,299. Both are available in standard or nano-texture glass options[…]

The old, terrible camera was also 12MP. I’d rather have an iPhone rear camera and no Center Stage. It seems like the display panel is the same, as are the limited number of ports and the price. I wonder whether it still has an A13 and no power button.

The price premium for 5K Retina displays remains surprising. A 1× Dell 27-inch display is $189.99, a 4K one is $239.99, and you don’t have to pay extra to get matte.

Matt Birchler:

I’m incredibly disappointed. I continue to think the Studio Display is for people who care about everything in a computer monitor besides the display itself.

[…]

There are people who really value physical design, and that’s fine, but if you want a great monitor that looks better than this (yes, even at 5K), there are other options, all of which cost a good deal less.

[…]

Compared to the $6,000 Pro Display XDR Apple was selling before, [the Studio Display XDR is] a steal at $3,300. And truthfully, it looks like a great monitor. 5K 120Hz mini-LED with 2,304 local dimming zones is undeniably a compelling combo.

[…]

I think what bums me out about Apple’s display lineup is that they are only serving the absolute highest end of the market, they have no truly “consumer” displays.

Dan Moren:

By default, the Studio Display still comes with a tilt-adjustable stand, though there are options for both a height-adjustable stand or a VESA mount. The Studio Display XDR gets the height-adjustable stand by default, and can also be configured with a VESA mount.

Juli Clover:

According to Apple’s list of compatible Macs, neither model will work with an Intel-based Mac.

Juli Clover:

According to Apple, Macs that have an M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2, or M3 will only support the Studio Display XDR at 60Hz.

Tim Hardwick:

Apple today discontinued its Pro Display XDR, following the introduction of a new 27-inch Studio Display XDR monitor.

Wade Tregaskis:

All in all… meh.

28% fewer pixels for 34% fewer dollars – so technically better value, if you don’t really care about screen real-estate. But that extra real estate is really valuable, and Apple have now apparently ceded the large display market to… well, mostly the tumbleweeds. Sure, there’s technically other 6k displays, like the LG, the Dell, or the Asus, but while they have some advantages – less than half the price, most notably – they have real big disadvantages – like low brightness and poor contrast ratios.

[…]

I didn’t bother including the audio & camera aspects because I’m genuinely confused as to who, in the market for an expensive display, would care? If you’re doing photography there’s no sound anyway, and if you’re doing videography in this price range you should be using real speakers or headphones.

[…]

I’m also choosing to overlook the firmware, which I assume uses the same weird, bastardised, glitchy version of iOS as the prior Studio Display model.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): Simon:

The same $1599 base price for the same 5K panel they introduced all the way back in 2014. What a missed opportunity. And they still consider a proper adjustable stand just another source of extra income.

Jason Anthony Guy:

This update—which is mainly about Thunderbolt 5 and improved microphones and speakers—is underwhelming. Selling it for the same prices as the outgoing monitor is even more disappointing.

Mr. Macintosh:

User: The industry is moving towards larger displays
Apple: XDR 32" = dead
User: uh ok.. we also wanted a 27" 120hz Studio Display
Apple: ok. Studio Display XDR 27" for $3299
User: What? no that’s not...
Apple: enjoy

Adam Engst:

Few Pro Display XDR owners will likely switch to the Studio Display XDR. While it has some improved specs, it’s still significantly smaller—who’s going to give up a 32-inch 6K display for a 27-inch 5K display?

But on its own, the Studio Display is important. By bringing mini-LED technology, HDR support, and professional color accuracy to a 27-inch display at $3299, Apple has made these capabilities accessible to video editors, photographers, and designers who couldn’t justify the cost of the $5000 Pro Display XDR, particularly when coupled with the $1000 Pro Stand.

Mr. Macintosh:

If I plug the new Studio Display into my Tahoe supported Intel Mac, it’s just flat‑out not going to work?

[…]

All I’m asking for is base compatibility. 60 hertz, mic, camera & speakers.

Mr. Macintosh:

Apple display daisy‑chaining has returned after an almost 10 year hiatus!

You can now daisy‑chain up to four Studio Displays (& XDR) with the new MacBook Pro M5 Max.

John Gruber:

I guess it would be nice to see HDR content, but not nice enough to spend $3,600 to get one with nano-texture. And I don’t think I care about 120 Hz on my Mac?

Mike Piatek-Jimenez:

Just saw the Studio Display XDR. $3300 for a 5K 27” display? No thanks. The brightness, mini-LED pixels, and 120Hz are nice, but there are tons of other options with similar features for a third of the cost.

I bought the Pro Display XDR years ago. It was outrageously expensive, but at the time it was the only 6K display on the market (and had a 32” size to match). That extra resolution and size made it worth it to me. I’m kind of surprised that Apple is replacing it with a smaller model.

Colin Cornaby:

The new Studio Displau XDR price is so bonkers that I originally thought I was reading about a new 6k/32 inch display. There were comparable displays on announced at CES I’d expect to come in around the $1000 mark or less. Only things missing were the webcam and speakers.

I really wish they had kept the 6k/32 config and price dropped it.

Garrett Murray:

It’s 2026 and we’re back to Apple’s biggest display size being 27 inches. What a disappointment. I don’t understand why we’re permanently locked into the idea that 27 inches is the biggest a display needs to be.

See also: Mac Power Users Talk.

Update (2026-03-05): Joe Rossignol:

The firmware reveals that the second-generation Studio Display is equipped with an A19 chip, while the Studio Display XDR has an A19 Pro chip, according to code reviewed by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris.

Dave B.:

The Studio Display should have been $999.

Even at Apple’s high prices due to their nice build quality, it should not be over a thousand bucks. $1299 would have been absurd. But $1599? You’d have to be a crazy person to pay that.

I’m a lot less offended by the $3299 XDR than by the $1599 base version. At least the XDR is a premium product. It’s a money-no-object product, so you’re paying a lot, but you’re getting a lot.

But to pay $1599 for a mid-tier monitor ($1999 if you want height adjustment) - is just plain offensive.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-06): Mr. Macintosh:

I just verified that the 2016 12" MacBook works with the original 2022 Studio Display (at 4k resolution)

My guess is that the new monitor will work just fine on Intel Macs! Is this a marketing ploy?

John Gruber:

I asked and the answer is that quite a bit of the support to drive these displays runs the Mac they’re connected to.

But why can they not act like generic monitors?

Kevin Yank:

I find myself feeling about the Studio Display XDR the same way I do about the Vision Pro. It’s a high-priced product on the leading edge of what is possible with mass-market consumer electronics. I am directly in the target market. This feels made for me. But the fact that its value is limited by strict “walled garden” constraints imposed by Apple makes me not able to justify the purchase.

[…]

Likewise, the Studio Display XDR seems like an exciting display, but you can only ever plug it into a Mac or an iPad. There’s no HDMI input, nor support for standard DisplayPort sources. Game consoles? Nope. Streaming boxes? Nope. Gaming PCs? Nope. I could justify investing in a screen of this quality if I could imagine using it for the next decade as the highest-quality display surface for any input I want to feed into it. But instead this product is locked down, limited to only the devices Apple will sell me. The utility just isn’t there to justify paying a “bleeding edge” price tag.

Nick Heer:

Three of the seven models in the Mac lineup require an external display. Apple has two choices: one really advanced one that costs as much as a generously-specced Mac Studio, and another that feels like it is stumbling along.

Monday, March 2, 2026

iPad Air (M4, 8th Generation)

Apple (MacRumors, Hacker News):

With M4, iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than iPad Air with M3, and up to 2.3x faster than iPad Air with M1. The new iPad Air also features the latest in Apple silicon connectivity chips, N1 and C1X, delivering fast wireless and cellular connections — and support for Wi-Fi 7 — that empower users to work and be creative anywhere.

[…]

With the same starting price of just $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch model, the new iPad Air is an incredible value.

Michael Simon:

Kicking off a week of product announcements, the new iPad Air has arrived, but if you go see it at the Apple Store, you’d be hard-pressed to know if Apple actually switched out the old models. They have the same dimensions, same colors, and same displays, have the same prices, and the same tagline on Apple’s website.

Dan Moren:

All the major improvements are under the hood. In addition to the M4 processor’s 30-percent performance improvement, there’s now 12GB of unified RAM—up from 8GB of memory in the M3 Air—and memory bandwidth of 120GB/s, compared to the 100GB/s offered by the earlier model. The M4 also unlocks hardware acceleration for 8K in more formats, including H.264, ProRes, and ProRes RAW.

John Gruber:

With the M5 iPad Pro models, RAM is tied to storage: the 256/512 GB iPad Pros come with 12 GB RAM; the 1/2 TB models come with 16 GB RAM.

Matt Birchler:

What’s notable about this time is that this is actually the second year in a row where I’ve basically been able to say the same thing. Last year’s M3 iPad Air was also just a processor swap over the M2 version.

[…]

The 128GB base storage is not great for a premium tablet like this. We saw Apple bump their budget iPhone up to 256GB base storage today, so why not their second-highest end iPad?

[…]

The 60Hz display is getting pretty damn long in the tooth. It’s fiiiiine, but at some point it’s time to get an upgrade. The Air has had the literal exact screen for 7 years now.

Andrew Cunningham:

This version of the Apple M4 is slightly cut down compared to the version that ships in Macs or that came with the M4 iPad Pro. It has only 8 CPU cores—3 high-performance cores and 5 efficiency cores, down from a maximum of and 4 and 6. It also uses 9 GPU cores instead of 10, and there isn’t an Air variant with 16GB of RAM. A 16GB RAM configuration was available for M4 iPad Pros with 1TB or 2TB of storage.

moolcool:

The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It’d be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in the household can pick it up and be logged into all of their stuff.

Windows XP had this feature. Chromebooks have this feature. It’s inexcusable that such an expensive gadget can only have one user.

Previously:

iPhone 17e

Apple (MacRumors, Hacker News):

At the heart of iPhone 17e is the latest-generation A19, which delivers exceptional performance for everything users do. iPhone 17e also features C1X, the latest-generation cellular modem designed by Apple, which is up to 2x faster than C1 in iPhone 16e. The 48MP Fusion camera captures stunning photos, including next-generation portraits, and 4K Dolby Vision video. It also enables an optical-quality 2x Telephoto — like having two cameras in one. The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display features Ceramic Shield 2, offering 3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation and reduced glare. With MagSafe, users can enjoy fast wireless charging and access to a vast ecosystem of accessories like chargers and cases. And when iPhone 17e users are outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, Apple’s groundbreaking satellite features — including Emergency SOS, Roadside Assistance, Messages, and Find My via satellite — help them stay connected when it matters most.

[…]

Available in three elegant colors with a premium matte finish — black, white, and a beautiful new soft pink […] iPhone 17e will start at 256GB of storage for $599 — 2x the entry storage from the previous generation at the same starting price[…]

This sounds way better than last year’s iPhone 16e.

Dan Moren:

Apple also says that the 17e has a 48MP Fusion camera system, which on the face of it seems identical to last year’s “2-in-1 camera system” although Apple touts the 17e’s “next-generation” portrait mode that adds the ability to recognize people, dogs, and cats as well as to add portrait mode effects after the fact. The 12MP TrueDepth camera in front likewise has the same specs as last year, with the same addition of “next-generation portraits.” Apple attributes this ability to improvements in its image pipeline.

Adam Engst:

However, for most people who pay attention to the details, I think the $799 iPhone 17 remains a better deal. For $200 more, you get a larger, brighter screen (6.3 versus 6.1 inches), Camera Control for the fastest access to the camera, an Ultra Wide camera for macro and wide-angle photos, a higher resolution 18-megapixel Center Stage front camera with support for dual capture, better battery life, Always-On display with ProMotion technology for smoother scrolling, Dynamic Island, and more.

However, the 17e does have the Action button, which I think is better for triggering the camera, anyway.

Andrew Cunningham:

The new iPhone includes an Apple A19 chip similar to the one in the more-expensive iPhone 17—both phones have six CPU cores, but the 17e only gets four GPU cores instead of five.

Matt Birchler:

MagSafe has been added, although it does have slower charging speeds than the other iPhones in the lineup (but it does equal the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro lineup, so not too far behind).

[…]

Based on Apple’s compare page, it looks like this might be the exact camera that’s in the iPhone Air.

Steven Aquino:

I gotta say, if the iPhone 17e had a Dynamic Island, I might’ve given it serious consideration as my everyday phone. Everything I need, no fluff.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): Jeff Johnson:

My iPhone SE 3rd generation:
5.45 x 2.65 x 0.29 inches
5.09 ounces
$429

iPhone 17e:
5.78 x 2.82 x 0.31 inches
5.96 ounces
$599

Andy Ihnatko:

I feel as if Apple just unrolled the blueprints for the iPhone 17 and thought about how to make a less-expensive version of that thing. They started with this, and then worked their way down to there.

It doesn’t strike me as a device that was designed from the ground up to hit a maximum price point. In my eye, that’s the more interesting challenge, and it creates more interesting products at this price level. It’s the difference between designing a less-interesting version of an expensive thing, and designing a brand-new thing that’s truly exciting…where the lower price is among the least-interesting things about it.

The price is the other thing that’s nagging at me right now. Was $599 the best they could do? Is $599 even a worthy goal?

Update (2026-03-20): Juli Clover:

The iPhone 17e earned a multi-core score of 9,241 on early Geekbench benchmarks, while the MacBook Neo earned a multi-core score of 8,668. Single-core chip results also favored the iPhone 17e , which earned a score of 3,607, while the Neo had a single-core score of 3,461.

John Gruber:

The 17e camera system remains limited to Apple’s original Photographic Styles; all the other iPhones in the new A19 generation — the 17, 17 Pro, and Air — offer the much improved “latest-generation” Photographic Styles. In practice, this means the system Camera app on the 17e only offers these styles: Standard, Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm, and Cool. The second-generation Photographic Styles, which debuted last year on the iPhone 16 models, offer a much wider variety of styles and more fine-grained control, all of which processing is non-destructive.

[…]

Here’s a link to Apple’s ever-excellent Compare page, with a comparison of the 16e vs. 17e vs. 17. (For posterity, here’s that Compare page archived as a PDF.)

[…]

The iPhone 17 has the clever Dynamic Island; the 17e has a dumb notch. The Dynamic Island is nice to have, but despite having one on my personal phone for 3.5 years (it debuted with the 14 Pro in 2022), I can’t say I’ve particularly missed it during the better part of a week that I’ve been using the 17e as my primary phone. I actually had to double check that the 17e doesn’t have it while first writing this paragraph, because, over my first few days of testing, I just hadn’t noticed. But then I went out and ran an errand requiring an Uber ride, while listening to a podcast, and I noticed the lack of a Dynamic Island — no live status update for the hailed Uber, and no quick-tap button for jumping back into Overcast.

[…]

Here’s a table with pricing for the iPhone models Apple currently sells[…] Frankly, I’m not sure who the year-old iPhone 16 is for today, especially considering that Apple is now only offering it with 128 GB of storage. […] I suspect Apple is on the cusp of completely moving away from the strategy of selling two- and three-year-old iPhones at lower prices, and updating their entire lineup with annual speed bumps.

Previously:

Octavo 1.0

Amy Worrall (Mastodon):

Octavo arranges your pages for perfect printing — booklets, mini zines, business cards, and more. It also cleans up messy PDFs: fix mismatched page sizes, straighten skewed scans, and position each page precisely.

[…]

Create saddle-stitched booklets with automatic page ordering. Just load your PDF and Octavo handles the imposition maths.

There’s a free Lite version and a $24.99 one-time unlock in the Mac App Store.

Update (2026-03-19): Amy Worrall:

Octavo was rejected because they couldn’t find the in-app purchase. Which was a big orange button. I added a review screenshot with an arrow pointing to it and it was then accepted.

Mac App Store Review Times Increasing

Spencer Dailey:

Average app review times for my Mac app (launched in 2019) have gone up by 3-5x and, it appears others too (tons of posts on Apple’s forums like this one). Mac app reviews now typically take 5 days, and I’m seeing lots of reports of 10+ day waits for some. While iOS app reviews have been faster for me, others have seen big delays there too. It just varies, but it’s clear that reviewers are underwater. This is very likely do to the rise in AI-assisted coding, which has in turn led to more app submissions. According to AppFigures, App Store submissions rose 24% in 2025 through November. According to Runway data, January and February’s average review time and max review times were significantly higher than they were in the last 4 months of 2025.

[…]

I and others have also run into delays in app processing too (which must happen before a build can even be submitted for review) and have personally seen it take up to 10 hours!

Previously:

Update (2026-03-03): David Deller:

It’s so bad.

Jeff Johnson:

I think this varies quite a bit.

On February 15 and 16, I had two Mac App Store updates reviewed and approved within hours.

However, Mac and iOS updates submitted on February 10 both took 2 days.

calicoding:

we had a Mac app take 10 days, after which we developer rejected. The next submission took 20 minutes

Amy Worrall:

Octavo seems to be taking 3-4 days each time. Got a 1.0.1 that’s been in progress since Friday…

Saturday, February 28, 2026

macOS 26.4: Charge Limit and Shortcuts

Dylan McDonald:

The Charge Limit feature, which lets you set a maximum charge to help extend battery health, was previously only available on iPhone and iPad.

[…]

Additionally, the new iOS 26.4 and macOS 26.4 betas bring Charge Limit to the Shortcuts app.

I like the current feature to automatically restore the charge limit the next day, so I don’t forget. But there are two problems:

Shortcuts support should make the second part easier, and perhaps it can also be used to turn the limit back off that first morning.

Previously:

Sync iPhone Alarms to an Apple Watch

Glenn Fleishman:

And yet. And yet. When you desperately want the digital jingle bell to sound off on a particular device, my goodness, what a fuss that might be.

Quick: Without picking up your iPhone, tell me how you configure an alarm in the Clock app to trigger on your Apple Watch when you’re wearing it? I can’t remember, and I just looked it up.

[…]

“Push Alerts” isn’t my first thought for syncing alarms and timers, but at least it’s there.

It always confuses me that the Notifications section of System Settings seems like an auto-generated list of the same settings for each app, but then a few system apps get special options sprinkled in there.

Flickr’s URL Scheme

Marcin Wichary (Hacker News):

Half of my education in URLs as user interface came from Flickr in the late 2000s.

[…]

This was incredible and a breath of fresh air. No redundant www. in front or awkward .php at the end. No parameters with their unpleasant ?&= syntax. No % signs partying with hex codes. When you shared these URLs with others, you didn’t have to retouch or delete anything. When Chrome’s address bar started autocompleting them, you knew exactly where you were going.

[…]

It was a beautiful and predictable scheme. Once you knew how it worked, you could guess other URLs. If I were typing an email or authoring a blog post and I happened to have a link to your photo in Flickr, I could also easily include a link to your Flickr homepage just by editing the URL, without having to jump back to the browser to verify.

Nick Heer:

It is the kind of logical directory-style scheme I wish I would see in library-based desktop applications, too. I still have copies of my libraries for Aperture and iPhoto on the same Mac as I use for Photos. Each of those has a pretty understandable structure within the library package: the most substantial part is a “Masters” folder containing a year, month, day, and then project folder hierarchy; among others, there is also a “Database” folder with nondestructive edit operations, though that becomes less intelligible structure if you drill down to the project level.

Marcin Wichary:

My post about Flickr URLs gathered some interesting responses (especially on Mastodon, thank you all!), so I thought I’d do what podcasts call a “mailbag episode”!

[…]

Both Erin Sparling and Nelson Miner highlighted how much the craft of Flickr URLs related to the craft of its API:

Literally used to talk about how good this URL scheme was in class, it was so informative. The Flickr API still informs everything I do these days, URLs included.

steerpike:

Flickr deserves a lot of praise for a number of technical advances that I wish had seen wider adoption. Their API was one of the first and honestly still one of the most enjoyable to actually use as a developer. It’s still full of incredibly interesting API calls that you wouldn’t expect from it unless you read carefully. Did you know, for example, that flickr API will provide you with the bounding box co-ordinates of different types of places? From a neighbourhood all the way up to a continent?

Previously:

Update (2026-03-04): Jaanus Kase:

Flickr’s web embeds were still working 15 years after I created them

Very unusual to have longevity for anything at all these days

Flickr deserves praise for being a good Internet citizen

Thursday, February 26, 2026

Why Not Objective-C

Brent Simmons:

I led the effort to port our remaining Objective-C to Swift. When I started that project, Objective-C was about 25% of the code; when I retired it was in the low single digits (and has gone even lower since, I’ve heard).

[…]

Objective-C code was where a lot of our crashing bugs and future crashing bugs (and bugs of all kinds) lived.

[…]

A second thing we knew was that having to interoperate between Swift and Objective-C is a huge pain.

[…]

And a third thing we knew was that very few of our engineers had a background writing Objective-C. Maintaining that code — fixing bugs, adding features — was more expensive than it was for Swift code.

I prefer Swift for new code, but I don’t really want to rewrite working code. I haven’t found my old Objective-C to be a source of bugs. However, I always seem to end up rewriting more than I initially planned because the interop is such a pain. I like using Swift for the main data types in my app, but of course those get used everywhere, including from Objective-C code. I’m also convinced that Objective-C interop is a source of some of the weird compiler behavior I see with crashes and dependency tracking. The part I don’t like rewriting in Swift is stuff that calls plain C APIs. The Swift version often feels less readable, and I’m less sure that it’s correct—both the opposite of my normal experience with the language.

Update (2026-03-03): Brent Simmons (Mastodon):

Then of course I wrote some Objective-C code recently and really, really loved it.

[…]

Once you get past that, which takes a day or two given a good-faith effort, you’ll realize how small a language it is, how easy to hold in your palm and turn around and understand all sides of it. And you’ll appreciate how easy it is to make good decisions when you don’t have a surplus of language features to choose from.

[…]

It’s a cliché to call Objective-C a more elegant weapon for a more civilized age. It’s better thought of, these days, as a loaded footgun.

But I did absolutely love writing this code! So much fun.

Brent Simmons:

Two things I didn’t note in my post on Objective-C but could have: the compiler is crazy fast, and the debugger is wonderfully smooth, without all the latency we’ve become used to the last bunch of years. The whole experience feels so different — so light and easy.

smitty825:

I have an old Objective-C Mac app that I have to go back and rebuild on occasion. There are two things that blow my mind each time I rebuild:

  1. No matter what version of Xcode I use…it always compiles successfully the first time.
  2. Holy hell…does it compile fast! It feels like I press the build and deploy button, and it’s deploying almost immediately.

I was recently working on some Objective-C code, while my Mac was on battery in Low Power Mode. I made some changes to the app code and pressed the keyboard shortcut for Test Again. At first I thought nothing had happened, but actually it had recompiled and run the test in the blink of an eye. It feels totally different from writing Swift, where even a tiny change in test code (so that app doesn’t need to be recompiled) takes 5–10 seconds.

Update (2026-03-04): Manton Reece:

I still prefer Objective-C and plan to continue to use it. One change I’m thinking about making, though… Going all code for UI instead of XIBs or Storyboards, to make it easier to diff when working with AI.

Previously:

Rewriting Apple’s Password Monitoring Service in Swift

Ricky Mondello et al. (2025, Mastodon, Hacker News):

The migration from Java to Swift was motivated by a need to scale the Password Monitoring service in a performant way. The layered encryption module used by Password Monitoring requires a significant amount of computation for each request, yet the overall service needs to respond quickly even when under high load.

[…]

Prior to seeking a replacement language, we sought ways of tuning the JVM to achieve the performance required. Java’s G1 Garbage Collector (GC) mitigated some limitations of earlier collectors by introducing features like predictable pause times, region-based collection, and concurrent processing. However, even with these advancements, managing garbage collection at scale remains a challenge due to issues like prolonged GC pauses under high loads, increased performance overhead, and the complexity of fine-tuning for diverse workloads.

[…]

Overall, our experience with Swift has been overwhelmingly positive and we were able to finish the rewrite much faster than initially estimated. Swift allowed us to write smaller, less verbose, and more expressive codebases (close to 85% reduction in lines of code) that are highly readable while prioritizing safety and efficiency.

[…]

Not only were our initial results heartening, but after a few iterations of performance improvements, we had close to 40% throughput gain with latencies under 1 ms for 99.9% of requests on our current production hardware. Additionally, the new service had a much smaller memory footprint per instance — in the 100s of megabytes — an order of magnitude smaller compared to the 10s of gigabytes our Java implementation needed under peak load to sustain the same throughput and latencies.

cogman10:

The call out of G1GC as being “new” is also pretty odd as it was added to the JVM in Java 9, released in 2016. Meaning, they are talking about a 9 year old collector as if it were brand new. Did they JUST update to java 11? And if they are complaining about startup time, then why no mention of AppCDS usage? Or more extreme, CRaC? What about doing an AOT compile with Graal?

The only mention they have is the garbage collector, which is simply just one aspect of the JVM. And, not for nothing, the JVM has made pretty humongous strides in startup time and GC performance throughout the versions. There’s pretty large performance wins going from 11->17 and 17->21.

I’m sorry, but this really reads as Apple marketing looking for a reason to tout swift as being super great.

CharlesW:

Another near-certain factor in this decision was that Apple has an extreme, trauma-born abhorrence of critical external dependencies. With “premier” support for 11 LTS having ended last fall, it makes me wonder if a primary lever for this choice was the question of whether it was better to (1) spend time evaluating whether one of Oracle’s subsequent Java LTS releases would solve their performance issues, or instead (2) use that time to dogfood server-side Swift (a homegrown, “more open” language that they understand better than anyone in the world) by applying it to a real-world problem at Apple scale, with the goal of eventually replacing all of their Java-based back-ends.

Previously:

Swift Server Powers Things Cloud

Vojtěch Rylko and Werner Jainek (2025):

The robustness of this work is ensured by a rigorous theoretical foundation, inspired by operational transformations and Git’s internals. After twelve years in production, Things Cloud has earned our users’ trust in its reliability. But despite the enduring strength of the architecture itself, the technology stack lagged behind.

[…]

Our legacy Things Cloud service was built on Python 2 and Google App Engine. While it was stable, it suffered from a growing list of limitations. In particular, slow response times impacted the user experience, high memory usage drove up infrastructure costs, and Python’s lack of static typing made every change risky. For our push notification system to be fast, we even had to develop a custom C-based service. As these issues accumulated and several deprecations loomed, we realized we needed a change.

A full rewrite is usually a last resort, but in our case, it was the only viable path for Things Cloud. We explored various programming languages including Java, Python 3, Go, and even C++. However, Swift – which was already a core part of our client apps – stood out for its potential and unique benefits. Swift promised excellent performance, predictable memory management through ARC, an expressive type system for reliability and maintainability, and seamless interoperability with C and C++.

[…]

Our Swift server codebase has around 30,000 lines of code. It produces a binary of 60 MB, and builds in ten minutes.

[…]

Compared to the legacy system, this setup has led to a more than threefold reduction in compute costs, while response times have shortened dramatically.

In contrast, OmniFocus puts all the logic in the client and can sync using any WebDAV server.

Werner Jainek (MacRumors):

The new cloud is already up and running – and you didn’t notice a thing. That was by design. From the outside, everything appears the same. But under the hood, everything changed: the infrastructure, the architecture, and the language it’s written in.

This post takes you behind the scenes: why we rebuilt Things Cloud, why we chose to write it in Swift, and how we transitioned without skipping a beat.

[…]

To ensure a smooth transition, we ran the new cloud in parallel with the old one. While the old Things Cloud continued syncing everyone’s to-dos, the new cloud quietly processed the same data using its own logic and infrastructure. Every edge case and every corner of the sync model was tested under real-world conditions – without anyone ever noticing.

Justin Bengtson:

What have been some of the pain points in using Swift on Server? What does the community think it needs to be improved to be more widely adopted in the industry? Any specific issues with deploying on Mac or Linux would be nice to know as well.

taylorswift:

yes, in general, i have found Swift’s “crash early and crash violently” philosophy to be problematic for server-side use cases, where availability is paramount and downtime is fatal.

to this day, Swift doesn’t have a good way to recover from precondition failures, so a single logic error in a many hundreds of thousands of lines codebase, triggered by a single unlucky visitor (or robot) has a nuclear-sized blast radius that takes down the service for everyone.

Simon Leeb:

I’ll take a crashing service any day of the week, if the alternative is a runtime with “let’s soldier on, it’ll be fine YOLO” vibes. I can image the post-mortem forum post would then be “I accidentally updated half a million user data records with unrecoverable garbage” instead of “things were patchy for a while”.

Konstantin:

Build times, compute and memory footprint during build are astronomical. Swift components are costing us 3x more than JVM/Kotlin components and 10x more than Rust/Go components to build. It’s really quite expensive to run Swift on the server.

[…]

Developing for the server on macOS is a huge pain in two main areas: 1) the overlapping types with iOS/macOS frameworks (e.g. Crypto) makes it impossible to know if what builds on macOS will build and even run on some Linux environment. Others have already mentioned the pain of FoundationEssentials, networking etc. 2) As a result of the previous, the ecosystem of Swift packages is full of libraries which although claiming support for server/linux targets, do not actually (correctly) support that.

[…]

DX around tooling has many papercuts (we see this when onboarding devs coming from more established server language ecosystems). One very prominent point is, well, IDE - Xcode is great for apps but positively hostile for server apps.

Previously:

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Mac App Store Search Not Showing Mac Apps

Jeremy Provost:

When you search for Morpho, the App Store automatically flips you over to iPhone & iPad Apps, even though there’s a perfectly good Mac app that matches the search.

To add insult to injury, searching for Morpho on the iPhone or iPad App Store does show our app first. But specifically because we’ve built a Mac app, our app doesn’t show up in the list of iPhone & iPad Apps on the Mac App Store. For being a good platform-citizen, we’ve been rendered virtually invisible in search.

I’ve seen this happen with several apps, including Morpho.

I don’t know when this changed, but now it makes sense why 2025 was our worst year for Morpho downloads on the Mac.

If the Mac App Store can’t be bothered to promote, you know, actual Mac apps, then I don’t know what the point is for developers or customers.

Jeremy Provost:

I tried it again, and it’s true: searching for Morpho now defaults to Mac Apps.

I wish I knew why this happened, why it’s working now, and whether it’s truly fixed or could happen again.

Jeremy Provost:

Here’s a report on Reddit that the same thing is happening for another app, but only in certain countries.

Ultimately, it seems that with the launch of Morpho Converter 3.0 there were enough searches or downloads to “upgrade” it to defaulting to Mac Apps.

Previously:

Copyright © 2000–2026 Michael Tsai.