Thursday, September 19, 2024

iPhone 16 Pro Camera

Nilay Patel:

The reason Apple calls it “Camera Control” and not just “shutter button” is the capacitive controls on the top, which should ideally let you adjust various settings with a quick swipe. I was really hoping I’d find myself using the capacitive controls to adjust things like exposure and focal length, but it’s all a bit fiddly switching between everything with the light presses and far too easy to end up changing things you weren’t intending to. The whole thing would be greatly improved if a second light press dismissed the control; once they’re open, they tend to stay open, leading to inadvertent changes when your finger slides along the button.

[…]

The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro hit a kind of tipping point — they produced photos so aggressively processed that all kinds of people started noticing and complaining about it. I have been reviewing phones and cameras for a long time, but I will never publish a review as efficiently devastating as Alix Earle asking her 7 million followers why her iPhone 15 camera sucks. If people who’ve built multimillion-dollar content businesses with their phone cameras aren’t loving the cameras on their new phones, something’s gone wrong.

[…]

The bad news is that, by default, the iPhone 16 Pro camera is even more aggressive about evening out shadows and highlights than the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s subtle, but it’s there — you can see it with basic photos of plants, with pictures of people, with street scenes — it’s all just a little bit brighter and a little bit flatter.

[…]

The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro allow you to exclude yourself from this narrative entirely with a huge upgrade to the Photographic Styles feature that allows you to adjust how the camera processes colors, skin tones, and shadows, even after you’ve shot a photo. […] The tone control is semantically aware — it will adjust things like faces and the sky differently, so it’s still doing some intense computational photography, but the goal is for you to be able to take photos that look a lot more like what a traditional camera would produce if you bring the slider all the way down.

Though the tone control happens in software, it’s not available for older iPhones. He says, “it’s possible to argue that this one single camera adjustment makes upgrading to an iPhone 16 or 16 Pro worth it.” The styles data is stored in the HEIC file so that the effect can be undone after the fact, though only using Apple’s app.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

Apple seemingly doesn’t ever refer to Camera Control as a “button”, but it is a button. You can see it depress, and it clicks even when the device is powered off (unlike, say, the haptic Touch ID Home button on iPhones of yore and the long-in-the-tooth iPhone SE). But it isn’t only a button. You can think of it as two physical controls in one: a miniature haptic trackpad and an actually-clicking button.

[…]

Just writing that all out makes it sound complicated, and it is a bit complex. (Here’s Apple’s own illustrated guide to using Camera Control.) Cameras are complex. But if you just mash it down, it takes a picture. Camera Control is like a microcosm of the Camera app itself. Just want to point and shoot? Easy. Want to fiddle with ƒ-stops and styles? There’s a thoughtful UI to enable it.

[…]

Camera Control is designed to be used in both wide (landscape) and tall (portrait) orientations. Moving it more toward the corner, where my finger wants it to be, would make it better for shooting widescreen, but would make it downright precarious to hold the iPhone while shooting tall.

It seems to be better placed for camera use than the Action button.

But, when your iPhone is locked and the screen is off, or in always-on mode, clicking Camera Control just wakes up the screen. You have to click it again, after the screen is awake, to jump to shooting mode.

But this is what I love about the Action button—no matter where I am I can press it to get to shooting mode.

There are now 15 base styles to choose from, most of them self-descriptively named (Neutral, Gold, Rose Gold), some more poetically named (Cozy, Quiet, Ethereal). The default style is named Standard, and it processes images in a way that looks, well, iPhone-y. The two that have me enamored thus far are Natural and Stark B&W. Standard iPhone image processing has long looked, to many of our eyes, at least slightly over-processed. Too much noise reduction, too much smoothing. A little too punchy. Natural really does look more natural, in a good way, to my eyes.

Austin Mann:

The upgrade of the Ultra Wide camera to 48MP was by far the feature I was most excited about at the keynote.

[…]

An added bonus is that the iPhone’s Macro mode also uses the Ultra Wide camera, meaning Macro shots are now 48 megapixels as well. The detail is remarkable, and the iPhone 16 Pro might just be my new favorite camera for macro photography.

[…]

I’ve also been surprised at how useful the extra shutter button has been. I find I use a combination of the on-screen shutter button, Action button, Volume button, and Camera Control—depending on the scenario and how I’m holding the iPhone to capture it.

[…]

In our extreme use cases—shooting from a helicopter and bouncing around in a safari vehicle—I occasionally found myself accidentally bumping the Camera Control adjustments (like inadvertently zooming in or changing exposure settings). For these situations, I went to Settings > Camera > Camera Control to explore my options.

[…]

Photographic Styles don’t work in Burst mode, which I learned after shooting a few bursts with Craig.

Previously:

Swift 6

Holly Borla (Hacker News, Lobsters):

Swift 6 marks the start of the journey to make data-race safety dramatically easier. The usability of data-race safety remains an area of active development, and your feedback will help shape future improvements.

Swift 6 also comes with a new Synchronization library for low-level concurrency APIs, including atomic operations and a new mutex API.

[…]

Swift 6 introduces a number of productivity enhancements, including count(where:) to streamline counting the number of elements in a sequence that satisfy a predicate, pack iteration for writing natural for-loops over the elements in a value parameter pack, access control for imports to keep implementation details from leaking into your public APIs, @attached(body) macros for synthesizing and augmenting function implementations, expression macros as default arguments, and more.

You can find a complete list of language proposals that were accepted through the Swift Evolution process and implemented in Swift 6 on the Swift Evolution dashboard.

[…]

Swift 6 unifies the implementation of Foundation across all platforms. The modern, portable Swift implementation provides consistency across platforms, it’s more robust, and it’s open source. macOS and iOS started using the Swift implementation of Foundation alongside Swift 5.9, and Swift 6 brings these improvements to Linux and Windows.

Rudrank Riyam:

I started documenting my learnings about Swift 6 errors, the reasoning behind them, and how to fix them. The first one is:

Static property ‘shared’ is not concurrency-safe because non-’Sendable’ type may have shared mutable state

Casey Liss:

Swift 6 strict concurrency checking may be the quickest and easiest way for me to feel like a dunce. ☹️

Half of these warnings I’m just like “uhhhhhh… wat”.

I’m sure I’ll get there, but, gracious. 😓 Gotta stop kicking that can though…

Alexander Steiner:

Just wait until you have fixed all errors but the app is crashing at runtime randomly because of missing annotations in first-party frameworks.

Sindre Sorhus:

My advice for updating to Swift 6:

Turn on the switch, fix the easy stuff, turn it off again, and wait until next year. Apple will spend the next year making it easier to adopt complete concurrency.

Simon B. Støvring:

I’m leaning towards this plan too. Properly adopting concurrency in Swift 6 is way too convoluted. I can’t imagine Apple won’t get flooded with feedback from developers, pushing them to simplify it in a future version.

dasdom:

Swift 6 is solving a problem I didn’t encounter in 15 years of iOS development by providing me with lots of problems I didn’t ask for.

Previously:

Google Search Adds Links to Internet Archive

Chris Freeland:

In a significant step forward for digital preservation, Google Search is now making it easier than ever to access the past. Starting today, users everywhere can view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, with a simple link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

[…]

To access this new feature, conduct a search on Google as usual. Next to each search result, you’ll find three dots—clicking on these will bring up the “About this Result” panel. Within this panel, select “More About This Page” to reveal a link to the Wayback Machine page for that website.

This makes it easier to see previous versions of a page. It would also be useful if Google could search pages that are in the archive but no longer available on the Web. For example, many articles and blog posts that I’ve linked to are on sites that are now defunct. I can find them in the Wayback Machine because I have the URL. But without that key, even if I know some of the text on the page, I can’t really search for it in the archive.

Ben Schoon (via Hacker News):

Google Search makes it easy to find information, but occasionally you need historical context for a page that may have been recently updated. That was previously possible to a certain extent through cached pages in Search, but that functionality was removed earlier this year.

Previously:

Lost Internet Archive Accounts

Matt Sephton:

Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman since 2015.

Somewhat surprisingly, they are not reaching out to affected users but rather waiting for them to create new accounts and silently relinking their old uploads only if the new account has same email as the old account. Otherwise, all profile metadata, favourites, lists, reviews, posts, collections, web archives, and the original username are not being relinked. For me that’s a decade of data…gone.

The main impact of this massive data loss, that happened around mid-July, is that there are now dead links to old profiles and various old pages all across the internet, plus the additional impact of lost data that is not being recovered. It’s a real blow to the broader preservation effort to know that the one place where data is supposed to be safe forever has had a massive data loss and the organisation responsible are not taking proactive steps to address the issue fully.

See also: Reddit.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Feedback Feedback

Cesare Forelli:

I want to file a constructive Feedback to Apple about the developer experience with the Feedback process itself (very meta, I know), and I need yours!

5 quick & unbiased questions, please 🙏 answer them now.

Previously:

macOS Firewall Regressions in Sequoia

Will Dormann:

[Running] nslookup clearly causes a DNS request and a response to go over the wire, but nslookup eventually gives up thinking that no servers could be reached.

[…]

So if I turn off the macOS firewall, this all works fine. 🤔

[…]

Problem #1: “Block incoming connections” includes DNS responses is new as of macOS Sequoia. Prior to macOS 15 Sequoia “Block incoming connections” meant “Don’t poke a hole in my firewall for this”. Starting with Sequoia, this also includes “Don’t allow responses to DNS requests”, which is clearly a bug in the macOS stateful firewall. Any response to a request that I initiate should be allowed in.

Problem #2: The macOS GUI for firewall rules being disconnected from the existing rules (e.g. cannot change some) is apparently an artifact of macOS switching underlying storage for the firewall rules at some point. And the GUI apparently is only hooked up to the old storage. If you’ve had a Mac for a while, you’ll probably get bitten by this.

Wacław Jacek:

It seems the OS firewall can sometimes start blocking access to web browsing after upgrading to macOS Sequoia. At least this was the case for me and some folks on Reddit.

Going to the firewall settings screen, there can be no way to toggle access for the browser.

Ivo Damjanović:

I have an issue with the firewall too. It does not accept incoming SSH connections. But they are allowed. I think this is a bug. I can tell you how to edit the entry list. You are able to edit some of them because the UI uses an old firewall rule storage. You can not edit the rules that use the new storage. You may edit them with sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --listapps.

I’m also hearing that firewall and other security and networking settings were silently reverted by the Sequoia update.

See also: MacRumors, Reddit, ESET.

Previously:

Apple Drops Lawsuit Against NSO Group

Ryan Naraine (via Hacker News):

Apple has abruptly withdrawn its lawsuit against NSO Group, citing increased risk that the legal battle might unintentionally reveal sensitive vulnerability data and difficulties in acquiring essential information from the spyware vendor.

In a court filing Friday, Apple said continuing the lawsuit now poses “too significant a risk” of exposing the anti-exploitation and threat intelligence efforts needed to fend off the very adversaries involved in the legal dispute.

[…]

Apple also cited concerns that NSO Group and unidentified officials in Israel may have taken actions to avoid producing information during discovery. “This means that going forward with this case will potentially involve disclosure to third parties of the information Apple uses to defeat spyware while Defendants and others create significant obstacles to obtaining an effective remedy,” the company said.

Nick Heer:

It also downplays the effects of a successful suit — a win would, according to Apple, “no longer have the same impact as it would have had in 2021” because there are plenty of NSO Group competitors.

WhatsApp appears to be continuing its suit against NSO Group. On the same day Apple filed its request to dismiss its case, WhatsApp attorneys were scheduling depositions (PDF).

Previously:

Canva Hikes Prices

Denham Sadler (via Hacker News, Slashdot):

Canva has announced a tripling of their prices for some of its users as the Australian tech company prepares for a public listing in the US.

In the US, some users have had their subscription increase from $119.99 per year to $300 per year for the first 12 months, then $500 per year thereafter– an increase of 316 per cent.

[…]

A spokesperson for Canva said the price rise was due in part to the introduction of a number of new features on the Canva platform, including many powered by AI and generative AI.

That’s the largest increase I can recall seeing.

Previously:

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Little Snitch 6 and DNS Encryption

Norbert Heger:

Little Snitch 6 offers a new feature: DNS encryption. With DNS encryption enabled, all name lookups are routed through Little Snitch and performed in encrypted form.

For this purpose, Little Snitch registers a DNS proxy. macOS then sends all DNS requests to that proxy, which in turn performs the lookup in encrypted form. The key point here is that all requests must be routed through the proxy.

[…]

There appears to be a bug in macOS Sequoia causing some requests to bypass the installed DNS proxy and be sent unencrypted to the system’s default name server instead.

[…]

After further investigation, we found that this bug has already existed at least since macOS 14.5 Sonoma (maybe even earlier, but we currently don’t have access to an older 14.x system for testing).

For more on the Little Snitch 6 upgrade, see the press release, release notes, MacRumors, and TidBITS.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-18): Norbert Heger (Hacker News):

After further investigation, we found that this bug only affects the DNS proxy of Little Snitch 6.1. It’s not a general problem of DNS proxies in macOS.

[…]

The issue has been fixed in Little Snitch 6.1.1.

Does Google Chrome Still Devastate Mac Battery Life?

Matt Birchler (Hacker News):

That brings us to the “Chrome devastates your Mac’s battery” claim that is commonly thrown around as fact, although rarely while citing any sources. This is presented as common knowledge. It’s as indisputable as gravity – a fact of the universe – Chrome crushes your battery and Safari sips it.

[…]

About 18 months ago, Google claimed they’d caught up to Safari in battery drain, so I decided to do some testing of my own. Conveniently, I recently had to wipe my MacBook Pro’s internal drive and restore to a clean version of macOS Sonoma (long story, but betas gonna beta) so I have pretty stock version of macOS running right now that would be perfect for some testing.

[…]

In my 3-hour tests, Safari consumed 18.67% of my battery each time on average, and Chrome averaged 17.33% battery drain. That works out to about 9% less battery drain from Chrome than Safari. Yes, you read that right, I found Chrome was easier on my battery than Safari.

While I did experience some variability in each 3 hour test run, Chrome came out on top in 5 of the 6 direct comparisons.

therjaye:

I believe Microsoft engineers contributed a lot of code to the Chromium project in regards to improving battery efficiency. All the Chromium-based browsers benefited from it and so Chrome is nothing like as bad as it used to be.

ksec:

Perhaps the peak of Chrome complaining battery drain was something in between 2018 - 2020. It also happens to be the peak of Safari is the new IE with so many web features missing and bugs unresolved. Both are correct to a certain degree and have been the case for many years before it reached what could be described as a PR crisis.

Since then Safari had twice if not more features and bug fix than usual in the next few Safari releases. While Chrome worked on multi tab memory usage reduction, and efficiency. At the same time Firefox just went into polishing mode because a lot of the efficiency work already came from Servo, E10s and Memshrink over the past 10 years.

In multi tab usage ( ~50 to 80 ) Chrome is already better than Safari simply because Safari still don’t consider lots of Tabs on macOS as one of their usage scenario. And Chrome being better for that for at least 2 years. For 7000 tabs it is still better to use Firefox.

I’ve certainly seen that Chrome handles large numbers of tabs much better than Safari.

Nicolas Magand:

Today, after nearly 20 years of loyalty to Safari, I’m considering switching to another default browser on my personal computer. I mean, why is it so hard to watch a YouTube video without hiccups, and why can I only choose from a selection of 4 search engines, including three Bing-based?

I still like Safari better as an app, but, as I wrote a week ago, I’m increasingly frustrated by compatibility and reliability problems. Maybe it will be better with Sequoia, when I can upgrade.

Mike Rockwell:

The search engine limitation is one of the main reasons I’ve switched from Safari on my iPhone.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-19): Nick Heer:

I cannot understand why Safari’s UI has been so poorly responsive for years now. This is just me toggling between two windows. Look how long it takes for the window to become visually active or inactive.

August Mueller:

Safari has been pretty sketchy for me as well lately. And frequently videos in YouTube will pause until I move my cursor around (though audio will still play). I’ve been contemplating moving to Chrome more and more.

The Accuracy of “Find My” AirPods

Mark Frauenfelder (via Slashdot):

A SWAT team terrorized an innocent St. Louis County family last May, all due to a pair of stolen AirPods and questionable police tactics. Brittany Shamily and her family, including a three-month-old baby, were terrified when heavily armed officers smashed through their front door screaming searching for evidence related to a carjacking that had occurred earlier that day.

The police relied on the “FindMy” app to track the stolen AirPods to Shamily’s home, despite the app’s known inaccuracies. This led to a search warrant being issued, and the SWAT team descended upon the unsuspecting family with overwhelming force.

Ryan Krull:

“FindMy is not that accurate,” says the family’s lawyer, Bevis Schock. “I actually went to my house with my co-counsel and played around with it for an hour. It’s just not that good.”

[…]

After this had gone on for more than half an hour, the AirPods were located — on the street outside the family’s home.

Previously:

Glowtime Ennui

John Gruber (Mastodon, Hacker News):

Last week’s “It’s Glowtime” event was very strong for Apple. It might have been the single strongest iPhone event since the introduction of the iPhone X. All three platforms are now in excellent, appealing, and coherent shape[…]

[…]

But, still, flying home from California on Tuesday, I was left with a feeling best described as ennui.

[…]

My dissatisfaction flying home from last week’s event is, ultimately, selfish. I miss having my mind blown. I miss being utterly surprised. I miss occasionally being disappointed by a product design that stretched quirky all the way to wacky. I miss being amazed by something entirely unexpected out of left field.

I felt that, too, but I disagree with the framing. The product lines are indeed very strong right now, but the event itself was boring. I started multitasking instead of fully paying attention and even then felt I’d wasted my time watching. It just felt too long and too canned. The products themselves seem fine. I’m not tempted to upgrade my iPhone 15 Pro, though after so many years of iPhones I think it would be unreasonable to expect to be after just one year.

Mossberg correctly cites AirPods and Apple Watches as big successes of the post-Jobs era. Not coincidentally, they are two of the three platforms Apple featured in last week’s event — and two of the three that people carry wherever they go.

[…]

What we’re seeing is Tim Cook’s Apple. Cook is a strong, sage leader, and the proof is that the entire company is now ever more in his image. That’s inevitable. It’s also not at all to say Apple is worse off. In some ways it is, but in others, Apple is far better. I can’t prove any of this, of course, but my gut says that a Steve-Jobs–led Apple today would be noticeably less financially successful and industry-dominating than the actual Tim-Cook–led Apple has been.

I think that’s probably right. I bet the software would be better, though. The more interesting question is the long-term state of the company and its products, which of course we don’t yet know.

Cook almost never reveals his true passionate self in public. But at least one time he did. At the 2014 annual shareholders meeting, Cook faced a question from a representative of the right-wing National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). As reported by Bryan Chaffin at The Mac Observer.

I have a somewhat different take on the famous “bloody ROI” response. Everyone focuses on how Tim Cook stood up for doing things that are right, even if they aren’t profitable. But the context is that Cook himself had started the ROI discussion by stating that Apple’s environmental programs were good for the bottom line. He was then asked a valid question—whether this was only true because of government subsidies. That would be interesting to know, but we never got the answer because he dodged the question and pivoted to accessibility and worker safety.

We know that Tim Cook loves data. But he wants us to believe that Apple has never run the environmental numbers, just like it has no idea whether the App Store is profitable. He’s always on message. And here the message is that Apple has its priorities, which shan’t be questioned.

Whenever an Apple developer or customer complains about something that sucks but could likely be fixed by the application of money, which Apple has, people respond that Apple’s hands are tied. It has to look out for its profitability and shareholders. But a perk of being CEO is that you can ignore smaller asks like these while spending tens of billions on TV content and cars. The ROI only matters when you say it does. You get to decide whether a cost that would make people happy is frivolous or an important investment in the future health of the platform.

Riccardo Mori:

Ever since Apple switched to this pre-packaged delivery format, the novelty has worn down quickly and these events all look like sophisticated PowerPoint presentations and, worse, they all look alike. When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur.

[…]

My impression that Apple is severely removed from how actual people use their phones is reinforced every time they show a short video to illustrate how certain features work. These videos are supposed to showcase how Apple products naturally embed in regular people’s daily lives. What we see are slices from utopia. Impeccable people moving about in their impeccable homes living glossy-magazine lives, everybody fluidly relating to their personal tech devices.

Ben Thompson:

The lack of a price increase for the iPhone 16 Pro made more sense when I watched Apple’s presentation; I found the updates over the iPhone 15 Pro to be pretty underwhelming. The A18 Pro chip is on TSMC’s newest 3nm process, there is a new Camera Control button, and the screen is a bit bigger with bezels that are a bit smaller; that’s really about it from a hardware perspective, although as always, Apple continues to push the envelope with computational photography. And, frankly, that’s fine: last year’s iPhone Pro 15, the first with titanium and USB-C, was for me the iPhone I had been waiting for (and most customers don’t upgrade every year, so these and other previous updates will be new features for them).

What I find much more compelling — and arguably the best deal in iPhone history — is the $799 iPhone 16 (non-Pro). The A18 chip appears to be a binned version of the A18 Pro (there is one less GPU and smaller caches), while the aforementioned bump to 8GB of RAM — necessary to run Apple Intelligence — matches the iPhone 16 Pro. There is one fewer camera, but the two-camera system that remains has been reconfigured to a much more aesthetically pleasing pill shape that has the added bonus of making it possible to record spatial video when held horizontally. The screen isn’t quite as good, and the bezels are a bit larger, but the colors are more fun. It’s a great phone, and the closest the regular iPhone has been to the Pro since the line separated in 2017.

[…]

Software, specifically AI, is what will drive differentiation going forward, and even in the best case scenario, where Apple’s AI efforts are good enough to keep people from switching to Google, the economics of software development push towards broad availability on every iPhone, not special features for people willing to pay a bit more. It’s as if the iPhone, which started out as one model for everyone before bifurcating into the Pro and regular (and SE) lines, is coming full circle to standardization; the difference, though, is its value is harvested through R&D intensive services that need to run everywhere, instead of unit profits driven by hardware differentiation.

Eric Schwarz:

I think this nails what a lot of the tech community has been complaining about for the last few years—Apple is kind of boring now, but in a way that you can safely buy the current iPhone when you feel like it is time to upgrade.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-18): Nick Heer:

This year’s bit of consumerist fun did feel overlong and tedious to me, too — like homework for understanding the lineup rather than an exciting demonstration of tomorrow’s technology available today. Apple’s employees were doing their best onscreen to show excitement. Yet it did not translate so well for me and, it would seem, many others.

M.G. Siegler:

When I originally took issue with the event itself – which is to say, the video presentation of what Apple was presenting “on stage” – it wasn’t about the products themselves. It was simply that the event itself was boring. It completely lacked any sort of pomp and circumstance. Sure, part of this is because the state of Apple leaks (by which I largely mean, Mark Gurman reports, of course) is such that we know almost everything coming at such events not just ahead of time, but often weeks or months ahead of time. But even if we didn’t know such details, I think the event still would have been less than great because it was just far too long. You got the sense that Apple was reiterating – which is a kind way of saying repeating – all of the talking points about Apple Intelligence for Wall Street as much as anyone else. Apple would deny this, of course. But in my mind, there is no denying that Apple is pushing their AI products far earlier than they would like or probably should be in order to “play the game on the field” as it were.

[…]

I believe Jobs would have figured out better ways to present and explain and market the devices Apple is putting out there. And that framing would have yielded more excitement around this year’s devices, rather than just a string of endless numbers.

Eric Schwarz:

I’d almost prefer to see a live iPhone presentation that just owns the fact that the next model is a nice iteration of the prior and keep it short and sweet.

Monday, September 16, 2024

macOS 15 Sequoia

Apple (feature list, release notes, developer, security, enterprise, full installer, IPSW):

macOS Sequoia brings exciting new features, including iPhone Mirroring, which expands Continuity by enabling access to and control of iPhone directly from macOS; big updates to Safari; a new Passwords app; and more. Starting next month, macOS Sequoia will introduce Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant while protecting users’ privacy and security.

See also:

So far (knock on wood), it seems like Sequoia breaks less stuff than other recent major releases. However, I can’t upgrade yet because Xcode 15.4 doesn’t work on Sequoia, and Xcode 16 can’t compile for Big Sur.

Rich Trouton:

As part of the release of macOS Sequoia, Apple has added new user functionality for managing system extensions, as well as management profile options for Mac admins.

Felix Schwarz:

TIL that in macOS Sequoia SecPKCS12Import() fails with error errSecAuthFailed (“Authorization/Authentication failed”) when trying to import PKCS12 data that’s “protected” with an empty password (“”).

Written out as a file, the same data will also fail to import into the Keychain Access app with the same error.

Howard Oakley:

Apple has already announced that this first ‘minor’ update will bring its AI features, including most significantly Writing Tools. Although those have been in beta-testing for almost as long as 15.0, in terms of changes, the step from 15.0 will in many ways be greater than that from 14.6 to 15.0. However, that only applies to Apple silicon Macs that support AI.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-17): See also: Hacker News.

Adam Chandler:

Wait so another year of improvements coming to photos for my cellular phone and none of these improvements are on the computer I edit, proof and organize the photos?

Rich Trouton:

As of macOS Sequoia, Keychain Access.app is in the following location:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Keychain Access.app

Howard Oakley:

One of the unannounced features in macOS Sequoia is, for many who use iCloud Drive, one of its most important, as this upgrade introduces the ability to pin files and folders to ensure they remain downloaded and don’t get evicted.

Jen Simmons:

With iPhone Mirroring on macOS Sequoia, you can use your iPhone from your Mac. Combine it with remote inspection from Safari, and now it’s easier than ever to test and debug websites on iOS using Web Inspector.

[…]

macOS Sequoia adds support for opening links directly in web apps. Now, when a user clicks a link, if it matches the scope of a web app, that link will open in the web app instead of their default web browser.

[…]

Now users can personalize web apps on Mac with Safari Web Extensions and Content Blockers.

Jeff Johnson:

For some reason, Apple chose not to support app extensions in Safari 18 web apps.

Tim Hardwick:

With macOS Sequoia now released, there are again new features that aren’t available to Intel Mac owners.

Matthias Gansrigler:

Does macOS Sequoia no longer accept global keyboard shortcuts with an option shift modifier, like (⌥ ⇧ 2) ? I can’t seem to get it to work anymore using RegisterEventHotkey…

Benjamin Mayo:

The iPhone Mirroring window defaults to “Actual Size”, but it really isn’t (at least for me). I’d estimate it is about 80% of my actual iPhone’s screen size, and is simply too small. The “Larger” view option is usable.

Update (2024-09-19): Shottr (Reddit):

Starting with macOS Sequoia, Apple does not allow global hotkeys where Option or Shift+Option are the only modifiers.

If you have an Opt+Letter hotkey, it'll stop working after you update macOS. Changing hotkey to Ctrl+Letter will help.

Apple Frameworks Engineer:

This was an intentional change in macOS Sequoia to limit the ability of key-logging malware to observe keys in other applications. The issue of concern was that shift+option can be used to generate alternate characters in passwords, such as Ø (shift-option-O).

This doesn’t make sense to me since most of the password characters would not use those modifiers, anyway.

Tyler Hall has screenshots of Sequoia’s notifications of extensions being added. Oddly, the spacing and use of smart quotes are inconsistent.

Norbert Doerner:

Our experiences with macOS 15 so far are not very good. Networking is flaky, many apps crash a lot, Apples developer tools (Xcode 16) are still highly unstable.

Alex Kleber:

MacOS 15 total fail in networking. VPNs not working anymore or something they disconnect without any reason, VMs are not working anymore using Shared Networking (@UTMapp). Sometimes DHCP is simply refusing to provide IP

Matthias Gansrigler:

My M1 MacBook Pro - logged out and sleeping - drained its battery completely over night, not connected to any other devices. Sequoia bug?

Tim Hardwick:

In this article, we’ve selected 50 new features and lesser-known changes that are worth checking out if you’re upgrading.

See also: John Voorhees’s review and the comments at Mac Power Users Talk.

Previously:

macOS 14.7 and macOS 13.7

Apple (release notes, full installer):

This document describes the security content of macOS Sonoma 14.7.

Apple (release notes, full installer):

This document describes the security content of macOS Ventura 13.7.

Previously:

iPadOS 18

Apple (feature list, release notes, security, enterprise, developer):

iPadOS 18 makes the iPad experience more versatile and intelligent than ever, and is available today as a free software update. iPadOS 18 brings incredible new features designed for the unique capabilities of iPad, making it even easier for users to get tasks done. With iPadOS 18, Calculator comes to iPad with Math Notes, along with new Smart Script handwriting tools in Notes — all designed for Apple Pencil. Additionally, iPad users now have more ways to customize the Home Screen and Control Center, and users receive the biggest redesign of the Photos app ever, new ways to express themselves in Messages, and so much more.

See also:

Previously:

Update (2024-09-19): My update failed with the iPad stuck at the progress bar on the black screen. I had to force-restart the iPad. Then the update completed, but Universal Clipboard no longer works.

iOS 18

Apple (feature list, release notes, security, enterprise, developer):

iOS 18 is now available, bringing iPhone users around the world new ways to personalize their iPhone with deeper customization to the Home Screen and Control Center; the biggest-ever redesign to Photos, making it even easier to find and relive special moments; and major enhancements to Messages and Mail. Starting next month, iOS 18 will introduce Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant while protecting users’ privacy and security.

I’m waiting to upgrade until I figure out what to do with Overcast.

See also:

Previously:

Update (2024-09-17): Bruno Rocha:

Apple silently broke the Screen Time APIs again in iOS 18… This time they not only silently removed the ability to override activities, they didn’t even bother updating the documentation, which still says you can do it.

Kevin Purdy:

iOS 18 makes these RCS upgrades possible, but certainly not guaranteed, at least as of today. Lots of people have already been enjoying cross-platform RCS messaging when texting with iOS 18 beta users. And iPhones on the big carriers' plans can now trade RCS with Android users. But some iPhone users, particularly on mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs)—typically pre-paid services that do not own network hardware but resell major carrier access—do not have an RCS option available to them yet.

[…]

Reading between the lines, you might conclude that Google is waiting on Apple to enable RCS on a network-by-network basis, both for Fi and for Android users at large. And a Google spokesperson would suggest that is correct.

Louie Mantia, Jr.:

Just to be clear, Google adopted RCS inside Google Messages in 2019. But perhaps more importantly, it was only made on-by-default in 2023. That’s right, just last year.

Eric Schwarz:

Nonetheless, I’m glad RCS is on iOS because it fixes a lot of messaging issues without resorting to a third-party app (at least in the United States) and the layperson doesn’t have to even care about which tech giant was actually the problem before.

watchOS 11

Apple (release notes, security, developer):

Apple today released watchOS 11, bringing powerful health and fitness insights, along with even more personalization, intelligence, and ways to stay connected, to the world’s most popular watch.

Apple Watch now offers a feature to help identify signs of sleep apnea, and the new Vitals app allows users to quickly check in on key health metrics at a glance and gain better context on their health. The ability to measure training load helps users make more informed decisions when working out for improved fitness and performance, and Activity rings are even more customizable. Apple Watch and the Health app on iPhone and iPad also provide additional support for users who are pregnant.

The Smart Stack and Photos face use intelligence to offer a more individualized experience, and Check In, the Translate app, and new capabilities for the double tap gesture come to Apple Watch for more convenience and ways to stay connected.

See also: Juli Clover.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-18): See also: Jonathan Reed.

tvOS 18

Apple (no release notes, security, developer):

Today, tvOS 18 introduces intelligent features like InSight, which displays timely information about actors, characters, and music from every live-action Apple TV+ movie and show onscreen in real time. Enhance Dialogue also gets smarter with tvOS 18, leveraging machine learning and computational audio to deliver greater vocal clarity. Subtitles now automatically appear at just the right moments, including when users mute, when they skip back while watching, or when the language in a show or movie does not match the device language. Additionally, tvOS 18 brings stunning new screen savers, like Portraits, to Apple TV 4K.

See also: Juli Clover.

Previously:

audioOS 18

Juli Clover:

The HomePod Software 18 adds the option to choose a Home Hub rather than having HomeKit select one automatically, a useful feature for people with multiple HomePods and Apple TV models.

There is a new SharePlay feature, allowing multiple people to share control of what’s playing on a HomePod through Apple Music. To use the feature, bring an iPhone close to another iPhone to add songs to a playlist and control playback.

AirPlay now supports Spatial Audio, providing an immersive audio experience with Dolby Atmos when using AirPlay to stream audio from an iPhone or iPad to the HomePod.

Siri control seems to be completely broken. As before, it claims to be unable to find a large number of my albums previously purchased from iTunes. After updating to audioOS 18, it said that the first five in a row that I tried were not available. Then I tried two more recent purchases, which had worked with audioOS 17, and it confirmed that it was going to play the album I had requested but actually played a completely different album.

Previously:

visionOS 2

Apple (release notes, security, enterprise, developer):

visionOS 2 is available today, bringing new spatial computing experiences to Apple Vision Pro users around the world. Existing photos can now be turned into spatial photos with remarkable depth and dimension, intuitive new hand gestures make navigating Vision Pro even faster and easier, and powerful enhancements to key visionOS apps and experiences take spatial computing to the next level.

See also: Juli Clover.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-19): See also: Wes Davis and Devon Dundee.

Friday, September 13, 2024

Alternative Distribution for iPad Apps in EU

Apple (MacRumors):

Starting September 16:

  • Users in the EU can download iPadOS apps on the App Store and through alternative distribution. As mentioned in May, if you have entered into the Alternative Terms Addendum for Apps in the EU, iPadOS first annual installs will begin to accrue and the lower App Store commission rate will apply.
  • Alternative browser engines can be used in iPadOS apps.

Federico Viticci:

A real clipboard manager on my iPad, let’s go 🚀

Previously:

Inferring Typing From Sounds and Eyes

Mark Stockley:

The technique, developed at Durham University, the University of Surrey, and Royal Holloway University of London, builds on previous work to produce a more accurate way to guess your password by listening to the sound of you typing it on your keyboard.

The slight differences in the sounds each key makes is an unintentional leak of information, known as a “side channel”.

Michael Nolan (paper):

While the technique presented in this paper relies on contemporary machine-learning techniques, such attacks date back at least to the 1950s, when British intelligence services surreptitiously recorded mechanical encryption devices employed by the Egyptian government.

Matt Burgess (Hacker News):

Today, a group of six computer scientists are revealing a new attack against Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset where exposed eye-tracking data allowed them to decipher what people entered on the device’s virtual keyboard. The attack, dubbed GAZEploit and shared exclusively with WIRED, allowed the researchers to successfully reconstruct passwords, PINs, and messages people typed with their eyes.

[…]

To be clear, the researchers did not gain access to Apple’s headset to see what they were viewing. Instead, they worked out what people were typing by remotely analyzing the eye movements of a virtual avatar [EyeSight] created by the Vision Pro.

Joe Rossignol:

The proof-of-concept attack was not exploited in the wild, according to the report. Nonetheless, Vision Pro users should immediately update the headset to visionOS 1.3 or later to ensure they are protected, now that the findings have been shared publicly.

Previously:

Canceling the Unity Runtime Fee

Matt Bromberg (via Tim Sweeney, Hacker News):

We want to deliver value at a fair price in the right way so that you will continue to feel comfortable building your business over the long term with Unity as your partner. And we’re confident that if we’re good partners and deliver great software and services, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do together.

So we’re reverting to our existing seat-based subscription model for all gaming customers, including those who adopt Unity 6, the most performant and stable version of Unity yet, later this year.

[…]

Unity Personal will remain free, and we’ll be doubling the current revenue and funding ceiling from $100,000 to $200,000 USD. This means more of you can use Unity at no cost.

[…]

Unity Pro: An 8% subscription price increase to $2,200 USD annually per seat will apply to Unity Pro.

[…]

A 25% subscription price increase will apply to Unity Enterprise. Unity Enterprise will be required for customers with more than $25 million USD of total annual revenue and funding.

Rui Carmo:

I mostly liked Unity and might go back to fiddling with it if I ever find the time, but to be honest Godot is a much better fit for my kids’ projects and I love the way it’s such a small, nimble engine that you can download and run on just about anything.

But I just have to thank them for having effectively bolted a jetpack onto the Godot community, because it’s been a wild ride and I’ve learned a lot playing with it over the past year.

Also, they apparently went to the trouble of removing/redirected the former announcement–but the Internet never forgets[…]

Previously:

StopTheMadness Pro 9

Jeff Johnson:

This new feature allows you to run your own custom scripts at any time on any web page. Your scripts can be triggered from the StopTheMadness Pro extension popup window, from a keyboard shortcut, and in macOS Safari from the contextual menu. JavaScript snippets are intended as an alternative to bookmarklets, which have several downsides such as the necessity to URL-encode your JavaScript.

[…]

The JavaScript snippets feature is not available in Google Chrome or Chromium web browsers, unfortunately, due to limitations of Chrome extension manifest version 3. JavaScript snippets are supported in Safari on both macOS and iOS, as well as in Firefox.

It’s a kind of an OSA Menu/FastScripts for Web pages. There’s more information about how it works here.

Jeff Johnson:

It’s frustrating when people ask me to enable StopTheMadness support for Safari web apps. The problem is Apple, not me! Apple chose to support content blockers and web extensions but not app extensions in Safari web apps. But it’s difficult to explain the technical difference to users.

David Johnson:

Web Apps on macOS Sequoia and Sonoma support Safari Web Extensions and Content Blockers when you have Safari 18 installed. We hear the request for extensions in more places on iOS.

Previously:

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Xcode 16

Apple:

Xcode 16 RC includes SDKs for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, macOS Sequoia 15, and visionOS 2. The Xcode 16 RC release supports on-device debugging in iOS 12 and later, tvOS 12 and later, watchOS 4 and later, and visionOS. Xcode 16 RC requires a Mac running macOS Sonoma 14.5 or later.

It seems like this will be the second year in a row that the new Xcode ships with a showstopper bug where Mac apps targeting an older OS version crash at launch.

JD Gadina:

FB14667312 - Invalid Binaries for macOS Apps Using QuickLook in Xcode 16 Beta

Florian Heidenreich:

It’s still not fixed with the Xcode 16 RC — so every macOS developer who uses QuickLook and targets macOS 11 and earlier will have to stick to Xcode 15.4 for the foreseable future.

Peter N Lewis:

Apple’s whole “we are going to change the behaviour of functions you use based on the SDK you link against” combined with “you have to use the new Xcode/SDK if you use a new macOS” is really infuriating.

Often, they wait until you link to a new SDK before changing behavior, but that is not the case with path extension change in Sequoia, nor for this change with creating Decimal numbers:

We narrowed down the issue to a change to the initializer for Decimal: Decimal(sign:exponent:significand). Prior to Beta 5, the sign passed into the initializer would be the sign of the Decimal. Passing .plus would result in a positive decimal, and passing .minus would result in a negative Decimal. This is regardless of the sign of the significant. In Beta 5, it seems that the sign passed into the init, and the sign of the significand are now negated. This means that passing .minus for sign and a negative Decimal for significand results in an unexpectedly positive Decimal value in Beta 5 alone. This behavior does not seem to be explicitly documented.

Arnaud:

Ah, I see the “nah let’s not care about which SDK the app was compiled with” SwiftUI philosophy is leaking

Previously:

Update (2024-09-17): Xcode 16 was released yesterday, but I do not see anything in the release notes about fixing the invalid binaries problem. As Xcode 15.4 doesn’t run on Sequoia, this means I need to stay with Sonoma.

Update (2024-09-19): softmaus:

FB14667312 is now at least mentioned [as a known issue] in the Release Notes – not in Xcode‘s though, but in macOS Sequoia 15.1 Beta 4’s.

yonato:

withCheckedContinuation crashes when compiling on XCode 16 and running on Sonoma (My Mac Designed for iPad)

Christian Beer:

It seems Xcode 16 broke Storyboard-References 🤯 Works with Xcode 15 but crashes when built with Xcode 16 because it doesn’t take the bundle but tries in main bundle 😩

Age Verification and the App Store

Jeff Horwitz and Aaron Tilley:

Driven by the alleged risks of social media to teen mental health—as well as examples of social-media apps being used to sell drugs to minors and recruit child sex-abuse victims—a wave of states have proposed or passed legislation to regulate platforms. The proposals restrict their ability to collect data on minors, serve them algorithmically targeted content or allow them to establish accounts without parental approval.

Before Carver’s bill in Louisiana, Apple had largely managed to stay out of the fray, but that is expected to change as lawmakers nationwide seek to confront the issue. Social-media platforms and many youth-safety advocates argue that effective content restrictions will require some form of age verification from Apple and Google, the duopoly that oversees operating-system software for the world’s billions of smartphones.

“Age verifying app by app is a case of whack-a-mole,” said Chris McKenna, founder of advocacy group Protect Young Eyes, who also advises Apple on digital-safety issues for children. “Every device knows the age of its user. We give our devices an enormous amount of our identity.”

An Apple spokesman said that websites and social-media companies are best positioned to verify a user’s age and that user privacy expectations would be violated if the company was required to share the age of its users with third-party apps.

I get that Apple doesn’t want to be responsible for age verification, but it’s really a stretch to say that this is better for privacy. With payment processing, Apple is all about protecting customers by only giving the App Store their billing information. It’s too dangerous to give a random Web site your credit card number, we’re told. But when we’re talking about much more sensitive information, like proof of identity, we’re supposed to believe the opposite. You should upload your driver’s license to each individual service because Apple collecting the information once and then sharing a Boolean would violate your privacy.

Ryan Christoffel:

Despite Apple’s opposition, however, the bill actually passed on the house floor. It was unanimous.

However, before the legislation could be voted on by the Senate, a key committee had to put it up for a vote. That committee is where Apple prevailed. Though no one on the committee would comment to the WSJ, it ultimately had its mention of app stores as responsible parties removed.

Ariel Zilber:

According to Carver, Apple lobbyists inundated him with messages “all day, every day.”

[…]

Louisiana was the first state to pass a law requiring age verification with IDs for sites that host adult content. Other states followed suit in approving similar statutes.

In May, The Post was the first to report that Google and Meta spent nearly $1 million on lobbyists who were hired to fight proposed legislation in New York that was aimed at protecting children online.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-17): It seems that Apple already has an API for age verification, but it only works with certain US states and only apps in certain categories can request the entitlement.

CodeEdit 0.3.1

Rui Carmo:

CodeEdit is a fully native macOS editor heavily inspired by Xcode UX conventions that is very interesting to me as an alternative to Visual Studio Code on the Mac.

Austin Condiff:

It might sound crazy, but we are determined to build an editor native to macOS written in Swift, by the community, for the community. Completely open source and free forever.

CodeEdit:

CodeEdit is a code editor built by the community, for the community, written entirely and unapologetically for macOS. Features include syntax highlighting, code completion, project find and replace, snippets, terminal, task running, debugging, git integration, code review, extensions, and more.

It sounds and looks very promising, but I couldn’t get it to work like in the screenshots. All I was able to do was open individual files and see them with syntax highlighting. Is there some trick to being able to create a workspace to access the multi-pane interface or use find/replace?

Previously:

Swift Build Times and Module Verification

Paulo Andrade:

Secrets’ build time must have gotten slower and slower without me really noticing it… until Xcode’s 16 betas, where I felt I really needed to understand what was going on.

[…]

The compiler is clearly spending most of the 3.5 minutes it took to build Secrets on verifying modules[…] This all sounds good and dandy, especially if you’re distributing a framework, but I clearly don’t want to be doing this in Secrets on every build!

[…]

This tweak brought down the build time from 3.5 minutes to 52 seconds 😮!

Previously:

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

iOS 18 AirPods Pro 2 Firmware

Juli Clover:

With head gestures, users can control Siri on the AirPods Pro with a shake or a nod of the head. If you get a phone call, for example, you can shake your head no if you don't want to answer it, or nod to accept the call. Siri interactions can be used for responding to incoming messages, calls, and notifications.

Apple is adding Voice Isolation to the AirPods Pro to cut down on loud background sounds to make you easier to hear, and there is a new Personalized Spatial Audio feature specific to gaming.

Previously:

Group Container Names in Sequoia

John Brayton:

On both macOS and iOS, sandboxed apps use group container folders to share data between the main app and extensions, such as the Subscribe in Unread share extension and Unread’s widgets.

[…]

On beta releases of Sequoia (macOS 15) using the “group.” prefix results in the customer getting an alert with this text at every launch:

“Unread.app” would like to access data from other apps.

Keeping app data separate makes it easier to manage your privacy and security.

I fixed this by changing the group container identifier.

Martin Höller:

I don’t like [how] Sequoia restricts how shared group containers can be named. So far I used “group.com.bluebanana-software.iyf”, which leads to a permission dialog each time the app is started. Now it needs to be “<TeamID>. com.bluebanana-software.iyf”.

To migrate to the new container, the user needs to actively give permission to access the old file as now it is outside of the app’s sandbox.

Adam Overholtzer:

Thankfully it only seems to impact “native” Mac apps built for Sequoia. Existing apps and Catalyst apps (mine anyway, knock on wood) don’t seem to show the popup.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): Pedro José Pereira Vieito:

Mac Catalyst apps can use the group.* Group Container identifiers because Apple does add that identifier to their provisioning profile (like with iOS apps). Mac App Store apps can also use them as they are signed by Apple.

Unfortunately, Apple is not currently adding the App Groups entitlement to the provisioning profiles of native Mac apps, so you will get the permission prompt when developing an app or when distributing it outside the App Store.

Previously:

Apple Loses Ireland Tax Case

Arjun Kharpal (ruling, Hacker News):

Europe’s top court ruled against Apple on Tuesday in the tech giant’s 10-year court battle over its tax affairs in Ireland. The case stems back to 2016 when the European Commission ordered Ireland to recover up to 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in back taxes from Apple.

[…]

Apple said in a filing on Tuesday that it will incur a one-time income tax charge of about $10 billion in its fourth fiscal quarter ending Sept. 28, 2024.

Charlotte Edwards and Theo Leggett (via John Gruber):

The original decision covered the period from 1991 to 2014, and related to the way in which profits generated by two Apple subsidiaries based in Ireland were treated for tax purposes.

Those tax arrangements were deemed to be illegal because other companies were not able to obtain the same advantages.

[…]

Apple said in a statement: "This case has never been about how much tax we pay, but which government we are required to pay it to. We always pay all the taxes we owe wherever we operate and there has never been a special deal.

I think first part is misleading because if Apple had been paying a different government it would have been paying more in taxes. That was the entire reason behind setting up the tax shelter. However, as I’ve written before, I think it is accurate to say that Apple didn’t get a special deal. Other companies could have done the same thing, if they had the resources and motivation to set up such a tax avoidance scheme.

The Irish government has argued that Apple should not have to repay the back taxes, deeming that its loss was worth it to make the country an attractive home for large companies.

[…]

Although corporation tax rates for businesses are set nationally, and are not subject to the EU’s jurisdiction, the trade bloc does have extensive powers to regulate state aid and in this case, it argued that by applying very low tax rates to Apple, Ireland was granting it an unfair subsidy.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Ireland ‘didn’t want the money’ because the government thought it might risk future Apple investment in the country (Apple was, at the time, planning a huge new datacenter here. Apple later scrapped those plans because protests lead to delays)

The Irish taxpayers sure as hell want the money.

Rui Carmo:

Yes, it’s a bucketload of money. No, it’s not to be “paid”, its been in escrow all this time. And yes, it accumulated due to Ireland’s very deliberate setup as a tax haven for tech companies, which brought them a lot of investment that would otherwise not have been done in the EU.

Old Unix Geek:

Ireland is actually harming the rest of the EU with its actions, since requiring Apple to pay similar taxes to everyone else might have helped EU competitors to the large US tech firms survive.

And it disadvantaged other European countries, which is why the EU said that it went against Ireland’s agreement in joining the Common Market.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-11): ensignavenger:

I read through the first part of the ruling to get a better idea of what happened. Apparently, Apple wrote to the Irish tax authorities, and said “this is how we plan to calculate our taxes” and the Irish tax authority said “okay, no problem, that works for us” and the EU commission investigated some years later, and said “wait, was that method of calculating taxes available to all Irish companies?

noirbot:

[It] feels odd that Ireland has now essentially gotten all the benefits of offering this illegal deal by having Apple do business there and now also gets all the back taxes that Apple probably wouldn’t have paid to Ireland if they hadn’t gotten the deal.

Update (2024-09-19): Timothy Taylor (via Hacker News):

I wrote a decade ago about the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich, a strategy for corporations to evade taxes that was widespread and large-scale enough to come to the attention of the International Monetary Fund.

[…]

However, a combination of Irish tax reforms in 2015 and changes in the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made this strategy ineffective: “Consequently, Irish companies began paying royalties directly to American parent companies instead of routing them through tax havens.”

No Alternative Payments in Louisiana

Ariel Zilber (via Hacker News):

Apple successfully killed proposed legislation in Louisiana that would have required the iPhone maker to allow developers who market their apps on the app store to use an alternative payment system by threatening to cancel the making of a Will Smith film in the state, according to a report.

In 2021, lawmakers in the Bayou State were keen on approving a bill that would have allowed developers of apps to use alternative payments systems which would have circumvented Apple’s app store.

[…]

“He basically said that if we didn’t kill the bill, he’d kill the movie and hurt our economy,” Magee told the Journal.

Perhaps Apple TV+ is more strategic than I thought. It’s expensive to run, but it’s dual-use in that it produces salable content and can also be used for lobbying.

Previously:

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Apple Denies Evidence of Hiding Browser Choice Setting

Hartley Charlton:

Apple faces allegations of misleading the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over a user interface issue in iOS related to changing the default browser, Open Web Advocacy reports.

[…]

Now, in a formal response to the CMA, Apple has denied that this issue ever existed.

[…]

Apple has not provided an explanation for how its claim in the August response aligns with these findings, leaving open the question of whether the company's internal processes failed to verify the accuracy of its statements or whether it is actively attempting to minimize the situation.

Open Web Advocacy:

The only realistic interpretation is that statements made by the CMA and OWA on this topic are “not correct” or false. That is, at the time either OWA or the CMA’s statements were written, Apple was not employing a deceptive pattern to hide the option to switch default browser if Safari was the default. This is certainly a bold claim given this was independently verified by us, ArsTechnica and the CMA. This verification included screenshots, documents and a video of the whole process. Apple presumably also retains copies of the original code that implement this “functionality” and can easily replicate the issue.

Why didn’t Apple just say that it was a bug and that they fixed it?

Previously:

EU iOS Envy

Allison Johnson:

Whining about stuff is a treasured American pastime, so allow me to indulge: the iPhone is more fun in Europe now, and it’s not fair.

They’re getting all kinds of stuff because they have cool regulators, not, like, regular regulators. Third-party app stores, the ability for browsers to run their own engines, Fortnite, and now the ability to replace lots of default apps? I want it, too! Imagine if Chrome on iOS wasn’t just a rinky dink little Safari emulator! Imagine downloading a new dialer app with a soundboard of fart sounds and setting it as your default! Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem interested in sharing these possibilities with everyone.

Federico Viticci:

As I wrote on Threads (much to the disbelief of some commentators), I personally feel like the “DMA fork” of iOS is the version of iOS I’ve wanted for the past few years. It’s still iOS, with the tasteful design, vibrant app ecosystem, high-performance animations, and accessibility we’ve come to expect from Apple; at the same time, it’s a more flexible and fun version of iOS predicated upon the assumption that users deserve options to control more aspects of how their expensive pocket computers should work. Or, as I put it: some of the flexibility of Android, but on iOS, sounds like a dream to me.

[…]

I think that Apple is doing a pretty good job with their ongoing understanding of the DMA. It’s a process, and they’re doing the work. I don’t find the installation of third-party marketplaces as horrible as others have painted it, and I’m excited about the idea of more default apps coming to iOS. Whether you like it or not, this is the world we live in now. A law was passed, and iPhones (and iPads soon) must be made more versatile. As a result, iPhones are more fun for people like me (a clipboard manager! Fortnite!), while very little has changed for those don’t care about new options.

Federico Viticci:

We can finally use our phones like actual computers with more default apps and apps from external sources.

Jason Snell:

One of Apple’s greatest fears has come to pass: fragmentation has come for the iPhone and iPad. By the end of the year, users in part of the world will be able to harness the power of Apple Intelligence for various tasks–while users in the European Union will be able to set default apps, delete stock Apple apps, buy from alternative App Stores, play Fortnite, use a clipboard manager, and more.

[…]

It strikes me that Apple has tried to make residents of the European Union envious of other regions by withholding Apple Intelligence, at least at first. There are legal reasons to do so, of course, but it’s also a lesson to Europeans that if they support such a strict regulatory regime, they’re going to be left on the side of the road while the rest of the world enjoys the bounty of AI features inside iOS. (Whether that bounty actually exists is beside the point.)

Yet, when I consider everything being experimented with in the EU, I start to wonder if the envy is actually going to flow in the other direction.

John Voorhees (Mastodon):

At first, the differences between my iOS and Federico’s didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Sure, it was easier for him to access AltStore, but it’s available outside the EU if you jump through some extra hoops. However, over time, the differences have multiplied. I’ve also had the chance to try Apple Intelligence in 18.1, and although there’s more to come from Apple on the AI front, which could change my calculus, from where things stand today, I’d gladly trade iOS 18.1 for the EU’s 18.0.

Sebastiaan de With:

I’m feeling pretty strongly that with the EU / US ‘forking’ of iOS thanks to the DMA, the only people who really being helped here are other tech giants and not users and small developers like us.

John Gruber:

Imagine if Chrome could deplete your iPhone battery as fast as it does your MacBook battery. Imagine if you were one of the millions (zillions?) of people whose “incognito mode” browsing history was observed and stored by Google and deleted only after they lost a lawsuit. Imagine — and this takes a lot of imagination — if Google actually shipped a version of Chrome for iOS, only for the EU, that used its own battery-eating rendering engine instead of using the energy-efficient system version of WebKit.

It would be great to have that as an option. I’m having so many problems with Safari for Mac: sites that don’t work properly, or that stall and stop updating, or that forget that I just logged in; the app beachballing for 30 seconds at a time, the whole browser getting wedged and not loading any pages until I restart it. After 20 years of using Safari, I find myself using Chrome more and more, and it seems faster and much more reliable. (Surprisingly, it even offers more search engine choices than Safari.) I don’t like this. Chrome is still not as good of a Mac app, and I want it to have solid competition. But Apple has dropped the ball, and Chrome “just works.” (Except that Apple prevents it from auto-filling SMS codes.) I only worry that these benefits wouldn’t be realized on iOS because Google wouldn’t be allowed to use its superior process architecture.

Eric Schwarz:

I like Safari, but if someone really likes Chrome, they should be able to use real Chrome on their iPhone. If it ends up being a resource hog, Apple can build tattle-tale resources in the operating system to educate the user. Likewise, I also would really prefer the ability to use my own storage for cloud-based device backups and photo storage—I could cut back on iCloud just for sync and the suite of non-storage features.

John Gruber:

On the rest-of-the-world side we have the imminent release of iPhone Mirroring and Apple Intelligence. I don’t play Fortnite, and even if I did, I wouldn’t on my phone, but I find the latter far more interesting — and fun — than the former.

I’m far more interested in a real clipboard manager than in Fortnite.

See also: Sebastiaan de With, though note that Apple Intelligence will not be in the initial world release, either, and Visual Intelligence and Genmoji aren’t coming until December or 2025 for non-English-speaking countries outside of the EU. Also, many people have older phones that can’t run Apple Intelligence. Apple and the EU may well work this out before they upgrade.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): MarkV:

Worth noting that every major service that Apple ever launched has come to the EU member states with a 1-3 year delay, if ever.

I’m talking about everything from the iTunes Music Store, iBooks, MobileMe, iCloud, Siri, Apple Maps (+ FlyOver, traffic data, bike lanes), Apple Pay, Apple TV+, Apple Watch cellular, Fitness+, Apple News, Apple Card, eSIMs, Satellite SOS, …

For Apple to pretend like AI being delayed is a DMA issue rather than regular business as usual is hilarious & sad.

Stefanus Secundus:

Also, using Apple services in non-English or mixed languages has always been a second-class experience—whether it’s waiting for new Siri voices or the latest transformer-based autocorrect improvements.

Apple’s DMA Compliance, Summer 2024

Damien Geradin:

Apple took everyone by surprise by announcing on 25 January 2024 how it intended to implement the app store-related provisions of the DMA in advance of the 7 March 2024 deadline. However, it became immediately clear to app developers that Apple’s implementation failed to comply with the DMA. This led Apple to make some limited changes to its terms in rapid succession to then bring more significant changes on 8 August 2024. The purpose of this blog post is to explain (in summary form, as many of these issues are complex and would deserve the sort of granular analysis that would not fit within a blog post) the reasons why Apple’s new terms still fail to comply with the DMA.

[…]

Apple’s August 2024 terms still fail to comply with the DMA. As explained below, they represent minimal progress on all key issues. In some cases, they still violate the letter of some DMA provisions. In other instances, they make it very hard, and in some cases impossible for app developers and their users to take advantage of the benefits of the DMA through a combination of unattractive fees and friction, amounting to circumvention.

[…]

Some of the requirements imposed on app developers who want to make their apps available for direct downloading are problematic: (i) it is not clear why direct downloading is only permitted from the app developer’s website and not, for instance, from a web app store as is the case in the PC space (web app stores may be an efficient means for app developers to distribute their apps and for users to find the apps that may cater to their needs.); (ii) in order for an app developer to be allowed to make its apps available for direct downloading, it has to be “a member in good standing of the Apple Developer Program for two (2) continuous years or more, and have an Application that had more than one (1) million First Annual Installs on iOS and/or iPadOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.” There is no justification for such onerous requirements, which will strictly limit the number of apps that may be eligible for direct downloading; and (iii) for the same reasons as those mentioned in the context of alternative marketplaces, the payment of the CTF to Apple is problematic.

Previously:

What to Do With Unwanted Political Spam Texts

John Gruber (Mastodon):

For several months this year — while receiving, I’d say, around half a dozen such messages per day, every day, every week — I tried using Messages’s “Delete and Report Junk” feature. As far as I can tell it didn’t do a damn thing. Now that I see Apple’s own documentation, I can see why. Using this feature doesn’t even block the sender from sending more messages.

About a month ago I switched tactics and started responding to all such messages with “STOP”. I usually send it in all caps, just like that, because I’m so annoyed. I resisted doing this until a month ago thinking that sending any reply at all to these messages, including the magic “STOP” keyword, would only serve to confirm to the sender that an actual person was looking at the messages sent to my phone number. But this has actually worked. Election season is heating up but I’m getting way way fewer political spam texts now. Your mileage may vary, but for me, the “STOP” response works.

It works in the sense that I don’t get any more from that number, but I do get more from other numbers about the same topic.

Jeff Gamet:

It’s crazy that I have to open a message, block the sender, then delete and report junk. The delete part often doesn’t show up so I have to report the junk message and then delete. This is multiple times a day. Such a great use of my time.

Update (2024-09-12): Tim Johnsen:

Should’ve done this ages ago #shortcuts #automation

Monday, September 9, 2024

iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):

The new Pro lineup features the thinnest borders of any Apple product and introduces larger display sizes: 6.3 inches on iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches on iPhone 16 Pro Max — the largest iPhone display ever.

[…]

The new mechanical architecture improves heat dissipation and efficiency for up to 20 percent better sustained performance.

[…]

Later this fall, Camera Control will be updated with a two-stage shutter to automatically lock focus and exposure on a subject with a light press, letting users reframe the shot without losing focus.

[…]

Later this year, Camera Control will unlock visual intelligence to help users learn about objects and places faster than ever before.

[…]

Powered by A18 Pro, the upgraded camera system introduces a new 48MP Fusion camera with a faster, more efficient quad-pixel sensor and Apple Camera Interface, unlocking 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision — the highest resolution and frame-rate combination ever available on iPhone, and a smartphone first. The quad-pixel sensor can read data 2x faster, enabling zero shutter lag for 48MP ProRAW or HEIF photos. A new 48MP Ultra Wide camera also features a quad-pixel sensor with autofocus, so users can take higher-resolution 48MP ProRAW and HEIF images when capturing uniquely framed, wider-angle shots or getting close to their subjects with macro photography. The powerful 5x Telephoto camera now comes on both iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, allowing users to catch the action from farther away, no matter which model they choose.

[…]

A new 6-core CPU is the fastest in a smartphone, with two performance cores and four efficiency cores that can run the same workload as the previous generation 15 percent faster while using 20 percent less power.

Camera Control sounds great—subject to case compatibility—but I wonder whether it will be too fiddly in practice. Another year with disappointing Pro colors.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): Juli Clover:

The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus have an A18 chip, while the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have an A18 Pro chip.

The chips are similar, but there are some differences to be aware of, along with differences in the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro thermal design.

Update (2024-09-17): Wes Davis (Hacker News, MacRumors):

Apple has hiked the price of its battery repair service for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. Now, it will cost $119 to get your battery replaced in either phone — a $20 jump over its older fee.

Joe Rossignol:

Kuo estimated that sales of all four iPhone 16 models reached about 37 million units in the first weekend after Apple began accepting pre-orders, which is down nearly 13% compared to first-weekend sales of the iPhone 15 series last year. The analyst said a key factor for the decline is the lower demand for the Pro models, with first-weekend sales of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max estimated to be down 27% and 16%, respectively, compared to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max sales during the equivalent period last year.

The Pro models certainly seem less differentiated than last year.

Tim Hardwick:

Apple during its iPhone event earlier this week unveiled a significant upgrade to its Voice Memos app, introducing multitrack recording capabilities that appear to be exclusively for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models. The new feature marks a notable advancement in mobile audio recording, but it appears it will be unavailable for older iPhones or the standard iPhone 16.

Update (2024-09-19): See also: iPhone 16 Pro reviews from Nilay Patel, John Gruber, and others.

iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus

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

Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — elevates the camera experience on the iPhone 16 lineup. It is packed with innovation, including a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch interactions. Camera Control can quickly launch the camera, take a photo, and start video recording so users don’t miss the moment. A new camera preview helps users frame the shot and adjust other control options — such as zoom, exposure, or depth of field — to compose a stunning photo or video by sliding their finger on the Camera Control. Additionally, developers will be able to bring Camera Control to third-party apps such as Snapchat.

[…]

A18 delivers a huge leap in performance and power efficiency, and is built on second-generation 3-nanometer technology to further accelerate Apple Intelligence. An upgraded 16-core Neural Engine is optimized for large generative models and runs ML models up to 2x faster than the A16 Bionic chip.

The 6-core CPU is 30 percent faster than the A16 Bionic chip and faster than all the competition. It is also more power efficient and can run the same workload with 30 percent less power than A16 Bionic.

Apple:

Today, Apple announced that Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant, will start rolling out next month with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, with more features launching in the coming months.

Francisco Tolmasky:

The “camera control” gives off strong TouchBar and Stage Manager energy. People have wanted a “take picture” button for years. But Apple couldn’t possibly just give us that. So they delayed this absurdly simple request for YEARS so that they could justify it with INNOVATION. This isn’t just a button, it’s covered in some sort of crystal or something and hey look you can rub it too.

Joe Rosensteel:

Extremely interested to find out how well the tiny camera control surface works with various iPhone cases instead of just making this a physical button.

Kevin Patrick Doyle:

or you know, gloves, which some of us wear a few months out of the year

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): Jason Snell:

I got to spend some time with Camera Control, the second button Apple has added to the iPhone in as many years. I should say up front that I’m a huge fan of adding physical buttons to the iPhone, because physical buttons build muscle memory that software interfaces can never quite build in the same way. Taking a picture on the iPhone should become second nature, just as it is with point-and-shoot cameras. The Camera Control button should enable that—and, by the way, it allows the Action Button to officially become a “do whatever you want” button.

The button itself feels really good. It’s a real button—if you push it all the way down, you can feel it depress with a pleasing tactile response. But it’s also a touch- and pressure-sensitive button that lets you “push halfway” to bring up another set of options, for things like zooming in or switching between photographic styles. If you keep your finger on the button and half-push twice in quick succession, you’ll be taken up one level in the hierarchy and can swipe to different commands. Then half-push once to enter whatever controls you want, and you’re back to swiping. It takes a few minutes to get used to the right set of gestures, but it’s a potentially powerful feature—and at its base, it’s still very simple: push to bring up the camera, push to shoot, and push and hold to shoot video.

Nick Heer:

Apple could have added a hardware camera button at any time in the iPhone’s history. It did not until it wanted to use the camera for things not directly concerning photography and videography. Oh, it has those features too, of course, but it also makes the buttons down the right-hand side of this year’s iPhone line into dedicated Apple Intelligence launchers.

Matt Birchler:

This event just solidified my opinion that the iPhone 15 lineup was one of the greatest iPhone lineups of all time.

M.G. Siegler:

I'm not trying to be a jerk, this is hopefully just constructive criticism: today's event could have and should have been half as long as it was.

Eric Schwarz:

Something else that has become apparent with these events—Apple spends way too much time demoing things that we’ve already seen.

Update (2024-09-17): Keith Harrison:

Two new sizes as the Pro phones grow in size, and weight, and get even smaller bezels. Here’s what you need to know about the iPhone 16.

Steve DentSteve Dent:

Apple has now released new updates on iPhone 16 repairability and appears to have addressed both those issues and a bunch more. Saying it tries to strike a balance between durability and repairability, it focused particularly on the “repairability” aspect with its latest devices.

Update (2024-09-19): Rocio Fabbro (via Hacker News):

“Apple employees can already purchase the iPhone 16 with their employee discount,” TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a post on X Wednesday. “Typically, employees have had to wait several weeks after the release of new iPhone models before being able to buy. This could be another sign that the early demand for the iPhone 16 is below expectations.”

Rosyna Keller:

This is false. New iPhones have been a part of EPP immediately since at least 2017.

See also: iPhone 16 reviews from Allison Johnson, John Gruber, and others.

AirPods 4

Apple (video, MacRumors):

The new AirPods 4 are the most advanced and comfortable headphones Apple has ever created with an open-ear design, and today, customers can choose between two distinct models: AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). AirPods Max now come in midnight, starlight, blue, purple, and orange, and offer USB-C charging for more convenience. This fall, AirPods Pro 2 will introduce the world’s first end-to-end hearing health experience, delivering active Hearing Protection, a scientifically validated Hearing Test, and a clinical-grade Hearing Aid feature.

[…]

Delivering a massive improvement in sound quality, AirPods 4 feature an entirely new acoustic architecture, low-distortion driver, and high dynamic range amplifier, and add Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking for the most immersive media experience. With the H2 chip, AirPods 4 unlock intelligent audio experiences only Apple silicon can deliver, such as Voice Isolation, enabling clearer call quality no matter the environmental conditions, and Siri Interactions, allowing users to simply nod their head yes or gently shake their head no to respond to Siri announcements. For even more control, AirPods 4 also feature a new force sensor on the stem to play or pause media and mute or end calls with a quick press.

Volume controls still seem to be limited to AirPods Pro.

Apple (Hacker News):

AirPods Pro add an innovative over-the-counter Hearing Aid capability for users with mild to moderate hearing loss. Using the personalized hearing profile from the Hearing Test, this new feature seamlessly transforms AirPods Pro into a clinical-grade hearing aid. After setup, the feature enables personalized dynamic adjustments so users have the sounds around them boosted in real time. This helps them better engage in conversation, and keeps them connected to the people and environment around them. With the incredible audio quality of AirPods Pro, the user’s personalized hearing profile is automatically applied to music, movies, games, and phone calls across their devices, without needing to adjust any settings. Users can also set up the Hearing Aid feature with an audiogram created by a hearing health professional.

Ezekiel Elin:

My hearing aids are waterproof, the battery lasts 5 days (discardable) or 18-22 hours (rechargeable), and I can stream directly from my phone. The main quirks I have to deal with are bugs on iOS that fail to handle headphones being paired all the time (CarPlay, mainly). I can control the volume on my hearing aids, change programs for loud environments, and can often hear better than my friends in those loud environments.

[…]

I don’t mean to dunk on the AirPods and their potential for people who don’t have or don’t want to try hearing aids. But if the people around you are that dissatisfied with their hearing aids then it really sounds like something’s gone wrong in the dispensing process.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple today announced that the AirPods Max are being updated with a USB-C charging port and new color options, including Midnight, Blue, Purple, Orange, and Starlight.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): Saagar Jha:

Interestingly AirPods 4 have a shorter advertised battery life than AirPods 3: from 6 hours to 5

Update (2024-09-17): Hartley Charlton:

Various media outlets and YouTube channels today shared their first impressions of the AirPods 4, reviewing the changes Apple has made to enhance comfort, sound, and functionality.

Apple Watch Series 10

Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):

Apple Watch Series 10 is nearly 10 percent thinner than Apple Watch Series 7, Series 8, and Series 9, while offering all the advanced capabilities users love, adding new features, and maintaining all-day 18-hour battery life. An innovative metal back integrates the antenna into the housing of the device itself, combining the two layers into one. The back is perfectly matched in material, finish, and color to the rest of the case, making it appear like the device is made from a single piece of metal.

[…]

In addition to being thinner, Apple Watch Series 10 is also lighter: Aluminum cases weigh up to 10 percent less than Series 9, and titanium cases weigh almost 20 percent less than stainless steel Series 9. The case also features more rounded corners and a wider aspect ratio, which contribute to a much larger display while only slightly growing the case to new 42mm and 46mm sizes.

[…]

Fifteen minutes of charging provides up to eight hours of normal daily use, or eight minutes of charging powers up to eight hours of sleep tracking. Faster charging also means users can charge to 80 percent battery in about 30 minutes.

I’m not sure that I like that the base size is increasing. With Apple Watch SE being updated in 2020 and 2022, a new model seemed imminent, but it was not updated today.

Apple:

Breathing Disturbances is an innovative new Apple Watch metric that uses the accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during sleep. Every 30 days, Apple Watch will analyze breathing disturbance data and notify users if it shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea so they can speak to their doctor about next steps, including potential diagnosis and treatment.

Because overall quality of sleep is important, Breathing Disturbances can also be used to assess restfulness of sleep. Breathing Disturbances can be influenced by alcohol, medications, sleep position, and more. Users can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month, or one-year period.

Apple:

Apple Watch Ultra 2 in black titanium, Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 2, and the new Titanium Milanese Loop can be pre-ordered today, with availability beginning Friday, September 20.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-12): Mark Gurman:

This has gone under the radar, but if you have an Apple Watch Series 6 or newer with Blood Oxygen monitoring and you buy a new Apple Watch, you’re going to lose that very key feature a lot of people rely on until Apple figures out a workaround or settles with Masimo.

Leonardo G Di Giulio:

Imagine how much accurate [the sleep apnea detection] would be if it also used the oxygen data.

David Smith:

An interesting point of comparison. The Series 10 “Small” (42mm) Apple Watch is very nearly the same physical footprint of the “Large” (42mm) Series 1 Apple Watch.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-18): Joe Rossignol:

The first Apple Watch Series 10 reviews have been published by various media outlets and YouTube channels, ahead of the device launching on Friday.

Thursday, September 5, 2024

Default Folder X 6.1

I missed reporting on last year’s Default Folder X 6:

[Quick Search] gives you keyboard-based access to Recent and Favorite Items, including recently-launched applications and recently-used Finder windows. Note that it does NOT search your whole Mac, it searches the files, folders and apps that Default Folder X remembers for you. In most cases, it will find exactly what you want without showing all the extra stuff you don’t want.

[…]

In Save As dialogs, the box where you type the filename is way too small. How ’bout we fix that?

[…]

You can now drag and drop files and folders onto Default Folder X’s icon in your menu bar. When you do, it will pop up its menu so you can select a destination for them.

[…]

Automatically perform actions on a file after you save it. This can be as simple as immediately opening the saved file or attaching it to an email, or as complex as using AppleScript, Automator or Shortcuts to process the saved file in some customized way.

Default Folder X 6.1 (release notes):

In addition to Sequoia compatibility, Default Folder X 6.1 also opens favorite URLs from its Quick Search window, can open folders in the Warp terminal app, and fixes a number of bugs that cropped up in version 6.0.8.

It’s $39.95 to buy or $9.95 to upgrade. I used Default Folder a lot back in the day, but since Mac OS X I’ve mostly been using LaunchBar to help with open/save panels. Now I’m considering whether I should level up.

Spotify Connect Can No Longer Use iPhone Volume Buttons

Sarah Perez (MacRumors):

Spotify claims Apple may again be in violation of European regulation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires interoperability from big technology companies dubbed “gatekeepers.” This time, the issue isn’t about in-app purchases, links or pricing information, but rather how Apple has discontinued the technology that allows Spotify users to control the volume on their connected devices.

When streaming to connected devices via Spotify Connect on iOS, users were previously able to use the physical buttons on the side of their iPhone to adjust the volume. As a result of the change, this will no longer work.

Spotify sees this an anti-competitive because Apple gets to use its own protocol with HomePod and can access the buttons, whereas if Spotify uses its protocol it can’t. The buttons would work if Spotify used AirPlay 2, but for whatever reason Spotify doesn’t want to do that. How can they try to offer something better if they’re stuck using the same technology as Apple?

The technology Spotify was using for Connect was already degraded before being discontinued, the streamer claims. Spotify said that the experience using the iPhone volume buttons was often unstable, resulting in bugs like volume spikes during sessions.

It’s unclear to me what technology Apple discontinued that used to make this possible. And why is it happening so late in the iOS 17 cycle? Did Apple make a change recently or is Spotify just finally giving up since it had gotten so buggy?

William Gallagher:

Spotify has reportedly asked Apple to allow it to control the volume when using Spotify Connect to send music to HomePods. However, Apple has said that it requires Spotify’s app to add integration with HomePods.

Emma Roth (Sonos):

The Sonos app has also stopped letting iPhone users change the volume of their devices using physical buttons for similar reasons.

Update (2024-09-06): John Gruber (Mastodon):

Who should get to decide the rules for how the hardware volume buttons work on iPhones and iPads? Apple, or the European Commission?

If Apple is arbitrarily blocking access, making the user experience worse, as some kind of power play to prop up HomePod…maybe the EC?

Steven:

Also, they’d have to integrate with HomePods to get access to the new API, not just “support airplay”. Even Sonos, which supports AirPlay 2 doesn’t get access.

BenRiceM:

Spotify is definitely being obstinate, but given that camera apps had to wait 15 years for an API to detect volume presses (without ridiculous workarounds), I do think Apple could stand to be a little more open here.

Update (2024-09-09): See also: Dithering.

Marco Arment:

My guess is this API, which has been deprecated for a decade.

It’s the only way we’ve ever been able to programmatically set the iPhone volume, so it’s how apps would intercept volume buttons: observe it for changes, and upon a change, immediately set it back, then perform the custom action.

The only other known method is subview-diving on the MPVolumeView, but I don’t think that was ever reliable enough to actually write changes to the volume.

Alex Pretzlav:

I bet they were doing it this way.

Karl Baron:

What broke in 17.3 was listening to private API NSNotifications for the hardware buttons (_UIApplicationVolumeDownButtonDownNotification) like in this code. [Signal] had to go back to observing an MPVolumeView in our camera app to let you use the volume buttons to shoot (causing volume to randomly change when the hack failed) until last year they finally gave us a real API for it.

I keep hearing about more apps that were using this private API. The real API seems to be only for camera use.

Jonathan Z Simon:

The Harmony (Logitech remote control system) app uses the iPhone volume keys as the remote control volume. For me this is an extremely valuable feature, and also totally natural: as a user, it “does what I mean”.

Jimmy Callin:

I do see an argument that by bundling custom volume button actions with HomePod, they are forcing apps to support (and maintain) HomePod and thus are misusing their strong market power in iOS to unnaturally boost their position in a separate product category.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

I believe Spotify has subsequently edited their support page, because the above text no longer appear here, where it now reads:

Apple has discontinued the technology that enables Spotify to control volume for connected devices using the volume buttons on the device. While we work with them on a solution, you can use the Spotify app to easily adjust the volume on your connected device.

They deleted the part that said, “Apple has told us that they require apps to integrate into Home Pod in order to access the technology that controls volume on iPhones.”

Why? This is the biggest mystery about this whole story. I never understood what that meant. There does not seem to be a new (non-camera) API that Apple could offer to Spotify in return for supporting HomePod, so my assumption was that Spotify was being rejected on policy grounds and that Apple would allow them to continue using the private API if they cooperated. But it now seems clear that Apple changed/broke the private API. So what could be the carrot that Apple was supposedly offering?

I don’t know whether Spotify was misleading us or whether this was a clumsy way of saying that the volume buttons would work with HomePod (automatically) if Spotify Connect supported AirPlay. But the main Spotify app already supports AirPlay, and it doesn’t really make sense for Spotify Connect:

I was wrong yesterday to say — in the headline of the post, of all places — that Spotify could solve the problem by adopting AirPlay 2. Spotify Connect is, and needs to be, its own separate thing. Spotify users who use Connect love it. Here’s what one DF reader wrote to me: “AirPlay is a per-device feature, while Spotify Connect synchronizes Spotify sessions across devices. I can initiate playing on my iPhone, then control it from my iPad, Mac, or Watch. I can change the destination speaker from any device. It’s so good that I’m forever wedded to Spotify until Apple or someone else comes up with an equivalent experience. I think if AirPlay offered equivalent functionality, but Spotify refused to adopt it, Spotify would be open to more criticism, but from the perspective of a Spotify user, it’s lost functionality and even supporting AirPlay 2 would not fix what is now a diminished experience. So I think Spotify is doing the only thing they can, which is complain.”

John Gruber:

Apple’s own Remote app uses the iPhone volume buttons to control the TV’s volume. Which I don’t think should be illegal, but clearly demonstrates the use case for being a public API.

Google Drive Blocks Unverified Apps

Binarynights:

Recently, Google has limited or blocked direct connections to Google Drive through ForkLift. Depending on whether users have previously connected to Google Drive through ForkLift, they may encounter one of two warnings when trying to connect via the Connect Panel.

[…]

Google now requires apps like ForkLift to undergo the Cloud Application Security Assessment (CASA). This assessment ensures that apps meet strict security standards to protect user data and maintain secure integrations.

Undergoing the CASA process helps ForkLift identify and fix any security issues, safeguarding user data and ensuring our security practices are transparent. However, meeting these requirements can be a lengthy process. Even if ForkLift meets all standards immediately, the assessment can take up to six weeks. If significant changes are needed, it could take much longer.

I don’t like this trend of Google making it harder for users to access its services via third-party apps, and the security benefits seem questionable.

Previously:

Founder Mode

Paul Graham (Hacker News):

The theme of Brian’s talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized as “hire good people and give them room to do their jobs.” He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple. So far it seems to be working. Airbnb’s free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.

[…]

In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode. But we can infer the existence of another mode from the dismay of founders who’ve tried it, and the success of their attempts to escape from it.

[…]

The way managers are taught to run companies seems to be like modular design in the sense that you treat subtrees of the org chart as black boxes. You tell your direct reports what to do, and it’s up to them to figure out how. But you don’t get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.

As he says, if this term catches on it will be misused like “agile.”

Shubhangi Goel:

A prime example of a tech titan embracing founder mode is Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, who has 60 direct reports and still eats in the company cafeteria.

[…]

Chesky spoke about how conventional advice on building and scaling up a startup is broken. He said, as he has before, that investors and outside managers just don’t have the insights that founders do. He said that splitting companies into organizational chart tiers — isolating founders from anyone but their direct reports — often kills the business.

[…]

There are also notable exceptions to positive founder mode: Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes were both founders who operated with autonomy, then ignominy.

On the other hand, Satya Nadella and Tim Cook are both outside managers touted with turning their companies around — in both cases, building on the legacies of strong founders.

Tim Cook wasn’t CEO during the Apple turnaround.

See also:

Previously:

Update (2024-09-06): See also:

Update (2024-09-09): See also: Kent Beck (via Hacker News).

Update (2024-09-17): See also: Patrick Collison.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Git Tower 12

Bruno Brito:

With Tower Workflows, we aim to provide you with the ability to create and customize your own branching workflows. You can use popular branching workflows as a starting point, tweak them, come up with your own unique solution from scratch, or embrace other popular workflows like the Stacked Pull Requests workflow.

For this to be possible, the Tower team focused on two big features for this release:

  • Branch Dependencies.
  • The “Restack Branch” action.

Version 12.0:

It allows Tower to keep track of the original branch from which another branch was created, a capability not natively supported by Git. Newly created branches in Tower automatically inherit their starting branch, and users can manually set or change the parent branch via the context menu at any time.

[…]

Tower enables you to create “stacks” of branches — branches that depend on other branches — and effortlessly restack them (using rebase) with a single action.

[…]

Repositories can now optionally be opened in a new window by passing the “-n” argument to the “gittower” command.

There’s more about stacked branches here.

Previously:

Snow Leopard at 15

Joe Rossignol:

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Apple releasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which became available to purchase for $29 on August 28, 2009.

After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having “over 300 new features” in 2007, Apple previewed Snow Leopard at WWDC 2008. Notably, during that year’s “State of the Union” session, Apple showed a presentation slide that said the update had “0 new features,” as Apple opted to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements.

Perhaps the more important anniversary is that of macOS 10.6.8 v1.1 on July 25, 2011. Yes, Snow Leopard didn’t really have any new user-facing features, but it had big changes the hood and was kind of a rough release at the outset. The Snow Leopard we remember fondly is the final version, released after almost two years of refinements.

Or, put another way, there were “no new features” between the initial releases of Leopard on October 26, 2007 and Lion on July 20, 2011.

Mario Guzmán:

Mac OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard appreciation post.

I never liked the capsule-style toolbar buttons in Mail, and iTunes didn’t yet use a standard table view, but otherwise I think the visuals in Snow Leopard have aged pretty well. We’ve gone from colored sidebar icons on a monochrome background to monochrome symbols on a busy, colored background.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-06): Adam Maxwell:

I still have my brown zippered hoodie from Customer Seeding for Snow Leopard testing. I miss the look and feel with color (except for the capsule toolbar controls), proper scrollbars, and ability to tell if a window is active.

Guy English:

Not to be too much of a party-pooper about Snow Leopard and it’s No New Features promise of a focus on reliability but—it came as iPhone OS 2.0 had just shipped, iPad was a year out, made major changes to the Finder, got all(?) system apps to be 64bit, and introduced GCD (Dispatch). So, you know, it was probably as heavy a lift, if not more so, than other macOS releases.

Basic Apple Guy:

Culturally, Snow Leopard is held in high regard as it represented a dramatic shift in priorities from features to foundation. It showed that Apple was willing to restrain itself from more consumer-facing flashy new features and instead strengthen its most crucial software.

To celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Snow Leopard, I’ve taken five of its most iconic wallpapers and upscaled them to fit beautifully on a 6K display.

Snapchat for iPad

Hartley Charlton:

After 13 years, Snapchat has finally rolled out an update that brings native app support to the iPad.

[…]

Until now, iPad users who wanted to use Snapchat had to run the iPhone version of the app, which was not optimized for the larger display, leaving it to run at a lower resolution with large surrounding black borders like other unoptimized apps.

William Gallagher:

The signup and login screens are still expanded iPhone ones and look very bare. Then when you're using it, you have no option but to hold your iPad in portrait mode — there is no landscape Snapchat at all.

Alex Heath:

Snapchat will soon start “experimenting” with placing sponsored messages next to chat threads from friends, according to CEO Evan Spiegel.

These “Sponsored Snaps” from brands will appear as unread messages in Snapchat’s main Chat tab, implying that they’ll sit above messages from a person’s contacts until they’re acted on. This is the first time Snap will show ads in the most used part of its app.

Previously:

Apple’s Magic Sound File Renaming

Shamino:

For those who are unaware, in macOS 11 (aka “Big Sur”), Apple changed all of the standard system sounds [names].

[…]

The interesting thing is that if you go to look for the actual sound files (in /System/Library/Sounds), you’ll find that the filenames are the same as the old names.

[…]

There is a application extension, /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/Sound.appex on my (macOS 14 "Sonoma") system. It is apparently a Quick Look plugin, but looking inside its package, I found a mapping table named AlertSounds.loctable. And this file is a binary property list file with a changed file extension. Dumping the contents of the file reveals the mapping. And not just one, but a big array of localized mappings[…]

“Basso” is now “Mezzo,” and “Sosumi” is now “Sonumi.” These are not just renamings; the sounds themselves are different, sometimes very different, as in “Purr” becoming “Pluck.”

I don’t really understand why they chose to maintain “compatibility” by changing the meanings of existing sound files, instead of adding the new sounds under new names (and perhaps hiding or deemphasizing the legacy ones, as they do with desktop pictures).

Previously:

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

AnandTech Farewell

Ryan Smith (tweet, Hacker News):

For better or worse, we’ve reached the end of a long journey – one that started with a review of an AMD processor, and has ended with the review of an AMD processor. It’s fittingly poetic, but it is also a testament to the fact that we’ve spent the last 27 years doing what we love, covering the chips that are the lifeblood of the computing industry.

[…]

I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable.

[…]

The AnandTech Forums will also continue to be operated by Future’s community team and our dedicated troop of moderators. With forum threads going back to 1999 (and some active members just as long), the forums have a history almost as long and as storied as AnandTech itself (wounded monitor children, anyone?). So even when AnandTech is no longer publishing articles, we’ll still have a place for everyone to talk about the latest in technology – and have those discussions last longer than 48 hours.

John Gruber:

There was no publication like AnandTech before it was founded, and there’s been no publication like it since. To say that it will be sorely missed is a profound understatement. When founder Anand Lal Shimpi left the site to join Apple 10 years ago, I was pretty skeptical that AnandTech could maintain relevance, let alone excellence. But it did, in spades.

Previously:

Kevan Parekh Replaces Luca Maestri

Apple (Slashdot, ArsTechnica, MacRumors):

Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri will transition from his role on January 1, 2025. Maestri will continue to lead the Corporate Services teams, including information systems and technology, information security, and real estate and development, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook. As part of a planned succession, Kevan Parekh, Apple’s Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis, will become Chief Financial Officer and join the executive team.

[…]

Parekh has been at Apple for 11 years and currently leads Financial Planning and Analysis, G&A and Benefits Finance, Investor Relations, and Market Research. Prior to this role, Parekh led Worldwide Sales, Retail, and Marketing Finance. He began his tenure leading the financial support of Apple’s Product Marketing, Internet Sales and Services, and Engineering teams.

Jason Snell:

So I’ll miss Luca Maestri on the calls. I’ll miss his Italian accent, which used to flummox English language speech-to-text algorithms. In an impressive endorsement of modern AI models, his words are now transcribed with almost no accent-induced errors. I’ll miss his occasional turns of phrase, like when he described the company facing a “cocktail of headwinds.” I’ll miss his occasional enthusiastic response to an analyst picking data out of the company disclosures, as when he practically lit up when Richard Kramer (“Richard! How are the kids?!”) of Arete Research asked him about the most exciting possible topic for a CFO… free cash flow margins.

Mark Gurman:

Companies often struggle with the departure of key executives, but Apple has a time-tested way to deal with it: make sure that the person quitting doesn’t actually leave.

[…]

Maestri will still have a few direct reports, including Timothy Campos (IS&T), Kristina Raspe (real estate) and George Stathakopoulos (information security). Instead of letting Maestri fully retire, he’ll have a less demanding role: being the boss of three groups that already have some of Apple’s strongest leaders and probably don’t need much oversight.

[…]

We’ll likely see similar scenarios play out in the coming years. After all, many top executives are nearing retirement age. In May, I detailed who the likely successors are for this old guard at Apple.

Three of the biggest transitions will involve Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, services head Eddy Cue and — of course — Cook himself. If Williams doesn’t make a clean exit, he can probably give up the COO title but stay in charge of Apple’s health and design groups. Cue could hold on to the fun part of the business — things like Apple TV+ and sports — but give up the rest of his organization. And Cook will probably become Apple’s executive chairman when he hands off the CEO job to who I believe will be hardware engineering chief John Ternus.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-10): See also: Hacker News.

Apple Books Layoffs

Dan Moren (Mastodon, Slashdot, ArsTechnica, MacRumors, The Verge):

In a report at Bloomberg (paywalled, naturally), Mark Gurman says that the company has laid off about a hundred people, primarily in the team behind Apple Books and the Apple Bookstore.

[…]

Apple has managed to achieve itself a comfortable, if distant second place in ebooks without really spending much in the way of time and effort. Which perhaps explains why they’re looking to cut costs and reduce focus—if the business works “fine” as is, then why invest more?

My disappointment stems from the fact that Apple is better positioned and equipped than anyone else in the industry to take on Amazon head-to-head in ebooks. But doing so would require the company to do something different. And I don’t mean its misguided attempts to reinvent the reading experience as it’s tried in the past—most avid readers are pretty happy with their the way they consume books.

[…]

The second option, to my mind, is one I’ve advocated for before: taking a page from Apple’s own digital music market of the 2000s and figuring out a way to make the Apple Books the premiere purveyor of ebooks without digital rights management. Ideally it would be combined with a seamless process to deliver those DRM-free books to your third-party e-reader of choice.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-06): Shelly Brisbin:

Whether it’s the familiarity of doing business with Apple directly, or the desire to store and sync purchases with the Books app on all their devices, I’ve heard loud and clear that Books is a place I need to be. A couple of times I made Kindle versions of the book and attempted to sell them on Amazon. I got very little traction there – perhaps because I didn’t promote its availability well, but more likely because people with accessibility needs don’t gravitate toward the Kindle platform. The Apple Books app not only offers a lot of flexibility in text formats and themes, it works flawlessly with the VoiceOver screen reader and other Apple speech tools.

From a production standpoint, the Books store is easy-peasy for me, too, since I create the book as an ePub – the format supported by Books and the one I prefer to offer directly because of its native accessibility. All I have to do is load the book into iTunes Connect and submit it for publication in as many country-specific stores as I want. And while I’m at it, I can choose whether or not to apply DRM. I’ve chosen not to do so.

Update (2024-09-13): See also: Mac Power Users Talk.

AppleVis Will Continue Under Be My Eyes

Michael Hansen:

As many of you already know, David Goodwin founded AppleVis in July 2010. Since that first day, David has worked tirelessly, day in and day out, to develop and maintain the AppleVis website. While myself and the rest of the AppleVis Editorial Team have supported David with the daily operations of the site, David has been the driving force behind the website--both in terms of the ideas and, on a more practical level, having sole responsibility for the technical implementation. AppleVis would not be here today were it not for David, and David has undertaken all of this work for the community on an entirely voluntary basis.

Early last week, David was hospitalized in the ICU due to a very serious and life-threatening medical issue. David was unresponsive for 8 days and almost died. We are relieved to share that he is now getting better, though he still has a long road to recovery ahead.

David Goodwin:

It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that after careful consideration I have made the difficult decision to step down from my responsibilities with AppleVis. As a direct result of my departure and following extensive deliberation, the editorial team has come to the painful conclusion that AppleVis will be closing. This decision was not made lightly, but it has become clear that continuing AppleVis without my involvement is not feasible.

David Goodwin:

AppleVis will be joining the Be My Eyes family through an acquisition that ensures not only its continued existence but also opens up exciting new possibilities.

When I announced the impending closure of AppleVis in July, I was deeply moved by the outpouring of support from our community. Your responses underscored the vital role AppleVis plays in the lives of so many blind and low-vision individuals. I am thrilled to inform you that this acquisition means AppleVis will continue to serve our community, stronger than ever before.

[…]

This is not a financial transaction - no money has changed hands, and I have not personally profited from this arrangement. Instead, this is a mission-driven partnership where Be My Eyes is taking on the responsibility of maintaining and growing AppleVis for the benefit of our community. My decision to transfer stewardship of AppleVis to Be My Eyes was driven solely by the desire to ensure its continued existence and growth. In this arrangement, Be My Eyes will acquire the AppleVis website, brand, and a license to all content, allowing them to invest in its future while maintaining the volunteer spirit that has always been at the heart of our community. As planned, I will still be stepping down from my role on the editorial team.

AppleVis:

We will reopen the AppleVis website on September 9, 2024—right in time for Apple’s Keynote and fall software releases. We will share all of our traditional content concurrent with the releases of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, including an article detailing what’s new for blind and DeafBlind users in iOS 18; podcasts; and blogs detailing new and resolved VoiceOver bugs in both iOS and macOS.

See also: Sabahattin Gucukoglu, Daniel Jalkut, Shelly Brisbin.

Previously:

Monday, September 2, 2024

Retcon 1.0

Nathan Manceaux-Panot (Reddit, Hacker News):

Rewrite Git history with a single drag-and-drop. Undo anything with ⌘Z. All speed, no bumps.

[…]

From small refinements to sweeping reworks, you do everything faster in Retcon. Edits take fewer steps, and don’t mess with the repo’s state.

This seems really cool, though it’s not really a replacement for a general-purpose Git client. There’s a 14-day trial, after which it’s $49.99/year. For me, at least, complicated history rewriting is not very common, and Tower can do much of it—and has undo—albeit not as smoothly. Perhaps it would make sense to subscribe for a month at a time now and then when it’s needed to get out of a jam.

Previously:

FreemiumKit and RevenueCat

Cihat Gündüz (Reddit):

FreemiumKit is the ultimate solution for Apple platform developers to integrate and manage in-app purchases and subscriptions effortlessly. With support for all Apple platforms, FreemiumKit provides a seamless and efficient way to handle your app’s monetization.

They have a comparison table vs. RevenueCat, which I’ve heard consistently great things about. Currently, it’s free, with a proposed monthly fee based on income.

The last time I looked at RevenueCat, I think it was free up to $10K in monthly revenue. Currently, it looks like the cutoff has been reduced to $2.5K/month, beyond which they take 1%. They say this is “tracked revenue,” which I take to mean it includes Apple’s cut, even though they say “only in months where you make more than $2.5k.” So for the App Store Small Business Program the threshold would be less than $2,125/month in pay to the developer (since VAT is removed, too). Maybe 1% is reasonable for what they offer, but whereas before it seemed like a no-brainer to start with their SDK, now I would be inclined to look more closely at what it offers over StoreKit 2.

Seou H.:

Switching to FreemiumKit had an incredible impact on my development process. I was able to clean up a significant amount of code, removing extra classes and unnecessary complexity that RevenueCat required. This cleanup wasn’t just about aesthetics—it made my app more efficient and easier to manage.

[…]

Built-in SDK components like PaidFeatureView and PaidStatusView were incredibly customizable, allowing me to focus on the user experience without worrying about the technical nitty-gritty. Instead of having to write an entire ViewModel for handling in-app purchases, I could use a one-liner from FreemiumKit. This freed me to concentrate on what mattered most: building a great app.

Previously:

The End of Finale

Greg Dell’Era (via Ric Ford):

35 years ago, Coda Music Technologies, now MakeMusic, released the first version of Finale, a groundbreaking and user-centered approach to notation software. For over four decades, our engineers and product teams have passionately crafted what would quickly become the gold standard for music notation.

Four decades is a very long time in the software industry. Technology stacks change, Mac and Windows operating systems evolve, and Finale’s millions of lines of code add up. This has made the delivery of incremental value for our customers exponentially harder over time.

Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry—a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this. Instead of releasing new versions of Finale that would offer only marginal value to our users, we’ve made the decision to end its development.

[…]

Finale authorization will remain available for the foreseeable future: Please note that future OS changes can still impact your ability to use Finale on new devices.

The FAQ recommends not updating to Sequoia.

William Gallagher:

That development of Finale began in the 1980s, and the first version came out in 1988. It required a Mac Plus, Macintosh SE, or Macintosh II, and preferred those Macs to have 1.5MB of RAM.

To put this in historical context, Finale soon gained a competitor whose name is better known today — but whose original function is forgotten. Apple’s current digital audio workstation app Logic Pro began as the third-party Notator Logic in 1990, and was a rival scoring app.

[…]

MakeMusic and Dell’Era are recommending that users migrate to Finale’s major rival, Dorico Pro. Normally Dorico Pro 5 retails for $579, but users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic can buy it for $149.

See also: Adam Engst and ATPM reviews of Finale 2000, Finale 2001, and Music Press.

The Apple IIGS Megahertz Myth

Dan Vincent (via Hacker News):

The Apple II and Commodore 64 with their 6502 and 6510 CPUs clocked at 1 MHz could trade blows with Z80 powered computers running at three times the clock speed. And the IIGS had the 6502’s 16-bit descendant: the 65C816. Steve Wozniak thought Western Design Center had something special with that chip. In a famous interview in the January 1985 issue of Byte magazine, Woz said,

“[the 65816] should be available soon in an 8 MHz version that will beat the pants off the 68000 in most applications, and in graphics applications it comes pretty close.” End quote. That’s already high praise, but he continues further: “An 8 MHz 65816 is about equivalent to a 16 MHz 68000 in speed, and a 16 MHz 68000 doesn’t exist.”

[…]

But that “should” in “should be available” was doing a lot of work. Eighteen months later when the IIGS finally shipped, there was no 8 MHz ‘816. It was as nonexistent as Woz’s imaginary 16MHz 68000. 8MHz chips were barely available three years later. What happened?

[…]

So why were IIGSes with chips rated at 4 MHz not running them at that speed? Why 2.8 MHz? Isn’t that… weirdly specific? Did an 8 MHz machine really get put on ice due to executive meddling? To solve these mysteries I descended into the depths of Usenet, usergroup newsletters, magazines, and interviews. My journey took me through a world of development Hell, problematic yields, and CPU cycle quirks.

Dave Haynie:

Way back in ’85, a 4MHz ’816 cost noticably more than an 8MHz 68000. Things are going to be even more skewed now.

Friday, August 30, 2024

Marathon Games on Steam

Malcolm Owen:

Bungie has finally brought all of the “Marathon” trilogy of games to Steam, with “Marathon Infinity” now playable for free on modern Macs.

[…]

Classic Marathon Infinity is a free game on the Steam storefront, playable on both Mac and Windows PC. It is a faithful re-release of the 1995 first-person shooter, using the original data files, but modernized.

These modernizations include widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, all under the Aleph One game engine.

Previously:

Cancellable withObservationTracking in Swift

Toomas Vahter:

This function works as a one shot function and the onChange closure is called only once. Note that it is called before the value has actually changed. If we want to get the changed value, we would need to read the value on the next run loop cycle. It would be much more useful if we could use this function in a way where we could have an observation token and as long as it is set, the observation is active. Here is the function with cancellation support.

[…]

The token closure controls if the change should be handled and if we need to continue tracking. Will and did change are closures called before and after the value has changed.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-18): See also: Marcin Krzyzanowski.

SwiftUI Breaks Continuity Camera

Wade Tregaskis:

If any view in the [active] window contains a Toggle – even one that’s disabled or hidden – then Continuity Camera (re. ImportFromDevicesCommands and importableFromServices) doesn’t work; all the submenu items under “Import from iPhone or iPad” are disabled.

I don’t know if this is truly specific to Toggle, that’s just the example case I happen to have isolated [first?].

What’s really weird is that once a Toggle has ever been displayed, even if you subsequently remove it from the view hierarchy entirely the “Import from iPhone or iPad” submenu items all remain disabled.

Previously:

macOS Firewall Slows DNS Queries

Jeff Johnson (Reddit):

I took packet traces of the DNS queries with the firewall enabled and disabled. What I found is that the DNS query response packet consistently arrives in under 20 milliseconds after the query packet is sent, regardless of whether the firewall is enabled. Thus, it appears that the extra query time added by the firewall is caused by on-device processing of the packets rather than by any network issue.

[…]

On my MacBook Pro running Sonoma, but not on my Mac mini running Sonoma, I frequently experience a bizarre issue where the dig command takes over 5 seconds to complete when the firewall is enabled.

DNS queries are several times slower, however this may be fixed in Sequoia.

Copyright © 2000–2024 Michael Tsai.