Bare Bones Software:
BBEdit is now built as a 64-bit application. This works around various reported bugs in the OS and has other beneficial side effects: the application starts more quickly on a “cold” launch; 64-bit color pickers and contextual-menu plug-ins are now available; and our customers are even more handsome and athletic than before.
[…]
When the “Match window appearance to selected editor color scheme” setting is turned on (as it is by default), BBEdit will use a light or dark (system-defined) appearance for the window title bar, appropriate to the color scheme.
[…]
Made a change to significantly improve performance when soft-wrapping long documents to the window width.
[…]
When using “Compare Against Previous Version”, the previous-version file now includes the time stamp as part of the file name, to make it easier to see which version of the file you’re comparing against.
Not being affected by 32-bit-only macOS bugs is a bigger deal than you would think.
Previously: BBEdit 12.
64-Bit BBEdit Mac Mac App macOS 10.13 High Sierra Text Editor Touch Bar
Benjamin Mayo:
As promised, Apple has included a new screen in the iOS 11.3 beta 2 settings called Battery Health (Beta) available on all iPhones since iPhone 6. This view includes information about the maximum capacity of the battery in the device, and describes whether the battery has degraded to the point where it can no longer offer peak performance.
[…]
With iOS 11.3, it is now possible to disable performance management, stop the throttling, and restore full speed. Apple has also tweaked the algorithms that decide when performance management should come into effect. Apple says performance management is more ‘adaptive’ than it was before so that it can dynamically increase or decrease the amount it is used, without the user doing anything at all.
iPhone 8 and iPhone X include smarter hardware that enables Apple to more precisely apply power management, so noticeable effects of throttling on these devices should be less when it eventually kick ins.
Apple has actually posted lots of beta screenshots itself.
Previously: Tim Cook Talks iPhone Batteries, Apple’s Message to Customers About iPhone Batteries and Performance.
Update (2018-02-06): See also: Juli Clover.
Update (2018-06-23): Dr. Drang:
So, is the maximum capacity reading inaccurate? Is Apple giving bad advice to its customers? Am I drawing a conclusion too soon? Whatever the answers, I'm pretty happy with my $30 investment.
Update (2018-06-24): Dr. Drang:
I got the battery in my iPhone replaced last Sunday, and after a week of use I can say without reservation that it was a big success. Before the replacement, a normal day of use at the office would put the battery well below 50% and I’d usually have to recharge sometime during the evening; now it’s typically over 80% when I get home, and I don’t even think about recharging. This success is tempered, though, by the poor advice Apple gave me before doing the replacement.
Battery Life iOS iOS 11 iPhone 8 iPhone X
The consensus seems to that the sound is best of class but Siri needs work, which is what we all expected.
See also: Nick Heer, Ryan Jones, Marco Arment, Matt Birchler.
Previously: The Apple Music and HomePod Strategy, HomePod to Arrive February 9.
Audio HomePod iOS iOS 11 Siri
Tech Crunch:
An issue at Apple appears to be resulting in app developers getting emails of ad spend and install summaries for apps belonging to other developers.
The issue — which appears specific right now to developers using Search Ads Basic, pay-per-install ads that appear as promoted apps when people search on the App Store — was raised on Twitter by a number of those affected […]
Some of the developers affected: Steve Troughton-Smith, Louis D’hauwe, Rafael Costa, René Fouquet, Luc Vandal.
Jeff Johnson:
You can lock down end users all you want, but the most damaging security vulnerabilities are always always always on the server side.
Previously: iTunes Connect Bug: Logs You Into the Wrong Account.
Update (2018-02-09): Joe Rossignol:
Apple today apologized after sending incorrect information to some iOS developers using its Search Ads Basic service yesterday. […] The follow-up email blames the mishap on a "processing error" and adds that all future reports of these kind will require developers to sign into their accounts to view their dashboards to ensure this issue does not occur again.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
“We can’t trust ourselves to not do this again, so we just won’t provide details by email again” I guess it’s a decent policy…
App Store App Store Search Ads Apple Bug iOS Privacy
Troy Hunt:
When I run my Hack Yourself First workshop, that’s one of the first questions I ask - “what’s the correct minimum password length?” I was thinking about that again just this weekend when preparing V2 of Pwned Passwords because I thought I might be able to use a minimum length threshold to reduce the size of the data set. So, rather than projecting my own views on minimum password length, I thought I’d go and check what the world’s top sites are doing. Here’s 15 of the biggest with a summary and some further commentary after that[…]
[…]
The point of all this is that you can no longer just look at a minimum length and say “ah, 6 characters - or even just 4 - is way too few” because authentication schemes can be far more intelligent than simply matching those 2 strings. That’s not to say those nice round, even numbers are always correct either - there are plenty of sites that don’t have any intelligence beyond mere string matching - but hopefully it provides food for thought.
Safari actually knows about the requirements for some top sites (via Hacker News). Or maybe this feature hasn’t shipped yet, since I could only find the referenced file in Safari Technology Preview:
/Safari Technology Preview.app/Contents/Frameworks/SafariShared.framework/Versions/A/Resources/WBSAutoFillQuirks.plist
Mac macOS 10.13 High Sierra Passwords Safari Security Web
Dirk Holtwick:
Overall for my personal purposes JSON and MessagePack seem to be the most appropriate ones. I was very positively surprised of the JSON results. MessagePack as the clear winner in the size comparison is probably the best choice for the projects I'm working on.
I was very disappointed of KeyedArchiver, which I previously expected to be in the top field. If not required for Apple OS specific purposes it really does not make sense to use any of those proprietary formats anymore.
I like the old, deprecated NSArchiver. It scales much better than NSKeyedArchiver.
Cocoa iOS iOS 11 JSON Mac macOS 10.13 High Sierra Optimization Programming XML
