Archive for July 2025

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Archaeology 1.3

Mothers Ruin Software:

macOS uses many different binary file formats.

Some — like binary property lists — have broad tool support and are relatively easy to inspect…

Some — like X.509 certificates, configuration and provisioning profiles or App Store receipts — use standard formats, but lack macOS-native inspection tools, or only have command-line tools that can be awkward to use…

Some — like compiled nibs, keyed archives, code signatures or URL bookmarks — use Apple-proprietary formats that are not documented and that have no (public) inspection tools.

Even a file in a well-known format often contains data blobs encoded in one of the other formats — such as an app’s preferences property list, which might contain URL bookmarks or an archive of serialized objects.

Archaeology gives you a way to dig into a number of these binary files.

This is a delightful app from the developer of Apparency and Suspicious Package. Aside from what’s mentioned above, it supports more formats such as notarization tickets and Mach-O binaries (showing embedded Info.plist files, SDK info, and linked libraries).

Previously:

Jeff Williams Retiring as Apple’s COO

Apple (MacRumors, 2, Hacker News):

Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world-class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year.

Benjamin Mayo:

I like how the press release says this succession is long planned, and yet they aren’t ready to say who is taking over Apple Watch and Health initiatives.

Also, Cook (himself set to retire in the foreseeable future) has so many direct reports now lol.

John Gruber:

What’s intriguing about the announcement is the design part — a functional area where, especially on the software side, Apple’s current stature is subject to much debate. While Williams is staying on until “late in the year” to continue his other responsibilities — Watch, Health, and serving as the senior executive Apple’s design teams report to — Khan isn’t taking over those roles when Williams leaves. And so by the end of the year, Apple’s design teams will go from reporting to Williams to reporting directly to Tim Cook.

I’ve long found it curious, if not downright dubious, that Apple’s design leaders have reported to Williams ever since it was announced in 2019 (the very same day that Khan was promoted to SVP of operations) that Jony Ive would be stepping down as chief design officer and leaving Apple to found the (as-yet-unnamed) design firm LoveFrom. Williams had no background in design at all.

[…]

I’m of the mind that, in hindsight, it was a mistake for Jony Ive to bring HI (software human interface design) under the same roof as ID (hardware industrial design). That arrangement made sense for Ive’s unique role in the company, and the unique period in the wake of Steve Jobs’s too-young demise. But it might have ultimately made Ive more difficult to replace than Steve Jobs.

I don’t think it ever made sense because it doesn’t seem like Ive really understood software design. And Alan Dye’s background is in advertising and web/print design.

Jeff Johnson:

We’ve come to accept the myth that there’s such a thing as “design” in the abstract, as if some one person were qualified to design anything and everything. That’s ridiculous and nothing but a product of Jony Ive’s hubris.

Mark Gurman:

Apple didn’t announce what will happen to the Watch and Health teams but here’s the likely outcome: Apple never said this but Watch HW was already given to Ternus years ago. You can bet watchOS and health software will go to Federighi. Fitness+ will obviously go to Services.

M.G. Siegler:

Williams joined Apple in 1998 (from IBM), the year after Steve Jobs returned. The same year Cook joined (from Compaq, though he had also been at IBM for a dozen years before that).

Khan joined Apple in 1995, which was obviously before Jobs returned.

The only members of the leadership team that have been at Apple longer are: [Cue, O’Brien, and Joswiak]

[…]

It’s certainly possible that Apple is going to try to spend these next five months finding that design executive. It’s also possible that they promote Dye to such a role – he did have one of the most prominent slots at the WWDC keynote this year thanks to “Liquid Glass” – though as Gruber notes, in hindsight, it may have been a mistake to have one person overseeing hardware and software design – something that only happened because Ive stepped in on the software side after Scott Forstall was forced out in 2012.

Previously:

Downloading Xcode With a Passkey

When I went to download the new Xcode beta, I again ran into an annoying Safari behavior, which seems to be specific to Apple’s sites. It pops up an Apple Account sheet offering to sign me in. But it can only sign in with my personal Apple ID, not my developer one. I have to click the blue text “button” to pick a different account, and there’s no keyboard shortcut for that.

Signing into Apple sites normally requires Apple’s special 2FA, which doesn’t work with Safari autofill. So I thought I’d try the Sign in with Passkey button to log in with one step. This should be an ideal use case: Apple’s browser, Apple’s Web site, Apple’s password manager. The first time I clicked the button it showed a progress spinner, and nothing happened for 30 seconds. I reloaded the page and tried again. After 5 seconds, it showed a Sign In sheet, but like the first one it wanted to use my personal Apple ID. I clicked Other Sign in Options, but that only let me use a passkey from a different mobile device or a hardware key.

I thought it was supposed to let me choose from multiple passkeys. Maybe the problem is that I don’t have one for my developer account? I opened the Passwords app, and the Passkeys section showed nothing for Apple. How could this be when account.apple.com does let me sign into my personal account with a passkey? I’m losing hope for the new credentials exchange feature if the app doesn’t even show all of my passkeys.

It seems like I need to create a passkey for my developer account, but I don’t see how to do that. I see nothing about passkeys at account.apple.com or at developer.apple.com/account/. The documentation is almost comically unhelpful:

  1. From anywhere on the Apple Developer website, click Account on the top right.

  2. Sign in to your Apple Account.

Stack Exchange has no idea, saying only that passkeys are created automatically.

Previously:

Xcode 26 Beta 3

Apple:

Removed support for creating new Style Transfer projects.

This is the only change that’s noted as being in beta 3. Why can’t Apple write release notes that tell us what’s actually new in this build?

Ryan Ashcraft:

The Beta 3 SDK adds support for Glass.clear, which looks like the glass material used more commonly throughout the system in Beta 1 and 2 of iOS 26. Less contrast, more glass-like.

Xcode Releases:

The download page says it requires macOS 15.4 or later, but Xcode’s Info.plist says it requires 15.5. The Info.plist is always correct.

[…]

Most importantly, #Xcode 26.0 beta 3 sees the return of the “BETA” badge on its app icon!

Malin Sundberg:

Whoop whoop! Now we can finally find a workaround for this 😬

John Siracusa:

I still can’t create a release build of my app in Xcode 26 beta 3 on Tahoe beta 3 due to a “swift-frontend” error. After three betas of this, I’m starting to worry that I won’t be able to release an updated build for Tahoe!

It looks like beta 3 may have fixed a problem I was having with Swift Testing, but it also brought a flurry of SourceKit crashes when editing code.

Sean Heber:

My Xcode beta 3 installed yesterday seemingly forgot I had the iOS 26 SDK installed today and I had to reinstall it.

Kinda feels like nothing on my computer is mine, ya know? It’s all being managed externally by unknown entities and changes on a whim. Can’t trust anything to just…. be left alone.

Previously:

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Vienna RSS at 20

Barijaona Ramaholimihaso:

After some minor fiddling, I got the initial version of Vienna running on VirtualBox on my retro hack.

[…]

Founding father of Vienna, Steve contributed mostly from 2004 to 2008, made a short comeback in 2010, and is definitely at the root of Vienna’s ethics: making a clean, spartan, and highly useful app.

He almost never publicized his bio, but I finally found an “About me” (he was from the UK and a software developer working in the US for Microsoft Business Solutions), and some reflexions on writing software : part 2 and part 1.

[…]

While I was finishing the Google Reader support started by Adam Hartford and Salvatore Ansani, Google announced it would end Google Reader… That is far from being the single reason why Vienna 3 had 20 beta versions and 9 release candidate versions before being released in November 2014!

Previously:

Hearing Aids vs. AirPods Pro

Steve Hayman:

Apple has spent a ton of money getting AirPods Pro approved by the FDA and other regulators to work as over-the-counter hearing aids, including providing a hearing test app on the iPhone that tweaks the audio profile on the headphones. This feature is available in a whole lot of countries, not yet including Canada, but, um, … I don’t work there any more so I guess I can say “it’s not too hard to work around that.” So I’ve had my AirPods Pro 2 set up as hearing aids for a few months now and have been trying them sporadically for hearing assistance (and more frequently just for listening to music or podcasts or whatever.)

[…]

The hearing aids cost 25 times as much as AirPods Pro. Are they 25 times better? No. Maybe for some people. Not for me. AirPods might still be good enough in some situations. I have only mild hearing loss, so I’m probably on the edge of hearing aid utility here.

[…]

If you’ve got your AirPods in, it’s totally obvious to everyone, and they all assume you’re listening to music and not paying attention to them. Kind of a stigma there. Conversely, these hearing aids are pretty inconspicuous, especially because they match the colour of the wire to the colour of your hair.

[…]

I already miss the tight integration between AirPods and my phone. Apple is doing some proprietary Bluetooth things that these hearing aids can’t match. The hearing aids do let you answer phone calls or adjust volume by tapping a button, but they’re sure not as tightly integrated as AirPods+iPhone are.

Previously:

iOS 26 Developer Beta 3

Juli Clover:

In some apps like Apple Music, Podcasts, and the App Store, Apple has toned down the transparency of the navigation bars. The look is more opaque to make the buttons more legible.

[…]

Apple added new color options for the default “iOS” wallpaper that it designed for iOS 26 , so now we have Halo, Dusk, Sky, and Shadow.

[…]

Apple tweaked the blue and green colors for the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, and Cellular Toggles. The colors are brighter and more in line with the other colors in Control Center.

Emma Roth:

Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language just got a little more… frosted. In the third iOS 26 developer beta, Apple dialed back the transparency of navigation bars, buttons, and tabs that once allowed you to clearly see the content beneath them.

Zac Hall:

Here are just a few more examples of iOS 26 beta 2 and iOS 26 beta 3 visual changes[…]

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s subtle…

Brandon Butch:

iOS 26 Beta 2 vs iOS 26 Beta 3 Music nav bar.

Matt Birchler:

I’ve collected a few that stand out to me.

Nick Heer:

Liquid Glass officially has two appearances: clear and “regular”, which is frosted. If there have been any changes to the clear style in any of the betas, I cannot say I have noticed them. But the frosted style has become steadily more opaque since the first developer build of iOS 26 in some places. In particular, when iOS is in light mode and the screen is predominantly white, like the buttons in a Mail message, the effect is now extremely subtle, to the point where I wonder if there is a third Liquid Glass appearance.

Benjamin Mayo:

I know a lot of people are going to be disappointed it isn’t as flashy as the first beta, but it still looks nice and readability is way up.

Also, there’s a fair few places where stuff is now completely opaque which I think is probably a bug.

Federico Viticci:

Apple significantly toned down Liquid Glass in iOS 26 beta 3 and, honestly, I’m a fan.

Looks modern without feeling like a gimmick with (unfixable?) legibility issues. Still not perfect, but better IMO.

It’s better, but I still think the entire concept is wrong and that at the very least they should tone it down even more.

Riley Testut:

Seems iOS 26 beta 3 is the equivalent of iOS 7 beta 3 where the most extreme design elements are finally dialed back — remember Helvetica Neue Ultra Light?

Nick Heer:

One of the stranger qualities of this year’s Liquid Glass visual update is how much it is changing within just a few weeks. One would assume some designers with power at Apple would have recognized the illegibility of the first version before it was made available in June. Alas, it seems Apple is working things out in public now.

[…]

Though I know there were changes in different releases of the iOS 7 development cycle, the first thing I thought of was the progression of Aqua in early builds of Mac OS X, first revealed in the second developer preview of 10.0. The most noticeable changes happened in the dock which, in the second and third previews, looked like a set of individual sometimes-underlined tiles. Those builds were released in January and February 2000; by the fourth preview, in May, the dock was closer to the version which eventually shipped. But those changes took place over many months; Mac OS X 10.0 did not ship to the public until March 2001. Complaints about the legibility of various translucent elements, however, were whittled away at for years to come.

[…]

But, also, you would think a company that has been working with transparent interfaces for twenty-five years would have some institutional memory and know what to avoid.

Louie Mantia, Jr.:

I repeat—anyone who has tried to make translucent UI is familiar with the story being played out right now. The core issue is that translucent UI is fundamentally flawed. You cannot make it too translucent without sacrifice. But every sacrifice you make makes it less cool. That’s why they started where they did. That’s why they are where they are now. It’s embarrassing to re-tread known issues like this. This could have been an exercise internally that no one ever saw.

The thing that kills me is that this is not Alan Dye’s first rodeo. That was iOS 7. His first go at doing software design was fixated on this same thing: translucency. It’s as if he can’t let it go, forcing everyone else to tag along while he makes discoveries the rest of us have known for quite some time. It’s awful being the end user of a product designed by someone who is effectively saying, “Oh, it’s illegible? Interesting. I didn’t know that.”

Konrad Kołakowski:

I think Microsoft kind of nailed it with Aero almost 15-20 years ago (especially when in matured with Windows 7)

I don’t remember any legibility issues back then - but because they used this glass material only as a “chrome” - window borders, backgrounds - on top of this „glass” we had placed “normal” opaque controls.

Limiting it to the chrome is certainly better, but I still don’t see what the point of a transparent title bar is Who wants to read skinny text atop crazy background?

Riccardo Mori:

You know what this is? iOS 15. Technically, 4 years old. Visually, absolutely fine. Why not work on bettering the parts of the UI that can be improved, while maintaining an organic look that ‘ages well’ and remains fresh, instead of doing a shallow facelift that really looks like the facelift certain Hollywood stars make to keep looking young, while ending up actually looking weird?

Previously:

Update (2025-07-09): Michael Flarup:

Is this better?

Juli Clover:

There was little outcry over the updates that Apple made in the second beta, but the third beta’s design updates have frustrated some users who feel that Apple is removing too much of the Liquid Glass aesthetic.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

There are some really poor Liquid Glass comparison shots going around comparing between dark mode and light mode that have convinced the normies and YouTubers that Apple has turned off the effect completely, which is nonsense. Beta 3 is still glassy af.

iPadOS 26 Developer Beta 3

Federico Viticci:

How much has Apple really “nerfed” Liquid Glass in the latest beta?

Here’s a comparison between iPadOS 26 developer beta 2 (first image) and beta 3.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Wow they kinda did the thing? Fullscreen apps on iPadOS work a lot more like fullscreen apps on macOS now — they generate a new ‘space’, and you can swipe between them.

Federico Viticci:

Truly another S-tier iPad multitasking change.

You can swipe back and forth between full-screen and windowed "spaces" AND if you re-resize a full-screen app, it automatically goes back to the windowed space.

Love this.

Ryan Christoffel:

10 years ago in macOS El Capitan, Apple added a convenient and fun new feature for the system cursor.

Shake the cursor back and forth rapidly and it would enlarge, making it easier to locate.

[…]

And now in iPadOS 26 beta 3, the same feature is coming to the iPad.

The iPad is already getting a more Mac-inspired cursor in iPadOS 26. It now looks like a proper pointer, rather than the circle that was available in iPadOS 18.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

They’re really all-in on stealing all the good ideas this cycle

Craig Hockenberry:

“Concentricity.”

Previously:

Update (2025-07-09): John Gruber:

This is not a thoughtfully spaced-out dialog box. (Journal app, iPadOS 26 b3.)

Monday, July 7, 2025

macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 3

Juli Clover (Mr. Macintosh, 9to5Mac):

Right now, there is a bit of a bug with the beta that is preventing Apple silicon Macs from being able to download it. Intel Macs can be updated with no issue, but Apple will need to address the server side bug before it will be available to everyone.

I can confirm that, once again, Software Update isn’t working. But you can download the full installer manually.

Again, the release notes don’t seem to say what’s new.

Howard Oakley:

Apple’s operating systems provide support for encryption and related techniques in CryptoKit, making quantum-secure methods available to third-party apps as well. For OS 26, CryptoKit gains Module-Lattice based key encapsulation or ML-KEM, part of the FIPS 203 primary standard for general encryption. Signatures gain the Module-Lattice based digital signature algorithm or ML-DSA, part of FIPS 204.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

I’m very ready for a beta 3 of the new OSes; beta 2 has been mostly usable, but has lots of little blockers getting in the way of progressing my apps

Previously:

Update (2025-07-07): The full installer didn’t work for me, either. After a long time, it reported an error failing to prepare the update.

Update (2025-07-08): The same installer worked this morning.

Mr. Macintosh:

This is the new macOS Tahoe Installer

Mario Guzmán:

After installing #macOSTahoe b3, I got a new wallpaper! :)

[…]

I think these icons are also new/updated in #macOSTahoe b3…

Mr. Macintosh:

Apple has added the new Tahoe wallpaper via image and active video .heic for both the blue background and beach background wallpaper images.

Marcus Mendes:

Much like on tvOS, Apple recently introduced native video screen savers on macOS that transition smoothly into the wallpaper upon unlocking.

With today’s beta seed, Apple included a new “Tahoe Day” screen saver that glides across the surface of Lake Tahoe’s rocky shoreline, with snow-capped mountains in the background.

This is pretty nice, but I had to turn it off on my Tahoe Mac because I mostly control it via Screen Sharing, and this makes it really slow.

Marcus Mendes:

One of the most common complaints in macOS Tahoe 26 betas 1 and 2 was the new tab UI in apps like Safari and Terminal, which added a black bar to the bottom of inactive tabs.

[…]

Now, Apple has increased contrast and eliminated the black bar, making it much easier to spot the active tab at a glance.

Mario Guzmán:

Native Tabs in #macOSTahoe still suck but at least they have fixed a lot of the visual issues from beta 1 and 2.

Thomas Brand:

Since the earliest rumors of transparent UI, I thought Tahoe would adopt the “frosted” look of visionOS.

With the release of Tahoe beta 3 I could be convinced frosted was Apple’s plan all along, and the initial renders of liquid glass were merely a faint to get an extreme reaction.

Craig Grannell:

Someone – probably multiple people – at Apple signed this off. The ‘glass’. The lack of clarity. The absurd floating back/forward buttons that become the most visually prominent thing in the window. All of it.

Reduce Transparency makes things slightly less awful but it still weird and ugly. Best bet appears to be Reduce Transparency + a solid colour (ideally grey) for wallpaper.

(This is dev beta 3.)

We’re, what, about eight weeks and counting now?

Jonathan Wight:

So i guess now that we’re at b3 the blurry icons are here to stay…

Now we can all experience what it is to have old person eyes.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s beta 3 of macOS and Apple still seems to be really struggling to deal with the floating sidebar in AppKit. It still has hard cut offs in various apps, and now it renders under a toolbar in fullscreen mode.

Stephan Michels:

I noticed a similar cut-off in my app. The glass effect have a very wide shadow, which doesn’t not spread across containers, in my case a scroll view without background. Ugly 🧐

Steve Troughton-Smith:

🤔 [System Settings]

Riccardo Mori:

Glass and transparency can be fun when used meaningfully. Look at the battery indicator in Mac OS X 10.0.3. It wasn’t a menu extra, but a live indicator in the Dock (called ‘dockling’).

Sindre Sorhus:

Menu item icons in macOS 26 reduce usability – should be optional

Update (2025-07-09): hyperjeff:

And we’re all agreed that this image of a loupe has almost nothing at all to do with the functionality of Preview, right? I have a loupe irl, and never use it to read an article, no matter how small the font. (I never really noticed the loupe in the previous icons, because it was just a small added element, but now I’m confused why it was ever used.)

Isaiah Carew:

the old HIG said document based apps should have icons with a top down image to symbolized the doc. And a tool that one might use on with type of thing.

Xcode uses a blueprint and a hammer. Obviously those are not used in coding, they’re symbols for design and building.

Liquid Glass took away the document and left only the tool. Preview is a great example of why that’s nuts. Without the document the tool makes no sense.

URedditor:

Fun fact:

Apple had another installer icon ready before they went with this. It was much darker & the arrow was basically just a hole in the icon.

Looks like there’s a some waffling — a lack of confidence, which is also apparent if u look at the blur effects in iOS 26 beta 3.

Thomas Brand:

The best part of Tahoe Beta 3 is that it no longer tries to give me a seizure when I scroll content under the toolbar in the Finder.

Pierre Igot:

At this point, it might be worth wondering if the Apple engineers working on macOS Tahoe are using Retina screenshots (i.e. double size) to review their own work, instead of looking at things at actual size on actual Retina displays. I have Retina displays exclusively, and at actual size the 2025 icon looks like it has fuzzy coloured bullets, not the snazzy, highly detailed thing that I see when I look at the Retina screenshot in double size.

Menu Bar Madness in macOS 26 and iPadOS 26

Craig Grannell:

In beta 2, Apple added an option to restore the menu bar background. Which is good. Except it also makes me question Apple’s confidence in its design work. When Apple starts hedging its bets, it signals that it knows something is wrong, but lacks the conviction to course-correct. Or perhaps such settings are a means to temporarily shut people up, while default choices reveal the true intent and direction of travel.

On iPad, things are even worse. I’m a fan of the new windowing system, but the menu bar implementation is dreadful. The problem isn’t its auto-hide behaviour – the Mac has had something similar (although off by default) since 2015. Again, the issue is that Apple is so enamoured with transparency that it’s sacrificing visual clarity.

Unfortunately, the ‘fix’ on iPad isn’t yet anywhere near as full as the Mac one. In beta 1, a two-up window view could see menu bar text vanish entirely. In beta 2, Apple added a subtle gradient, which barely helps. Honestly, this is embarrassing – the sort of thing a design student wouldn’t hand in as part of a project. A menu bar coming to iPad is great, but not if you can’t read its text.

Pierre Igot:

You do wonder what the internal processes are[…]

They’ve been trying to get rid of the Mac menu bar’s bar for about 18 years now. I don’t understand why.

Matt Birchler:

In this case, the Mac actually has notably larger touch targets than the iPad version. This one is particularly notable for me because the menu has long been the go-to example for why touch on the Mac would not work, and yet the iPad has an even smaller one.

Previously:

The Curious Case of the Responsible Process

Tor Arne Vestbø:

As it turns out, permissions are inherited by child processes. And when a process is about to access some protected resource, the TCC subsystem figure’s out which process is the responsible one, and uses that as basis for requesting and persisting the result.

[…]

In the case of an application embedding and launching helper executables this behavior of course makes sense, but it can be a bit surprising in cases such as launching apps from the terminal.

[…]

As it turned out, since Qt Creator was launching user applications when running and debugging, it was effectively becoming the responsible process for all these user applications. And if one of them required a permission that needed a corresponding usage description, then the only way to make the application work was to add the description to the responsible process; Qt Creator.

[…]

Somehow lldb was circumventing the logic that was deciding which process was the responsible one.

Luckily LLDB is part of the open source LLVM project, so I was able to track it down to this change, with the magic formula:

int responsibility_spawnattrs_setdisclaim(posix_spawnattr_t attrs, int disclaim);

He says it “just works” with Xcode, though he isn’t sure why, but my experience is that often neither Xcode nor the app prompts for Automation or Contacts access when running an app or testing and so the APIs just fail.

Via Peter Steinberger (tweet):

If you’re building a macOS CLI that uses AppleScript, you need to embed an Info.plist into your binary, sign it with proper entitlements, and optionally use the undocumented responsibility_spawnattrs_setdisclaim API to avoid permission dialogs that blames the hosting app.

[…]

Getting AppleScript to work in a CLI tool turned out to be a maze of undocumented APIs, security permissions, and macOS quirks that nobody warns you about.

Previously:

Fixing mediaanalysisd Storage and CPU Use

OSXDaily:

If you have discovered your Mac disk space has reduced since installing or updating to MacOS Sequoia, the inordinately large com.apple.mediaanalysisd cache file issue could be to blame. A variety of Mac users have reported the directory being filled with 15GB+ of data, with some users noting 50 GB, 80 GB, even 140GB of cache files, filling users entire disk drives with the cache bundle files.

Let’s review what the directory is, and how to recover your disk storage space.

[…]

With one user on Apple discussions reporting up to 140 GB of medianalysisd cache files on their Mac, and another on Rumors Forums reporting 80GB of caches, there are also multiple other mentions of this on everywhere from stackexcahgne, reddit, MacRumors Forums, and the official Apple support forums. How widespread the issue is is not clear, and if any particular feature or combination of settings triggers the huge medianalysisd cache folder, or if it’s just a bug, is currently unknown.

Via Full Report Below:

On my machine, com.apple.mediaanalysisd is using no less than 143GB. For a 27 GB photo library.

Paul Hudson:

mediaanalysisd has regularly been sitting on ~100% CPU for over a week now. My laptop is hot to the touch, and I have no idea why. Rebooting didn’t help. Suggestions?

Daniel Berezhnoy:

I think I be had the same problem the last 2 weeks. Can’t figure out why!

See also: Apple’s forums.

Previously:

Friday, July 4, 2025

DOJ’s iPhone Monopoly Case Moves Forward

Juli Clover:

Apple failed in its attempt to get the antitrust lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice filed against it dismissed, reports Reuters. U.S. District Judge Julien Neals, who is overseeing the case, today denied Apple’s motion for dismissal.

[…]

The DOJ accused Apple of a smartphone monopoly in the United States, citing Apple’s restriction of third-party access to Apple services and features and claiming that consumers are “locked” into Apple’s ecosystem. Apple argues that the DOJ is attempting to force it to spend money on enriching its competitors, and that it is not a monopolist because it faces competition from companies like Samsung and Google.

[…]

The case is unlikely to make it to trial until 2028 or even later.

Previously:

iOS 26 Recovery Assistant

Joe Rossignol:

iOS 26 adds a new Recovery Assistant feature to all compatible iPhones, and it can help return the device to a working state, with no Mac or PC required.

[…]

According to a Reddit post, Recovery Assistant can help you return an iPhone to a working state with help from another Apple device, such as an iPad. This process can be initiated through the menu in the top-right corner of the Recovery mode on the affected iPhone. On the other Apple device, you can follow the on-screen steps to download and install a newer iOS version on the iPhone that is in Recovery mode, to help revive it.

It sounds like iOS automatically opens Recovery, if needed, but there’s no way to manually bring it up like with macOS Recovery.

Previously:

iOS 26 Information Density

Nate Parrott:

didn’t realize everything in iOS 26 is just a little bigger and way less stuff fits on screen now?

Riccardo Mori:

Let’s make a fun comparison about information density across various versions of iOS and device screen sizes.

In reverse chronological order.

Corollary: iOS 26 kinda sucks at information density.

Riccardo Mori:

[Apple:] To give content room to breathe, organizational components like lists, tables, and forms have a larger row height and padding. Sections have an increased corner radius to match the curvature of controls across the system.

Which is largely unnecessary. It reduces the amount of information displayed on screen, and you’ll have to scroll more as a consequence. Look at the Before and After layouts: the Before layout doesn’t need solutions to increase its clarity. You’re just injecting white space everywhere. It’s also ironic that where more space and ‘breathing room’ are actually necessary, the header (“Single Table Row” in the figure) is pushed even nearer to the status bar.

Previously:

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Funding

Cynthia Brumfield (via Hacker News):

After DHS did not renew its funding contract for reasons unspecified, MITRE’s 25-year-old Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program was slated for an abrupt shutdown on April 16, which would have left security flaw tracking in limbo.

Gavin D. Howard (via Hacker News):

The CVE system has been less good about securing our infrastructure than they have been about giving headaches to some of the most important projects. Curl gets bogus CVEs all the time and has to spend precious time dealing with them. Postgresql does too. The Linux kernel went a different route and just spams CVEs so that kernel CVEs essentially become worthless.

Worthless? Does that mean that CVEs were actually worth something to people?

Yes, absolutely. Script-kiddies that consider themselves “security researchers” try to find bugs in big projects and then get them labeled as CVEs so they can add those CVEs to their résumés. As one user on Hacker News said, “Unfortunately, the CVE database(s) are too noisy to be useful.”

In fact, it got so bad that Curl decided to do extra work to become a CNA, just so they can reject spurious reports and avoid the NVD from giving excessively high vulnerability scores.

CVE Foundation (via Hacker News):

The CVE Foundation has been formally established to ensure the long-term viability, stability, and independence of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program, a critical pillar of the global cybersecurity infrastructure for 25 years.

Jessica Lyons:

Earlier this week, the widely used Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program faced doom as the US government discontinued funding for MITRE, the non-profit that operates the program. Uncle Sam U-turned at the very last minute, and promised another 11 months of cash [via CISA] to keep the program going.

Meanwhile, the EU is rolling its own.

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) developed and maintains this alternative, which is known as the EUVD, or the European Union Vulnerability Database.

Previously:

Thursday, July 3, 2025

SummerFest 2025 for Indie Mac Apps

SummerFest:

Your inspiration doesn’t come from a factory. Neither does artisanal software. For a limited time, we’re all offering you a great price on great software, right at the workshop door. No ridiculous bundles, no silly gimmicks. Great software, great support, great (but sustainable) prices.

[…]

These are terrific tools for thinking, writing, organizing, and delivering your ideas. Sure, you can manage with less – but why would you want to? Each of these tools is carefully crafted and maintained by a small, dedicated team with vision and determination.

I’m listing all of the apps below, most with direct links that automatically apply the discount, but for some you’ll need to enter the coupon code SUMMERFEST2025.

Alifix 1.4

Howard Oakley:

If you have old Finder aliases that need to be checked and repaired, Alifix will do that job with you. Use it to scan a folder containing those aliases, and it will warn you which can’t be resolved any longer, and can rewrite those that need to be updated.

I’d forgotten about this utility, which just added support for macOS Tahoe, but it’s a good tool to have in your belt, as aliases sometimes break when copying between volumes or restoring from backup.

See also: more about aliases and bookmarks.

Magic Lasso Adblock 5.0

Matthew Bickham:

Magic Lasso Adblock v5.0 now lets you block ads and trackers across all apps on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac — not just in Safari.

[…]

Whether you’re scrolling through social media, playing games, or reading the news (including Apple News), ads are blocked automatically — creating a cleaner, faster experience across your device.

[…]

Many apps secretly track your activity and sell your data to third parties. App Ad Blocking helps shut down these trackers before they load, giving you stronger privacy everywhere.

My concern with ad blocking is always that it will accidentally block something that isn’t an ad and break a site (or, with the new version, an app). However, in my testing so far, that hasn’t happened. For blocking outside of Safari, it uses a network extension, and this currently doesn’t support the same fine-grained control as the Safari extension; but, if necessary, you can quickly toggle all of the blocking on/off from the Magic Lasso Adblock app.

Nick Heer:

After iOS began registering taps immediately, I found scrolling apps with interstitial ads — particularly news apps like those from CBC News and the New York Times — to be particularly hostile. I would scroll and then, while intending to stop the scroll, often tap on an ad which would send me to Safari. Irritating. Not all ads are blocked in these apps, but enough are that it has improved my news reading.

Previously:

CodableWithConfiguration

John Sundell:

When a type conforms to either EncodableWithConfiguration or DecodableWithConfiguration, it requires an additional configuration value to be passed when either encoding or decoding it (and the compiler will enforce that requirement).

[…]

CodableWithConfiguration is really quite useful when using Swift’s built-in serialization API to encode and decode types that require additional data in order to be initialized, without having to resort to modeling required data as optional, or having to define additional types that are only ever used for decoding purposes.

It’s a shame there’s no way to avoid the boilerplate of encoding/decoding all the properties that don’t come from the configuration.

Previously:

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Cloudflare Creates AI Crawler Tollbooth

Matthew Prince (Hacker News, Slashdot):

The problem is whether you create content to sell ads, sell subscriptions, or just to know that people value what you’ve created, an AI-driven web doesn’t reward content creators the way that the old search-driven web did. And that means the deal that Google made to take content in exchange for sending you traffic just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Instead of being a fair trade, the web is being stripmined by AI crawlers with content creators seeing almost no traffic and therefore almost no value.

That changes today, July 1, what we’re calling Content Independence Day. Cloudflare, along with a majority of the world’s leading publishers and AI companies, is changing the default to block AI crawlers unless they pay creators for their content. That content is the fuel that powers AI engines, and so it’s only fair that content creators are compensated directly for it.

thaddeus:

This is pretty cool, but we’re also dangerously close to Cloudflare basically being the whole internet.

Thomas Claburn:

In a separate post, Cloudflare’s David Belson, head of data insight, and Sam Rhea, VP of product, published data illustrating the disparity between what AI crawlers take and the referral traffic they send back to websites.

During the period between June 19 and 26, 2025, for example, “Anthropic’s AI platform Claude made nearly 71,000 HTML page requests for every HTML page referral,” observe Belson and Rhea. We must note that these measures only track traffic from the Claude website, not the app, as the app does not emit a Referer: header. The same goes for the other AI vendors.

Manton Reece:

I’m concerned that this default goes too far. Cloudflare has enormous power to intercept web traffic, because they’ve effectively re-centralized DNS for so many websites. While Matthew’s reasons for doing this are good, it should still be an opt-in feature. The open web should by default be open.

[…]

Cloudflare has a series of blog posts today with more details. In one post, they outline how AI crawlers can use HTTP Signatures (similar to what ActivityPub uses) to identify themselves if they have a relationship with Cloudflare for making payments to web publishers. When enabled, Cloudflare will return an HTTP 402 “payment required” response. There’s a mechanism for crawlers to say how much they will pay or to accept the listed price.

[…]

I can also imagine a harmless bot accidentally getting mislabelled as an AI crawler. Cloudflare has significant control even though they aren’t even the ones hosting your web site. According to a companion press release today, Cloudflare proxies traffic for 20% of the web.

Previously:

Update (2025-07-04): Vladimir Prelovac:

Cloudflare launched pay per crawl service in an attempt to centralize control of AI crawling economy.

Interestingly there is an open source effort by Coinbase which may be a better way to achieve this for publishers (and this could be the first actually useful thing to come out of the crypto world). This banks on existing http 402 response spec and is conveniently called x402.org

Now if only it wasn’t so darn hard to setup a wallet for your grandma in her browser so we could have decent micropayments on the web. Something I think about a lot in the context of Kagi/Orion.

Update (2025-07-08): Adam Engst:

There are undoubtedly numerous concerns with pay-per-crawl, not the least of which is that it would put Cloudflare in a position of even greater power within the Internet ecosystem. It could also hinder academic research and open source projects that lack substantial funding.

However, what I find even more interesting about pay-per-crawl is how it might revive HTTP response code 402 as a more general method of enabling direct transactions between producers and consumers. We’re getting close to some of the micropayment-related ideas in Ted Nelson’s largely theoretical Project Xanadu, which could radically democratize commerce on the Internet (I’ve been beating this drum for decades; see “Xanadu Light,” 29 November 1993).

Figma Files for IPO

Thomas Claburn (Figma, Hacker News):

The company prospectus mentions AI more than 150 times, characterizing it both as a creative accelerant and a potential threat.

[…]

Back to Figma, whose prospectus says that as of the first three months of 2025 it has 13 million monthly active users.

For the year that ended on December 31, 2024, Figma reported revenue of $749 million, up 48 percent year-on-year from the prior year. And for the three months that ended March 31, 2025, the company reported revenue of $228 million, up 46 percent year-on-year.

[…]

Figma cautions that its own use of AI could make its software more complicated to maintain.

Previously:

Update (2025-07-04): Georgia Butler (via Hacker News):

The filing states that Figma entered into a renewed hosting agreement with AWS on May 31, 2025, which commits to “a minimum of $545 million in cloud hosting services over the next five years.”

This works out at $298,466.59 daily in costs to Figma. How this is broken down into storage, compute, or bandwidth costs is not detailed.

Fakespot Shuts Down

Bryson Thill (via Hacker News):

Fakespot’s technology revealed some eye-opening statistics. About 43% of the best-selling Amazon products had reviews that were unreliable or fabricated, according to a study by app company Circuit. The problem was even worse in certain categories. Clothing and jewelry led the pack with a staggering 88% of reviews deemed unreliable.

[…]

As Fakespot gained traction, investors took notice. In November 2020, the company raised $4 million in Series A funding, bringing their total funding to $7 million and signaling strong confidence in their mission to combat fake reviews.

Three years later, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, bringing the startup’s 13-person team into the Firefox family. Mozilla integrated Fakespot’s technology directly into Firefox as the “Mozilla Review Checker” feature, making it easier than ever for users to verify product reviews without installing separate extensions.

[…]

Mozilla couldn’t find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity, choosing to redirect resources to core Firefox features and AI-powered browser tools.

Previously:

macOS Tahoe Drops FireWire Support

Joe Rossignol:

The first macOS Tahoe developer beta does not support the legacy FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 data-transfer standards, according to @NekoMichi on X, and a Reddit post. As a result, the first few iPod models and old external storage drives that rely on FireWire cannot be synced with or mounted on a Mac running the macOS Tahoe beta.

Unlike on macOS Sequoia and earlier versions, the first macOS Tahoe beta does not include a FireWire section in the System Settings app.

I’ve seen reports that FireWire support has been partially broken since macOS 12.3, anyway.

Mark Sokolovsky:

Take a fine comb and look through the latest developer beta, tell me if you find any mention of FireWire anywhere – not even System Profiler has it anymore. They’re saying on AppleInsider that even with a Thunderbolt Dock, it won’t let you connect any FW device to macOS.

[…]

Macs started carrying FireWire as early as 1997 as a BTO/CTO option, however, was not included onboard on any model until 1999. Even then, not all models carried it. The mid-2012 13″ non-retina MacBook Pro was the last model Mac to carry any sort of FireWire port.

USB continues to improve, but I just don’t think it’s ever been as reliable as FireWire was.

Jack Wellborn:

In honor of FireWire support presumably going away in macOS Tahoe, here’s pictures from when I connected my original iPod to my M1 MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro to
Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter to
Thunderbolt 2 cable to
Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 2 adapter to
Firewire 2 cable to
External HD with FireWire 2 and FireWire 1 ports to
FireWire 1 cable to
iPod

Previously:

Update (2025-07-04): Adam Maxwell:

Wow, that’s the end of an era. I bought FW drives as long as I was able, as it seemed like performance and reliability was always better. FW > Ethernet > USB > WiFi > Bluetooth in my unscientific aggregate of performance and reliability.

Lee Bennett:

I guess I’m gonna have to keep an older Mac & OS around coz I still periodically use a FireWire bridge to capture VHS tapes.

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Brazil Recommends Sanctions for Apple Over App Store and NFC Rules

Hartley Charlton:

The recommendation was issued by the General Superintendence of Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (SG/CADE), the technical body of the federal antitrust authority. In a public statement translated from Portuguese, SG/CADE determined that Apple’s conduct with iOS constitutes a violation of Brazilian competition law and urged CADE’s internal tribunal to impose penalties, including financial fines and mandatory changes to Apple’s policies.

The investigation started in 2022 after formal complaints were submitted by Latin American e-commerce platform MercadoLibre and other digital service providers. The companies alleged that Apple engaged in anti-competitive practices by requiring in-app purchases to be made exclusively through its own payment system and by restricting developers from informing users about alternative purchasing options — a practice known as anti-steering.

MercadoLibre further argued that Apple abused its control over the iOS platform by denying third-party access to critical technologies such as the iPhone ‘s NFC chip, effectively limiting mobile payment competition in Brazil.

Previously:

Tim Robertson, RIP

Peter Cohen:

Confirmed with the family this morning that @mymac founder Tim Robertson passed away after a recent illness.

Tim was not just a mainstay of Apple blogging, podcasting and smart analysis for decades, but one of the very nicest people I’ve ever met.

Like ATPM, My Mac began in 1995 and was originally published in DOCMaker format. Each issue was a standalone app-document file, downloadable like shareware from AOL and eWorld.

Update (2025-07-08): John Nemerovski:

Tim recruited, inspired, and nurtured the writing of dozens of regular and guest contributors to MyMac.com, publishing thousands of articles over the course of three decades. His MyMac Podcasting Network has also hosted thousands of episodes of shows such as Tech Fan, GeeksPub, Geekiest Show Ever, and The Essential Apple Podcast.

He accomplished it all as a dedicated Apple aficionado, with very little advertising or sponsorship, while working a day job as a car salesman. MyMac contributors, like Tim, have always been unpaid volunteers who create content at a professional level.

[…]

Tim was a one-of-a-kind, fearless leader. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family in Michigan and encourage anyone who knew him to share their stories on his official obituary.

Grammarly Acquires Superhuman

Krystal Hu (via Hacker News):

Grammarly has signed a deal to acquire email efficiency tool Superhuman as part of the company’s push to build an artificial intelligence-powered productivity suite and diversify its business, its executives told Reuters in an interview.

The San Francisco-based companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman, once an exclusive email tool boasting a long waitlist for new users, was last valued at $825 million in 2021, and currently has an annual revenue of about $35 million.

Previously:

iPadOS Windows Mess Up Data Saving

Craig Hockenberry (Mastodon):

From the very beginning, iOS has had a notion of an app being in the foreground or background. When you saw an app on screen it was active and when it was gone it was inactive.

[…]

It was simple system that let you do what you needed to do, when you needed to do it. Now with windows on iPadOS, that’s gotten a lot harder.

That’s because apps stay active even when their windows do not.

If you’re using iPadOS 26 and noticing that the saving/syncing/exchange of data is not happening, there’s a stupid trick you need to do to get things working: Tap on the home screen to hide the windows (they slide off to the sides of the display). That makes all the apps on screen inactive and triggers the work that they need to do.

It seems like there’s a missing API for apps to know what’s happening.

Previously:

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