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.
Bargain Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia
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.
Aliases Alifix Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia macOS Tahoe 26
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:
Advertising Apple News Firefox Google Chrome iOS iOS 18 iOS App Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Magic Lasso Adblock Microsoft Edge Network Extensions Privacy Safari Extensions The New York Times
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:
iOS iOS 18 Mac macOS 15 Sequoia Programming Swift Codable Swift Programming Language
