Howard Oakley:
Spotlight is so substantial, almost silent in the log, and impenetrable that the best approach to diagnosing its problems is to test it out in a controlled way. Mints has been doing that by creating a folder of files containing an unusual word, then searching for that. Although that’s still useful for a quick test, we need something more focused and flexible, and that’s what SpotTest aims to deliver.
Following deep dives into how Spotlight indexes and searches metadata and contents of files, and how it can search text extracted from images and the results of image analysis, I’ve realised that different test files are required, together with alternative means of search. For example, the standard approach used in compiled apps, with NSMetadataQuery, is incapable of finding content tags obtained using Visual Look Up, which only appear when using the mdfind command. SpotTest takes these into account.
[…]
A perfect 13/15 result from NSMetadataQuery is only possible after waiting a day or more for background mediaanalysisd processing to recognise and extract the text in file I, a PNG image.
Howard Oakley:
As promised, this new version of my Spotlight indexing and search utility SpotTest extends its reach beyond the user’s Home folder, and can now test and search any regular volume that’s connected to your Mac and mounted in /Volumes.
Previously:
Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Search Spotlight SpotTest
Alexander Gromnitsky (via Hacker News):
At the time of writing, the most recent Adobe Reader 25.x.y.z 64-bit
installer for Windows 11 weights 687,230,424 bytes. After
installation, the program includes ‘AI’ (of course), an auto-updater,
sprinkled ads for Acrobat online services everywhere, and 2 GUIs:
’new’ and ‘old’.
It looks like a steady, pretty linear increase until you realize that the graph use a log scale…
Previously:
Update (2025-09-02): Nick Heer:
The installed size of the latest version of Acrobat is, on my Mac, 2.18 GB — or, to spell it out as Gromnitsky did, 2,176,053,007 bytes. Of course, over 435 MB of that is because it includes a copy of the Chromium web browser engine. I primarily use this application to view, edit, and add form fields to text-based documents, and to dismiss ads for A.I. features and Adobe services. Gromnitsky is describing only Reader, which is far more limited than Acrobat, even more so than Apple’s own Preview software; you cannot even split a PDF into multiple files with Reader.
Acrobat Adobe Reader Artificial Intelligence History Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Optimization PDF Windows Windows App
Miguel Arroz (Mastodon):
PaperVault stores information as sequences of QR Codes you can print and scan easily, protected by a password only you know. Data is secured using industry-standard robust encryption algorithms.
[…]
Vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Your data is yours and I don’t want to hold it hostage. Therefore, I’m publishing the data format used when printing to QR Codes. View the data format technical documentation ≫
Neat idea, seems to be easy to use and thoughtfully implemented, and it’s free. Scanning—and verification—can be done using an iPhone controlled from the Mac via Continuity. Larger documents get split into multiple QR codes, printed in a grid, but I was surprised how much one QR Code can store.
Continuity Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia PaperVault Passwords Printing Privacy QR Codes
VintageApple:
Nick R. was generous enough to send me his entire vintage Mac programming library to
be destructively scanned and shared with the community. We’ve added a few of our own
for a pretty huge collection (over 150) of vintage Mac programming related books.
Via Rui Carmo:
[This] is a great resource for people interested in vintage Mac programming, including the original Think Pascal and Think C books I used when I was hacking away at 68k Mac apps.
The books are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, so it doesn’t have the Rhapsody Developer’s Guide or the early books on Carbon, Cocoa, and the other technologies from NeXT.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-02): John Gruber:
These evoke nostalgia both for the classic Mac era and for the entire notion of “programming books”.
Dave Mark’s 1989 Learn C on the Macintosh was, I think, the first book I read about Mac programming.
Ken Kocienda:
A nostalgic list of books for me. I was first learning to write programs in the middle of this era, a time before programming documentation or open source code was available online. Books were it. Printed material was my only way to learn, and it wasn’t easy. In the early 1990s, I wanted to be a programmer, but I wasn’t, and I struggled with that hard truth. That was a long time ago, but I remember, and I kept a few of my old books because I couldn’t bear parting with them.
Update (2025-09-04): Chris Hanson:
In addition to scans of Mac programming books, VintageApple.org has a complete archive of Apple’s develop magazine, which is exemplar of how a platform vendor should communicate with developers.
Between being run by Caroline Rose and Louella Pizzuti and featuring articles about system technologies written by the system software engineers and developer technical support engineers directly responsible for them, it really was an incredible publication.
Chris Hanson:
The original Dylan book was actually converted to HTML back in the very early days of the web. Rainer Joswig has an archive of it as well as an archive of the Dylan Design Notes that clarify, amend, and clean up the language (at least before its syntax was ruined to make it palatable to developers who would never use it anyway).
Previously:
Apple Book C Programming Language Dylan History Mac Mac OS 8 Mac OS 9 Pascal Programming System 7
