Craig Hockenberry (Mastodon):
The source code example using in Supporting business model changes by using the app transaction does not work if you’re using current Xcode and App Store conventions. Additionally, the sandbox environment uses the same outdated conventions.
And when you use that sample code, that you cannot test in the Xcode transaction simulator or in the TestFlight sandbox environment, it will fail spectacularly on launch day. You will be inundated with support requests from people who are expecting to see a payment for the previous version AND you’ll be in a state of panic because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. And did I mention that you can’t test this in production?
The sample code implies that the originalAppVersion is a string that’s separated by periods (“.”). The sandbox environment returns a value of “1.0” which reinforces this notion that it’s a value that separated by periods.
It is not.
Sarah Reichelt:
If Apple allowed their people to write and publish their own apps, they would learn all this. As it is, they are totally isolated from the situation.
App Store Business Documentation iOS iOS 18 iTunes Connect Sandbox Testers Mac Mac App Store macOS 15 Sequoia Programming TestFlight
Typepad:
After September 30, 2025, access to Typepad – including account management, blogs, and all associated content – will no longer be available. Your account and all related services will be permanently deactivated.
Please note that after this date, you will no longer be able to access or export any blog content.
The FAQ:
The export will produce a single TXT file for each blog. The file format is MTIF which is supported by some other blogging platforms, including WordPress.
Warner Crocker:
This blog is named Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3. I may be a theatre geek, but I’m not a fan of the three-act structure. The name came about because there were first and second acts preceding it. The first act was on Windows Live Spaces (long since dead and gone) back in the day before I ever thought of this as something I’d enjoy doing. Then there was a Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 2 on Typepad.
Well all plays, regardless of act structure have an ending. The curtain is coming down on that second act in the same way it did on the first one.
[…]
Everything in the corporeal world reverts back to dust. So do all the bits in the digital one.
Datacide Movable Type Sunset Typepad Web WordPress
Jason Snell:
But here we are, living in an era where Cook has now served as Apple CEO longer than Jobs did. The Apple of 2025 is quite different from the company Cook took control of back in 2011. Today’s Apple generates nearly four times the revenue that the company did when Cook took over, driven by more-than-quadrupling iPhone revenue. Back in 2011, there was one iPhone; now there are five, along with several iPad models, a wearables business that basically didn’t exist, an experimental headset, and a revitalized Mac powered by iPhone chips.
[…]
The toughest part to follow of Steve Jobs’s many acts was his role as a guider of product development. Jobs had taste and intuition, and it enabled Apple to do some remarkable things. Cook is not that guy, and the fear was always that under his tenure, Apple would falter.
Did it? Depends on how you view things. From the perspective of investors looking for growth and profit, Cook has taken everything to a higher level. If you focus on product innovation, it’s more of a mixed bag.
[…]
I’d also say that, surprisingly for someone who was once in charge of the Mac at Apple, part of Cook’s legacy is his allowing the Mac to lose its way in the mid-2010s, a time when it seemed like Apple was trying to build the iPad up so that the Mac could be put out to pasture as a legacy device. The addition of USB-C and the controversial “butterfly” keyboard added to the sense of malaise. But to Cook’s credit, Apple pulled the Mac back from the abyss, transitioning to chips originally designed for iPhones and iPads and ushering in the most successful era (by revenue, anyway) in Mac history.
People seem to agree that Apple Silicon saved the Mac, but it’s interesting to consider why. Apple had made a series of bad hardware design decisions. Couldn’t it simply reverse them? After switching to Intel processors, the theory was that Apple no longer had a chance of being ahead in performance, but at least it would never be behind. You’d think that on-par performance plus Apple’s design chops and the superiority of macOS would lead to success.
The post-butterfly Mac notebooks were a reprieve, but they didn’t exactly take the world by storm. Having skipped the butterflies, my 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro was arguably the worst Mac I’ve owned: noisy, hot, random shutdowns, unusable without the failing and non-replaceable SSD, the Touch Bar. Without superior hardware, the Mac had to rely more on its software advantage, but throughout the Tim Cook era macOS has in large part become harder to use and less reliable. Most of the new features have been half-hearted ports from iOS rather than expanding its unique capabilities.
The software problems remain, but with the Apple Silicon processors they’re now offset by a hardware advantage, at least for notebooks. Yes, this is innovation, but I get frustrated whenever Apple is judged based on its innovation—meaning discontinuities like this or whole new product lines. This is what Wall Street likes because it affects the company’s growth potential. To me, what matters is the software. How well is it designed and how well does it work? Everything else—how pleasant the hardware, services, accessory products are—follows from there.
And forget about what wonders “fantasy Steve Jobs” might have accomplished. Just look at what’s happened with music.
Previously:
AirPods Antitrust Apple Apple Music Apple Services Apple Software Quality Apple Vision Pro Apple Watch ARM Macs Business History iPad iPhone Mac Siri Tim Cook Touch Bar
Olivia A. Gallucci:
The Mach Object (Mach-O) is the binary format used on Apple’s operating systems for executables, libraries, and object code. It was created for the Mach kernel (hence the name) and introduced in NeXTSTEP, the predecessor to macOS, as a replacement for the a.out format.
[…]
In this post, we’ll explore Mach-O’s layout and history. Then, we will examine how macs use Mach-O for code signing integrity and for Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC) on ARM64e systems.
Previously:
ARM Code Signing iOS iOS 18 Mac Mach-O macOS 15 Sequoia Programming
