SpamSieve 3.2 includes lots of updates for macOS Tahoe 26 and adds remote training and improvements to the filtering accuracy.
I love the new app icon that Kenichi Yoshida designed. To avoid jail, the sieve is now within the squircle. It’s also enlarged, and there’s once again room to see the envelope coming out the bottom. One thing we had to let go was the custom badging from the previous design. It used to start out showing a large envelope glyph in the top-left corner, and this would change in the Dock to indicate when SpamSieve was filtering or training messages. As far as I can tell, this is no longer possible with Tahoe and Liquid Glass. We can set the Dock icon at runtime, but only if we know the exact pixels, which we don’t because we don’t know whether the user has selected Dark or Clear or Tinted icon mode, and because there’s no API to load a .icon file with those variants. So SpamSieve now does the badging using the system API (like the unread count in Mail).
As previously discussed, something is wrong with Apple Mail’s AppleScript support and POP accounts in Tahoe.
It does look like there were some AppleScript improvements in Tahoe, though. Recent versions of Mail had a terrible performance regression where accessing one message via AppleScript would make Mail load every message in its mailbox, all at once. Then when your script accessed the next message it would do it all again, even if the script was supplying the unique ID of the desired message, which is also the database primary key. (Sidenote: there’s also a longstanding bug in Mail’s AppleScript terminology that makes it hard to look up messages in this way; whenever you recompile your script the source text becomes invalid.) Anyway, what should have been quick operations could be slow, and operating on multiple messages could be accidentally quadratic. With Tahoe, Mail once again seems to be able to do database queries for information about a single message.
I’m sorry to say that Microsoft will be temporarily removing AppleScript support from Outlook on November 1. Mac Outlook (and its predecessors Entourage and Outlook Express, from members of the Claris Emailer team) have a history of being great Mac citizens but then started removing features and feeling more like cross-platform Office apps. Five years ago, Microsoft shipped an in-progress rewrite of the app using Web technologies, with many of the key features removed. It was still possible to run the “legacy” version of the app (which was shipped in the same binary), and we were told that this would be supported until AppleScript and other features had been reimplemented in the new codebase. However, now they’re killing the legacy version, even for customers who already have that version of the app installed and are current with their Microsoft 365 subscription. AppleScript support is slated to return in December, and they assure me this will actually happen, but I’m a bit skeptical because the announced schedule has slipped several times already. Interestingly, and sadly, it look like rules in Outlook are gone for good. They’re not even on the public roadmap. I also miss schedules, database rebuilds, and import/export.
There are huge RAM and performance improvements with SpamSieve’s handling of large table view selections. These come from more pervasive use of custom collection types, to delay fully realizing objects that might not be needed and to only realize batches of them at a time. Also, it fixes a bug in my implementation of _customIndexOfEquatableElement() that in some cases defeated the intended optimization. The bottommost override must call firstIndex(of:) rather than delegating to the protocol extension implementation of the same method! (Also, be careful when implementing this family of protocol overrides, as Swift will not tell you if you spell them wrong or have the signature slightly off.)
On previous versions of macOS, you could round-trip a Swift string to UTF-8 data and back, and it would remain the same. With Tahoe, if it starts with a Unicode BOM that gets stripped.
There’s a Tahoe issue with multiple displays where the menu bar icon’s menu sometimes opens on the opposite side of the screen (i.e. disconnected from the icon) and slightly off-screen.
Opening Apple Help links to a particular anchor remains broken in Tahoe.
Previously:
Apple Help Apple Mail AppleScript Design E-mail Icons Liquid Glass Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 Menu Bar Microsoft Outlook Multiple Displays Software Rewrite SpamSieve Sunset Swift Programming Language Unicode
Paul Alcorn (via Hacker News):
In a surprise announcement that finds two long-time rivals working together, Nvidia and Intel announced today that the companies will jointly develop multiple new generations of x86 products together — a seismic shift with profound implications for the entire world of technology. Before the news broke, Tom’s Hardware spoke with Nvidia representatives to learn more details about the company’s plans.
The products include x86 Intel CPUs tightly fused with an Nvidia RTX graphics chiplet for the consumer gaming PC market, named the ‘Intel x86 RTX SOCs.’ Nvidia will also have Intel build custom x86 data center CPUs for its AI products for hyperscale and enterprise customers. Additionally, Nvidia will buy $5 billion in Intel common stock at $23.28 per share, representing a roughly 5% ownership stake in Intel.
[…]
Nvidia emphasized that the companies are committed to multi-generation roadmaps for the co-developed products, which represents a strong investment in the x86 ecosystem. But representatives tells us it also remains fully committed to other announced product roadmaps and architectures, including the company’s Arm-based GB10 Grace Blackwell processors for workstations and the Nvidia GraceCPUs for data centers, as well as the next-gen Vera CPUs.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-25): Lauren Hirsch and Tripp Mickle:
Intel, the embattled chipmaker, has talked with Apple about investing in its business as it tries to improve its financial standing.
[…]
The conversations are part of a furious effort by Intel to raise cash and find customers for its ailing business.
Apple Business Intel NVIDIA Processors
Joe Rossignol:
If your Mac experiences an issue that prevents it from starting up properly, macOS Tahoe includes a new Recovery Assistant that can attempt to identify the issue and resolve it, according to an Apple support document published this week.
[…]
Recovery Assistant is also available from the Utilities menu in macOS Recovery mode.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-29): Howard Oakley:
DRA requires an internet connection to function. If you’re asked to choose a connection, opt for a Wi-Fi network if possible.
[…]
When your Mac restarts, it may show a notification that you need to recover iCloud data. If so, open System Settings and you should see a new item in its sidebar to Recover iCloud Data.
Howard Oakley:
Although in a different league, our novel treatment of the week is Device Recovery Assistant, as I showed here on Friday. It’s sufficiently new that Apple hasn’t quite gone firm on what to call it. Its sole account refers to it as Recovery Assistant, in accordance with the menu command used to open the app in Recovery mode. But when it’s running, it claims to be Device Recovery Assistant, which sounds like it might also be good for your iPhone or iPad, but isn’t. That’s a similar feature added to iOS and iPadOS 26, as explained here.
I’m still a little wary of magic healing tools in Recovery mode. The first is there even now, waiting to catch those who’ve taken AI a little too seriously, and think running repairHomePermissions might be a good idea. Whatever you do, please don’t try this one at home, as its effects can be devastating.
[…]
Far from repairing them, each time I have tried this it locks me out of every folder in my Home folder and wreaks havoc elsewhere.
[…]
(Device) Recovery Assistant doesn’t appear to do anything so disastrous, but Apple is completely opaque as to what it actually does.
Update (2025-10-22): Howard Oakley:
All of us at some time or other find our mind has gone blank and we can’t remember the password we’ve typed in so often before. Or the person who did know that password may no longer be there to recall it for us. At times like these we may need to gain access to a locked Mac. This article looks at how you can do that in an Intel Mac with a T2 chip, or an Apple silicon Mac, running Big Sur or later, in particular macOS Tahoe.
File Permissions Mac macOS Recovery macOS Tahoe 26
Marco Arment (Mastodon):
Frankly, I’m taking a risk, and am considering it an experiment. I know almost nothing about Reddit, but I want to learn.
I want Overcast to have an official presence here, where I can just tell you what I’m working on, what I’m considering, which bugs I’m trying to tackle, and how things work behind the scenes.
And you can tell me how you use Overcast, what’s working for you, what’s not, and what you’d like to see.
I can’t respond to most posts, and depending on volume, I might not always even be able to read them all.
The early posts and replies are encouraging. I hope this works out.
After the Overcast rewrite, just over a year ago, I got scared reading—on Mastodon, Twitter, and the unofficial Reddit—of all the problems people were having. It seemed to work fine for the majority, but it was hard to know in advance whether I would be affected, so I didn’t want to go through that one-way door. With many bugs now squashed, I finally updated last month and it’s been working well for me. There are some minor issues, like not being able to reorder pinned podcasts, but overall it seems to be reliable and at least as fast as before. I still think this app has the best audio engine.
Previously:
Audio iOS iOS 26 iOS App Overcast Podcasts Reddit SwiftUI
