Howard Oakley:
Apple has just released its first public Background Security Improvement (BSI) for macOS 26.3.1 Tahoe, labelled as BSI (a)-25D771280a.
Apple:
Available for: iOS 26.3.1, iPadOS 26.3.1, macOS 26.3.1, macOS 26.3.2
Impact: Processing maliciously crafted web content may bypass Same Origin Policy
Description: A cross-origin issue in the Navigation API was addressed with improved input validation.
Mr. Macintosh:
This update will NOT show up in Software update. It will only display in System Settings > BSI Updates.
Previously:
Background Security Improvements Mac macOS Release macOS Tahoe 26 Security WebKit
William Gallagher:
Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign of all of its operating systems from iPhone to Mac may have proven divisive, and it was certainly spearheaded by Alan Dye. But there is no possibility that it will be dropped, even as Bloomberg now reports that several designers left alongside Dye when he moved to Meta.
This new report from Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter says that Apple whipped out Liquid Glass as a wild card to distract from its failings in Apple Intelligence. But then in the same breath, the report also says that Liquid Glass was many years in the making.
That’s certainly what it seemed like at the time of the announcement, that it had been in the works for a while but wasn’t mature enough yet (even if you liked the concept).
Joe Rossignol:
Mark Gurman said the latest internal versions of iOS 27 and macOS 27 do not have major Liquid Glass design changes. He also mentioned how Apple’s new software design chief, Steve Lemay, was “a driving force” behind Liquid Glass and was “deeply involved in its development.”
John Calhoun:
I think Steve Lemay is a good guy. I kind of fought with him when I was an engineer, he was a young, new designer (at Apple). But I always respected his point of view—even when we argued.
[…]
The bigger argument I remember with Steve revolved around the drawer UI element. With regard to PDF’s, (the half of Preview that I worked on, another engineer handled images), the drawer was to display thumbnails for each page. If the PDF had a TOC (table of contents) the drawer is where we would display that as well.
So when you opened a PDF in Preview, the PDF content of course would appear in the large window—thumbnails, TOC (later search) would be relegated to a vertical strip of drawer real estate alongside the window—the user could open/close the drawer if they liked to focus perhaps on the content.
Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window. This was inexplicable to me. I saw the layout of Preview as hierarchical: the left side of the content driving the right side. You click a thumbnail on the left (in the drawer) the window content on the right changes to reflect the thumbnail clicked on.
Joe Rossignol:
iOS 26.1 lets you choose between “Clear” and “Tinted” options for Liquid Glass, with the “Tinted” look adding more opacity to user interface elements. And with iOS 27, which is expected to be released later this year, Apple might go even further.
iOS 26.2 introduced a slider that allows you to manually adjust the opacity of Liquid Glass, but only for the Lock Screen’s clock. Starting with iOS 27, Gurman said the setting might be expanded to the entire operating system.
Gus Mueller:
There’s been a lot of talk recently about Liquid Glass on MacOS, and it being an abomination (epic rant from Nilay Patel there). OK, it’s not recent, but there’s still a lot of talk and Nilay’s rant got me thinking[…] What if there was an Apperance toggle that said something along the lines of “Use the pro look and feel”, and all apps got a variant of the Sequoia UI, but spiffed up a bit more? It’s Gizmo vs. Platinum all over again.
Previously:
Design iOS iOS 27 Liquid Glass Mac macOS 27 Preview.app Rumor
Liam Proven:
Professor Charles Anthony Richard Hoare has died at the age of 92. Known to many computer science students as C. A. R. Hoare, and to his friends as Tony, he was not only one of the greatest minds in the history of programming – he also came up with a number of the field’s pithiest quotes.
[…]
In 2024, FACS, the Newsletter of the Formal Aspects of Computing Science, dedicated its July issue [PDF] to a tribute to Hoare for his 90th birthday. We have also seen some very good and touching posts in his memory, including “Commemorating Tony Hoare, Inventor of QuickSort,” and “In Memoriam: Sir Antony Hoare (1934–2026)” by Dag Spicer at the Computer History Museum.
Wikipedia:
Hoare’s most significant work has been in the following areas: his sorting and selection algorithm (Quicksort and Quickselect), Hoare logic, the formal language communicating sequential processes (CSP) used to specify the interactions between concurrent processes (and implemented in various programming languages such as occam), structuring computer operating systems using the monitor concept, and the axiomatic specification of programming languages.
Lance Fortnow (Hacker News):
A story that I was determined to hear from the source was the legendary quicksort 'wager'. The story goes that Tony told his boss at Elliott Brothers Ltd that he knew a faster sorting algorithm than the one that he had just implemented for the company. He was told 'I bet you sixpence you don't!'. Lo and behold, quicksort WAS faster. I asked Tony to tell this story pretty much every time we met, because I enjoyed it so much and it always put a smile on both of our faces. To his credit, Tony never tired of telling me this story 'right from the top'. I had hoped to visit again in the past year and record him telling it so that there was a record, but unfortunately this did not happen. However, I discover that it is indeed recorded elsewhere. One detail I might be able to add is that I asked Tony if indeed the wager was paid out or if it had merely been a figure of speech. He confirmed that indeed he WAS paid the wager (!). A detail of this story that I find particularly reflective of Tony's humble personality is that he went ahead and implemented the slower algorithm he was asked to, while he believed quicksort to be faster, and before chiming in with this belief. It speaks to a professionalism that Tony always carried.
I often think of this passage from his Turing Award lecture:
I gave desperate warnings against the obscurity,
the complexity, and overambition of the new design, but my warnings
went unheeded. I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a
software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that
there are no obvious deficiencies.
The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill,
devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple
physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature. It
also requires a willingness to accept objectives which are limited
by physical, logical, and technological constraints, and to accept a
compromise when conflicting objectives cannot be met. No committee
will ever do this until it is too late.
He is, of course, also known for calling null references a billion-dollar mistake
Previously:
Algorithm Concurrency CS Theory Programming Quicksort Rest in Peace
