Archive for May 2026

Friday, May 15, 2026

Apple Developer App 11.0

The update also adds these changes:

Refreshed look with Liquid Glass.

List filtering by Unwatched, Bookmarked, and Downloaded, and preferred topics.

Improved reliability of image capture during enrollment.

Bug fixes and various other enhancements.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

[It] has been ported from Catalyst-based to AppKit-based (it is a SwiftUI app in either case). Expect a whole new set of idiosyncrasies along with whatever new improvements/bugs it introduces.

(You can now fullscreen videos properly, for example)

I went to launch the old app so that I could compare it before downloading the new one and realized that I had deleted it because that was the only way to prevent WWDC session links from opening in the app instead of in Safari. So I don’t have a good feel for what’s changed aside from the list filtering mentioned above and the better support for full screen videos.

The current universal links behavior is that if I click a link within Safari it stays in Safari and shows a banner for opening the link in the Developer app. That’s an improvement. If I click a link outside of Safari, it opens the Developer app. There’s no command in the app to open the current session in your browser, though you can use Edit ‣ Copy Link and then paste it.

Previously:

Apple Developer App Catalyst (Marzipan) Cocoa iOS iOS 26 Liquid Glass Mac macOS Tahoe 26 SwiftUI Universal Links

12 Comments

OmniFocus 4.8.10

OmniFocus 4.8:

OmniFocus 4.8 introduces a visually refreshed interface, adopting beautiful Liquid Glass design elements and a modernized look and feel when run on macOS Tahoe 26, iOS 26, or iPadOS 26. This release also includes support for a range of new OS features - support for consulting Apple’s new on-device Foundation Models via Omni Automation plug-ins, OmniFocus Shortcuts actions in Spotlight on macOS 26, iOS 26 CarPlay widgets, watchOS 26 Control Center Controls, and more!

[…]

New Navigation Bar collapses on scroll, providing more space to view your tasks on iOS 26. When expanded, the Navigation Bar contains the redesigned Perspectives Bar and buttons for Quick Open, Search, Smart Add, and Quick Entry. Collapsed, the Navigation Bar displays a minimal set of buttons (including a button showing the current perspective icon, which you can tap to expand the Navigation Bar).

Here’s what that looks like. I guess it’s the kind of design that Apple wants to encourage with Liquid Glass, but I find it annoying how the controls always seem to be moving around and showing either too much or too little.

Starting in version 4, OmniFocus for iOS showed the perspectives bar on the bottom and then had a single + button floating over the bottom-right. You could tap, double-tap, or drag it to create new actions. The new design is an improvement in that there are now dedicated buttons for creating new actions at the current location (Smart Add) or in the inbox (Quick Entry). I nearly always want it in the inbox, so I no longer have to double-tap every time!

But the expanded form of the navigation bar now includes the Quick Open button (previously available with the perspectives) and the Search button (previously available by pulling down the list). I don’t think these items need such prominence, and now they take up enough extra space that, rather than the + buttons floating over the edge of the actions, the bar now obscures the full width of the action (with fuzzy text showing through).

The lower part of the navigation bar shows the perspectives. With Liquid Glass, the bubbles for each “tab” are wider, so I can only see four perspectives at once instead of five. There’s also extra dead space below the bottom of the navigation bar, where a little bit of blurred text shows through. Overall, it feels like it takes up more space than before, while showing less.

The animating design is meant to help by auto-collapsing the larger navigation bar to a form that’s even more compact than before. Here, everything except the two + buttons gets hidden in a menu. It seemed like a promising idea, but after months of use I find it worse than the old design and probably worse than just showing the huge bar all the time (which is not an option, even if you enable Reduce Motion). The interface just feels busy, with the navigation bar animating in and out as I scroll and change perspectives. I never quite have muscle memory for where the buttons will be. And one of my most common actions—switching back and forth between perspectives—now often takes extra taps because I have to go into the menu. It’s not even fully predictable: generally, the bar goes into compact mode when you scroll down a long list, but sometimes OmniFocus continues showing the expanded bar, anyway.

Forecast and Perspective Items widgets are now available in CarPlay on iOS 26.

This is surprisingly really useful because it lets me put arbitrary text on my car’s screen. In theory, you can do this with Apple Notes, but its font size is so large that there’s barely room for any text. OmniFocus lets me pick a much smaller font to see more. You can create multiple widgets. I always have one showing my flagged actions, and I have another car-specific perspective for information that I want to have available there.

On devices running macOS Tahoe 26, iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or visionOS 26 with hardware support for Apple Intelligence, OmniFocus plug-ins can now consult Apple’s new on-device Foundation Models.

As I discussed in my post about OmniOutliner 6, I think this is really cool but haven’t found it to be useful yet. I do think there’s potential here because things are set up so that the AI can leverage OmniFocus’s rich data model. You could ask it to pull dates out of text and then set date properties on your actions. Tags and notes attached to actions can be used for either input or output. Time estimates and project names are also potential fodder. This would need to be done, not purely by prompting but by writing JavaScript using a glue layer that Omni provides. There are some sample plug-ins.

Some other nice changes in recent versions:

Control Center — Quick Entry, Quick Open and Open Perspective controls are now available in the Control gallery on macOS 26.

[…]

AppleScript’s “evaluate javascript” now resolves Promise results from asynchronous functions.

[…]

Setting values for new repetition rules is now fully supported by AppleScript.

I’ve been using OmniFocus since 1.0, and it’s normally been trouble-free, but the last year or so has been frustrating. I haven’t had any data loss, but the little bugs have worn on me. The good news is that some of the worst ones are finally fixed:

Syncing would stop working unless I force-quit the iOS app.
There were various problems with the iOS share sheet.
There were major performance problems with search and quick entry.

The bad news is that some really annoying ones are still in play:

Tabbing in the Mac app often stops working, so that the cursor moves to the search field in the toolbar instead of to the next column.
Tags in the main view of the Mac app spontaneously collapse themselves, hiding all the actions they contain.
After the Mac app syncs in the background, sometimes it moves the window to a different space. This bug was seemingly fixed for a while but then came back.
The iOS app sometimes shows an out-of-date list of flagged actions. The count in the perspectives bar will be correct, but the action list itself will be missing deferred actions that recently became available. (Recent release notes suggest that this and the tabbing bug are fixed, but I still see both of them regularly, though the flagged one is perhaps less frequent than in previous versions.)
Syncing the watch app is unreliable enough that I’ve uninstalled that version of the app. It would never sync on its own in the background, and the count shown in the complication would always be wrong. Even syncing in the foreground would fail more often than not. I don’t know whether this is the fault of the app or watchOS, but it just doesn’t work. If I added an action on the watch I couldn’t count on ever seeing it on other devices. Also, the uncompleted watch syncs would degrade the performance of the Mac and iOS apps. It works much better to skip the watch app and just input from the watch using Reminders.

My overall take is that OmniFocus is still a great app, and I don’t know what I'd do without it. I just wish it would get back to being friction-free.

SwiftUI: @State and the Attribute Graph

Federico Zanetello:

@State is one of the many SwiftUI’s pillars that, once understood, we take for granted and use pretty much everywhere without a second thought. But what is @State? What’s happening behind the scenes?

Nikita Vasilev:

The answer is that @State does not store its value in the struct. The struct holds only a thin token - a reference to a node in an external, long-lived graph maintained by the SwiftUI runtime.

[…]

State in the Attribute Graph is owned by the view that declares it. Lifetime of the graph node is tied to the lifetime of that view’s identity in the hierarchy.

Rens Breur:

As is generally known, SwiftUI hands off some of its work to a private framework called AttributeGraph. In this article we will explore how SwiftUI uses that framework to efficiently update only those parts of an app necessary and to efficiently get the data out of your view graph it needs for rendering your app.

Chris Eidhof:

In this talk, we’ll look at the system that underpins SwiftUI: the attribute graph.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-15): Mindaugas Rudokas:

For an official “documentation” source, this WWDC video has a segment with pretty good illustrated explanation on how AttributeGraph and update cycle of SwiftUI works (starts at 20:47).

iOS iOS 26 Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Programming Swift Programming Language SwiftUI

11 Comments

APFS Folder Clones

Anders Borum:

After my experiments with APFS cloning, I made a Quick Action shortcut for Finder that’s much faster than Duplicate or “cp -c -R”, both of which clone files individually instead of the whole tree in one go.

The regular file copying APIs also give you folders full of file clones rather than a directory clone. His shortcut runs a Python script:

The clone is made with the macOS clonefile(2) syscall, invoked directly through ctypes. clonefile asks APFS to create a new inode that shares the source’s data extents — no bytes are copied up front, the new tree just points at the same disk blocks. The two trees diverge lazily: only blocks that are later modified in one side get their own physical storage (copy-on-write).

However, it’s not clear to me what the benefit is. Aside from somehow being faster, it sounds like you end up with the same structure. The clonefile(2) man page says:

If src names a directory, the directory hierarchy is cloned as if each item was cloned individually. However, the use of clonefile(2) to clone directory hierarchies is strongly discouraged. Use copyfile(3) instead for copying directories.

I don’t think APFS really supports directory clones except at the snapshot level.

Amazon Tokenmaxxing

Rafe Rosner-Uddin (Hacker News):

The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens—units of data processed by models.

They said the move reflected pressure to adopt the technology after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 percent of developers to use AI each week, and earlier this year began tracking AI token consumption on internal leader boards.

[…]

Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data.

Goodhart’s law:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-15): See also: Jon Snader and Hacker News.

Amazon Artificial Intelligence Business Programming Working

2 Comments

Chrome’s Huge weights.bin File

Tim Hardwick:

The file in question is called “weights.bin,” which powers Google’s on-device Gemini Nano AI model – the engine behind Chrome features like scam detection, autofill suggestions, and the “Help Me Write” tool. Local models tend to be pretty big storage-wise, and this one is no different. The problem is that Google hasn’t clearly signposted the fact that it’s eating 4GB of your drive with training data.

The issue only recently came to light thanks to security researcher Alexander Hanff, who noticed that Chrome installs the model on any device meeting the minimum hardware requirements, only without prompting you whether you’d like it there in the first place.

I was opted into the On-device AI feature but for some reason did not have the file on my Mac.

Artificial Intelligence Google Chrome Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 Storage

8 Comments

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

OmniOutliner 6.1

Ken Case:

Redesigning and rebuilding all of our toolbars, sidebars, and inspectors for Liquid Glass gave us a great opportunity to cross-pollinate features, making some familiar platform-exclusive features available across all platforms for the first time. And it was also easier than ever to build new features that work in consistent ways across those platforms.

For all platforms OmniOutliner 6 introduces smart Dynamic Themes, which automatically adapt to Light and Dark Mode, and a brand new cross-platform template picker.

On the Mac, OmniOutliner 6 additionally introduces the ability to open and work with concurrent multiple windows of the same document—something I find particularly useful when working with long outlines.

On the iPad and iPhone, OmniOutliner 6 adds support for creating and editing advanced Saved Filters, and a handy, new Style Attributes Inspector, plus additional style customization support for grid lines, row indentation and column-spanning Notes.

Multiple windows per document is probably my favorite new feature. I have some really big outlines that I don’t want to split up, because I like to be able to search everything at once. It had been unwieldy to flip back and forth to look at different parts of the document, so I had been duplicating the file in order to open another (view-only) copy in a separate window. Now I can just open another window—and it even supports more than two. This is also useful if I want to do a search without losing my current view.

Not being able to edit saved filters on iOS was a longstanding limitation. It didn’t affect me that much because I nearly always use OmniOutliner from my Mac. But I imagine this was a more serious problem for heavier iOS users because—at least for me—saved filters aren’t set-it-and-forget-it like smart playlists in Music. My filters often have embedded query text that I want to edit. It’s great that this can be done from iOS now, and it may be the best iOS implementation I’ve seen of this sort of complex interface. Version 6 also lets you duplicate saved filters, which is great when I want to create multiple complex filters that are the same except for one condition.

But, for me, the change is actually a regression because on the Mac the standard predicate editor interface has been replaced with the new cross-platform filter editor interface. On iOS, it’s impressive that editing complex filters is even possible, but on the Mac the new interface—based around nested sheets that lack default buttons—feels clunky. You also can no longer create new criteria at arbitrary locations; instead, they are always created at the bottom, and then you can drag them to the desired location.

I’m also unhappy with the layout of the window toolbar area. The filter field for regular searches has moved from the toolbar to a separate banner that shifts my content down and takes up more space (while wasting space in my now-empty toolbar). I used to put the i button in the toolbar for toggling the inspector pane. In previous versions, the inspector appeared below the toolbar, so I could click twice in the same place to show/hide the inspector. Now, the inspector goes all the way to the top of the window (even though there’s nothing actually in the top portion of it) so that every time I click the toolbar button it moves out from under the cursor. I think Apple is encouraging this sort of design, but I just don’t see the point. (Toggling the inspector via the keyboard also isn’t easy because I type the “I” key using my mouse hand.) On the plus side, you can now save some space at the bottom of the window by hiding the status bar.

But as I mentioned last year, one of the interesting problems we’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native apps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem, Omni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With Omni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we can share those links with other people and other apps.

Omni Links support everything we said document links needed to have. Omni Links work across all of Apple’s computing platforms and can be shared with a team. They leverage existing solutions for syncing and sharing documents, such as iCloud Drive or shared Git repositories. They are easy to create, easy to use, and easy to share.

[…]

With Omni Links, this makes collaboration easier than ever: you can select a row, copy an Omni Link, and share it with your team—and anyone with a Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Apple Vision Pro can open the link in the free viewer to see what you shared—no additional purchase required.

Omni Links are really cool and seem to have a good, flexible design. As in previous versions, you can make a link, not just to a file, but also to a particular outline row within it. Each row has a unique ID so that the link keeps pointing to the right place even if you move the row or add other rows around it. What’s new with Omni Links is that when you link to another file (rather than create an internal link within the same document) the links are more robust and sharable (either to other people or to your other devices). Each link consists of a connected folder name and a relative path. Having a floating base for the path solves the problem of each user/device having a different absolute path for iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Git, or wherever else you store your documents. You wouldn’t want to move or rename the file within the folder (as that would change the relative path), but you can change where the folder itself is stored (or even which service is used to sync it) without breaking any document links. You can just go to the Connected Folders window in OmniOutliner and tell it where that folder is now stored. The links are also scriptable via Omni Automation.

With OmniOutliner, these powerful Apple Intelligence language models are fully under your control. Like all language models, they’re not perfect oracles by any means—and they’re not fundamental to using OmniOutliner. But sample plug-ins leveraging Apple Intelligence are ready for immediate one-click installation, and plug-in authors can integrate these language models with OmniOutliner in all sorts of creative ways.

For those who choose to use them, these plug-ins can be nice time savers: automatically summarizing an article into an outline, or generating content such as a meeting agenda or a fictional story based on a simple prompt.

The integration between Omni Automation and Apple’s foundation models is really neat. Everything happens on-device, and it’s able to take input from the current outline selection, the clipboard, or a prompt that you enter, and return the results in a structured outline format. First, you need to install the AI Tools plug-in. Then you can install plug-ins Omni has written such as Outline the Clipboard or Step-List Generator or write your own (in JavaScript). Installation is easy: you can just click special links rather than having to download files and move them into place (though you can also do that if you prefer).

Currently, I see this as more a technology preview that shows potential than a feature I would use in actual work. The sample plug-ins seem useful in theory—e.g. helping you get unstuck by breaking down tasks—but do not provide features that I personally need. Apple doesn’t currently provide a user-level front end for its models. I can imagine a future where an OmniOutliner document becomes an interactive document—like a Mathematica notebook or a BBEdit AI Worksheet. This seems like an almost ideal interface for prompting an LLM because you’d get a local artifact with rich text, structure, and powerful search. Unfortunately, the results from Apple’s local model seem far behind the online competition. The answers aren’t as good and aren’t consistent; sometimes there will be a reasonable amount of detail with good formatting, but other times it will be very brief or make each line a new indented outline child, creating a pyramid of doom.

In testing, I constantly ran into errors. Both the input and output have to fit into 4,096 tokens or you get “insufficient maximum response token limit.” And lots of seemingly benign text triggered “content likely to be unsafe” errors. The local models are also really slow, often taking 30 seconds or more on an M1 Pro. There’s no progress indicator, so sometimes it isn’t clear whether it’s still thinking or the process has stopped with an error (shown in the separate Console window). Presumably, this will improve over time with better models and faster hardware.

OmniOutliner 6 release notes:

Theme colors can now automatically update when Dark Mode is turned on or off. Override the automatic color conversion when desired, to create your own light or dark appearance.

[…]

Image attachments can now be resized to better fit your content. Additionally, attachment support, previously a Pro-only feature, is now available in the Essentials edition of OmniOutliner.

[…]

New “Pasting from other apps” setting offers options for pasting styled text. Dedicated menu items are now available for “Paste and Merge Styles,” “Paste and Match Style,” and “Paste with Original Style” behaviors.

Styled text is great, but moving it between Mac apps has always been a source of friction. Paste and Match Style is usually what I use throughout macOS because it will discard unwanted formatting from the source, making the text harmonious with the destination. Paste and Merge Styles is a new Omni-specific feature that’s better in that it preserves essential styles such as bold and italic, while matching the font and color of the destination. When I wanted to preserve those, I used to have to do a regular (full) paste and then go into the Style Attributes in the inspector and click the × button for the attributes that I wanted to delete. Now this is handled automatically.

(Note: The Mac version of OmniOutliner does still support lots of different options for bold, strikethrough, and underlined text. You can still access these by clicking and holding on the buttons in the inspector, even though the little pop-down menu arrows indicating that this is possible have been removed.)

Paste and Match Style is still useful when you want to strip those basic styles, too, or get rid of links. Unfortunately, it does not get rid of links when copying and pasting from OmniFocus to OmniOutliner. I never want these links because I’m typically cutting OmniFocus actions to move them to OmniOutliner. By the time I paste the text, the targets of the links no longer exist. These dead links are pernicious because I can’t even get rid of them using the Remove Link command; that leaves black text with a blue underline, and the cursor still changes to the pointing finger even though there’s no more link to click. The solution I found is to use a script to only copy the plain text from OmniFocus. Omni also supplies a plug-in.

Ainsley Bourque Olson:

OmniOutliner 6.1, available today for all platforms, introduces a powerful collection of new Shortcuts actions—bringing the collection of actions available for automating OmniOutliner via shortcuts to 25!

OmniOutliner is a universal purchase that’s $24.99 for Essentials and $99.99 for Pro (50% off for upgrading) or $49.99/year.

Previously:

Artificial Intelligence Dark Mode Foundation Models Framework iOS iOS 26 iOS App Liquid Glass Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 OmniOutliner Outliner Pasteboard Shortcuts URL

Comments

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Xcode 26.5

Apple (xip, downloads):

Xcode 26.5 includes Swift 6.3 and SDKs for iOS 26.5, iPadOS 26.5, tvOS 26.5, macOS 26.5, and visionOS 26.5. Xcode 26.5 supports on-device debugging in iOS 15 and later, tvOS 15 and later, watchOS 8 and later, and visionOS. Xcode 26.5 requires a Mac running macOS Tahoe 26.2 or later.

[…]

Messages can now be queued in the coding assistant.

Agents can now ask clarifying questions to provide more accurate results.

[…]

Mac (Designed for iPad) apps with pointer authentication are now compatible with macOS Tahoe 26.5 and newer.

Previously:

Xcode 26.4.1

Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Programming Swift Assist Xcode

Comments

macOS 15.7.7 and macOS 14.8.7

macOS 15.7.7 (security, full installer):

This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

macOS 14.8.7 (security, full installer):

This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

Howard Oakley.

I don’t know what happened to 15.7.6 or 14.8.6, but they seem to have been skipped.

Jesse Squires:

I updated to Sequoia 15.7.7 and now there’s this virtual “Update” drive stuck in Finder.

It won’t go away, even after multiple reboots.

Previously:

macOS 15.7.5 and macOS 14.8.5

Update (2026-05-13): Jeff Johnson:

You can see on the Apple security releases support page that Safari 26.4 was released for Sequoia and Sonoma on March 24, the same day as macOS Tahoe 26.4. Inexplicably, however, Apple has still failed to release Safari 26.5 for Sequoia and Sonoma. If you look at the list of WebKit vulnerabilities in the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.5, those are now 0-day vulnerabilities in Safari 26.4 on Sequoia and Sonoma. Any malware author in the world can read the description of those vulnerabilities, compare the WebKit binaries on macOS 26.5 to the WebKit binaries on macOS 26.4, and reverse engineer the fixes, which would allow them to develop exploits for the vulnerabilities. The reason that software vendors standardly update all vulnerable software on the same day is to avoid this exact situation, when there’s a significant window of time for malware authors to develop attacks on vulnerable, unpatchable systems.

I’m not sure why there was a delay, but Safari 26.5 is now available for Sequoia and Sonoma. It does not show up in Software update for me, but I can get it through softwareupdate.

Previously:

iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9

Mac macOS 14 Sonoma macOS 15 Sequoia macOS Release Safari Security Software Update

2 Comments

iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9

Apple:

This document describes the security content of iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9.

[…]

Available for: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation

After a brief reprieve, Apple seems to have gone back to the policy of iOS 18.7.3, where you can only get iOS 18.7.9 if your phone is not capable of running iOS 26.

Previously:

iOS iOS 18 iOS Release iPadOS iPadOS 18 iPadOS Release Security

Comments

Monday, May 11, 2026

macOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes, security, enterprise, developer, full installer, IPSW):

macOS Tahoe 26.5 adds a Suggested Places section to the search interface in the Apple Maps app. It also lays the groundwork for ads in the Maps app, which are coming this summer.

The App Store is also getting a monthly subscription option that will let users pay a lower price on a monthly basis, but agree to pay for a subscription for a 12-month period.

I’ve heard that macOS 26.5 introduces problems with disabling System Integrity Protection; I’m not sure whether this was fixed before the final release.

See also Mr. Macintosh and Howard Oakley.

Previously:

macOS 26.4.1

Update (2026-05-12): Rich Trouton:

One of the features included with macOS Tahoe 26.5.0 is a new option in the Energy preferences in System Settings for automatically starting a Mac when power is connected to it, either following a power failure or when the Mac is plugged in to power.

Matt Gemmell:

With macOS 26.5, unmounted external thunderbolt drives are no longer automatically remounted whenever the screen is unlocked, bringing my 8 months of mild suffering to an end.

Update (2026-05-13): John Brayton:

I am seeing a bug in macOS 26.5 that affects keyboard shortcuts that have no modifiers and are attached to menu items.

Keyboard Shortcuts Mac macOS Release macOS Tahoe 26 Power System Integrity Protection

1 Comment

iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes, security, no enterprise, developer):

iOS 26.5 introduces end-to-end encryption for RCS messages exchanged between iPhone and Android users. E2EE for RCS requires both participants in the conversation to have a carrier that supports the feature, and carriers will be rolling out support over time. Encrypted RCS messages have a small lock symbol, and match the end-to-end encryption protections of iMessage.

In the Maps app, there is a new “Suggested Places” section that displays recommendations based on location and recent searches. The Maps app is getting ads this summer, and the groundwork for ads is included in iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5.

Apple added a new Pride Luminance wallpaper that matches the Pride Luminance Apple Watch face and Apple Watch band. The updates are largely the same on iPad.

Apple is calling encrypted RCS a beta:

Apple and Google have led a cross-industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to Rich Communication Services (RCS), making the cross-platform messaging format that replaces traditional SMS more secure and private.

[…]

Encryption is on by default and will be automatically enabled over time for new and existing RCS conversations.

[…]

[iMessage] remains the best way to communicate between Apple devices.

watchOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer):

watchOS 26.5 adds a new Pride Luminance watch face. It also fixes a bug with dual SIM iPhones and an issue that could cause audio alerts to fail to play in the Workout app.

Previously:

watchOS 26.4

watchOS watchOS 26 watchOS Release

Comments

tvOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer):

No new features were found in tvOS 26.5 during the beta testing period, so it likely focuses on bug fixes and performance improvements.

Previously:

tvOS 26.4

tvOS tvOS 26 tvOS Release

Comments

visionOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes, security, no enterprise, developer):

Apple’s release notes say that visionOS 26.5 includes bug fixes and security improvements.

Previously:

visionOS 26.4

visionOS visionOS 26 visionOS Release

Comments

audioOS 26.5

Juli Clover (release notes):

According to Apple’s release notes, HomePod Software 26.5 includes performance and stability improvements.

Previously:

audioOS 26.4

audioOS audioOS 26 audioOS Release

Comments

Friday, May 8, 2026

Reddit Pushes Web Visitors to App

Nate Anderson:

I’ve recently developed a daily habit—perhaps one I should cut back on—of visiting several subreddits to keep up on things like audio production and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But I was surprised this weekend to suddenly find myself cut off; Reddit simply would not let me visit the site on my mobile phone.

Instead, a new overlay popped up, saying, “Get the app to keep using Reddit.”

There was no way to skip, bypass, or close the overlay. It did not provide any instructions or alternatives for continuing to use the mobile web version. What it did offer was a large button I could press to get the app. If I did so, the overlay told me, I would be able to “search better” and “personalize your feed”—two things I don’t care to do.

[…]

The block seemed curious, given that Reddit began as a website, and websites generally want traffic. […] But some services, including X and Instagram, aggressively push users toward apps—or at least toward being logged in to them.

So far this is just an experiment for “a small subset of frequent logged-out mobile users.”

Via Nick Heer:

It sucks that the open web is getting torn apart because commercial websites are incentivized to direct people to apps where large-scale scraping is a bigger challenge.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-11): See also: Hacker News and MacRumors.

Advertising iOS iOS 26 iOS App Reddit Universal Links Web

12 Comments

Ask Jeeves Shuts Down

Ask.com:

As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 30 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026.

Mr. Macintosh:

Courtesy of the Internet archive, the image above is from the 1996 beta. This is what Ask Jeeves looked like after the public launch on June 1, 1997.

Ask Jeeves Search Sunset Web

2 Comments

Building Shopie for Mac With SwiftUI

Paulo Andrade (Mastodon):

Unlike my other apps, where I typically blend AppKit (or UIKit) with SwiftUI, Shopie is built entirely in SwiftUI. I wanted to keep it that way to maximize code reuse across iOS, iPadOS, and now macOS. This post explores how far SwiftUI can take you on the Mac in 2026, especially if your goal is to build an app that feels truly native to the platform.

[…]

In a proper Mac-assed app, opening a context menu should enable a focus ring around the item the menu applies to, even when that item isn’t selected. […] Reminders, Notes, and Stocks are all SwiftUI apps on macOS, yet each behaves differently. Reminders only gets this right because it’s using List, which inherits the behavior from NSTableView.

[…]

SwiftUI has already gone through three drag-and-drop eras. […] But the problem with all three is that you have no visibility into the drag session unless you are the drop target.

[…]

Once again, the issue isn’t that keyboard support is impossible in SwiftUI. It’s that the framework gives you just enough to cover the simple cases, then gets in your way the moment you try to match what Mac apps have done for decades.

David Deller:

Spent most of the day fighting with SwiftUI and getting nowhere. Hate it when this happens. The solution, as always, was to redo some parts in AppKit. I wish I had done this whole app in AppKit from the start.

SwiftUI never gave me this much trouble on iOS, but it’s so much worse on Mac. And context-switching between the two is a drag.

Patrick McConnell:

SwiftUI is littered with things that do 85% of what you need and then get ignored for years. It’s the iPadOS of frameworks.

Yes, we can use Cocoa frameworks (and I do) but why can’t SwiftUI approach the level of the Cocoa frameworks?

I think in many cases Cocoa is more effective simply because Apple hasn’t spent the effort to bring SwiftUI to the same level.

Helge Heß:

I think it’s because SwiftUI is not intended to be a Cocoa level framework. Similar in how Objective-C is not supposed to replace C. That would be Smalltalk, which shows how impractical (however nice) that would be.

My personal suggestion is to consider SwiftUI a form builder on steroids. It’s extraordinarily effective for things builtin.

Helge Heß:

I can’t tell what their long-term plan is, but IMO it’s extremely unlikely to be a fully SwiftUI based system. Except for tiny platforms like watchOS (the original target AFAIK). I suspect that SwiftUI for UIKit+ was never intended to be a competitor to Cocoa, but to ReactNative and the likes.

Colin Cornaby:

I had the unpleasant experience of trying to do something complicated with a scroll view in SwiftUI. You can’t get or manipulate the scroll offset directly? What?

Previously:

Update (2026-05-11): Max Seelemann:

Couldn’t have said it better.

Louie Mantia:

Every macOS developer comes to the same conclusion after trying to use SwiftUI to make a proper Mac app: it’s not ready (yet).

To be honest, I can’t understand why everyone keeps trying.

Regarding the scrolling limitation that Cornaby mentioned, Fatbobman writes:

This article will explore these latest scroll control APIs and review the development of all significant APIs related to scroll control since the inception of SwiftUI.

Apple Sued for Removing Rave App From Store

Juli Clover:

Rave, a cross-platform service that lets users watch movies and TV shows together, today filed a series of antitrust lawsuits against Apple after Apple removed the Rave app from the App Store in August 2025.

According to Rave, Apple cited “unspecified allegations of fraud and vague concerns about content moderation” when pulling the app. Rave alleges Apple targeted the service because Rave competed with SharePlay, and Apple wanted to corner the market on smartphone co-viewing. Rave claims that Apple also falsely labeled the Rave Mac app as malware, preventing Mac users from installing it.

Discussion on Reddit suggests that Rave had unmoderated public chatrooms, pornography, issues with scams, and CSAM material. The Rave app was also labeled as malware by Kaspersky, BitDefender, Windows, and Google, suggesting Apple may have had reason to protect users from the app beyond limiting competition.

They claim that the content moderation issues have been resolved.

Antitrust App Store App Store Rejection iOS iOS 26 iOS App Lawsuit Legal Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 Malware Notarization Rave SharePlay

Comments

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Sendy 7

Hex:

Sendy has been completely refreshed with a modern, more polished interface.

[…]

Reach your audience sooner with 2 times faster sending speeds.

[…]

Design beautiful emails faster than ever with the all-new drag & drop editor. No coding required. […] Get up and running faster with built-in templates.

[…]

Introducing a new File Manager to easily store, organize, and reuse all your uploaded images

[…]

A new Amazon SES Status indicator in the sidebar shows your current reputation (e.g. Healthy or Paused)

[…]

When editing a campaign or autoresponder, you can ask AI to review your email and suggest improvements based on what you’ve already written.

I continue to like Sendy but haven’t had the chance to install this update yet. It’s $69 for new licenses or $34 to upgrade.

Amazon SES Artificial Intelligence E-mail Mailing Lists Sendy Web

2 Comments

Arq Restore Notes

Greg Hurrell:

The other backup tool that has saved my hide in the past is SuperDuper!, but on this occasion I didn’t have access to my physical (SuperDuper!) backup, so restoring from the cloud (Arq) was my only option.

[…]

Arq used all the memory on the system, requiring me to start again[…] Restarting is a bit annoying, because I use Glacier storage for my backups, meaning that you can’t just start downloading the data from the cloud; instead, you request for it to be made available and then wait 5 hours before actually beginning the download. Downloading from Glacier also hurts the wallet a bit, to the tune of about a hundred bucks for all the retrieval costs associated with the repeated attempts.

[…]

There are a number of apps that you have to open or twiddle in order to get things working, even though Homebrew installs them[…]

Backup and restore have definitely gotten easier over the years, but whether on iOS or macOS restoring is never as smooth as you’d hope.

Previously:

Amazon Glacier Arq Backup Mac macOS Tahoe 26

5 Comments

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

iOS 27: Custom Wallet Passes

Alen Todorov (via Hacker News, MacRumors):

After 14 years of waiting on developers to ship Wallet support, Apple is letting users do it themselves. Here is what Bloomberg is reporting, how the new flow works, and what it means for third-party tools like WalletWallet.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on Monday that iOS 27 will add a “Create a Pass” feature to the Wallet app. Tap the “+” button you already use to add credit cards or pass emails, and Wallet will offer something it has never offered before on iPhone: a path to build your own pass.

You can scan a QR code on a paper ticket or membership card with the camera, or build a pass from scratch in a layout editor. The whole flow runs without an Apple Developer account, a Pass Type ID, or any certificate signing.

[…]

Apple shipped PassKit alongside iOS 6 back in 2012. The pitch was clean: businesses build .pkpass files, customers tap to add, everyone wins. In practice, the consistent adopters ended up being airlines, big-box retailers, ticketing platforms, and a handful of national chains. Most gyms, cafes, libraries, rec centers, and small loyalty programs never built one, because the path requires an Apple Developer account, signing certificates, and enough engineering work that “just print a paper card” almost always won the budget conversation.

This seems like it should have been a day one feature except that perhaps Apple worried that it would disincentivize developers from adopting PassKit. Instead, people created Photos albums with pictures of bar codes.

noio:

15 years ago, a friend of mine built an app to do this — “Pass Creator” — then Apple yanked the functionality.

kilian:

The wallet app UI is the peak of Apple’s ‘single 20y/o in sf’ design.

Anyone that has multiple card from the same bank (because, say, you have a personal account and a shared account with your partner) has to do the “pick between the two identical looking top 20px of cards” dance every time they use Wallet to pay for something. It is mind-boggling that the current UI persists.

I wish Wallet supported search while in Apple Pay mode and a way to add your own notes/comments to each card.

Previously:

Apple Pay iOS iOS 27 iOS App QR Codes Strategy Tax Wallet WalletWallet

16 Comments

Delayed Siri Features Settlement

Juli Clover (Slashdot, Hacker News):

Apple will pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it of false advertising and unfair competition after the personalized Siri features it promoted when launching the iPhone 16 were delayed.

A smarter, Apple Intelligence version of Siri was shown off at WWDC 2024, and then promoted in ads and videos when the iPhone 16 launched in September 2024. After Apple delayed the Siri Apple Intelligence features in March 2025, Apple pulled its ads, but they had been running for several months at that point.

If you really did buy an $800+ iPhone because of advertised features that never shipped, getting back $25 doesn’t seem like much consolation. I’m not sure what would make sense, though. With a lot of products, you could just extend the return period, but returning an iPhone months or a year later is not very useful because you probably no longer have your old phone to switch back to.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-07): Manton Reece:

Right, because tech company class action lawsuits are now rarely about the customers. They’re about the lawyers skimming some of the money. The settlement doesn’t appear to outline the fee yet, but 25% for these things is common — and matches the Apple battery lawsuit a few years ago — which would be $62.5 million here.

Joe Rossignol:

According to the terms of the settlement, each person who files an eligible claim will receive a per-device payment of $25, but this amount could increase up to $95 if the total number of claims submitted is lower than anticipated.

[…]

Within the next few months, a settlement website should go live with an online claims form.

[…]

On an earnings call last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the personalized version of Siri will be released this year.

Apple Apple Intelligence iOS iOS 18 iPhone 16 Lawsuit Legal Siri

7 Comments

Software Brain

Nilay Patel (Hacker News):

It’s a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. Marc Andreessen, the literal embodiment of software brain, called it in 2011 when he wrote the piece “Why software is eating the world” as an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But software thinking has been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.

[…]

The simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code. Like I said, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our lives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies have been built around maintaining those databases and providing access to them.

[…]

Any business process that looks like code talking to a database in a repetitive way is up for grabs. That’s why Anthropic has been so relentlessly focused on enterprise customers, and it’s why OpenAI is now pivoting to business use. There’s real value in introducing AI to business, because so much of modern business is already software: collecting data, analyzing it, and taking action on it over and over again in a loop. Businesses also control their data, and they can demand that all their databases work together.

In this way, software brain has ruled the business world for a long time. AI has just made it easier than ever for more people to make more software than ever before — for every kind of business to automate big chunks of itself with software. It’s everywhere: the absolute cutting edge of advertising and marketing is automation with AI. It’s not being a creative.

Via John Gruber:

It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about it, but the undeniable proof that something is profoundly off is the deep unpopularity surrounding everything related to AI. You can’t argue that the public always turns against groundbreaking technology. The last two epoch-defining shifts in technology were the smartphone in the 2000s, and the Internet/web in the 1990s. Neither of those moments generated this sort of mainstream popular backlash. I’d say in both of those cases, regular people were optimistically curious. The single most distinctive thing about “AI” today is the vociferous public opposition to it and deeply pessimistic expectations about what it’s going to do.

Maybe the closest analog is social media, where people love to talk about how bad it is and yet continue right on using it. In both cases, there’s the sense that abstinence is not really an option because you’ll be left behind, and meanwhile the technology is providing real utility.

Previously:

Artificial Intelligence Business Database Web

6 Comments

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

macOS Text Replacement Export/Import

Adam Engst:

What I didn’t know until recently is that Apple provides a hidden—but documented, amazingly!—way to export your replacement pairs to a property list file. All you have to do is select the items to export (Command-A selects all) and drag them to the desktop. You can then edit that file in a text editor like BBEdit or TextEdit before reimporting it, which is merely a matter of dragging it back into the Text Replacements dialog. This export/import feature is useful in three ways:

Backup: If you have an extensive set of text replacements, making a backup would be a sensible precaution.

Sharing: Any Mac user can import your text replacements, so if you’ve built up a custom collection of scientific, medical, or technical replacements, you can share them with colleagues.

Easier editing: Bulk changes might be easier to make outside Apple’s one-at-a-time interface.

[…]

I was all ready to give you an updated version of the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary that could be imported into the Text Replacements dialog, but after hours of testing, I just couldn’t make it work reliably enough.

Previously:

Text Replacements Do Not Sync

Update (2026-05-11): Vítor:

The article mentions an invisible plist file, but in the past I’ve found the best way to export Text Replacements to be querying the ~/Library/KeyboardServices/TextReplacements.db SQLite database.

I’ve queried that effectively for years in an Alfred workflow because people asked for a way to export Text Replacements into Alfred Snippets.

Bug Mac macOS Tahoe 26

2 Comments

The Problem With the Touch Bar

John Gruber:

I know that sounds like a joke but I really do think the biggest problem with the Touch Bar wasn’t that the first crack at it wasn’t good enough, but that they never took a second crack at it.

One could argue that the second crack was adding the physical Esc key. That took three years. It might have worked out better if the initial version had included Esc and perhaps the volume controls as real keys. Then the focus could have been more on what the Touch Bar could add in place of the keys that many people rarely use, rather than on how it messed up common actions.

I think better software could have helped a lot. First, it would sometimes hang and not respond. But, more importantly, I think it could have been a lot more useful. There’s this amazing, programmable screen, but there wasn’t really any way to empower the user to do stuff with it. You could only rearrange predetermined toolbar buttons. There also should have been a better way to balance global vs. app-specific items.

Hardware-wise, I think it needed some sort of haptics. And, even now, I’m disappointed with how Touch ID works on Macs. With iPhones, it was nearly perfect for me. Through several generations of Macs, it still often rejects my finger and feels like it’s slowing me down.

Alex Rosenberg:

I thought the Touch Bar was clever and had potential. I think it was immediately and permanently sullied by being paired with the butterfly keyboard and laptops that had too few ports. Being paired with those other problems but being the official identifying feature of those machines painted a target on it.

Steven Aquino:

What was ushered with a bang exited with but a whimper. My understanding over the years has been the software people inside Apple Park more or less fell out of love with the Touch Bar. I’ve never gotten a concrete explanation why, but the enthusiasm evidently was severely, irreparably curbed.

It’s a shame, because hardware was never the Touch Bar’s Achilles heel.

[…]

I hate to break it to the able-bodied masses, but not everyone is a touch typist.

[…]

Touch Bar Zoom is/was a masterpiece.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-06): Craig Grannell:

The problem for me is that it wasn’t everywhere. It’s always a long shot getting devs en masse to support new features. But to support a feature that only a relatively small number of Macs have and that pretty rapidly started to fall out of favour? That’s, er, an even longer shot.

Cory Birdsong:

The Elgato Stream Deck became a huge success at the same time the Touch Bar floundered, which tells me the problem was entirely in the software implementation. Fundamentally, the buttons on it should've been user-configured instead of dynamic based on the app. You can't build muscle memory around keys that change every time you switch applications. I used BetterTouchTool to set mine up that way, and I liked it a lot better than the default implementation.

BetterTouchTool Haptics History Keyboard Keyboard Shortcuts Mac MacBook Pro macOS 10.12 Sierra Touch Bar

27 Comments

Monday, May 4, 2026

GyazMail 1.8

Goichi Hirakawa:

Compatible with Mac with Apple Silicon [i.e. doesn’t require Rosetta].

Updated the app icon.

Improved compatibility with macOS Tahoe.

Previously:

E-mail Client GyazMail Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 Rosetta

1 Comment

2026 Six Colors Apple in the Enterprise Report Card

Jason Snell (complete commentary):

There weren’t too many radical changes in this year’s survey. Respondents are most positive about Apple’s hardware, with another strong score honoring its commitment to security and privacy. And optimism about the future of Apple in the enterprise skyrocketed, up half a point to tie for second-highest score in the survey.

[…]

Speaking of software surprises, half of the respondents felt that this year’s OS adoption pace was more or less the same as usual. Only 17% felt this was a slower year, up slightly from last year. What’s interesting is that there’s been a two-year trend in this category, with “quicker than usual” and “about the same” switching places. Perhaps the pace of change has just become the new normal.

[…]

Panelists were enthusiastic about some specific new [enterprise program] features, but there are still long-standing gaps that generate frustration. And what’s Apple Business, anyway?

[…]

Apple’s hardware may be riding high, but software is not going great. And yet the score went back up from last year’s low of 3.0. macOS Tahoe and Liquid Glass were the dominant sources of negativity. Complaints ranged from cosmetic inconsistency to serious breakage.

Previously:

Apple Software Quality AppleCare Artificial Intelligence iOS iOS 26 Liquid Glass Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Mobile Device Management (MDM)

2 Comments

MacBook Neo and How the iPad Could Be

Craig Mod (Hacker News):

The iPad should be radically (though obviously) touch-only. No keyboards. No pointers. No mice. No trackpads. Just your disgusting fingers flopping over the screen and mooshing into icons. It should not have any window’d modes. Each app should fill the whole screen and only the whole screen. […] iPadOS shouldn’t be anything like Windows or macOS or Linux, it shouldn’t be iOS made big, it should be only like iPadOS — a singular thing of finger-poking joy.

[…]

These kinds of workflow paper cuts are everywhere on the iPad. In terms of power, that original iPad Pro is still pretty much all the iPad you could ever want or need. I’m sure there are a few of you doing more with your iPads than the original Pro could deliver, but I’m not sure there’re many. Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil (Procreate being one of the true killer apps, the app that may have sold more iPads to creative professionals than anything else) could be done better on a MacBook. Even email feels better on a MacBook.

[…]

This sense of iPad “not working” has only grown in the past two years with the explosion of LLMs and tools like Claude Code. macOS is the place to run the things because macOS is malleable and its constituent parts fungible, it’s able to embody the role of tool by trusting the user to be an adult.

[…]

You’d think that Apple would have seen the launch of the M1 as a clear moment to maximally delineate between MacBooks and iPad. But no, Apple got weird. Some kind of internal velocity set in motion perhaps years ago by an errant project manager continued to push the company into fuzzy software spaces. For instead of making iPadOS more iPad-focused — a touch-only wonderland of touch-computing joy — they began to make it more like fake macOS. […] And each time we’d peek — a few times a year or so — our hearts fell a little in dismay to see how far they’d strayed, how utterly uninteresting it all was, how much it was trying to be “macOS lite” but somehow, mostly, worse. […] Slowly, then quickly, those of us on macOS felt squeezed in the opposite direction.

[…]

I just love the idea that the specificity of our tools should be radically clear.

Mahmoud Itani:

Later this year, the MacBook Pro is expected to undergo one of its most significant transformations ever with a touchscreen OLED display. At around the same time, the iPhone Fold will bring a tablet-sized screen to Apple’s handset for the first time.

[…]

However, while Apple’s laptops and tablets have been largely evolving along parallel lines, they’re now seemingly en route to an intersection. The looming strategy shift suggests that Apple is thinking differently behind the scenes. iPads and MacBooks are actively borrowing hardware and software features from each other, and, at this pace, they could realistically become a single product within a few generations.

Similar to how the iPhone rendered the iPod redundant, Apple’s upcoming touchscreen products appear to be starting to dig the iPad’s grave.

iPersuade:

Most authors who write articles like this simply don’t understand how iPads are actually used in a productive environment and what makes people who use them as their main machine really like them. I have both mac and my iPad pro and mostly I live on my iPad pro. What I need the iPad for would not be solved by a touchscreen mac. The MacBook Neo is not truly competition for the iPad because they’re different tools and anybody buying a Neo to replace their iPad wasn’t using the right tool to begin with. The less expensive iPad compared to a Mac made some people pick the wrong tool for cost reasons, so in that sense it looks like competition. And in that sense it looks like the Neo is the shiny new object dislodging the iPad. The question might be how many people who bought an iPad really wanted a mac and what does that do to the iPad market? That is an open question but not for the reasons pundits typically write about.

Cyberguycpt:

The Neo Taught Me I Never Needed an iPad

Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoy my iPad and understand why it’s a great tool for so many people. However, for most of my daily activities, the NEO is all I need. I don’t play games or draw on it; I mainly use it for social media and watching videos. Occasionally, I need to do more computer-based tasks like typing emails, writing word documents, or creating Excel sheets, which are much easier with a keyboard. Up until now, an iPad was the only option for me because of its price. I wouldn’t spend $1000+ on a laptop for just a few tasks every now and then, but with my educational discount, the MacBook at $599 finally made sense. When I first got the NEO, I was a bit skeptical about how often I’d actually use it, but I’ve found myself using it more than the iPad.

Brandon McMullen:

I have been really thinking about the place of the iPad now that the new $599 MacBook Neo has been replaced. I have seen countless videos and articles saying some version of “Why would you even buy an iPad anymore? Just get the Neo”. I think that this sentiment is both right and also very wrong.

[…]

I predict, and I hope this bears out, that as time goes on, the iPad will be looked at as less of a laptop, and more of an iPad again. Let’s let the iPad just be an iPad again. Because iPads are awesome! They’re great for drawing, journaling, reading, shopping, entertainment, gaming, lounging around with, and the list goes on and on. An iPad is an awesome “tablet computer”, it doesn’t need to be an awesome laptop. The iPad as a third device, slotted in between the smartphone and the laptop, is where it excels.

[…]

I don’t believe for a second that the new MacBook Neo is going to kill the iPad. Rather, I think the MacBook Neo may kill the mainstream desire to make the iPad a laptop replacement.

Keren R. Bell:

I think the iPad is an amazing thing when its allowed to breathe its own air, and the MacBook Neo might just let it have that chance.

Riccardo Mori:

Apple never really took a definitive decision with the iPad, so they kept changing course and approach. They kept throwing stuff at it, at this iPad that kept becoming a jack of an increasing number of trades, while being a master at very few of them, comparatively. They built an increasingly higher tower of ‘stuff the iPad can potentially do’ over the inadequate foundation that iOS/iPadOS was and is. They thought that the problem was solvable by throwing faster and faster CPUs at it, while the actual work should have been done on the operating system front. There are still things a Newton MessagePad 2100 with a 162MHz ARM processor can do better than an M5 iPad Pro because NewtonOS is a better-designed OS for the device it runs on than iPadOS is on the iPad.

They also thought that remaining vague enough about the iPad’s core purpose was a good strategy, perhaps to buy time or to avoid taking a defining direction for the iPad that couldn’t be easily reversed. Apple’s way of remaining vague was perfectly epitomised by the phrase, We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it. Like, here’s this obscenely powerful slab of glass and aluminium, do with it whatever you wish.

[…]

First Apple tried to make iOS and iPadOS more complex because the iPad needed to be a more sophisticated device than an iPhone, but apparently there’s a ceiling after which complicating iPadOS makes the whole system unintuitive, with increasing discoverability issues, and the insurmountable obstacle that is a touch interface — and a touch interface can only do so much.

So, when the complication of iPadOS didn’t go very far, the natural next step for Apple was simplifying Mac OS.

Matt Ronge:

The iPad’s external display support is underrated.

I connected my iPad to a Studio Display and ran Workbench. Now my headless Mac mini (back in Minneapolis) is running full-screen on a 27" display in Ohio.

Remote Mac on a Studio Display through an iPad. Pretty wild. 🤯

Alex Reframe (translated):

Apple really needs to put macOS on the iPad. Not a lite version, macOS adapted for the iPad.

Here I tested it with the screen mirroring from the Mac mini, the screen adapted and touch works. It’s absolutely amazing!

At most, being able to switch from iPadOS to a version with macOS capabilities depending on the user’s needs and what they’re looking for.

Mahmoud Itani:

Meanwhile, the redesigned MacBook Pro will likely offer a slimmer shell and OLED touchscreen, bringing its form factor closer to an iPad Pro. That’s not to mention that Apple code has revealed in the past that the company is testing 5G-enabled MacBooks, so the overhauled model could potentially pack an in-house cellular modem, too.

[…]

If the touchscreen Pro is successful, it’s almost certain to expand to the Air and the Neo, making it even harder to justify buying an entry-level iPad.

[…]

The same goes for the iPad mini, which is in danger of being eclipsed by the iPhone Fold. For one, iPadOS is increasingly gaining desktop-like features that make more sense on larger screens. And those who want a small book-like tablet will surely opt for an iPhone Fold instead, which is expected to cost roughly what you’d pay for a mini and an iPhone Pro.

Hartley Charlton:

Apple has reportedly abandoned plans for a foldable “iPad Ultra” following years of disappointing sales performance for the iPad Pro.

Jon Mundy (Hacker News):

The next step for Apple seems clear to me: make an iPad Neo and lock up the tablet market. Give us a brightly coloured £200/$200ish full-sized tablet, with Apple’s peerless handle on the whole software and hardware pipeline, and its impressive custom silicon operation.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-05): Steve Troughton-Smith:

The idea that we can rewind the clock to when developers cared enough to make high-quality unique iPad apps like Push Pop Press did is a complete fantasy. If you push the reset button on iPad today, developers aren't remotely in the mood to rebuild the kind of unique, bespoke app ecosystem the device had before iOS 7 and the last big reset. If iPad were invented today, it would have a fate much more similar to Vision Pro than anybody wants to think about.

iOS 7 effectively wiped out iPad app development. For years after that release, developers were hands-full redesigning for flat design and then flexible layouts. Custom iPad app designs fell by the wayside, and eventually all the unique apps on the platform were replaced with scaled phone apps.

Update (2026-05-06): Warner Crocker:

I use an iPad as a tool in my work as a theatre practitioner. I’m on my feet with a script on my iPad, using an Apple Pencil to take notes. If I need to do keyboard work in the rehearsal room, I plop the iPad on a Magic Keyboard, do the keyboard related task, then pop the iPad off again and get back on my feet. When I’m back in my digs, I mostly work on a Mac. Apple’s ecosystem makes this all possible. When it works well.

[…]

The current lineup serves me well. Frankly, I can’t imagine any changes Apple could make that would alter how I work.

[…]

Craig Mod argues that “the specificity of our tools should be radically clear.” I buy the argument, but extending the discussion I’ll say it’s better to have more capability than less. Most users don’t touch anywhere near what even the most limited devices can offer.

[…]

Moving on, and with the “What’s a Computer?” miscues behind us, Apple’s current challenge and our headaches stem more from Apple trying to meld its operating systems into some sort of grand cohesive vision that feels the same across all of its devices. Admirable. But ultimately flawed in the same way that each different computing device Apple sells is as different as any two users who use that same device.

Artificial Intelligence iOS iPad iPadOS iPadOS 26 iPhone iPhone Fold Mac MacBook Neo macOS Tahoe 26

18 Comments

Friday, May 1, 2026

Apple’s Q2 2026 Results

Apple (transcript, MacRumors, Hacker News):

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $111.2 billion, up 17 percent year over year. Diluted earnings per share was $2.01, up 22 percent year over year.

“Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth across every geographic segment,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone achieved a March quarter revenue record, fueled by such extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup. During the quarter, Services achieved yet another all-time record, and we were excited to introduce remarkable new products to our strongest lineup ever. That included the addition of the iPhone 17e and the M4-powered iPad Air, along with the launch of MacBook Neo, which is captivating customers all around the world.”

Jason Snell:

And now, to help you visualize what Apple just announced, here is our traditional barrage of charts and graphs[…]

Margins are now at 49.3%.

Jason Anthony Guy:

iPhone saw a quarterly revenue record, fueled by “extraordinary demand” for the iPhone 17 family, reaching $57 billion in revenue (up 22%), while Services hit yet another all-time record ($31 billion in revenue, up 16%). Mac revenue was up 6% (to $8.4 billion), iPad revenue was up 8% (to $6.9 billion), and Wearables, Home, and Accessories were up 5% (to $7.9 billion). Apple’s installed user base also reached a “new all-time high” of 2.5 billion active devices.

The company gave unexpectedly strong guidance for the June quarter, with expectations of 14–17% total revenue growth, in spite of uncertainty surrounding tariffs, wars, and RAMageddon.

Jason Snell:

Those holiday quarters are huge. They stand out on any chart you make. The other quarters, well, they’re the sag in the saddle. They’re important because you need 12 months to make a calendar, but they’ve never had the sizzle of the holiday quarter.

Which is why it’s so impressive that, for two successive “boring” quarters, Apple has generated more than $100 billion in revenue. In 2020, Apple’s “boring” quarters averaged $60.9 billion in revenue. That a company this large can still grow this much in five years is astounding.

[…]

The key concept here seems to be flexibility. It sure sounds to me like Apple wants the ability to, for example, stash a little extra cash away so that it’s capable of making big moves if it needs to. Maybe that’s capital expenditures involving AI stuff. Maybe it’s keeping enough cash ready to spring if there’s a company it feels like it can acquire, in whole or in part.

M.G. Siegler:

The dichotomy is so wild that it now gets written about every single quarter. But the dichotomy also keeps growing every single quarter as Big Tech keeps ramping CapEx and yes, Apple stays the same! I mean the chart above says it all by showing it all.

[…]

Last year, the numbers exploded. This year, they’ll explode even further. Amazon will hit $200B spent for the year. Google will be close behind at $190B. Microsoft should be around the same at $190B. Meta at $145B. Apple? Again, they hit $4.344B in CapEx in the first half of 2026 – which was down a bit year on year – so they should end in that $9B to $10B range, assuming some level of ramp.

[…]

Either Apple is right and the rest of Big Tech will have lit hundreds of billions – perhaps trillions when all is said and done – of dollars on fire, or Apple is going to be in big trouble.

[…]

What’s especially wild there is that Apple is most famously the company that doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone else if at all possible. It’s the “Tim Cook Doctrine” for chrissakes! Either they’ve forgotten that fear, which stems from the times Apple nearly died in their history when others refused to play ball with them, and have been lulled to complacency by years of iPhone dominance, or again, they just think this will be like web search. Not something they need to fully own.

Adam Engst:

Troublingly, Apple is pushing harder into advertising. In the Q&A with analysts, Parekh said the company had added more ad inventory to the App Store and would bring ads to Apple Maps in the US and Canada this summer. Apple spins the increase in ads as helping developers and local businesses, but even Apple’s pet 451 Research firm won’t be able to come up with double-digit numbers for customer satisfaction with ads.

Juli Clover (Hacker News):

Tim Cook said that the Mac mini and Mac Studio could be hard to get for months to come.

[…]

Shipping delays for the Mac mini and the Mac Studio have been increasing over the last few months, and the waits for some models stretch into months. Apple stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB RAM entirely, and it stopped accepting orders for some models with higher amounts of RAM. As of last week, the base Mac mini was listed as “Currently Unavailable” from Apple’s online store because it is out of stock.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple was very optimistic about the MacBook Neo before announcing it, but the company still “undercalled” the level of enthusiasm that the laptop would generate, according to Cook.

Previously:

Update (2026-05-04): Jeff Johnson:

There should be more discussion of the line from the statement of John Ternus during the Apple earnings call: “Tim is one of the greatest business leaders of all time.”

Update (2026-05-06): Craig Grannell:

Apple making money is a good thing if you enjoy using its products and want the company to not just survive but thrive. However, I’m less excited about how Apple increasingly makes that money: advertising. Apple used to poke fun at rivals peppering user experiences with ads, and yet today it’s doing exactly that, while still claiming to be better because it respects user privacy.

[…]

Apple needs to rediscover its philosophy of old before it becomes yet another tech company that blatantly prioritizes shareholders over the people who actually use its products.

Apple Apple Quarterly Results Apple Services Business iOS iPhone 17 iPhone 17 Pro iPhone 17 Pro Max iPhone Air Mac Mac mini Mac Studio MacBook Neo

11 Comments

Claude at Apple

Ryan Christoffel (Reddit):

Apple recently announced an AI partnership with Google. But reporting indicates the company initially pursued deals with other companies, including Anthropic.

Based on new comments from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it’s easy to see why.

Gurman, speaking on TBPN, said the following:

Apple runs on Anthropic at this point. Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple is doing internally in terms of product development, a lot of their internal tools…They have custom versions of Claude running on their own servers internally.

Aaron (Hacker News):

Apple accidentally left Claude.md files in today’s Apple Support app update (v5.13)

That’s an odd way of phrasing it, because it makes it sound like the file is naturally in the app package and Apple forgot to delete it. But why was it being copied into the app in the first place? (It seems to be related to building the app, not to using AI for customer support.)

Aaron:

Apple has released an emergency update to the Apple Support app (v5.13.1) to remove the Claude.md files

Ziwen:

I have a friend in apple.

He has over 200 dollars credit on claude everyday to spend.

Previously:

Apple Artificial Intelligence Claude iOS iOS 26 Programming

15 Comments

War on Adobe

Jess Weatherbed (Hacker News):

All empires eventually fall, and it seems the creative software industry has collectively decided that Adobe’s time has come.

[…]

Pricing in particular has given competitors an opening to attack. Some of the best alternatives aren’t just undercutting Adobe’s price — they’re available for free. People love free.

[…]

Perhaps coincidently, Canva also dropped its own bomb on Adobe’s After Effects this week. Canva has made the full version of Cavalry available for free instead of locking the motion graphics software behind its own user subscriptions, after the design platform acquired it back in February. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Canva did a similar thing last year with Affinity — a trio of apps it acquired that provide similar features to Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software.

[…]

Other Adobe apps also took a hit this week thanks to the latest DaVinci Resolve 21 update. The free multipurpose post-production software — which is already considered a rival to Premiere Pro — now includes photo editing features like color-correction, masking tools, and import support for Apple Photos and Lightroom Catalog files.

Jaron Schneider (Hacker News):

No, you would no longer really “own” the software, but Adobe promised that, in exchange, going cloud-based meant that it would be more agile and better able to deliver updates and features to users. You also would, theoretically, save a lot of money by not having to purchase the physical Creative Suite disks.

[…]

I don’t think that has wholly changed in the last decade-plus, as I know there are still people at Adobe who feel the same way — I met them just two years ago when I visited with the PetaPixel Podcast team. But the difference is the corporation around those people has changed, and now those people are no longer encouraged to talk to the public the way they once were.

[…]

Adobe started to shift its focus to enticing those corporate customers to the detriment of its connection to the customers that gave it success to begin with. […] Adobe not so much forgot who its users were, but instead it actively decided they no longer mattered. It believed it had become so big, so mighty, and so important that it could move beyond them. What arrogance.

Nick Heer:

I think Adobe has actually shipped worse products as a result of this strategy — and, for once, I will avoid making it all about bugs, of which there are many. Adobe’s applications are more capable than they ever have been, but they are also often worse for professionals in actual use as a direct result of the company’s software-as-a-service model. Nearly every application contains upsells or supposedly helpful alerts that are actually ads for other Adobe services. These promotions are particularly aggressive in pushing artificial intelligence tools. Even software as relatively simple as Acrobat cannot help but promote its ability to summarize a two-page document, and then suggest you store it with Adobe’s cloud service instead of sending it as an attachment.

This stuff gets in the way of professionals trying to do their job. Adobe was pressured into adding a “Quiet Mode” in Photoshop to hide most of these things, but not all of them, and only in Photoshop. It only underscores how much Adobe views its software as something it gives people permission to use, instead of tools it makes to help people get their work done.

Eric Schwarz:

In that time, Adobe has added features, but the shift to Creative Cloud meant that the company has taken up rent-seeking and the general behavior seems to include unfixed bugs, bloat, and disrespecting its users.

[…]

I’d be willing to overlook a lot of this if the software continued to get better, but the software has strayed so far from even feeling like it belongs on a Mac. Even one of the common practices to resolve issues using the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool makes the whole thing feel like ’90s Microsoft at best and malware at worst.

Previously:

Adobe Business Canva Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 Strategy Tax

6 Comments