Joe Rossignol (iOS/iPadOS release notes, no security, enterprise, no developer):
Apple today released iOS 26.6.2 with a fix for “an issue that prevents downloading a software update over a cellular connection.”
Previously:
Audio Intelligence is a brand-new class of Apple Intelligence features that use the microphones of Apple Watch, the power of Apple silicon, and on-device and cloud-based AI models to help you detect sounds, identify music, and stay present and engaged — all while protecting your privacy at every step.
- Siri Recap: Uses ambient listening to generate high-level notes from conversations, such as takeaways from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference, producing an Apple Intelligence-generated title, summary, and key points reviewable in the Siri app.
- Live Rewind: Lets users “go back in time for 15 seconds,” transcribing and displaying what was just said in a conversation with a double press of the Digital Crown.
- Shazam: Automatically identifies music playing nearby and surfaces the song title and artist on the Music Recognition widget in the Smart Stack.
- Sound Recognition: Brings sound alerts to Apple Watch for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, listening for sirens, alarms, doorbells, a baby crying, and more, even when their iPhone isn’t nearby.
Apple is emphasizing that all of them are built to prioritize privacy and security using the extensive infrastructure the company has developed to protect its other Apple Intelligence and Siri services. As more and more of these types of features debut, though, the audio intelligence announcements are a reminder that AI-powered tools are becoming increasingly universal in all areas of computing and life.
“These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple,” the company wrote in a report shared with WIRED.
[…]
Apple emphasizes that its on-device capabilities for Apple watches have expanded thanks to the company’s new S11 chips. The chips include a special memory-protected space that Apple calls the Secure Exclave. Designed specifically for sensor data, the exclave is an isolated buffer that is inaccessible to the rest of the operating system where Apple Watch can hold and process audio data in a protected space.
[…]
To try to mitigate blatant privacy violations, Apple says that the watch produces an audible chime when a watch owner initiates a Live Rewind transcript to alert other people in the area—even if it is on silent mode or paired with headphones. And the features are built to omit or filter out potentially identifying information about speakers. But the sheer scope and breadth of the tools is extremely noteworthy.
If you want to really take a deep dive on privacy and the new features, Apple has published an 11-page privacy paper that goes even further.
Previously:
The new Health Sensing System on Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 features new optical and electrical heart sensors, enabling higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, a new readiness score, a more comprehensive Vitals overview with the addition of HRV, and an updated Heart Rate app.
[…]
Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 introduce readiness — a new feature that analyzes a user’s recent activity, vitals, and sleep score, and then provides a single 0-10 score each day with a clear, actionable recommendation: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. This helps a user decide how to take on their workday or tackle their training plan.
[…]
A new Longevity tab analyzes a user’s longitudinal health data for deeper insights into heart health, sleep, mental wellbeing, movement health, metabolic health, hearing, and nutrition. The tab includes Health Age, a new feature that uses Apple Watch data to show users how their metrics are tracking relative to their chronological age, informed by the best available science.
I wonder how much of this new health stuff will work with older / SE watches… probably not much?
Previously:
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):
Engineered with the new Health Sensing System and S11 chip, Apple Watch Ultra 4 delivers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable, higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, and a new readiness score to support athletes of all kinds. Apple Watch Ultra 4 also offers extended battery life to track outdoor workouts for up to 45 hours and the most accurate on-device GPS in a sports watch.
[…]
For everyday use, Apple Watch Ultra 4 now offers more than two days of battery life, up to 50 hours. In Low Power Mode, it offers up to 84 hours of battery life. Charging is now faster than ever: Just 15 minutes adds up to 18 hours of additional battery life.
[…]
The pedometer model has been completely redesigned with new machine learning algorithms and the S11 chip to provide more accurate distance measurements during indoor walk or run workouts, and more accurate step counts all day.
[…]
Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at $799.
The Ultra 2 was sold to me as the watch that can do Siri without network connectivity. That was very useful to me to leave reminders for stuff I think about while on a run without the phone.
3 years later, Apple releases the OS 27 versions and Siri got improved to the point where it can’t work on-device any more on said Ultra 2
So to get the feature back which I paid for and which was specifically used to sell me the device and which now has been taken away from me, I just have to… buy the next hardware generation?
And how long will that last before they decide to remove the feature again?
Does it still work offline in the EU?
Previously:
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):
With the new Health Sensing System and S11 chip, Apple Watch Series 12 delivers higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, which power an enhanced suite of health and fitness features including a new readiness score.
[…]
Apple Watch Series 12 is designed to be as individual as the person wearing it and is available in an array of beautiful finishes, including dark bronze, black, light gold, and space gray aluminum, and radiant gold and natural titanium. It is also available in a stunning ceramic material, in pearl white and night blue. Aluminum models now feature Ceramic Shield 2, which is tougher than any smartwatch glass and 60 percent tougher than the Ion-X of previous aluminum models.
[…]
Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.
[…]
Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399.
It sounds like the S11 is the biggest update to the SOC in a while, but I haven’t seen much coverage of it yet.
Previously:
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot):
Apple today introduced iPhone Duo, the first foldable iPhone. Opened, it is the thinnest iPhone ever, with a 7.6-inch inner display that provides a large canvas for viewing content, gaming, and multitasking, and a special nano-texture finish that minimizes glare for an unparalleled viewing experience. Closed, the 5.4-inch outer display delivers 90 percent of the screen area of iPhone 18 Pro in a compact, pocketable design. Both displays share the same aspect ratio, so content scales proportionally, ensuring visual continuity. iPhone Duo is built to last with an innovative hardware design and a precision hinge that offers a smooth, satisfying feel with every use.
[…]
The 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera — the same as on iPhone 18 Pro models — captures wider fields of view and enables macro photography, while the Center Stage front camera can automatically take photos and videos in any orientation, so users don’t have to rotate iPhone for landscape selfies. Upgraded Photographic Styles with new texture and grain controls let users further dial in their desired appearance and have more creative control over their photos. […] The foldable design with dual displays unlocks camera experiences that are not possible on any other iPhone.
[…]
Lock Screen controls, the Dock on the Home Screen, and app navigation and controls now appear on the side to maximize vertical space for content. When iPhone Duo is open, the display shows two Home Screen pages with Today View — a vertically scrolling list of customizable widgets — on the left. The status bar includes a circular, flexible system that nestles into the corner of the screen, showing relevant information like Wi-Fi, cellular strength, battery, and more.
[…]
The expansive display supercharges productivity, letting users do more at once with new multitasking capabilities. Split View allows users to open two apps side by side on iPhone for the first time.
[…]
iPhone Duo is available in star white and night sky, and starts at $1,999, or $83.29 per month for 24 months, in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities.
I love the idea of the larger screen and how it can be balanced half-folded like a laptop, upside-down, or on the short side. The camera is better than I expected. The price is high enough to make me lose interest but perhaps not unreasonable if it can actually replace your iPad. My main concern is that the wide passport-style shape doesn’t look very comfortable to hold or keep in your pocket. It’s great that it can unfold, but the compact form factor is how most people will probably hold it most of the time. How well does the side Touch ID work if you’re left-handed?
The release notes of Xcode 27 RC doesn’t contain the phrase ‘Duo’…
Learn how to update and optimize your app for the foldable display of iPhone Duo. Discover how to opt in to the full-screen experience, adopt flexible layout best practices, and simulate poses in Device Hub with Xcode. Find out how to use size classes instead of interface orientation, handle asymmetric safe areas, and test Split View multitasking to ensure your app shines in all the ways people use it …
This is like a whole new platform dropping with a month’s lead time
The app design implications alone that are now basically forced onto app developers is nuts. Vision Pro was opt in but… all iPhone apps have to support this new device right? What a nightmare. Ugh, websites? New safe areas?
ToolbarItem(placement: .somewhereDepends)
As an anecdotal data point, I’ve had my foldable OnePlus Open for over 2 and a half years. It’s fallen on tile and cement, been kicked accidentally, and swatted across a room by my cat. The hinge and screens have no problems.
Here’s the list of tech products that have the Duo moniker[…]
Previously:
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):
Apple today announced AirPods 5, delivering the industry’s best Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) in an open-ear design and even better sound quality, at an outstanding value. AirPods 5 feature an all-new multiport acoustic architecture and next-generation Adaptive EQ for even more immersive sound. Their breakthrough open-ear ANC removes up to 50 percent more external noise compared to AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, alongside a more natural Transparency mode. Combined with Siri AI and iPhone, AirPods enable users to draw on their personal context and get answers with broad world knowledge, entirely hands-free. Users can also respond to Siri using head gestures, or use Live Translation to help connect across languages.
[…]
For users who want even more, AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case deliver great improvements to the AirPods experience. Force sensor with volume swipe arrives on AirPods 5, a first for the open-ear form factor, adding the ability to quickly adjust volume by swiping up or down on the stem.
Battery life is also improved, with up to five hours of playback with ANC on a single charge — one hour longer than AirPods 4 with ANC, thanks to a redesigned battery.
ANC is now available in the base model with the same $129 price, and the higher model is now $149 instead of $179.
Apple unveiled the first AirPods on September 7, 2016, meaning the iconic wireless headphones are now 10 years old. However, the AirPods did not launch until December that year.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-10): Ivan Pavlov:
AirPods 5 case not getting UWB for “Find My” precise location is a huge 👎️
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot):
Apple today announced iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, delivering the most advanced pro camera system in an iPhone, and huge leaps in battery life and performance. The new 48MP Fusion Main camera, now with variable aperture, brings creative control that wasn’t possible before, and new Pro controls let users customize their experience in the Camera app. Both models feature a smaller and even more useful Dynamic Island, as well as A20 Pro and a next-generation vapor chamber that together deliver the highest sustained performance in iPhone history.
[…]
Pro controls is a new customizable experience in the Camera app for iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that makes it easier than ever for users to access their most used settings and introduces new options for manual control.
[…]
When a photo is taken in the new Reference mode, the camera captures signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute develops into an unalterable reference image.
[…]
The upgraded Dynamic Island can now show three Live Activities at once[…]
[…]
eSIM-only models deliver up to 36 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro Max.
[…]
iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities. Available in burgundy, glacier, silver, and black, iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 or $49.95 per month, and iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299 or $54.12 per month for 24 months.
What I’m most happy to see is the ability to increase the depth of field. I don’t understand what Apple Reference Image is doing that it needs to be uploaded/offloaded to Private Cloud Compute.
Previously:
Zac Hall (July):
Apple just updated TestFlight for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more. The new version, 4.3, introduces “a search field to quickly find apps.”
But when Apple implemented this change, they also changed the sort order of the list of apps you’re registered to test. Starting with this update, the list is sorted in alphabetical order. For as long as I can remember — perhaps dating back to when TestFlight was a third-party utility — the list was ordered by recency. The most recently updated app was at the top; the oldest at the bottom. Sorting by recency is really the only sort order that makes sense when you’re registered for dozens (or more) of apps. For me, trying to see if there is an update to a new app whose name starts with U now requires scrolling through over 100 items.
[…]
Also, if I consider the broader view, this really speaks to how much we’ve lost in terms of UI vocabulary. For decades, any list of items with names and dates could be sorted by name or date, ascending or descending, through the standard use of clickable headers at the top of every list. This was true for almost any such list in any app, on any platform — Mac, Windows, Unix, Amiga, whatever. This was just basic GUI stuff.
[…]
iOS in 2007 introduced a simplified UI vocabulary that omitted many of these baseline GUI features. That seemed like a reasonable trade-off for a device with a 3.5-inch display and fat fingers as the only input device. But then iOS became popular and Apple stopped bringing the richer UI vocabulary of the Mac to iOS[…]
And it starting bringing iOS limitations to the Mac.
It certainly shouldn’t have taken until July 2026 to be able to search in TestFlight, either. And being able to search, and see the results sorted alphabetically, shouldn’t mean you can no longer view the full list sorted by recency.
Whatever is going on with this sort order, it isn’t affecting everyone. John Siracusa, amongst many others, has the same problem I do — his list is now alphabetical, and it’s driving him nuts too. Ryan Booker, amongst many others, still has his list sorted by recency.
John Gruber (September):
For both of us, yesterday’s v4.3.1 update fixes the bug.
But there should still be more sort options.
Previously:
James Calligeros (Hacker News, Phoronix):
Asahi Linux now officially supports Macs with an M3 series SoC!
Linux support for M3 series SoCs and the machines powered by them is now in a state where almost everything supported on the M1 and M2 series machines just works. This includes the webcam, internal microphones, USB (up to the hardware limit of USB 3 10 Gb/s), hardware accelerated video decoding including support for AV1, WiFi, Bluetooth, and much more! The only major exceptions remain full DCP support and the GPU, which we will have more news on in the coming months.
[…]
Sleep currently does not work due to limitations with the firmware-provided framebuffer. This will be addressed once full DCP support is wired up for M3.
[…]
Although MacBooks and iMacs are supported (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max), the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) is not yet supported.
Previously:
NSTrackingSeparatorToolbarItemadds a white band over the top of the leading split view panes when in full screen mode on macOS 27 [beta 3]. That white band appears to have the height of the toolbar.
He says this was fixed in Beta 4.
macOS 27 developer beta 5 (26A5406e) introduces a bug that causes a white bar to appear over window content if the window’s toolbar has an
NSTrackingSeparatorToolbarItem. I filed FB24266969 with Apple describing this.
NSSearchToolbarItemhas been screwed last minute in Catalyst with less than a month to go? Cool, cool…That’s the kind of thing that can halt my release plans entirely 🫠
Also screwed up in AppKit, with the macOS 27 beta 5 release.
Also, the
titlebarSeparatorStylesetting seems to be ignored. Toolbars in beta 5 always have a separator line and a blurred slightly lighter background.Weirdly enough Apple’s own apps don’t have these issues.
In macOS 27 developer beta 5, search fields in toolbars (
NSSearchToolbarIteminstances) have their placeholder text, search strings, and magnifying glass icons vertically off-center. I reported this as FB24286690.
Beta 6 also fixes the UI issues with
NSSearchToolbarItem. Elements are now re-aligned again, the recents menu is in a good position, and the focus ring is perfectly outlining the entire bounds. :D
Previously:
I thought it would be useful to have a single reference for the different ways we can style the toolbar in SwiftUI on macOS 26.
The toolbar
idcreates a stable customization domain, and each itemidgives the framework something stable to persist when the user adds, removes, or reorders controls. This identifiability of toolbar items is a requirement for customization. Under the hood, when SwiftUI inevitably bridges your toolbar contents toNSToolbar, these identifiers will be directly translated to theNSToolbarItem’sitemIdentifiers.As we continue the migration to a customizable toolbar, we are likely to encounter a few surprises related to this model.
[…]
After a closer inspection, and perhaps a few minutes of digging through the documentation, we come to the bleak realization: there is no customizable
ToolbarItemGroupAPI.[…]
The regular toolbar model and the customizable toolbar model overlap, but they are not interchangeable. You cannot give a
ToolbarItemGroupanid, and you cannot place one directly insidetoolbar(id:content:).
Let’s take a look at another example. This one is a bit tricky, because on macOS, you will get Action 1 in the top trailing position and the whole group of actions centered in the navigation bar. On iOS, you will get Action 1 pinned to trailing and all other items collapsed.
[…]
The final addition to the Toolbar API is the toolbarMinimizeBehavior view modifier allowing us to minimize toolbars while scrolling up or down. You can minimize tab, bottom, window and navigation bars with it.
With new modifiers SwiftUI gives us a much better balance between system-driven adaptation and explicit control. We can now decide which actions are more important, which items should always stay visible, which groups should intentionally live in the overflow menu, and how toolbars should react to scrolling.
iOS 27 includes a few smaller additions that make toolbar content easier to configure.
We can remove the default padding around an item whose content should extend to its edges with contentMarginsRemoved(_:)[…]
[…]
The status bar is now represented by ToolbarPlacement.statusBar, so its visibility can be controlled through the same toolbar API as other bars[…]
[…]
ForEach now conforms to ToolbarContent, which means we can generate toolbar items directly from a collection[…]
Together, the toolbar APIs let us express the importance of each action while SwiftUI continues to handle the toolbar’s layout across different sizes.
Previously:
McKinley is an all-in-one studio for drawing and annotating SF Symbols. It bundles vector tools with knowledge of the SF Symbols structure, so you can edit one set of objects across multiple weights, sizes and colours. Import SVG or start from scratch, live preview your work using Apple’s own renderer, and export directly to Xcode, so you never need touch the SF Symbols app again!
[…]
Gone are the days of converting your strokes and shapes to outlined paths before export. Keep everything how you drew it, and let McKinley handle the output.
[…]
Link your project’s asset catalog to your McKinley document. Then when you make a change, hit the Sync keyboard shortcut and it’s immediately populated with your latest version.
[…]
McKinley is a Mac-assed Mac app: a native AppKit UI, Quick Look previews and thumbnails for your documents, a full AppleScript dictionary for batch work, and the whole user guide offline in Help.
$60, no subscription. It’s been a while since I had to deal with custom SF Symbols, but I remember it being a major pain. I haven’t had the chance to try McKinley with a real project yet, but it looks very well done. I love seeing a new app ship with documentation and extensive AppleScript support, including sample scripts that you can install right from its script menu.
The icon isn’t just a symbol but a whole artistic creation on a canvas.
Look at how your tools are on panels that could be individually opened on their own auxiliary window. I can’t stand the single-window, everything buried into a single-sidebar design we get these days.
SF Symbols rendering does a surprising amount behind your back: it interpolates nine weights from three masters, applies optical size adjustments, resolves hierarchical opacity ladders, and changes some of this between OS releases. Any preview I rendered myself might diverge from the real thing in ways nobody would notice until the symbol was in an app looking subtly wrong. (Obviously I aim to get my canvas rendering with the exact same nuance as Apple’s renderer, but programmers are fallible and the fewer ways things can diverge, the better.)
Apple provides no API for “here’s my SVG, render it as a symbol”. For a normal app using a custom SF Symbol, the symbol is compiled from an Asset Catalog in Xcode into a
.carfile (a compiled asset catalog) at build time. But there’s no ‘build time’ when I want to update a preview in McKinley.My workaround involves compiling your symbol into a
.carfile at runtime, on every edit, by patching bytes into a template, then loading that temporary.carfile into McKinley via NSBundle.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-08): John Gruber:
I mean just look at McKinley. It’s both beautiful and quite obviously a serious professional tool.
Mark Gurman (tweet, John Gruber, Mastodon, 9To5Mac):
The Schiller exit is a bit more notable. Unlike Maestri, he still had a real job: The veteran executive ran the App Store and Apple Events. The App Store portion alone is no joke. It generates an estimated $30 billion a year and can be very challenging to manage. Apple’s app marketplace is loved by many consumers, but often criticized by developers and subjected to increasingly onerous regulations. It was a busy, all-encompassing gig and nowhere near a semiretirement.
[…]
But there’s a bit more to the story, I’m told. Ternus and services chief Eddy Cue want to make even more money from the App Store and figure out ways to raise margins and squeeze additional recurring revenue from the platform. Schiller, on the other hand, seems to believe that such moves will only further irk developers and governments. While there was no internal blowup or anything like that, it’s something he wanted no part of.
“Product guy” dreams about margins, forgets that people buy Apple hardware because of the software.
Apple admitted during its July earnings call that regulatory changes have started to weigh on its Services growth. Apple reported services revenue of $30.7 billion for the June quarter, a record for the period but short of the $31.4 billion that analysts expected.
The hardware guys treating third-party developers like they do their suppliers has stifled Apple’s software platforms
I thought that perhaps with the move to John Ternus as CEO, it could also be an obvious time to revisit such policies. But I hadn’t considered that Apple could actually be in favor of making them more onerous.
See also: Mario Guzmán and Indie Simulator.
Previously:
Ian Gillespie (2025):
Banktivity has traditionally been what’s known as a document-based app. It lets you create and open independent files (or documents), each with its own data. In contrast, many modern apps—Music, Calendar, Photos—are library-based. These apps typically have a single window and a unified data set.
We’ve long appreciated the flexibility our document model provides. But in practice, most of our customers use only a single file. And more critically, this architecture makes it much harder to integrate Banktivity with the broader Apple ecosystem.
[…]
The shift from a document-based model to the new Organizer framework marks a major step forward for Banktivity. It simplifies how users interact with their data while laying the foundation for deeper system integration, background syncing, and a more seamless multi-device experience.
This follows MoneyWell also getting rid of the document model. From my perspective, it’s a shame. I prefer the flexibility of being able to have different accounts in different documents, choosing where to store the documents, and even splitting the same account across multiple documents for performance reasons.
Ian Gillespie (2025):
Ledgers contain an entire, independent set of accounts, categories, investments, goals, budget and so on. Many customers will only have one Ledger for the finances they manage. But we also know there is a good number of customers out there that manage finances across family members, non-profits and small businesses – for these customers, support for multiple Ledgers is crucial.
[…]
While UI is what you see, most of the hard work has been in the architecture. The Library framework — the backbone that replaces our old document system — is in place. That means we can now reliably connect your Banktivity User Account with all of your Ledgers, whether local or synced to the cloud.
Refactoring Banktivity from a document-based app into a library-style app was a significant undertaking. It changed some very fundamental assumptions in the code. Ledgers can now be opened and closed in the background, multiple windows and scenes can be active at once, and the Organizer has to coordinate local files, cloud sync, user accounts and application state in ways the old document architecture never had to.
Banktivity 10.0 laid the foundation for that transition. With Banktivity 10.1, a major focus has been strengthening that foundation. We’ve spent a lot of time simplifying the underlying architecture, eliminating race conditions and threading issues, and improving how ledgers are opened, closed and managed.
Previously:
Neil Fraser (via Hacker News):
Nearly twenty-five years ago I registered neil.fraser.name to provide a stable presence on the Internet. It has been the home of this website, my email address, and a server for APIs.
[…]
On 15 April 2026 Verisign proposed the destruction of the entire 3rd level of the ‘.name’ hierarchy in order to simplify their administration. Astonishingly, on 28 July 2026 ICANN approved this action.
[…]
One of my original reasons for choosing ‘.name’ was that it was run by Global Name Registry -- more specifically, it was not run by Verisign. I had history with Verisign and did not trust them. Unfortunately, Verisign acquired Global Name Registry a few years later.
He’s going to lose his site and e-mail address, and someone else could potentially register the domain and hijack his accounts.
Previously:
To spread the word, we announced SoundSource 6 on our blog and sent a mass mailing to our customer list. We also took a more targeted approach, contacting both existing and potential customers who’d previously reached out to us with specific requests. We went back to those folks to let them know about the changes that would interest them most.
[…]
A real live person writes every email response our support team sends, and that human touch takes time. The process is helped along by text snippets, replies that we write once and then reuse and adapt to answer common questions.
[…]
To decide if an email should be sent to a customer, we checked Help Scout’s conversation history, as well as our own custom app for their order history. For example, if someone requested several features across different emails, we’d pick the one that was most impactful, then delete other drafts to avoid inundating them with multiple messages.
Previously:
Apple is facing a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) London lawsuit brought on behalf of app developers over its app tracking rules, with the iPhone maker accused of abusing its power to unfairly impose greater restrictions on third parties.
[…]
Lawyers bringing the new lawsuit against Apple, though, say the feature imposed stricter requirements on third-party app developers than on Apple’s own services, giving its advertising ecosystem a competitive advantage.
Via Ben Lovejoy:
The latest lawsuit has an interesting twist: it’s being brought by Ann Pope, who was previously a senior official with the regulator behind today’s case.
The company told Reuters it was “bound by the exact same requirements as all developers.”
However, regulators across Europe including in France, Italy and Poland have investigated ATT. Germany’s competition regulator, the Federal Cartel Office, last month determined that Apple was favoring its own apps over those from external developers.
The EU is saying “you’re big enough that you have to treat your other business models like third parties” and Apple replies with “but we know we’re solid, so that makes no sense!”
Previously:
Apple has agreed to make changes to its App Tracking Transparency feature in Germany, according to the country’s competition regulator.
[…]
In Germany, Apple has agreed to remove “possibly discouraging symbols and wording” from the App Tracking Transparency prompt, the regulator said. Apps will also be “given more scope to explain to users what significance personalized advertising has for their offering and their business model,” and the “freedom to combine the consent request required by Apple with the consent requests required under data protection law.”
The FCO’s objection appears to be that Apple’s existing prompt is making app tracking sound scarier than it really is. The iPhone maker will make eight changes in order to address this – including removal of the word “track.”
The regulator helpfully offers an illustration of the differences between these prompts on the fourth page of its FAQs (PDF) about the case. There are many things they say could be deterrents in the App Tracking Transparency dialog, and I do not think Apple would deny that they are suggesting that users opt out of tracking. The definition of “tracking” Apple uses is self-serving, which would not matter so much if it did not also have a parallel desire to grow its advertising business.
[…]
A particularly damning finding in that comparison, to my eyes, is the way Apple puts “Ask App Not to Track” as the topmost button in the App Tracking Transparency dialog, but puts the option to “Turn Off Personalised Ads” at the bottom of it its own advertising prompt.
Previously:
As those new models start shipping on 22 September, the window for the first public release of Golden Gate has narrowed to 15-22 September, with greatest likelihood on the same day as the arrival of those new Macs.
[…]
At the same time as the release of Golden Gate, we should get Tahoe 26.7 and Sequoia 15.8, but it looks increasingly likely that the final version of Sonoma has been 14.8.9, released on 6 August.
As we prepare to flee from the visual horrors of macOS Tahoe at last, this article is a reminder that it wasn’t the first major release of macOS that has had blatant bugs in its interface, although I suspect it may be unique in that those were intentional. While progress in Golden Gate has been limited, I hope you’ll find it rectifies some of the worst errors of Liquid Glass.
Many Macs will be left behind, as Golden Gate drops support for Intel.
Normally, I update around January. With Tahoe I waited until July. This time, I’m considering updating to Golden Gate soon after its release. The downside is that Xcode 26 doesn’t run on Golden Gate, so I would have to drop support for many older macOS versions (about 3% of my customers’ Macs). But it seems like Apple’s going to force that soon, anyway, as one of the next Xcode 27 updates will likely drop support for Tahoe. I want to get off Xcode 26, both to use the newer SDK and because there are various debugging/testing things that don’t work properly.
I am working on a new app. Right now, I am targeting back to macOS Sequoia. I think that would be a good OS to target but becoming quite old with Golden Gate just around the corner. […] I wonder if I should just target macOS Golden Gate and focus testing on that.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-04): Isaiah Carew:
i’m in the exact same boat. i’d really like to stay on macOS 15 and whatever Xcode works there. it means i can still build things in the old UI and mostly Tahoe and GG respect it.
but recent bug reports from beta testers and the inability to see these bugs on my VM has made me feel very stuck here — like apple has purposefully made it difficult to move forward and support older versions too.
A US federal judge has sided with Google, ruling that the company will not have to sell its online advertising exchange (previously known as AdX). The US Department of Justice (DOJ) sought this remedy in the long-running ad tech antitrust trial, which Google lost in 2025. However, the remedies imposed upon Google for that loss are shaping up to be minimal.
[…]
While divesting the ad exchange would have been the most serious penalty, the government also asked for fines and court-ordered changes to Google’s business practices. It’s likely that the DOJ will get a lot of that, but we don’t know the specifics yet. Judge Leonie Brinkema has sealed the order for 14 days, giving the parties a chance to request redactions.
[…]
After all these years of hearings, appeals, and decisions, Google’s market power will remain largely unchanged going forward.
Previously:
The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies’ long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store.
[…]
While Apple suffered little penalty in its Epic case, Google was tripped up by its anti-competitive management of the supposedly open Android ecosystem. Google used its market position to discourage device makers from promoting or pre-loading non-Google app stores and attempted to hide that conduct. The remedies set by Judge James Donato included lower fees, mirroring Google Play apps in other stores, and most vitally, placement of alternative app stores in Google Play.
[…]
Google and Epic were set to return to court on July 16 to argue in favor of the settlement. However, the writing may have been on the wall. In a recent expert analysis provided to the court, MIT economics professor Nancy Rose noted that the settlement was “unlikely to enable Google Play’s potential competitors to overcome their long-standing network-effect disadvantage in a timely manner.”
[…]
Under the terms of Judge Donato’s original injunction, these stores will have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps by default. […] Google will also require approved stores to block malware, respect intellectual property, and include mechanisms to update and uninstall apps.
My guess is that all the big app developers will opt out of this. Games, though, maybe not?
Previously:
Liu downloaded the circuit schematic from Apple in March, two months after he left the company. Liu used the schematic to run a simulation using electrical engineering tool LTspice, and then messaged people telling them he ran the simulation for power conversion development work.
[…]
Liu used the Apple schematic on a Mac mini that later synced to the MacBook he took from Apple, which is why Apple knows about it. Apple now wants to investigate the Mac mini and other devices Liu still has in his possession.
Apple says the “shocking evidence” is proof that its trade secrets are in active use and evidence is being destroyed, which is why expedited discovery is needed.
The first point seems really bad for OpenAI. On the fourth point, I’m not sure what Apple is alleging here — I think they’re alleging that Liu took an Apple internal engineering app with him over to OpenAI?
William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele (MacRumors):
OpenAI has responded to Apple’s latest filing about the theft of confidential information, by filing its own rebuttal which again accuses the company of trying to stop employees leaving. According to Reuters, OpenAI is now also calling out Apple for being behind on AI.
[…]
“[Employees] can leave a company like Apple that has struggled to adopt AI and move to an exciting startup that builds innovative products,” says OpenAI in its new filing. “Apple may not like those choices. But it cannot claim those choices are unlawful, and it cannot use its own sloppy procedures to blame others for its own mess.”
On the face of it, the evidence Apple provided yesterday does appear damning. OpenAI doesn’t seem to be denying that confidential Apple information was used by the company, but rather claiming that the iPhone maker failed to properly protect it.
It sounds like there’s a lot of evidence against Chang Liu, but Apple is suing OpenAI.
Previously:
So I was quite surprised earlier this year when I started to receive personalized pitches from indie developers, a few at first, and now several per week. Many seem to be building apps with AI assistance, but more to the point, they seem to be getting AI help with promoting the apps as well. They often reference our still-current prohibition on press releases with a nominally personal email, but for someone as steeped in words as I am, it’s obvious that an AI is doing the writing.
[…]
At first, this reliance on AI rubbed me the wrong way. But then I realized that it wasn’t really any different than a software company outsourcing its media relations to a PR firm. Those communications had a certain form and set of expectations, and while these new AI-generated messages have a different form, the expectations (coverage) are pretty much the same. AI is simply the new PR agency. Which undoubtedly dismays PR professionals, but there’s still room for those doing PR right.
The problem I have with these new pitches isn’t that the developers used AI to generate them; it’s that they often don’t do it very well.
I’ve noticed a huge increase this year in people pitching me their apps. Many of them seem to have been coded with the assistance of AI. For some app categories, this worries me, and there also seems to be less care taken in following Mac platform conventions. But it’s also exciting to see such a flurry of development, both totally new ideas and fresh takes on old niches. I have a large backlog that I’d like to write about. (There are also many almost indistinguishable variations in certain categories.)
Separately, as Engst says, many of the pitches (and sometimes even the sites) are obviously written by AI. This rubs me the wrong way. I don’t mind at all receiving a generic press release or even a one-liner with a link. But these lengthy e-mails, customized for me, purport to be personal communications when they really aren’t. Sometimes I’ll reply with questions or feedback, and it feels like the entire conversation is with an AI.
When people put in some effort to pitch me their product or article, I’ve always tried to give them a decent reply. Often, I end up learning something or wanting to follow their other work even if I don’t end up writing about what was pitched. This is unfortunately no longer sustainable. There are too many pitches, and it’s demotivating talking to bots. I have to be much more selective about interactions. I appreciate hearing about all the apps, but I’m focusing on the ones that particularly interest me, and I’m less likely to even click the link if it seems like an AI pitch.
Previously:
Then, when you look at the sample code, it’s all SwiftUI. At least the sample compiles and runs because it uses a completely different syntax than what was shown at WWDC.
[…]
Eventually I stumbled upon TipUIPopoverViewController which inherits from UIViewController. That should work! […] But it didn’t: the close button on the popover didn’t work.
[…]
Until you realize that any changes you make are stored in a SQLite database, debugging is very confusing. It’s also easy for your own state to get out-of-sync with the Tip state: there is not a single source of truth.
[…]
Unfortunately, that sample code doesn’t scale well. If you have a view with multiple tips, you’re going to be littering your code with tip instances, observation tasks, and popover controllers. It’s a mess and a clear sign that the TipKit developers didn’t think much about UIKit.
In the previous article, we introduced the basic usage of TipKit. In this article, we will discuss some advanced topics related to TipKit, such as how to fully customize Tip views (not using TipView and popoverTip), how to use TipKit with UIKit, and how TipKit can share data across different applications, as well as how to reuse Tip declaration code. Additionally, we will attempt to address some common questions and concerns about TipKit.
Previously:
Apple’s former hardware engineering chief John Ternus officially became CEO of the company today, with the change now reflected on Apple’s leadership page.
[…]
Tim Cook is now executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, after a 15-year run as CEO.
John joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021 as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Throughout his tenure at Apple, John has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products and was instrumental in the introduction of multiple new product lines, including iPad and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch.
John has led much of the company’s focus in areas like reliability and durability, introducing new techniques that have made Apple products remarkably resilient. He has also driven much of Apple’s innovation in materials and hardware design that have reduced the carbon footprint of its products, including the creation of a new recycled aluminum compound that has been introduced across multiple product lines, the use of 3D-printed titanium in Apple Watch Ultra, and advancements in reparability that have increased the life spans of several Apple products.
Prior to Apple, John worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
This feels like Apple really trying to remind us of a previous product-focused CEO.
[…]
I would not have predicted this [reliability and durability] angle being so prominent, so I can only assume it’s something that’s important to Ternus.
[…]
One of the key tenets of the Cook era was Apple making a series of environmental pledges. I am very happy to see this called out as something Ternus is interested in.
There’s no mention of software.
Ternus sent his first memo as CEO to employees this morning, praising Cook and sharing his excitement for Apple’s future.
The 5 GB free iCloud tier lasted Tim Cook’s entire career as CEO, how will Ternus stack up?
Previously:
Update (2026-09-02): Juli Clover:
Apple has set new CEO John Ternus’ target compensation at $58 million, according to an updated SEC filing [PDF]. Tim Cook’s target compensation is $47 million in his new role as executive chairman.
Update (2026-09-07): Ryan Christoffel:
But a new profile published today at the Financial Times adds fresh details and insights to the story.
Regarding Ternus’s reputation inside Apple, it says he “is known within the company for being both highly competent and unshowy.”
It doesn’t seem like there was actually much insight, but I’m linking to this for completeness.
Previously:
New in Swift 6.4 […] is a warning which is emitted when a nested closure performs a
weakcapture while the parent closure implicitly captures that object as a strong reference.At first glance, that new diagnostic could be a bit puzzling, since it might seem unnecessary to have to specify such a weak capture twice (or, alternatively, move it to the parent closure’s capture list), but it turns out that it’s an incredibly useful new warning that can help us avoid a quite common kind of memory management bug.
[…]
Finally, in situations where capturing
selfstrongly doesn’t actually lead to a retain cycle, we can silence the new warning for nestedweakcaptures by explicitly addingselfto the outer closure’s capture list, such as when creating aTaskwithin the following example[…]
Previously:
I don’t appreciate being forced by Xcode 27 to drop support for macOS 10.13-11.0. It’s my decision which OSes I want to support, not Apple’s. Yes, I can keep Xcode 26 around until submissions require Xcode 27, but what then?
Originally, Xcode 27 was documented as supporting Big Sur on Intel Macs, but now the earliest is Monterey.
I’m frustrated, too, but it’s more honest than the recent releases that claimed to support deployment on older macOS versions when Apple clearly hadn’t tested that it actually worked. I filed bugs, and Apple kept responding that they’d fixed it, when they hadn’t.
Using old versions of Xcode isn’t a great solution because they aren’t supported on Golden Gate. Swift also makes it more difficult to call newer APIs when using an older SDK. You can’t just copy/paste a method prototype or constant value and conditionally use it when running on a newer OS.
I eventually found a hidden workaround that changes the errors back into warnings. That is good news, but it does not make the concern disappear. The setting is undocumented, absent from the normal Xcode interface, and currently being tested only in a beta toolchain. The larger question is what Apple intends to enforce when Xcode 27 is final and, later, when App Store submission requirements move to its SDKs.
[…]
Apple’s current Xcode system requirements list Xcode 26 with deployment targets beginning at iOS 15 and macOS 11. Yet developers have been able to enter older targets manually. In an Apple Developer Forums discussion about Xcode 26, an Apple product manager explained that the published deployment target range is aligned with simulator support and on-device debugging. The accepted answer confirms that an iOS 13 target can still build even though it falls below the range in Apple’s table.
My own tests went further. Xcode 26.5 compiled a project targeting iOS 9.0. It warned that the target was older than the supported range, but the build succeeded. On macOS, I have compiled current apps with deployment targets as old as macOS 10.9. Xcode warned me, but it still produced working applications.
[…]
For iOS and iPadOS, staying on Xcode 26 is not a lasting option. Apple has repeatedly made a current Xcode and SDK mandatory for new App Store submissions. […] If any one of those conditions fails, iOS and iPadOS developers will have no normal App Store path for publishing new updates that still support versions older than 15.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-07): Léo Natan:
Just want to remind you guys that if you move to Xcode 27, the only “officially” supported and sanction Xcode for GG, UIDesignRequiresCompatibility is no longer respected across the 27 OSes (apps built with older Xcodes still are). So you might suddenly find out you have a lot of work ahead of you, adding support for the dreaded Glass. And 27 Glass is not the same as 26 Glass. That can be an issue if you skipped 26 altogether but still want to support it.
Previously:
