Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Dictating Literal Reminders to My Apple Watch

Reading about the Pebble Index motivated to keep looking for a better way to dictate reminders using my Apple Watch. Ideally, I would press a button, immediately begin speaking, and the literal text of what I said would appear in OmniFocus. This should work when offline.

My watch doesn’t have an action button, so the next best thing is a complication. I can’t use the OmniFocus complication because I’m not running OmniFocus on my watch. It just doesn’t reliably sync in the background, and even if I manually trigger a foreground sync it takes a long time and doesn’t always complete successfully. Fortunately, if I add a reminder on the watch, OmniFocus on my phone will reliably import it.

Shortcuts can have complications, so I looked into making a shortcut that could create reminders from speech. I had trouble figuring out how to make the shortcut, but Edward Munn showed how to set it up with Record audio ‣ Transcribe ‣ Add New Reminder. Then I discovered that Dictate text ‣ Add New Reminder is better because you don’t have to press a button to stop recording and also you can see the text being transcribed as you speak. The challenge was getting the shortcut to sync to the watch. Sometimes this doesn’t happen automatically, so you have to select Show on Apple Watch. Sometimes that doesn’t work right away and you have to toggle it a few times. Sometimes a formerly visible shortcut disappears and you have to select that option again. There’s no way to see at a glance from your iPhone or Mac which shortcuts are set to sync to the watch.

Running shortcuts via a complication turns out not to be ideal. After tapping the icon, you have to tap a second Run button to confirm. Then it opens the list of Shortcuts and eventually runs the shortcut and is ready to record. This sometimes took 10 or more seconds on my Apple Watch SE before I could begin speaking. With my new SE 3, it takes 2–3 seconds, which still feels like a long time.

It also works to invoke the shortcut via Siri, and this can be faster (if Siri responds and understands me the first time). With Siri, there’s no Run button to tap, nor shortcut to open: it just runs the whole process as a text conversation in the Siri interface. My shortcut is called “Dictate Reminder,” and I have to be careful to say exactly that. If I say “Dictate a reminder” or “Make a reminder,” it will invoke the standard Siri interface for creating reminders, which is not what I want because it’s non-literal. It will try to parse out times, places, and other fragments that it recognizes and make a mess of things. Sometimes making a new reminder with Siri will edit (and mess up) the previously created reminder. In the car, it’s better to use the complication or to press the digital crown; if I just say “Hey Siri, dictate reminder,” CarPlay will step in and steal the command from the watch but not know how to run the shortcut.

The shortcut works, but I’m not totally happy with it for a few reasons. First, it still feels slow. It’s so much more convenient to just ask Siri to create a reminder. So I tend to do that when the watch is online and when I think what I’m going to say won’t confuse Siri’s parser. Second, it takes more steps to edit the reminder if it wasn’t transcribed properly or if I want to add more text to it.

Instead of the shortcut complication, sometimes it seems better to do it old-school using the Reminders complication. In the worst case, this requires 4 taps (complication, Add Reminder, microphone button, Done button), but it responds more quickly than the shortcut. watchOS remembers the input method, so I can often skip tapping the microphone button, and if I’m creating a series of reminders I’ll already be in the Reminders app so I can skip the complication button, too. It’s nice to be entering directly into the Reminders app so that I edit the text.

A problem with using the complication is that it opens Reminders to the Today view. This means that tapping Add Reminder will create the reminder with a due date. It’s easier to remove the date later than to prevent it from being attached on creation. I wrote a script to clear the date in OmniFocus.

Finally, I found my favorite method of dictating reminders: the New Reminder widget. It’s not directly on the home screen, so it seems like it’s going to be slower, but I can pin this to the top of the list and then quickly swipe up and tap it. It jumps right into the dictation screen, faster than when using the complication, and it doesn’t create the reminder under Today. This seems to be the best way except for when I need to be hands-free, in which case I use Siri to run the shortcut.

Previously:

iPadOS Post–MacBook Neo

Matt Birchler (pre-Neo):

I think Apple is going to discontinue iPadOS. I know, I know, it’s a big swing, but put the pitchforks away and hear me out. iPadOS, as it exists now, is being stretched too thin. The idea of having one operating system, with the same features, that spans from a small, 8" tablet up through a 13" laptop-style slab that also connects to a 32" monitor is fundamentally problematic.

[…]

So here’s the prediction: Apple will discontinue iPadOS. The regular iPad, iPad mini, and iPad Air will continue to exist, but they will run iOS. These iPads will not have the Mac-style window management they have today, but they will maintain Split View and (probably) Stage Manager. Of course, the iPhone will continue to run iOS, and the iPhone Fold will adopt a more iPad-style layout when the 8" inner screen is exposed.

That leaves the iPad Pro, which I believe will begin shipping with macOS. No, not some fork of macOS or “macOS lite,” the real deal. This will live alongside the other Macs in the lineup, and it will be the tablet-style Mac while Apple will keep the clamshell laptop and desktop machines in the lineup. The strongly rumored touch-enabled MacBook Pros on the horizon will come with a new build of macOS that fully supports touch, opening the door to a tablet-style Mac, and why mess with perfection? Put macOS on the iPad Pro and instantly have the best convertible computer on the planet.

Eric Schwarz:

As someone that considers themself an iPad power user, I’m fairly confident I make use of more features than the average person. However, the external display limitations on the iPad mini coupled with the small screen size have kept me from really digging in to the new desktop-style interface on iPadOS 26. If the mini could run a separate, external display, I think that would be a damn-near perfect computer for most of my needs—at the desk, it could use a large monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but then be something ultraportable that can even fit in some jacket pockets. Instead, I simply get a mirrored, pillarboxed image, so I’ve used it with an external display maybe twice? Until Apple creates some feature parity with the experience, the iPad mini (and to a lesser extent, the adjective-less iPad) will tend to be used the way iPads have always been used, like oversized iPhones.

Likewise, the iPad Airs and Pros have so much computing power, and despite all the improvements, iPadOS is still holding them back.

Mark Gurman (via Steve Troughton-Smith):

Publicly, Apple has denied wanting to do such a thing. Behind the scenes, though, engineers have been exploring the idea. They’ve discussed all sorts of ways to bring the two systems together — from running the current version of macOS on beefier iPads to building a new type of operating system befitting a hybrid product. There’s even been talk of completely folding together the Mac and iPad app ecosystems.

Brendan Shanks:

At the risk of being hyperbolic: is the MacBook Neo throwing the iPad under the bus?

For $599 you can now buy a 128GB A16 iPad ($350) + Magic Keyboard Folio ($250)…or a 256GB A18 Pro MacBook Neo. $250 for the keyboard has always felt excessive, now it’s just absurd.

I’d love to see the Magic Keyboard Folio come down to $150, along with the expected A18 iPad upgrade.

Colin Cornaby:

I wonder what the future of the iPad is. It’ll be around - but the MacBook Neo feels like a concession that the Mac and not the iPad is the future.

I worked at a school district deploying laptops to students in 2000s. The MacBook Neo looks a lot like the laptop we were begging Apple to make. (We might have asked for plastic casing, students can be rough on laptops!) Instead Apple started pushing the iPad for schools when it came out - and the place I worked switched to Chromebooks instead.

Chris Hannah:

That’s why I’ve long thought the best (Apple) computer for most people was probably an iPad. You can watch TV/movies, browse the web, play games, read emails, etc. It does everything most people need.

But there’s still one “problem”. It runs iPadOS. And even as far as it’s come, it’s still not macOS or Windows. So there was always some level of adaptation needed, even if minor. As a lot of paradigms on how computers are used are simply different.

Whereas now, if you want an Apple computer, and you either don’t need to do particularly complex tasks, or you’re on a tight budget, then I don’t think the iPad is the best choice anymore.

Someone:

The reason Apple has managed to get Microsoft’s dream so, so wrong, is they never fully committed to the consequences, or rather they wanted to maintain the thing that was most important to Apple - that you had to buy multiple devices.

A Surface Pro is a One Device computer experience - it’s a tablet tablet when you want it to be a tablet, or it’s a proper laptop when you want to do “real” work, but plug it into a dock at home, with multiple displays, external GPU etc, and it’s a normal desktop PC. All your data there, no cloud sync nonsense, just keep working as you were.

Apple would never do that, because they want you to buy an iPad, AND a Mac, and then dick around with this awkward shifting your user session states between devices through iCloud and maybe your files come with you but not for important stuff because that’s all too large and structured to move via cloud syncing…

The iPad would have been a better device if it iPadOS had never existed, and you just had the option to install iOS, or macOS on it. It’s been the exact same hardware as the Mac since the M1 was released, so there’s no good reason for iPadOS to exist.

John Gruber:

I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned. iPad Pros, encased in Magic Keyboards, are expensive and heavy. So are iPad Airs. My 2018 iPad Pro, in its Magic Keyboard case, weighs 2.36 pounds (1.07 kg). That’s the 11-inch model, with a cramped less-than-standard-size keyboard. I’m much happier with this MacBook Neo than I am doing anything on that iPad. Yes, my iPad is old at this point. But replacing it with a new iPad Pro would require a new Magic Keyboard too. For an iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard, that combination starts at $1,300 for 11-inch, $1,650 for 13-inch. If I switched to iPad Air, the cost would be $870 for 11-inch, $1,120 for 13-inch. The 13-inch iPads, when attached to Magic Keyboards, weigh slightly more than a 2.7-pound 13-inch MacBook Neo. The 11-inch iPads, with keyboards, weigh about 2.3 pounds. Why bother when I find MacOS way more enjoyable and productive? My three-device lifestyle for the last decade has been a MacBook Pro (anchored to a Studio Display at my desk at home, and in my briefcase when travelling); my iPhone; and an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard for use around the rest of the house. This last week testing the MacBook Neo, I haven’t touched my iPad once, and I haven’t once wished this Neo were an iPad. And there were many times when I was very happy that it was a Mac.

[…]

I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?

John Gruber:

I didn’t mean to imply, for even a moment, that there aren’t use cases where the iPad clearly wins. I’m just coming to the realization that they’re not mine. I’ve had it stuck in my head for a long time that it’s somehow silly to have a MacBook as my main computer and another MacBook as a secondary one. But that’s what I want, really.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

A $499 MacBook Neo with the brains of a couple-year-old iPhone can run Xcode, Photoshop, Blender, Terminal, and pretty much everything else you can think of, yet your $3,200 iPad Pro, with a desktop-class chip, cannot 😑

What are we doing here?

Matt Birchler:

Without even having the laptop in hand, I can already tell you that I will absolutely be able to do my day job, all of my side projects, including web development, app development, video editing, and podcasting, all from this new device. Meanwhile, I have a more powerful iPad Pro sitting next to me that literally cannot do most of those things, or if it can, it does many of them in a hacky workaround way that would be inconvenient at best.

I won’t re-litigate this whole debate here, but I’m a product manager by day, and there is absolutely no way even a maxed-out iPad Pro would be as functional for me as even the cheapest, slowest Mac money can buy. Not video editing, not development, just a normal job that happens at a computer.

[…]

When Steve Jobs originally presented the iPad, he showed it off explicitly as a device that could live in between someone’s desktop computer and their smartphone. As people have enjoyed the product, and as Apple has explicitly changed their marketing over the years to encourage more people to at least attempt to use iPads as their primary computers as well. And what we’re seeing now is that, yeah, an iPad spec’d out as a primary computer is a pretty expensive investment, often more expensive now than even the equivalent MacBook in the lineup.

But if you do treat the iPad as a third device, then I think the pricing is much more compelling.

Marcus Mendes:

Apple, on the other hand, saw the average selling price of an iPad go from $527 in Q3 2025 to $583 in Q4 2025, a roughly 10% jump that helped offset the broader market cooldown and reinforced Apple’s dominance in the premium tablet segment.

Daniel Rubino (via Mac Power Users Talk):

I want to talk about the gaslighting Apple has done here and how tech media, as usual, just goes with it without even noticing it, which makes me perturbed. (And don’t get me started on how no one in the tech press reviews low-end Windows PCs, but now they suddenly care about the category.)

For more than a decade, Apple insisted the iPad was the future of mainstream computing. Not a companion. Not a tablet. A replacement. The company spent years telling students, families, and budget‑conscious buyers that a $599 Windows laptop was unnecessary because the iPad was lighter, faster, more modern, and (if you believed the ads) simply a better computer. “What’s a computer?” wasn’t just a slogan. It was a thesis statement.

[…]

And then Apple released the MacBook Neo. […] But it’s also the clearest admission Apple has made in years: the iPad was never the laptop replacement Apple wanted it to be.

John Gruber:

It’s folly to look at the MacBook Neo and presume that an Apple laptop with iPad-like specs must be iPad-like in its capabilities. Anyone who finds iPads limiting for work — and I’m one of them! — isn’t limited because of the hardware. It’s because iPadOS isn’t designed to suit the way we work. The MacBook Neo is a full-fledged kick-ass Macintosh. It really is.

Old-Board1553:

[This] just proves Apple users and Windows users wanted all along a cheap Macbook and not an iPad. Neo for sure will make Apple rethink the tablet segment now. Is not the fact that iPads are not good, the problem is the OS on them.

See also: Nilay Patel and David Pierce.

MitchWagner:

I’ve gone from using the ipad daily, to rarely, to never. I’ve thought about donating it. I’m a little surprised people are buying them.

[…]

Today I said:

My iPad lives in a keyboard case. Tonight I glanced at it while sitting on the couch and reaching for my phone, and I said to myself, “Maybe if I took it out of the keyboard case I might like using it?” And I did and I do.

In other words: I was holding it wrong.

Matt Birchler:

I expect that in iPadOS 27, these 3 options will remain, but the full screen apps option will bring the return of split screen that does not involved free-floating windows like we have now in iPadOS 26. In June, this will make a lot of iPad users happy who didn’t love needing to opt into full windowing to get the split views they used to love.

However, this new full screen apps mode will also come to the iPhone Fold this fall, allowing those users to run apps full screen and with a more iPad-style layout, while also allowing side-by-side apps on the internal screen. The iPhone would not need free floating windows, so I would not expect that to come to the Fold.

Apple could keep the naming of the OS different on the iPhone and iPad, but if this prediction comes to pass, it really does feel like in 2027 they could unify the OS naming across all their phone and tablet devices, but we’ll see…that stirred people up last time I suggested it…

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Apple was once convinced the future of computing was ‘apps’, so iPad was designed married to that idea. But we’re 16 years on now, and the present of computing is AI, and IDEs, command lines and virtualization, and Python, and git, and scripting and automation. iPad risks being completely left behind as a computing platform by not supporting any of that stuff properly, and developer interest has been waning for years now. It’s well past time for iPad to get its shit together, and open up.

[…]

Apple has steadily aligned closer and closer to what I’ve been asking for all that time. iPad has been my only ‘laptop’ since 2012, and I use it for hours a day[…]

Tobias Hedtke:

Not necessarily the most powerful or the most spec’d-out machine — just a versatile and reliable companion that is there whenever I need it.

Until recently, the device that came closest to that ideal was the iPad Pro.

With the Apple Pencil and the Magic Keyboard, I was able to use it as my primary computing device for more than two years. Computational power has never been an issue with iPad Pro models. Instead, it was the software, iPadOS, that held the hardware back from unleashing its full potential.

SpaceJello:

It is now more obvious than ever all the iPads with the M series and some of the A series can definitely run Mac OS.

With each iteration of the OS’s, their UI are becoming more and more alike if not practically the same. The M series chips in the iPads are overkill, and the app developers are moving onto iPad OS in a snail pace (I am looking at you Adobe).

Given how lacklustre iPad OS is in some aspects when compared to Mac OS, would Apple ever a) allow Mac OS on iPad or b) finally merge the two OS’s?

I can see how this would turn the market upside down again.

Colin Devroe:

I needed a new iPad. Almost bought the Neo instead. Went with a standard iPad simply for touch. So I can say that if Apple ships a touch device that runs macOS I’d buy it immediately.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Historically, at this time of year, there’s been quite a bit of angst from hardcore iPad users, after the shine of features introduced at the last WWDC has worn off and we’re left with, well, iPadOS. This year? Blissful silence.

The changes to iPadOS 26 went a long way to solving a lot of the biggest problems, and giving the platform runway. There are still major things that I think the platform needs to see — like Xcode, Terminal, virtualization, fully-external-display/clamshell mode and more.

iPad feels more like a ‘next-generation Mac’ than ever, but there are still a few key pillars of the platform missing. Everything else at this point just needs incremental improvement, which is such a step forward from where we have been historically.

Previously:

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

An Ultralight MacBook and Other Apple Silicon Roads Not Taken

John Gruber:

If I had my druthers, Apple would make a new svelte ultralight MacBook. Not instead of the Neo, but in addition to the Neo. Apple’s inconsistent use of the name “Air” makes this complicated, but the MacBook Neo is obviously akin to the iPhone 17e; the MacBook Air is akin to the iPhone 17 (the default model for most people); the MacBook Pros are akin to the iPhone 17 Pros. I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant.

The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.

Mike Sax:

I want a MacBook Mini (12”). I’d be thrilled and impressed.

David Sparks:

If you’ve been waiting for Apple to make a truly ultralight Mac, something more premium, smaller, and yes, more expensive, the Neo isn’t that machine. The Neo is about accessibility and volume. It’s the MacBook for everyone.

I want the other thing.

[…]

The technology is ready. Apple silicon was basically designed for this. The question is whether Apple sees the market opportunity, or whether they think the Air (or whatever it becomes post-Neo) already fills that slot.

I don’t think it does.

Thomas Clement:

Actually looking for ultraportable ~1Kg (or less), whatever size makes this possible (13" I guess, even maybe 12").

Stephen Hackett:

Among the many sins Apple committed with the 12-inch MacBook is that it was priced like a mid-range laptop, confusing the product line. If Apple were to return to this market, slotting in an ultra-portable machine in a more premium price point would avoid that confusion and let Apple go wild with what it could do with such a machine.

Jason Snell:

As someone who has known and loved the 12-inch PowerBook, 11-inch MacBook Air, and even the 12-inch MacBook, I am sadly not convinced that this is a big enough segment for Apple to target when the MacBook Air exists.

And here’s the biggest reason I think a smaller laptop may never happen: Over the last decade, everything in macOS has gotten a bit bigger—not just OS elements, but even fundamentals of app design. When I was still using an 11-inch Air, I would often discover apps that couldn’t be resized to fit on my screen. The same happened with the retina MacBook. I’m afraid that the 13-inch display in the MacBook is probably as small as modern macOS and today’s Apple will reasonably go.

Dan Moren:

She, did, however knock the MacBook Neo on one hardware feature—or lack thereof. And no, it wasn’t the two USB-C ports or that one is slower than the other. It’s the lack of a touchscreen. That’s a feature that even budget PC laptops have had for a long time, and Apple—arguably the king of touchscreens!—has refused to bring to its computer platform.

Dan Moren:

Still lacking in any of Apple’s laptops, however, are cellular options, all the more apparent as the company touts its C1X modem in recently released iPhones and iPads. Might that finally find its way into a future MacBook?

Mr. Macintosh:

I know this is goofy thinking territory… but imagine if Apple actually wanted to make a run at the low‑price PC market

Neo could be the budget nameplate across the entire Mac lineup

Mac mini Neo: Apple TV case, A18 $299

iMac Neo: A18 Chip $899

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele:

Apple has all of the elements to make a “Mac Neo” Mac mini adjunct. There is proof of market demand, and proof in the company’s own historical trends.

[…]

Save incredible rendering power for the Max and Ultra chips. A19 Pro would be just fine for most uses, and faster than the M2 mini.

[…]

There is an argument that Apple could build a Mac Neo into the chassis of the Apple TV 4K. We’d very much like this.

Mr. Macintosh:

How could Apple not turn the Studio Display into the next generation 27" iMac?

Adam C. Engst:

[W]hat’s stopping Apple from turning this into a 27-inch iMac Neo besides a little storage? It probably couldn’t support all the ports in Mac mode, but that would make the $1600 a lot more palatable if you got a Mac with it.

Scott Hanselman:

The MacBook Neo uses an A18 Chip that is in my iPhone Pro Max, and it runs full macOS competently in eight gigs of RAM

I want to plug my iPhone into my thunderbolt dock and run macOS X.

It doesn’t seem like it’s a technical problem anymore, now it’s organizational willpower

benwiggy:

The cheapest iPhone (17e) is the same price as the MacBook Neo! (In the UK: both £599.) If Apple can make a laptop for that price, then surely a basic phone should be a fraction of that?

gabe:

Had a dream that Apple released a 32-inch MacBook, called the MacBook Pro Ultrawide, and it looked like this. I bought one and unlocked extreme productivity but then it wouldn’t fit into my backpack, so I had to leave it behind.

Saagar Jha:

So I needed a new trash can

Previously:

Modern FatBits Mode

Marcin Wichary:

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Zoom, and then turn on “Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom.”

[…]

I’d also recommend turning off “Smooth images” under “Advanced…” so you see individual pixels better[…]

Over the years, I found this feature very useful to inspect various misalignments, to check visual details, and occasionally simply to read text that’s too small.

[…]

Peek gestures are fast, but the main benefit is that they’re safe. In some apps, pressing ⌘+ a few times and then ⌘– the matching amount of times doesn’t guarantee you will end up back in the same situation. The window size might change, the scroll position might move, the cursor might end up in a different place. In contrast, the Ctrl gesture is 100% deterministic and reversible; it will always work the same and never mess anything up.

John Gruber (Mastodon, previously):

This is one of the very best MacOS tips. No third-party software. Built into MacOS for several (many?) years now. Incredibly useful.

But I had no idea it existed until last June at WWDC.

A great feature that I rarely hear anyone talk about. It’s the perfect topic for the “Unsung” blog. I’m not sure how old this feature is, but I think I recall using it back when I had a Mighty Mouse. I think I could activate it one-handed using the side buttons?

These days, with a Magic Mouse, I use the Control-Option-Command modifier keys to avoid conflicts. It actually feels a bit more natural with a trackpad because you can use the same three-finger double-tap gesture to toggle the zoom level (it remembers where you left it) and to adjust the zoom. You can also quick-toggle the zoom when using the mouse, and it does let you use the same separate set of modifier keys as for zooming, but the problem with using modifier keys to toggle the zoom is that it conflicts. Any combination of modifier keys is also used by some keyboard shortcut that I use. When I press the bare modifiers as part of typing that keyboard shortcut, macOS doesn’t know that a letter key will be forthcoming, and it triggers an unwanted zoom.

Wichary has another great tip of using the Command-Shift-4 mode to measure distances on screen. Somehow I’ve never thought to do that—when were the numbers added? I do often use that mode to draw a temporary straight line to see whether two items are aligned. And, yes, this works in combination with the accessibility zoom.

Previously:

Only Time Will Tell

Marcin Wichary:

Why is there a short wait if you press a button on your headphone remote or your AirPods to pause the music? Because the interface has to let a bit of time pass to figure out if you’re going to press the button again, making it a double press (advance to next track) instead of a single press.

This kind of disambiguation delay is everywhere for simple gestures.

[…]

Why is there a short wait if you press a button to go to the next track on your car’s steering wheel? It’s a delay of a different kind, but the same principle: the function cannot kick in on press down, because press down and hold mean “fast forward.”

Monday, April 13, 2026

SpamSieve 3.3

SpamSieve 3.3 is an update of my Mac e-mail spam filter that includes lots of changes to improve the filtering accuracy:

Previously:

Artemis II Desktop Pictures

Nick Heer:

NASA has put a few hundred photos on Flickr with some awesome views — and I must emphasize how the word “awesome” undersells these images. I am using this one as the wallpaper on my iMac right now, and it feels like a pretty good use of a big, high-resolution display.

Previously:

Artemis II’s Fault-Tolerant Computer

Logan Kugler (via Hacker News):

To ensure those wrong answers never reach the spacecraft’s thrusters, NASA moved beyond the triple redundancy of traditional systems. Orion utilizes two Vehicle Management Computers, each containing two Flight Control Modules, for a total of four FCMs. But the redundancy goes even deeper: each FCM consists of a self-checking pair of processors.

Effectively, eight CPUs run the flight software in parallel. The engineering philosophy hinges on a “fail-silent” design. The self-checking pairs ensure that if a CPU performs an erroneous calculation due to a radiation event, the error is detected immediately and the system responds.

“A faulty computer will fail silent, rather than transmit the ‘wrong answer,’” Uitenbroek explained. This approach simplifies the complex task of the triplex “voting” mechanism that compares results. Instead of comparing three answers to find a majority, the system uses a priority-ordered source selection algorithm among healthy channels that haven’t failed-silent. It picks the output from the first available FCM in the priority list; if that module has gone silent due to a fault, it moves to the second, third, or fourth.

[…]

Orion carries a completely independent Backup Flight Software (BFS) system. This is a prime example of dissimilar redundancy. It is implemented on different hardware, runs a different operating system, and utilizes independently developed, simplified flight software.

Jim Hillhouse:

There are two main flight computers that use two radiation hardened IBM PowerPC 750FX single-core processors, a CPU introduced in 2002 and used in Apple computers such as the iBook G3 until 2005.

Previously:

Friday, April 10, 2026

Privacy & Security Settings Don’t Show Intent-Based Access

Howard Oakley (Hacker News):

Thus, access to a protected folder by user intent, such as through the Open and Save Panel, changes the sandboxing applied to the caller by removing its constraint to that specific protected folder. As the sandboxing isn’t controlled by or reflected in Privacy & Security settings, that allows TCC, in Files & Folders, to continue showing access restrictions that aren’t applied because the sandbox isn’t applied.

[…]

It’s possible for an app to have unrestricted access to one or more protected folders while its listing in Files & Folders shows it being blocked from access, or for it to have no entry at all in that list.

[…]

Most concerning is the apparent permanence of the access granted, requiring an arcane command in Terminal and a restart in order to reset the app’s privacy settings.

I was aware that access could be granted in this way, but I think I assumed that it only lasted until the app quit. Oakley says that it actually persists until you run tccutil reset All and restart. (I guess the specific TCC identifier is undocumented; clearly it’s not SystemPolicyDocumentsFolder.)

I generally have the opposite problem, with access not lasting as long as expected:

Previously:

Update (2026-04-16): Howard Oakley:

Obtaining a definitive list of locations that are subject to privacy protection in macOS Tahoe 26.4 hasn’t been easy, and I’ve previously relied on information given piecemeal in WWDC sessions. This article reports the results of formal testing using a new version of my test app Insent, and brings some surprises.

Notifications Privacy

Joseph Cox:

The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database, multiple people present for FBI testimony in a recent trial told 404 Media.

Rosyna Keller:

Push Notifications can be sent encrypted (server controls the encryption) and decrypted locally with a UNNotificationServiceExtension running on the device. Signal and other E2EE apps do this.

But then the decrypted notification gets saved to the database.

Rosyna Keller:

So iOS should probably delete an app’s entries from the notifications database when said app is deleted…

More than that, you may not want certain notifications to even be posted. As I discussed back in 2015, the Notification Center settings only control what’s displayed; turning notifications off there does not prevent the notifications from being generated and stored in the database. These days, the database is protected by TCC, but the information is still written to disk. For more privacy, apps should have their own settings that prevent the information from being sent to the system in the first place.

Marcus Mendes (Hacker News):

Signal’s settings include an option that prevents the actual message content from being previewed in notifications. However, it appears the defendant did not have that setting enabled, which, in turn, seemingly allowed the system to store the content in the database.

Patrick Wardle:

AuRevoir (French for ‘goodbye’) is a simple utility to view and remove notifications from Apple’s Notification Database.

Previously:

Mythos and Glasswing

Rich Mogull:

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI chatbot, made two security announcements that were shocking for many but seen as inevitable by those of us working in AI security. First, it announced Mythos Preview, a new, non-public AI model that turns out to be startlingly good at finding security flaws in software. The second was Project Glasswing, Anthropic’s program for getting that capability into the hands of the companies best positioned to fix those flaws before anyone else can exploit them. Apple is one of those companies.

As much as I’d like to downplay the announcements, Mythos and Project Glasswing are very big deals on their own, and harbingers for the future of digital security. Mythos was able to find and exploit new vulnerabilities in every major operating system, including a bug in OpenBSD, an operating system famous for its security, that had been sitting there unnoticed for 27 years.

[…]

We are at the start of a period in which finding software flaws that affect everyday users will become dramatically easier for both attackers and defenders. […] However, over the long run, I believe using AI to identify security vulnerabilities favors defenders, because developers can find and fix many more bugs before shipping software to the public.

Anthropic has a habit of making wild and scary public statements that seem designed to generate headlines and funding but sort of fall apart upon scrutiny. I initially dismissed this as more of the same, but people seem to be taking it seriously.

Paul Haddad:

Our model is so good, it’s not safe to release, yet. Has to be one of the greatest AI marketing stunts ever.

Ben Thompson:

There’s reason for cynicism, given Anthropic’s history, but the part of the “Boy Cries Wolf” myth everyone forgets is that the wolf did come in the end.

Daniel Jalkut:

If Anthropic has really developed an LLM that can suss out security weaknesses better than any other AI, the US government would be foolish to continue shunning them.

Or, rather, if the government believes the marketing, it may want to take control of the company and its technology, like how it restricted restricted civilian nuclear research.

Ben Thompson:

In fact, Amodei already answered the question: if nuclear weapons were developed by a private company, and that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S. military, the U.S. would absolutely be incentivized to destroy that company.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-13): Martin Alderson (Hacker News):

For nearly 20 years the deal has been simple: you click a link, arbitrary code runs on your device, and a stack of sandboxes keeps that code from doing anything nasty. Browser sandboxes for untrusted JavaScript, VM sandboxes for multi-tenant cloud, ad iframes so banner creatives can't take over your phone or laptop - the modern internet is built on the assumption that those sandboxes hold. Anthropic just shipped a research preview that generates working exploits for one of them 72.4% of the time, up from under 1% a few months ago. That deal might be breaking.

[…]

If an LLM can find exploits in sandboxes - which are some of the most well secured pieces of software on the planet - then suddenly every website you aimlessly browse through could contain malicious code which can 'escape' the sandbox and theoretically take control of your device - and all the data on your phone could be sent to someone nasty.

[…]

Equally, sandboxes (and virtualisation) are fundamental to allowing cloud computing to operate at scale.

Jon Martindale:

That’s the pitch in Anthropic’s blog and verbose 250-page report on the model — which includes over 20 pages of Anthropic staff waxing lyrically about their novel impressions of the new model and its “fondness for particular philosophers.”

Alongside the repeated suggestions from Anthropic and its staff that we should be concerned, nay, terrified, of what AI like Claude Mythos can do, they repeatedly suggest they’re unsure if this new AI is conscious.

For the record, it is not. It might be good at finding vulnerabilities in software, but many of them aren’t as potentially damaging as Anthropic wants us all to believe.

[…]

Under the subheading, “and several thousand more,” Anthropic also states that it can’t actually confirm that all of the thousands of bugs Mythos claims to have found are actually critical security vulnerabilities. It’s just extrapolated that number from having found in around 90% of the “198 manually reviewed vulnerability reports, [Anthropic’s] expert contractors agreed with Claude’s severity assessment exactly.”

Colin Cornaby:

When I read about Mythos one thing stood out to me: It didn’t matter if the modal was aligned or safe. You couldn’t afford to run it anyway, and they can’t afford to serve it to you. And that’s a better explanation for why they’ve limited access to Mythos.

[…]

If Mythos is only affordable by the very largest companies – I think cybersecurity is a very shrewd focus by Anthropic. But for reasons that concern me.

[…]

I think this is Anthropic’s next big play. Scare everyone with some security theater. And sell big tech some tiger rocks. And everyone will be too terrified to ever stop paying for Mythos. Big tech might even be willing to pay billions for multiple models.

Ben Thompson:

In other words, Anthropic isn’t facing a marginal cost problem, but an opportunity cost problem: where to allocate its compute.

[…]

The key to handling those costs will be to charge more for Claude going forward; that, by extension, means maintaining pricing power, which leads to a second benefit of not releasing Mythos broadly. Anthropic certainly faces competition from OpenAI; for both frontier labs, however, the real competition in the long run are open source models.

Stefan Esser:

One thing I have not seen discussed about #Mythos. Will @apple really give Claude and therefore potentially the whole world access to their private source code?

Bruce Schneier:

This is very much a PR play by Anthropic—and it worked.

[…]

These models do demonstrate an increased sophistication in their cyberattack capabilities. They write effective exploits—taking the vulnerabilities they find and operationalizing them—without human involvement.

[…]

The security company Aisle was able to replicate the vulnerabilities that Anthropic found, using older, cheaper, public models. But there is a difference between finding a vulnerability and turning it into an attack. This points to a current advantage to the defender.

[…]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about security in what I called “the age of instant software,” where AIs are superhumanly good at finding, exploiting, and patching vulnerabilities. I stand by everything I wrote there. The urgency is now greater than ever.

Previously:

Thursday, April 9, 2026

macOS 26.4.1

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

macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 addresses an issue that could cause the M5 MacBook Air and M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pro models to fail to join 802.1X Wi-Fi networks when using content filter extensions.

See also Mr. Macintosh and Howard Oakley.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-14): macOS 26.4.1 fixes a bug introduced in macOS 26.4 where NSWorkspace.icon(forFile:) didn’t work with custom icons.

iOS 26.4.1 and iPadOS 26.4.1

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

According to Apple’s release notes, the software updates contain unspecified “bug fixes.”

Benjamin Mayo:

While the official release notes were vague, a thread on the developer forums indicates it actually fixes a significant bug related to iCloud data syncing.

Developers had noticed that iPhones running 26.4 would stop receiving iCloud change notifications, which impacted cloud data sync for apps that use CloudKit framework, including Apple’s own Passwords app.

[…]

The bug exists on iPadOS 26.4.0 as well, but macOS Tahoe 26.4 was not afflicted by the same issue.

Adam Engst:

Apple, would it kill you to acknowledge what the bug affected in the release notes? Something like, “Fixes an issue where data synced by iCloud may not appear immediately.”

Apple (MacRumors):

Stolen Device Protection will be automatically enabled on devices that update from iOS 26.4 to iOS 26.4.1.

Adam Engst:

I tested this explicitly with my update, turning Stolen Device Protection off before I installed, and checking immediately afterward, where it remained off.

I don’t understand why Apple keeps announcing that it’s doing this and then not actually doing it, or perhaps only doing it for certain users. If, like me, you don’t want Stolen Device Protection, the idea of being opted into it is a bit scary. If you do want it, you may now have a false sense of security unless you check that it was actually enabled.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-14): Akshay Kumar:

Wi-Fi instability remains a widely discussed problem after updating to iOS 26.4.1. The networking stack continues to struggle with maintaining steady connections to local routers, and Apple has yet to officially acknowledge its flaw, leaving users to rely on community troubleshooting.

[…]

  • Reports confirm the update resolves the CloudKit/iCloud sync bug, which previously caused outdated or missing data across apps like Passwords.

However, users are still discussing lingering issues:

  • Delayed syncing after update
  • Temporary mismatch between devices
  • Apps needing manual refresh to update data

Nick Heer:

We’re four major updates into iOS 26 and Safari still opens tabs from other apps in random places among open tabs. Too bad this massive company has no time to fix bugs.

I’m still seeing lots of freezes in Safari where the bottom bar gets drawn in the center of the screen, and the whole app stops responding to taps.

ClickFix Now Uses Script Editor Instead of Terminal

Thijs Xhaflaire (via Andrew Orr):

Unlike traditional ClickFix campaigns that instruct users to paste commands directly into Terminal, the discovered variant uses a browser-triggered workflow to launch Script Editor.

[…]

  • The page leverages an applescript:// URL scheme
  • Clicking the “Execute” button invokes this URL scheme from the browser
  • The browser prompts the user to allow Script Editor to open
  • Once opened, a pre-filled script is presented for execution

[…]

This payload uses base64 encoding combined with gzip compression to obscure its contents before execution.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-13): Wojciech Reguła:

I described this technique on my blog in 2022.

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Adobe Modifies Your Hosts File for Their Analytics

Thom Holwerda (via Hacker News):

If you’re using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.

[…]

If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.

They used to just hit http://localhost:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.

Sure enough, my /etc/hosts contains:

## Adobe Creative Cloud WAM - Start ##
166.117.29.222 detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com
## Adobe Creative Cloud WAM - End ##

I don’t even use Creative Cloud. Lightroom Classic is the only app I wish I could get from the Mac App Store, because Adobe’s own updater is so intrusive and terrible.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-09): John Gruber:

They didn’t have to do this, of course. In fact, quite obviously, they definitely should not be doing this. Adobe is just a third-party developer, no better, no more trusted, no more important than any other. Imagine if every piece of software on your computer added entries to your /etc/hosts file. Madness.

Update (2026-04-10): Nick Heer:

In his headline, Tsai says this is “for their analytics”, but I do not think that is right. I spent a little time digging into this today and, while I have nothing concrete, I expect this is for integrations between web apps and the company’s desktop apps. In Adobe Express — free web apps for a handful of common image and PDF editing tasks — there are at least two JavaScript files containing references to a ccdDetectUtil, presumably standing for “Creative Cloud Desktop detection utility”. If the user has the desktop apps installed, it appears to suggest the Express app, too, and I am guessing this also powers a thing where you can update a Creative Cloud desktop app by clicking a button on the web.

See also: Hacker News.

Apple Scraping YouTube for AI Training Data

Joe Rossignol:

Three established YouTube channels have sued Apple, alleging that the company violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by unlawfully accessing and scraping millions of copyrighted videos from YouTube to train its AI models.

[…]

Apple “deliberately circumvented” YouTube’s protections against video scraping and “profited substantially” by doing so.

Apple’s research papers indicate that some of the YouTube videos uploaded by the plaintiffs were used to train its AI models, the complaint alleges.

Malcolm Owen:

This apparently involved using computers with rotating IP addresses to scrape the data.

[…]

This data was then used to create an archive that was used to train “Apple AI Video.” As proof of this, the suit refers to an academic paper from Apple’s researchers disclosing it had trained using Panda-70M.

Panda-70M is described as a dataset made entirely of YouTube videos. All acquired via scraping YouTube for content. Ted Entertainment’s content is in a total of 438 videos, with MrShortGameGolf’s content in 8 videos, and Golfholics in 62 videos.

And yet when Musi made an app where users could watch individual YouTube videos, with no circumvention, Apple pulled it from the App Store.

Previously:

Perplexity Privacy Lawsuit

Ashley Belanger (via John Gruber):

Perplexity’s AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users’ knowledge or consent.

“This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account,” the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that “enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users” are shared.

[…]

“‘Incognito’ mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google,” the complaint said. “Even paid users who turned on the ‘Incognito’ feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them.”

Previously:

Apple Granted Stay Over External Purchase Fee

Sarah Perez:

Apple is preparing to take its App Store fight with Epic Games back to the Supreme Court. In a new filing, the iPhone maker said it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review another aspect of this long-running case over App Store fees.

In the meantime, Apple sought to pause the appeals court’s ruling limiting how it can charge for external payments. On Monday, April 6, the court granted Apple’s motion, and Epic Games immediately challenged it.

Juli Clover:

Apple says that it does not want to make multiple major changes to its App Store fee structure. Instead, Apple proposes that the current no-commission setup remain in place until Apple hears back from the Supreme Court. Developers can currently include links to non-App Store purchase options in their apps and Apple charges no fee from purchases made using those links. Apple wants to continue fee-free links and hold off on the long legal battle to determine a fee for the time being.

Marcus Mendes:

Additionally, Epic filed its actual response opposing Apple’s original motion to stay the order. In it, the company reaffirms its stance that “Apple’s effort to stay this Court’s mandate is about nothing other than delay,” and argues that “staying the mandate (…) simply delays relief for consumers and allows Apple to continue reaping supracompetitive profits from IAP.”

Previously:

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Dynamic Notarization Checks?

Tyler Hall:

I submitted a new build of one of my Mac apps to Apple’s Notary service - like every new release. Normally, the notarization goes through in just a few minutes. Today, multiple builds have been pending for 2+ hours. And, weirdly, my API server is getting traffic from those two builds I submitted for notarization.

Does Apple’s notary service…launch and run app submissions? I’ve never noticed this behavior before.

Thomas Reed:

In theory, the notarization process is supposed to weed out anything malicious. In practice, nobody really understands exactly how notarization works, and Apple is not inclined to share details.

[…]

All developers and security researchers know is that notarization is fast. I’ve personally notarized software quite a few times at this point, and it usually takes less than a couple minutes between submission and receipt of the e-mail confirming success of notarization. That means there’s definitely no human intervention involved in the process, as there is with App Store reviews. Whatever it is, it’s solely automated.

Tahoe TCP Overflow Bug

Photon (Hacker News):

After exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47 seconds of continuous uptime, a 32-bit unsigned integer overflow in Apple’s XNU kernel freezes the internal TCP timestamp clock. Once frozen, TIME_WAIT connections never expire, ephemeral ports slowly exhaust, and eventually no new TCP connections can be established at all. ICMP (ping) keeps working. Everything else dies. The only fix most people know is a reboot.

[…]

This is a 32-bit unsigned integer timer wraparound bug in the TCP subsystem, specifically a TCP timestamp counter overflow. The counter in question, tcp_now, is the kernel’s internal TCP clock. When it stops ticking, every timer in the TCP stack that depends on it stops working.

They suggest that the bug may have been around since Catalina, but I’ve had a Mac server running from the Catalina days all the way through Sequoia, with months of uptime, and haven’t seen this problem. I’ve not updated the server to Tahoe yet.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Jason Snell:

As someone who keeps a Mac mini running in my closet, I guarantee you that I have been affected by this bug. […] Unless I’m traveling, I just shrug, reboot the Mac, and go on with my life.

Update (2026-04-10): John Gruber:

I think this bug is new to Tahoe. If you look at Apple’s open-source XNU kernel code — e.g. lines 3,732 to 3,745 in tcp_subr.c — you can see that the lines assigning the time in milliseconds to a uint32_t variable were checked in just six months ago, whereas most of the file is five years old. Also, I personally ran my MacBook Pro — at the time, running MacOS 15.7.2 Sequoia — up to 91 days of uptime in January.

See also: Adam Engst.

Challenges With Ancient Dates in Apple SDKs

Aaron Trickey:

Foundation’s date-handling code has an effective lower bound around January 1, 4713 BC on the Julian calendar. You can create a Date value representing an instant in time below that limit, but many Calendar methods will return unexpected values when you try to do anything with it.

[…]

And NSDatePicker does okay with BC dates. […] UIDatePicker, however, simply cuts off at AD 1.

[…]

When formatting or parsing dates, there is no way to override the built-in era symbols (like “BC” and “AD”) or, in locales where multiple conventions are in use, to choose among them.

[…]

(For going to and from strings, the older DateFormatter type does have such a property [for the Julian to Gregorian transition] defined, but it wasn’t carried forward into the newer Date.FormatStyle API, and it obviously doesn’t affect DateComponents conversions.)

Previously:

John Martellaro, RIP

Bryan Chaffin:

He rose to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Air Force, and he was a NASA scientist. He worked for years at Apple, and most importantly to me, he was a columnist and the voice of reason and humanity at The Mac Observer. He wrote SciFi and a variety of tech columns for several other Mac sites, too.

John was kind, smart, logical, and always reasonable. He was both considerate and considered. Every word that came out of his mouth had a reason to be there and a place to go.

Jeff Gamet:

He’s the guy behind the space shuttle landing simulator I played on an Apple II. He also wrote fantastic analysis pieces and interviewed wonderfully interesting people for his podcast back when we worked together at The Mac Observer.

He wrote for many Mac publications. Just his author page at TMO has 83 pages of article summaries.

Update (2026-04-14): John Gruber:

One of Martellaro’s columns I most remember was one I linked to in January 2010, “How Apple Does Controlled Leaks”[…] Inexplicably, the original piece is no longer hosted at The Mac Observer, but thankfully the Internet Archive has it.

[…]

Another one worth revisiting is this post from December 2011, where I linked to a Martellaro column in which he declared that the success of the Amazon Kindle Fire necessitated that Apple build a 7-inch iPad. “Noted for future claim chowder,” I wrote. Well, Apple debuted the iPad Mini in October 2012.

Many of the Martellaro articles that I linked to over the years are also no longer available outside the Internet Archive.

Update (2026-04-16): Adam Engst:

It has been a tough few weeks for Mac writers. On 26 March 2026, John Martellaro died, followed by Chuck La Tournous on 3 April 2026. I didn’t know either one well, although John wrote what he subsequently told me was his first-ever industry piece for TidBITS back in 1996 (see “Dream to be Different,” 9 September 1996). It captures some of the idealism of Apple’s early days while bemoaning how Apple had lost its way, trading inspiration and wonder for price-cutting. It’s a reminder of how we have long built up Apple as a paragon of virtue, only to be disappointed when the company acts like, well, a company.

Monday, April 6, 2026

Phantom App Updates, Part 3

digidude23:

Is Apple creating updates for 3rd party apps now?

This update from Apple will improve the functionality of this app. No new features are included.

iSan4eZ:

Apple inserted this text into my app and issued an update with the same version.

I’m sure about it as I update the app on my phone as soon as I publish it. Imagine my surprise seeing another update a day later with the same release notes, but this prefix added.

Matt Neuburg (via David Deller):

VLC is also showing this. Moreover, I already updated XScreenSaver to this version, yet now I am seeing this modified listing to update to. […] Personally I'm kind of afraid to download those updates just in case the App Store has been hacked and evil payloads injected somehow.

This has happened twice before, and it’s probably nothing to worry about, but it’s weird that I don’t think we ever got an official explanation from Apple.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): See also: MacRumors and Hacker News.

Notes From Setting Up New Apple Devices

This weekend, I helped my non-techie father migrate to a new iPhone 17e and MacBook Air:

Previously:

Apple Creating All the Apps

John Gruber:

Pogue interviewed Scott Forstall and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone’s software library while not opening it to third-party developers:

“I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use,” he told Forstall. “And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I’m going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible.”

Jesper:

Scott Forstall both arranged for the covert development of app, sandbox and profile infrastructure, as well as talked Steve off the idea of killing jailbreaking and letting it be as long as it was just a fun community experiment.

Indeed, it was Steve catching wind on the latest app developments that ultimately made him change his mind on officially supporting app development, at which point Scott could unveil his skunkworks and presumably shave months off the effort.

[…]

Apple has had a bipolar attitude towards developers for at least the last 40 years, never quite deciding whether we are indispensable or insipid.

[…]

Apple is at its best when the openness of the Woz strain is coupled with the determination and focus of the Jobs strain.

Previously:

Friday, April 3, 2026

macOS 26.4 Paste Protection

Adam Codega:

Apple does not inspect or analyze the contents of what you paste. Even harmless text like "hello world" will trigger the warning under the right conditions.

Instead, Terminal checks where the clipboard content came from. It does this by calling a private API _sourceSigningIdentifier on the NSPasteboard, which reveals the code-signing identity of the application that placed the content on the clipboard.

If the source app matches a predefined list (74 apps total), the paste may be flagged.

Via Jeff Johnson:

The dialog is NOT displayed if Terminal app was opened within the last 30 days, or if developer tools are installed on the Mac.

Dr. Drang:

Surely, I thought, a command that pipes the contents of some random file on the internet into bash for execution would be worth warning about. Nope. I copied the curl command from Safari, pasted it into Terminal, and hit Return. No warning from macOS and my test folder and files disappeared again.

My feelings about this have gone from “I hope Apple doesn’t make it impossible for me to work the way I normally do” to “Looks like Apple isn’t going overboard on the protection” to “Is there any protection here at all?”

Patrick Wardle:

You can read more about ClickFix attacks in MacPaw’s Moonlock Labs write-up: “How ClickFix attacks trick users and infect devices with malware”

[…]

Long before macOS 26.4 (ok, like a month 😄), when Apple added native ClickFix protection, I had already added ClickFix protection to BlockBlock[…]

[…]

The reason Apple doesn’t allow us to subscribe to these events—specifically ES_EVENT_TYPE_RESERVED_1 (the paste event)—is that it’s private, and thus only available to clients that possess the com.apple.private.endpoint-security.client entitlement.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Ferdous Saljooki:

If you’re looking to trigger this on a test machine running macOS 26.4:

  1. /Library/Developer must not exist and no dev tools [including non-Apple tools] should be installed
  2. /var/db/.AppleSetupDone must be older than 24 hours. On a fresh install backdate it: sudo touch -t 202603200000 /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
  3. Clear Terminal’s state: defaults delete com.apple.Terminal LastTerminalStartTime and defaults delete com.apple.Terminal UserAcknowledgedPasteWarning
  4. Quit Terminal completely and relaunch
  5. Copy ANY text from Safari and paste into Terminal

Update (2026-04-13): Howard Oakley:

Although important, devising those defences is continuing the game of cat and mouse: no sooner are they in place than the attackers switch to a different ploy, as they have recently done by abusing a URL scheme and Script Editor. macOS offers a seemingly endless supply of mechanisms available for such abuse.

What has largely escaped attention is how bizarre user behaviour has become. Here’s a victim using a thoroughly GUI operating system copying what to them can only be incomprehensible gibberish and pasting it into Terminal, or running it in Script Editor. Why on earth would a user fall prey to that?

[…]

Over this period, tackling problems on Macs has moved from understanding how to use those GUI tools to blindly entering magic spells in Terminal, and now Script Editor. This trend has been promoted by search engines and most recently AI assistance, both of which are primarily text-based. Ask Google a Mac question, and the chances are you’ll be presented with commands to paste in, rather than a well-written account of how to solve it in the GUI.

I think Apple is also partly behind this change. GUI controls are increasingly absent, hidden, or in different places in different OS versions. Recommending a Terminal command can be simpler and more future-proof.

Previously:

A Letter to John Ternus

Marco Arment (Mastodon):

I urge you, on behalf of everyone who loves computers as much as we do, to protect and cultivate this spirit of Apple’s founders as the company’s top priority:

  • We love computers. We don’t hide that — we celebrate it!
  • We use computers to enhance our minds, lives, and abilities — not to be controlled, restricted, tricked, placated, angered, or surveilled.
  • Our computers work for us, with the utmost respect for our time, attention, money, data, and privacy.
  • We are customers and owners — not resources to be harvested, annoyed, or badgered into ever more services and upsells.

[…]

Making great computers must remain Apple’s top responsibility, because if you don’t do it, nobody will.

Previously:

Small Ways the App Store Could Be Improved for Developers

Jeff Johnson (Mastodon):

There are countless small, practical, mostly uncontroversial ways in which Apple could improve the App Store for developers, yet the App Store has changed relatively little in the 18 years since it was hastily cloned from the iTunes Music Store. […] These changes to the App Store would not require a huge financial investment from Apple. They would simply require Apple to care about the App Store and developers.

[…]

Apple is actually punishing developers for making native apps on each of Apple’s platforms! (In contrast, if I made an “iOS app on Mac,” then there would be only one review.)

[…]

We should be able to edit the metadata after an app has been published. Apple can of course review the edits before the metadata is changed in the App Store.

[…]

Stop using a session cookie for developer website logins!

[…]

App Store Connect is one of the slowest websites I’ve ever used.

[…]

Stop sending a 1.2 MB promo code email—without any actual promo codes!—every time we generate a promo code. […] Several of my apps are a Universal Purchase for iOS and macOS. But for some reason, all promo codes are platform-specific.

[…]

Allow App Store users on older versions of iOS to purchase the last compatible version of an app.

[…]

Show a “contact developer” button when an App Store user leaves a 1 to 3 star rating.

[…]

When an App Store user searches for an app by name, the app should appear first in the results.

Previously:

Thursday, April 2, 2026

iOS 18.7.7 and iPadOS 18.7.7

Jason Snell:

Last December I complained that Apple was withholding iOS 18 security updates from iPhones capable of running iOS 26, leaving users who didn’t want to upgrade to Apple’s latest OS version yet in some security peril.

[…]

The good news: As of Wednesday April 1, Apple is pushing out iOS 18.7.7 to all devices running iOS 18. This update, released last month for devices that were not capable of running iOS 26, is now available even for compatible devices.

[…]

Now the bad news: This is happening because of some really bad security breaches like DarkSword and Coruna.

Meek Geek:

My iPhone was stuck on 18.7.2 since early December and was deprived of FOUR point updates!

I considered this an unprecedented user-hostile move to coerce users to upgrade to iOS 26 when they don’t want to or can’t, and was determined to never buy another iPhone.

Mr. Macintosh:

What a crazy #Apple50 birthday present! 🎁

[…]

Who else is still holding the iOS 18 line like me?😅

Pieter Arntz:

DarkSword is a full‑chain iOS exploit kit that strings together six vulnerabilities in WebKit, Safari, the dynamic loader, and the kernel to go from a browser visiting a malicious website to full device compromise. The chain has been observed in the wild since at least November 2025 in campaigns set up by commercial spyware vendors and state‑sponsored actors.

There is no need to tap a link in Messages or approve an install prompt. Just loading a compromised site or even a malicious advertisement inside Safari is enough to trigger the exploit chain if your device is still missing the relevant patches.

Adam Engst:

After I wrote “DarkSword Exploit Threatens iPhones Still Running iOS 18” (23 March 2026), Apple published the tech note page “Update iOS to protect your iPhone from web attacks,” emphasizing the importance of staying current. It also addresses what those with older versions of iOS should do, noting that Apple released updates for iOS 15 and iOS 16 (to protect against Coruna—see “Older iPhones and iPads Receive Critical Security Updates for Coruna Exploits,” 13 March 2026).

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Cédric Luthi:

And now, thanks to DarkSword, people who are still on iOS 17 have another opportunity to upgrade to iOS 18 which has reappeared in Software Update after being removed a few months ago.

John Gruber:

It feels a bit spiteful that Apple doesn’t support staying a year behind the major version of iOS like they do — thankfully — with MacOS. The vast majority of iPhone and iPad users just do what Apple encourages — they accept the default setting to auto-update when Apple pushes updates to their devices. People who update manually do so by choice, and if that choice is offered, it ought to be supported.

Russia Gets Apple to Turn Off App Store Payments

MacRumors (9to5Mac):

In a new support document, Apple said new purchases, in-app purchases, and subscription renewals are no longer available in Russia unless a user already has funds in their Apple Account balance, which can continue to be used.

[…]

Apple reportedly took this action in response to an order from the Russian government, which allegedly hopes that the lost services revenue from Russian users will pressure the company to add some popular Russian apps back to the App Store, after those apps were removed due to sanctions arising from Russia’s war with Ukraine. The order would presumably end if Apple were to make those apps available again.

That reasoning doesn’t make sense to me.

Will Shanklin:

Why is Russia doing this? Well, the (state-aligned) Russian news outlet RBC reported that government officials said it was to prevent users from paying for VPN apps. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the country has stepped up its attack on the services as part of its “great crackdown” on online information and speech. By mid-January, it had reportedly blocked 70 percent more VPN apps than late last year.

Valerie Hopkins et al.:

The Russian authorities have deepened their crackdown on popular foreign apps and have begun periodically turning off mobile internet across the country, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build up censorship technology that they plan to expand.

Anastasiia Iurshina:

What follows is the testimony of an IT specialist living and working in Russia, describing what internet control looks like in practice in early 2026. They have worked in IT both for Russian and international companies for over 20 years, including software development, machine learning, and information security.

Matthew Luxmoore and Milàn Czerny:

The Kremlin has struggled for years to curb internet freedoms and curtail the reach of Western tech platforms that have amassed huge user bases inside Russia. A new Russian super-app is now making that goal possible.

Max is a messaging and e-commerce platform run by tech giant VK that is expanding to offer everything from taxi-hailing services to electronic passport wallets, modeled on China’s WeChat.

With full-throated government backing, Max is being pushed by pro-Kremlin celebrities as a safer equivalent to Telegram and WhatsApp, the popular messaging platforms now being throttled by Russian censors.

Previously:

Mobile Web Browsing Benchmarks 2026

Eric Seckler (MacRumors):

Today, we are proud to celebrate a major milestone: Android is now the fastest mobile platform for web browsing.

Through deep vertical integration across hardware, the Android OS, and the Chrome engine, the latest flagship Android devices are setting new performance records, outperforming all other mobile competitors in the key web performance benchmarks Speedometer and LoadLine and providing a level of responsiveness previously unseen on mobile.

[…]

Where traditional benchmarks often focus on synthetic tasks, LoadLine uses recorded, stable versions of select real-world websites. This includes simpler and more complex sites with varied characteristics, reflecting the most important types of mobile web content, such as shopping, search, and news portals.

LoadLine has proven that Android’s page load performance is world-class: Top tier Android phones score up to 47% higher than non-Android competitors. And this matters: LoadLine scores also correlate well (-0.8) with median and high-percentile page load latency in the field.

John Gruber:

Speedometer is a benchmark anyone can run just by visiting the benchmark’s website. Running LoadLine, especially on an iOS device, is an enormous hassle that involves two USB-C-to-Ethernet adapters, enabling Remote Automation and the Web Inspector in Safari, installing custom certificates on the iOS device, and installing custom software on an attached Mac.

You will be shocked to learn that the three unnamed Android phones outscored the “competing mobile phone” by significantly larger margins on LoadLine than Speedometer.

Matt Birchler:

Likely due to corporate lameness, they didn’t put specific labels on their bar chart, they just identified that 3 Android OEMs have devices that performed better on the Speedometer 3.1 benchmark than some “competing mobile phone platform”.

[…]

I happen to be someone who has the fastest iPhone and the fastest Android phone from the most popular Android maker in the US: the iPhone 17 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra.

I guess today is a day of benchmarks for me, because I literally just posted a bunch of benchmarks, including GeekBench scores which showed the Galaxy matching the iPhone in single-core, and beating it in multi-core.

But yeah, I get the same results as Google did, although the iPhone scored a bit lower on my device for some reason[…]

Previously:

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

CloudKit Problems With iOS 26.4

Lukas Kubanek:

Looks like Apple broke CloudKit sync in OS 26.4. Remote notifications don’t seem to arrive, so no updates unless the app is relaunched.

Sean Heber:

There are so many annoying limits and throttles when dealing with iCloud/CloudKit. Now I ran into one where the subscriptions that let you know when content changed are also throttled and limited. From what I’m reading, I might be in push-notification-jail for 24 hours now because I triggered a ton of changes during a test.

Makes it a tad hard to know when I broke something vs. when iCloud just decides to stop sending me stuff for a while.

Sean Heber:

Has anyone had a CKSubscription just… stop? It’s a zone change subscription. It’s supposed to generate an invisible push so I can refresh things. This used to work. Then early yesterday it didn’t work anymore. I’ve tried everything I can think of including reverting all code entirely back to a state from a few days ago when I know it worked. But it still doesn’t work. I’ve rebooted things. I’ve reinstalled things. It’s been 27ish hours now since I last saw it work.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Looks like the CloudKit sync issue in *OS 26.4 is real (I can repro with all of my apps), and has the very distinct potential to lead to catastrophic data loss and/or sync conflicts across effectively all apps. Apps only receive changes from the cloud after being quit and relaunched.

Amy Worrall:

Anyone know if the iOS 26.5 beta fixes the CloudKit subscriptions not working bug from 26.4?

Ged Maheux:

It’s hilarious that the iOS 26.5 beta release notes make no mention that they fixed this massive regression with iCloud push sync Apple broke in 26.4.

It seems serious enough to warrant a 26.4.1 update.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Adam Engst:

The good news is that Apple has acknowledged and addressed the bug, and multiple developers have confirmed the fix is present in the iOS 26.5 beta. However, that release may not appear until mid-May, so we can hope Apple will release an iOS 26.4.1 patch to address it sooner.

Update (2026-04-09): There’s more information about the bug in the Apple Developer Forums and on Reddit, and it’s apparently fixed in iOS 26.4.1.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-10): Gui Rambo:

It looks like the CloudKit silent notification bug was caused by some sort of token validation added in iOS 26.4 that was dropping notifications from CloudKit. Fixed in iOS 26.4.1 by bypassing the validation for notifications that come from CloudKit.

See also: Khaos Tian.

CKSyncEngine

WWDC 2023:

Discover how CKSyncEngine can help you sync people’s CloudKit data to iCloud. Learn how you can reduce the amount of code in your app when you let the system handle scheduling for your sync operations. We’ll share how you can automatically benefit from enhanced performance as CloudKit evolves, explore testing for your sync implementation, and more.

The documentation:

The sync engine uses an opaque type to track its internal state, and it’s your responsibility to persist that state to disk and make it available across app launches so the engine can function properly.

For example, if you delete an object while offline, you can send that change to the engine and let it keep track of whether it’s been pushed to the server. In theory, you don’t have to manage tombstones yourself as long as you persist the engine’s state. When you add or change objects, the state stores just the IDs so it shouldn’t grow too huge.

There’s some sample code, but it’s frustrating in that the conflict resolution is rather basic. I think you actually can access the ancestorRecord to do a three-way merge, but they don’t show that.

Sean Heber (previously):

I removed CKSyncEngine and did it all myself solving the problems we needed solved. Maintaining a synced database of items with unique IDs supporting cascade deletes and automatically handling conflicts without much participation from the server which knows nothing of our needs.

[…]

One of the key problems we had was how CloudKit replays deletion tombstones going way back. Tapestry would download feed items, make a CKRecord, and put it in iCloud to sync to other devices. Then later when the item gets old, we delete them. Over time, with busy feeds, you’re looking at hundreds of expiring items per day for some people.

[…]

Those replays are a total waste of time but it’s just how it works. It could take hours to restore the relatively small number of actually current records as CloudKit replays dead records the new install never had in the first place. Thousands and thousands of them.

I had to rearchitect everything to redesign it around this one unchangeable behavior.

You could probably fetch the initial data manually, using CloudKit directly, before initializing CKSyncEngine. Then it would take a while for it to catch up, but at least the app would be usable. It seems like the engine should just handle this better, though.

Christian Selig (Mastodon, tweet):

I’ve had a lot of fun working with CKSyncEngine over the last month or so. I truly think it’s one of the best APIs Apple has built, and they’ve managed to take a very complex topic (cloud syncing) and make it very digestible and easy to integrate, without having to get into the weeds of CKOperation and whatnot like you had to in previous years.

More interesting for a blog post, perhaps, I also had a fair few questions going into it (having very little CloudKit knowledge prior to this), and I thought I’d document those questions and the corresponding answers, as well as general insights I found to potentially save a future CKSyncEngine user some time, as I really couldn’t find easy answers to these anywhere (nor did modern LLMs have any idea).

[…]

But you should not have multiple CKSyncEngine instances managing a single private database (I naively tried to do this to have a nice separation of concerns between different types of data in the app). The instances trip over each othre very quickly, with it not being clear which instance receives the sync events.

[…]

In this [the case of quotaExceeded] Apple pauses the queue until the user frees up space or buys more (or after several minutes, specified by retryAfterSeconds) but does not add your item back, which seems weird to me, so just add it back. But you also can’t just add it back, as that would put it at the end of the queue, so you have to insert it back at the beginning of the queue so it’s the next item that will be retried (since it just failed). Only, there’s no API for this, so grab all the items in the queue, then empty the queue, then re-add all items back to the queue with your failed item at the front.

Stéphane Lizeray:

CKSyncEngine has greatly simplified the integration with CloudKit and the error handling though. It was way more difficult before, I would say almost impossible before.

[…]

There are several issues here. The first one is not related to CKSyncEngine but to the replay API of CloudKit. The second one is that you have options when fetching changes to fix this issue (Scope + prioritizedZoneIds) but it is supposed you designed your schema accordingly. And it didn’t exist with CKFetchRecordZoneChangesOperation only with CKSyncEngine… The third issue is that you can’t use ZoneOptions.desiredKeys

See also: Harmony, which uses CKSyncEngine on GRDB (via Aaron Pearce).

Previously:

axios Compromised on NPM

Ashish Kurmi (Hacker News):

axios is the most popular JavaScript HTTP client library with over 100 million weekly downloads. On March 30, 2026, StepSecurity identified two malicious versions of the widely used axios HTTP client library published to npm: axios@1.14.1 and axios@0.30.4. The malicious versions inject a new dependency, plain-crypto-js@4.2.1, which is never imported anywhere in the axios source code. Its sole purpose is to execute a postinstall script that acts as a cross platform remote access trojan (RAT) dropper, targeting macOS, Windows, and Linux. The dropper contacts a live command and control server and delivers platform specific second stage payloads. After execution, the malware deletes itself and replaces its own package.json with a clean version to evade forensic detection.

Carly Page:

The releases didn’t come through the project’s usual build process either. Security firm StepSecurity found that both versions were published via the compromised npm account of “jasonsaayman,” the project’s primary maintainer, who was reportedly locked out of the account while the packages were being pushed.

The attackers swapped the account’s email address for an anonymous ProtonMail inbox and pushed the infected packages manually via the npm CLI, completely bypassing the project’s GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline and the safeguards developers tend to assume are in place.

Previously:

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Parachute Backup Acquired

Florian Albrecht (Reddit, Mac Power Users):

The team of Leitmotif is pleased to announce that, as of March 25, 2026, Parachute Backup is part of Leitmotif GmbH. Offloader and Outpost Launcher remain with Eric Mann. Parachute Backup 1.5.0 is the first version released by Leitmotif GmbH. Parachute Backup remains a one-time purchase, and its privacy-first approach remains unchanged.

Previously:

MacBook Neo Sales

Tim Cook:

Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers. We love seeing the enthusiasm!

Joe Rossignol (Hacker News):

Apple also released MacBook Air models with the M5 chip and MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips last week, so it was a big week for new Macs, but the affordable MacBook Neo is likely driving the record number of first-time Mac buyers.

If you want a MacBook Neo, you may have to wait. In the U.S., MacBook Neo orders placed through Apple’s online store today are estimated to be delivered between April 6 and April 13.

MacDailyNews:

Apple’s newly launched MacBook Neo, the company’s most affordable laptop ever, has become an immediate hit, selling out quickly and prompting the tech giant to double its production orders to a targeted 10 million units, according to supply chain sources.

[…]

Industry observers had previously projected MacBook Neo shipments of around 4.5–5 million units for 2026, but the current momentum and production ramp suggest significantly higher potential. The device’s ability to attract first-time Mac buyers while maintaining Apple’s signature build quality and ecosystem integration positions it as a potential game-changer in the affordable laptop space.

Mr. Macintosh:

Apple tried this before… but it took 25 YEARS to finally nail the perfect price

12" iBook G3-G4 2001-06 $999❌
13" MacBook 2006–11 $999❌
13" MacBook Air 2008-17 $999❌
11" Macbook Air 2011–15 $899❌
13" M1 MacBook Air 2020-24 $999❌

13" MacBook Neo 2026 $599✅

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Joe Rossignol:

In the latest edition of his Culpium newsletter today, Culpan said the MacBook Neo is selling so well that Apple’s supply of the binned A18 Pro chips with a 5-core GPU will “run out” before the company is able to fully satisfy demand for the laptop.

MacBook Neo Reviews

John Gruber (Hacker News):

But just using the Neo, without any consideration that it’s memory limited, I haven’t noticed a single hitch. I’m not quitting apps I otherwise wouldn’t quit, or closing Safari tabs I wouldn’t otherwise close. I’m just working — with an even dozen apps open as I type this sentence — and everything feels snappy.

[…]

The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off. Obviously this is a cost-saving measure. But the Neo’s trackpad doesn’t feel cheap in any way. You can click it anywhere you want — top, bottom, middle, corner — and the click feels right.

[…]

The Neo has no notch. Instead, it has a larger black bezel surrounding the entire display than do the MacBook Airs and Pros. I consider this an advantage for the Neo, not a disadvantage.

[…]

The Neo crystallizes the post-Jony Ive Apple. The MacBook “One” was a design statement, and a much-beloved semi-premium product for a relatively small audience. The Neo is a mass-market device that was conceived of, designed, and engineered to expand the Mac user base to a larger audience. It’s a design statement too, but of a different sort — emphasizing practicality above all else. It’s just a goddamn lovely tool, and fun too.

Jesper:

It is not a perfect product. That’s what’s good about it. It’s a product borne of a mature and confident knowledge of the usual standards, and respectfully considering how a different set of circumstances could affect those standards. Without huffiness, belittling and drama, with humor, with heart, with empathy. More of that, please.

Matt Birchler:

I bring this up because, of course, the MacBook Neo is able to run all of your professional apps, and I’m glad Tyler Stallman showed this off in his video. Consider how much faster the MacBook Neo must be than a 2012 Mac mini, and tell me that you can’t do awesome, creative work on this thing.

Jason Snell:

Beyond the price, the most impressive thing about the MacBook Neo is that it is just a Mac like any other. It does all the things you’d expect a Mac to do.

[…]

It runs all the apps. If you’re patient and careful, you could use it in ways that are wildly beyond what Apple recommends. (I’ve been misusing Logic Pro as a podcast editing app for more than a decade, on devices vastly more underpowered than the MacBook Neo, and it hasn’t been a problem.)

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Some good news: I don’t know if Apple had a change of heart or what, but you can enable Xcode’s intelligence features on the MacBook Neo with 8GB RAM, including ChatGPT and Codex support. Previously, this was limited to 16GB devices — I have no idea when that switch happened? 😯

Juli Clover (review):

[We] picked one up to take a look at the new machine and share some first impressions.

Joe Rossignol:

The first reviews of the MacBook Neo were published today by selected publications and YouTube channels, ahead of the laptop launching on Wednesday.

[…]

The big question: is just 8GB of RAM enough? Most reviewers say yes.

Joe Rossignol:

The Verge today showed the MacBook Neo had up to 8× slower sustained SSD read and write speeds in a benchmark test compared to the new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

Matt Birchler:

I used Magic Disk Benchmark to test the read and write speeds of the 3 Macs I have access to (and can install a random disk app on, aka not my M5 Pro work Mac). As you can see, there’s a pretty enormous gap between the Neo and even a base M2 Mac mini.

Ryan Christoffel:

Today the MacBook Neo arrives in users’ hands, and in his review, MKBHD says it’s potentially “Apple’s most disruptive product” in the last 10+ years.

Gábor Szárnyas (Hacker News):

Here’s the thing: if you are running Big Data workloads on your laptop every day, you probably shouldn’t get the MacBook Neo. Yes, DuckDB runs on it, and can handle a lot of data by leveraging out-of-core processing. But the MacBook Neo’s disk I/O is lackluster compared to the Air and Pro models (about 1.5 GB/s compared to 3–6 GB/s), and the 8 GB memory will be limiting in the long run.

Andrew Cunningham:

One reason why I’ve been so curious about Apple’s long-rumored budget MacBook was because it would be really, really nice to have something close to $500 that a person could just go out and buy without having to worry about whether they were getting the right thing (you wouldn’t want to mistake the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-32P-C0Z2 for the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-71P-59PZ, would you??), or whether it would be available at all. Something with Apple’s typical warranty support and network of retail stores behind it. And something that would integrate better with an iPhone than Microsoft and Google’s platforms are able to.

[…]

That the MacBook Neo is using a smartphone chip was not a surprise. What surprised me a little was that it’s still acting like it’s in a smartphone, with short bursts of peak performance in both single- and multi-core tests that fall off sharply to keep the chip inside a tiny power envelope.

[…]

It seems as though Apple has left some performance on the table here—based on our testing, even a 7 W or 8 W power envelope would have been enough to improve its sustained clock speeds, while still keeping overall power consumption reasonably low. It’s possible that Apple keeps the power envelope low to help extend the battery life, since the Neo’s 36.5 WHr battery is only 73 percent as big as the M1 Air’s 49.9 WHr battery, and it comes with a similar screen, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Andy Ihnatko:

I imagine that the only people who will be disappointed with the Neo will be people who were willing and able to spend $1099 on the MacBook Air that they actually need, and tried to save some money by downgrading. Or, people who wind up doing something that I often do: treating the $1099 as a budget, not as an MSRP. A $699 maxed-out Neo leaves you with a $400 bankroll for an external SSD, a USB-C external display in a travel-friendly folio stand, and other niceties. It’s tempting.

Rui Carmo:

To my surprise, it ran this site’s 3D visualization quite snappily, which is no small feat (most PC laptops struggle with it, regardless of what browser and GPU they have). And although I didn’t have the chance to run any benchmarks, RAM usage in Activity Monitor was pretty much OK after launching a gaggle of Apple apps, which wasn’t surprising (their software load doesn’t include any of the Electron bloat everyone has to deal with to some degree).

In general, I think it makes a killer Chromebook/PC laptop replacement for school, and although I expect the A18 to not be a powerhouse, it felt quite snappy, even with multiple apps open.

Matt Birchler:

Novelty is a hell of a drug, but I also think there’s something to specific products that, despite them clearly not being the best technical option available, still have a draw for some reason.

M.G. Siegler:

I keep trying to find a breaking point in my own workflows, but I honestly can’t. Yes, it’s ever-so-slightly slower at certain tasks. And yes, my workflows are admittedly pretty light, dominated by web-usage with a few native Mac apps sprinkled in here and there. But I gave it a solid week of daily usage. There’s nothing I would consider a deal-breaker here or even close to it. So I’m keeping it.

I’m honest-to-god surprised by this. I had assumed I might return it and opt for an M5 machine. Instead, I think I’m gonna trade in one of my other Macs.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Reviews keep saying the MacBook Neo puts other laptops ‘in its price range’ to shame, but it very clearly puts PC laptops four times its price to shame. And that’s before accounting for the RAMpocalypse which is going to clip the PC market’s wings this year. There’s a potential future where Apple becomes the largest consumer PC manufacturer by market share, effectively overnight, depending on how this plays out. A perfectly-timed kill shot for an industry in turmoil

Andreas Osthoff (Slashdot):

After our initial benchmarks, we can clearly say that Apple pretty much just toys around with the competition from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm because the single-core performance of the MacBook Neo is better than any other mobile processor (except for Apple’s M4 and M5 chips).

Jason Snell:

Antonio G. Di Benedetto of The Verge has reviewed the MacBook Neo as well as numerous PC laptops, and he thinks it’s not going to go well for PC makers[…]

Framework (via Mike Rockwell):

Framework founder Nirav Patel heads to the Apple store to get the new MacBook Neo and takes it apart to see how it compares with our Framework Laptop 12. From repairability to design choices, this comparative teardown explores two very different, but overlapping approaches to building entry-level laptops.

Matt Birchler:

It feels as good as Apple’s premium laptops, and in one or two specific ways, actually feels better. Whether it’s the friendly design or just the new feet, which I think are significantly nicer than the ones on Apple’s Air and Pro machines, it feels outstanding to hold and to use.

[…]

In my experience, the MacBook Neo performs worse across the board than that M1 MacBook Pro. Yes, the single-core performance is higher, but there are fewer cores, and the efficiency cores are even slower. There’s also half the RAM, which I think is probably the biggest bottleneck in this device. Paired with the significantly slower SSD (about 2/3 the speed of M1 drives and 1/5 the speed of M5 drives), the system has to rely on swapping to the SSD even more. So while I can open a good number of apps at once and the experience is okay, it’s worth noting that the experience is worse than doing the same things on an M1 with 16GB RAM. If I could have the MacBook Neo with its outstanding construction and hardware trade-offs, but put an M1 with 16GB RAM in it, I would choose the M1 every single time.

Jason Snell:

If you are a savvy shopper with a very limited budget and need that push beyond what the MacBook Neo can give you, you are probably better off searching for a used or refurbished MacBook Air. Last week on MacBreak Weekly, Christina Warren made a strong case for picking up a refurbished or used M3 or M4 MacBook Air, which would cost slightly more than a MacBook Neo but far outclass it in terms of features.

But this entire conversation misses the most important thing about the MacBook Neo: It is sold in every Apple Store, on Apple’s website, and in every Apple sales channel. Most people won’t think to cruise for a refurbished Air—they will just go down to their local store, or pop onto Amazon, and shop for a computer. That’s why the MacBook Neo is important. It’s available to everyone, everywhere, and Apple will stand behind it as a new product.

John Voorhees:

Seeing is believing when it comes to emulation, so it’s worth seeing how your favorite systems fare before diving into emulation on the Neo yourself, but I was surprised to see how well the Neo did even on systems as recent as the Nintendo Switch 1. Beyond the GameCube, it’s hit or miss what will run well, but older systems like NES, Game Boy, GBA, SNES, PS1, PSP, 3DS, PS2, Dreamcast, and Saturn games all ran well and in most cases at upscaled resolutions and with shaders applied.

See also:

Previously:

Friday, March 27, 2026

Goodbye, Mac Pro

Chance Miller (Hacker News, Mac Power Users, Slashdot):

Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.

[…]

The Mac Pro has lived many lives over the years. Apple released the current Mac Pro industrial design in 2019 alongside the Pro Display XDR (which was also discontinued earlier this month). That version of the Mac Pro was powered by Intel, and Apple refreshed it with the M2 Ultra chip in June 2023. It has gone without an update since then, languishing at its $6,999 price point even as Apple debuted the M3 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio last year.

With that in mind, the Mac Studio is clearly set up to be the ‘pro’ desktop Mac of the future in Apple’s lineup. The Mac Studio can be configured with the M3 Ultra chip and a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, paired with 256GB of unified memory and 16TB of SSD storage.

Juli Clover:

In addition to discontinuing the Mac Pro, Apple today discontinued the $700 wheel add-on kit that it sold for the Mac Pro.

Joe Rossignol:

Below, we reflect on nearly two decades of the Mac Pro.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

So after 2012 — and arguably after 2010 — there was one trash can Mac Pro in 2013, one Intel “new tower” Mac Pro in 2019, and one Apple Silicon Mac Pro in 2023. No speed bumps in between any of them. Three revisions in the last 14 years. So, yeah, not a big shock that they’re just pulling the plug officially.

It’s not a shock that a product that was underpowered and overpriced wouldn’t sell well, leading to cancellation. The mystery is why Apple seemed to repeatedly come up with designs that were not what customers were asking for and why it couldn’t manage to do basic speed bump updates. Presumably the answer is internal politics. I’m not sure what to make of the reporting that John Ternus was apparently one of the champions of the Mac Pro and that he’s likely to be the next CEO, yet the product is being killed.

Andrew Cunningham:

Schiller said in that 2017 meeting that the new Mac Pro was being designed “so that we can keep it fresh with regular improvements,” and Apple did quietly update the system a couple of times with fresh GPU options. But by the time the Mac Pro finally arrived in late 2019, Apple was just months away from introducing the first of the Apple Silicon Macs, and the writing had been on the wall for Intel Macs for a while.

Apple Silicon ended up being the final nail in the coffin for the concept of the Mac Pro. The chips’ unified memory architecture meant memory upgrades were impossible. Their integrated GPUs meant they didn’t support external graphics cards from AMD or Nvidia and couldn’t be upgraded over time.

Jesper:

What does matter in audio production is latency. Thunderbolt is a cable, when most PCIe slots are a handful of inches through one electrical trace away from the CPU. Thunderbolt does add processing delay compared to on-board slots directly.

No doubt a bunch of PCIe expansion chassis will appear to cater to the professionals that used the Mac Pro for its only remaining strength, its slots.

It will be very interesting to see how the workarounds will fare at solving problems for professionals that Apple were, until fairly recently, valuing highly enough to publicly apologize to.

Eric Schwarz:

One little thing that I came across is that Apple now no longer sells a Mac with expansion slots. While the argument could be made that the 2013-2019 “trash can” Mac Pro also put those slots on hiatus, it did feature upgradeable RAM and storage, as well as a modular card for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Prior to that, the last time no Macs included expansion slots was before the introduction of the Macintosh II and my beloved Macintosh SE.

D. Griffin Jones:

Apple decided to start caring about the Mac Pro again at the worst possible time. The Intel Mac Pro, while excellent, arrived just six months before the announcement that the Mac would transition to Apple silicon. After which, the Mac Pro didn’t offer any better performance than the Mac Studio. Just the card slots — which you couldn’t put a GPU in.

Due to Apple silicon’s all-in-one architecture, the Ultra-tier chip pushes the limits of what Apple can fabricate at a reasonable price. The bigger the chip is on the die, the lower the yield of good chips will be made, raising the cost further.

Apple reportedly experimented with making a higher-tier chip than the Ultra — often referred to as the “Extreme” chip, though the name is just speculation. It was canceled for being too expensive.

Stephen Hackett:

Had Apple stuck to the original timeline, and killed off the 2013 Mac Pro in favor of an iMac “specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market,” back in 2017, Apple could have avoided putting out the best Intel Mac ever, less than a year before the transition to Apple silicon.

Did Apple know in 2017 that 2020 was the year the M1 would make it out of the lab? Probably not, but it doesn’t make the timing any more painful.

[…]

The company yanked the pro market around for over a decade. The Mac Pro was old, then it was new! It did not support internal expansion, then it did! With every change of its mind, Apple lost more and more trust of would-be Mac Pro buyers.

Colin Cornaby:

Without GPU or RAM upgradability its days were numbered. MPX was supposed the be the ecosystem of the future but went nowhere.

I wish the Mac Studio was more upgradable. And I’ll miss buying Macs that don’t seem disposable. I’m already not sure how much RAM I should get in a Mac Studio. It’s a balance between being locked in to what you choose, and now treating the machine as something you’re not going to keep long term.

Jeff Johnson:

Key pre-trash Mac Pro features for me:

  • Hard drive bays
  • Expandable RAM
  • Lots of ports, including audio
  • Under the desk
  • Affordable! Starting at $2500

Mac Studio is affordable, but it lacks the other features. (Its ports are fewer in number and kind.)

Matt Gallagher:

I’m pretty sad about the death of the Mac Pro. I owned a 2009 Mac Pro and it lasted a decade (upgraded everything). I stopped using it only because it got damaged. I didn’t get another because in early 2019, I couldn’t.

Between 2012 and 2017, every Mac Apple released was just “not for me” (a lifelong Mac user). This was right in the middle of macOS being neglected in favor of iOS and hardware felt it too.

Guy English:

If it wasn’t going to be great then I think it’s the right thing to retire it. One day maybe it’ll ride again.

John Siracusa:

To better days…

Marco Arment:

Let’s all come together as a community and help @siracusa through this difficult time.

Jason Snell:

RIP to a real one, but it’s time for us all to move on.

BasicAppleGuy (post):

RIP Mac Pro

Previously:

Update (2026-03-31): Sherief Farouk:

[Integrated GPUs not being able to support external graphics cards] is patently false and I say that as a Mac GPU driver developer who worked on Mac Pro driver support till it was EOL - the lack of support is an OS choice, ARM devices with integrated GPUs support PCIe GPUs just fine, Apple just chose to actively block that path.

Sherief Farouk:

I’d make an educated guess that TB latency vs PCIe for audio doesn’t matter

[…]

looks like there are cold hard numbers out there about Thunderbolt latency on Mac[…]

Adam Engst:

Early in its run, the Mac Pro was the choice of people like me who considered themselves professionals because they needed a bit more processing power, additional RAM to avoid swapping, faster (and less cluttered) internal storage, and support for multiple displays. I bought an early 2009 “cheese grater” Mac Pro for those reasons, paying $2279.

Chris Liscio:

I was nervous about splashing out on the iMac Pro, because we were promised that something big was coming soon. But the polished-stainless-steel Mac that Apple introduced in 2019 was…clearly not for me. Instead, it was aimed squarely at movie and music production environments: with multi-GPU upgrade options for 3D work, video codec accelerators, PCIe slots for wacky audio gear.

[…]

For me, the death of the Mac Pro as a viable development system started around 2013. It wasn’t about upgrades or GPUs. It was simpler than that: I felt like one of very few suckers who bought my specific configuration, and nobody at Apple actually used a similar machine. For example, my 2013 Mac Pro had AMD FirePro D700 GPUs (a rare configuration) that often had issues with graphics corruption. Later, my iMac Pro—with its 18 cores—gave me all sorts of trouble in Xcode, often compiling Capo more slowly than my 2013 Mac Pro could. Adding insult to injury, these machines were not cheap! I tried to “throw money at the problem (of making big computations go faster)”, but I actually just bought headaches.

Benjamin Mayo:

In retrospect, it’s kinda funny how much goodwill the 2017 Mac Roundtable generated when the two products that came out of it, iMac Pro and Mac Pro, were essentially abandoned after just one generation.

Riccardo Mori:

The 2023 Apple Silicon Mac Pro is existing evidence that today’s Apple does not understand an important segment of their audience. It’s a machine that looks like the result of someone at Apple asking ChatGPT how to make a new Mac Pro. “But look, it’s still expandable!”, they point at proprietary slots, while the motherboard sports an SoC with integrated CPU, GPU, and storage.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

The actual last Mac Pro was the 2019 Intel model — the Apple Silicon Mac Pro was just a $4,000 chassis upsell with empty space for a hamster

Benjamin Mayo:

There is no meaningful difference in the state of play between today and June 2023, when the M2 Ultra Mac Pro was released. Even on release, it was considered extraneous given Apple also offered the Mac Studio with the exact same chip, in a significantly smaller case and at a lower price point.

[…]

Nevertheless, I believe Apple had more ambitious ideas for the Mac Pro in the Apple Silicon era, but this work failed to pan out as they hoped. This is signposted by the fact that during the launch event for the Mac Studio in March 2022, presenter John Ternus went out of his way to tease that an update for the Mac Pro was still forthcoming. It is uncharacteristic of them to talk about anything regarding future products, but they did it here because they wanted to front-run the notion that the Mac Pro had been usurped, and that Apple’s highest-end customers should keep waiting to see what cool things they would do.

I think the intent was for Apple to launch a workstation M-series chip, something that could only be housed in the thermal envelope of the Mac Pro chassis. There were rumours at the time of a quad-Max chip, perhaps called the M2 Extreme. That never came to pass.

See also: The Talk Show and MacRumors Forums.

Update (2026-04-13): Mike Rockwell:

Imagine an alternate reality where the Mac Pro became a system optimized for large amounts of internal storage. You could pop it open and there were six 3.5-inch SATA drive slots and a few M.2 NVMe slots as well.

[…]

There’s a lot of ways that Apple could have made the Mac Pro a unique and interesting computer in their lineup that truly had a reason to exist. But instead, they chose to make it a Mac Studio in an overpriced chassis that no longer served a purpose.

macOS 26.4’s Script Editor Won’t Open Some Older AppleScripts

Adam Engst:

Allen Gainsford first reported the issue, noting that many of his BBEdit AppleScripts no longer worked after upgrading to macOS 26.4. Attempting to run them produced macOS error code -1758 (errOSADataFormatObsolete)[…]

Further investigation by Dafuki revealed a nuanced situation. In his testing, many AppleScripts—even some dating back to 2006—continued to run without issues when triggered from apps like BBEdit and Keyboard Maestro. However, others wouldn’t open, and after failing to open one script, Script Editor would then refuse to open any subsequent scripts until it was quit and relaunched.

He found that the issue appears to involve older compiled scripts that rely on legacy storage formats—hence the “data format is obsolete” errors. Allen Gainsford even found that one affected script had a 0-byte data fork and a 26 KB resource fork, indicating that the actual script was stored in the resource fork—a legacy structure macOS supports only for backward compatibility.

Although Script Editor’s 2.11 version number didn’t change from macOS 26.3.1 to macOS 26.4, Apple did increment its build number from 233 to 234, indicating that it received some changes.

A workaround is to use the retired Script Debugger. I wonder whether osacompile could also update the script’s format.

Previously:

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Ads in Apple Maps

Joe Rossignol (Hacker News):

Apple is “exploring” the idea of showing search ads in the Apple Maps app, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

[…]

Ads in the Apple Maps app would not be the traditional banner ads that you see on websites, but rather paid search results. For example, a fast food chain could pay Apple to appear near the top of the results when a user searches for “burgers” or “fries.” Many similar apps already offer search ads, including Google Maps, Waze, and Yelp.

Kyle Hughes:

If a company has maxed out what they can earn through hardware and software quality then other screws need to be tightened.

[…]

I think this is important to consider as a third-party developer.

It used to be that hardware sales driven by the software platform were Apple’s best path to growth. Writing software for that platform added value to that platform: third-party developers were contributing to the flywheel.

Now, service revenue is the best path to growth. Writing software for the platform does not contribute to service revenue and can’t move the needle on selling more hardware. It is a maintenance-level concern.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple has officially announced that ads are coming to the Apple Maps app on the iPhone and iPad in the U.S. and Canada starting “this summer.”

Apple says businesses in the U.S. and Canada only will be able to place ads in search results and at the top of a new “Suggested Places” section in the app.

[…]

Similar to the ads that are already shown in App Store search results on the iPhone and iPad, ads in Apple Maps will have an “Ad” label, and Apple promises strong privacy protections. For example, Apple says a user’s location and the ads they see and interact with in Apple Maps are not associated with a user’s Apple Account.

Nick Heer:

The way they are “clearly marked” is with a light blue background and a small “Ad” badge, though it is worth noting Apple has been testing an even less obvious demarcation for App Store ads. In the case of the App Store, I have found the advertising blitz junks up search results more than it helps me find things I am interested in.

This is surely not something users are asking for. I would settle for a more reliable search engine, one that prioritizes results immediately near me instead of finding places in cities often hundreds of kilometres away.

Ant Dude:

Is it me or does iPhone’s iOS Maps app not show the details when using its offline map like in Bozeman, MT, USA? Like searching for its airport, restaurants, stores, etc. This is in an old iPhone 11 Pro Max’s iOS v17.6.1. I tested with airplane on to disable both cell and wifi to test out the newly downloaded offline 1 GB map area.

I’ve found that it works much worse than Google Maps when offline. It won’t find directions, and even maps that I’d preloaded don’t always display.

Joe Rosensteel:

I could continue, and certainly for other location types beyond restaurants, but I believe I’ve made my point: every new Apple Maps partner merely adds another incomplete layer of data. The underlying problems persist because Apple relies on these external sources rather than genuinely investing in its own internal ratings, reviews, or photo capabilities. As such, their data remains largely unhelpful.

The Michelin Guide, The Infatuation, or any “expert” source will never cover every restaurant in every city. As for user reviews, OpenTable users are limited by its business model, and both Yelp and TripAdvisor offer more features and consistency in their own apps than Apple provides in Maps.

Google Maps, however, offers a one-stop shop for ratings, reviews, menus, reservations, and even real-time busyness data, all directly comparable to surrounding places and usable worldwide.

Ingrid Burrington (via Nick Heer):

Google Maps probably isn’t profitable. At best, I would believe it’s been marginally profitable in recent years.

[…]

There’s an oft-cited 2019 research note from a Morgan Stanley analyst that estimated that Maps revenue would be around $2.95 billion in 2019, and could reach $4.63 billion and $11 billion in 2023 based on new advertising programs for Maps that the company planned to grow out. I haven’t found the original research note anywhere online, just coverage of it. These estimates have been passed around enough online that today SEO-hungry slop blogs confidently state that in 2023 Maps made $11 billion.

Joe Rossignol:

“Some older software versions will no longer support Apple Services like the App Store, Siri, and Maps,” said Apple, in a support document published last month. “Update your software to the latest available version to continue using these services.”

Ben Kuhn:

I just did another round of “what’s making my Zoom calls stutter every 60s” and this time the culprit was… APPLE #!*$ING MAPS. That’s right, Macs now come preloaded with software to ruin wifi latency :(

You can fix by revoking Maps’ location access in Preferences[…]

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): John Gruber:

I can’t help but suspect that they’re going to make the experience worse, and the question is really just how much worse. The addition of ads to the App Store has made the experience worse.

[…]

I also do not begrudge Apple for wanting to monetize Maps. But if the addition of ads does make the Apple Maps experience worse, why won’t Apple let us buy our way out of seeing them? Netflix doesn’t force us to watch their ads. YouTube Premium is arguably the best bang-for-the-buck in the entire world of content subscriptions. Why should Apple One subscribers still see these ads in Apple Maps?

Joe Rosensteel:

I know that it’s not the same team doing all of these things, so that doesn’t mean that the ad team in Apple Maps is going to compromise the experience exactly like the team in iMessage, and the team in Wallet. It’s precisely because these garbage experiences are distributed across teams that makes me think it’s impossible to ever have a good experience when Apple’s financial interest is ahead of my own.

Apple Business

Hartley Charlton:

Apple today announced Apple Business, a new all-in-one platform that unifies device management, productivity tools, and customer outreach features.

The service is designed to be a consolidated replacement for several of Apple's existing business-focused offerings, including Apple Business Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple Business Connect. It provides organizations with a single interface to manage devices, employees, communications, and customer engagement across Apple's ecosystem.

[…]

The platform introduces Managed Apple Accounts with what Apple describes as "cryptographic separation" between personal and work data, allowing employees to use the same device for both purposes without commingling information.

The older services will be discontinued with their data migrated into Apple Business.

Six Colors:

It’ll take some time to digest these changes, but it seems like this is a simplification of Apple’s business offering, and making MDM free will be a win for smaller organizations. Unfortunately, Apple’s still only offering 5GB of free iCloud data on managed accounts, and it’s hard to think that any business should rely on Apple’s notoriously unreliable email platform.

Previously:

Discontinuing Sora

Juli Clover (Hacker News):

OpenAI today said that it is ending support for its Sora AI video app just six months after it initially launched.

Kyle Orland:

The announcement comes days after leaked news of an OpenAI all-hands meeting in which company executives reportedly said they were refocusing on business and productivity applications rather than being “distracted by side quests,” as OpenAI head of applications Fidji Simo reportedly put it.

Todd Spangler:

Disney has now ended its partnership with OpenAI, which included plans for the media conglomerate to take a $1 billion stake in the artificial-intelligence company led by CEO Sam Altman.

John Gruber:

Sora was kind of fun for a week or two. But, contrary to the above, nothing anyone made with Sora mattered. It was just a very (very) expensive lark.

It will be interesting if they release details, but my immediate assumption was that it was very expensive to run and not very strategic for them.

Manton Reece:

Guess what? That was written almost exactly six months ago.

Nick Heer:

It is because it is expensive without any clear reason for it to exist other than because OpenAI wants to be everywhere.

[…]

In a tweet, OpenAI has confirmed it is shutting down Sora. But, while it originally announced “We’re saying goodbye to Sora”, it changed that about an hour later to read “We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app“, emphasis mine. The Journal has not changed its report to retract claims about shutting down the platform altogether, though, while OpenAI continues to promote Sora API pricing.

M.G. Siegler:

As it turns out, much like the Studio Ghibli situation before it, it was a mere viral moment in time. OpenAI is great at creating these, but they’re fleeting.

[…]

But what’s really wild is shafting Disney in the process. I mean, they’re without question the most important entertainment and content company in the world. And OpenAI seemingly did them dirty. The fact that Disney is no longer looking to do the major investment which sure seemed like a good idea to them – checks notes – just three months ago, seems to say a lot.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): Hayden Field:

Sora seems to have taken up a massive amount of compute without the financial return to justify it. Industry sources told The Verge that it’s been lagging behind competing video-generation models.

[…]

Sora started off strong in October with about 4.8 million worldwide downloads and 6.1 million in November, followed by a sharp drop-off in December (3.2 million) and in the following months: 2.1 million in January, 1.4 million in February, and just 1.1 million month-to-date for March.

“What’s most notable about it is dropping off while they’re expanding into new markets — that should be driving growth,” Shah said, adding, “You should’ve seen an uptick in that. Even if nobody else in the US downloaded it again, there should be some growth, presumably.”

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Xcode 26.4

Apple (xip, downloads):

Xcode 26.4 includes Swift 6.3 and SDKs for iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, tvOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, and visionOS 26.4. Xcode 26.4 supports on-device debugging in iOS 15 and later, tvOS 15 and later, watchOS 8 and later, and visionOS. Xcode 26.4 requires a Mac running macOS Tahoe 26.2 or later.

There are lots of improvements for C++. With no more support for Sequoia, I won’t be updating for a while.

New Run Comparison feature allows to compare call trees with other runs using View → Detail Area → Compare With… or the ⇆ button in the jump bar. After selecting which run you want to compare with, the comparison view allows you to view which functions took more or less time between the runs. Call tree filtering operations like “Charge to callers” allow you to focus in on the functions that are faster or slower.

Top Functions is a new, top-level mode of a Call Tree view allowing to quickly identify the most expensive functions in the trace, no matter where they’re called from. To access Top Functions, select rightmost button in the Call Tree navigation bar.

[…]

Swift Testing adds support for specifying a Severity when recording an Issue.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): Christian Beer:

So Xcode 26.4 only runs on Tahoe 26.2 or newer… our CI macMini needs to run Xcode 16.2 for older apps but Xcode 16.2 does NOT run on Tahoe!!!

This all sucks so much!!111

J⋃⋂D⋀:

After updating to Xcode 26.4, paste from Mac to iOS Simulator is completely broken.

[…]

Write directly to the Simulator’s pasteboard with simctl:

echo -n "your text here" | xcrun simctl pbcopy booted

This bypasses the broken Mac-to-Simulator auto-sync. Once run, paste works normally inside the Simulator. You still need another Cmd+V to paste into simulator.

Update (2026-04-03): Jeff Johnson:

Before and after, Xcode Settings in versions 16 and 26

The damn thing doesn’t even fit on my screen anymore!

macOS 26.4

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

macOS Tahoe 26.4 returns the compact tab bar option to Safari for those who prefer the slimmed down look, along with a new Charge Limit feature for the Mac so you can set a maximum charge level from 80 to 100 percent. It also adds new eight emoji characters, and it displays warnings for apps that will stop working in the future. Apple is ending support for Rosetta 2 after macOS 27, so app that are still using Rosetta will display a popup letting users know that the app won't work starting with macOS 28.

macOS 26.4 also includes Apple Creator Studio for the Freeform app and it has the same Family Sharing change as iOS 26.4.

Dangerous-Coat-9174:

They fixed so many things, my appreciation for the developers has been restored. I am so happy that compact tabs, many bugs that I was experiencing have been fixed, the battery limit is nice and I uninstalled aldente but i am wondering if i will need something for temperature limits because I use it in the Summer mostly. Did you notice any other fix or added feature that has not been posted yet? Also the shadow in the mission control thing has been removed thank god.

See also Mr. Macintosh and Howard Oakley.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-26): Tim Hardwick:

As described in an updated Apple support document, a “Slow Charger” label now appears in orange text in the battery status menu and above the Battery Level graph in Battery settings. The indicator is accompanied by an info button for more details.

John Gruber:

After I posted this item back in October about the new MacBook Pros not shipping with chargers anywhere in Europe (not just the EU, even though it’s an EU law that requires products to be available without included chargers), a bunch of readers regaled me with tales of a family member complaining about their MacBook losing battery life even while plugged in, only to discover that they were using wimpy 5- or 10-watt USB-C adapters.

Joe Rossignol:

macOS Tahoe 26.4 introduces a new security feature that warns Mac users if they paste certain commands in the Terminal app that may be harmful.

klasma:

It would be helpful if the dialog actually showed what is being pasted, so that the user could decide whether they want to “Paste Anyway”…

Starfia:

What kind of a Mac alert title is “Possible malware, Paste blocked”? A comma splice with incorrect capitalization?

Chris Pirillo:

Apple has to resort to malware tactics to try to trick you into upgrading to Tahoe. This is user hostile. Shameful behavior.

Patrick Wardle:

Did @Apple forget to update the public Endpoint Security header files in macOS 26.4?

New ES events still marked: ES_EVENT_TYPE_RESERVED_* 😢😤

Rich Trouton:

This new message may not be desirable to display in all Mac environments, so Apple has provided management options to prevent this message from being shown. For more details, please see below the jump.

The relevant preference domain and key values are below:

  • Preference domain: com.apple.applicationaccess
  • Key: allowRosettaUsageAwareness
  • Value: Boolean

Armin Briegel:

In macOS 26.4 Apple has added user confirmation prompts to all file type/UTI default app changes.

Update (2026-03-30): George Black:

Tahoe 26.4 fixes the Liquid Mud issue in the Settings search bar!

Matt Gemmell:

macOS 26.4 seems to remount unmounted drives when unlocking the screen. Apple keeps finding new ways to make me dread every update and its bizarre bugs.

Howard Oakley:

The macOS 26.4 update for Apple silicon Macs was large, and the work required to verify its contents and complete its preparation was incorrectly reported in both percent completion and time remaining. Even in smaller updates, some form of progress needs to be shown in the progress bar during these later stages of preparation, or users may be mislead into thinking the update has frozen or failed, and could for example restart their Mac to try updating again.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-31): Rajesh Pandey:

macOS Tahoe 26.4 brings several new features to Macs. But it also breaks one critical functionality: Time Machine backups.

The bug appears to affect backups over network drives and NAS (network-attached storage), causing them to fail with a credential error.

Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad:

I wonder why I’m able to force quit apps that aren’t even running 🤔 🤣

Update (2026-04-16): Rosyna Keller:

I’m getting false positive warnings on Apple Silicon apps not being supported on future versions of macOS. But this app, SQLPro for SQLite, is a fat app. The only thing it has is an x64 subprocess for a Legacy Color Picker extension, which is automatic launch by AppKit and is entirely Apple’s code!

macOS 15.7.5 and macOS 14.8.5

macOS 15.7.5 (security, full installer):

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

macOS 14.8.5 (security, full installer):

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

See also Howard Oakley.

Previously:

iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4

Juli Clover (iOS/iPadOS release notes, security, enterprise, developer):

iOS 26.4 adds a new Apple Music feature called Playlist Playground, which uses AI to generate playlists for you based on text-based prompts. You can ask for moods, feelings, occasions, and more when making a request.

Joe Rossignol:

iOS 26.4 was released today, and it includes a couple of new features for CarPlay: an Ambient Music widget and support for voice-based chatbot apps.

Ryan Christoffel:

Apple Music gets several updates in iOS 26.4, including a new fullscreen design for albums and playlists.

Benjamin Mayo:

The iOS 26.4 attempt is a much nicer interpretation of this idea. First and foremost, it doesn’t try too hard; the foreground text colour is only ever white or black. The background is colour-matched, which injects a splash of personality and helps make the full-bleed album art blend more seamlessly with the rest of the UI. The Liquid Glass toolbars and tab bars also neatly blend in with their colourful surroundings. The design is impactful, yet refined.

Ryan Christoffel:

iOS 26.4 expands customization tools with two settings:

  1. Reduce Bright Effects, which is brand new in iOS 26.4
  2. Reduce Motion, which has been updated in iOS 26.4

Nick Heer:

In my testing, this does exactly what you would expect. In places like toolbar buttons — or the buttons in the area of what is left of a toolbar, anyhow — the passcode entry screen, and Control Centre, the glowing tap effects are minimized or removed.

Juli Clover:

Apple has made a small but useful change to the way that Family Sharing works. Each adult member of the family can now use their own payment method for purchases, rather than being forced to share a payment method.

Juli Clover:

Apple has removed the RCS end-to-end encryption beta in the fourth beta of iOS 26.4 after testing it in the prior three betas. Apple already said that end-to-end encryption for RCS would not launch in the iOS 26.4 update, and would instead be introduced in the future.

Juli Clover:

The iOS 26.4 update […] includes improvements for the built-in iOS keyboard. In its notes for the software, Apple says iOS 26.4 offers “improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.”

Previously:

Update (2026-03-26): Juli Clover:

The update doesn’t have the Siri feature set we were hoping for, but there are quite a few new additions like new emoji and an AI music feature.

Jeff Johnson:

If you use the Compact Tab Bar in Safari, then attempting to open a Safari extension popup window will crash the entire Safari app.

[…]

I personally reported this bug to Apple a month ago, on February 24: FB22044349 “iPadOS 26.4 beta: opening a Safari extension popup window crashes Safari.”

Financial Times (Reddit):

The UK is believed to be the first European market where Apple is rolling out its new age controls, which are designed to ensure that only adults can download apps rated on its App Store as being suitable for over-18s.

Following an iOS software update that was pushed out on Wednesday, adults who do not verify their age will face restrictions on web browsing, as well as “communication safety” checks to their messages and FaceTime video calls, which are designed to detect nude photos and videos.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-08): Sarah Reichelt:

I’m not loving iPadOS 26.4.

It keeps warning me that I’m running out of space but more than half is taken up with iPadOS and System Data. Plus, every app is asking for a rating at least once a day. Not the devs fault - the system is supposed to limit these.

Previously:

watchOS 26.4

Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer):

The update makes it quicker to start a workout in the Workout app by tapping on a Workout type icon, plus it has eight new emoji characters that include orca, trombone, treasure chest, fight cloud, hairy creature, landslide, ballet dancer, and distorted face.

Previously:

tvOS 26.4

Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer):

Apple added a new Genius Browse section to the Apple TV app in tvOS 26.4. Genius Browse is a content discovery feature that provides recommendations for TV shows and movies across multiple suggested categories. Suggestions vary based on content preferences, and the options are updated regularly.

[…]

tvOS 26.4 also adds more easily accessible customization options for subtitles, and it improves Apple TV Audio Format settings with an option for Continuous Audio Connection for HDMI output.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): Joe Rossignol:

Below, we have recapped what is new in tvOS 26.4.

visionOS 26.4

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

visionOS 26.4 includes bug fixes and security improvements, along with improved Spatial Audio and eight new emoji characters. New additions include distorted face, fight cloud, landslide, ballet dancer, treasure chest, trombone, orca, and hairy creature.

Previously:

audioOS 26.4

Juli Clover (release notes):

According to Apple’s release notes, HomePod Software 26.4 includes performance and stability improvements.

Previously:

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Lightroom End Marks

Marcin Wichary:

The search for the strangest Adobe setting continues in Lightroom, where the first option in the Interface section is… end marks[…]

Presently, only one option is there… …but at least back in 2012 there were many more.

What does it do? It adds an old-time’y glyph at the end of either left or right panel.

This is the very first interface setting shown in the preferences window. I guess the idea is that you might want a way to know you’re at the bottom of the list of panels. But the weird thing is that Lightroom does show scroll bars for the panels, even when System Settings is set to hide them, so I can already tell whether I’m at the bottom by looking at the scroll thumb.

John Beardsworth:

These Panel End Marks are simply png files stored in the Panel End Marks settings folder and you can easily create your own in Photoshop.

I love his idea of repurposing them to “serve as a reminder of star ratings, colour labels and even keyboard shortcuts for flags.” I wish more apps had places to attach user comments, either to model objects or to bits of UI.

Previously:

Background Garmin iPhone Syncing in EU

Sunil Bhatt:

Thanks to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Garmin watches in the EU can now sync steps, sleep, and heart rate data automatically, even when the Garmin Connect app is closed. This removes a long-standing limitation that previously favoured the Apple Watch.

For years, Garmin users on iPhone had to manually open the Garmin Connect app just to sync their data.

Marko Maslakovic:

The changes Apple has made affect how Bluetooth and background data transfer work. It’s part of a broader push to level the playing field between Apple’s own devices and everything else. That includes watches, fitness trackers and other health gear. Apple is required to give developers access to the same communication tools its own apps use. Garmin seems to be making use of those.

There are still limits to what happens in the background, especially on iOS where battery management remains strict.

See also: Accidental Tech Podcast.

Previously:

AppGrid Updates Blocked From App Store

Attila Miklosi:

Apple replaced Launchpad with a new “Apps” view — a hybrid of Spotlight search and a scrolling list of your installed applications. You can access it from the Dock or via keyboard shortcut, but it behaves very differently from the old grid.

[…]

AppGrid is a grid-based app launcher built specifically for macOS Tahoe. It’s the fastest way to restore the Launchpad experience[…]

I was never a Launchpad guy, but I know some people really miss it. He says that the app got a lot of traction, but then:

About three months in, Apple blocked all further updates. The reason: too similar to Launchpad — the feature they had just removed from the OS. I appealed several times, got nowhere, and eventually gave up.

The weirdest part is that they didn’t pull the app, but forced it into a zombie state. It’s still on the App Store right now, still selling, and Apple is still collecting 30% on every sale. They just won’t let me ship updates. I can’t fix bugs, can’t respond to competitors, can’t add the features users are asking for. It’s frozen in place, generating revenue for both of us, without any way to improve the product further.

So I’ve been building direct distribution outside the App Store at appgridmac.com. The unsandboxed version can do things the App Store build never could — hot corner activation, for instance, which is the single most requested feature from former Launchpad users but is blocked in the sandboxed version.

[…]

Apple told me they would accept updates if I made the app look different enough from Launchpad. But by then thousands have paid for it already, and they paid exactly for it being as similar to Launchpad as possible, so I decided not to go down that route[…]

Apple does allow other apps such as LaunchMe to have modes that look like Launchpad:

Simply download and install the app to begin customizing your app launcher to bring back Launchpad experience.

[…]

When you first open LaunchMe, you’ll need to change one setting to get “Classic View” like Launchpad had before the macOS 26 Tahoe update.

The guidelines prohibit apps that are “confusingly similar to an existing Apple product, interface” (5.2.5), but of course Launchpad no longer exists. These weird App Store situations—inconsistent application of rules, approved but can’t update—are in a way the most frustrating.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-26): Gui Rambo:

This is why I don’t ship my Mac apps in the App Store anymore

Sherief Farouk:

Apple once rejected my app after a bug fix was submitted because at the time Apple was internally planning a similar feature to my existing app.

See also: Marcus Mendes.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): Attila Miklosi:

I wrote about the situation on the AppGrid site last week. Michael Tsai picked it up, then 9to5Mac, then Macworld. I wasn’t really expecting that. It was meant to be an explanation for existing users more than anything else.

The traffic spike was real: the site went from ~70 visitors/day to 1,655 on March 26th, with 349 download clicks that day.

What he’d do differently:

I’d have launched direct from day one alongside the App Store version. The sandbox limitations weren’t theoretical. Hot corners and pinch gestures were on the roadmap before I even submitted. I knew they wouldn’t be possible in the sandboxed version. I submitted anyway because the App Store felt like the safe, legitimate path. It was, until it wasn’t.

The review process isn’t the problem per se. The problem is there’s no real appeals path when enforcement goes sideways.

Monday, March 23, 2026

Liquid Glass Is Permanent

Danny Bolella (Reddit):

If you read the comments on my articles or browse the iOS subreddits, there is a vocal contingent of developers betting that Apple is going to roll back Liquid Glass. […] I shared this exact sentiment with the Apple team.

Their reaction? Genuine shock. They were actually concerned that developers were holding onto this position. They made it emphatically clear that Liquid Glass is absolutely moving forward, evolving, and expanding across the ecosystem.

Their exact warning to me was that those who don’t adopt it now “are gonna find themselves in a tough position later.”

[…]

We had them confirm the hard truth: Xcode 27 will absolutely not have the deferral flag, and it will not respect it if you leave it there, anyway. When Q1 2027 rolls around and Xcode 27 becomes the mandatory minimum for compiling to the App Store, glass will be enabled globally, period.

Jeff Johnson:

What’s truly astonishing about the macOS Tahoe UI is that it’s now been SIX MONTHS since Tahoe was released to the public, yet it’s still full of glaring bugs. […] So many little things are off, out of alignment. It’s like Apple rushed out an alpha version.

Bolella:

The Apple engineers explained that a massive part of the initial Liquid Glass rollout was simply ensuring the foundation was solid. It had to be functional, it had to meet incredibly strict styling guidelines across every single Apple platform, and most importantly, it just had to work.

[…]

The team was visibly enthusiastic about what is in store for WWDC26 and Xcode 27. While they wouldn’t drop any specific spoilers, they gave the very strong impression that this upcoming cycle is where Liquid Glass takes its first massive step into maturity.

Jeff Johnson:

This is the Safari search field on Tahoe. Notice the position of the clear button.

John Gruber:

Perfect MacOS 26 Tahoe screenshot from the Journal app. Apple shipped this.

Simon B. Støvring:

Liquid Glass is a catastrophe.

Dave Mark:

I have SO many examples of this. Text fields that are cut off, text color choices that render text completely unreadable. In this regard, Apple design has lost the thread.

Leon:

the thing about modern Apple UI is they go for some deeply flawed vision that seems developed in a vacuum away from third parties, accessibility experts and engineers, and then when that fails they water it all the way down until people say “huh okay this isn’t that bad any more”

it just lurches from catastrophe to milquetoast and back again, with most of the time firmly in milquetoast territory

what i’d love, love to see is them - or anyone - come up with is a system vision that bakes in accessibility and pro / studio app design first.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-26): CrabQueenInc:

Disheartening but not surprising. I feel so fortunate that I’m not in need of a new computer, but at least my options will be wide open when I get to vote with my wallet next time, as it were.

Jesper:

You need only live with Liquid Glass for a short while to see places that even the most glowing critic, who accepts at face value the intent behind the changes, would agree it completely drops the ball. Odd margins, nonsensical visual weight, hard to read text, constantly shifting dark-to-white-to-dark-again backgrounds, blurry messes. There is no part of Liquid Glass that “just works”, and Apple’s insistence on its excellence is what is so deeply concerning about the situation.

[…]

I guess hope springs eternal that the reason they don’t see the problem with it is that the second phase brings back some of the things that are so dearly missed, and that the people in charge of it has always seen it as part of the proposition.

[…]

The initial rollout would have to have been very rushed for this to not have been part of the first version, but a rushed rollout is exactly the kindest way to explain its current state.

CM Harrington:

It’s like they never used a mac before.

Nick Heer:

Regardless of whatever one thinks the visual qualities of Liquid Glass, the software quality problem is notable there, too. We are now on the OS 26.4 set of releases and I am still running into plenty of instances with bizarre and distracting compositing problems. On my iPhone, the gradients that are supposed to help with legibility in the status bar and toolbar appear, disappear, and change colour with seemingly little relevance to what is underneath them. Notification Centre remains illegible until it is fully pulled down.

See also: Hacker News.

Update (2026-03-30): See also: Steve Troughton-Smith.

Kelly Guimont:

I learned how to downgrade specifically to disinfect my computer and avoid this particular fungus.

I get that design evolves and changes and things can move around. I understand that it will not look the same forever. I have a hard time accepting that UI elements being completely unreadable and making basic things harder to access is considered “progress” and I’m supposed to be happy about it.

Gavin Wiggins:

I thought my vision was going bad. But no, it's just the fuzzy Liquid Glass app icons on iOS and macOS that give me the illusion of poor eyesight.

Dan Counsell:

We’ve had zero customers request to adopt Liquid Glass for any of our Mac apps. That alone says a lot.

Aaron Pearce:

Can’t think of a single user asking about it in my apps either.

Kelly Guimont:

For everyone trying to defend #LiquidGlass here is some historical evidence. First, you should be following this account for examples of interface design from back in the day. Second, look how ornate all those borders are. Much green, so purple, WOW (etc). And yet I can read the window title and the button labels and everything else.

Disk Image Performance With macOS 26.3.1

Howard Oakley:

This table summarises read and write performance of the most popular types of disk image prior to macOS Tahoe, and demonstrates how sparse bundles have consistently performed best and most consistently, and sparse images (now dropped from Disk Utility’s options) fare worst, particularly when encrypted.

Howard Oakley:

Although most of the test results in macOS 26.3.1 are very similar to those from 26.0, performance when using 256-bit AES encryption has fallen for all three disk image types, and most significantly in write performance for RAW and ASIF images, which have reduced from 4.3 to 1.58 GB/s (RAW) and from 3.9 to 1.72 GB/s (ASIF). The magnitude of those reductions is sufficient to have obvious impact on their use. Compared to native write performance using FileVault of 7.66 GB/s, those two types of disk image are pedestrian in the extreme, turning that blisteringly fast SSD into the equivalent of 20 Gbps over USB 3.2 Gen 2×2.

[…]

When their folder-based structure is acceptable, UDSB sparse images remain the disk image type of choice, for their consistent high performance even when encrypted.

[…]

As [ASIF] sparseness isn’t dependent on APFS trimming habits, they are now an alternative that can be used on network storage and NAS. However, those able to use sparse bundles should continue to do so, particularly if using encryption.

Previously:

Provisioning Profiles in Mac VMs

Quinn:

There may be other outstanding issues, but you can now:

  • On a macOS 15 or later host, install macOS 15 or later in a VM.
  • On the guest, log in using an Apple Account in System Settings.
  • And install Xcode.
  • And add your Apple Account to Xcode.
  • And then build and run a Mac app.
  • Even if it uses a restricted entitlement.

Via Craig Hockenberry:

It’s a momentous day for Mac developers: you can now provision a device running in a VM. Whether you use VirtualBuddy, UTM, or another app, Xcode can now build, run, and debug apps on multiple versions of macOS without having to reboot.

This includes apps that have entitlements for iCloud and other Apple services.

[…]

Essentially, we now have a setup like the iOS simulator where you can work on two versions of the OS simultaneously. That’s a huge boost for developer productivity!

[…]

One thing you cannot do in a VM: use your Apple ID to login to the Mac App Store. So no testing your shipping app version.

This also means you can’t run TestFlight builds, because you can’t download the app from the store.

Previously:

Friday, March 20, 2026

Overcast Transcripts

Marco Arment (Mastodon):

What’s in this beta:

  • Transcripts of most podcasts (swipe on the episode art during playback, it’s a new page past the info screen)

  • Live-scrolling of transcripts during playback

  • Tap to seek on any line of text

  • Music detection

All of this should work even with dynamic ad insertion… and even with private/membership podcasts!

And if you play an episode that isn’t transcribed yet, you can transcribe it right on your iPhone (if you’re running iOS 26+).

This is really impressive, and I think it will be transformative for podcast listening and triage. There’s a long discussion with more technical details in the latest Accidental Tech Podcast.

Christian Bender:

The way you can follow along as the audio plays, or jump to a place in the episode by tapping a paragraph in the transcript, is just so convenient. It made me seriously consider using Apple Podcasts. And of course, I immediately tested the Overcast implementation.

[…]

It’s the kind of feature that fits how I use podcasts. Like chapters, it supports choice. It lets you cut through the noise and get straight to the topics that interest you.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-10): Marco Arment (Mastodon):

The first update with transcripts is now in the App Store!

See also: Steven Aquino.

Android Sideloading Waiting Period

Ryan Whitwam (Hacker News):

With its new limits on sideloading, Android phones will only install apps that come from verified developers. To verify, devs releasing apps outside of Google Play will have to provide identification, upload a copy of their signing keys, and pay a $25 fee. It all seems rather onerous for people who just want to make apps without Google’s intervention.

Apps that come from unverified developers won’t be installable on Android phones—unless you use the new advanced flow, which will be buried in the developer settings.

[…]

Google swears it’s not interested in the content of apps, and it won’t be checking proactively when developers register. This is only about identity verification—you should know when you’re installing an app that it’s not an imposter and does not come from known purveyors of malware.

[…]

So a rootkit can be malware, but a rootkit you downloaded intentionally because you want root access on your phone is not malware, from Samat’s perspective. Likewise, an alternative YouTube client that bypasses Google’s ads and feature limits isn’t causing the kind of harm that would lead to issues with verification. But these are just broad strokes; Google has not commented on any specific apps.

Adamya Sharma (via John Gruber):

When Google execs previously said sideloading would become a high-friction process on Android, they really weren’t kidding.

The company is finally sharing what Android’s new sideloading flow will look like in practice, and if you’re someone who installs apps outside the Play Store, you’re going to feel it immediately, and you’re going to feel it deeply.

[…]

It’s a deliberately slow and almost impossible-to-rush-through process that will allow advanced Android users to sideload apps from unverified developers, while giving them plenty of caution to keep them safe from malicious apps and bad actors.

[…]

Yes, really. There’s a mandatory one-time, one-day waiting period before you can proceed and sideload an app from an unverified developer. Google calls it a “protective waiting period.”

Horrific. Can we finally dispense with this notion that Apple’s App Store can be as restrictive as they want because if you don’t like that you can just buy an Android phone?

tavavex:

The part in the flow where you select between allowing app installs for 7 days or forever is a glimpse into the future. That toggle shows the thought process that’s going on at Google.

I can bet that a few versions down the line, the “Not recommended” option of allowing installs indefinitely will become so not recommended that they’ll remove it outright. Then shrink the 7 day window to 3 days or less. Or only give users one allowed attempt at installing an app, after which it’s another 24 hour waiting period for you. Then ask the user to verify themselves as a developer if they want to install whatever they want. Whatever helps them turn people away from alternatives and shrink the odds of someone dislodging their monopoly, they will do. Anything to drive people to Google Play only.

Gregory:

At this point I’m convinced that there’s something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.

Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It’s unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-26): Peter N Lewis:

Just so it’s clear, because it’s frequently not been clear in reporting I’ve seen, the 24 hour waiting period is after turning on the switch that allows sideloading. It is not before each individually sideloaded app.

And I can sort of see their reasoning on this, to defend naive users from being conned in to turning it on. For savvy users, you can just turn it on, wait a day and then get on with your life.

Saagar Jha:

My security hot take for this week is that Google’s changes for sideloading on Android seem to strike a good balance between security and usability. This gives me hope the team is putting thought into maintaining the original dream of the platform rather than making a worse iOS.

Of course the jury is still out on how well this will work but the rationale seems pretty solid to me. Being tricked into installing blatant malware is, despite how you might feel about it, a major problem for Android. Historically efforts to combat this have badly hurt openness.

The general problem with security is identifying bad things is hard because often it will end up impacting desirable things too. In this case Google picks a very specific quality of scams and aims to target it specifically: urgency. I expect this to be very high signal!

Update (2026-03-30): Stephen Schenck (Hacker News):

Users will be able to opt out of further delays after that initial 24 hours.

Today Google clarifies that this status can carry over to new devices, so you only ever have to go through it once.

Updates to Vibe Coding Apps Rejected From the App Store

Hartley Charlton:

Apple has quietly blocked AI “vibe coding” apps, such as Replit and Vibecode, from releasing App Store updates unless they make changes, The Information reports.

[…]

Apple told The Information that certain vibe coding features breach long-standing App Store rules prohibiting apps from executing code that alters their own functionality or that of other apps.

[…]

An Apple spokesperson said the policy is not targeted specifically at vibe coding apps.

If the apps are in breach of longstanding rules, why is it the updates that are blocked? It seems like either Apple should have rejected the apps long ago or else they’re trying to retcon the new policy, which remains unclear to me.

Malcolm Owen (9to5Mac):

Report sources say that the apps in question are close to being approved for the App Store again, but after agreeing to make changes to the way they function. These changes include updating previews of the vibe-coded apps, or removing functions like making apps specifically for Apple devices.

That sounds like removing the core functionality.

The report adds that there are other apps that exist in the App Store that didn’t get the same limitation, such as Vercel’s v0. Other apps that offer similar capabilities that aren’t coding-specific, such as design app Canva, could potentially be hit by the same issues, since they can be used to create filters, quizzes, and other items using AI.

For the most part, the report focuses on the issue being one of competition and revenue protection. Apple could lose revenue due to these vibe coding apps creating software that doesn't pass through the App Store itself.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-01): Juli Clover (Hacker News):

Apple has removed a “vibe coding” app from its App Store, reports The Information. AI app building app “Anything” was pulled from the App Store , and Anything co-founder Dhruv Amin was told that his app violated Guideline 2.5.2.

[…]

“Anything” launched on iOS back in November with no issue, and Amin says the tool has been used to publish thousands of apps in the App Store . The app let users create and preview vibe code apps on the iPhone, and it raised $11 million at a valuation of $100 million back in September.

While Anything was removed from the App Store on March 26, Apple has been blocking updates to the app since December. Amin submitted an update that would allow vibe coded apps to be previewed in a web browser instead of in the app to attempt to comply with the 2.5.2 rule, but Apple blocked the update and pulled the app.

Thursday, March 19, 2026

MarsEdit 5.4.1

Daniel Jalkut:

This update adds support for macOS’s standard “Versions” document history, improves the Share Extension to support sending text to MarsEdit, and includes a number of bug fixes across the rich text and plain text editors.

I’m holding off on this update for the moment because I’m seeing a regression viewing and sorting by the Edited Date, but I love the idea of versions support. It works as you’d expect, with a Time Machine–style interface showing two MarsEdit windows, so I get the same font and syntax coloring that I’m used to. It would be nice if it went a bit further and supported synchronized scrolling or coloring for the differences, but it does allow selecting and copying text so I can easily use an external diff tool if necessary. I had been using WordPress’s revisions feature, which is nice in that it colors the differences, but it’s a bit of a pain to pull up, the two-column interface gets in the way of selecting text from only one side, and it only works for posts that have been published to the server.

Previously:

Update (2026-03-30): Jack Wellborn:

I happen to be the one who reported that versions was broken in the first place and am delighted to see it better supported. I wish Apple did a better job surfacing and socializing automatic versioning because it feels magical and fits with a more modern paradigm that doesn’t require manual saving.

The date bug is fixed in MarsEdit 5.4.2.

Update (2026-04-08): Versions in MarsEdit are only available for drafts. Published posts do not store versions (even if you edit and republish) and do not have access to the versions of the draft from before publication.

Copyright © 2000–2026 Michael Tsai.