Friday, April 24, 2026

Git Tower 16

Tower 15:

This update introduces Automatic Branch Management, making it easier than ever to keep your repository tidy and clutter-free. We’ve also added significant improvements to the “History” view for better visualization of your work 😎

Tower 16:

Tower 16 for Mac is now in beta, and it introduces AI Commits, allowing you to generate commit messages and descriptions with the help of AI directly from your favorite Git client.

Every year there are lots of new features, but it still seems to me that they’re ignoring the basics:

Mario Guzmán:

Tower v15.0 got a new liquid glass icon but unfortunately, like some Apple-made icons early in the beta season, it looks blurry in the Dock.

Previously:

I Regret the Blood Pact I Have Made With iCloud Photos

Nick Heer (Mac Power Users Talk):

Apple’s next iCloud tier is a generous 6 TB, but it costs another $324 per year. I could buy a new 6 TB hard disk annually for that kind of money. […] A better solution is to recognize I do not need instant access to all 95,000 photos in my library, but iCloud has no room for this kind of nuance. The iCloud syncing preference is either on or off for the entire library.

[…]

So: the next best thing is to create a separate Photos library — one that will remain unsynced with iCloud. Photos makes this pretty easy by launching while holding the Option (⌥) key. But how does one move images from one library to the other? Photos is a single-window application — you cannot even open different images in new windows, let alone run separate libraries in separate windows. This should be possible, but it is not.

[…]

As a workaround, Apple allows you to import images from one Photos library into another — but not if the source library is synced with iCloud. You therefore need to turn off iCloud sync before proceeding, at which point you may discover that iCloud is not as dependable as you might have expected.

[…]

I have this library stored locally and backed up, or at least I though I did. I thought I could trust iCloud to be an extra layer of insurance. What I am now realizing is that iCloud may, in fact, be a liability. The simple fact is that I have no idea the state my photos library is currently in: which photos I have in full resolution locally, which ones are low-resolution with iCloud originals, and which ones have possibly been lost.

Colin Devroe:

I’m finally moving away from maticulously organizing my own library and just letting photos do it and using iCloud Photo Library. I’m syncing 170,000+ items. And it says “synced” when clearly it is not finished.

Previously:

Mac Easter Eggs

Doug Brown (Slashdot):

I was recently poking around inside the original Power Macintosh G3’s ROM and accidentally discovered an easter egg that nobody has documented until now.

[…]

The “secret ROM image” text in particular seemed like it could be related to the picture shown above. I decided to dive deeper to see if I could figure out why the SCSI Manager contained these strings, in the hopes that I could solve the mystery. Would this be the clue I needed in order to figure out how to instruct the Power Mac G3 to display this picture?

[…]

When you open the newly-formatted RAM disk, you should see a file named “The Team”[…]

Howard Oakley:

This mythical animal from the Mac bestiary has been tucked away as an Easter egg in the Emoji & Symbols viewer for many years. Type the letters clarus or moof (the sound it makes) into the search box of that viewer to see the two emoji figures of a dog and a cow, although neither of them resembles Clarus in appearance, as shown in the Page Setup window in recent macOS.

[…]

More inaccessible, but apparently present for even longer, is a PNG image showing marijuana leaves embedded inside the Chess app.

[…]

According to a recent report in MacWorld, the colour-matched wallpapers provided for MacBook Neos spell out MAC.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-27): Jake Zien:

It’s not just the Neo wallpapers, they’ve been doing this for years on iPad, MacBook, iMac, Studio Display. Actually quite telling about the Neo’s positioning and importance within Apple that it says “Mac” instead of “Neo.”

Update (2026-04-28): Howard Oakley:

When I wrote that the Minimise Easter egg was defunct in macOS Tahoe, I was delighted to be corrected, thank you, as it’s still alive and flourishing.

In fact this had been documented just over a year ago by John Gruber on his Daring Fireball blog. I’ve added information from the macOS defaults site, and played around with this in a macOS 26.4.1 virtual machine.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

What’s That “Structured” in Structured Concurrency?

Max Seelemann:

There are only three ways to create a concurrently running operation from the standard library, Task being the first. The other two are async let and TaskGroups — which happen to be the structured ones.

[…]

In my words, it’s a direct, inescapable dependency relationship. You can always start a task and forget about it – not structured. But when you do an async let, you need to await the result before the function ends (or discard it, see below). Likewise, task groups can only be created through with(Throwing)TaskGroup, which forces the caller to await their completion.

Previously:

Stolen Device Protection May Protect You From Accessing Your Own Device

Glenn Fleishman:

Note that this remains an iPhone-only feature, even though an iPad could be exploited the same way. I have to infer either that Apple has had almost no reports of exploitation via iPad passcode theft, or that they are balancing the needs of the average iPad user who is out and about with that device against the complexity of managing Stolen Device Protection.

[…]

Once enabled, you see two options: Away from Familiar Locations and Always. Familiar Locations ostensibly leans on Significant Locations, but I’ll warn you that I have, on multiple occasions, been in my home, a place I spent a significant majority of my time, and was told by Stolen Device Protection that I wasn’t in a familiar location.

Eric deRuiter:

Stolen Device Protection will require that you erase and restore your phone to be able to regain full access to it should FaceID fail to recognize you (surgery, injury, shaving a beard, broken eye glasses, etc…)

Previously:

NetNewsWire 7.0.4

Brent Simmons:

The big new changes are to iCloud syncing: there’s a new setting to not sync the content of unread articles, since that’s the biggest part of your iCloud database and what takes the longest to sync.

NetNewsWire:

We’ve added a new weekly background iCloud storage cleanup.

This happens automatically, but there’s also a status window with a Clean Up button to initiate it manually.

Your next syncs after cleaning up may take an extra long time! This is because iCloud syncs deletions, and doing a cleanup means doing a lot of deletions.

[…]

From here on sync times should be faster and iCloud storage needs should be lower.

I’ve been syncing using Feedbin, and version 7.0.2 added an important fix for that, with more to come in 7.1.

Brent Simmons:

To be clear: we didn’t do anything in NetNewsWire to support AI, LLMs, or MCP, but, since the app is scriptable, you can do all kinds of useful things with it.

Here’s the netnewswire-mcp repo on GitHub.

Greg Pierce:

I’ve been feeling like MCP is a lot like x-callback-url. Kind of a janky, pragmatic solution to a problem that optimized for opportunities and constraints available at a particular moment.

Maybe not built to last, but super useful.

Previously:

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

iOS 26.4.2 and iPadOS 26.4.2

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

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

Apple also released iOS 18.7.8 for older iPhones that are not updated to iOS 26.

Juli Clover (Hacker News):

A flaw with notification services allowed notifications that were supposed to be deleted to be retained on an iPhone or iPad. Apple says it fixed the logging issue with improved data redaction.

Previously:

Character in iPhone Password Removed From Keyboard

Connor Jones (Hacker News, Reddit):

A university student in the US is in data limbo after Apple removed a character from its Czech keyboard, preventing him from entering his iPhone passcode.

[…]

This is because iOS 18 was the last operating system version that allowed iPhone users to enter the special character – in this case, the caron/háček (ˇ) – using the old keyboard on the lock screen.

[…]

The student has not backed up the files to iCloud either, so they cannot be retrieved via a separate device. Apple support staff have suggested the only way to regain access to the iPhone 13 is by restoring it, which would erase the files of value.

[…]

Apple Support arranged for Byrne to attend a Genius Bar appointment, where the staffer behind the desk made no progress and even started restoring the phone without seeking the student’s consent.

My first thought was to plug in a USB keyboard, but apparently iOS doesn’t allow that before first unlock for security reasons.

Previously:

Little Snitch for Linux

Christian Starkjohann:

I decided to use eBPF for traffic interception at kernel level. It’s high performance and much more portable than kernel extensions. The main application code is in Rust, a language I’ve wanted to explore for quite a while. And the user interface was built as a web application. That last choice might seem odd for a privacy tool, but it means you can monitor a remote Linux server’s network connections from any device, including your Mac. Want to know what Nextcloud, Home Assistant, or Zammad are actually connecting to? Use Little Snitch on the server.

[…]

But in summary: on Ubuntu, I found 9 system processes making internet connections over the course of one week. On macOS, we counted more than 100.

[…]

The kernel component, written for eBPF, is open source and you can look at how it’s implemented, fix bugs yourself, or adapt it to different kernel versions. The UI is also open source under GPL v2, feel free to make improvements.

[…]

One important note: unlike the macOS version, Little Snitch for Linux is not a security tool. eBPF provides limited resources, so it’s always possible to get around the firewall for instance by flooding tables.

Previously:

2025 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card

AppleVis:

Our survey results indicate that across almost all categories, satisfaction with Apple’s accessibility offerings for blind, DeafBlind, and low vision users decreased when compared to 2024. (You can see all 2025 ratings in the “Ratings At-a-Glance” section below, as well as in the sections for each category.) Many categories saw their lowest individual ratings since we began this survey for the 2022 year, including both VoiceOver features and VoiceOver user experience on iOS and iPadOS, among several others. Satisfaction with the braille user experience on iPadOS and macOS, and the low vision user experience on tvOS, increased when compared to 2024.

For VoiceOver and braille users, dissatisfaction with software quality and the presence of long-standing accessibility bugs were overarching themes throughout participant comments. For low vision users, participant comments show that Apple’s 2025 Liquid Glass user interface redesign had a significant negative impact on the user experience for many.

Overall, user comments reflected a mixture of frustration with the state of vision accessibility on Apple’s platforms and appreciation for Apple’s work in this space. Many participants called on Apple to prioritize fixing bugs over adding new features.

Shelly Brisbin:

AppleVis users believe Apple continues to struggle when it comes to fixing bugs in VoiceOver and Braille, giving the company a C – a 3.0 rating – in this category, which covers all platforms. Also at the bottom of the ratings were macOS VoiceOver user experience, with a 3.1, and three tvOS categories, which scored between 3.2 and 3.5. Low-vision features in tvOS took the greatest ratings tumble, from 2024, slipping from 4.1 to 3.2.

Sebby:

Tahoe broke VMware Fusion for VoiceOver users; some restricted API that’s no longer available in setuid helper programs. Causes any VM to crash the moment VoiceOver starts (or is running when the VM starts). The bug is a rehash of a similar bug in Sonoma. Unlike last time, it still isn’t fixed in the .4 release of Tahoe. Remember this when Apple tells you how much accessibility means to them.

Previously:

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

John Ternus Replaces Tim Cook

Apple (Hacker News, CNBC, MacRumors, ArsTechnica):

Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026.

[…]

As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.

[…]

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” said Ternus. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

[…]

Apple Services has been a major focus area of Cook’s, and during his tenure the category has grown to become a more than $100 billion business, the equivalent of a Fortune 40 company. Cook was also instrumental in creating the wearables category at Apple, which now includes the world’s most popular watch and headphones, and which has served as the foundation for Apple’s remarkable impact on the health and safety of its users. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple also transitioned to Apple-designed silicon, enabling the company to own more of its primary technology and deliver industry-leading gains in power efficiency and performance that directly benefit users across its products.

Apple:

Johny Srouji will become chief hardware officer. Srouji, who most recently served as senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, will assume an expanded role leading Hardware Engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw, as well as the hardware technologies organization.

John Gruber:

Ternus will become the 8th CEO in Apple’s 50-year history[…]

Jason Snell:

I’d actually be surprised if Cook isn’t in the executive chairmanship for a lot longer than people expect. I don’t think he’s ready to put Apple in the rearview—but I do think he’s trying to get the timing on this exactly right.

[…]

The company is impossibly larger than the one Cook took over from Jobs. The explosive growth of the iPhone, especially from 2014 on, has changed the fundamentals of the company. When iPhone growth finally slowed, Cook swapped in a growing wearables business (led by what I assume is the product Cook is most proud of, the Apple Watch) and a dramatically growing set of subscription services. Those growth lines keep Wall Street happy.

[…]

Cook’s priorities helped make Apple a manufacturing powerhouse, capable of building products nobody else could—at least, until Apple showed the way. But as Patrick McGee so capably showed in his book Apple in China, Apple was also training up China on being a tech manufacturing powerhouse.

[…]

In spite of its success, or perhaps because of it, Apple has been a company in stasis for 15 or 20 years. When everything’s going great, and all the executives just stick around no matter how rich they get on stock options, it’s really hard to make changes. The arrival of any new person in charge, not just John Ternus in particular, is an opportunity to shake things up. New leaders have the freedom to make their mark. That could be good for Apple.

Adam Engst:

Whatever issues one might have with Apple, they aren’t likely to apply to the company’s hardware, where performance and reliability have been top-notch. His skills may well translate to improving quality in other parts of the company.

[…]

I very much doubt we’ll see major changes at Apple once Ternus takes over because the company culture runs deep and its executive team has decades of experience. Ternus may be new to the CEO role, but he knows exactly how Apple works and is unlikely to modify that in any significant way—which, given the company’s current performance, is probably entirely appropriate.

Jeff Johnson:

It’s difficult to get excited at this point. Ternus doesn’t seem to be the type of person who will rock the boat. Navy, not pirate.

Riley Testut:

I’m legitimately hopeful Apple uses this an opportunity to rethink its approach to developers and regulatory issues — but will take time to see if that’s true.

Miguel Arroz:

Here’s hoping John Ternus is more open to remote work than Tim Cook.

Colin Cornaby:

It’s not likely - but I’m hoping Apple resumes live keynotes and press events. Ternus is a much better presenter than Cook. While no one is as good a showman as Jobs was, Ternus at least seems to have the best presence out of all the big tech CEOs.

The Hacker News page currently has 1,234 comments, and top one is:

Wow. Hopefully, Ternus will bring what he brought to Apple’s hardware to their software. The hardware is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else, but their software gets worse and worse every generation.

John Gruber (Hacker News):

Tim Cook is 65 years old, has been CEO for 15 years, and is going out on top. Looking only at the numbers, Cook is the GOAT. But Cook, by all accounts, would be the first to tell us he doesn’t want to be judged by the numbers alone.

[…]

With the table set by the budding iPhone and nascent iPad products Jobs left behind, Apple didn’t need a product person at the helm in the 2010s. They needed someone to let the existing products blossom and expand. Today, it feels to me like Apple needs a product guy at the helm again. Someone with the itch to spearhead the creation of new things.

[…]

And, if you agree that Apple itself was Jobs’s greatest product, Cook really is a product person after all.

I have a different take, which is that the conventional wisdom was wrong. That is, if you’re judging by the products rather than the numbers. The problem with Cook wasn’t the creation of new things; it was the lack of focus and failure to maintain what Apple already had. It turns out that you do need a product person, even to be a caretaker CEO, or decay sets in. I don’t want to minimize his accomplishments, though, because clearly the post-Jobs era could have been a lot worse. There were no bigger shoes to fill.

I don’t think it’s the case that Apple, the company, was Jobs’ greatest product. We all wanted that to be true, but we’ve now had two long intervals to see how it functions without him. It seems like a totally different company. History is not going to see Apple itself as greater than the iPhone unless Apple under Ternus or a subsequent CEO delivers another iPhone-scale product. That’s an unreasonable expectation that I don’t think anyone is predicting.

Scott:

What frustrates me most is all the low-hanging fruit that was just left to rot, mostly because—I can only assume—Cook didn’t really have finger on pulse of the entire ecosystem. Failing on “the last 10%” for pretty much every current product is the best proof I offer.

Rui Carmo:

But despite all of that, the soul of the company has felt increasingly bland, and the accumulating faux pas in software quality–culminating in the Liquid Glass debacle and the general state of macOS and iPadOS–have tested even the most faithful.

Ternus is a hardware guy, and very likely deeply involved in the MacBook Neo. My hope is that he has a better feel for what good product actually looks like, and can drive the kind of change that has been overdue for a while now.

I’d start with fixing macOS and iPadOS, preferably in a way that matches what people actually expect from their devices rather than what a design committee thinks looks modern.

Om Malik:

The challenge for Apple is still software, an increasingly cluttered interface across multiple hardware devices and platforms, and a distinct lack of clarity about what role AI will (or will not) play in its future. Ternus’s other task will be to repair an incredibly fragile relationship with developers, who have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with Cupertino.

[…]

Sure, Cook inherited the greatest product portfolio and the greatest brand in modern business. How many times have we seen people screw it up? He ran it with operational ruthlessness. He is no product visionary, and neither is Ternus. They are not Steve. Tim has run Apple for fifteen years, through a pandemic, two trade wars, a supply chain reordering, and the slow grinding shift from hardware-only to hardware-plus-services-plus-silicon.

Matt Birchler:

That said, while his tenure has been financially successful, I think a lot of people feel like Apple isn’t quite the company they originally fell in love with, and I hope Ternus can make us feel more that way again. I recognize that’s hard when you’re not the scrappy underdog, you’re one of the biggest companies in the world, but I do think it’s important for Apple to keep that “we do whatever is right for the user” energy and less of that “we extract as much as we’re legally allowed to from every user and developer” energy.

Jeff Johnson:

Seriously, how the fuck do you go from the idea “do what’s right” to “keep adding ad slots”?

Ben Thompson (Hacker News):

“What Makes Apple Apple” isn’t a new question; it was the central question of Apple University, the internal training program the company launched in 2008. Apple University was hailed on the outside as a Steve Jobs creation, but while I’m sure he green lit the concept, it was clear to me as an intern on the Apple University team in 2010, that the program’s driving force was Tim Cook.

[…]

The core of the program, at least when I was there, was what became known as The Cook Doctrine[…]

[…]

Cook, in this critique, prioritized Apple’s financial results and shareholder returns over what was best for Apple in the long run. […] This isn’t the only part of Apple’s business where this critique has validity.

[…]

It really is ironic: Tim Cook built what is arguably Apple’s most important technology — its ability to build the world’s best personal computer products at astronomical scale — and did so in a way that leaves Apple more vulnerable than anyone to the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China. China was certainly good for the bottom line, but was it good for Apple’s long-run sustainability?

This same critique — of favoring a financially optimal strategy over long-term sustainability — may also one day be levied on the biggest question Cook leaves his successor: what impact will AI have on Apple?

Nick Heer:

The Tim Cook story at Apple is an almost poetic arc. Upon arrival, he fundamentally overhauled the way its products would be made, primarily by moving manufacturing to Japan, Taiwan, and China. This groundwork is what allowed him to transform the company when he arrived as CEO, growing it into a global behemoth and working within China to create the best and most precise electronics manufacturing chain anywhere. And that became a problem for him.

Tim Hardwick:

In a new Bloomberg report, reporter Mark Gurman suggests one of the reasons Ternus has been chosen as successor is for his decision-making style, which is said to be closer to co-founder Steve Jobs than Cook, who has a more deliberative approach.

Ryan Christoffel:

Last night, a new report on incoming CEO John Ternus called the Apple veteran a decisive leader who is often led more by instinct than consensus.

And some of that initiative-taking in leadership decisions, it seems, is already focused on integrating AI more deeply into Apple’s internal operations.

See also: Dithering, Accidental Tech Podcast, Mac Power Users Talk.

Previously:

The Quadrant Was Now Complete

M.G. Siegler:

The music fades as Jobs walks up, looking a bit tired but healthy. He is just 44 years old.

Yes, a new video of Jobs has been unearthed. And yes, it simply must be written about.

[…]

And it seems like perfect timing for this video to surface given that Apple has just unveiled the MacBook Neo – the first laptop to come in fun colors since the candy-colored iBooks back in the day.

[…]

This is a great message delivered in a very Jobsian way: this wasn’t about a turnaround, this was about putting great products into the world. The turnaround was a byproduct of that.

He didn’t just say how great products were the focus. Apple actually delivered a string of them, both hardware and software. And you could tell that he understood why they were good.

Previously:

Monday, April 20, 2026

Filing the Sharp Edges Off a MacBook

Ken Walters (via Hacker News):

The bottom edge of the MacBook is very sharp. Indeed, the industrial designers at Apple chose an aluminum unibody partly for the fact that it can handle such a geometry. But, it is uncomfortable on my wrists, and I believe strongly in customizing one's tools, so I filed it off.

The corner is sharp all around the machine, but it's particularly pointed at the notch, which is where I focused my effort. It was quite pleasing to blend the smaller radius curves into the larger radius notch curve. I was slightly concerned that I'd file through the machine, so I did this in increments. It didn't end up being an issue.

Jeff Johnson:

I wrote about this issue 8 years ago (wherein I argued that 2006 was the best MacBook Pro design ever)[…]

I keep mentioning this and the too-large, unreliable trackpad.

Previously:

Copilot Everything

Tey Bannerman (Hacker News):

A few weeks ago, I tried to explain to someone what Microsoft Copilot is. I couldn’t… because the name ‘Copilot’ now refers to at least 75 different things.

Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All named ‘Copilot’.

Zac Bowden:

Microsoft is now beginning its effort to reduce and remove Copilot branding across Windows 11, with the latest Notepad update for Insiders outright removing the Copilot icon and phrasing. Now, the AI menu is simply called “writing tools,” and maintains the same functionality as before.

Via Steve Troughton-Smith:

Microsoft is ‘removing Copilot’ from its system apps, but it’s not removing the AI features, just taking away the branding, which brings it closer in line with how Apple Intelligence works across macOS and iOS.

Usama Jawad (Hacker News):

At the start of the year, Microsoft generated a lot of goodwill among Windows 11 fans when it announced its big plan to fix the operating system in 2026. It highlighted numerous ways to approach and remediate user concerns such as giving them more control over Windows Update and adding back some highly requested features. Another key point in the company’s announcement was pulling back on inserting Copilot everywhere, and being more mindful about how AI features are integrated into the OS. Microsoft began rolling out some changes in this regard a couple of days ago, and unfortunately, people are a little underwhelmed.

[…]

To be fair to Microsoft, if you check out our coverage of this topic, you’ll notice that Redmond did not claim that it will eradicate AI from Windows 11. In fact, its wording was more around the idea that it would be more “intentional” about how and where the Copilot branding shows up, while also ensuring that AI capabilities are actually useful.

Previously:

Design for Repairability

Charlie Sorrel:

Apple’s MacBooks haven’t always been monolithic, barely repairable slabs of aluminum, glass, and glue. They used to be almost delightful in their repairable features, from their batteries to their Wi-Fi cards. Powerbooks, iBooks, and especially early MacBooks showed what happens when Apple applies its design skills directly to repairability and maintenance, instead of to thinness above all. Today we’re going to take a look at the best repairability features that Apple has ditched.

Eric Schwarz:

Aside from the rose-colored repairability glasses, the iBook G3 started at $1299 in 2001. Taking into account inflation, that’s almost $2500 in today’s money. Would you be able look past having a closed system if you can get at least three years of service at 1/4 the price?

Nick Heer:

These four complaints range from the somewhat quaint — swappable Wi-Fi cards — to the stuff I actually miss, which is everything else. RAM and disk upgrades are a gimme since the cost-per-gigabyte (generally) declines over time, and I would love easily swappable batteries. But right now, nearly four years into owning this MacBook Pro, I would also really like to be able to swap in a new keyboard in the future. Not only are the keycaps unintentionally becoming polished, some oft-used keys feel a little mushy.

Marcus Mendes:

As spotted by MacMagazine, the estimated service costs for the new MacBook Neo are now available.

For users without AppleCare, there is a flat fee of $149 for battery service, while other damages will require an inspection[…]

Andrew Cunningham (MacRumors):

One less-advertised change that may make the Neo more appealing to businesses, schools, and the accident-prone is that its internal design is a bit more modular and easier to repair than other modern MacBooks. That’s our takeaway after spending some time thumbing through the official MacBook Neo repair documentation that Apple published on its support site this week.

Replacements for pretty much any component in the Neo are simpler and involve fewer steps and tools than in the M5 MacBook Air. That includes the battery, which in the MacBook Air is attached to the chassis with multiple screws and adhesive strips but which in the Neo comes out relatively easily after you get some shielding and flex cables out of the way.

But the most significant change in the Neo is that the keyboard is its own separate component.

Tim Hardwick:

A teardown of the new MacBook Neo by Australian YouTube repair channel Tech Re-Nu reveals what may be the most modular and repair-friendly Mac laptop in recent times.

The Neo is shown being taken apart in just six minutes, suggesting Apple has prioritized simplicity across the board, using standard Torx screws (T3, T5, and T8) and a clean cable routing design.

Nick Heer:

They only found adhesive on the back of the trackpad — hardly the end of the world. It is a far cry from the glued-in battery of the MacBook Pro.

[…]

This does not entirely invalidate iFixit’s argument, of course. Apple’s laptops used to have replaceable memory and storage, but none of that can be changed post-purchase.

To me, the biggest problem is the SSDs. Not only can you not replace them, but you can’t even use a modern Mac with an external SSD if the internal one is damaged. It bricks the whole computer.

John Gruber:

By allowing the Neo to be a bit thicker and heavier, it’s also a lot simpler.

Juli Clover (John Gruber):

Repair site iFixit did its traditional teardown on the MacBook Neo, and was pleasantly surprised with the laptop’s repairability. “We haven’t been as happy about a MacBook since 2012,” says iFixit.

Nick Heer:

On a recent episode of “Dithering”, Ben Thompson and John Gruber discuss the Tech Re-Nu teardown of the MacBook Neo and what it reveals about the supposed trade-offs of repairability.

[…]

To summarize: “the price”, it is implied, is that the MacBook Air must be less repairable for it to have good battery life and better performance.

I am less certain.

[…]

My impression of Apple’s approach to repairability is that it was not a high priority for a long time — particularly for products nearer the beginning of their development cycle — and that it argued for trade-offs that were ultimately irrelevant.

Scharon Harding:

Apple earned the lowest grades in a report on laptop and smartphone repairability released today by the consumer advocacy group Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The report, which looks at how easy devices are to disassemble and how easy it is to find repairability information, gave Apple a C-minus in laptop repairability and a D-minus in cell phone repairability.

Previously:

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Fast Thumbnails With CGImageSource

Max Seelemann:

The parameters are documented, but the optimal combination is not. Here’s what I learned:

  • kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways: While this seems optional for correct functionality, without it there will be error logged for images that might include embedded thumbnails (like JPEG or HEIC), but don’t. There’s a FromImageIfAbsent variant, but it did not silence these logs in all cases.
  • kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: Required for the thumbnail to respect the EXIF orientation of the image, in case it has one (which is not uncommon for JPEG).
  • kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize: Specifies the largest dimension of the desired thumbnail; the returned image will then be equal or smaller than this.

The first test showed incredible improvements: The same 12MP JPEG image now took just about 26ms on macOS. That’s almost 30 times faster than the naive approach.

Image IO has some very useful APIs, although unfortunately it hasn’t always been well tested. I ended up writing four different versions of an image resizer because different parts of the API would fail on certain files with different macOS versions. The resizer keeps trying different techniques until it finds one that works. Also, sometimes the APIs raise C++ exceptions. If you don’t catch these from Objective-C using @catch (...) (literally, three periods), your app will crash.

Brent Simmons:

Avoid bug in CGImageSourceCreateImageAtIndex with indexed-color (4-bit palette) ICO files — always use CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-21): Paul Goracke:

A while ago, @bdudney released a wonderful little ebook titled “All the Image IO You Need to Know” which had this info as well as more. Certainly changed my coding.

John Deere Right-to-Repair Settlement

Caleb Jacobs (via Hacker News):

While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $99 million into a fund for farms and individuals who participated in a class action lawsuit. Specifically, that money is available to those involved who paid John Deere’s authorized dealers for large equipment repairs from January 2018. This means that plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents—far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%.

The settlement also includes an agreement by Deere to provide “the digital tools ​required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair” of tractors, combines, and other machinery for 10 years. That part is crucial, as farmers previously resorted to hacking their own equipment’s software just to get it up and running again.

Previously:

Globalstar Takeover

Tim Hardwick (Hacker News):

Amazon and Globalstar have announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire the satellite operator.

[…]

Alongside the acquisition, Amazon and Apple have signed a separate agreement for Amazon’s Leo satellite network to power existing iPhone and Apple Watch satellite features, including Emergency SOS, Messages via satellite, Find My, and Roadside Assistance via satellite.

Dan Moren:

Amazon acquiring Globalstar gives it a leg up in its attempt to take on Starlink, which is the biggest player in this space. But Apple previously sank a billion-dollar-plus investment into Globalstar, whose system underpins its satellite features.

That stake seems to have bought Apple some assurances, including support for not only current but future devices. The ongoing question for Apple’s satellite features is whether users will ever end up paying for them, something that the company has been happy to continually kick down the road.

Jon Brodkin:

Amazon didn’t go into much more detail about the features it will support on Apple devices. Bloomberg reported in November that Apple was working on a satellite framework for third-party apps that would let developers add satellite connections to their apps. Apple was also reportedly working on satellite-powered maps and richer messaging capabilities for satellite connections.

Amazon and Globalstar operate at smaller scales than Starlink, which already has over 10,000 satellites in orbit and plans for many more. So far, Starlink’s constellation includes about 650 D2D satellites for mobile service, which is offered through T-Mobile in the US and other carriers abroad.

Amazon has deployed 241 satellites and says it will have over 3,000 when its initial satellite constellation is complete. Globalstar operates 24 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and has said its third-generation system, or C-3, will include 48 additional satellites.

Friday, April 17, 2026

Codex for Almost Everything

OpenAI (Hacker News):

Codex can now operate your computer alongside you, work with more of the tools and apps you use everyday, generate images, remember your preferences, learn from previous actions, and take on ongoing and repeatable work. The Codex app also now includes deeper support for developer workflows, like reviewing PRs, viewing multiple files & terminals, connecting to remote devboxes via SSH, and an in-app browser to make it faster to iterate on frontend designs, apps, and games.

With background computer use, Codex can now use all of the apps on your computer by seeing, clicking, and typing with its own cursor. Multiple agents can work on your Mac in parallel, without interfering with your own work in other apps. For developers, this is helpful for iterating on frontend changes, testing apps, or working in apps that don’t expose an API.

John Voorhees:

It was just over a week ago that OpenAI raised $122 billion in financing and announced it was shifting its focus to building a superapp that brings the capabilities of its models into a unified experience. It turns out that app is Codex, OpenAI’s app that, until today, was focused primarily on developing software.

However, according to OpenAI, 50% of Codex’s users were already giving it non-coding tasks to complete. Combined with the OS flexibility of a desktop environment, that made Codex the natural place to bring together a wide range of new productivity and coding features.

[…]

OpenAI has drawn aspects of its Atlas browser into Codex, too. This allows Codex to prototype websites and apps that users can comment on in-line, creating a tight feedback loop for refining designs. Currently, this feature is limited to running sites and apps via a local server setup, but OpenAI says it will be extended to incorporate actions like interacting with the greater Internet, taking screenshots, and stepping through user flows in the future.

Federico Viticci:

The feature that OpenAI rolled out in Codex is literally based on the Sky app that I exclusively previewed last year, and which was later acquired by OpenAI along with the team that built it.

[…]

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Codex now features the best computer use feature I have ever tested in any LLM or desktop agent. In fact, it’s even better than the computer use feature I used in Sky last year: Sky’s computer use was great, but it was considerably slower than Codex’s current one because it was running on Anthropic’s Claude models. With Codex for Mac today, even the (kind of slow) GPT 5.4 is faster than Sky ever was. But, using Codex with fast mode or – for simpler tasks – the Cerebras-hosted GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark model yields dramatically faster performance than Sky for Mac delivered in 2025.

[…]

We all have Apple’s Accessibility team to thank for the technology that allows Codex’s computer use tool to exist. To build it, the Codex team took advantage of an advanced accessibility feature that allows third-party apps to read the “accessibility hierarchy” (also known as “AX Tree”) of any app open on macOS. My understanding is that this technology was primarily created to allow screen-readers and other assistive tools to work with Mac apps regardless of their automation/scripting features. In this case, it’s been repurposed as a way for Codex to ingest the full contents and hierarchy of any window and, essentially, load it as context for the LLM.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Developers, I recommend you do this asap: ask Codex to run your app and try to figure out how to do a task, without seeding it with any information.

It’s like putting a new user in front of the screen, and watching how they operate it. It will very rapidly expose any problems you have in messaging or user education, and it’s a little eye-opening if you’ve never (or not recently) run user tests.

Previously:

Perplexity Personal Computer

Perplexity:

Personal Computer brings the multi-model orchestration of Computer to your machine. It can work across your local files, native applications, connectors, and the web to complete complex and even continuous workflows.

Personal Computer makes Perplexity Computer a more personal orchestrator, elegantly hybridizing the local and server environments for maximum security and productivity.

Juli Clover:

Perplexity Computer came out earlier this year, and it’s an all-in-one “digital worker” able to create and execute entire workflows. With today’s upgrade, it can run directly on a Mac with access to the file system and native apps. Pressing both Command keys on a Mac will activate Personal Computer, and it responds to text or voice commands. Personal Computer can work across any Mac app, and it can see active apps and display quick actions automatically.

[…]

Personal Computer for Mac is rolling out to Perplexity Max subscribers starting today, with Perplexity prioritizing waitlist members. Perplexity Max is priced at $200 per month, and the new feature is not available to $20/month Pro plan subscribers.

Andrew Orr:

Perplexity is moving beyond the typical chatbot model by running in the background and carrying out multi-step tasks.

The feature builds on Perplexity’s existing agent system, which breaks a request into smaller jobs and assigns them to different sub-agents.

[…]

Actions can require approval and that activity is logged, but the setup still asks users to trust an always-on agent with broad access.

Previously:

Xcode 26.4.1

Apple (xip, downloads):

Fixed crash for MetricKit apps built with Xcode 26.4 due to missing symbols when running on iOS, macOS, and visionOS versions below 26.4.

[…]

Fixed stack-allocation bugs in async functions that caused “freed pointer was not the last allocation” crashes, particularly in swift_asyncLet_finish. These long-standing issues became more frequent in Swift 6.2 and 6.3 due to optimizer improvements.

Nic Lake:

I’m currently learning SwiftUI.

26.4 preview windows don’t let you scroll or swipe. Crashes & requires an Xcode restart.

Seems like this kind of stuff is, if not the norm, then at least common enough where the general response is “welcome to iOS development, here’s a cookie”.

Christian Beer:

Xcode loses my Apple Accounts again and again!! WTF? It also happens on the CI server… SO annoying!

And it doesn’t even has a Passwords.app integration!! 🤬

Isaiah Carew:

notarization failing today because of new Paid App terms. i don’t have any paid apps but still have to agree to get notarization working.

took me 90min to sign in. dev ID was “Locked for Security Reasons” — it always is.

unlock fails in Chrome, “The action could not be completed”. in safari the captcha doesn’t show.

but unlock works on my phone.

the it says, “Reset your password?” but it didn’t. it just unlocked the account — the text in the alert was just wrong.

Heath Borders:

Every month or so, I have to open Xcode, and every time I’m surprised at how it can’t do basic things. Xcode can’t find a call hierarchy for a local function declaration. It just beeps at me.

It’s been 10 years or so since Jump to Definition and Jump to Next Counterpart worked consistently for me. Often, I just get beeps or nothing happens.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-21): Der Teilweise:

Someone at Apple sat at their keyboard and wrote this error message for Xcode.

Maybe replacing devs with an AI tool is a step forward in some cases.

I’m not even starting to talk about the fact that the alert looks like it is disabled/in the background but is not.

And the tiny OK button.

Thursday, April 16, 2026

Gemini App for Mac

Michael Friedman (via Abner Li):

Today, we’re bringing the Gemini app to macOS as a native desktop experience, designed to live right where you work. It’s always just a keyboard shortcut away, so you can quickly get the help you need without losing your focus.

[…]

With our new native desktop experience, you can share anything on your screen with Gemini to get help with exactly what you’re looking at, including local files. If you’re reviewing a complex chart, you can share your window and ask, 'What are the three biggest takeaways here?' to get an instant summary.

Juli Clover:

Gemini will need Accessibility access to read full pages in a browser window.

Nano Banana is available for creating images, and Veo can be used for generating videos.

[…]

Free access to Gemini is limited, and Google has subscription plans with increased usage limits. Google AI Plus is $7.99 per month, Google AI Pro is $19.99 per month, and Google AI Ultra is $249.99 per month.

John Voorhees:

Gemini can also interact with files, the contents of a window, Google Drive, Photos, and NotebookLM. It’s multimodal, too, with support for the generation of text, images, video, and music. Dig a little deeper into Gemini’s menus and you’ll find support for Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, and Personalized Intelligence.

Chazak:

Downloaded it and deleted it 30 minutes later when I found it automatically installs a setting to open automatically as a log in item. Deleting it in system settings does not solve the issue. It automatically returns it to the auto login setting. It takes control of the setting. Invasion of my privacy and control over my own machine. I've returned to the web app version.

Josh Woodward:

We heard your feedback. We recruited a small team. They built 100+ features in less than 100 days. 🤯

100% native Swift. Lightning fast.

Sundar Pichai:

The team built this initial release with @Antigravity, and it went from an idea to a native Swift app prototype in a few days.

Gus Mueller:

Took a peak at it and … it contains 1,856 Objective-C classes whose class name starts with Java.

What in the world are they doing?

So I had Gemini analyze Gemini. Looks like there’s a lot of shared Android code in there, but compiled to Objective-C and Swift.

Previously:

The App Store Scammer Strikes Back

Jeff Johnson:

First, Virus Protection for Phone is back in the App Store! The App Store URL is the same, and the developer is the same, Virtual Advisors Limited. The app version history shows a large gap, with version 1.8 released in February 2025, before my blog post, and version 1.9 released just a few days ago. In retrospect, I have no way of knowing whether Apple removed the app from the App Store. The notoriously secretive corporation certainly didn’t make any kind of statement. It’s possible that the app developer voluntarily unpublished the app after noticing the bad publicity.

The second update to the story is that the same scammer appears to have a second scam app in the App Store iPhone Cleaner - Virus Protect under a different developer account, Ranger Bookie Investments LLC. How did I discover this second app? The same way I discovered the first app: an advertisement on a sketchy video streaming website.

[…]

According to AppFigures, iPhone Cleaner - Virus Protect had 65,000 downloads and an estimated net revenue of $310,000 worldwide over the last month. That’s more money than I make in a year! I guess crime does pay.

[…]

For example, curiously, neither developer (they’re surely one and the same developer) identifies as a trader in the European Union, despite the fact that both apps have In-App Purchases.

Nicolas Magand:

Looking at the Top Free Apps list on the Mac App Store as I write this line, the 6th most popular app is called “AI Chatbot · Ask AI Anything 5.2”. It sits right after Microsoft Excel and CapCut, and before Microsoft PowerPoint. No, this app — unrelated to OpenAI — is not fishy at all (!) and the Mac App Store is very safe. The 12th most popular app on the list is “HP: Print and Support”. Great, great stuff.

Juli Clover (Hacker News):

A fake Mac app designed to look like the real thing snuck past Apple’s app review team, costing users $9.5 million in cryptocurrency.

According to CoinDesk, a fake macOS version of the Ledger Live crypto wallet app scammed people into handing over access to their cryptocurrency wallets. More than 50 people fell victim to the fake app between April 7 and April 13.

Ledger has an official Mac app, but it is distributed via the Ledger website and not through the Mac App Store.

David Price:

With unhappy timing, news of this scam broke in the same week as the banning of Freecash, as reported by Macworld’s sister site TechCrunch. In adverts, Freecash offered to pay users to scroll on TikTok, but this was a flimsy veil for its real purpose: harvesting sensitive data. By installing and running the app, users were giving up data about anything from their religion to their sexual orientation, which the makers happily sold on to third parties.

[…]

That decision would appear to indicate that Freecash does not, contrary to its makers’ protestations, meet the standards of Apple’s App Store. (The Android app is still showing up for me in Google search, but the URL it directs to no longer works. Presumably, then, it’s been kicked off Google Play too.) But once again, it’s unclear why Apple’s vetting team wasn’t able to spot this shortcoming before welcoming the app on to the company’s official storefront. Or why it took so long to take action against an app whose murkier practices had been highlighted by journalists months previously.

[…]

This week has been unusually bad, but stories of this sort don’t come as a surprise any more. The App Store of 2026 is absolutely stuffed with slop, scams, and clones, propped up by an ecosystem of fake reviews pushing undeserving apps to the top of the charts. Phil Schiller was complaining about “insane” scam apps 14 years ago, and to the casual eye it’s difficult to see that things have got any better.

[…]

If running an app store is too much trouble, close it down. If comprehensive vetting is impractical, stop pretending the App Store is completely safe. (And definitely stop scaremongering about sideloading.) If you can’t make the App Store a truly reliable resource for good, safe, legitimate software, then give iPhone users the freedom to install from other places. Or just stop pretending the App Store monopoly is about anything other than revenue.

Nick Heer:

Price calls the App Store “rotten” — is there any other word? — and says Apple should “give iPhone users the freedom to install from other places. Or just stop pretending the App Store monopoly is about anything other than revenue” if it cannot effectively police its wares. I imagine Apple would argue it enforces its rules all the time and sometimes things just get through.

But that kind of response only reveals the scale of the store and, consequently, the problem: nobody can effectively govern this many items, especially when they are all user-submitted.

Jeff Johnson:

Three scam apps I mentioned in my blog post are still in the crApp Store:

Stronix VPN, Reliable VPN, Privacy Pro VPN

Two mentioned apps are gone, but one already left and came back, so we don’t know if it was Apple or the developer who removed them.

Previously:

Update (2026-04-17): Sarah Perez:

When reached for comment, Almedia, the Germany-based company that owns Freecash, denied allegations of driving artificial traffic to its platform or using deceptive marketing techniques.

“Our apps are fully compliant with the Apple App Store and Google Play Store policies, as demonstrated by the fact that they are live and regularly pass platform reviews,” an email from Almedia PR manager James Law, signed “Almedia Press Office,” noted.

[…]

A Washington Post report about the scam app ecosystem noted this trend, highlighting several fraudulent apps that would disappear from the App Store and then reappear under a different developer account. Other independent investigations have documented this tactic as well, and often, scam apps’ owners operate a portfolio of accounts, it’s been reported.

John Gruber:

As I have repeatedly written, it boggles my mind why Apple doesn’t have an App Store “bunco squad” that targets scam and fraud apps that are popular and/or high-grossing. It’s folly to think that the App Store could ever be completely free of scam apps. But it’s absurd that this app Freecash rose to #2 in the App Store, with millions of downloads, and Apple only took a look at and removed it after TechCrunch asked about the app.

Peter N Lewis:

There is no way Apple would fund a “bunco squad” whose sole job was to reduce Apple’s revenue. They simply are not being hit by the consequences of the crap that is on the App Store. They are more than big enough and powerful enough to peddle the clearly false statement that the App Store keeps you safe, while making 30% off scamming victims and addicts, and people will continue to believe it’s all good.

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele:

We also know that this isn’t new. But it is escalating, and getting far, far worse and more prevalent.

[…]

Apple cannot take a high ground and say only it can protect users, when it is not actually protecting them as well as it could and should.

[…]

It would unquestionably add to Apple’s workload if it checked on an app a few hours or a few days after allowing such an update. But this is a known method that scammers use to get by the App Store review team.

[…]

After we reported less than four days ago about the fraudulent apps, Apple got back to us. They repeated the same talking points that they always do when an app gets pulled after it steals money from users, or some other nefarious deed. […] Essentially the same email was sent to us 29 times over the last decade. The emails used verbatim quotes 17 times over that timespan.

Update (2026-04-21): Lin Xi Qin:

Three of the four apps offer “lifetime” subscriptions for $99.99, an economically impossible promise for any product whose ongoing cost scales with user activity. One of them links to a privacy policy that, on close reading, is a copy-paste from a completely unrelated app the same developer previously published. Another ships screenshots advertising “AI Content Detector” and “Humanizer” features that, by their nature, exist to evade OpenAI’s own AI-detection tools — a direct violation of OpenAI’s usage policy for its API.

[…]

What the HTTP capture shows is that the app presents users with a model selector containing GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.3 options — charges them premium subscription fees — and then, when they actually send a query, the code substitutes the cheapest model available and pockets the price differential as margin.

This is not a trademark technicality. It is commercial fraud in the plain sense.

[…]

On March 30, 2026, The Daily Tech Feed published a technical investigation of the first two apps — the Hira Amin “5.4” and the Hadiqa Bashir “5.2.” Their analysis, based on direct examination of the compiled binaries and captured network traffic, documents that the two apps are not independent products from independent developers. They are duplicated instances of the same underlying software, distributed through two separate Apple developer accounts.

Howard Oakley:

Finally, never misinterpret claims made of an app’s credentials. Although every App Store app is reviewed by Apple, experience has shown that’s far from being a reliable protection from fraud.

[…]

I’m afraid that when it comes to checking potentially fraudulent apps, you’re still responsible for making your own decisions. Please choose wisely.

Update (2026-04-28): Ravie Lakshmanan (tweet):

The 26 apps, collectively dubbed FakeWallet, mimic various popular wallets like Bitpie, Coinbase, imToken, Ledger, MetaMask, TokenPocket, and Trust Wallet. Many of these apps have since been taken down by Apple following disclosure. There is no evidence that these apps were distributed via the Google Play Store.

[…]

These apps have icons that mirror the original but have intentional typos in their names (e.g., LeddgerNew) so as to trick unsuspecting users into downloading them. In some cases, the app names and icons have no connection to cryptocurrency. Instead, they are used as placeholders to direct users to download the official wallet app through them, claiming they are “unavailable in the App Store” due to regulatory reasons.

Kaspersky said it also identified several similar apps likely linked to the same threat actor that do not have the malicious features enabled, but have been found to mimic a benign service, such as a game, a calculator, or a task planner. Once launched, these apps open a link on the web browser and leverage enterprise provisioning profiles to install the wallet app on the victim’s device.

macOS Post–MacBook Neo

Nicolas Magand:

I wonder what will happen with millions of extra Mac users.

Will the Neo help the Mac become a proper gaming platform?

[…]

Will the popularity of the MacBook Neo be an opportunity for Apple to mobilise more third-party developers to build apps for MacOS, now that the potential user base can be significantly larger? How many of these new apps will be truly native, and how many will be built on top of frameworks like Electron, since the majority of these new users probably won’t care?

[…]

How many of the new Mac users, brought to the platform via the Neo, will eventually become MacOS enthusiasts?

[…]

I am a little worried that a never-seen-before popularity for the Mac would encourage Apple to make MacOS look and behave more like iOS.

Tony Arnold:

Microsoft Teams is using 45% CPU while doing absolutely nothing.

[…]

I applaud Apple for the Neo, which is really putting heavy cross-platform framework developers on notice.

Alex Potenza:

Curiously, despite all the praise for Apple Silicon hardware, the Mac has not gained meaningful share since its introduction. On StatCounter’s worldwide desktop OS figures, Apple’s combined desktop OS share was 16.54% in November 2020, when the first Apple Silicon Macs arrived, and has dropped to 12.22% in February 2026 if you combine its current OS X and macOS categories.

[…]

I keep running into these problems myself when I show up to a hot desk with a Mac, and I keep seeing them when other people use my Mac. The interesting people are not anti-Apple diehards, but longtime iPhone users who otherwise like Apple products and still get tripped up by Macs. I wrote about many of these same issues when Ventura came out in 2022. The striking part is how many of the same screenshots and complaints still apply now almost half a decade later.

[…]

These docks are also much cheaper than Thunderbolt docks. US Amazon prices I found were roughly USD 40-50 for MST adapters, and USD 270-330 for Thunderbolt docks. That matters for something like a MacBook Neo, a cheap Windows laptop or Chromebook with an ordinary USB-C port can plug into one of these multi-display docks and use the setup just fine, while a new MacBook Neo user cannot.

[…]

Macs are not losing on CPU performance, battery life, thermals, security, or browser compatibility. They are losing on the cumulative cost of workflow mismatches that create rollout exceptions, retraining, accessory replacement, and extra support overhead.

Via Pierre Igot:

Maybe the MacBook Neo is a first step. But there are many more steps required, most of which involve… software. Sigh.

Eric Schwarz:

Despite SoC limitations for multiple displays, my M1 MacBook Pro could push enough pixels to run two 1080p displays easily, yet it can’t. Our even older, less-powerful HPs from our loaner pool can, despite struggling at a lot of other things. I don’t see why Apple couldn’t bake in DisplayPort MST and proper DisplayLink support (instead of forcing you to use a third-party driver.) This gets an easy win for working in a PC environment.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

The people most against Liquid Glass are the people who are really afraid of macOS becoming more closely aligned with iOS and iPadOS, which is perhaps why they’re overindexing on the little things and silly, fixable bugs instead of talking about the larger picture — the Mac is evolving to serve a different audience makeup (wait for the Neo effect), and some people are simply going to be left behind.

[…]

I’ve heard multiple Apple people call it ‘iOS Developer Edition’ in jest, but I’m not convinced they’re joking.

Previously:

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:

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

I replace my Magic Keyboards every 15 months — they crack, the nylon frays, the hinges fail. $249-349 for that? Apple’s worst product by price, full stop. That degradation penalty makes the iPad a materially worse proposition for anyone who needs a keyboard and mouse. macOS wins on the operating system front too, though that part is personal.

Here’s why I can’t fully commit to the Neo-versus-iPad framing, though: the real comparison is MacBook Air versus iPad Pro, and it isn’t even close. A 13″ iPad Pro M5 with 512GB of storage plus a Magic Keyboard runs $1,848 — the equivalent MacBook Air starts at $1,099.

[…]

That gap exposes the actual problem: Apple’s iPad pricing is broken.

Update (2026-04-17): Juli Clover:

Along with discussing the Neo, Ternus and Joswiak talked about the differences between the iPad and the Mac. Ternus said that Apple isn’t going to merge the products, and similarities are because Apple focuses on what would make a device better and not on how one product might impact another.

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.

Update (2026-04-27): Howard Oakley:

Even using a known and simple app like Insent, behaviours aren’t always consistent, and are susceptible to order effects and maybe even cosmic rays! There are also subtle differences between protected locations that can make generalisation unreliable. However, after extensive checks with Insent the following table gives an overview of protected locations in macOS 26.4.

The three common local folders ~/Desktop, ~/Documents and ~/Downloads are most consistent, with controlled read access, GUI controls in Files & Folders, and can be overridden by intent using MACL xattrs. Network volumes also appear to protect write access.

External volumes that are mounted automatically during startup don’t appear to count as being removable, but any that are mounted later have similar protection for both read and write, and can be overridden by intent using MACLs.

iCloud Drive and third-party cloud storage using the FileProvider API are more difficult to investigate, as I’ve still been unable to find any GUI control. It also doesn’t appear to be overridden by intent using MACLs, although its directories can still have com.apple.macl xattrs attached to them.

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:

Update (2026-04-27): Bruce Schneier:

Apple has patched this vulnerability.

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:

Update (2026-04-17): Bruce Schneier:

This is, in many respects, exactly the kind of responsible disclosure that security researchers have long urged. And yet the public has been given remarkably little with which to evaluate Anthropic’s decision. We have been shown a highlight reel of spectacular successes. However, we can’t tell if we have a blockbuster until they let us see the whole movie.

For example, we don’t know how many times Mythos mistakenly flagged code as vulnerable. Anthropic said security contractors agreed with the AI’s severity rating 198 times, with an 89 per cent severity agreement. That’s impressive, but incomplete. Independent researchers examining similar models have found that AI that detects nearly every real bug also hallucinates plausible-sounding vulnerabilities in patched, correct code.

This matters. A model that autonomously finds and exploits hundreds of vulnerabilities with inhuman precision is a game changer, but a model that generates thousands of false alarms and non-working attacks still needs skilled and knowledgeable humans.

Update (2026-04-27): John Gruber:

So on the one hand, Anthropic itself is the one describing Mythos as a dangerous national security threat. On the other hand, their own security is so sloppy that rando hooligans on Discord have had access to Mythos since the day it was announced, and regularly access other unreleased Claude models. This, just weeks after Anthropic screwed up and accidentally exposed the entire source code to Claude Code.

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.

Update (2026-04-17): Juli Clover:

MacBook Neo orders placed today on the online Apple Store won’t reach customers until May, which means that it’s sold out for the month of April, as 9to5Mac points out. All colors and both the 256GB and 512GB SSD configurations will be delivered between May 1 and May 8 at the earliest.

Copyright © 2000–2026 Michael Tsai.