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Quality leadership at Apple, assembled in California <img src="https://s.w.o ...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" ><channel> <title> Comments for Michael Tsai </title> <atom:link href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/comments/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog</link> <description></description> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:56:47 +0000</lastBuildDate> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2</generator> <item> <title> Comment on Git at 20 by Scott </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/15/git-at-20/#comment-4250097</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Scott]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:56:47 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47408#comment-4250097</guid> <description><![CDATA[And here I had naively hoped, 20 years ago now, that Apple would adopt principles of CMS/VCS into the Finder, and expand it out system-wide and eventually to a network and cloud service. Oh well. FTFF! (Oh those were the halcyon days, when Apple adopted UNIX fundamental concepts, pulled talent from FreeBSD, and the future looked so very bright! Annnnnnnnd… here we are.)]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>And here I had naively hoped, 20 years ago now, that Apple would adopt principles of CMS/VCS into the Finder, and expand it out system-wide and eventually to a network and cloud service. Oh well. FTFF!<br />(Oh those were the halcyon days, when Apple adopted UNIX fundamental concepts, pulled talent from FreeBSD, and the future looked so very bright! Annnnnnnnd… here we are.)</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Git at 20 by Wu Ming </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/15/git-at-20/#comment-4250085</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Wu Ming]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:18:04 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47408#comment-4250085</guid> <description><![CDATA[As much as standardization looks and feels convenient, I believe splitting teams and users on multiple tools offers not only variety, that is fun and useful, but also the opportunity for evolution. One large corporation acting as conduit for most SCM processes is a menace. Especially when many other permutations with equivalent results are possible. Personally I believe Fossil checks all the marks. As other SCM tools do. They were pushed to the margins for no good practical reasons.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As much as standardization looks and feels convenient, I believe splitting teams and users on multiple tools offers not only variety, that is fun and useful, but also the opportunity for evolution.</p><p>One large corporation acting as conduit for most SCM processes is a menace. Especially when many other permutations with equivalent results are possible.</p><p>Personally I believe Fossil checks all the marks. As other SCM tools do. They were pushed to the margins for no good practical reasons.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Apple Mail’s Broken “Block All Remote Content” by frijole </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/07/apple-mails-broken-block-all-remote-content/#comment-4250058</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[frijole]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:47:50 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=43598#comment-4250058</guid> <description><![CDATA[Earlier this year they responded to the bug report and gave me a bug bounty. They also created a CVE, and the fix went out in 15.4. https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-24172https://support.apple.com/en-us/122373]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Earlier this year they responded to the bug report and gave me a bug bounty. They also created a CVE, and the fix went out in 15.4.</p><p><a href="https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-24172" rel="nofollow ugc">https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-24172</a><br /><a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/122373" rel="nofollow ugc">https://support.apple.com/en-us/122373</a></p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Git at 20 by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/15/git-at-20/#comment-4249988</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:15:54 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47408#comment-4249988</guid> <description><![CDATA[Git is in a sweet spot where it is technically very reliable, and the easy tasks are easy. You only encounter the weirder aspects when it's too late, and you're already deeply invested.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Git is in a sweet spot where it is technically very reliable, and the easy tasks are easy. You only encounter the weirder aspects when it's too late, and you're already deeply invested.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Google Is Winning on Every AI Front by Philip </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/google-is-winning-on-every-ai-front/#comment-4249713</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Philip]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:19:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47404#comment-4249713</guid> <description><![CDATA[Same. I tried it after reading this post and it never outperformed ChatGPT. Neither in speed nor in answer quality.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Same. I tried it after reading this post and it never outperformed ChatGPT. Neither in speed nor in answer quality.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Claude for Mac by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/claude-for-mac/#comment-4249656</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:06:08 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47402#comment-4249656</guid> <description><![CDATA["All these apps are just glorified thin clients after all." ChatGPT has pretty good integration into Mac OS. It can use the accessibility API to see what you are doing and read context from applications. It can also trigger some actions, like typing code into IntelliJ. But even if they were just wrappers around the chat API, having a nice UI that you can trigger with a shortcut is still a nice win. Incidentally, this is why LLM apps on iOS suck, they can't do any of this stuff.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>"All these apps are just glorified thin clients after all."</p><p>ChatGPT has pretty good integration into Mac OS. It can use the accessibility API to see what you are doing and read context from applications. It can also trigger some actions, like typing code into IntelliJ.</p><p>But even if they were just wrappers around the chat API, having a nice UI that you can trigger with a shortcut is still a nice win.</p><p>Incidentally, this is why LLM apps on iOS suck, they can't do any of this stuff.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on LLaMA Gaming AI Benchmarks by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/llama-gaming-ai-benchmarks/#comment-4249611</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 08:29:56 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47400#comment-4249611</guid> <description><![CDATA[I found this bloggpost about how recent ai gains feel like bullshit rather spot on. I get this weird feeling like I'm being gaslit all the time when people wax lyrically about how fantastic AI is. It's nice and useful I think the 20 dolalrs a month my company pays for my ChatGPT plus sub are money well spent. But at the same time I honestly don't see that much of a difference over the last two years. It's more fine grained and tighter locked into the large hump of the bell curve. Results look more like the thing they're copying. Anyways... worth a read: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4mvphwx5pdsZLMmpY/recent-ai-model-progress-feels-mostly-like-bullshit]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I found this bloggpost about how recent ai gains feel like bullshit rather spot on. I get this weird feeling like I'm being gaslit all the time when people wax lyrically about how fantastic AI is. It's nice and useful I think the 20 dolalrs a month my company pays for my ChatGPT plus sub are money well spent. </p><p>But at the same time I honestly don't see that much of a difference over the last two years. It's more fine grained and tighter locked into the large hump of the bell curve. Results look more like the thing they're copying. Anyways... worth a read:</p><p><a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4mvphwx5pdsZLMmpY/recent-ai-model-progress-feels-mostly-like-bullshit" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4mvphwx5pdsZLMmpY/recent-ai-model-progress-feels-mostly-like-bullshit</a></p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Bauhaus Clock Screensaver by freediverx </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/bauhaus-clock-screensaver/#comment-4249483</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[freediverx]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 23:33:03 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47388#comment-4249483</guid> <description><![CDATA[ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.gif]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.gif</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Google Is Winning on Every AI Front by Ben G </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/google-is-winning-on-every-ai-front/#comment-4249481</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben G]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 23:13:18 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47404#comment-4249481</guid> <description><![CDATA[Huh. I tried Gemini Pro from December until about 3 weeks ago and it consistently gave me incorrect answers (to engineering class problems) and/or it presented the answers in a very confusing manner. ChatGPT and Grok were almost always correct. Grok wins for outputting the answers in the most understandable format. Often, I knew the answer that Gemini gave was incorrect right away, so I'd say something like "Are you sure this is correct?" and it'd be like "You're right! My apologies for the oversight. Let me do it again." and it would either output the same wrong answer, or go off on a different wrong tangent. Or sometimes it would have the equation correct, with the correct numbers, and then it would output the wrong answer. Like 2 + 3 = 5.3 type of stuff. Guess I'll have to try the new model.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Huh. I tried Gemini Pro from December until about 3 weeks ago and it consistently gave me incorrect answers (to engineering class problems) and/or it presented the answers in a very confusing manner. ChatGPT and Grok were almost always correct. Grok wins for outputting the answers in the most understandable format.</p><p>Often, I knew the answer that Gemini gave was incorrect right away, so I'd say something like "Are you sure this is correct?" and it'd be like "You're right! My apologies for the oversight. Let me do it again." and it would either output the same wrong answer, or go off on a different wrong tangent.</p><p>Or sometimes it would have the equation correct, with the correct numbers, and then it would output the wrong answer. Like 2 + 3 = 5.3 type of stuff.</p><p>Guess I'll have to try the new model.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Claude for Mac by cglong </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/claude-for-mac/#comment-4249450</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[cglong]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:18:38 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47402#comment-4249450</guid> <description><![CDATA[Is ChatGPT really the "best" app when it only works on macOS 14+ with Apple Silicon? All these apps are just glorified thin clients after all.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Is ChatGPT really the "best" app when it only works on macOS 14+ with Apple Silicon? All these apps are just glorified thin clients after all.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Obituary for Cyc by John Muir </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/obituary-for-cyc/#comment-4249441</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[John Muir]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:40:33 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47406#comment-4249441</guid> <description><![CDATA[Yes, I remembered that strange conclusion from the same documentary, many years after watching, it thanks to Andy Baio. When I saw this here, what did I do to confirm it is the glimmering phantom that I thought it was? Asked an AI, of course.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yes, I remembered that strange conclusion from the same documentary, many years after watching, it thanks to Andy Baio.</p><p>When I saw this here, what did I do to confirm it is the glimmering phantom that I thought it was? Asked an AI, of course.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Obituary for Cyc by Mac Folklore Radio </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/obituary-for-cyc/#comment-4249434</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mac Folklore Radio]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:17:27 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47406#comment-4249434</guid> <description><![CDATA[[trying again with a disguised URL to get past WordPress] I first heard about Cyc from the 1993 documentary "The Machine That Changed The World". Here's Doug talking about "the brittleness problem": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&list=PL3GEqwP6dqmjVeHZTmymATHwu3s_YWLQC Cyc knows people shave and Cyc "thinks" an electric shaver held in the hand is, in some sense, part of a person. But it also knows people don't have electrical parts. "So in a sense, [Cyc] is asking,'Is Fred still a person while he's shaving?'" Unfortunately Doug passed away in 2023 (says Wikipedia).]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[trying again with a disguised URL to get past WordPress]</p><p>I first heard about Cyc from the 1993 documentary "The Machine That Changed The World". </p><p>Here's Doug talking about "the brittleness problem":</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&list=PL3GEqwP6dqmjVeHZTmymATHwu3s_YWLQC" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&list=PL3GEqwP6dqmjVeHZTmymATHwu3s_YWLQC</a></p><p>Cyc knows people shave and Cyc "thinks" an electric shaver held in the hand is, in some sense, part of a person. But it also knows people don't have electrical parts. "So in a sense, [Cyc] is asking,'Is Fred still a person while he's shaving?'"</p><p>Unfortunately Doug passed away in 2023 (says Wikipedia).</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Claude for Mac by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/claude-for-mac/#comment-4249425</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 19:53:08 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47402#comment-4249425</guid> <description><![CDATA[OpenAI's app is currently the best vendor-specific Mac app. Claude is a barely working clown show, while ChatGPT feels part of the OS. But IntelliBar is the best LLM chat app for Macs. Apart from the extremely convenient shortcut UI, it supports almost all LLM vendors and allows you to easily ask the same question to different models. You can prompt a local model, and if the answer isn't suitable, ask the same question to a commercial model with a single click.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>OpenAI's app is currently the best vendor-specific Mac app. Claude is a barely working clown show, while ChatGPT feels part of the OS.</p><p>But IntelliBar is the best LLM chat app for Macs. Apart from the extremely convenient shortcut UI, it supports almost all LLM vendors and allows you to easily ask the same question to different models. You can prompt a local model, and if the answer isn't suitable, ask the same question to a commercial model with a single click.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on LLaMA Gaming AI Benchmarks by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/llama-gaming-ai-benchmarks/#comment-4249421</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 19:43:20 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47400#comment-4249421</guid> <description><![CDATA[The unmodified release version of Maverick (Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct) ranks 32nd on LMArena. This is interesting because Meta tried to make the model less "biased" toward the left and refuse fewer questions. If the hypothesis that LLMs are biased toward the left is correct, removing that bias should improve the model, particularly in this type of benchmark. The results don't seem to bear that out.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The unmodified release version of Maverick (Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct) ranks 32nd on LMArena.</p><p>This is interesting because Meta tried to make the model less "biased" toward the left and refuse fewer questions. If the hypothesis that LLMs are biased toward the left is correct, removing that bias should improve the model, particularly in this type of benchmark. The results don't seem to bear that out.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Google Is Winning on Every AI Front by Bart </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/google-is-winning-on-every-ai-front/#comment-4249410</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bart]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:58:23 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47404#comment-4249410</guid> <description><![CDATA[Aside from the cringe phrasing of "vibes checks and high-taste testers," I have to agree. My own "vibe check" says they have accelerated very quickly. And they do have the advantage that they basically already have everyone's data, and everyone has an account. An advantage that Apple also potentially had and will continue to squander for the foreseeable future. People gave them a hard time for a while about "glue on pizza" (sounds kind of old already) but in that span of time they went from that to something that has a substantial lead and is inarguably useful.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Aside from the cringe phrasing of "vibes checks and high-taste testers," I have to agree. My own "vibe check" says they have accelerated very quickly. And they do have the advantage that they basically already have everyone's data, and everyone has an account. An advantage that Apple also potentially had and will continue to squander for the foreseeable future.</p><p>People gave them a hard time for a while about "glue on pizza" (sounds kind of old already) but in that span of time they went from that to something that has a substantial lead and is inarguably useful.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on LLaMA Gaming AI Benchmarks by Laurent Giroud </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/14/llama-gaming-ai-benchmarks/#comment-4249407</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Laurent Giroud]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:46:45 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47400#comment-4249407</guid> <description><![CDATA[This is interesting on two counts: first this highlights how those firms are essentially clueless as to how generally improve their models so they can be controlled in more programmatic manners (which, by construction, they cannot be), and second, they are willing to take the risk to be caught pants down, lying in public about it. So we have essentially two levels of incompetence: one semi-technical and one purely executive/communication. The latter of which raises even more moral questions but keep in mind that companies are amoral (alas). I think they are essentially symptoms of the same underlying issue though: executives are so far from having a technical understanding of the issues at hand here that they seem to be essentially wishing their teams to make the LLM inherent-to-their-construction problems disappear and are willing to fabricate evidence in the meantime.This would already be an important problem but there could be a second one at play here : one may wonder if those executives are getting clear feedback from engineers that LLMs’s lack of controllability are inherent to their very structure. Absent this feedback they would not see any other choice but to march forward (into the wall, alas).Given how much AI hype there is, even in engineering groups, it is not even clear many even dare expressing the thought that other approaches are needed for the expected feature set (natural language, symbolic reasoning, safety, absence of hallucinations). I am with John Siracusa here: a step back is needed but it’s not clear there is any awareness of that necessity at any decision level in those companies. And the fact they are willing to be caught lying about it makes one think they don’t really have a way out at the moment.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is interesting on two counts: first this highlights how those firms are essentially clueless as to how generally improve their models so they can be controlled in more programmatic manners (which, by construction, they cannot be), and second, they are willing to take the risk to be caught pants down, lying in public about it.</p><p>So we have essentially two levels of incompetence: one semi-technical and one purely executive/communication. The latter of which raises even more moral questions but keep in mind that companies are amoral (alas).</p><p>I think they are essentially symptoms of the same underlying issue though: executives are so far from having a technical understanding of the issues at hand here that they seem to be essentially wishing their teams to make the LLM inherent-to-their-construction problems disappear and are willing to fabricate evidence in the meantime.<br />This would already be an important problem but there could be a second one at play here : one may wonder if those executives are getting clear feedback from engineers that LLMs’s lack of controllability are inherent to their very structure. Absent this feedback they would not see any other choice but to march forward (into the wall, alas).<br />Given how much AI hype there is, even in engineering groups, it is not even clear many even dare expressing the thought that other approaches are needed for the expected feature set (natural language, symbolic reasoning, safety, absence of hallucinations).</p><p>I am with John Siracusa here: a step back is needed but it’s not clear there is any awareness of that necessity at any decision level in those companies. And the fact they are willing to be caught lying about it makes one think they don’t really have a way out at the moment.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Bauhaus Clock Screensaver by Alexandre Dieulot </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/bauhaus-clock-screensaver/#comment-4249310</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Alexandre Dieulot]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:18:14 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47388#comment-4249310</guid> <description><![CDATA[https://x.com/_atilla1/status/1911443302127227249 > Since it's based on the Max Bill watch dial, I've taken it offline to clarify design rights and avoid any IP issues. I'm already in touch with @junghansgermany to properly address the situation. I'll keep you updated on our progress. Thank you!]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://x.com/_atilla1/status/1911443302127227249" rel="nofollow ugc">https://x.com/_atilla1/status/1911443302127227249</a></p><p>> Since it's based on the Max Bill watch dial, I've taken it offline to clarify design rights and avoid any IP issues. I'm already in touch with @junghansgermany to properly address the situation. I'll keep you updated on our progress. Thank you!</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Unable to Send Messages With Apple Mail on macOS 15.4 by sergio molino </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/unable-to-send-messages-with-apple-mail-on-macos-15-4/#comment-4249273</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[sergio molino]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 10:39:03 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47365#comment-4249273</guid> <description><![CDATA[I have the same problem, I do not understand why the Send icon is greyed out after the first pressing!!]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have the same problem, I do not understand why the Send icon is greyed out after the first pressing!!</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/10/how-apple-fumbled-siris-ai-makeover/#comment-4249250</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:25:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47373#comment-4249250</guid> <description><![CDATA[I'm with this lot: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html AI is the failure, not the poor sods trying to use it for something]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I'm with this lot: <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html" rel="nofollow ugc">https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html</a></p><p>AI is the failure, not the poor sods trying to use it for something</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Bauhaus Clock Screensaver by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/bauhaus-clock-screensaver/#comment-4249222</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 07:48:04 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47388#comment-4249222</guid> <description><![CDATA[Like with the iOS clock that Apple copied? https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/cip/2013-01/08/content_16095837.htm]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Like with the iOS clock that Apple copied? <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/cip/2013-01/08/content_16095837.htm" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/cip/2013-01/08/content_16095837.htm</a></p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Bauhaus Clock Screensaver by Nate </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/bauhaus-clock-screensaver/#comment-4249092</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Nate]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:15:45 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47388#comment-4249092</guid> <description><![CDATA[It looks beautiful but it’s currently unavailable. Intellectual property claim from Junghans?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It looks beautiful but it’s currently unavailable. Intellectual property claim from Junghans?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Tony Collins </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4248880</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tony Collins]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2025 10:04:12 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4248880</guid> <description><![CDATA[Hi Sebby. I use iCloud with a custom domain, which might be the worst of all worlds Can I ask why you use a VM to host your mail? I've got a new Mac mini and I'm considering self-hosting but to be honest I wouldn't know where to start these days - the last time I self-hosted was around 2003']]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi Sebby. I use iCloud with a custom domain, which might be the worst of all worlds</p><p>Can I ask why you use a VM to host your mail? </p><p>I've got a new Mac mini and I'm considering self-hosting but to be honest I wouldn't know where to start these days - the last time I self-hosted was around 2003'</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Riccardo Mori </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248730</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Riccardo Mori]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 22:08:50 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248730</guid> <description><![CDATA[What MeX said, 100%.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What MeX said, 100%.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by charles </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248674</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[charles]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 18:31:51 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248674</guid> <description><![CDATA[I don't understand the problem. Just copy the "System" folder to the external disk. Oh wait... that's OS 9. Okay, no problem. Well, it's a bit of a nuisance, but not that bad: just copy everything from the root of a working volume to the external volume, and "bless" the disk... right, that's OS X. Oh, right. It's a Silicon Mac. What's that you say, follow an Apple Support article? No, that won't work. What you had better do is just send an email to this guy Howard Oakley...]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I don't understand the problem. Just copy the "System" folder to the external disk. Oh wait... that's OS 9.</p><p>Okay, no problem. Well, it's a bit of a nuisance, but not that bad: just copy everything from the root of a working volume to the external volume, and "bless" the disk... right, that's OS X.</p><p>Oh, right. It's a Silicon Mac. What's that you say, follow an Apple Support article? No, that won't work. What you had better do is just send an email to this guy Howard Oakley...</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by MeX </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248672</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[MeX]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 18:29:14 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248672</guid> <description><![CDATA[Apple says that all this mess is for privacy reasons. OK, then give us the option to select what privacy level do we want. I want to be able to do with my Macs whatever I want, including 100% booting from external SSD, booting different Macs from the very same external SSD, not installing anything in the internal SSD (booting 100% from the external SSD) leaving it empty or for Time Machine backups only, install any application from outside the Apple Store, etc. Apple, they are my Macs, not yours, since I paid for them. Stop patronizing us. Give us options. Options are good.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Apple says that all this mess is for privacy reasons. OK, then give us the option to select what privacy level do we want. I want to be able to do with my Macs whatever I want, including 100% booting from external SSD, booting different Macs from the very same external SSD, not installing anything in the internal SSD (booting 100% from the external SSD) leaving it empty or for Time Machine backups only, install any application from outside the Apple Store, etc.</p><p>Apple, they are my Macs, not yours, since I paid for them. Stop patronizing us. Give us options. Options are good.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248585</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 13:19:28 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248585</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Jon I recommend disabling Activation Lock, too, but I don’t think it has any bearing on any of the boot/install issues I’ve been writing about these last few weeks.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Jon I recommend disabling Activation Lock, too, but I don’t think it has any bearing on any of the boot/install issues I’ve been writing about these last few weeks.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Sebby </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248579</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sebby]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 13:05:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248579</guid> <description><![CDATA[T2 and later require Internet, yeah. And with the T2 you have to depend on Internet Recovery if there's any failure of the internal installation unless you were clever enough to preempt this and turn off signature verification and turn on external bootability. And for AS, yes, you had to have transferred ownership during installation for an external install to be updatable. I ran into this as well and back then there was no way to recover from this situation except starting from scratch. Unfortunately the whole thing is now very brittle and failure-prone, dependent on a load of variables that are very hard to estimate and it's pot luck more than anything whether it'll work or not. I don't think Apple intended it to be user-serviceable at all and it works only because Apple thought it was worth supporting, but not supporting well.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>T2 and later require Internet, yeah. And with the T2 you have to depend on Internet Recovery if there's any failure of the internal installation unless you were clever enough to preempt this and turn off signature verification and turn on external bootability.</p><p>And for AS, yes, you had to have transferred ownership during installation for an external install to be updatable. I ran into this as well and back then there was no way to recover from this situation except starting from scratch. Unfortunately the whole thing is now very brittle and failure-prone, dependent on a load of variables that are very hard to estimate and it's pot luck more than anything whether it'll work or not. I don't think Apple intended it to be user-serviceable at all and it works only because Apple thought it was worth supporting, but not supporting well.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Jon </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248574</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jon]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 12:41:22 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248574</guid> <description><![CDATA[That's why primary thing I do with at least non portable Macs is disable Activation Lock. In the past I had multiple errors of updating operating system due to apple which send bad system signature via nsurl or due a not properly verified signature of iBoot prior installing firmware with system update. Disabled Activation Lock and boom, Mac behaves like it should.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>That's why primary thing I do with at least non portable Macs is disable Activation Lock.<br />In the past I had multiple errors of updating operating system due to apple which send bad system signature via nsurl or due a not properly verified signature of iBoot prior installing firmware with system update.</p><p>Disabled Activation Lock and boom, Mac behaves like it should.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Sebby </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4248539</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sebby]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 11:09:18 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4248539</guid> <description><![CDATA[Self-host email, sure. Why not? He's right, iCloud email is terrible (source: me, recovering addict). An AS Mac Mini running your email server stack in a VM will work great. Use Arq to back up the VM to Wasabi, and put the credentials in a plain text file stored in iCloud Drive (but not the encryption password, obviously). And I used to be terrified as well, but I realised this was basically because of the trauma caused by HW failures in the past. Yes things can go wrong, but you only live once on this earth and so long as your data's backed up safely you have nothing to fear from HW failure because in the absolute worst case you can find another host (managed or otherwise). And, really, you *do* have more important things to worry about if your house burns down. You are most certainly not your email. The big players have been very successful in raising expectations, and yes there are clearly cases where it just makes more sense to recommend hosted services to others, but they are not infallible or special, and the commodification of compute resources ironically means that you have more power now than ever (despite, yes, the hardship of getting delivery working out of the gate). I used to self-host, and am happy to be doing it again.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Self-host email, sure. Why not? He's right, iCloud email is terrible (source: me, recovering addict). An AS Mac Mini running your email server stack in a VM will work great. Use Arq to back up the VM to Wasabi, and put the credentials in a plain text file stored in iCloud Drive (but not the encryption password, obviously).</p><p>And I used to be terrified as well, but I realised this was basically because of the trauma caused by HW failures in the past. Yes things can go wrong, but you only live once on this earth and so long as your data's backed up safely you have nothing to fear from HW failure because in the absolute worst case you can find another host (managed or otherwise). And, really, you *do* have more important things to worry about if your house burns down. You are most certainly not your email. The big players have been very successful in raising expectations, and yes there are clearly cases where it just makes more sense to recommend hosted services to others, but they are not infallible or special, and the commodification of compute resources ironically means that you have more power now than ever (despite, yes, the hardship of getting delivery working out of the gate). I used to self-host, and am happy to be doing it again.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Swiftly 1.0 by Sebby </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/swiftly-1-0/#comment-4248527</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sebby]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 09:59:27 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47354#comment-4248527</guid> <description><![CDATA[OK so it genuinely looks nice. This is the sort of quickstarter that languages really benefit from; just look at the success of golang because of the self-contained toolchain. I think this is necessary to get past Xcode.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>OK so it genuinely looks nice. This is the sort of quickstarter that languages really benefit from; just look at the success of golang because of the self-contained toolchain. I think this is necessary to get past Xcode.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on CSS “text-wrap: pretty” in WebKit by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/css-text-wrap-pretty-in-webkit/#comment-4248482</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 07:26:54 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47386#comment-4248482</guid> <description><![CDATA[That Gruber example is devastating. How did they not think of this when designing this feature? There must be a way to define a parent relative to which all child paragraphs are formatted.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>That Gruber example is devastating. How did they not think of this when designing this feature? There must be a way to define a parent relative to which all child paragraphs are formatted.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on APFS Native Normalization by A brief history of Mac native file systems </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/06/27/apfs-native-normalization/#comment-4248481</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[A brief history of Mac native file systems]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 12 Apr 2025 07:26:13 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=18242#comment-4248481</guid> <description><![CDATA[[…] normalisation; this had to be resolved in later versions of macOS 10.13 and iOS 10, as explained here and […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[…] normalisation; this had to be resolved in later versions of macOS 10.13 and iOS 10, as explained here and […]</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248312</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:41:44 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248312</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Mike I think the Apple Silicon Macs needs activation from Apple’s server, so I doubt they’ll be able to even install the OS.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Mike I think the Apple Silicon Macs needs activation from Apple’s server, so I doubt they’ll be able to even install the OS.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Mike Richardson </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248309</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Richardson]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:33:37 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248309</guid> <description><![CDATA[Why did they have to make the firmware and external booting and all of this so goddamn brittle? 20 years from now, the retro computing crowd is going to have a hell of a time with these machines. The hardware might work perfectly fine (assuming you removed the battery before it leaked liquid death all over the logic board), but no one will be able to load any software onto the damn things. > The cynical take is that all this is an attempt to set up Macs for removal of external booting altogether. Why even bother with all this half-ass shit then? Just kill external booting with the introduction of Apple Silicon.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Why did they have to make the firmware and external booting and all of this so goddamn brittle?</p><p>20 years from now, the retro computing crowd is going to have a hell of a time with these machines. The hardware might work perfectly fine (assuming you removed the battery before it leaked liquid death all over the logic board), but no one will be able to load any software onto the damn things.</p><p>> The cynical take is that all this is an attempt to set up Macs for removal of external booting altogether. </p><p>Why even bother with all this half-ass shit then? Just kill external booting with the introduction of Apple Silicon.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on CSS “text-wrap: pretty” in WebKit by Lukáš Valenta </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/css-text-wrap-pretty-in-webkit/#comment-4248292</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Lukáš Valenta]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 21:09:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47386#comment-4248292</guid> <description><![CDATA[I wonder how is it that SwiftUI does not offer anything like this - the native app loses here (for content where this might make sense)]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wonder how is it that SwiftUI does not offer anything like this - the native app loses here (for content where this might make sense)</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Failed Software Update on the External Drive of an Apple Silicon Mac by Daniel </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/11/failed-software-update-on-the-external-drive-of-an-apple-silicon-mac/#comment-4248284</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:35:26 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47392#comment-4248284</guid> <description><![CDATA[I don't like the direction computing is headed. What benefit do these policies have? The cynical take is that all this is an attempt to set up Macs for removal of external booting altogether. iPad-ification is only getting worse...]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I don't like the direction computing is headed. What benefit do these policies have? </p><p>The cynical take is that all this is an attempt to set up Macs for removal of external booting altogether. iPad-ification is only getting worse...</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4248254</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 17:56:33 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4248254</guid> <description><![CDATA[@ObjC4Life I am still getting prompt and helpful responses from DTS, but most of the issues end up being bugs or known limitations with no workaround.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@ObjC4Life I am still getting prompt and helpful responses from DTS, but most of the issues end up being bugs or known limitations with no workaround.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4248252</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 17:53:59 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4248252</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Vadim It’s a comment on the same blog post.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Vadim It’s a comment on the same blog post.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by ObjC4Life </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4248183</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[ObjC4Life]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:38:30 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4248183</guid> <description><![CDATA[Thanks for your blog post. You were spot on talking about how Swift/SwiftUI is like chasing a moving target. I've decided not to do it. You talked about how devs are basically in an abusive relationship and I agree. Apple's hard push on new APIs often has developers scrambling (myself included). People who work inside Apple have their own interests/agendas that don't always align with ours. Ideally an approaching WWDC should be an exiting time for developers. I *should* get the feeling that Apple is going to introduce all these new features that can integrate into my app that is going to make my life EASIER and better. But instead I get a feeling of dread. What APIs that are important to me are they going to deprecate? What's going to break? What new half-implemented features are they going to try to push on me? Everyone feels they *need* to move to SwiftUI or else ( Sonos, Overcast etc.)...but that isn't the approach I'm taking. Apple's messaging has a lot to do with these feelings but they so often mislead us. You talked about GCD vs Combine vs Async Await. Combine came out like 5 years ago (maybe?). But GCD is not deprecated and still works. There was no developer penalty for using GCD and skipping Combine entirely (other than FOMO). When/if SwiftUI becomes a requirement, I'm moving to a third party cross platform framework. -- Also thanks for mentioning your issues with DTS. "First, you’ll be lucky to get a response. Second, if you do get a response, it will probably take multiple back and forths before the responder acknowledges what you can prove is occurring. Then they’ll likely state this is expected behaviour, note that you should have known this – despite their being no known public human record of this ‘known’ behaviour on the internet – and close the ticket as completed." In the past DTS was very helpful to me but recently I've been treated this way. The last couple tickets I filed were ignored completely and I was told to make a post on the developer forums instead. My post was ignored. Do they even do DTS anymore?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Thanks for your blog post. You were spot on talking about how Swift/SwiftUI is like chasing a moving target. I've decided not to do it. You talked about how devs are basically in an abusive relationship and I agree. </p><p>Apple's hard push on new APIs often has developers scrambling (myself included). People who work inside Apple have their own interests/agendas that don't always align with ours. </p><p>Ideally an approaching WWDC should be an exiting time for developers. I *should* get the feeling that Apple is going to introduce all these new features that can integrate into my app that is going to make my life EASIER and better. But instead I get a feeling of dread. What APIs that are important to me are they going to deprecate? What's going to break? What new half-implemented features are they going to try to push on me?</p><p>Everyone feels they *need* to move to SwiftUI or else ( Sonos, Overcast etc.)...but that isn't the approach I'm taking. Apple's messaging has a lot to do with these feelings but they so often mislead us.</p><p>You talked about GCD vs Combine vs Async Await. Combine came out like 5 years ago (maybe?). But GCD is not deprecated and still works. There was no developer penalty for using GCD and skipping Combine entirely (other than FOMO).</p><p>When/if SwiftUI becomes a requirement, I'm moving to a third party cross platform framework. </p><p>--</p><p>Also thanks for mentioning your issues with DTS.</p><p>"First, you’ll be lucky to get a response. Second, if you do get a response, it will probably take multiple back and forths before the responder acknowledges what you can prove is occurring. Then they’ll likely state this is expected behaviour, note that you should have known this – despite their being no known public human record of this ‘known’ behaviour on the internet – and close the ticket as completed."</p><p>In the past DTS was very helpful to me but recently I've been treated this way. The last couple tickets I filed were ignored completely and I was told to make a post on the developer forums instead. My post was ignored. Do they even do DTS anymore?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Vadim </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4248175</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Vadim]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:12:21 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4248175</guid> <description><![CDATA[@michael: the “Tim” link seems to be pointing to the wrong page - it’s the same page as the previous link. Can you fix that?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@michael: the “Tim” link seems to be pointing to the wrong page - it’s the same page as the previous link. Can you fix that?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/10/how-apple-fumbled-siris-ai-makeover/#comment-4248016</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 04:23:12 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47373#comment-4248016</guid> <description><![CDATA[I actually agree with Gianandrea if he's talking as a voice assistant. I enjoy chatGPT as a pair programmet, but as a lying voice assistant not so much.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I actually agree with Gianandrea if he's talking as a voice assistant. </p><p>I enjoy chatGPT as a pair programmet, but as a lying voice assistant not so much.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Matthew Bickham </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4248012</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Bickham]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 03:58:40 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4248012</guid> <description><![CDATA[@ObjC4Life re: > Seems like Matthew's feelings on SwiftUI may have changed a bit since last July? I wouldn't say those feelings for that particular technology has changed. What I said back then it still my position: > Personally I prefer working in SwiftUI now – probably because I no longer need to implement two similar UIs in both UIKit and AppKit. So in my particular situation, for my particular app, I feel SwiftUI is a good approach. My expertise in AppKit and UIKit wasn't the best, so I did always feel that using those technologies, especially with Storyboards, was incredibly fragile and prone to breakage. Despite its' problems, I don't feel that way with using SwiftUI. Though I do keep my usage of SwiftUI to some of the less high-level components, which I find are the least polished. I also need to support earlier versions of iOS and macOS so cannot use some of the newer SwiftUI apis for backwards compatibility reasons. Though saying all of that, both SwiftUI and Swift, are still part of the constant maintenance treadmill that I wrote about. The Swift 6 language mode is another one of those technical debt items that eventually everyone will have to work through which will bring little real benefit, but lots of extra work, to most normal app developers. The rumoured OS-wide redesign slated for iOS and macOS, is another dreaded item that will likely have to be supported in one way or another. When these things come around, I do look jealously at cross platform electron apps (that have eschewed native platform conventions completely) and can simply ignore Apple's increasingly erratic UI and language changes.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@ObjC4Life re: </p><p>> Seems like Matthew's feelings on SwiftUI may have changed a bit since last July?</p><p>I wouldn't say those feelings for that particular technology has changed. What I said back then it still my position:</p><p>> Personally I prefer working in SwiftUI now – probably because I no longer need to implement two similar UIs in both UIKit and AppKit.</p><p>So in my particular situation, for my particular app, I feel SwiftUI is a good approach. My expertise in AppKit and UIKit wasn't the best, so I did always feel that using those technologies, especially with Storyboards, was incredibly fragile and prone to breakage.</p><p>Despite its' problems, I don't feel that way with using SwiftUI. Though I do keep my usage of SwiftUI to some of the less high-level components, which I find are the least polished. I also need to support earlier versions of iOS and macOS so cannot use some of the newer SwiftUI apis for backwards compatibility reasons.</p><p>Though saying all of that, both SwiftUI and Swift, are still part of the constant maintenance treadmill that I wrote about.</p><p>The Swift 6 language mode is another one of those technical debt items that eventually everyone will have to work through which will bring little real benefit, but lots of extra work, to most normal app developers.</p><p>The rumoured OS-wide redesign slated for iOS and macOS, is another dreaded item that will likely have to be supported in one way or another. When these things come around, I do look jealously at cross platform electron apps (that have eschewed native platform conventions completely) and can simply ignore Apple's increasingly erratic UI and language changes.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Awaiting APIs by Anonymous </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/10/awaiting-apis/#comment-4247987</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anonymous]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 02:37:00 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47377#comment-4247987</guid> <description><![CDATA[Who is responsible for this…Schaffer that you bozo?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Who is responsible for this…Schaffer that you bozo?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover by Léo Natan </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/10/how-apple-fumbled-siris-ai-makeover/#comment-4247899</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Léo Natan]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:08:34 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47373#comment-4247899</guid> <description><![CDATA[> Apple AI chief John Giannandrea> Giannandrea told employees that he didn’t believe chatbots like ChatGPT added much value for users Quality leadership at Apple, assembled in California <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f926-200d-2642-fe0f.png" alt="🤦♂️" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>> Apple AI chief John Giannandrea<br />> Giannandrea told employees that he didn’t believe chatbots like ChatGPT added much value for users</p><p>Quality leadership at Apple, assembled in California 🤦♂️</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Bri </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247875</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bri]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:34:22 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247875</guid> <description><![CDATA[I've recently been working on developing for old 68k Macs. It's been loads of fun! Even with things being so much more archaic than what we're used to today, there's a magic there that's absolutely lost in modern Apple. Modern Apple is nothing like the Apple from 80s and 90s. Modern Apple is basically another Microsoft. So what I wonder is... how can we get that magic back again? Is there any chance at all for having a computer that's fun, creative and productive like classic Macs were? Or like Macs circa 2010, when Snow Leopard was the latest and greatest, and everything "just worked"? It feels like the only possible option is jumping to Linux, and while there's certainly freedom to be had there, I've never found it to be that magical. At least in my experience so far, it's lacking vision, coherence, and the human touch. Everything is patchwork, designed in haste by programmers who are only technically minded and not trying to make things that are actually pleasant to interact with. There's tons of bickering about the right way to do things, so nothing ever gets streamlined. It's not like classic Mac OS or Mac OS X at all. At least, not in any of the distros I've tried. Is our only hope something like an eccentric billionaire deciding to fund a new operating system with these explicit goals, and not caring at all about commercial success?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I've recently been working on developing for old 68k Macs. It's been loads of fun! Even with things being so much more archaic than what we're used to today, there's a magic there that's absolutely lost in modern Apple. Modern Apple is nothing like the Apple from 80s and 90s. Modern Apple is basically another Microsoft.</p><p>So what I wonder is... how can we get that magic back again? Is there any chance at all for having a computer that's fun, creative and productive like classic Macs were? Or like Macs circa 2010, when Snow Leopard was the latest and greatest, and everything "just worked"?</p><p>It feels like the only possible option is jumping to Linux, and while there's certainly freedom to be had there, I've never found it to be that magical. At least in my experience so far, it's lacking vision, coherence, and the human touch. Everything is patchwork, designed in haste by programmers who are only technically minded and not trying to make things that are actually pleasant to interact with. There's tons of bickering about the right way to do things, so nothing ever gets streamlined. It's not like classic Mac OS or Mac OS X at all. At least, not in any of the distros I've tried.</p><p>Is our only hope something like an eccentric billionaire deciding to fund a new operating system with these explicit goals, and not caring at all about commercial success?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by wilt </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247821</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[wilt]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:56:01 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247821</guid> <description><![CDATA[I wonder what one can expect from a company whose first tier support operators are obviously drilled to urge customers (I was about writing "users") to update for whatever issue they're reporting, to follow insane "diagnostic" procedures, to deny the very possibility a huge bug (known to Apple) is at stake. My two calls to Apple Support over last years were both of this kind. One operator was so kind and enthusiast that I hadn't the heart to let him down and, as we were sharing screen, I proceeded to trash right away all launchagents and daemons in main Library (including Little Snitch's, Microsoft Office's etc) that were certainly responsible for my Mac issue. And I screwed everything up of my own free will. I read on the web of a mythical second tier support operators (engineers?) who most likely are at least more proficient at telling lies.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wonder what one can expect from a company whose first tier support operators are obviously drilled to urge customers (I was about writing "users") to update for whatever issue they're reporting, to follow insane "diagnostic" procedures, to deny the very possibility a huge bug (known to Apple) is at stake. My two calls to Apple Support over last years were both of this kind. One operator was so kind and enthusiast that I hadn't the heart to let him down and, as we were sharing screen, I proceeded to trash right away all launchagents and daemons in main Library (including Little Snitch's, Microsoft Office's etc) that were certainly responsible for my Mac issue. And I screwed everything up of my own free will. I read on the web of a mythical second tier support operators (engineers?) who most likely are at least more proficient at telling lies.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by ObjC4Life </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247774</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[ObjC4Life]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 13:35:46 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247774</guid> <description><![CDATA["If you’re an indie Apple developer, you’re on a treadmill that never slows down. Apple’s annual OS updates mean a constant stream of changes, and unlike Apple — where teams of engineers handle updates — you’re expected to keep up with everything solo. The annual OS release cycle forces developers to scramble to update their apps, even if nothing is broken. Apple’s constant API changes and deprecations create an ongoing headache for developers. Swift and SwiftUI continue to evolve so quickly that learning them feels like chasing a moving target, with major shifts that often require rewriting large portions of code. StoreKit changes made in-app purchases a moving target as well, forcing developers to adapt to new implementations. StoreKit 2 completely changed the API structure, forcing rewrites to systems that had been working for years. Other examples abound: UIKit and AppKit developers had to rethink entire UI structures when Apple pushed SwiftUI as the future. Core Data, long a staple for managing persistence, has been overshadowed by SwiftData, requiring yet another major shift. The introduction of new concurrency models — first Grand Central Dispatch, then Combine, and now async/await — may mean rewriting asynchronous code multiple times over in just a few years. For Apple, these changes represent progress. For developers, they represent an endless cycle of busy maintenance work that doesn’t always improve their apps, but is necessary just to keep them running." Being expected to reimplement entire codebases constantly for a "new API" is absurd. Usually the new API isn't an enhancement at all and just makes things worse and often results in us actually losing API features rather than gaining. "I didn't implement this someone else did years, let's rewrite it in Swift" seems more like Apple's attitude/goal. Throwaway years of polish just to chase a new language is a mistake. Sucks to read that someone with a popular app now recommends against developing on Apple platforms. Apple is doing a great job fucking up dev relations. Seems like Matthew's feelings on SwiftUI may have changed a bit since last July? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/magic-lasso-redesigned/ Swift / SwiftUI has been a disaster for all parties. AppKit/UIKit still work just fine. I recommend devs not move to SwiftUI. Developer pushback can help Apple realize (faster) that SwiftUI was a mistake. I think some people at Apple already know this but can't say it...]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>"If you’re an indie Apple developer, you’re on a treadmill that never slows down.</p><p>Apple’s annual OS updates mean a constant stream of changes, and unlike Apple — where teams of engineers handle updates — you’re expected to keep up with everything solo. The annual OS release cycle forces developers to scramble to update their apps, even if nothing is broken.</p><p>Apple’s constant API changes and deprecations create an ongoing headache for developers. Swift and SwiftUI continue to evolve so quickly that learning them feels like chasing a moving target, with major shifts that often require rewriting large portions of code.</p><p>StoreKit changes made in-app purchases a moving target as well, forcing developers to adapt to new implementations. StoreKit 2 completely changed the API structure, forcing rewrites to systems that had been working for years.</p><p>Other examples abound: UIKit and AppKit developers had to rethink entire UI structures when Apple pushed SwiftUI as the future. Core Data, long a staple for managing persistence, has been overshadowed by SwiftData, requiring yet another major shift. The introduction of new concurrency models — first Grand Central Dispatch, then Combine, and now async/await — may mean rewriting asynchronous code multiple times over in just a few years.</p><p>For Apple, these changes represent progress. For developers, they represent an endless cycle of busy maintenance work that doesn’t always improve their apps, but is necessary just to keep them running."</p><p>Being expected to reimplement entire codebases constantly for a "new API" is absurd. Usually the new API isn't an enhancement at all and just makes things worse and often results in us actually losing API features rather than gaining. "I didn't implement this someone else did years, let's rewrite it in Swift" seems more like Apple's attitude/goal. Throwaway years of polish just to chase a new language is a mistake. Sucks to read that someone with a popular app now recommends against developing on Apple platforms. Apple is doing a great job fucking up dev relations. </p><p>Seems like Matthew's feelings on SwiftUI may have changed a bit since last July? <a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/magic-lasso-redesigned/" rel="ugc">https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/magic-lasso-redesigned/</a> </p><p> Swift / SwiftUI has been a disaster for all parties. AppKit/UIKit still work just fine. I recommend devs not move to SwiftUI. Developer pushback can help Apple realize (faster) that SwiftUI was a mistake. I think some people at Apple already know this but can't say it...</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247766</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 13:06:38 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247766</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Bart Americans love hair. They can't disrespect a guy with loads of hair. It really is as simple as that.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Bart Americans love hair. They can't disrespect a guy with loads of hair. It really is as simple as that.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Software Tyrannosaur </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247736</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Software Tyrannosaur]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:43:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247736</guid> <description><![CDATA[There is no reason to have Macs on a 12-month release schedule or keep it in lock step with iOS because of services. If the backend processes for services are that embedded into the OS THAT is a problem. They could rework the relevant bit to accommodate the new iOS and incorporate that without jacking up the entire codebase. With every iteration Apple makes it tougher to troubleshoot and manage the Mac by locking stuff down in the name of "security". Nuts. I left Windows behind more than 20 years ago because of the black hole that was the registry. Now I need to tweak system bits and deal with the death of kernel extensions, Mail extensions and Safari extensions because dog forbid that anyone might want to do something Apple has decided isn't in their best interests.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There is no reason to have Macs on a 12-month release schedule or keep it in lock step with iOS because of services. If the backend processes for services are that embedded into the OS THAT is a problem. They could rework the relevant bit to accommodate the new iOS and incorporate that without jacking up the entire codebase. With every iteration Apple makes it tougher to troubleshoot and manage the Mac by locking stuff down in the name of "security". Nuts. I left Windows behind more than 20 years ago because of the black hole that was the registry. Now I need to tweak system bits and deal with the death of kernel extensions, Mail extensions and Safari extensions because dog forbid that anyone might want to do something Apple has decided isn't in their best interests.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Software Tyrannosaur </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247735</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Software Tyrannosaur]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:33:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247735</guid> <description><![CDATA[I had a similar experience working more than 2 decades for another large Silicon Valley tech firm. When I started it was like Google. In one of my interviews I was told that if what I did was good for the customer, good for my team or good for the company, in that order, I wouldn't be punished if I failed. That shifted as the company grow and the MBAs moved in. Now it's simply down to juggling the numbers to look good for Wall Street every quarter. They haven't come out with a new product in years and just keep milking their cash cow while laying off left right and centre to goose that bottom line. I got out before they hit the iceberg that is coming. As to the other thread about developers being sour, when I started at the same company in the 90s their code base was a huge monolithic blob where fixing a bug in one feature sometimes broke something somewhere else. I remember filing the same bug report 3 times because of the fix/break scenario. The final time I ran dtrace, found the offending line in the source and attached it to the bug report with the fix because I (and the customers) were tired of the constant break/fix repeat scenario. I discussed this with a VP in software development and suggested an approach similar to what I saw with IBM. Rework out code base to make it modular and patchable so that if something broke we could issue a patch for that specific bug without having to upgrade the entire image. His response was that as much as that is an excellent engineering solution it isn't sexy enough to get the required funding because it involves no new features, no new products, nothing other than more stable software. But if I could prove that such an effort would lead to increased revenue he'd try to sell it. That's the mentality in the C-suites, new features = more revenue. As for Apple, they've been trying to make macos into IOS for years now, something I predicted years ago. Forget that it's a different use case and lock it down. Catalyst anyone? The net result is that if I didn't didn't have a bunch of Mac-only apps I'd have moved on by now. That and unfortunately Linux always promises a great user experience but rarely if ever delivers.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I had a similar experience working more than 2 decades for another large Silicon Valley tech firm. When I started it was like Google. In one of my interviews I was told that if what I did was good for the customer, good for my team or good for the company, in that order, I wouldn't be punished if I failed. That shifted as the company grow and the MBAs moved in. Now it's simply down to juggling the numbers to look good for Wall Street every quarter. They haven't come out with a new product in years and just keep milking their cash cow while laying off left right and centre to goose that bottom line. I got out before they hit the iceberg that is coming.</p><p>As to the other thread about developers being sour, when I started at the same company in the 90s their code base was a huge monolithic blob where fixing a bug in one feature sometimes broke something somewhere else. I remember filing the same bug report 3 times because of the fix/break scenario. The final time I ran dtrace, found the offending line in the source and attached it to the bug report with the fix because I (and the customers) were tired of the constant break/fix repeat scenario.</p><p>I discussed this with a VP in software development and suggested an approach similar to what I saw with IBM. Rework out code base to make it modular and patchable so that if something broke we could issue a patch for that specific bug without having to upgrade the entire image. His response was that as much as that is an excellent engineering solution it isn't sexy enough to get the required funding because it involves no new features, no new products, nothing other than more stable software. But if I could prove that such an effort would lead to increased revenue he'd try to sell it. That's the mentality in the C-suites, new features = more revenue. </p><p>As for Apple, they've been trying to make macos into IOS for years now, something I predicted years ago. Forget that it's a different use case and lock it down. Catalyst anyone? The net result is that if I didn't didn't have a bunch of Mac-only apps I'd have moved on by now. That and unfortunately Linux always promises a great user experience but rarely if ever delivers.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Tomáš Kafka </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247732</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tomáš Kafka]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:28:11 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247732</guid> <description><![CDATA[Last week I filled a bug report for retracting a WWDC talk (Efficiency awaits: Background tasks in SwiftUI) that presents APIs that are either unfinished or not implemented at all even almost 3 years later. https://x.com/tomaskafka/status/1907003833546657803 I wasted at least a day on this, finding forum and StackOverflow posts of many others who got burned as well. And in the end, @eskimo told me to file a bug against the talk: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/726443?answerId=823711022&page=1#832295022 I don’t expect anything to happen, but man, the comment section on PHP documentation was a godsend for centralizing these kinds of corrections and real world implementation experiences.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last week I filled a bug report for retracting a WWDC talk (Efficiency awaits: Background tasks in SwiftUI) that presents APIs that are either unfinished or not implemented at all even almost 3 years later.</p><p><a href="https://x.com/tomaskafka/status/1907003833546657803" rel="nofollow ugc">https://x.com/tomaskafka/status/1907003833546657803</a></p><p>I wasted at least a day on this, finding forum and StackOverflow posts of many others who got burned as well.</p><p>And in the end, @eskimo told me to file a bug against the talk: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/726443?answerId=823711022&page=1#832295022" rel="nofollow ugc">https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/726443?answerId=823711022&page=1#832295022</a></p><p>I don’t expect anything to happen, but man, the comment section on PHP documentation was a godsend for centralizing these kinds of corrections and real world implementation experiences.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247689</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 07:05:46 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247689</guid> <description><![CDATA[>porting their products to Linux One nice thing about using open source is that you can fix bugs that bother you. In my experience, maintainers are always super grateful if you do. And if you can't code, you can still set bounties.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>>porting their products to Linux</p><p>One nice thing about using open source is that you can fix bugs that bother you. In my experience, maintainers are always super grateful if you do.</p><p>And if you can't code, you can still set bounties.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by CowMonkey </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247657</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[CowMonkey]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 04:29:21 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247657</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Bart: it is interesting that they are pushing "New Outlook" like this, as it is obviously way, way worse than the established version. The new one is, as all apps are, just a shell to their web interface; missing essential features (try dragging an attachment out of an email to your desktop for example). I'm probably missing the situational awareness that is necessary to understand why such decisions and the one for a MS account are being made - it doesn't feel like such changes are in the users interest.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Bart: it is interesting that they are pushing "New Outlook" like this, as it is obviously way, way worse than the established version. The new one is, as all apps are, just a shell to their web interface; missing essential features (try dragging an attachment out of an email to your desktop for example).</p><p>I'm probably missing the situational awareness that is necessary to understand why such decisions and the one for a MS account are being made - it doesn't feel like such changes are in the users interest.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Wu Ming </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247635</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Wu Ming]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 02:59:14 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247635</guid> <description><![CDATA[Scott Forstall should be back into the company he greatly helped to become successful. And begin tiding up.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Scott Forstall should be back into the company he greatly helped to become successful. And begin tiding up.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Someone </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247628</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Someone]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 02:14:02 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247628</guid> <description><![CDATA[Maybe developers, instead of complaining and continuing to develop for Apple hardware, should stop work on Apple kit, and devote themselves to porting their products to Linux. KDE Plasma / Qt. Gnome, these are all workable setups. As long as developers have users who rely on their software, and they're Mac / iOS only, they're part of the problem preventing Apple's bad software from having any consequence. @Bart Yes, Federighi has been a disaster of greater proportion than when Jonny Ive was operating without Steve Jobs. But damn, he has nice hair, so I guess no consequences.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Maybe developers, instead of complaining and continuing to develop for Apple hardware, should stop work on Apple kit, and devote themselves to porting their products to Linux. KDE Plasma / Qt. Gnome, these are all workable setups.</p><p>As long as developers have users who rely on their software, and they're Mac / iOS only, they're part of the problem preventing Apple's bad software from having any consequence.</p><p>@Bart Yes, Federighi has been a disaster of greater proportion than when Jonny Ive was operating without Steve Jobs. But damn, he has nice hair, so I guess no consequences.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Matthew Bickham </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247597</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Bickham]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:22:18 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247597</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Michael if these stats are correct: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1485088/app-revenue-distribution-by-category-worldwide/ As at mid-2024, Games made up 55% of app revenue worldwide, with Entertainment at 14% and Photo and video at 8%. This is total app revenue, not just the Apple App Store app revenue, so it's probably not 100% correct but in the ballpark of accuracy.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Michael if these stats are correct:</p><p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1485088/app-revenue-distribution-by-category-worldwide/" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.statista.com/statistics/1485088/app-revenue-distribution-by-category-worldwide/</a></p><p>As at mid-2024, Games made up 55% of app revenue worldwide, with Entertainment at 14% and Photo and video at 8%.</p><p>This is total app revenue, not just the Apple App Store app revenue, so it's probably not 100% correct but in the ballpark of accuracy.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247590</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:08:17 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247590</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Matthew And I wonder if the App Store revenue is still mostly from games.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Matthew And I wonder if the App Store revenue is still mostly from games.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by BentoCorp </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247582</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[BentoCorp]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 23:43:03 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247582</guid> <description><![CDATA[As an indie developer, one of the best things I did was to make the feedback and support email accessible to users and come directly to my inbox to handle. Seeing multiple bugs or queries on the same issue is annoying, but also a great motivator to fix those issues – both in order to improve the product quality, but also to reduce the load of having to constantly handle the same questions or issues. I can pretty much judge the quality of the product by the volume of email. As time has gone on, and issues have been fixed, the volume has dropped dramatically. I think in larger companies this is where the bug fixing downfall occurs. It's easy to be separate and put up a firewall between the constant and pressing issues that your customers are experiencing and what you prioritise as an organisation to do everyday.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As an indie developer, one of the best things I did was to make the feedback and support email accessible to users and come directly to my inbox to handle.</p><p>Seeing multiple bugs or queries on the same issue is annoying, but also a great motivator to fix those issues – both in order to improve the product quality, but also to reduce the load of having to constantly handle the same questions or issues.</p><p>I can pretty much judge the quality of the product by the volume of email. As time has gone on, and issues have been fixed, the volume has dropped dramatically.</p><p>I think in larger companies this is where the bug fixing downfall occurs. It's easy to be separate and put up a firewall between the constant and pressing issues that your customers are experiencing and what you prioritise as an organisation to do everyday.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Matthew Bickham </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247568</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Bickham]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 23:03:33 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247568</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Bart agree that Craig does not get blamed for a lot of these issues, but I think as I wrote in the linked piece, that it goes further than a single exec. The annual release cadence is almost entirely driven by the annual iPhone release cadence. Apple believes they need a new iOS with each new iPhone cycle in order to market the newness. Now with services, this inevitably ties all of their other device OS's together, including macOS, on the same release cycle to retain compatibility. If we want to play blame the execs, from my little knowledge, I don't think Craig would be the main culprit in the deterioration of developer experience. Every indication is that Phil Schiller is the main culprit behind the App Store's mafia style tactics, obviously supported and backed by Tim Cook. This is in order to continue to keep absolute software control, as well as to extract as much revenue as possible, in order to support their only growing revenue stream, which is 'services'. They are also doing a very clever magic trick each time they talk about their services. In financial calls and other PR pieces they always talk about services as if it is Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud etc. When in fact the reality is that an overwhelming majority of their services income and revenue is actually due to taxing 15-30% from developers on the App Store and getting $20+ billion per/annum by selling their users privacy to Google via the Google Search deal. All the other Apple One services they like to talk about are all second-tier – when looking at it from a competitive marketshare standpoint – and bring in relatively little revenue or profit in comparison to App Store tax and the Google Search deal.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Bart agree that Craig does not get blamed for a lot of these issues, but I think as I wrote in the linked piece, that it goes further than a single exec.</p><p>The annual release cadence is almost entirely driven by the annual iPhone release cadence. Apple believes they need a new iOS with each new iPhone cycle in order to market the newness. Now with services, this inevitably ties all of their other device OS's together, including macOS, on the same release cycle to retain compatibility.</p><p>If we want to play blame the execs, from my little knowledge, I don't think Craig would be the main culprit in the deterioration of developer experience.</p><p>Every indication is that Phil Schiller is the main culprit behind the App Store's mafia style tactics, obviously supported and backed by Tim Cook. This is in order to continue to keep absolute software control, as well as to extract as much revenue as possible, in order to support their only growing revenue stream, which is 'services'.</p><p>They are also doing a very clever magic trick each time they talk about their services. In financial calls and other PR pieces they always talk about services as if it is Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud etc. When in fact the reality is that an overwhelming majority of their services income and revenue is actually due to taxing 15-30% from developers on the App Store and getting $20+ billion per/annum by selling their users privacy to Google via the Google Search deal.</p><p>All the other Apple One services they like to talk about are all second-tier – when looking at it from a competitive marketshare standpoint – and bring in relatively little revenue or profit in comparison to App Store tax and the Google Search deal.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by someone </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247555</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[someone]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:31:36 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247555</guid> <description><![CDATA["And, recently, they’ve made it worse by announcing stuff that they know won’t ship in the 0.0 release. This is spun as clever planning to deliver new delights throughout the year. But it seems more like a cope for squeezing more into the major release than they should." We used to call this vaporware back in the days.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>"And, recently, they’ve made it worse by announcing stuff that they know won’t ship in the 0.0 release. This is spun as clever planning to deliver new delights throughout the year. But it seems more like a cope for squeezing more into the major release than they should."</p><p>We used to call this vaporware back in the days.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Unable to Send Messages With Apple Mail on macOS 15.4 by someone </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/unable-to-send-messages-with-apple-mail-on-macos-15-4/#comment-4247543</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[someone]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:06:03 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47365#comment-4247543</guid> <description><![CDATA[Could it be Apple Intelligence being invoked at this step to be able to suggest rewording the message?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Could it be Apple Intelligence being invoked at this step to be able to suggest rewording the message?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Unable to Send Messages With Apple Mail on macOS 15.4 by Jerry </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/unable-to-send-messages-with-apple-mail-on-macos-15-4/#comment-4247542</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jerry]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:00:43 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47365#comment-4247542</guid> <description><![CDATA[What I have been seeing so far in 15.4 is that read messages sometimes will not be shown as being read. (You still have to get a sent message back into the Sent Messages folder in order to be allowed to “Send again” that some less clever person at Apple decided (some time ago now) was appropriate.)]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What I have been seeing so far in 15.4 is that read messages sometimes will not be shown as being read. (You still have to get a sent message back into the Sent Messages folder in order to be allowed to “Send again” that some less clever person at Apple decided (some time ago now) was appropriate.)</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Adam Maxwell </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247537</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Adam Maxwell]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:32:11 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247537</guid> <description><![CDATA[I build furniture by hand for a hobby, and my first instinct was to point out that I intentionally do not finish the backs of cabinets: I leave roughsawn boards because this is a hallmark of antique, handmade furniture of a certain vintage. Hopefully my notional grandchildren will see them someday and realize they're descended from a madman who resawed 12" wide boards by hand. The point, though, is the same: I'm trying to craft a bookcase that doesn't sag and lasts a long time, using traditional joinery where I allow for seasonal wood movement, and I make mouldings to cover the end grain and give it a more finished appearance. This is that "back of the cabinet" mentality that Apple used to have, where the end product was carefully fit together, did its job, and looked like it had been designed and crafted for a purpose. Present-day Apple has a bunch of people who polish their parts of the system, but there's no cohesion or overall thought, and all those shiny buttons look like a polished heap of rabbit dung at the end of the day. I think Jobs could enforce standards within Apple, as he mostly had good taste (except for those damn iCal editable labels) and limited tolerance for usability problems. For 3rd parties, Interface Builder made it easy to get to 90% of the HIG, and users would complain and quote chapter and verse of the HIG until you finished the other 10% ("yes, thank you for pointing out that the label at the bottom of BibDesk's editor windows is off by 2 points"). I'm guessing iPod and iTunes worked pretty well because Jobs loved music and had a collection he'd curated over decades, as I do, on physical media, and wanted access to it all the time. Marketdroids who have have never ripped a CD or used iTunes as a portable analogue of their home music collection will just see it as another place to put advertising, rather than something with intrinsic value on its own.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I build furniture by hand for a hobby, and my first instinct was to point out that I intentionally do not finish the backs of cabinets: I leave roughsawn boards because this is a hallmark of antique, handmade furniture of a certain vintage. Hopefully my notional grandchildren will see them someday and realize they're descended from a madman who resawed 12" wide boards by hand.</p><p>The point, though, is the same: I'm trying to craft a bookcase that doesn't sag and lasts a long time, using traditional joinery where I allow for seasonal wood movement, and I make mouldings to cover the end grain and give it a more finished appearance. This is that "back of the cabinet" mentality that Apple used to have, where the end product was carefully fit together, did its job, and looked like it had been designed and crafted for a purpose.</p><p>Present-day Apple has a bunch of people who polish their parts of the system, but there's no cohesion or overall thought, and all those shiny buttons look like a polished heap of rabbit dung at the end of the day. I think Jobs could enforce standards within Apple, as he mostly had good taste (except for those damn iCal editable labels) and limited tolerance for usability problems. For 3rd parties, Interface Builder made it easy to get to 90% of the HIG, and users would complain and quote chapter and verse of the HIG until you finished the other 10% ("yes, thank you for pointing out that the label at the bottom of BibDesk's editor windows is off by 2 points").</p><p>I'm guessing iPod and iTunes worked pretty well because Jobs loved music and had a collection he'd curated over decades, as I do, on physical media, and wanted access to it all the time. Marketdroids who have have never ripped a CD or used iTunes as a portable analogue of their home music collection will just see it as another place to put advertising, rather than something with intrinsic value on its own.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Soured by Bart </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/soured/#comment-4247535</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bart]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:16:59 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47360#comment-4247535</guid> <description><![CDATA[Once again surprised at how Craig Federighi never comes up in all this. Is he not ultimately in charge of all software? Are not almost all of Apple's problems (aside from legal ones, and even some of those) software related? Why does he just get to pop up in a pre-recorded video once a year, do something silly, announce some features which may or may not exist yet, and then just fast cut off into the sunset? Well, he then usually does a couple puff piece interviews with the same friendly journalists who ask the same softball, pre-approved questions. If Tim isn't going to address it, shouldn't it fall to him?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Once again surprised at how Craig Federighi never comes up in all this. Is he not ultimately in charge of all software? Are not almost all of Apple's problems (aside from legal ones, and even some of those) software related?</p><p>Why does he just get to pop up in a pre-recorded video once a year, do something silly, announce some features which may or may not exist yet, and then just fast cut off into the sunset? Well, he then usually does a couple puff piece interviews with the same friendly journalists who ask the same softball, pre-approved questions.</p><p>If Tim isn't going to address it, shouldn't it fall to him?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Bart </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247530</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bart]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:07:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247530</guid> <description><![CDATA[Not to go on and on but even just today I had to deal with people being forced into "New Outlook" which broke their profile, but Microsoft doesn't actually care that the user's mail works. A popup comes up saying that New Outlook WILL be enabled on next startup, with the choices to either do it now or wait until restart. And since the "New outlook ON/OFF" toggle is still set to OFF, because the user never wanted it on, there's nothing they can do about it. And so the timebomb goes off and it's New Outlook they get. For now they haven't removed the toggle, but they have gotten more and more aggressive. It replaces the shortcut for the Office 365 version, so even when that version is clicked on, New Outlook launches anyway. Launching it directly from the Program folder works, so they are hijacking the shortcut. These are the kinds of things Microsoft, just for one specific example, spends its time on now. Fixing bugs, unless they are in the way of management engagement metrics, is simply not a consideration anymore. They don't have time. They have to hurry up and implement the next user hostile trick the psychology department has come up with to get .1% more users on Edge this month.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Not to go on and on but even just today I had to deal with people being forced into "New Outlook" which broke their profile, but Microsoft doesn't actually care that the user's mail works. A popup comes up saying that New Outlook WILL be enabled on next startup, with the choices to either do it now or wait until restart. And since the "New outlook ON/OFF" toggle is still set to OFF, because the user never wanted it on, there's nothing they can do about it.</p><p>And so the timebomb goes off and it's New Outlook they get. For now they haven't removed the toggle, but they have gotten more and more aggressive. It replaces the shortcut for the Office 365 version, so even when that version is clicked on, New Outlook launches anyway. Launching it directly from the Program folder works, so they are hijacking the shortcut.</p><p>These are the kinds of things Microsoft, just for one specific example, spends its time on now. Fixing bugs, unless they are in the way of management engagement metrics, is simply not a consideration anymore. They don't have time. They have to hurry up and implement the next user hostile trick the psychology department has come up with to get .1% more users on Edge this month.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Bart </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247528</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bart]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:00:38 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247528</guid> <description><![CDATA[Ah, a post directly relevant to my pet peeve. I seem to recall people predicting this was coming even back in the 90s (maybe even before then) when we really started just pumping out MBAs and taking a Gordon Gecko mentality to absolutely every aspect of business. It's also possible that those who have been around long enough were simply spoiled by a situation that couldn't continue to exist. When the Internet was young the people and companies using it and making software for it were doing it mostly because they loved it and it directly benefited them to help build it. Now many of those successful companies have become incumbents or absorbed into the corporate machine and the entire situation has flipped. To a degree, Google and Apple no longer have to care if the users like what they do. What are you gonna do, not use it? Same thing with Microsoft and what they keep doing to Windows. Nobody likes it, everyone hates it, the user hostility has gotten to the point of almost being blatant. But what are you gonna do, not use that Windows software that there is no replacement for? It's not even about not fixing bugs. Now they are actively introducing hostile features like the strict enforcement of Microsoft accounts in Windows 11, patching out workarounds. It's almost laughable to think that they would fix bugs, their priorities are absolutely at the other end of the spectrum, far more focused on controlling what the users do in order to continue to funnel them into sales.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ah, a post directly relevant to my pet peeve.</p><p>I seem to recall people predicting this was coming even back in the 90s (maybe even before then) when we really started just pumping out MBAs and taking a Gordon Gecko mentality to absolutely every aspect of business.</p><p>It's also possible that those who have been around long enough were simply spoiled by a situation that couldn't continue to exist. When the Internet was young the people and companies using it and making software for it were doing it mostly because they loved it and it directly benefited them to help build it.</p><p>Now many of those successful companies have become incumbents or absorbed into the corporate machine and the entire situation has flipped.</p><p>To a degree, Google and Apple no longer have to care if the users like what they do. What are you gonna do, not use it? Same thing with Microsoft and what they keep doing to Windows. Nobody likes it, everyone hates it, the user hostility has gotten to the point of almost being blatant. But what are you gonna do, not use that Windows software that there is no replacement for?</p><p>It's not even about not fixing bugs. Now they are actively introducing hostile features like the strict enforcement of Microsoft accounts in Windows 11, patching out workarounds. It's almost laughable to think that they would fix bugs, their priorities are absolutely at the other end of the spectrum, far more focused on controlling what the users do in order to continue to funnel them into sales.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Unable to Send Messages With Apple Mail on macOS 15.4 by Old Coot </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/unable-to-send-messages-with-apple-mail-on-macos-15-4/#comment-4247525</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Old Coot]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 20:56:24 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47365#comment-4247525</guid> <description><![CDATA[I might consider re-installing the latest Sequoia update.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I might consider re-installing the latest Sequoia update.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs by Dmitri Zdorov </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-companies-dont-fix-bugs/#comment-4247522</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dmitri Zdorov]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 20:42:53 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47362#comment-4247522</guid> <description><![CDATA[It’s not just about bugs. It’s about caring for small things that seemingly don’t directly impact the bottom line. From a corporate strategy point of view, there’s not much difference between not fixing a bug in the Music app, deciding the iPhone mini shouldn’t be manufactured because only a few million people are buying it (vs. tens of millions), or not updating QuickTime to support modern video formats.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It’s not just about bugs. It’s about caring for small things that seemingly don’t directly impact the bottom line. From a corporate strategy point of view, there’s not much difference between not fixing a bug in the Music app, deciding the iPhone mini shouldn’t be manufactured because only a few million people are buying it (vs. tens of millions), or not updating QuickTime to support modern video formats.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Numbers 14.4 by Dave </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/numbers-14-4/#comment-4247497</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dave]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:45:30 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47332#comment-4247497</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Daniel, This was just posted today: https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/04/a-full-list-of-new-functions-in-numbers-14-4/ It lists the 34 new functions. Hope this helps!]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Daniel,</p><p>This was just posted today:</p><p><a href="https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/04/a-full-list-of-new-functions-in-numbers-14-4/" rel="nofollow ugc">https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/04/a-full-list-of-new-functions-in-numbers-14-4/</a></p><p>It lists the 34 new functions. Hope this helps!</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247455</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:08:57 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247455</guid> <description><![CDATA[Yeah, that doesn't exist in my 1Password, version 8.10.70.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yeah, that doesn't exist in my 1Password, version 8.10.70.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247449</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:56:44 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247449</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Plume There used to be a whole Backups tab in the Preferences window. It would back up at least once a day and you could easily pick one to restore from. From what I’m reading, it looks like now it only does automatic backups in the cloud account.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Plume There used to be a whole Backups tab in the Preferences window. It would back up at least once a day and you could easily pick one to restore from. From what I’m reading, it looks like now it only does automatic backups in the cloud account.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247445</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:41:07 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247445</guid> <description><![CDATA[>1Password got rid of the built-in automatic local backup feature I don't know. I opened it on my Mac and looked through the settings and menus, but I could not find an automatic backup feature. There's a one-time export feature; that's all I found.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>>1Password got rid of the built-in automatic local backup feature</p><p>I don't know. I opened it on my Mac and looked through the settings and menus, but I could not find an automatic backup feature. There's a one-time export feature; that's all I found.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Bri </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247442</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bri]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:38:59 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247442</guid> <description><![CDATA[@gildarts This is why I use a cloud backup provider, Backblaze specifically. So I have my local backups using Time Machine along with my cloud backup. I'd never rely on just one backup provider to work, and have had many instances where one failed and so I needed the other. And that's all on top of what's being synced between my devices. I'm still using 1Password 7 and am going to stick with it as long as I possibly can, since I still haven't found anything I actually like more. (Though I never tried Strongbox.) And that means I can back up my password vault using Time Machine and Backblaze, so that's fairly secure too.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@gildarts This is why I use a cloud backup provider, Backblaze specifically. So I have my local backups using Time Machine along with my cloud backup. I'd never rely on just one backup provider to work, and have had many instances where one failed and so I needed the other. And that's all on top of what's being synced between my devices.</p><p>I'm still using 1Password 7 and am going to stick with it as long as I possibly can, since I still haven't found anything I actually like more. (Though I never tried Strongbox.) And that means I can back up my password vault using Time Machine and Backblaze, so that's fairly secure too.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247437</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:11:24 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247437</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Plume 1Password got rid of the built-in automatic local backup feature?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Plume 1Password got rid of the built-in automatic local backup feature?</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Glaurung </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247431</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Glaurung]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:08:12 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247431</guid> <description><![CDATA[@gildarts: If disaster strikes and your house is gone, then it's entirely possible your phone will be gone as well. There are some passwords that you simply have to commit to memory - the one for the email address you use to register on your banking/insurance/etc websites, the one for your apple (for ios) or google (for android) account is another. And for some things, (the data on your phone, for instance) using cloud backup (as a final line of defence) is essential as well. In a worst case situation, you need to be able to get a new phone up and running with your old number, get access to your email account, and only then will you be able to regain access to all the online accounts which have random passwords that were backed up on devices that are now gone.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@gildarts:</p><p>If disaster strikes and your house is gone, then it's entirely possible your phone will be gone as well. There are some passwords that you simply have to commit to memory - the one for the email address you use to register on your banking/insurance/etc websites, the one for your apple (for ios) or google (for android) account is another. And for some things, (the data on your phone, for instance) using cloud backup (as a final line of defence) is essential as well. </p><p>In a worst case situation, you need to be able to get a new phone up and running with your old number, get access to your email account, and only then will you be able to regain access to all the online accounts which have random passwords that were backed up on devices that are now gone.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247424</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:47:42 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247424</guid> <description><![CDATA["Not to mention the low level constant dread about losing everything if you bork something" You can also lose things when they're hosted by somebody else in their cloud. So, either way, you need to have a backup strategy. IMO, it's way easier to back up your own Vaultwarden data than to back up something like 1Password (which, as far as I know, has no automatic backup functionality built-in). I've never felt safer about my data. I back up all the data from one NAS to another on-site NAS and all of my important data to a Filen account. At some point, I'll probably drop off another NAS at a family member's and sync things to that, too. With Tailscale, this kind of thing has become borderline trivial. Self-hosting has become much easier than in the past, and the services available—things like Immich, hoarder, or Vaultwarden—have become much better, to the point where they are better than many services provided by A-tier cloud providers. Obviously, I still wouldn't tell any random person to stop using Google Drive and self-host their data, but anyone reading this blog can do this in half a weekend.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>"Not to mention the low level constant dread about losing everything if you bork something"</p><p>You can also lose things when they're hosted by somebody else in their cloud. So, either way, you need to have a backup strategy. IMO, it's way easier to back up your own Vaultwarden data than to back up something like 1Password (which, as far as I know, has no automatic backup functionality built-in).</p><p>I've never felt safer about my data. I back up all the data from one NAS to another on-site NAS and all of my important data to a Filen account. At some point, I'll probably drop off another NAS at a family member's and sync things to that, too. With Tailscale, this kind of thing has become borderline trivial.</p><p>Self-hosting has become much easier than in the past, and the services available—things like Immich, hoarder, or Vaultwarden—have become much better, to the point where they are better than many services provided by A-tier cloud providers.</p><p>Obviously, I still wouldn't tell any random person to stop using Google Drive and self-host their data, but anyone reading this blog can do this in half a weekend.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by gildarts </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247398</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[gildarts]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:50:07 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247398</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Bri: Not to mention the low level constant dread about losing everything if you bork something or your house burns down. Admittedly, losing synced files is kind of the least of your problems if your house burns down, but it has kept me from self-hosting Bitwarden, etc. I can't afford to lose my house AND my ability to access every account I have, insurance for example.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Bri: Not to mention the low level constant dread about losing everything if you bork something or your house burns down. Admittedly, losing synced files is kind of the least of your problems if your house burns down, but it has kept me from self-hosting Bitwarden, etc. I can't afford to lose my house AND my ability to access every account I have, insurance for example.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts by Bri </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/locked-out-of-apple-developer-accounts/#comment-4247393</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bri]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:38:46 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47350#comment-4247393</guid> <description><![CDATA[For reasons like this I'm avoiding being reliant on any major tech company for earning a living, especially Apple given that they are actively hostile towards their own third party developers. I do make some free mac apps, but I don't strictly *need* to notarize them. In fact, I hate notarizing them, because I feel like a chump every time I do it.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For reasons like this I'm avoiding being reliant on any major tech company for earning a living, especially Apple given that they are actively hostile towards their own third party developers. I do make some free mac apps, but I don't strictly *need* to notarize them. In fact, I hate notarizing them, because I feel like a chump every time I do it.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Bri </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247389</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bri]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:24:45 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247389</guid> <description><![CDATA[I've stopped using iCloud, except for syncing contacts, and that does occasionally just fail to work. The only real syncing service I'm using at this point is Nextcloud, self hosted by me, which isn't great, but it at least does its one main job well enough. But it's not like I can recommend self hosting to just anyone.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I've stopped using iCloud, except for syncing contacts, and that does occasionally just fail to work.</p><p>The only real syncing service I'm using at this point is Nextcloud, self hosted by me, which isn't great, but it at least does its one main job well enough. But it's not like I can recommend self hosting to just anyone.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Kristoffer </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247317</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kristoffer]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:59:59 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247317</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Plume +1 Google Photos is the poster child of this. I was soooo delighted when that launched, and I'm still a big fan. But free became payed became full of duplicate copies because my wife wants access to all photos and maybe I don't understand how to do that properly but right now I share all vacation picuters and that menas we pay twice for each in the family plan and it's just .... On the other hand. Back when I had a NAS in the cupboard that was a right nightmare to.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Plume +1</p><p>Google Photos is the poster child of this.</p><p>I was soooo delighted when that launched, and I'm still a big fan. But free became payed became full of duplicate copies because my wife wants access to all photos and maybe I don't understand how to do that properly but right now I share all vacation picuters and that menas we pay twice for each in the family plan and it's just .... </p><p>On the other hand. Back when I had a NAS in the cupboard that was a right nightmare to.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247309</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:39:51 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247309</guid> <description><![CDATA[The main problem, as with the "Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts" sibling post, is that there is nothing you can do about this. These companies are moving all of their customers to their cloud services, locking them in, and then slowly degrading these services, and there is no recourse. You hope that things magically resolve themselves, and they probably usually do, but sometimes they don't, and then you're just screwed. You can't call or email anyone who has any power to do anything for you. This is why I'm moving as much as possible to self-hosting. Things can still go wrong, but at least now I can do something about it.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The main problem, as with the "Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts" sibling post, is that there is nothing you can do about this. These companies are moving all of their customers to their cloud services, locking them in, and then slowly degrading these services, and there is no recourse. You hope that things magically resolve themselves, and they probably usually do, but sometimes they don't, and then you're just screwed.</p><p>You can't call or email anyone who has any power to do anything for you.</p><p>This is why I'm moving as much as possible to self-hosting. Things can still go wrong, but at least now I can do something about it.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247307</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:33:48 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247307</guid> <description><![CDATA[>It looks like this That's wild. If Apple makes this association based on a phone number merely just appearing in an email, then I absolutely believe this is what happened. The fact that this prompt doesn't even give any context for where the number was found is atrocious design. >no one in government wants to use the official secure communication channels This actually pisses me off. I work for a company that has government contracts, and we have some security restrictions, and I just do that shit even if it's annoying and makes my work harder. These people are literally making decisions that affect the whole world, and they can't be bothered to follow the most basic security protocols.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>>It looks like this</p><p>That's wild. If Apple makes this association based on a phone number merely just appearing in an email, then I absolutely believe this is what happened. The fact that this prompt doesn't even give any context for where the number was found is atrocious design.</p><p>>no one in government wants to use the official secure communication channels</p><p>This actually pisses me off. I work for a company that has government contracts, and we have some security restrictions, and I just do that shit even if it's annoying and makes my work harder.</p><p>These people are literally making decisions that affect the whole world, and they can't be bothered to follow the most basic security protocols.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on iOS 18.4: Ambient Music by Nathan </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/ios-18-4-ambient-music/#comment-4247234</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Nathan]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 03:25:19 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47334#comment-4247234</guid> <description><![CDATA[I noticed this in the release notes and set it up on both my phone and iPad. The music’s nice. However, when I went to turn one of them on after reading this post last night, it just failed to start. I have no idea why.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I noticed this in the release notes and set it up on both my phone and iPad. The music’s nice.</p><p>However, when I went to turn one of them on after reading this post last night, it just failed to start. I have no idea why.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Mac Folklore Radio </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247200</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mac Folklore Radio]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:19:22 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247200</guid> <description><![CDATA[Don't worry, I'm sure another re-branding will solve everything. (Younger folks: see iTools, .Mac, and MobileMe. I had no reason to believe they'd get it right the fourth time around.) Watch the problem-ridden iTools demo at Macworld San Francisco 2000. Nothing has changed. I use iMessage and nothing else. The hardware is great. Everything else is a disaster and nobody at Apple seems to notice or care. Plug: a third-party IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV service is well worth the money.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Don't worry, I'm sure another re-branding will solve everything. (Younger folks: see iTools, .Mac, and MobileMe. I had no reason to believe they'd get it right the fourth time around.)</p><p>Watch the problem-ridden iTools demo at Macworld San Francisco 2000. Nothing has changed. I use iMessage and nothing else. The hardware is great. Everything else is a disaster and nobody at Apple seems to notice or care.</p><p>Plug: a third-party IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV service is well worth the money.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Jason </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247185</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jason]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:45:33 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247185</guid> <description><![CDATA[He didn't even mention the ridiculous PITA that is Shortcuts sync conflicts.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>He didn't even mention the ridiculous PITA that is Shortcuts sync conflicts.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Matt B </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247179</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt B]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:17:15 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247179</guid> <description><![CDATA[The problem is that they all "mostly work" but not fully work. Like you, I've had issues with iMessage syncing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And one of my computers displays "29 unread messages" but when selecting "unread" nothing shows. With no way to know the current state of syncing and no way to push "sync now" I just have to deal with the frustration. It's the death by a thousand cuts. Apple doesn't care any more.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The problem is that they all "mostly work" but not fully work. Like you, I've had issues with iMessage syncing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And one of my computers displays "29 unread messages" but when selecting "unread" nothing shows. With no way to know the current state of syncing and no way to push "sync now" I just have to deal with the frustration. </p><p>It's the death by a thousand cuts. Apple doesn't care any more.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Abysmal Services by Anonymous </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/abysmal-services/#comment-4247177</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anonymous]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:11:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47348#comment-4247177</guid> <description><![CDATA[“It ended up overheating my phone battery to the point it could no longer hold a charge.” Okay buddy, sure. It doesn’t even matter which service this is about, that’s just silly.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>“It ended up overheating my phone battery to the point it could no longer hold a charge.”</p><p>Okay buddy, sure. It doesn’t even matter which service this is about, that’s just silly.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts by MeX </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/08/locked-out-of-apple-developer-accounts/#comment-4247167</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[MeX]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 21:17:03 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47350#comment-4247167</guid> <description><![CDATA[The same here (I could not login) and after months requesting including phone calls I could login my account. Really frustrating.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The same here (I could not login) and after months requesting including phone calls I could login my account. Really frustrating.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by NaOH </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247159</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[NaOH]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 20:54:48 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247159</guid> <description><![CDATA[I’ve got a little over 500 contact cards. On the Mac, back on 10.14 Mojave (and earlier; I can’t speak to later macOS versions), Siri/data detectors will display information that’s been found in other apps in an existing contact card. I found an instance of this, essentially like this: TimCook@gmail.com (added by me) tim.cook@gmail.com (noticed by Siri in an email) I prefer the capitalization, and I remove periods from Gmail usernames since they have no effect. The two addresses as shown would get to the same person. But the Siri-added info isn’t really in the contact card. For one, it’s not shown in Contacts on my up-to-date iPhone (13 mini, so no AI). On top of that, in Mac Contacts, off to the right of the Siri/data detectors suggestion, is a lowercase i in a circle, akin to an Information icon/emoji. Clicking that, the data source is shown and buttons are there to add the information to the contact or to ignore it. Again, this is only on the Mac, not on an up-to-date iPhone. For as tight-lipped as Apple can be, for as obstinate as Apple can be about product mistakes/shortcomings, I’m more confident it’s not their work that was the problem rather than a mistake by a politician within a group of people who never admit any wrongdoing.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I’ve got a little over 500 contact cards. On the Mac, back on 10.14 Mojave (and earlier; I can’t speak to later macOS versions), Siri/data detectors will display information that’s been found in other apps in an existing contact card. I found an instance of this, essentially like this:</p><p><a href="mailto:TimCook@gmail.com">TimCook@gmail.com</a> (added by me)</p><p><a href="mailto:tim.cook@gmail.com">tim.cook@gmail.com</a> (noticed by Siri in an email)</p><p>I prefer the capitalization, and I remove periods from Gmail usernames since they have no effect. The two addresses as shown would get to the same person.</p><p>But the Siri-added info isn’t really in the contact card. For one, it’s not shown in Contacts on my up-to-date iPhone (13 mini, so no AI). On top of that, in Mac Contacts, off to the right of the Siri/data detectors suggestion, is a lowercase i in a circle, akin to an Information icon/emoji. Clicking that, the data source is shown and buttons are there to add the information to the contact or to ignore it. Again, this is only on the Mac, not on an up-to-date iPhone.</p><p>For as tight-lipped as Apple can be, for as obstinate as Apple can be about product mistakes/shortcomings, I’m more confident it’s not their work that was the problem rather than a mistake by a politician within a group of people who never admit any wrongdoing.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by gildarts </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247144</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[gildarts]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 19:39:29 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247144</guid> <description><![CDATA[> If this actually happens, this is clearly the most plausible explanation, but does it happen? Absolutely does happen. It doesn't just add it without some level of user interaction, but it does suggest it and if you weren't paying attention it would be an easy mistake to make. > These people just don't want to use them. The evidence I've seen from the last 1.5-2 decades is that no one in government wants to use the official secure communication channels. See Hillary Clinton and her email server. Having never used any of the official government tools, I don't know how insufferable they are to use, but having used other IT from various government organizations, I'd guess pretty terrible. And there is zero incentive to improve it because that would cost money and everyone /has/ to use it anyway. > Hegseth detailed the operational timeline for the strikes and specified launch times for F-18 fighter jets and MQ-9 drones. He gave the timeline for when bombs would be dropped. That is fair. I was uncertain on the timing of the details vs the attacks happening. If it was hours in advance, yeah, that is, at best, unwise. If it was more or less real time, I have less of a problem with it as after the attacks are happening, keeping such information secret is minimally important.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>> If this actually happens, this is clearly the most plausible explanation, but does it happen?</p><p>Absolutely does happen. It doesn't just add it without some level of user interaction, but it does suggest it and if you weren't paying attention it would be an easy mistake to make.</p><p>> These people just don't want to use them.</p><p>The evidence I've seen from the last 1.5-2 decades is that no one in government wants to use the official secure communication channels. See Hillary Clinton and her email server. Having never used any of the official government tools, I don't know how insufferable they are to use, but having used other IT from various government organizations, I'd guess pretty terrible. And there is zero incentive to improve it because that would cost money and everyone /has/ to use it anyway.</p><p>> Hegseth detailed the operational timeline for the strikes and specified launch times for F-18 fighter jets and MQ-9 drones. He gave the timeline for when bombs would be dropped.</p><p>That is fair. I was uncertain on the timing of the details vs the attacks happening. If it was hours in advance, yeah, that is, at best, unwise. If it was more or less real time, I have less of a problem with it as after the attacks are happening, keeping such information secret is minimally important.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by Michael Tsai </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247125</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tsai]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:33:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247125</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Plume It looks like <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1bk8hh5/this_person_added_themselves_to_my_iphone_contacts/" rel="nofollow ugc">this</a> and has happened to me, though I think Siri was correct in my experience. I’ve also seen a bunch of cases when I wish it would have offered the option but didn’t. I don’t understand what the criteria are.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Plume It looks like <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1bk8hh5/this_person_added_themselves_to_my_iphone_contacts/" rel="nofollow ugc">this</a> and has happened to me, though I think Siri was correct in my experience. I’ve also seen a bunch of cases when I wish it would have offered the option but didn’t. I don’t understand what the criteria are.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by Dave </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247123</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dave]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:29:08 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247123</guid> <description><![CDATA[I agree. But still....why did Waltz need to call Goldberg "a loser"? It was a mistake on the part of Waltz. Has he apologized or been fired for *his* actions? (I'd go for a simple - but public - reprimand. American soldier lives were put in danger because of this.)]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I agree. But still....why did Waltz need to call Goldberg "a loser"? It was a mistake on the part of Waltz. Has he apologized or been fired for *his* actions? (I'd go for a simple - but public - reprimand. American soldier lives were put in danger because of this.)</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by Plume </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247120</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Plume]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:25:25 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247120</guid> <description><![CDATA[>I, for one, totally believe the data detectors explanation I don't understand what they're saying. I haven't used an iPhone in a few years. Still, when I did, it never exhibited the above behavior ("an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related)." If this actually happens, this is clearly the most plausible explanation, but does it happen? >I'm not sure why the Fed hasn't stood up their own Signal network They have officially sanctioned secure messaging apps (e.g. they use Wickr). These people just don't want to use them. >I've seen zero indication that Signal is less secure than the government networks It is. Not because it's technically insecure but because it's controlled by a private company outside of government control. The threat model for these people is very different from ours. >I buy it for really sensitive stuff, I'm not sure this qualifies Hegseth detailed the operational timeline for the strikes and specified launch times for F-18 fighter jets and MQ-9 drones. He gave the timeline for when bombs would be dropped.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>>I, for one, totally believe the data detectors explanation</p><p>I don't understand what they're saying. I haven't used an iPhone in a few years. Still, when I did, it never exhibited the above behavior ("an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related)."</p><p>If this actually happens, this is clearly the most plausible explanation, but does it happen?</p><p>>I'm not sure why the Fed hasn't stood up their own Signal network</p><p>They have officially sanctioned secure messaging apps (e.g. they use Wickr). These people just don't want to use them.</p><p>>I've seen zero indication that Signal is less secure than the government networks</p><p>It is. Not because it's technically insecure but because it's controlled by a private company outside of government control. The threat model for these people is very different from ours.</p><p>>I buy it for really sensitive stuff, I'm not sure this qualifies</p><p>Hegseth detailed the operational timeline for the strikes and specified launch times for F-18 fighter jets and MQ-9 drones. He gave the timeline for when bombs would be dropped.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA by gildarts </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/the-signal-chat-leak-and-the-nsa/#comment-4247076</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[gildarts]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:57:40 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47329#comment-4247076</guid> <description><![CDATA[I, for one, totally believe the data detectors explanation. I've had several near misses on adding the wrong contact information to someone's contact because of scenarios just like this. If you are paying attention, it shouldn't be a problem, but data detectors are pretty dumb and if some contact info is in an email from someone it will often suggest a info update, even if the data is unrelated to the person actually sending the data. Honestly, I'm not sure why the Fed hasn't stood up their own Signal network/app that doesn't use the phone address book, etc. The thing is freaking open source. I've considered setting something like that up for better parental controls for family/friends and find it hard to believe that the government couldn't setup something like that. Either the encryption works or it doesn't. Outside of user error or the person's device being compromised, I've seen zero indication that Signal is less secure than the government networks. You could argue that Signal is more secure because it doesn't retain messages in a manner that can be retrieved from archives. Of course not storing that runs into Federal records laws, but that is a different argument from the security of the conversation. I know there is an argument that conversations like this should be taking place in specific secure facilities, and while I buy it for really sensitive stuff, I'm not sure this qualifies. If they were talking about the mole they have standing behind Putin for instance, that shouldn't be talked about outside of the most secure devices.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I, for one, totally believe the data detectors explanation. I've had several near misses on adding the wrong contact information to someone's contact because of scenarios just like this. If you are paying attention, it shouldn't be a problem, but data detectors are pretty dumb and if some contact info is in an email from someone it will often suggest a info update, even if the data is unrelated to the person actually sending the data.</p><p>Honestly, I'm not sure why the Fed hasn't stood up their own Signal network/app that doesn't use the phone address book, etc. The thing is freaking open source. I've considered setting something like that up for better parental controls for family/friends and find it hard to believe that the government couldn't setup something like that. Either the encryption works or it doesn't. Outside of user error or the person's device being compromised, I've seen zero indication that Signal is less secure than the government networks. You could argue that Signal is more secure because it doesn't retain messages in a manner that can be retrieved from archives. Of course not storing that runs into Federal records laws, but that is a different argument from the security of the conversation.</p><p>I know there is an argument that conversations like this should be taking place in specific secure facilities, and while I buy it for really sensitive stuff, I'm not sure this qualifies. If they were talking about the mole they have standing behind Putin for instance, that shouldn't be talked about outside of the most secure devices.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Numbers 14.4 by Daniel </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/numbers-14-4/#comment-4247059</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:53:42 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47332#comment-4247059</guid> <description><![CDATA[As a very frequent user of Numbers, I'm very happy with this update — array support is long overdue, and they enabled me to migrate my last spreadsheet from Excel. But wow, they really botched the release process. "Over 30 functions" with no listing of them anywhere? I couldn't even find the new functions in the linked documentation, because for some reason it switches back to the previous release. Even with this, though, Numbers still lags far behind Excel for Mac, which in turn seems to be significantly behind Excel for Windows. Not being able to use functions defined in other cells is particularly bad. This update's `LET()` may make doing complex calculations ten times better than it was last week, but even now it's still a hundred times worse than in Excel for Windows.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As a very frequent user of Numbers, I'm very happy with this update — array support is long overdue, and they enabled me to migrate my last spreadsheet from Excel. But wow, they really botched the release process. "Over 30 functions" with no listing of them anywhere? I couldn't even find the new functions in the linked documentation, because for some reason it switches back to the previous release.</p><p>Even with this, though, Numbers still lags far behind Excel for Mac, which in turn seems to be significantly behind Excel for Windows. Not being able to use functions defined in other cells is particularly bad. This update's `LET()` may make doing complex calculations ten times better than it was last week, but even now it's still a hundred times worse than in Excel for Windows.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Numbers 14.4 by cowmonkey </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/numbers-14-4/#comment-4246955</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[cowmonkey]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 07:02:06 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47332#comment-4246955</guid> <description><![CDATA[@gildarts: you are correct, I am a heavey user of spreadsheets (professionally, of course ;)) and unfortunately there is no alternative to Excel - Not Google Sheets, Not Libre Calc and sure AF not Numbers. The main problem with the Pages, Numbers and Keynotes app is that while they all look nice and polished, they continually get in the way of the user - How far we've strayed from Claris Works and FileMaker Pro]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@gildarts: you are correct, I am a heavey user of spreadsheets (professionally, of course ;)) and unfortunately there is no alternative to Excel - Not Google Sheets, Not Libre Calc and sure AF not Numbers. </p><p>The main problem with the Pages, Numbers and Keynotes app is that while they all look nice and polished, they continually get in the way of the user - How far we've strayed from Claris Works and FileMaker Pro</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on XcodeBenchmark by ihatexcode </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/25/xcodebenchmark/#comment-4246911</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[ihatexcode]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 03:57:35 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=46847#comment-4246911</guid> <description><![CDATA[Practically speaking, is there a benefit for xcode development picking a mac mini with more than 16gb ram (options include 24/32gb)? I'm not particularly concerned with the downsides of using swap if it's enough for getting work done well. Only reason I ask is because of the ram pricing scheme.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Practically speaking, is there a benefit for xcode development picking a mac mini with more than 16gb ram (options include 24/32gb)? I'm not particularly concerned with the downsides of using swap if it's enough for getting work done well. Only reason I ask is because of the ram pricing scheme.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Numbers 14.4 by Dave </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/numbers-14-4/#comment-4246883</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dave]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2025 01:12:06 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47332#comment-4246883</guid> <description><![CDATA[@Michael_Tsai, a direct quote from your post: "Apple today updated its iWork apps Keynote, Numbers, and Pages with new features that require iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, or macOS 15.4" No explanation, and none needed. Except.... over 30 new functions? I guess some require Apple Intelligence in some sort of way? The way you quoted make it sounds like 14.4 *requires* macOS 15.4. It simply does not. I have come to rely o your blog for both a place I can rely on for news (even if secondhand, you are awesome about attribution) and accuracy. My point with my comment maybe should have been directed elsewhere, but based on your post I thought it best to say macOS 14.X can still download - without certain AI features - the latest version of Numbers. Peace.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>@Michael_Tsai, a direct quote from your post:</p><p>"Apple today updated its iWork apps Keynote, Numbers, and Pages with new features that require iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, or macOS 15.4"</p><p>No explanation, and none needed. Except.... over 30 new functions? I guess some require Apple Intelligence in some sort of way? The way you quoted make it sounds like 14.4 *requires* macOS 15.4. It simply does not.</p><p>I have come to rely o your blog for both a place I can rely on for news (even if secondhand, you are awesome about attribution) and accuracy. My point with my comment maybe should have been directed elsewhere, but based on your post I thought it best to say macOS 14.X can still download - without certain AI features - the latest version of Numbers.</p><p>Peace.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Numbers 14.4 by Ulysses </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/07/numbers-14-4/#comment-4246849</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ulysses]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:49:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47332#comment-4246849</guid> <description><![CDATA[Numbers has unique (distinct) counts in pivot tables, while Excel for Mac still doesn’t have it after years and years. Plus Excel has horrible tiny fonts and cruddy scientific number auto formatting when I open CSVs in it, whereas Numbers just displays my CSV intact and readable. I do wish Numbers get rid of the popup about “formatting can be changed” when opening CSVs though. It covers up the column headers I'm trying to read.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Numbers has unique (distinct) counts in pivot tables, while Excel for Mac still doesn’t have it after years and years. </p><p>Plus Excel has horrible tiny fonts and cruddy scientific number auto formatting when I open CSVs in it, whereas Numbers just displays my CSV intact and readable. </p><p>I do wish Numbers get rid of the popup about “formatting can be changed” when opening CSVs though. It covers up the column headers I'm trying to read.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> Comment on Rebuilding the Social Security Administration’s Codebase by Anonymous </title> <link>https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/02/rebuilding-the-social-security-administrations-codebase/#comment-4246828</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anonymous]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2025 21:15:32 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mjtsai.com/blog/?p=47290#comment-4246828</guid> <description><![CDATA[re: "easier to find developers" -- this is to allow the bossman to churn employees who don't kiss the ring. It used to be that merit mattered, or so went the illusion, now it's more the case that Capital wants everyone to be a gig worker, even employees. These skilled Cobol programmers have too much security for The Modern Workforce. Employees need to be contingent, otherwise they might have opinions.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>re: "easier to find developers" -- this is to allow the bossman to churn employees who don't kiss the ring. It used to be that merit mattered, or so went the illusion, now it's more the case that Capital wants everyone to be a gig worker, even employees. These skilled Cobol programmers have too much security for The Modern Workforce. Employees need to be contingent, otherwise they might have opinions.</p>]]></content:encoded> </item> </channel></rss> If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:
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