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The oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet, TidBITS brings you the Apple Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and iPod news, reviews, tips, and commentary that matters. Join us each week for audio versions of award-winning coverage from industry stalwarts Adam Engst, Glenn Fleishman, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Michael Cohen, Rich Mogull, Jeff Carlson, Tonya Engst, and others.

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Mimestream 1.8.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Mimestream has released version 1.8.1 of its Gmail-specific email app to improve compatibility with macOS 26 Tahoe. The Tahoe-targeted update ensures the Message list retains its new size between launches, fixes inconsistent vertical padding in the Format bar, fixes a bug where arrow key navigation skipped the message list, resolves an issue that caused default label backgrounds not to be visible, and fixes a visual issue for the +/- buttons in the settings bottom bar. ($49.99 annual subscription,

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Alfred 5.7

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Running with Crayons has released Alfred 5.7 with support for macOS 26 Tahoe. The keyboard-driven launcher overhauls the built-in macOS System Settings searching so that you no longer need to use Alfred’s workflow, adds a new macOS Settings proxy in Alfred Remote to launch settings correctly in macOS 13 Ventura and later, introduces an AppleScript option to reveal and open the details of a workflow in Alfred’s Preferences, resolves an out-of-bounds issue in Music Mini Player that

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Support for FireWire Removed from macOS 26 Tahoe

TidBITS ·

2025/09/19

Early in the macOS 26 Tahoe beta cycle, reports emerged that Apple had removed support for FireWire, the once-ubiquitous peripheral connection technology that took over from SCSI around 1999 and powered high-speed Mac accessories until Thunderbolt 1 and USB 3.0 superseded it in 2011 and 2012. Also known by its technical standard name of IEEE 1394, FireWire operated first at 400 Mbps and later at 800 Mbps, much faster than SCSI’s paltry 40 Mbps but far behind USB 3.0’s 5 Gbps and Thunderbolt 1’s 10

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macOS 26 Tahoe Won’t Install on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio

TidBITS ·

2025/09/17

Thanks to our old friend Ken Gruberman, who wrote on TidBITS Talk in response to “When Should You Upgrade to Apple’s OS 26 Releases?” (15 September 2025):If you have an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, like me, the answer is NEVER. That’s because macOS 26 Tahoe WILL NOT INSTALL on these machines; you can’t update the existing system nor install it onto an external drive. Others are also reporting the issue on the Apple Support Community, so it’s not an isolated problem. While some Apple support reps may not

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macOS 26 Tahoe Pushes FileVault Use

TidBITS ·

2025/09/17

In his review of macOS 26 Tahoe at Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham writes: One other tweak to the install process is the default behavior for Apple’s FileVault disk encryption. If you sign in to an Apple account as part of setting up macOS, FileVault now turns on automatically, and also automatically uses your Apple Account for recovery in the event something goes wrong. … But if you decline to sign in with an Apple Account during setup, just creating a local account, the macOS installer

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Apple Updates Older Operating Systems with OS 26...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/16

Along with the various OS 26 releases that appeared yesterday, Apple rolled out a series of updates to older versions of its operating systems and Safari to integrate the applicable security fixes and catch up with the zero-day exploit from last month. The updates include: macOS Sequoia 15.7: Includes fixes for 34 vulnerabilities, all of which are also present in macOS 26 Tahoe. Apple says it also “introduces 8 new emojis, the ability to create Memory movies in Photos with Apple Intelligence, a

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When Should You Upgrade to Apple’s OS 26 Releases?

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

As promised, Apple has released the first versions of all its 2026 operating systems, including a few new Apple Intelligence features. Many of you are thinking about upgrading. But would it be better to wait? Let’s consider a few broad categories of users. Early adopters: You know who you are, and you’re probably well into your installation process by now. That’s fine. Although the betas have been mostly stable in my testing, I’ve noticed various cosmetic problems with the new Liquid Glass

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Acorn 8.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

Flying Meat has issued Acorn 8.2 with a new pop-up that allows you to view differences and split screen between images. The image editor enables you to set the bits per component of an image on export, adds new Linear and Radial Multi-stop Gradient filters with more colors, saves the amount of feathering you apply to a selection to .acorn files (along with the current selection), adds the Command-Option-J shortcut for duplicating the currently selected shape(s), updates zoom and resize cursors for

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GraphicConverter 12.4.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

Lemkesoft has published GraphicConverter 12.4.2 with added features, improvements, and bug fixes for the Swiss Army knife of graphics programs. The release adds the capability to create an image with Image Playground; adds support for importing and exporting PNG keywords in tEXt records; improves detection of resolution values in some variants of PhotoRaw; allows you to rename, copy, and move Adobe Camera Raw (.acr) sidecar files; resolves possible issue with drag and drop in HDR images; addresses a

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Default Folder X 6.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

St. Clair Software has released Default Folder X 6.2 with support for macOS 26 Tahoe and a bug workaround for Adobe Creative Cloud 2025 apps. The Open/Save dialog utility updates the Finder toolbar buttons to work better in macOS 11 Big Sur and later, resolves an issue that resulted in incorrect text selection in Save As dialogs in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, ensures the Open With submenu works more smoothly, now considers any file or folder added to the Downloads folder as a recent

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BusyCal 2025.3.2 and BusyContacts 2025.3.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

Busy Apps has released BusyCal 2025.3.2 and BusyContacts 2025.3.2 with support for macOS 26 Tahoe and user interface updates to match the operating system’s new look. New options have been added to the View menu in BusyCal (Show Last Selected Event) and BusyContacts (Show Previous Card) for cycling through recently selected contacts. BusyCal also updates the Dock icon to adapt to the system appearance, deals with a hang when opening Time Zone settings in Tahoe, and addresses a compatibility

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Agenda 21

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

Momenta has issued version 21 of Agenda with an updated Liquid Glass design and the new Ask Agenda AI assistant (which requires macOS 26 Tahoe and Apple Intelligence). The Ask Agenda chat is an on-device model that doesn’t use the cloud, and it has access to your Agenda notes. You can ask questions about your notes in everyday language, get links to the most relevant notes in responses, and limit Ask Agenda queries to notes in date ranges. To ask follow-up Ask Agenda questions, you’ll

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Bookends 15.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/15

Sonny Software has published Bookends 15.2 with a new “native” scanning option for importing Microsoft Word documents. You can select between the previous RTF method and the new native scan option in Settings > Scan & Bib. The native scan option requires that the document has been saved as a DOCX file. The key differences between these two scan styles are that native scans have no size limit for the document you can scan, are not vulnerable to known Word AppleScript bugs, and

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Little Snitch 6.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/14

Objective Development has released Little Snitch 6.3, adding support for macOS 26 Tahoe to the network traffic management utility. The update adds Internet Access Policy support for Safari Web apps added to the Dock, improves loading of the blocklist to treat semicolon-prefixed text as comments (preventing false positives), adds quick filters to the search field for showing only active or inactive rules in the rule list, improves the header section of the rule list to describe the current contents

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DEVONthink 4.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/14

DEVONtechnologies has issued DEVONthink 4.1 (nicknamed Europa) with improvements and bug fixes for all three editions (standard, Pro, and Server), as well as several AI-related feature additions for DEVONthink Pro. All editions add a new script editor for drafting reminders and smart rules, bring a new a Quick Look extension for previewing Spotlight results in macOS 15 Sequoia and later, detect links in Markdown documents at least 25 times faster when syntax coloring and WYSIWYG is enabled,

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BBEdit 15.5.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/14

Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 15.5.3 with fixes for reported issues. The venerable text editor corrects cosmetics of the pattern field editors used in Process Lines Containing, addresses misbehavior when switching workspaces with one or more Notebook windows open, fixes a bug in which pattern playgrounds didn’t correctly write out the pattern in use when saved, resolves an issue where creating a new color scheme didn’t correctly configure it as the active scheme, ensures the

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Memory Integrity Enforcement Bolsters iPhone Security

TidBITS ·

2025/09/12

In an Apple Security Research blog post, the company’s Security Engineering and Architecture team writes:Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) is the culmination of an unprecedented design and engineering effort, spanning half a decade, that combines the unique strengths of Apple silicon hardware with our advanced operating system security to provide industry-first, always-on memory safety protection across our devices — without compromising our best-in-class device performance. We believe Memory

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iPhone Satellite Features Remain Free for Another Year

TidBITS ·

2025/09/12

When Apple first introduced Emergency SOS via satellite with the iPhone 14, it promised two years of free service. Later, Apple extended the free service by another year (see “Apple Extends Free Emergency SOS via Satellite for iPhone 14 Users for Another Year,” 15 November 2023). That extension was set to expire in November, but Apple has—in a footnote on the press releases for the new iPhones—moved the free access expiration date again: Apple is extending free access to satellite features for an

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Overlooked Details of the iPhone Air

TidBITS ·

2025/09/12

Apple’s product announcements are grand, cinematic events that often barely touch on, gloss over, or overlook interesting details that might impact our lives. Here are a few details about the new iPhone Air that weren’t entirely clear from the announcement. It’s iPhone Air, not iPhone 17 Air I completely missed this while Apple presenters were talking about the iPhones, to the point where, after drafting my article, I had to search for “iPhone 17 Air” and replace it with just “iPhone Air.” Why did

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OS 26 Scheduled for 15 September 2025

TidBITS ·

2025/09/10

Although Apple did not mention release dates for its upcoming operating systems during its iPhone introduction, the company quietly added those dates to the associated Web pages for its core operating systems. We now know we can expect macOS 26 Tahoe, iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26 to ship on 15 September 2025. I assume that tvOS 26 and HomePod Software 26 will ship simultaneously. Unlike with the last few major operating system releases, Apple isn’t indicating that any promised

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