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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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AirPods Pro 3 Improve Noise Cancellation, Add Workout...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/10

Along with the expected releases of the iPhone 17 lineup and new Apple Watch models, Apple used its “Awe Dropping” event to introduce the new AirPods Pro 3. They offer enhanced noise cancellation, heart rate monitoring for workouts, and a new Live Translation feature. The wireless earbuds are available for pre-order now at the familiar $249 price point, with availability starting on 19 September 2025. The advancement that’s likely to have the most impact comes in noise cancellation, which Apple says

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Apple Releases New Apple Watch SE 3, Apple Watch...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/10

At its September 2025 event, Apple unveiled three new Apple Watch models that emphasize health monitoring, durability, and connectivity. The cellular-capable models all now feature 5G cellular capabilities, while the flagship Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 introduce hypertension detection and sleep quality measurements. The Ultra 3 can also communicate with satellites, and the Apple Watch SE 3 adds several features previously missing from the SE line. The new lineup maintains Apple’s

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Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Lineup, Including Ultra-Thin...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/09

At its September 2025 “Awe Dropping” event, Apple announced its latest iPhone lineup, starting with a notably improved iPhone 17 and including a much-rumored new model: the ultra-thin iPhone Air. The company also unveiled redesigned iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models featuring a new 48-megapixel Telephoto camera and aluminum unibody construction for improved thermal performance. All three models now start with 256 GB of storage. The iPhone 16e ($599), iPhone 16 ($699), and iPhone 16 Plus

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BasicAppleGuy’s macOS Icon History

TidBITS ·

2025/09/09

BasicAppleGuy writes: With macOS 26, Apple has announced a dramatically new look to their UI: Liquid Glass. Solid material icon elements give way to softer, shinier, glassier icons. The rounded rectangle became slightly more rounded, and Apple eliminated the ability for icon elements to extend beyond the icon rectangle (as seen in the current icons for GarageBand, Photo Booth, Dictionary, etc.). With this release being one of the most dramatic visual overhauls of macOS’s design, I wanted to

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Parallels Desktop 26

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Matching Apple’s new macOS numbering scheme, Parallels has issued version 26 of its Parallels Desktop for Mac virtualization software with support for macOS 26 Tahoe and Windows 11 (25H) as well as many under-the-hood enhancements. The upgraded app updates icons across the board on Macs running Tahoe, enables Windows to assess the available disk space on your Mac accurately, improves the behavior of full-screen Windows apps in Coherence mode (allowing your Mac to go into sleep mode normally),

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SoundSource 5.8.6

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Rogue Amoeba has released SoundSource 5.8.6 with workarounds for a couple of known issues and initial support for macOS 26 Tahoe. The audio control utility addresses a known issue with sample rate mismatches by setting device sample rates to match in the Audio MIDI Setup application. Additionally, it resolves an issue with FaceTime, Home, and Phone that causes only silence to be captured by setting the system’s default audio output device to an external device. Rogue Amoeba has reported these bugs

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Coherence X 5.0.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

BZG has released Coherence X 5.0, the first major upgrade in over four years for the site-specific browser that lets you turn websites into Chromium-based native apps. Version 5 introduces a redesigned creation tool built for macOS 26 Tahoe and Liquid Glass, a new step-by-step interface that makes it easier to go from URL to Mac app in seconds, a revamped icon picker with improved support for macOS-style artwork, and support for Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium. The update also now enables newly

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Airfoil 5.12.6, Audio Hijack 4.5.3, and Piezo 1.9.6

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Rogue Amoeba has updated three of its audio utilities—Airfoil 5.12.6 (wireless audio broadcasting), Audio Hijack 4.5.3 (full-featured audio recording), and Piezo 1.9.6 (simple audio recording)—to provide initial support for macOS 26 Tahoe, although issues with sample rate mismatches and the FaceTime, Home, and Phone apps remain until Apple fixes macOS bugs. The icons for Audio Hijack and Piezo have been slightly modified to help them “escape from the icon jail” Apple implemented in macOS 26 Tahoe

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Carbon Copy Cloner 7.1.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 7.1.3 to address the handling of iCloud placeholder file remnants from before macOS 14 Sonoma. These files are now treated like ordinary files and will no longer affect the copying of the “real” files that they reside next to. The update also resolves an issue that arose in version 7.1.2, where sparse files located on a NAS volume were getting recopied each time the backup task ran. Additionally, it eliminates errors that would occur when

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OmniFocus 4.7.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

The Omni Group has released OmniFocus 4.7 with a new Planned Date type, the capability to create mutually exclusive tags, and improved repeat functionality. Items can now be assigned a Planned Date (the date an action, action group, or project is scheduled for work), several new repeat behaviors can now be configured in the updated Repeat Inspector (including Repeat Limits, Automatic Catch Up, and Repeat Schedules), and mutually exclusive tags can be used in a variety of workflows (such as priority

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Camo Studio 2.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Reincubate has issued Camo Studio 2.3 with new and improved Scenes for the virtual camera system. Scenes enable you to save an entire configuration (from backgrounds and filters to overlays), and the new Personalize tool makes it easier to customize personal or professional details. The update introduces Screen Capture functionality, brings added Profiles to simplify output configuration settings like resolution and frames-per-second, adds canvas background customization in the Scene Editor, adds

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Quicken Classic 8.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Quicken has updated Quicken Classic for Mac to version 8.3, defaulting to Detailed Tracking when adding accounts at financial institutions that support that tracking level. The financial management app now allows you to bulk-import security prices (from a single CSV file with prices for multiple dates and multiple securities), enables you to organize your accounts within each account type group in the Sidebar, adds a new graph for banking account registers that allows you to see the account balance

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Retrobatch 2.3

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Flying Meat has released Retrobatch 2.3, adding the capability to compare a modified image against the original image using new toolbar modes. Using keyboard shortcuts, you can toggle between the original image (shortcut key “a”), the modified image (“b”), an animated view of the differences (“d”), and a split view (“s”). The bulk image processing utility now adds a Send Notification node that sends out system notifications when a workflow starts,

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BusyCal 2025.3.1 and BusyContacts 2025.3.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/08

Busy Apps has released BusyCal 2025.3.1 and BusyContacts 2025.3.1, both packed with new features and improvements. BusyCal will now suggest existing events and tasks as templates while you edit or update a title, redesigns the calendar picker in the Info Panel (adding keyboard tabbing, live filtering, and search term highlighting), updates behavior for syncing Group Calendars in Microsoft Graph accounts to be optional, brings new and improved duration pickers accessible from end time/due time

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Atlassian Acquires The Browser Company for $610 Million

TidBITS ·

2025/09/04

Atlassian, the Australian company behind workplace tools like Trello, Confluence, and Jira, is acquiring The Browser Company of New York for $610 million, following an earlier investment from Atlassian’s venture capital arm. On its Keeping Tabs blog, The Browser Company of New York writes: Today, The Browser Company of New York is entering into an agreement to be acquired by Atlassian in an all-cash transaction. We will operate independently, with Dia as our focus. Our objective is to bring Dia to

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Mellel 6.5

TidBITS ·

2025/09/03

Mellel has issued version 6.5 of its eponymous word processor with improved navigation history and user interface enhancements. The release now remembers the last 20 visited locations in your document and includes back and forward buttons on the toolbar, updates the Style palette with a handy contextual menu, enables you to jump to editing an auto-title’s format directly from an auto-title in the document, allows you to use an existing stream as a starting point for a duplicated new stream,

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Everything Kevin Kelly Knows About Publishing

TidBITS ·

2025/09/03

At his blog, The Technium, Kevin Kelly writes: In my professional life, I’ve had several bestselling books published by New York publishers, as well as many other titles that sold modestly. I have also self-published a bunch of books, including one bestseller on Amazon and two massive hit Kickstarter-funded books. I have had lots of foreign edition books released by other publishers around the world, including bestsellers in those countries. Every year I also publish a few private books to give

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Google Allowed to Keep Chrome and Continue Paying...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/03

After years of legal proceedings, the Google antitrust case has finally resulted in a ruling with real-world impact—though perhaps not in the way many expected. Rather than forcing dramatic changes, the ruling preserves key aspects of how users currently engage with Google’s products. In a highly readable 230-page PDF, Judge Amit Mehta writes: Last year, this court ruled that Defendant Google LLC had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain

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Should You Let Claude Learn from Your Chats?

TidBITS ·

2025/09/02

On its blog, Anthropic writes: Today, we’re rolling out updates to our Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy that will help us deliver even more capable, useful AI models. We’re now giving users the choice to allow their data to be used to improve Claude and strengthen our safeguards against harmful usage like scams and abuse. Adjusting your preferences is easy and can be done at any time. By participating, you’ll help us improve model safety, making our systems for detecting harmful

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Are AI Subscription Models Sustainable?

TidBITS ·

2025/08/28

When it comes to AI, what should be available for free? We’re accustomed to getting many core Internet services, such as search and email, for free, but running anything at scale requires massive investment and operating costs. To give you a sense of the scale, OpenAI recently reported 700 million active weekly users of ChatGPT, four times the number accessing the service at the end of last year.You can use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others to an extent without paying. But all of them come with a

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