Apple Archive

Let’s dive into a peculiar bug in iOS. And by that I mean, let’s follow along as Guilherme Rambo dives into a peculiar bug in iOS. The bug is that, if you try to send an audio message using the Messages app to someone who’s also using the Messages app, and that message happens to include the name “Dave and Buster’s”, the message will never be received. ↫ Guilherme Rambo As I read this first description of the bug, I had no idea what could possibly be causing this. However, once Rambo explained that every audio message is transcribed by Apple into a text version, I immediately assumed what was going on: that “and” is throwing up problems because the actual name of the brand is stylised with an ampersand, isn’t it? It’s always DNS HTML, isn’t it? Yes. Yes it is. MessagesBlastDoorService uses MBDXMLParserContext (via MBDHTMLToSuperParserContext) to parse XHTML for the audio message. Ampersands have special meaning in XML/HTML and must be escaped, so the correct way to represent the transcription in HTML would have been "Dave & Buster's". Apple’s transcription system is not doing that, causing the parser to attempt to detect a special code after the ampersand, and since there’s no valid special code nor semicolon terminating what it thinks is an HTML entity, it detects an error and stops parsing the content. ↫ Guilherme Rambo It must be somewhat of a relief to programmers and developers the world over that even a company as large and filled with talented people as Apple can run into bugs like this.

A few months ago I shared my Swift SDK for Darwin, which allows you to build iOS Swift Packages on Linux, amongst other things. I mentioned that a lot of work still needed to be done, such as handling codesigning, packaging, and bundling. I’m super excited to share that we’ve finally reached the point where all of these things are now possible with cross-platform, open source software. Enter, xtool! This means it’s finally possible to build and deploy iOS apps from Linux and Windows (WSL). At the same time, xtool is SwiftPM-based and fully declarative, which means you can also use it to replace Xcode on macOS for building iOS software! ↫ kabiroberai While this is obviously an impressive piece of engineering that’s taken countless years to fully put together, the issue this doesn’t address are Apple’s licensing terms when it comes to Xcode and development for Apple’s platforms. The Apple Developer Program License Agreement clearly forbids installing Xcode and the Apple SDK on non-Apple branded devices, and as this new xtool requires you download Xcode.xip and use it, it seems it violates these terms. Now, as far as I’m concerned, these terms are idiotic and should be 100% illegal, but if you’re an Apple developer who relies on your Apple developer account to make money, using a tool like this definitely has the potential to put your developer account at risk. For experimentation, sure, this is great, but for any official work I would be quite weary until Apple makes some sort of statement about the matter, which is highly unlikely to happen. Perhaps the courts can, at some point, have a say here – especially in the EU – but even then, Apple can always find or manufacture some reason to terminate your account if they really want to. If you want to develop on your own terms, perhaps developing for Apple platforms is not what you should be doing.

John Siracusa, one third of the excellent ATP podcast, developer of several niche Mac utilities, and author of some of the best operating system reviews of all time, has called for Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to step down. Now, countless people call for Tim Cook to stand down all the time, but when someone like Siracusa, an ardent Mac user since the release of the very first Macintosh and a staple of the Apple community, makes such a call, it carries a bit more weight. His main argument is not particularly surprising to anyone who’s been keeping tabs on the Apple community, and the Apple developer community in particular: Apple seems to no longer focus on making great products, but on making money. Every decision made by Apple’s leadership team is focused solely on extracting as much money from consumers and developers, instead of on making the best possible products. The best leaders can change their minds in response to new information. The best leaders can be persuaded. But we’ve had decades of strife, lawsuits, and regulations, and Apple has stubbornly dug in its heels even further at every turn. It seems clear that there’s only one way to get a different result. In every healthy entity, whether it’s an organization, an institution, or an organism, the old is replaced by the new: CEOs, sovereigns, or cells. It’s time for new leadership at Apple. The road we’re on now does not lead anywhere good for Apple or its customers. It’s springtime, and I’m choosing to believe in new life. I swear it’s not too late. ↫ John Siracusa I reached this same point with Apple a long, long time ago. I was an ardent Mac user during the PowerPC G4 and G5 days, lasting into the early Intel days. However, as the iPhone and related services took over as Apple’s primary source of income, I felt that Mac OS X, which I once loved and enjoyed so much, started to languish, and it’s been downhill for Apple’s desktop operating system ever since. Whenever I have to help my parents with their computers – modern M1 and M2 Macs – I am baffled and saddened by just how big of a convoluted, disjointed, and unintuitive mess macOS has become. I long ago stopped caring about whatever products Apple releases or updates, because I feel like as a user who genuinely cares about his computing experience, Apple simply doesn’t make products for me. I’m not sure replacing Tim Cook with someone else will really change anything about Apple’s priorities; in the end, it’s a publicly traded corporation that thinks it needs to please shareholders, and a focus on great products instead of money isn’t going to help with that. Apple long ago stopped being the beleaguered company many of its most ardent fans still seem convinced that it is, and it’s now one of those corporate monoliths that can make billions more overnight by squeezing just a bit more out of developers or users, regardless of what that squeezing does to the user experience. Apple is still selling more devices than ever, and it’s still raking in more gambling gains through digital slot machines for children, and as long as that’s the case, replacing Tim Cook won’t do a goddamn thing.

Way back in 2021, in the Epic v. Apple court case, judge US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to allow third-party developers to tell users how to make payments inside iOS applications without going through Apple’s App Store. As we have come to expect from Apple, the company maliciously complied, lowering the commission on purchases outside of its ecosystem from 30% to 27%, while also adding a whole bunch of hoops and hurdles, like scare screens with doom-and-gloom language to, well, scare consumers into staying within Apple’s ecosystem for in-app payments. Well, it turns out Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is furious, giving Apple, Tim Cook, and its other executives what can only be described as a beatdown – even highlighting how one of Apple’s executives, under orders from Tim Cook, lied under oath several times. Gonzalez is referring this to the District Attorney for Northern California “to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.” In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate. ↫ US District Judge Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers Gonzalez’ entire ruling is scathing, seething with rage, and will probably do more reputational damage to Apple, Tim Cook, and his executive team than any bendgate or antennagate could ever do. Judge Gonzalez: This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction. Effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases. Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple. ↫ US District Judge Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers Gonzalez effectively destroyed any ability for Apple to charge commissions on purchases made inside iOS applications but outside Apple’s App Store, and this order will definitely find its way to the European Union as well, where it will serve as further evidence of Tim Cook’s and Apple’s continuous, never-ending contempt for the law and courts that uphold it. For its part, Apple has stated they’re going to appeal. Good luck with that.

Yep. I regret to inform you all that, as of January 2025, I am a Mac user: I bought a Mac. I have betrayed the penguin. So, how did such an icon of early 2000s Apple fall into my grubby hands? Well, it all started with the Wii U. I’m not joking. ↫ Loganius That’s one heck of an excuse to get a PowerPC G4 – needing to do Linux kvm hacking to fix a bug. While getting the PowerMac G4 they bought all set up and working properly for development purposes, someone else fixed the bug in question in the meantime. Such is the way of open source development. Regardless, as far as classic computers go, PowerPC Macs are a great way to enter the wider hobby of retrocomputing. They’re widely available, incredibly cheap, and offer a ton of variety when it comes to supported operating systems, working with everything from classic Mac OS to Mac OS X, from Linux to the BSDs, down to more exotic awesome stuff like MorphOS. Their popularity also ensures a steady stream of replacement parts, expertise, and community support. I have a 1.25Ghz 17″ PowerBook G4 for MorphOS, and a snow white iBook G3 for Mac OS 9.2.2, and I’ll never get rid of them.

I’ve saved the worst for last. For some reason, Xcode phones home to appstoreconnect.apple.com every time I open an Xcode project. This also appears to be unnecessary, and I experience no problems after denying the connections in Little Snitch, so I do! I assume that the connections send identifying information about the Xcode project to Apple, otherwise why even make the connections when opening a project? And all of these connections from Xcode, to every domain, require login to your Apple Developer account, so Apple is definitely receiving identifying information about you in any case. In effect, Xcode is a developer analytics collection mechanism, whether you like it or not, which I don’t. ↫ Jeff Johnson If, at this point in time, you’re still surprised Apple doesn’t practice what it preaches, the fault lies pretty much entirely with you. Anyway, it seems Xcode phones home to Apple quite a bit, which I doubt is all that unique in the world of commercial development environments. I honestly don’t think Apple itself doing anything particularly nefarious with this data, but the fact it’s collecting it in the first place should still make you think twice about using Xcode, especially if you’re developing anything even remotely sensitive. What should really worry you is the fact Tim Cook and Apple are close allies of Trump and his regime. Xcode is required for iOS/iPadOS/etc. development, because the App Store requires applications be built and submitted with it. As such, every iOS developer is sending substantial amounts of data to Apple during development, which should be especially concerning for people outside of the US and people who aren’t straight white males; using Xcode requires an Apple Account, so Apple knows quite a bit about who is using it. With the breakdown of the rule of law in the US, all of this data is basically freely accessible to US authorities, and we’ve seen by now that people like self-styled genius Elon Musk don’t worry too much about pesky things like the rule of law. If Musk wants this data, Apple will hand it over. If you’re an Apple developer, you should stop and think every time you open Xcode. You’re sending your data straight to a hostile entity. If you’re claiming to use Apple products because of Apple’s privacy “promises”, Xcode’s data collection should be a huge worry for you.

Apple’s first-generation Vision Pro headset may have now ceased production, following reports of reduced demand and production cuts earlier in the year. ↫ Hartley Charlton at MacRumors I think we’ll live.

What’s the European Commission to do when one of the largest corporations in the world has not only been breaking its laws continually, but also absolutely refuses to comply, uses poison pills in its malicious compliance, badmouths you in the press through both official – and unofficial – employees? Well, you start telling that corporation exactly what it needs to do to comply, down to the most minute implementation details, and in the process take away any form of wiggle room. Steven Troughton-Smith, an absolute wizard when it comes to the inner workings of Apple’s various platforms and allround awesome person, dove into the European Commission’s proposed next steps when it comes to dealing with Apple’s refusal to comply with EU law – the Digital Markets Act, in particular – and it’s crystal-clear that the EC is taking absolutely no prisoners. They’re not only telling Apple exactly what kind of interoperability measures it must take, down to the API level, but they’re also explicitly prohibiting Apple from playing games through complex contracts and nebulous terms to try and make interoperability a massive burden. As an example of just how detailed the EC is getting with Apple, here’s what the company needs to do to make AirDrop interoperable: Apple shall provide a protocol specification that gives third parties all information required to integrate, access, and control the AirDrop protocol within an application or service (including as part of the operating system) running on a third-party connected physical device in order to allow these applications and services to send files to, and receive files from, an iOS device. ↫ European Commission In addition, Apple must make any new features or changes to AirDrop available to third parties at the same time as it releases them: For future functionalities of or updates to the AirDrop feature, Apple shall make them available to third parties no later than at the time they are made available to any Apple connected physical device. ↫ European Commission These specific quotes only cover AirDrop, but similar demands are made about things like AirPlay, the easy pairing process currently reserved for Apple’s own accessories, and so on. I highly suggest reading the source document, or at the very least the excellent summary thread by Steven, to get an even better idea of what the EC is demanding here. The changes must be made in the next major version of iOS, or at the very latest before the end of 2025. The EC really goes into excruciating detail about how Apple is supposed to implement these interoperability features, and leaves very little to no wiggle room for Apple shenanigans. The EC is also clearly fed up with Apple’s malicious compliance and other tactics to violate the spirit of the DMA: Apple shall not impose any restrictions on the type or use case of the software application and connected physical device that can access or makeuse of the features listed in this Document. Apple shall not undermine effective interoperability with the 11 features set out in this Document by behaviour of a technical nature. In particular, Apple shall actively take all the necessary actions to allow effective interoperability with these features. Apple shall not impose any contractual or commercial restrictions that would be opaque, unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory towards third parties or otherwise defeat the purpose of enabling effective interoperability. In particular, Apple shall not restrict business users, directly or indirectly, to make use of any interoperability solution in their existing apps via an automatic update. ↫ European Commission What I find most interesting about all of this is that it could have been so easily avoided by Apple. Had Apple approached the EU and the DMA with the same kind of respect, grace, and love Apple and Tim Cook clearly reserve for totalitarian dictatorships like China, Apple could’ve enabled interoperability in such a way that it would still align with most of Apple’s interests. They would’ve avoided the endless stream of negative press this fruitless “fight” with the EU is generating, and it would’ve barely impacted Apple’s bottom line. Put it on one of those Apple microsites that capture your scrolling, boast about how amazing Apple is and how much they love interoperability, and it most likely would’ve been a massive PR win. Instead, under the mistaken impression that this is a business negotiation, Apple tried to cry, whine, throw tamper tantrums, and just generally act like horrible spoiled brats just because someone far, far more powerful than they are told them “no” for once. Now they’ve effectively been placed under guardianship, and have to do exactly as the European Commission tells them to, down to the API level, without any freedom to make their own choices. The good thing is that the EC’s journey to make iOS a better and more capable operating system continues. We all benefit. Well, us EU citizens, anyway.

There have been some past rumblings on the internet about a capacitor being installed backwards in Apple’s Macintosh LC III. The LC III was a “pizza box” Mac model produced from early 1993 to early 1994, mainly targeted at the education market. It also manifested as various consumer Performa models: the 450, 460, 466, and 467. Clearly, Apple never initiated a huge recall of the LC III, so I think there is some skepticism in the community about this whole issue. Let’s look at the situation in more detail and understand the circuit. Did Apple actually make a mistake? ↫ Doug Brown Even I had heard of these claims, and I’m not particularly interested in Apple retrocomputing, other than whatever comes by on Adrian Black or whatever. As such, it surprises me that there hasn’t been any definitive answer to this question – with the amount of interest in classic Macs you’d think this would simply be a settled issue and everyone would know about it. This vintage of Macs pretty much require recaps by now, so I assumed if Apple indeed soldered on a capacitor backwards, it’d just be something listed in the various recapping guides. It took some very minor digging with the multimeter, but yes, one of the capacitors on this family of boards is soldered on the wrong way, with the positive terminal where the negative terminal should be. It seems the error does not lie with whomever soldered the capacitors on the boards – or whomever set the machine that did so – because the silkscreen is labeled incorrectly, too. The reason it doesn’t seem to be noticeable problem during the expected lifespan of the computer is because it was rated at 16V, but was only taking in -5V. So, if you plan on recapping one of these classic Macs – you might as well fix the error.

In recent weeks, law enforcement in the United States discovered, to their dismay, that iPhones were automatically rebooting themselves after a few days of inactivity, thereby denying them access to the contents of these phones. After a lot of speculation online, Jiska Classen dove into this story to find out what was going on, and through reverse-engineering they discovered that this was a new security feature built by Apple as part of iOS 18.1, to further make stolen iPhones useless for both thieves as well as law enforcement officers. It’s a rather clever feature. The Secure Enclave Processor inside the iPhone keeps track of when the phone was last unlocked, and if that period exceeds 72 hours, the SEP will inform a kernel module. This kernel module will then, in turn, tell the phone to gracefully reboot, meaning no data is lost in this process. If the phone for whatever reason does not reboot and remains powered on, the module will assume the phone’s been tampered with somehow and kernel-panic. Interestingly, if the reboot takes place properly, an analytics report stating how long the phone was not unlocked will be sent to Apple. The reason this is such a powerful feature is that a locked iPhone is entirely useless to anyone who doesn’t have the right code or biometrics to unlock it. Everything on the device is encrypted, and only properly unlocking it will decrypt the phone’s contents; in fact, a locked phone can’t even join a Wi-Fi network, because the stored passwords are encrypted (and I’m assuming that a locked phone does not provide access to any methods of joining an open network either). When you have a SIM card without any pincode, the iPhone will connect to the cellular network, but any notifications or calls coming in will effectively be empty, since incoming phone numbers can’t be linked to any of the still-encrypted contacts, and while the phone can tell it’s received notifications, it can’t show you any of their contents. A thief who’s now holding this phone can’t do much with it if it locks itself like this after a few days, and law enforcement won’t be able to access the phone either. This is a big deal in places where arrests based purely on skin colour or ethnicity or whatever are common, like in the United States (and in Europe too, just to a far lesser degree), or in places where people have to fear the authorities for other reasons, like in totalitarian dictatorships like Russia, China or Iran, where any hint of dissent can end you in harsh prisons. Apple is always at the forefront with features such as these, with Google and Android drunkenly stumbling into the open door a year later with copies that take ages to propagate through the Android user base. I’m legitimately thankful for Apple raising awareness of the need of features such as these – even if they’re too cowardly to enable them in places like China – as it’s quite clear a lot more people need to start caring about these things, with recent developments and all.

Apple announced a trio of major new hearing health features for the AirPods Pro 2 in September, including clinical-grade hearing aid functionality, a hearing test, and more robust hearing protection. All three will roll out next week with the release of iOS 18.1, and they could mark a watershed moment for hearing health awareness. Apple is about to instantly turn the world’s most popular earbuds into an over-the-counter hearing aid. ↫ Chris Welch at The Verge Rightfully so, most of us here have a lot of issues with the major technology companies and the way they do business, but every now and then, even they accidentally stumble into doing something good for the world. AirPods are already a success story, and gaining access to hearing aid-level features at their price point is an absolute game changer for a lot of people with hearing issues – and for a lot of people who don’t even yet know they have hearing issues in the first place. If you have people in your life with hearing issues, or whom you suspect may have hearing issues, gifting them AirPods this Christmas season may just be a perfect gift. Yes, I too think hearing aids should be a thing nobody has to pay for and which should just be part of your country’s universal healthcare coverage – assuming you have such a thing – but this is not a bad option as a replacement.

The iPhone 16 family has arrived and includes many new features, some of which Apple has played very close to its vest. One such improvement is the inclusion of JPEG XL file types, which promise improved image quality compared to standard JPEG files while delivering relatively smaller file sizes. Overall, JPEG XL addresses many of JPEG’s shortcomings. The 30-year-old format is not very efficient, only offers eight-bit color depth, doesn’t support HDR, doesn’t do alpha transparency, doesn’t support animations, doesn’t support multiple layers, includes compression artifacts, and exhibits banding and visual noise. JPEG XL tackles these issues, and unlike WebP and AVIF formats, which each have some noteworthy benefits too, JPEG XL has been built from the ground up with still images in mind. ↫ Jeremy Gray at PetaPixel Excellent news, and it will hopefully mean others will follow – something that tends to happen when Apple finally supports to the new thing.

I have been working on an emulator for early (Motorola 68000-powered) Macintosh computers. While implementing the disk drive, I noticed documentation was scattered and hard to find. Now that I have a working implementation, this post is my attempt to document everything in one place. ↫ Thomas Exactly what it says on the tin – everything you ever wanted to know about the disk drive on early Macintosh computers.

Apple is making additional changes to its app ecosystem in the European Union to comply with the terms of the Digital Markets Act. The default browser selection experience that’s already in place will be updated, Apple will allow EU users to set defaults for more types of apps, and core iOS apps like Messages and the App Store will also be deletable. iPhone owners in the EU can already set different defaults for the browser, mail app, app marketplace, and contactless payments, but Apple is going to allow users to select new defaults for phone calls, messaging, password managers, keyboards, call spam filters, navigation, and translation. That means, for example, that EU users will be able to choose an app like WhatsApp instead of Messages to be their default texting app, or a mapping app like Waze to be the default instead of Apple Maps. ↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors It’s clear by now that Apple’s malicious DMA compliance attempts have proven to be an abject failure. Apple continuously needs to backtrack and give in more and more to the European Commission, without the Commission even having to really do anything at all. Slowly but surely, Apple is complying with the DMA, all while its toddler tantrums have done serious damage to the company’s standing and reputation without having any of the desired effects for Apple. Whoever set out this toddler DMA strategy at Apple should probably be fired for incompetence. This latest round of additional changes to comply with the DMA are very welcome ones, and further solidify the EU version of iOS as the best version. Not only do iOS users in the European Union get different browser engines, they can also remove larger numbers of default applications, set more default applications, replace more Apple-services with third-party ones, and so on. Thanks to the DMA, iOS is finally becoming more of a real operating system, instead of a set of shackles designed primarily to lock users in. It’s only a matter of time before laws similar to the DMA spread to the rest of the world, and I honestly don’t think the United States is going to stay behind. Corruption in the US is widespread, but there’s only so much money can do, even in US politics.