Facebook has been caught sharing data on its 2.2 billion users with other tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, and even Russian search giant Yandex. Apple is in the list too, but not in a way that makes sense.

iOS 12.1.2 fixes eSIM and cellular issues for Apple’s 2018 iPhones and provides unspecified security fixes, but the main reason for its existence may be to work around a ban on selling some iPhone models in China due to alleged infringement of Qualcomm patents.

In keeping with our tradition, we’re going to take off the last few weeks of the year to spend with family and friends, so look for the next email issue of TidBITS on 7 January 2019. Thanks for your attention in 2018, and we hope you’ve enjoyed both our content and our site redesign this year!

Bare Bones Software is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the commercial release of its BBEdit text editor with a new merchandise store that offers a limited-edition rebus T-shirt, a reissue of the classic “It Doesn’t Suck” T-shirt, and other BBEdit-themed garments.

If you set up an automatically renewing TidBITS membership before April 2018, our new membership system will require a one-time restart from you. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Our membership program plays a crucial role in ensuring that we can bring you TidBITS every week, but memberships went down earlier this year during the transition to our new Internet infrastructure and its new membership system. Join TidBITS today and help us continue our award-winning tech journalism!

The hosts of the Command Control Power podcast for Apple consultants have commissioned a theme song from songwriter extraordinaire Jonathan Mann—anyone who has ever answered tech support questions will particularly appreciate its sly humor.

Wondering about the best approach for making a book or calendar as a holiday present, now that Apple has gotten out of the business of print projects? Over at Six Colors, “Take Control of Photos” author Jason Snell compared Mimeo and Motif.

Apple has produced a lovely short film for the holidays that’s an ode to creativity on the Mac. It’s also a testament to the amount of time, money, and effort Apple seems increasingly willing to put into unusual marketing efforts.

Apple keeps saying that its new hardware can drive a 5K display at 5120-by-2880 resolution, but it would seem that there’s only one 5K display available for sale, the LG UltraFine 5K Display. Why isn’t there more choice in the 5K display space?

If you’re racking your brain trying to figure out all the reasons why a Mac isn’t booting, Howard Oakley has developed a diagram that reminds you of all the boot steps, problems that can occur at each one, and possible solutions.

A relatively new form of spam is making the rounds on the Internet. It purports to be from a hacker who has taken over your computer and who will reveal your porn browsing to all your contacts unless you pay a Bitcoin blackmail. It’s fake, but its use of breached passwords as “proof” points toward a concerning future.

Since Code42 Software discontinued its CrashPlan for Home service, there’s no reason to let the CrashPlan software continue to run in the background on your Mac. Here’s how to remove it.

If you have an iPhone X that’s suffering from touch-related problems, or a non-Touch Bar model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro purchased between June 2017 and June 2018, you’ll want to take advantage of Apple’s latest repair programs.

We think of our iPhones, iPads, and Macs as extremely personal devices, but as you’ll read in these five stories from the Jamf Nation User Conference, large organizations are also putting Apple devices to interesting uses as focused tools in education, healthcare, hospitality, and retail.