Adam Engst
Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS. He has written numerous books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992, the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993, and the Take Control electronic book series now owned and operated by alt concepts. His awards include the MDJ Power 25 ranking as the most influential person in the Macintosh industry outside of Apple every year since 2000, inclusion on the MacTech 25 list of influential people in the Macintosh technical community, and being named one of MacDirectory's top ten visionaries. And yes, he has been turned into an action figure.
Matthew Ball shares nine takeaways about the Apple Vision Pro after living with and thinking about it for six months.
Fixes numerous extremely obscure bugs. ($59.99 new, free update, 29.7 MB, macOS 11+)
For those who prefer to receive their news and information in email, an RSS-to-email service lets you follow blogs, newsletters, and other services that publish RSS feeds without using a newsreader app. Adam Engst compares Blogtrottr, Feedrabbit, and Follow.it.
Adds support for Focusmate session URLs and addresses numerous minor bugs. ($56.99 new, free update, 67.5 MB, macOS 11+)
Allows attachments on accounts, provides default actions for scheduled transactions, and adds a Security Detail view. ($59.88/$83.88/$119.88 annual subscription, free update, 3.2 MB, macOS 11+)
Major new release for the drive cloning and backup utility loaded with new features and enhancements. ($49.99 new, $24.99 upgrade, free update, 23.6 MB, macOS 13+)
Extends several previous Safari-only features to Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge. ($49.99 new, free update, 34.4 MB, macOS 10.13+)
Apple has unveiled a Web-based version of its Podcasts app. It’s available to anyone, but those who sign in with their Apple IDs can access their existing podcast subscriptions.
Fixes three annoying bugs. ($299.99 new, free update, 5.07 GB, macOS 13.5+)
Apple has quietly released watchOS 10.6.1 to fix an issue that could prevent access to Apple Fitness+. Although tvOS 17.6.1 has no release notes, we expect that it addresses the same problem.
Seemingly in response to the strongly negative feedback that arose from the potential in macOS 15 Sequoia of having to approve permission for each of your apps that require screen recording permissions every single week and after restarts, Apple has changed to a monthly schedule and made the prompt text more specific. The repetitive prompts remain too frequent: they are still unnecessary and bad for security.
Although our concerns about our coverage of Apple earnings reports were not unfounded, a majority of readers said that they found the articles worthwhile.
Although Apple makes it sound like Californians will be able to ditch their physical driver’s licenses and state IDs in favor of digital versions in the Wallet app, California and the other states supporting digital IDs in Wallet require that you continue to carry your physical ID.
The relatively new Backblaze Restore app makes it much faster and easier to restore backed-up files to your Mac, but if your initial restore fails with a “Permission denied” error, here’s the solution.
When iOS 18.1 ships later this year, iPhone developers will be able to offer NFC contactless transactions within their apps, enabling in-store payments, car keys, closed-loop transit, corporate badges, student IDs, home keys, hotel keys, merchant loyalty and rewards cards, and event tickets, with government IDs promised for the future.
