We’re taking some time off for the Thanksgiving holiday in the US this week, so the next TidBITS email issue will appear on 5 December 2022. Until then, look for new articles on our website and ongoing discussions in TidBITS Talk, where people will undoubtedly be discussing Adam Engst’s warning to have plenty of free space before upgrading to macOS 13 Ventura and his testing and analysis of Emergency SOS and Find My via satellite. For those feeling jaded by technology, Glenn Fleishman recommends iOS 16’s new Lock Screen Photo Shuffle wallpaper for the way its machine-learning algorithm finds images that bring him joy. Notable Mac app releases this week include VMware Fusion 13, OmniFocus 3.14.1, Mactracker 7.12, and SoundSource 5.5.6.
We’re taking the next email issue of TidBITS off to celebrate Thanksgiving, although we’ll continue to publish articles on our website. You can look forward to the next email issue on 5 December 2022.
After hearing about Ventura upgrade problems from a reader, Adam Engst did some research to determine that you should try to have at least 37 GB free before upgrading to Ventura. And how you determine that 37 GB might matter.
Technology has a hard time delivering happiness. Apple has cracked the code with how it uses machine learning to populate the Lock Screen Photo Shuffle feature and Featured Photos widget with images you’ll like.
In which Adam Engst drives to a nearby deep valley where there’s no cellular connectivity to test Find My via satellite and run through the Emergency SOS via satellite demo in a real-world situation. It seemingly worked but revealed a gap in Apple’s approach.
Watchlist
Adds support for Windows 11 virtual machines on both Intel-based Macs and Apple M-series Macs. (Free/$149.99/$199.99 new, upgrades available, 672 MB, macOS 10.12+)
Resolves a few annoying bugs in the task management app. ($39.99 new, free update, 67.4 MB, macOS 11+)
Adds detailed information about all recent hardware and operating system releases, including the iPhone 14 and tenth-generation iPad. (Free, 182 MB, macOS 10.12+)
Adds a new Background Sound special source and updates the Audio Capture Engine to improve performance. ($39 new, free update, 29.4 MB, macOS 10.15+)