This week’s big news is that the US Department of Justice and 16 states have filed a lawsuit alleging that Apple violated antitrust statutes to maintain an illegal iPhone monopoly. Adam Engst provides a high-level overview of the suit. Apple also pushed out minor updates to various versions of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS to fix a few high-profile bugs and block an image processing vulnerability. Separately, the company unveiled a welcome new documentation site that provides manuals, specs, and downloads for most Apple products. Finally, we report on the results of our Do You Use It? poll asking about your preferred podcast app. Hint: it’s not Apple Podcasts. Notable Mac app releases this week include Alfred 5.5, BBEdit 15.0.2, Fantastical 3.8.13 and Cardhop 2.2.17, Lunar 6.7.3, Retrobatch 2.1, and Unite 5.2.
Release notes for these updates list “important bug fixes and security updates” or just “important security fixes” so they probably address one or more zero-day security vulnerabilities.
Apple doesn’t say what has changed for macOS 13.6.6 Ventura, but the bugs fixed in macOS 14.4.1 Sonoma have bedeviled users for the last two weeks.
The US Justice Department and 16 states have filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing Apple of maintaining an illegal iPhone monopoly based on its practices in super apps, cloud gaming, messaging apps, smartwatches, and digital wallets. The big question is whether the iPhone actually enjoys monopoly status.
The results of our poll asking which podcast apps TidBITS readers prefer reveal that Marco Arment’s Overcast is by far the most popular, well ahead of Apple Podcasts. No other podcast app broke double digits.
Apple has unveiled a new Documentation site that lets users browse for information about Apple hardware and (older) software. It’s a big win, especially considering the sorry state of the Apple website’s search engine, but some parts of it still need work.
Watchlist
Brings new workflow components and improvements to the keyboard-driven launcher. (£34 new, free update, 5.3 MB, macOS 10.14+)
Maintenance update for the venerable text editor focused on bug fixes. ($59.99 new, free update, 29.6 MB, macOS 11+)
Adds a prompt to alert you to a change in a local copy of a calendar event. ($56.99 annual subscription, free update, 66.3/29.9 MB, macOS 11+)
Provides more accurate nits readings for Apple displays and prepare for the next version of macOS. ($23 new, free update, 22.2 MB, macOS 11+)
Adds new Lookup Table (LUT), Tile Chop, and Camera Capture nodes to the bulk image processing utility. ($29.99 new, free update, 54.8 MB, macOS 12+)
Site-specific browser introduces a revamped App Library. ($29.99 new, free update, 17.9 MB, macOS 12+)
