We’re taking the week off for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, so look for your next email issue on 8 December 2025. Adam Engst announces PayPal support for TidBITS memberships, recounts how Cloudflare’s outage took down large swaths of the Internet, and examines the results of our Do You Use It? poll showing that contact posters remain a niche iPhone feature. He also gets sucked into a quixotic quest to digitize dense tables of data from a book, ultimately succeeding with agentic AI assistance from ChatGPT Atlas (and later Google Gemini). We share ExtraBITS that link to articles about Apple’s new N1 chip markedly improving Wi‑Fi performance, Apple being hit with a $634 million blood‑oxygen verdict, and Apple’s 3D‑printed titanium watch cases. Notable Mac app releases this week include BBEdit 15.5.4, Camo Studio 2.5, Scrivener 3.5.1, SpamSieve 3.2.2, SuperDuper 3.11, Timing 2025.9, Ulysses 39, and Unite 6.5.
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 8 December 2025.
Thanks to a reader request, PayPal is now available for TidBITS memberships. It’s a convenient alternative to using a credit card for renewals or new sign-ups. Stripe keeps things simpler for our administrative operations, but if you prefer PayPal, you’re welcome to use it.
This morning’s Cloudflare outage impacted millions of websites worldwide, exposing a troubling truth about modern Internet infrastructure: a handful of companies now control critical chokepoints that can take down significant portions of the Web.
Two years after Apple introduced contact posters in iOS 17, our Do You Use It? poll shows that over half of respondents haven’t created a single one. The feature’s limited visibility and fussy creation process may explain the lackluster adoption.
What started as a simple need—digitizing training pace tables for a workout app—became a test of OCR tools. ChatGPT Atlas won where others failed, autonomously processing five photos into perfect CSV data despite page curl and dense columns.
Watchlist
Improves the app icon appearance when running macOS 26 Tahoe. ($59.99 new, free update, 28 MB, macOS 12+)
Adds a Screen Capture feature to the virtual camera system. ($49.99 annual subscription, free update, 81.6 MB, macOS 12.3+)
Long-form writing tool fixes bugs and updates app icon that to be more Liquid Glass-friendly. ($59.99 new, free update, 116.2 MB, macOS 11+)
Maintenance update with bug fixes and improvements for the spam-filtering utility. ($39.99 new, free update, 60.8 MB, macOS 10.13+)
Adds initial support for macOS 26 Tahoe to the backup app and fixes some security vulnerabilities. ($27.95 new, free update, 9.2 MB, macOS 10.13+)
Adds the ability to round time entry durations in reports for cleaner timesheets. ($108/$132/$192 annual subscriptions, free update, 31.9 MB, macOS 11+)
Major upgrade for the writing app fully embraces Apple's Liquid Glass design language. ($5.99/$39.99 monthly/yearly subscription, free update, 59.99 MB, macOS 14+)
Adds full native support for macOS 26 Tahoe to the site-specific Web browser app. ($29.99 new, free update, 28.8 MB, macOS 12+)
