The Desolation of Blog

Six years ago I published a blog post Chrome exempts Google sites from user site data settings that received quite a bit of attention: Michael Tsai, Hacker News The Register, The Verge, and Gizmodo, among others. The blog post was about a Google Chrome bug that mysteriously exempted Google-owned sites from the setting to automatically delete all site data. Eventually, spurred by my report, Google did fix the bug. You can probably guess why I’m writing about the bug again: I’ve noticed Chrome…

Last year I wrote a blog post Apple in China, Ripoff in Amazon about a copycat book in Amazon search results. Sadly, it appears that Apple Books is no better than Amazon. I’m currently rereading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita for a book club. I read the classic novel for a Russian literature class way back as a college undergraduate but hadn’t read it since. The English translation by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor, $9.99 USD in Apple Books, was recommended to me. When…

Occasionally my blog posts become news stories. This has actually occurred more than once recently, and many times over the years. You may or may not be surprised to learn that news media outlets usually don’t talk to me, don’t ask for comment, before publishing stories about my blog posts. Of course this phenomenon is not exclusive to me: it’s just a bad habit of the news media. I know that it’s happened to Mysk as well. Unfortunately, the lack of communication from the news media has resulted…

Although my business is to “stop the madness” on the web, I can’t seem to stop myself from the quixotic madness of posting articles on the web criticizing Apple’s curation of the App Store. Can my little blog counteract the PR of one of history’s largest corporations? Doubtful, but I’m just mad enough to try. First, an update to my recent article Spicy tale of an App Store fraud. Apparently the App Store developer in question saw my article in the news, because the fake App Store reviews posted…

I was reading Apple’s August 13 court filing in the Epic trial, helpfully hosted by 9to5Mac, and I was surprised by a statement Apple made about its developer program: Unlike cost-only based commissions, Apple’s revenue-based commissions incentivize continued investment. Apple charges developers a $99 annual fee for the Apple Developer Program. May 17, 2021 Trial Tr. at 2762:21–2763:13. This modest fee—designed to prevent fraud and expressly not intended to compensate Apple for the use of its…

The macOS command-line tool hdiutil is used to manipulate disk images. From the WHAT'S NEW section of man hdiutil on the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate beta: In macOS 27.0, hdiutil is deprecated. Use diskutil image instead for all disk image operations. diskutil image provides subcommands for attach, create, resize, info, and chpass. ASIF (Apple Sparse Image Format) images are only supported by diskutil image and are not supported by hdiutil. There’s also a DEPRECATION NOTICE at the top of the man…

In response to my article App Store allows developers to spam the submission and review process, MacStories published an article Raising the Gates Is Not the Way to Improve the App Store. I highly respect MacStories, and of course subscribe to their RSS feed, but I disagree with their article’s framing of my article. I did not raise the gates or erect the barriers, Apple did. Apple is the one gatekeeping its own platforms. From the beginning of iPhone in 2007, I’ve disagreed with Apple lockdown…

Yesterday I published a spicy tale of an App Store fraud perpetrated by a developer deep into AI slop. My blog post was linked by Daring Fireball and 9to5Mac, which I appreciate! Coincidentally, on the same day well-known developer Marco Arment complained on social media that his new, unreleased Mac App Store app had been waiting 12 days for review by Apple. Reportedly, Apple app review is having trouble keeping up with the increased volume of App Store submissions due to AI slop; anecdotal…

Despite my history of uncovering App Store frauds, I rarely go looking for these things intentionally! They’re just so pervasive and obvious, they jump out at me. In this case, I was looking at the list of top paid Safari extensions in the Mac App Store, because two of my own extensions are currently on the list, when I noticed the TabControl Extension. TabControl Extension is the #13 top paid Safari extension in the United States Mac App Store as of the time of the above screenshot, #12 when I…

Ten years and one day ago, on August 9, 2016, I abruptly quit my job. I mark this occasion as the beginning of my indie software developer career. Happy anniversary to me and to my customers! I didn’t formulate a plan until after I quit. I decided that I could afford to indulge a dream, express myself, design and build my own app from scratch. I could be my own boss for once. My journey as an indie developer mirrored an enduring aphorism: it takes five years to become an overnight success. That…

I use iCloud only for testing the iCloud sync feature of my App Store apps. As I mentioned in my recent blog post Apple account email address disclosure via Mail app, I don’t have an iCloud email account. As you can see in my screenshots below, iCloud is disabled in System Settings for all uses of Mail. Nonetheless, when I send an email in Mail app, from a non-iCloud account to an non-iCloud account, Mail immediately triggers an iCloud connection, as revealed by Little Snitch. In testing, I’ve…

In 2023 I published a blog post The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard that included links to the release notes of some Mac OS X updates. Well, let's look at the release notes for the 10.6.1 update: […] It looks like the so-called "bug fix update" itself needed a number of bug fixes. How about the 10.6.2 update? […] We're not done. Here's 10.6.3: […] And 10.6.4: Sadly, the links above now result in Page Not Found on Apple’s website. The Wayback Machine last successfully archived these…

I’ve written very little on my blog about so-called Artificial Intelligence, an old term applied to a relatively new technology, Large Language Models (LLM). I don’t think I have anything new to say about the subject, and my first-hand experience with LLMs is negligible, since I eschew them. Fortunately, my employer does not force me to use AI. (I’m self-employed!) The benefit of writing a blog post expressing my opinion about AI is that I can refer to it in the future when someone—some…

I could have terminated the title of this blog post with “App Store” but wanted to talk about something specific that came up for me today: App Store user ratings and reviews. This subject is related to yesterday’s blog post No, you curate the App Store. Despite the fact that Apple employees privately review every version of every app before developers can publish to the App Store, supposedly ensuring the quality of apps, verifying that they do what they claim to do, Apple nonetheless also…

A week ago I blogged about an app named Chrome Browser Default in the Mac App Store. This app is no longer available in the Mac App Store. I had deleted the app from the Applications folder on my Mac, and now I can’t download it again from the Purchased section of the App Store app. I have no idea why the Dutch name “Standaard Browser Wisselen” appears in the alert, because the App Store Purchased section says “Chrome Browser Default,” and my only Mac system language is English (US). The name…

I use an M1 Mac mini for testing different major macOS versions. Currently the Mac has six boot volumes, macOS 12 Monterey through macOS 27 Golden Gate. While booted into macOS 26 Tahoe, I noticed a couple of strange things in the Privacy & Security section of System Settings. The Privacy & Security subsections Files & Folders and Full Disk Access are inextricably intertwined. Let’s look at Full Disk Access first. In case you’re wondering, smbd is the Server Message Block daemon for macOS file…

Three years ago, I disclosed an unfixed vulnerability in the macOS App Management feature, which you can see in the Privacy & Security section of System Settings. App Management is supposed to protect the integrity of notarized apps installed on your Mac by requiring your permission to modify them. By default, only the developer of an app, as determined by its code signing certificate, is allowed to modify the app without your explicit consent; I assume this developer exception is for automatic…

This is a loosely-based sequel to my May 16 blog post Mac App Store: What’s in a name? inspired by an app named App for YouTube ℠ with a symbol at the end. This blog post is inspired by an app named Chrome Browser Default. Released less than a month ago by an unknown developer, Chrome Browser Default has somehow become a top download in the United States Mac App Store, alongside well-known developers Amazon, WhatsApp/Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft: You might joke that this is possible because…

This is a follow-up to my July 10 blog post, Apple Hide My Email bug, possibly related to disclosure vulnerability. Yesterday I happened upon a Mastodon post that inspired me to continue researching my Mac Mail app bug: curl can be used to send emails with smtp I have multiple email accounts, for example with my personal domain lapcatsoftware.com here and my business domain underpassapp.com, but email clients such as Mail app do not provide me with full control over the sent email headers,…

If I think about what I like and dislike about the internet, contrasting what I find pleasant or productive with what I find unpleasant or unproductive, I can’t escape the conclusion that debating strangers stands out as the principal activity that makes me dislike, even hate the internet. A long internet debate with a stranger can drastically sour my mood, ruining a whole day. And I can’t recall a single long debate with a stranger that ever ended well, in my decades on the internet. Short…

Yesterday I published the blog post Apple again black-holed my App Store Connect bug report, which complained that Apple has twice given up on investigating my bug report without requesting additional information from me. This morning I spent some time investigating the bug myself. I believe that I’ve found the cause and a workaround. Funny, isn’t it, how a lone outside developer, in less than an hour and without the server-side source code, can do a better job at investigating an Apple bug…

I had filed a bug report with Apple Feedback Assistant: FB22952887 “App Store Connect page redirects to /login after already logged in.” This reproducible bug is still not fixed. My report previously received the resolution “Investigation complete - Unable to diagnose with current information” without requesting additional information from me. On the morning of June 15, I published the blog post Can you reproduce this App Store Connect bug? My blog post apparently caught the attention of…

For five years I’ve used the free random password generator app PSWD from the Mac App Store, and I’ve been happy with it. Since I first installed the app, the developer released a number of minor updates, the last in July 2023, three years ago. This was fine, because the app was essentially perfect for my purpose, so I didn’t need the app to change. A few days ago, however, the developer released a major update: PSWD 5.0 is a complete rewrite. Everything is new Among the changes in PSWD 5.0 was…

When you press the volume keys on macOS Sequoia and earlier, a nice big user interface appears as feedback, registering the volume change and displaying the new system volume. You can’t miss it. On macOS Tahoe, however, you can easily miss it. The user interface is much smaller and appears only at the top of the screen, near the volume control in the menu bar. The volume interface has not changed from Tahoe to Golden Gate. In fact, I first noticed it today when testing the latest developer…

As a software developer for Apple platforms, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years attempting to understand Apple financial statements, though I’m admittedly not an expert in corporate finances. This blog post is for other non-experts who are also interested in Apple finances. I originally became interested in Apple quarterly reports and financial statements because I wanted to see the unit sales of Apple hardware: Mac, iPhone, iPad. Unfortunately, Apple ended its longtime practice of…

Last week a disclosure vulnerability in Apple’s Hide My Email feature was publicly announced and verified by a news media outlet, though the technical details of the vulnerability were not publicized. The vulnerability is that it’s possible to unhide the real email address of a Hide My Email user. I don’t know whether I’ve accidentally stumbled upon that vulnerability, or perhaps in this case the Hide My Email user just messed up in some way, but I’ve definitely discovered a bizarre and…

Safari was inactive, in the background, with no windows open, when out of the blue I got a Little Snitch alert: Safari wanted to connect to the URL http://192.168.0.1/favicon.ico for some reason. The IP address 192.168.0.1 is private. I quickly realized that http://192.168.0.1/ was one of my bookmarks, for the web interface of my router. I had recently been looking at my bookmarks in order to answer someone’s question on Reddit about Safari bookmarks, though I hadn’t looked specifically at that…

This may sound far-fetched, but I already found that iCloud remotely triggers iMessage sign-in and sync (as well as FaceTime sign-in). I have circumstantial evidence that iCloud also remotely enabled Protect Mail Activity on my Mac, and I can’t think of any other explanation. Let me describe the circumstances in detail. Yesterday, inspired by social media, I was looking through the Mac Mail app for its one remaining NSDrawer (which turns out to be attached to the Mail Connection Doctor window.)…

WebKit, to quote its website, “is the web browser engine used by Safari, Mail, App Store, and many other apps on macOS, iOS, and Linux.” Obviously, Safari uses WebKit to display web pages, but did you know that Mail app uses WebKit to display email messages? This is true not just for HTML emails but also for plain text format emails. There are a couple of ways to reveal the presence of WebKit in Mail, both of which may be bugs. If you disable “Auto-play animated images” in the Accessibility…

Despite the fact that I never filed a report with Feedback Assistant, the bug that I discussed in my March 26 blog post App Store Connect analytics missing platform versions appears to be fixed now. The analytics are no longer missing iOS and macOS versions. Did my blog post spur the bug fix? I have no idea, since Apple is uncommunicative, but I’m going to try again with another bug. This time I made the mistake of first filing a report with Feedback Assistant: FB22952887 App Store Connect page…