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John Siracusa

@siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
344 followers 0 following 748 posts

Programmer, tech writer, and co-host of Accidental Tech Podcast, Reconcilable Differences, and Robot or Not. 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mastodon.social/@siracusa, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2026
Oh, I almost forgot: The @atpfm zip hoodie is available in colors other than black for the first time! (These images show just some of the colors.) atp.fm/store
A gray zip hoodie with a small embroidered six-color ///ATP logo on the left chest.A white zip hoodie with a small embroidered six-color ///ATP logo on the left chest.A navy zip hoodie with a small embroidered six-color ///ATP logo on the left chest.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2026
We’ve also brought back an old favorite: our “ATP Graffiti” shirt that celebrates the Palm OS Graffiti handwriting system. (Available in many different colors.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Pal… atp.fm/store
The Accidental Tech Podcast logo rendered as Palm OS Graffiti letters.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2026
We forgot to make this shirt during our last sale. The MacBook Neo has brought “A” chips to the Mac! atp.fm/store
A black t-shirt with an A18 Pro logo: Apple-six-colors slanted stripes leaning against chunky “A18” letters with a blue “Pro” badge below it.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2026
We also have two shirts celebrating the fact that the M5 generation got an Ultra chip (even if it is still two Max chips stuck together). atp.fm/store
A black t-shirt with an M5 Ultra logo: Apple-six-colors slanted stripes leaning against chunky “M5” letters with a yellow “Ultra” badge below it.A black t-shirt with an M5 Ultra logo: Apple-six-colors slanted stripes leaning against chunky “M5” letters with a yellow badge below it that shows two instances of the word “MAX” stuck together, with the second one rotated 180 degrees, like the two M5 Max chips that are stuck together to make the M5 Ultra.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2026
Our @atpfm Holiday 2026 sale includes Pride and Trans Pride variants of our logo shirt. We are donating 100% of the profits from these products to two charities: Trans Lifeline and Transgender Law Center. translifeline.org/about […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
A black t-shirt with the ///ATP logo on it, with the usual six colored stripes from the rainbow Apple Logo replaced with the colors of the traditional Pride flag.A black t-shirt with the ///ATP logo on it, with the usual six colored stripes from the rainbow Apple Logo replaced with the colors of the Trans Pride flag.A navy t-shirt with the ///ATP logo on it, with the usual six colored stripes from the rainbow Apple Logo replaced with the colors of the traditional Pride flag.A blue-gray t-shirt with the ///ATP logo on it, with the usual six colored stripes from the rainbow Apple Logo replaced with the colors of the Trans Pride flag.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/10/2026
Anyone know how to get rid of this (new?) little friend in the macOS menu bar?
Slack app icon in the menu bar.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026
Please make it stop.
An iOS screenshot showing Siri asking me which app I would like to use when I try to create a reminder. I’ve answered this question the same way many, many times since upgrading to iOS 27, but it keeps asking.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
I have a new friend in Settings…and it won’t leave, no matter what I do.
“Activate iCloud Storage” with a red “1” badge next to it.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026
Excited to try this update! (Thanks, CDN propagation…?)
The iOS software update screen showing an update to iOS 26.7 in progress.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026
It's almost a blessing that Verizon Fios is putting TiVo out of its misery in November (by discontinuing CableCARD support).
An email from TiVo that reads:

We’re reaching out to let you know about an upcoming change to SkipMode™, the functionality on your TiVo DVR that lets you automatically skip commercial breaks on select recorded TV shows.

Beginning November 2, 2026, the current version of SkipMode, using the Skip Button on your TiVo remote, will no longer be available. You will still be able to skip commercials manually using the 30-second skip (→I) and Fast Forward (▶︎▶︎) buttons on your remote.

We are also excited to share that in November we will be testing a new Premium Auto Commercial Skip add-on service. You’ll have the opportunity to try the service for free for 30 days and decide if it is right for you. After the 30-day trial period, you will have the option to opt in and add it to your TiVo account for an additional monthly fee.

For now, no action is required. Before November 2, 2026, we will send additional details about the free trial, pricing, and how the new service works.

Thank you for being a TiVo customer.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026
The best part is when the HTTP 503 responses prevent the CAPTCHA from loading.
The blank space where a CAPTCHA should be.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026
@appfigures Guess who’s back after a long vacation… (I really thought it was fixed this time!)
Appfigures on iOS showing a missing icon for one of my apps.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026
This is the error that appears on the web page when some part of the execution of a step gets a 503 response.
A dialog box image from a web page that reads:

This action could not be completed.

Your request could not be completed because of an error. Try again later.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/06/2026
macOS 26 Tahoe lies on a hospital bed as Avery Brooks asks… “Has anything you’ve done made your OS better?” (Welcome, macOS 27. Seriously.)
Ed Norton in American History X (1998)
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2026
(I woke up thinking it was today.)
A macOS notification that says: "WWDC Tomorrow"
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2026
Update! Look what just appeared in a VIP rank-up package!
A VIP rank-up package from MIDA containing…a Biolens Seed!
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2026
💅
My final “golden” loadout in Marathon season 1. Highlights include a gold M1T and Brrt, a gold backpack, and full gold cores. Only a purple shield, though. Shame.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026
As an example of the auto-industry illness described in my post, take a look at the Chevy Equinox and compare it to the Chevy Equinox EV. Did someone say EV? Time to mess up those door handles!
A side view of the 2026 Chevrolet Equinox. It has normal door handles.A side view of the 2026 Chevrolet Equinox EV. It has flush, electronically activated pop-out door handles.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026
There. This makes me feel (slightly) better.
A side view of the new Ferrari Luce, with one small change to correct an aspect of its styling that has been bothering me: the duct on the side of t he car behind the front wheel has been rotated so it is pointing in the direction of the car's travel, rather than being parallel to the tilted cut-line of the front edge of the front door.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026
Just another day of asking coding agents to diagnose crash reports.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026
@twostraws What is Kickstart asking me to do? The "Analytics" page in App Store Connect shows a bunch of data for my app (Example URL: appstoreconnect.apple.com/apps/1234…) but the Kickstart app still shows this under Build > Analytics: Crashes
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026
From the App Store app on macOS 26.5. (A sheet is open, which is why the window content is dimmed. The progress spinner was animating, drawing attention to its amazing positioning.)
The "Is this…?" butterfly meme with the text, "Is this ‘concentricity’?" A screenshot in place of the butterfly shows a circular progress spinner near the  upper-right corner of a window on macOS Tahoe, partially cut off by the edge of the window.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026
I tried to introduce my son, Alex, to programming when he was young. He wasn’t interested. But he eventually found his way to it on his own. By the time Alex graduated high school, he had put his first app into the App Store. Now, after 4 years at WPI, Alex […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
Alexander Siracusa, graduate!
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/05/2026
Another ringing endorsement of the reliability and performance of Spotlight.
From a post about the new version of Raycast for macOS: “In v1, file search relied on Spotlight metadata. It (mostly) worked, but we were limited to what Spotlight had indexed, and it couldn't work on Windows at all. In v2, we built our own file indexer from scratch in Rust. It runs as a separate process, scans the filesystem directly, builds a search index, and keeps it up to date via file system events.”
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/05/2026
I’m loving the new version of @appfigures which gives a slightly different appearance to the broken app icon images that I’ve seen in the app for the past several years.
Appfigures on iOS showing my three apps, each with a blank white icon with a circle with a line through it overlay 🚫
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/04/2026
I'm getting a steady trickle of crash reports for an AppKit-related crash that I can't reproduce at all. Can anyone at Apple shed any light on what might cause this assertion to fail while my app is quitting? ![[NSApp _openWindows] […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026
We’ve brought back an old favorite: our decidedly non-Retina “ATP Pixels” shirt. atp.fm/store
The Accidental Tech Podcast logo rendered as individual pixels separated by a tiny bit of space, with a slightly dimmer pixel drop-shadow.A zoomed-in version of the logo showing the individual pixels at a larger size.The ATP Pixels logo on a black t-shirt.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026
We’re still waiting for the M5 Ultra, but in the meantime, we have M5 Pro and M5 Max shirts. atp.fm/store
A black t-shirt with an M5 Pro logo: Apple-six-colors slanted stripes leaning against chunky “M5” letters with a blue “Pro” badge below it.A black t-shirt with an M5 Max logo: Apple-six-colors slanted stripes leaning against chunky “M5” letters with a purple “Max” badge below it.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026
For the networking nerds, we have two new shirts that are a twist on our earlier T568A/B shirts—literally. Introducing the T568A and T568B Crossover shirts (gigabit). atp.fm/store
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026
We also have a shirt marking the ignominious end of a once-great Mac. atp.fm/store
Line art showing the top front of a 2019 Mac Pro case. Beneath it is the text: 2019–2026.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026
Our @atpfm WWDC 2026 sale includes a set of shirts that attempt to match the colors of the MacBook Neo, right down to the subtly tinted logo that’s meant to match the tinted keyboard colors. (The Indigo and Blush are probably the most successful. Yes, the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
Four t-shirts in colors that match the MacBook Neo: Indigo, Blush, Citrus, and Silver. Each shirt has a monochrome ///ATP logo on it, in a color tinted to match the shirt. A MacBook Neo of the matching color appears in the lower left corner of each shirt for comparison.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/04/2026
“Apple II Forever” indeed… www.inkandswitch.com/slow-software
A chart of typing latency that shows the Apple IIe with the lowest latency (30ms). A modern Mac is 100ms.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/03/2026
To better days…
John Ternus introduces the all-new Mac Pro at WWDC 2019.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/03/2026
👯‍ #marathon
Two toots:

Maxél says, "this game man. Its got its teeth in me"

tylercheung says, "this game is way too much stress"
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2026
This episode also includes my theory about the black “speaker” modules in the MacBook Neo (starts at 41:55). overcast.fm/+BQnv4MC0jU/41:55 You can see the images I’m referencing in the iFixIt teardown video at 00:27 and at 05:57 […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
The engine bay of an F80 BMW M3 (I think).
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2026
If you’re wondering what Mac programming was like back then, take a look.
Pages showing how to manually handle mouse events on window controls.Pages showing how to manually handle events in the menu bar.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2026
My decades-long shelf-space crunch continues. The latest eviction victim: this old chonker. Love the pages of ads in the back of the book. Oh, and several empty, lined pages for you to write your own notes.
Foundations of Mac Programming, by Dan Parks Sydow: front coverFoundations of Mac Programming, by Dan Parks Sydow: back coverFoundations of Mac Programming, by Dan Parks Sydow: spine (2 inches high!)Ads for other IDG publications in the back pages of the book.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/03/2026
And speaking of longterm predictions, I did indeed add this to my calendar (although I wouldn’t take the bet at two years, so we settled on three).
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/03/2026
Nvidia’s DLSS5: the latest version of their fancy frame generator, right? Uhhh…just take a look at this. youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA
A scene from the latest Resident Evil game. DLSS5 off on the left, and on on the right. The image on the right has much more realistic lighting and detail.A close-up of the characters face from the previous picture. You can see the huge increase in detail and the quality of the skin.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2026
🤔
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2026
This is pretty much the only thing I ever say to Siri for home-automation purposes, and I say it exactly like this, word for word. Today, Siri decided to get creative and try something different.
An iOS screen showing the Siri command “Hey Siri lights out” with a list of media containing the words “lights out” in their titles. (Siri did not turn off the lights.)
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/02/2026
I gave Codex a shot at the problem in Xcode 26.3, but it also failed to find a solution. Then I rubber-ducked with it for a while and came up with a new, terrible approach: 1. Copy the Assets.car file from a build of my app made with Xcode 26.0.1 into the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
The new build step I added to my project:

set -e
SOURCE_CAR="${PROJECT_DIR}/SwitchGlass/BuildResources/Assets.car"
DEST_RESOURCES="${TARGET_BUILD_DIR}/${UNLOCALIZED_RESOURCES_FOLDER_PATH}"
if [ -f "$SOURCE_CAR" ]; then
  /bin/cp -f "$SOURCE_CAR" "${DEST_RESOURCES}/Assets.car"
fi
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :CFBundleIconFile" "${TARGET_BUILD_DIR}/${INFOPLIST_PATH}" >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
/bin/rm -f "${DEST_RESOURCES}/AppIcon.icns"
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/02/2026
I pushed Codex to find a solution. It made a heroic effort, trying many different approaches. But in the end, it did not find a solution.
I've exhausted the standard approaches. The CAR file format is proprietary (BOMStore-based) and there's no public API or tool to selectively remove Icon Image renditions while keeping IconGroup/Icon|mageStack entries.

Summary of Findings

The problem is that actool always generates Icon Image fallbacks when compiling a . icon file, regardless of:

* --minimum-deployment-target value
* --standalone-icon-behavior setting
* --enable-icon-stack-fallback-generation=disabled flag

And macOS 15 prefers these Icon Images from Assets.car over CFBundleIconFile, even when both are present.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/02/2026
I gave the coding agent in Xcode 26.3 a shot at the only problem I care about in Xcode right now. I got a predictable but unfortunate result. FB19437407
According to Apple's documentation, there is no built-in way to use both your custom Icon Composer (icon) file for macOS 26 Tahoe AND your custom legacy icon (ApplconGood.icns) for macOS 15 and earlier.

The documentation explicitly states:

"If you add an Icon Composer file to your Xcode project, it replaces any existing icon asset catalog that you previously used to represent your app icon. Xcode automatically generates a similar-looking version of the Liquid Glass icon for previous releases. If you want your existing icon to appear in previous releases, continue to use asset catalogs to represent your app icon."

Your Options

1. Use Icon Composer file only (Applcon.icon):
* macOS 26: Your custom Liquid Glass icon displays
* macOS 15 and earlier: Xcode auto-generates a "similar-looking" icon from your Liquid Glass design (but it won't be your custom ApplconGood.icns)

2. Use Asset Catalog only (Applcon.appiconset):
* macOS 26: The system applies automatic Liquid Glass effects to your existing icon
* macOS 15 and earlier: Your custom icon displays as-is

3. Remove the icon file from the project to use option 2, keeping your custom legacy icon on older systems while accepting the auto-generated Liquid Glass treatment on macOS 26.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/01/2026
I don’t know how many years I’ve spent with some or all of my app icons “missing” in the @appfigures iOS app dashboard screen, but it’s a lot. They come and go like the weather, but I can’t remember the last time I saw all of them at once. Such a wierd, durable bug.
The AppFigures dashboard screen showing two of three app icons as empty/blank placeholder images.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/01/2026
Just casually zooming in on a laptop screen from a YouTube video posted today.
A notification showing that macOS Ventura 13.7.8 is available and will be installed later tonight.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/01/2026
“I know I just added the TV series ‘North of North’ to my watch list. Why isn’t this search finding it?” …I thought to myself before remembering that I’m running iPadOS 26.
A search box in an iPad app containing “Nort” with seemingly no search results below it. But look underneath the floating Liquid Glass-style sidebar and there’s a blurry image of the expected search result.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/01/2026
Also confirmed using Tiger on infinitemac.org:
Creating a new user account on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.Running the "id" command on the new account, showing:

uid=502(john) gid=502(johng groups=502(john)
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/12/2025
Meanwhile…
My Warlock in Destiny 2, wearing some Mandalorian-inspired armor and carrying a purple lightsaber.
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John Siracusa @siracusa.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/12/2025
Here’s my skill tree for season one. I was pretty happy with it.
My ARC Raiders skill tree. Survival: 38 (with Security Breach), Mobility: 41, Conditioning: 7
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