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The Only-Fixes Edition Thursday, August 12, 2021

Apple Ships Mysterious macOS 11.5.2 Update, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

The release notes mention only “bug fixes.” There are no security notes. What does it fix? We don’t know!

What Has Changed In macOS 11.5.2?, by Howard Oakley, Eclectic Light Company

It appears that the bugs which this fixes in Safari and those frameworks were deemed significant enough to merit a ‘patch’ update before Big Sur goes into security-only maintenance on the release of Monterey.

Stuff

'Today At Apple' Session Explores How To Create Looping Videos In The Clips App, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

Apple today shared a new “Today at Apple” session on YouTube, exploring how to shoot and edit looping videos in the Clips app, with the help of director Romain Laurent and Jahmyra from Today at Apple.

Things Adds Extensive Markdown Support And Search For Extended Notes Attached To Tasks, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Adding a note to a task isn’t new to Things, but the latest update expands the feature significantly. Using Markdown syntax, you can now create headings, make text bold or italic, and add bulleted and numbered lists, links, code blocks, and highlight text. The formatting is rendered inline, providing a sense of structure and style to notes.

Darkroom For iOS And Mac Gets Overhauled Image Loading/generation, UI Improvements, More, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Headlining the release is a number of improvements to image loading and generation, the ability to set a default format for loading images, crop and transform enhancements, UI improvements, and more.

First Impressions Of Glass, The New Photo Sharing App, by Shawn Blanc, The Sweet Setup

It’s like Flickr in that it has a strong emphasis on community and quality and a little bit of photog nerdery. And it’s like Instagram in that it’s an easy-to-use, photo sharing iPhone app.

Firefox 91 For macOS Brings Enhanced Cookie Clearing Feature, by José Adorno, 9to5Mac

With Firefox 91, when the user decides to forget about a website, the browser will automatically throw away all cookies, supercookies, and other data stored in that website’s “cookie jar.” This “Enhanced Cookie Clearing” makes it easy to delete all traces of a website in your browser without the possibility of sneaky third-party cookies sticking around.

Notes

Bipartisan Bill Targets Apple And Google's Ability To Profit From App Stores, by Lauren Feiner, CNBC

The bill targets, in part, the in-app payment systems for companies that own app stores with more than 50 million users in the U.S. Under the bill, companies like Apple and Google would not be allowed to condition distribution of an app on their app stores on whether the developers use their in-app payment system.

They also would be prohibited from keeping developers from communicating with app users about "legitimate business offers," or from punishing developers for using different pricing terms through another system.

A Fourth Globalisation, by Marc Levinson, Aeon

When a US manufacturer sends old designs abroad to be converted into modern technical drawings, US tariffs apply only if the drawings are used to make imported merchandise; if the foreign drafting firm simply emails the drawings back to the US, no tariffs apply. If ‘offshoring’ this work eliminates similar engineering jobs in the US, there will be no record that imports were involved. The displaced engineers will have no claim to the sort of government assistance that often goes to displaced factory workers. Preserving jobs, or perhaps an entire workplace, by raising tariffs or slapping a quota on imports of engineering drawings is not a practical option.

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When is a good time for an app to prompt users that there is a new version to update? There are apps on my Mac that prompt me to upgrade when I start up the apps, just when I need to do things (such as upload a file to an SFTP server) urgently. There are also apps that prompt me to upgrade when I quit the app, such as at the end of the work-day when I am shutting down everything to go for dinner, and I really don't want to stay in front of the computer.

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Thanks for reading.