Adam Engst

Apple has integrated ChatGPT into Siri with the second set of Apple Intelligence features that debuted in this week’s operating system releases. Don’t get too excited.

With macOS 15 Sequoia, Apple has addressed a long-standing issue by letting update notifications open the App Store’s Updates screen. It’s a small improvement that improves the user experience when updating apps from the Mac App Store.

Rogue Amoeba has finished moving its entire fleet of audio apps to its next-generation audio capture technology, a process that took three years after being forced by Apple security changes. Here’s the story.

Adam Engst investigates how macOS 15.2 Sequoia introduced a bug in Apple Software Restore that breaks bootable backups of M-series Macs. He provides guidance for adapting your backup strategy to accommodate a world without bootable backups.

Apple has released iOS 18.2.1 and iPadOS 18.2.1 with “important bug fixes” that are apparently not important enough to describe. Unusually, there are no security-related fixes, so these bug fixes presumably address functional issues introduced in 18.2.

On a recent visit to San Francisco, Adam Engst was thoroughly impressed with a ride in a Waymo robotaxi. How many years will it be before the company expands service to most of the country?

Adam Engst looks at Watch Duty, a nonprofit-developed app that combines wildfire mapping with real-time alerts from firefighters and first responders. It can help you track active fires and evacuation zones for yourself or affected family and friends.

In our most recent Do You Use It? poll, we asked which backup methods you could use to recover your data and get back to work. Versioned backups—made with Time Machine by most people—were by far the most common, receiving 87% of the votes, but cloud storage was also extremely popular, with 59%. Just over half of respondents (51%) rely on Internet backups, with fewer (41%) relying on regularly scheduled duplicates and 33% saying they could turn to a second Mac to get back to work. Only 9% of people said they manually copy files to external drives for backup, and I’m extremely pleased to see that no one said they ignore backups entirely. Of course, that mainly speaks to the self-selected nature of the poll respondents—TidBITS readers know that working without a backup is like tightrope walking without a net.

Adam Engst explores how ChatGPT can transform complex spreadsheet data into valuable visualizations, sharing insights from analyzing his running club’s registration patterns and promotional channel analysis.

I’m slightly conflicted about wearing my Apple Watch while sleeping. I don’t suffer from sleep apnea or have any particular trouble sleeping, and being informed about occasional bouts of early morning insomnia doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Learning that I spent an average of 7 hours and 32 minutes asleep every night over the last month is slightly interesting but not particularly actionable.