Tech – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

macOS 26.1 Seems To Have Fixed the iconservicesagent Memory Leak

A bug fix. But who did the fixing?

A little follow up.

A few weeks back before Apple released the non-beta version of macOS 26.1 I wrote up some observations about macOS 26. One of those observations was about memory leaks.

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I cited one example I was seeing frequently with iconservicesagent, a process that the system uses to read and generate icon images. When it goes awry because of a corrupted icon or corrupted icon cache then the memory leak occurs. You can kill the process and it will restart, but that wasn’t fixing the problem and the memory leak would reoccur.

Tracking down what might be a corrupted icon is beyond my skill level, so I was hoping this was a bug that would eventually get fixed by Apple, or an app developer who might clean up an errant icon.

Apparently that happened because I haven’t seen the memory leak reoccur since installing macOS26.1. Of course quite a few apps have updated in the meantime as well. So, there’s no way for me to really know whether the fix was on Apple’s end or an app developer’s without doing some digging I don’t have time for. Nor would most users.

Keep in mind, Apple created an entirely new method for developers to build icons this year. Some developers have used the new Icon Composer already, some have not. It’s caused a few developer headaches, especially for app developers who offer multiple icon choices as a part of their app and general disgruntlement with the icons Apple itself has released. Note Apple hasn’t as of yet updated all of its own icons.

I’m glad the bug has been fixed. Whether the fault was on Apple’s end or a developer’s it points to the catch up that Apple has to do to solidify things in macOS 26 Tahoe with app developers having to follow behind as it does so. We’ll see how many other bugs get quashed in the months ahead with macOS 26.2 presumably coming sometime before the end of the year and successive point releases following in the first half of the next year.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Small acts

It’s only business they say. Nothing personal. That’s the way the world works. Well, what I share each week in Sunday Morning Reading always comes from a place of personal interest. That may not be how the world works, but it works for me and I hope it does for you. Call it a small act.

In the wake of the continuing and confounding ICE occupation of Chicago comes a terrific piece by Kyle Kingsbury called I Want You To Understand Chicago.

Follow that up with a ProPublica piece by Melissa Sanches, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba about the nighttime raid on a Chicago apartment building that featured men rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters, and all of the residents emptied on to the streets with many of their belongings. The punchline is in the article’s title, “I Lost Everything”; Venezuelans Were Rounded Up In A Dramatic Midnight Raid But Never Charged With A Crime.

A Nation of Heroes, A Senate Of Cowards by Will Bunch calls it like it is and much the way I see things after last weekend’s actions in the U.S. Senate.

Growing up, I never understood the cliché, “it’s nothing personal, it’s only business.” Frankly I still don’t. It excuses too much that I find wrong about the way the world works. Charles Broskoski examines the personal side in Personal Business.

And speaking of the way the world works (or doesn’t) in the midst of the Epstein fever I don’t think we’ll ever shake, Sarah Lyons points out that the violence in his and others’ actions is something we all live with in This Is How The World Works. It shouldn’t be.

Corbin Trent says We Didn’t Kill American Manufacturing—We Let It Die. He’s spot on.

Mark Jacob tells us How News Coverage Eases Us Into Tyranny. However this saga we’re living through ends up, one thing is for certain. The media has killed any chance of returning to what it once was.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t read of some nefarious business practice spilling out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. Turns out Meta is knowingly leeching off of scammers to the tune of about 10 percent of its revenue. I guess that makes Meta and Zuckerberg a scammer too. Cath Virginia has the writeup with Meta Must Rein In Scammers — Or Face Consequences. I doubt they will.

The Internet Archive is under attack in the same way libraries, media organizations, and text book publishing is. It shouldn’t be. Mathew Ingram has the lowdown in The Internet Archive Should Be Protected Not Attacked.

On a more positive note, Jeff Veen tells us how Small Acts Build Great Cultures. Boy, do we need lots of small acts these days.

To close out, did you ever wonder where collective nouns like “a watch of nightingales” or “an ostentation of peacocks” come from? For many years it was assumed that the anonymous author of this collection of collective nouns was the work of a “gentleman of excellent gifts” written down in one of the first books printed after the invention of The Gutenberg Press, The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blazing of Arms. Turns out the author was a woman named Juliana Barnes. Maria Popova has the story in A Parliament of Owls And A Murder Of Crows: How Groups Of Birds Got Their Names, With Wondrous Vintage Illustrations By Brian Wordsmith.

(Image form Ganesh Narahanan on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Apple Peelings

Like it or not, Apple locks us all into perpetual betas

A concerned reader asked me a question the other day. She wondered why I always seem so down on Apple even though I use lots of Apple gear.

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I have many reasons to be down on Apple. I’m not fond of how Tim Cook has sucked up to the Trump regime. I think Apple’s monopolistic policies harm developers and users alike. I think Apple can’t live up to the pace it has put themselves and us on. Apple’s “It just works” mantra long ago faded into the dustbin of history the same way Google’s “Do no evil” did.

That last one is the one that gets me riled up the most.

Things don’t “just work” anymore. They work sometimes. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes after working for a while they just stop. Sometimes they return to working. Sometimes not. I chalk this up to the fact that every Apple user is essentially running beta software whether or not they have opted into betas. (I don’t run betas.) As I’ve stated here often, when beta software arrives for beta users on their devices, beta software is also being introduced behind the scenes on Apple’s servers. Beta users expect there to be issues. That’s the price of admission. Non-beta users do not. And in my view, they shouldn’t be exposed to those same “take your chances” experiences.

Most users aren’t aware of this and some of the signals that are easily missed are so common place that they are easily ignored. For example, if you use an Apple Watch to log in to a Mac, every now and then you’ll see a message on your Mac that you have to sign in with your password to make that Apple Watch feature work again. Typically, that happens around the time Apple releases a new beta version. Or you may see that a notification that a device you’ve owned for quite some time has suddenly signed on as a new device to your iCloud account as a new device.

Things get muddier still as most Apple coverage is about what’s happening with each new beta and ignores the problems that backend issues may cause for non-beta users. At least I rarely see it and I try to stay current. Apple coverage is also spending as much time looking to the future as it does the current moment. That begs the question, are we just bored with the present and if so, why?

Apple is on what seems to me like a far too haphazard and perhaps reckless pace of advancing software development that is leaving users and developers playing catch up, while it does the same. It’s one thing to play catch up, it’s another to play catch up when you’re adding new features into the mix at the same time. I get it. The pace of tech, fed by the AI bubble/boom/bombast is forcing everyone into a high stakes race. But it sure isn’t taking care of the potholes on the racetrack.

The last few years there’s been a period in the spring each year where things have settled down somewhat before they start ramping up again for the next year’s betas to be released at Apple’s WWDC. That typically comes after a .3 or .4 release of that year’s current operating system. That’s typically in the Spring and often feels like a breath of fresh air. I like the Spring. I also like the Fall, but while I eagerly look forward to the leaves changing color, I approach Apple’s annual Fall operating system releases more and more with trepidation knowing that some of the Summer’s beta issues will continue as we head into Winter.

A big part of this in my opinion is Apple’s fortunate position of taking a long view in its hardware and software development. Apple may be working several generations ahead of whatever they are selling at the moment, but I don’t believe they are paying enough attention to what’s happening in the moment the majority of its users are living.

But, back to that original question. After some of the bigger issues I mentioned earlier became prominent enough to make me question my use of Apple products I did some looking around and some self examination. Given that I support a number of folks who use Apple products as well as products from other makers it was easy enough to do. The simple sum that all added up to is that Apple’s hardware is, in my opinion, the best of what’s on the market, and no one else has come up with software solutions any more reliable than Apple at the moment. I chalk that up to the AI rat race that feels more and more likely to keep companies and users frustrated for sometime to come while everyone chases promises that more than likely won’t pan out they way they were sold.

Sure, I could try to work my older geek muscles back into shape and chuck it all and buy cheaper equipment to run Linux, etc…and that has had some romantic appeal. But in the end, I am no longer that romantic and will admit to the compromise that I need something that works reliably most of the time, if not all of the time.

The fact that I felt very uncomfortable typing the phrase “most of the time” in that previous sentence is I guess the best answer to the user question I opened this post with.

In a different context, but to the same point, since I pay for the hardware and the services I use, I feel I have every right to complain when something doesn’t work reliably or as advertised. It’s no different than complaining to my grocer or my auto mechanic when they don’t live up to service I initially signed on for. Sad to say, my realization is that it’s easier to change grocers or auto shops if things don’t change for the better. And that’s the compromise I’ve let Apple (and the rest of the tech sector) force me into.

I write about my experiences mostly. I don’t regurgitate Apple’s PR for clicks and then comment how problematic something might be on a podcast down the road when something new is rolling out. If I’m having a bad experience I’m betting others are too. So, I share what’s at my fingertips, on my screen, and occasionally running rampant in a memory leak.

(Image from zebronit on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Politics, the arts, a little snow, and the end of an era

It’s a Sunday and Fall is homing in on Winter as the first snow of the season hits Chicago this morning. Perfect time for a little Sunday Morning Reading featuring some interesting stories about the arts, AI, and home.

As the first flakes of this winter of discontent fall, two interesting reads highlight some of the chaos the art-less U.S administration is inflicting on the American arts scene, specifically The Kennedy Center. Shawn McCreesh takes a look at the damage being done in The Kennedy Center Crackup.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Higgins reports that the Washington National Opera May Move Out Of The Kennedy Center Due to Trump ‘Takeover.’ I’m here to tell you that while what’s happening on the banks of the Potomac may feel very inside the beltway, the repercussions are being felt in the boardrooms of arts organizations across the country.

The above, like most of our news of late, is certainly not something to laugh at. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find ways to laugh at the incompetent, ignorant and dangerous players wreaking havoc in their wake. Laughter gets under their all too thin skins, no matter how made up or stretched too tight by surgery. Mike Monteiro offers up How To Point At Fascists And Laugh.

NatashaMH, far too young to worry about being old, takes a look at creating art as she nears the mid-century mark in I Don’t Paint For Your Sofa. Youngsters these days.

Art and politics might be an unholy mix in dangerous times like these, but there’s another foul concoction brewing. Adam Willems points to An ex-Intel CEO’s Mission To Build A Christian AI: ‘Hasten The Coming of Christ’s Return.’ If you ask me these folks wishing for these kind of end times have really missed the points. All of them.

Continuing on the AI front there seems to be a bit of weakening in the walls of what most concede is an economic bubble. The cliché is that bubbles pop. Those that don’t, just disappear as they float away. Ben Thompson takes a look at what happens in either case in The Benefits of Bubbles.

Home is where hearts are and often places you can’t return back to. I’ve lived both. Chris Andrei is Searching For The Elusive Feeling Of Home.

With the weather changing and snowflakes falling out my window, there’s a passage of time marker about to be set. The Farmers’ Almanac is about to shut down. Growing up in rural America there were only two publications that everyone I knew received in the mail. It was always a big deal in our house when my dad, who was the postmaster, brought those home. The Sears Catalog and The Farmer’s Almanac. The Sears Catalog is long gone. The 2026 edition of the latter will be its last. Grace Snelling takes a look back and ahead in After More Than 200 Years, The Farmers’ Almanac Is Shutting Down For Good.

Returning to where this week’s column began, the arts, Jack Rodolico’s The Blue Book Burglar examines how New York’s once vaunted Social Register, was not only a destination that social climbers desired to be included in, but was also a hit list for the country’s hardest working art thief. I just don’t understand how the current thieves doing today’s pillaging have it so damn easy.

Smartphone Makers Need To Make Delete and Report Spam Buttons A Priority

Time to end the phone spam game

I’ve written about the changes Apple made to the Phone app before. I’m writing about it again. Apple, other smartphone makers, and the telecommunications companies need to make detecting and deleting spam calls and texts more of a priority. Yes, there’s been some progress but to call it incremental is to insult the idea of incrementalism.

Apple now sends unwanted calls to a sort of purgatory. If they’ve been already identified as spam you may never see them thanks to the new features, unless you check for them. If it’s a new phone call you will have the opportunity to banish it yourself.

It’s an improvement, but it still takes too much effort.

For example if you receive an unwanted call, you see this screen:

New Shareshot.

Unless you know to hit the delete button or to slide the number to the left for more options the design of the screen offers you only the two options, Delete and Mark as Known. Nothing on the screen gives you any indication on how to mark or delete the call as spam.

Tapping on the Delete button gives you the following options

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Swiping to the left reveals the following icons with the orange one giving you the option to block the number.

New Shareshot.

My suggestion would be to design that first screen so deleting and blocking spam calls was a first page priority instead of having to make an additional tap or swipe to get rid of the number. If you asked me, in an age when spam calls are so prevalent I’d put a Block and Report screen on the main screen when a call comes in.

I also wonder why if I delete, block, and report a number as spam the number hangs around in a list, forcing me to use an edit function to actually get them off my phone. It feels very email like, reminiscent of having to check your spam folder if you think you haven’t received a message. But in these cases, the number as already been identified as such.

New Screenshot.

Apple has shown that it wants to help with the improvements I wrote about in an earlier post. Apple and other smartphone makers need to go further in helping us rid our phones of these unwanted annoyances.

Of course the telecommunications companies can do better here too. Spam filtering uses databases they maintain of phone numbers reported as spam. All well and good. But if you’ve already identified them as a spammer, don’t let the number make the call or send the text in the first place.

The Little Prince Meets Artificial Intelligence

A melange of technology and fantasy

Every year, sometimes twice a year, I return to one of my favorite theatre gigs, directing a staged reading for The International Voices Project. IVP is a Chicago company that produces staged readings of plays translated from other countries and cultures. Throughout the years the plays I’ve directed have taken me on journeys with writers from Syria, Lebanon, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Ukraine, El Salvador, and now Romania.

The reason I return each year is one of the reasons I have pursued and enjoyed my life making theatre. I get to touch and explore worlds, cultures, and ideas I would never have had the chance to experience otherwise. It’s always an adventure into something new.

My most recent gig with IVP certainly scratched all of those itches. The play is called Veronica’s Little Prince by Romanian playwright Dr. Catalina Florina Florescu. Yes, Antonie de Saint-Exupéry’s character of The Little Prince plays an important role.

The piece centers on Veronica, a former principal ballerina who has literally had her legs taken out from under her in a mysterious accident, leaving her in an institution, unable to move without the aid of a wheelchair and unable to speak. Unhappy with her fate Veronica is suspected of wanting to kill herself. Even before the mysterious accident she’s lived a life of self-destructive behavior.

The Little Prince arrives to help her examine and uncover the truth within her actions.

There’s another twist. I mentioned that Veronica can’t speak. In a technological twist she communicates via an AI robot by typing on her body. Via an implant those signals transmit to the robot who speaks her words and thoughts.

The play weaves in and out of Veronica’s mind and thoughts, her past and present, reality and fantasy, technology and humanity in very theatrical ways.

Creating an even more mysterious melange of tech and fantasy, the most frightening line to me is when Veronica’s Little Prince answers Veronica’s question about who told her to come by saying:

You see, they have programmed me to pop up whenever I hear certain words.

That may delight AI enthusiasts and those who keep suggesting we’re living in some sort of simulation, but given the rush to push us all deeper into a world run by Artificial Intelligence, it more than tweaks a nerve for those, like me, who may see benefits to AI in some forms, but think the pitfalls are more dangerous. Frankly, I prefer the characters in fantasy to spring from the minds of humans, not lines of code.

Given the sound and visual representations that give the script its many layers it was quite a challenge to present in a staged reading format without the benefit of theatre technology. But we managed to pull it off, letting the words weave their magic.

My thanks and kudos to the cast for doing such great work and especially to young Olive Popio who played our Little Prince.

(Photo by Scott Dray for The International Voices Project)

Slide Over In iPadOS 26.1 Returns Just In Time

Glad to have this multi-tasking tool back.

Since I don’t run betas on any of my devices, I’ve been somewhat anxiously waiting for the release of iPadOS 26.1 which returns the Slide Over multi-tasking feature to the iPad. It got here just in the nick of time.

iPad OS 26.1 arrived yesterday afternoon, about 2 hours before rehearsal began and I quickly set things up for the evening’s rehearsal, using Notes in Slide Over to quickly jot down notes as rehearsal went along.

I use an 11 inch iPad Pro in my theatre work as my primary device. It contains the script I’m working on and ever since Slide Over was available I would use that multi-tasking feature to keep one or more apps tucked away for quick access conducting rehearsals.

New Shareshot.

I do question why Apple only allows one app in this returning version as opposed to multiple apps as it did before. It was always handy to keep multiple apps available throughout rehearsal, given that I prefer to have my script open full screen on the 11 inch iPad Pro.

As a side note, I’m not a fan of the Liquid Glass border around the window in Slide Over. It waists screen real estate, almost begging you to look at the feature. Even switching Liquid Glass to the new Tinted version, now also available in iOS 26, doesn’t erase or lessen that border or its distracting impact.

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In fact, setting the border aside, switching back and forth I don’t really see any significant difference in the apps I’m currently using between the Clear and Tinted versions of Liquid Glass. I won’t call that a complaint, but I will say it might all be much ado about nothing. At least on the iPad.

Sunday Morning Reading

No tricks. No treats. Just thoughts and reading worth sharing.

The frights of Halloween have passed us by, but real life horrors remain and expand. Never had more gut wrenching emotions this weekend than spending it with my grandkids costumed in their bountiful innocence, avoiding what’s out there in a life they’ll one day have to face, but in the present doesn’t exist beyond the edges of any joyful moment of wonder and exuberance they can conjure. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading won’t touch on too much of that, but then again, I think it just did.

David Todd McCarty thinks amidst it all We Can Be Heroes. Making my grandkids laugh uncontrollably makes me feels damn close.

Adam Gropnik visits the home of the poet Wislawa Szymborska and returns with How To Endure Authoritarianism.

Will Bunch says It Didn’t take A Reichstag Fire To Burn Down Congress. He’s correct. It didn’t even take a match.

Some interesting writing on Artificial Intelligence and the Internet this week that’s worth your while, first up Cory Doctorow tackles When AI Prophecy Fails.

Will Douglas Heaven explains How AGI Became The Most Consequential Theory Of Our Time.

Tim Chinenov wonders Who’s Creating The Rage Bait That’s Radicalizing You?

Decidedly not on the Internet Friday night while trick-or-treating with my grandkids, though not in my besieged town of Chicago, I witnessed not only kids howling with fun, but adults who joined in on the fun with their own costumes and decorated homes, some elaborate, some not so, all with love and honoring a tradition I’ve never seen in the communities I’ve lived in. Many families set up in their driveways, some with small fire pits, some with tents, tables full of food (and candy), welcoming all comers to their Halloween semi-tall gating front yards. I also noticed the adults who just sat in their cars and slowly followed their children down the block. The entire experience reminded me of this piece from the summer in which Joan Westenberg says every creator pays a tax while the rest stay spectators in The Unbearable Lightness of Cringe. Pay the tax.

And closing out this week, kudos to both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays for an excellent World Series, which the Dodgers won. Both teams played a splendid series and provided an incredible Game 7 finish to one of those contests you never want to see end, but know it must. Grown men over compensated for incredible talent, playing a kid’s game like kids, thrilling and heart breaking in the same breath. Too bad we don’t have any great, or even good, baseball writers to chronicle the moment these days.

DeValuing The Myth of Anything Super

Grammarly rebrands as Superhuman

Super.

It used to mean bigger, better, bolder, somehow special. At least when it referred to humans, as in superheroes.

Now that we’re busy replacing humans with Artificial Intelligence, the rush to brand AI innovations as somehow superior or “super” is doing more to devalue the concept of anything “super” since the comic books and their movie spinoffs started examining all the collateral damage their superheroes caused in their efforts to save worlds, galaxies, universes and multi-verses.

Long time proofreading service Grammarly acquired the AI-native email app Superhuman this past summer and has now announced a sort of unusually reversed rebranding that rolls out these bundled services under the subsumed Superhuman brand.

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You have to laugh at the decidedly and very human super-ego sized slug line that claim the new effort gives you “the power to be more human.”

The newly christened Superhuman certainly isn’t alone as Artificial Intelligence purveyors have been defining pursuing super intelligence as their goal for quite some time, which has always had an ironic appeal, even if chatbots and the like don’t understand irony.

In my opinion the entire thing is all very silly, far too easily unmasked as unhealthy hubris, yet also very dangerous. The promises continue to fall short, yet the hype continues to feed economic fires that will eventually burn out, even as AI invades everything associated with technology and business.

Super may have a definition that sets anything following the prefix as special and somehow superior to the ordinary. But it is also slang for supernumerary, which in show biz traditions means extra, unwanted, or unimportant.

Sunday Morning Reading

Balancing on the edge of a coin

Regardless of the many problems with the Internet, there’s no denying its benefits. One of those is the pleasure of reading stuff I probably would never be aware of without it. In many ways that’s what this Sunday Morning Reading column is about (as well as my life in general on the Internet.) When you read and live life enough, you discover that the trick is always balancing on the edge of the coin that separates the two sides.

There’s comfort perhaps landing on one side or the other, but life is actually in the fragile middle of the muddle somewhere, even if it’s a fine, and increasingly thinner line, often hard to discern.

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First up this Sunday is a piece by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called Fear, Greed, Civic Virtue and the Fall of the Elites. Pay attention to that word “virtue.” As Marshall points out it originally meant “manliness.” The word’s evolution is as tricky as the concept itself.

Follow that up with Ian Betteridge’s The Politics of the Missing Middle.

Ian Betteridge’s law of headlines that says any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word “no.” Steven Levy falls into Betteridge’s trap in his piece, Can AI Avoid The Enshittification Trap? Cory Doctorow’s theory of Enshittification has been a popular topic in this column and Betteridge’s law certainly applies here. For those looking for a primer on enshittification Greg Rosalsky has a a quick primer on the topic in A Theory Why The Internet Is Going Down The Toilet.

While technically not falling under the umbrella of enshittification, some of the ways folks are using AI sure sound shitty. Check out Alexandra Jones’s I Realized I’d Been ChatGPT-ed Into Bed: ‘Chatfishing’ Made Finding Love On Dating Apps Even Weirder.

Things are getting weird indeed. Adi Robertson tells us that The Next Legal Frontier Is Your Face and AI.

Several pieces on the arts and creativity stood out to me this week. David Sparks’ The Inherent Value Of The Creative Act reflects on his creative life and his resistance to using AI for the work of creating, but it helps with his administrative tasks. There’s that edge of the coin again.

Authoritarians always target art and artists first. You don’t need an Internet to discover that history, or perhaps we might if the current forces in charge have their way. Andrew Weinstein discusses Trump’s Campaign To Defund The Arts—and Rewrite History.

Speaking of creativity or rather the other side of that coin, Joe Rosenthal takes on Creative Neglect: What About The Apps In Apple? I mentioned some of this in a piece I wrote this past week.

Speaking of that edge and to close out this week, here’s an image of a Mastodon post by friend David Todd McCarty from this morning.

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(Coin Image above from ABARONS on Shutterstock)