If you look forward to receiving TidBITS each week, please become a member—we rely almost entirely on reader support. In this week’s issue, Adam Engst remembers Tekserve’s David Lerner, suggests that executive turnover at Apple’s AI and design teams could finally improve Siri and refine Liquid Glass, and reveals a hide-and-seek iOS 26 Phone setting that lets you choose whether tapping a recent call dials back or opens the contact. Finally, we link to Dave Barry’s hilarious account of how Find My saved his iPad—twice. Notable Mac app releases this week include BusyCal 2025.4.2 and BusyContacts 2025.4.3, Cocktail 19.3, Default Folder X 6.2.3, Fantastical 4.1.5 and Cardhop 2.4.3, Mellel 6.5.5, Retrobatch 2.3.1, SoundSource 5.8.11, and SoundSource 6.0.
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David Lerner, remembered by many for his “May You have 1000 Backups and Never Need One” email signature, has died at 72. Read Sam Roberts’s obituary in the New York Times; we revisit his and Tekserve’s appearances in TidBITS.
Apple’s hectic week of executive transitions could have more profound impacts than just reshuffling the org chart. With John Giannandrea retiring and Alan Dye departing, Apple has an opportunity to fix Siri and refine Liquid Glass.
In iOS 26’s Phone app, Unified view lets you tap a call to show contact info instead of initiating a callback. A hidden setting lets you switch that tap-a-call behavior back to a callback—but it appears only when in Unified view and isn’t available to those using Classic view.
Watchlist
Updates the calendar and contact apps with improvements and bug fixes. ($49.99 new for each, free update, various sizes, macOS 11.5+)
General-purpose maintenance utility updated with support for macOS 26 Tahoe. ($29 new, free update, 2.1 MB, macOS 26+)
Adds open Finder windows to the Open/Save dialog utility's Quick Search results. ($39.95 new, free update, 28.6 MB, macOS 10.13+)
Adds Control Center controls for both the calendar and contact apps. ($56.99 annual subscription new, free update, various sizes, macOS 12+)
Collects controls to adjust the user interface appearance and customize colors in a new Appearance tab in Settings. ($69.99 new, free update, 107.6 MB, macOS 10.13+)
Updates the re-encoding behavior of the Delete Metadata node. ($29.99/$49.99 new, free update, 58.7 MB, macOS 12+)
Updates the audio handling ARK plugin to address a rare crash. ($45 new, free update, 38.8 MB, macOS 14.5+)
Major upgrade for the audio control utility brings grouped output devices and integrated AirPlay streaming. ($49 new, $25 upgrade, 51.6 MB, macOS 15+)
