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Received — 22 July 2026 ⏭

macOS 27 Public Beta

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
14 July 2026 at 19:27

Juli Clover:

Apple today released the first public beta of macOS Golden Gate, expanding the macOS 27 beta test to non-developers. You can sign up to test the update on Apple’s beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta.

Jason Snell:

The fact that there are more design changes in macOS than any of Apple’s other 27 updates speaks volumes about how broken many of the Tahoe design decisions were. Apple describes the design as “even more refined,” because in Apple marketing-speak, broken features are never remedied or fixed—past features are just improved. The truth is, Apple has rolled back numerous missteps and made changes to others to mitigate the issues they caused.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto:

The Golden Gate developer beta has proven stable in my everyday use on an M5 MacBook Air and M5 Max MacBook Pro, which is notable since dev betas often have side effects like tanking battery life or causing hardware to run hotter than normal.

[…]

Would I still prefer to go back to the flatter design of macOS Sequoia? Yes, unequivocally. But at least Liquid Glass is more tolerable and less distracting now.

John Voorhees:

Nowhere is the Snow Leopard of it all more apparent than in the hundreds of little changes made to improve the day-to-day use of your Mac. I’m not going to catalog them all here, but I’ve used Golden Gate on two different Macs at this point, and based on my experiences so far, the changes are meaningful.

Jeff Johnson:

This is the crazy Finder column view file selection dragging behavior I’m seeing in the latest Golden Gate developer beta.

Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad:

With the release of the macOS 27 Golden Gate public beta, can we finally submit Mac apps built with Xcode 27?

Previously:

iOS 27 Public Beta

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
14 July 2026 at 19:27

Juli Clover:

Apple released the iOS 27 public beta today, and if you’ve been curious about the new software, now’s the time to try it out. iOS 27 brings Siri AI, performance improvements, and lots of new Apple Intelligence features.

[…]

Everything feels snappier than it did in iOS 26. Animations are quicker, apps launch faster, and AirDrop transfers complete faster. You’ll see improvements when taking photos, opening the keyboard, using the App Library, and swapping Home Screen pages. Your iMessages between devices sync more accurately, messages won’t fail to send and will be automatically retried, and your iPhone can transition more smoothly between Wi-Fi and cellular.

Dan Moren:

In general, the iOS 27 incarnation of Liquid Glass is far easier on the eyes, dialing down the transparency in favor of legibility. Apple’s also imposed some distinction between user interface elements and content. For example, in list views like in Messages and Mail there are now much clearer “toolbar” areas at the top when you start scrolling, even if they still have some degree of translucency. App icons have also gotten a face lift; they’re sharper, and feel more vibrant.

[…]

That’s because one of the odd things about looking at iOS 27 is that there’s just a ton of small stuff—those “quality of life” improvements that chip away at little frustrations and annoyances.

Previously:

Meta and YouTube Addiction Lawsuits

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
1 July 2026 at 21:05

Cecilia Kang, Ryan Mac, and Eli Tan (March, Hacker News):

The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.

[…]

Citing features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, claiming they led to anxiety and depression.

Nick Heer:

For its part, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is standing up for beleaguered social media companies in an editorial today criticizing everything about these verdicts, including this specific means of liability, which it calls a “dodge” around Section 230.

[…]

Product design, though, is a different question. It would be a mistake, I think, to read Section 230 as a blanket allowance for any way platforms wish to use or display users’ posts. (Update: In part, that is because it is a free speech question.) From my entirely layman perspective, it has never struck me as entirely reasonable that the recommendations systems of these platforms should have no duty or expectation of care.

Nick Heer, on an April Massachusetts lawsuit:

To me, a non-lawyer, much of the actual text of the ruling (PDF) explaining why this lawsuit was not immediately turfed on Section 230 grounds seems pretty reasonable. For example, the judge says “[u]nder the default settings, Meta enables approximately forty types of notifications” for the Instagram app, which the government alleges “is designed to overwhelm young users and compel them repeatedly to reopen Instagram”. We can argue whether this is a meaningful thing for a government to police or if it is just another example of Meta resorting to tacky growth-hacking techniques instead of trusting their product is sufficiently compelling on its own. (Most days when I open Instagram in my browser, it puts a red badge over the notifications tab and suggests I have one new follower. I do not; I never have. It lies to me every time, presumably because it knows most people, including me, will usually click on that, thereby increasing a number on a dashboard somewhere.)

Mike Masnick:

couple weeks back, Jonathan Haidt published another entry in his ongoing campaign to convince the world that social media is inherently ruining kids’ lives. This one was a victory lap titled “Seven Lines of Evidence Against Social Media,” treating recent developments — including the social media addiction verdicts against Meta that most people are misunderstanding — as vindication of his thesis.

[…]

But then something inconvenient happened for Haidt’s thesis: Pew went and did a brand new study exploring teens’ experiences on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This one asked the kids themselves.

[…]

Indeed, the research repeatedly suggests that for the very small number of kids who are facing mental health problems and overrelying on social media in response, the answer is a targeted intervention to help those individuals — not a broad “ban kids from social media” program.

Previously:

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