Honestly, I kind of support this lack of backward compatibility. So many apps I use from big companies are still Intel based and leaving tons of performance on the table. This will finally force them to change when Rosetta is deprecated.
The alternative to this was continuing to optimize Rosetta while simultaneously processors improve, soon enough the performance gap wouldn't matter in the slightest. By the end of the decade you'd probably be comfortably running that software on a MacBook Neo w/ A20 Pro.
Rosetta and its underlying tech enable 10,000s of games and applications to run so it's a tremendous loss overall, it doesn't sound like much will be left if this means x86 OSX games:
> "we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks"
Mac used to have a lot of great shareware from indie devs. Some of them have shut down and their apps will eventually stop working. Kinda annoying when I can play the windows port of a game on windows but not the original Mac version
> EV certificates no longer bypass SmartScreen. Years ago, signing files with an Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificate would result in positive SmartScreen reputation by default, but this behavior no longer exists. EV certificates may matter for enterprise procurement, but they no longer impact SmartScreen behavior. Paying a premium for EV solely to avoid SmartScreen warnings is no longer justified.
Signing on Windows is a pain in the arse and gets more expensive every year. I dread having to renew my certificate. Also they keep reducing the maximum certificate length, so you can't just do it once every 5 years, like you used to be able to.
I can't remember how difficult it was to set up my initial Apple developer account (trauma related memory loss, perhaps) but it is dead simple to renew. Just pay the $99. I did it yesterday. Took about a minute.
Well, you can still run unsigned software (by clicking through to a bit of a hidden option in the popup dialog), and they also even remove that through "reputation" if enough people approve said binary (exact bitwise binary, so every new version released will go through the same issue).
Yes, Windows is terrible, too. The entire desktop software world has lost its collective mind and the platforms are turning themselves into locked down game consoles just so that grandma doesn't accidentally install malware.
> just so that grandma doesn't accidentally install malware
That's the stated reason. The actual reason is that they are salivating at the sight of how much money the app store and play store are making. They just don't want to move too quickly for fear of customers revolting.
Really stupid on their part. There was a town with a baker and an auto mechanic. The baker saw how much money the auto mechanic was making, so he sold his bakery and went homeless because he had no car repair skills.
They might be trying to appease Google who now won't let you pass a recaptcha on windows because windows isn't locked down enough, and force you to scan a code with your Google phone instead.
It's expensive. I don't agree that it's harder, in the sense of TFA's technical struggles getting it to work. If you've got the money for the certificate, passing OV and signing the binary is easy. The difficulty of signing isn't the big problem we face on Windows. The main issue is that signing barely does anything: you still get hit with SmartScreen blocks even though it's signed. The return on your investment of time and money is just showing your name as the publisher in the SmartScreen prompt. The only way to avoid the SmartScreen prompt is by building reputation with lots of installs.
I still prefer this over having a Microsoft developer account and publishing in the store--I hate having to put my software through arbitrary store review processes--but it's not a good situation. SmartScreen is just about the worst thing ever to happen to indie developers on Windows. We're right there in the thick of it with macOS developers: different details, same struggle. Both of our corporate overlords want you to distribute software in their store, and you get the sense that they would end self-distribution entirely if they thought they could get away with it.
I note that TFA's author edited the post after-the-fact, changing the line about Windows. It originally claimed that Windows worked fine and they got "just an EXE" and that was that. I assume they finally tried it for real on a civilian computer and saw the SmartScreen block.
"Note: We enabled the availability of iOS 18.7.7 for more devices on April 1, 2026, so users with Automatic Updates turned on can automatically receive important security protections from web attacks called DarkSword. The fixes associated with the DarkSword exploit first shipped in 2025."
I speculate withholding security updates from iOS 26 compatible devices still on iOS 18 to force people to update didn't work out due to Liquid Glass resistance.
"Note: We enabled the availability of iOS 18.7.7 for more devices on April 1, 2026, so users with Automatic Updates turned on can automatically receive important security protections from web attacks called DarkSword. The fixes associated with the DarkSword exploit first shipped in 2025."
A declared winner in the tug-of-war between commercial interests (forced bundling of Vision Pro headset and future smart glasses features into phone and tablets), security of individual users (heretofore claimed as a numerically small subset), collective resistance of users to unwanted UX, national and class-action groups with lawyers to opine on the security of their clients.
Side tangent: I’m the developer of Kindle Comic Converter. Kindle updates 5.19.2+ have completely broken the sideloaded manga reader with bugs like huge margins, pages being on the wrong side in 2 page landscape mode, no panel view, no % read tracker, and laggy page turns. I’ve documented the problems here and the first report was 60 days ago. https://youtu.be/Eo6K7omlE7g
And I haven’t even touched all the problems with normal sideloaded books like broken embedded/publisher fonts.
And the 11th gen seems to have the final update be 5.19.2 so there is no hope of future fixes.
Kindle settings > help > contact us > email/call if you want to voice complaints.
If anyone is interested, I made a video about my favorite application of the 2D discrete Fourier transform, where it's used to erase rainbows on manga screen tones on color eink Kaleido 3 on Kobo Colour: https://youtu.be/Dw2HTJCGMhw?si=hlhwHv0qB6SoMha9
