I despise this design pattern, because it’s inherently slower than signing in using an email/password combination that was saved to my passwords app (which is Apple Passwords) and autofilled by my web browser. It’s not just a little slower but *a lot* slower.

Apple released all of its OS 26.2 updates a week ago today. A little unusual for Apple to release OS updates on a Friday, but I think they wanted to get these out before Christmas week. And I don’t think it was rushed — for iOS 26.2 at least, there were two release candidate builds during beta testing. I suspect Apple had hoped to release them earlier.

I know it seemed weird back at WWDC when Apple announced that they were re-numbering all their OS versions to start with 26. But now that the change has settled in for a few months, it seems very natural. It’s so easy now to remember that the current major version for each OS is 26. It’s also easier to talk about new features that span across OSes. And, in the future, when you see a reference to, say, iOS 26, you’ll know exactly when that version came out without having to think, because it’s right there in the version number itself.

A few other notes:

• Juli Clover at MacRumors, as usual, has a great rundown of what’s new across the whole system in iOS 26.2, copiously illustrated with screenshots. Clover notes: “For pop-out menus that expand from a corner button, iOS 26.2 adds a quicker, bouncier animation that looks like the animation that Apple showed off at WWDC.” Popover menus are just one example, but this is actually true for a lot of Liquid Glass details. iOS 26.2 is the first release that visually delivers on most of what Apple showed in the WWDC keynote.
• Zac Hall has another good iOS 26.2 rundown, also illustrated, at 9to5Mac.
• Clover also notes that iOS 26.2, for some users (including me), defaults to a first-run screen that encourages you to turn on automatic OS updates. Pay attention if you don’t want that.
• A list of iPadOS 26.2 changes from Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac.
• Nadeem Sarwar at Digital Trends has a good piece showing the new AirDrop code feature, to allow AirDropping with people who aren’t in your contacts for up to 30 days.
• MacOS 26.2 Tahoe changes, from MacRumors and from 9to5Mac.
• Clover on tvOS 26.2, WatchOS 26.2, and VisionOS 26.2.
• Michael Tsai’s roundup of links regarding MacOS 26.2 Tahoe, and for iOS 26.2.

Lastly, iOS 26.2 seems to be the release that Apple is starting to suggest as an upgrade for users who hadn’t already installed it by choice. Be prepared for questions and complaints from non-nerd friends and family who’ve never even heard of “Liquid Glass”.

Apple, on its Apple Ads site:

Search is the way most people find and download apps on the App Store, with nearly 65 percent of downloads happening directly after a search. To help give advertisers more opportunities to drive downloads from search results, Apple Ads will introduce additional ads across search queries. You don’t need to change your campaign in order to be eligible for any new positions. Your ad will run in either the existing position — at the top of search results — or further down in search results. If you have a search results campaign running, your ad will be automatically eligible for all available positions, but you can’t select or bid for a particular one.

The ad format will be the same in any position, using a default product page or custom product page, and an optional deep link. You’ll be billed as usual based on your pricing model: cost per tap or cost per install.

I have a bad feeling about this.

David Shepardson, reporting for Reuters:

TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said Thursday it signed binding agreements with three major investors to form a joint venture to operate TikTok’s U.S. app led by American and global investors in a bid to avoid a U.S. government ban, a significant step toward ending years of uncertainty.

The craziest aspect of this whole saga is that TikTok has been operating illegally since Trump took office. Not some sort of nitpicking technicality. The whole point of the PAFACA act was to ban TikTok in the US until and unless they were sold to American owners. No cloud service. No app store downloads. Trump directed the Justice Department simply not to enforce the law … and the biggest companies in the world just said OK, sure.

This just isn’t normal. There are always edge cases in the enforcement of any law. Political leanings affect priorities. Old laws are often ignored. But PAFACA was a brand new law, with bipartisan support, specifically written to target TikTok, and the Trump administration decided to just ignore it. This wouldn’t happen anywhere in Europe or in, say, Japan. And it wouldn’t have happened under any previous US administration, Democrat or Republican. It’s not the biggest issue or worst wrongdoing of the Trump 2.0 administration, but it’s clearest indication of their disregard for the rule of law.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of news and commentary on the deal. (Karl Bode at Techdirt: “It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse”.)

Michael Bierut, “I Hate ITC Garamond”, for Design Observer back in 2004:

ITC Garamond was designed in 1975 by Tony Stan for the International Typeface Corporation. Okay, let’s stop right there. I’ll admit it: the single phrase “designed in 1975 by Tony Stan” conjures up a entire world for me, a world of leisure suits, harvest gold refrigerators, and “Fly, Robin, Fly” by Silver Convention on the eight-track. A world where font designers were called “Tony” instead of “Tobias” or “Zuzana.” Is that the trouble with ITC Garamond? That it’s dated?

Maybe. Typefaces seem to live in the world differently than other designed objects. Take architecture, for example. As Paul Goldberger writes in his new book on the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, Up From Zero, “There are many phases to the relationships we have with buildings, and almost invariably they come around to acceptance.” Typefaces, on the other hand, seem to work the other way: they are enthusiastically embraced on arrival, and then they wear out their welcome. Yet there are fonts from the disco era that have been successively revived by new generations. Think of Pump, Aachen, or even Tony Stan’s own American Typewriter. But not ITC Garamond.

The most distinctive element of the typeface is its enormous lower-case x-height. In theory this improves its legibility, but only in the same way that dog poop’s creamy consistency in theory should make it more edible.

I can’t explain how it is that I’ve never linked to this piece before.