iOS 26.3 and macOS 26.3 Fix Dozens of Vulnerabilities, Including Zero-Day (macrumors.com)

88 points by akyuu 3 hours ago

ost-ing a minute ago

Maybe they can fix Messages from bugging out all the time. Apple software has gone down the drain. I don’t want a million new features I just want the ones that make a phone a phone actually work 99.5% of the time

pikhq 2 hours ago

I hope they release a version of these fixes on iOS 18 in a form installable on an iPhone 14; I've been trying to stay away from Liquid Glass until it's actually usable. I really don't want to be forced to upgrade, since Apple seems to have replaced UX testing with "just ship it," as has become standard in the industry.

layer8 an hour ago

They won't, it already didn't happen for 18.7.4 and 18.7.3 (only via beta channel for the latter), and the present fixes are being released as 18.7.5 for the iPhone XS/XR. Still I think that staying on iOS 18 is the lesser evil.

sillywalk 27 minutes ago

Doesn't look like it. It looks like it's only iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347

BitwiseFool 2 hours ago

Liquid Glass looks pretty from a distance, but my biggest gripe with the design language is just how difficult so many things become to read or interact with. Given that the whole raison d'être of liquid glass is transparent effects, the options to limit that or otherwise increase contrast simply do not go far enough. I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Reason077 an hour ago

> “My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.”

I’m optimistic that they will eventually course correct on Liquid Glass, but we’ll have to wait until iOS/macOS 27, or perhaps longer.

There are parallels to Apple’s butterfly keyboard fiasco on the hardware side. Sleek looking on the surface but an objective step backwards in usability. Unfortunately it took Apple several years to reverse course on that one.

kergonath 12 minutes ago

bs7280 an hour ago

My biggest frustrations with it aren't even related to the look of things, its the all around disregard for user experience. The new screenshot UX on iOS is an insanely bad downgrade.

tailnode 2 hours ago

They almost certainly will course-correct in the next release now that the culprit responsible for Liquid Glass is no longer at the company. But they won't chuck it out wholesale; it will be a gradual evolution back to sanity.

dylan604 an hour ago

ibejoeb an hour ago

The Windows ME/Fisher Price look. I can get past the drag handle problem. It's like every window is now the damn ios simulator.

derefr 2 hours ago

> I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

I mean, "computing power" in a literal sense maybe, but does that matter if it doesn't translate to either "workload contention" or "electrical power"?

I think the Liquid Glass effects, similar to smooth scrolling, are mostly just running as pixel shaders on a spare tile of one of the SoC's GPU's Streaming Processors — a tile that likely likely would have been idle-but-burning-power-anyway, given that GPU power management occurs on the level of entire SPs. It's the same reason that ProMotion "smooth viewport scrolling" doesn't really cost anything.

loloquwowndueo an hour ago

rdtsc an hour ago

> I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable

Sounds like you need to spend some money for a new Apple device! /s

Cider9986 27 minutes ago

I recommend installing liquid glass on iOS. It actually has been looking good on there since 26.2. Macs have been godawful with liquid glass.

ProfessorLayton 2 hours ago

While I'm really glad they've fixed a bunch of important security vulnerabilities, I'm really hoping they fixed the screen flickering issue [1] they introduced in macos 26. It has been driving me insane and even impacts my Studio Display. My work computer is locked to 15.7.3 and has no such issues with either the internal or external display (The same display flickers in 26).

Really wish Apple would get their software quality up from the gutter.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/macos-tahoe-studio-disp...

vondur a few seconds ago

Wow, I have an M4 MacMini with a Studio Display and haven't seen that. Hope I don't Jinx it when I get home to use it...

copperx 32 minutes ago

Is this related to the 'Screen Mirroring' problem?

When I connect my laptop to a projector, I can select an individual window, or at least I used to be able to select a window and just project that. However, now when I try to select the window, as soon as the mouse cursor gets near the selection button, the button disappears!!! It has been driving me absolutely insane.

Aloisius 27 minutes ago

I see flickering like crazy when I adjust the screen brightness on my M5 Macbook Pro on Tahoe.

But it's especially obvious when it dims itself based on ambient room brightness, I can actually see the vertical refresh happening as I move from a fully bright room to a dim one.

ErneX 2 hours ago

A similar issue happens with Apple Silicon macs and external monitors since long time ago. A fix I found online [1] is to disable GPU dithering using the Better Display app.

The flickering was so bad in my case that the pixels got stuck for some minutes when it happened.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/s/TDOa9Lb5rP

ProfessorLayton 2 hours ago

I tried that and many other things like changing the default color profile and it and it didn't work. A reboot fixes it for a few days before returning, so it definitely seems like a bug rather than a hardware issue. Both my work MBP (No issues, macos 15) and personal Air (macos26) are apple silicon.

ErneX an hour ago

FarmerPotato an hour ago

iOS also flickers every time I exit an app back to the Home Screen.

Weird green tints for no reason.. bubbles that take so long to inflate, you think your tap was dropped. Round edges that no longer fit the text content. Stupid ellipses at the edges of wrapped text. And all the functions that now take two taps when one used to do it. Text rendered on top of text for crying out loud! Whole view panes clobberin* each other. WebKit is a mess of wasted black bars where menus were hidden. Multiple flashes of white and black between content changes. It hits Apple apps as well as trashing third party layout.

Too many defects to list.

Headline: Apple celebrates 50th anniversary by burning down 40 years of human interface knowledge.

seanieb 2 hours ago

Careful if you're still on MacOS Sequoia, Apple has hidden Tahoe as a default under updates. If you click updated now it automatically upgrade you to Tahoe.

fainpul 13 minutes ago

seanieb 6 minutes ago

I believe it is new. I’ve never seen them: - put a upgrade os version under “updates” - then select the upgrade os version instead the current version when there are multiple updates ( os patch, safari or xcode)

fainpul 4 minutes ago

tailnode 2 hours ago

Why couldn't Apple patch the zero-day using their new Background Security Improvements pipeline?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102657

jiehong 7 minutes ago

Their previous security updates feature was mostly unused.

I suppose it’s not really working, or is the product of a team and no other internal team actually use it.

jajuuka 2 hours ago

I imagine scheduling lined up for the 26.3 release and it wasn't considered dangerous enough. They did this with 26.2 as well including a fix for a zero day. I wonder if they are leveraging that to get people to update sooner. Imagine some people might be turned off of updating with the bugs and visual changes in 26. It's not like 26.2 or 26.3 have any major changes that are enticing.

bayesnet 2 hours ago

Is there any word on whether these vulnerabilities were exploitable on devices with MIE[0]?

[0]: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...

pier25 2 hours ago

Were Sequoia and iOS 18 affected?

NetOpWibby 2 hours ago

macOS was so buggy for me a few days ago that I updated my computer to the public beta. Boom, problem solved. So bizarre.

copperx 30 minutes ago

Do you feel an improvement in speed? My 32GB RAM M5 MBP is slow as molasses in Tahoe. My M1 MBA feels much faster (I haven't updated yet).

an-allen an hour ago

This one - I have seen some shit folks. This one is not good.

altern8 an hour ago

Now if they'd only fix—meaning remove—Liquid Glass and other nonsense that they've added, I could stop sticking to Sequoia..?

Aloha 2 hours ago

Now if they'd only fix the CarPlay issues, I really miss working navigation in my car.

I have called and opened tickets, and I keep hearing it'll be fixed real soon now.