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The macOS Stage Manager needs to exit, stage left

For the last couple weeks, I've been (finally) working on some Moom videos. And while I personally don't use Stage Manager, it was ideal for the first video, as I needed to keep switching into and out of Moom's settings, and didn't want to leave app windows cluttering the screen.

But I ran into a problem…I generally record with ScreenFlow, and when I tried to do something in System Settings, I would run into a massive delay—30 or so seconds before my clicks would take. And when I tried to record an onscreen pop-up menu that users can resize, it only showed up in about one of 20 frames.

After a lot of troubleshooting, I found the cause of the problem: Stage Manager itself. And while the first glitch only affected ScreenFlow, the second occurred in both ScreenFlow and Apple's built-in recording tool.

Here's how both look in action:

As soon as I disabled Stage Manager, both issues went away. I have reported this bug to Apple (#FB22517070), but I don't know that they'll do anything about it. I hope they will, as it's incredibly disruptive and prevents using Stage Manager when making videos, which seems like a prime use.

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The Queue helps track TV shows and movies to watch

As with Dramatis, The Queue is a Claude-developed web app. Its purpose is to help me track the TV shows and movies that I want to watch, am watching, or have watched. So as with Dramatis, the same disclaimer applies: While I managed the project, all of the code involved was written by Claude. There's no use of passwords, nor does it store or collect personal data (other than free API keys, which are store locally in your keychain). But still, use at your own risk.

Unlike Dramatis, though The Queue is completely free to use—no Anthropic API key is required. It uses the free TVmaze API to retrieve information about TV shows, and two free API keys (which you have to create) from TMDB and OMDB for movie information.

Here's how it looks on my Mac:

And here's a download link:

Download The Queue web app (591KB)

It works like Dramatis does, by running a mini web server on your local Mac.

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A full history of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates

Updated and republished for macOS 26.4.1; skip it unless you really really care about all the macOS releases. Originally published on November 14th, 2005.

(This post was on hiatus for 16 months…if you'd like to know what's new and improved, on both the front and back end, check out the behind-the-scenes writeup.)

Below the break is a table showing all major releases of macOS (previously Mac OS X) from the public beta through the latest released update, which is 26.4.1, as of April 8, 2026—the 288th release in total.

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Dramatis tracks characters in books, series, and movies

As shown in my post about Claude Code, Dramatis (from "dramatis personae," the list of characters in a story) is a tool Claude created to help me keep track of the relationships between major characters in books, TV series, and movies. Here's a look at the main screen, for season one of The West Wing:

When you retrieve data for a title, it's automatically grouped into buckets that make sense for the show's plot—by function in The West Wing, Friends gets "Main Six," "Romantic Interests," and "Supporting Cast," etc. Click on a bucket and you'll see just the characters within that bucket.

Each character can have a separate, lower level of organization—Jed Bartlett is in the Executive Branch bucket, but his info card also shows Oval Office. Click on any character for full details on their role, as well as links to other characters who interact with the selected character.

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Claude Code turns my techie to-dos into to-dones

Like many of you, I suspect, I've been using AI tools to assist me with tasks both mundane ("Help me find a cat bed large enough for three cats") and complex ("Configuration recommendations for pfSense"). There are obviously tons of choices out there for AI tools, but I chose Claude—I pay for the least-expensive plan, the Pro level at $204 per year.

Until recently, all my interactions with Claude had been through either the web site or the macOS app. I was aware of Claude's Terminal-based programming-focused tool, Claude Code (and its corresponding tab in the Mac app), but hadn't tried using it yet. Why not? Because I'm not a programmer, so I figured what could it do for me?

But in the last few weeks, I've thrown some projects at Claude Code, to see what it could do. In the end, Claude Code created things that I might have been able to make on my own could never have created with this level of usefulness and completeness. And Claude Code did it all in a matter of hours (spread over some number of days), while I simply told it what I wanted, and then how to refine what it had delivered.

So what has Claude Code done for me? I used it to bring my macOS Release Dates and Rates post back to life, in a version that's incredibly easy to maintain. I used it to create a simple site monitoring script that lets me know when I need to update the macOS releases post.

Those projects were, I thought, impressive. But they were nothing compared to these two…

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How to monitor Apple update releases

As the last step in bringing back my A Full History of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates post, I wanted a way to be notified of released updates. On the Macs I regularly use, of course, this happens automatically for the versions I'm using. But Apple updates the older OSes on a regular basis, and I don't see those releases.

Of late, Apple has been good about listing all their releases—even those without security-related components—on their Apple security releases page, so I though that'd be a good one to watch.

There are lots of tools and web sites out there that monitor pages for changes, but they all seemed overly complicated to me, or do way more than I need. I did mostly like urlwatch, but its output is just raw diff results. I wanted something a bit simpler to read.

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That post, you know the one…it’s back!

Prompted by both the 25th birthday of macOS (March 24th), and my buddy Kirk's prodding, my dormant A full history of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates post is coming back! After a long vacation, it's looking better than ever, and honestly, it's 10x more usable now.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what's changed during its 16 month vacation, and how it got there…

In addition to the cosmetic work done at Botox of Hollywood, here's what else has changed.
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Block the “Upgrade to Tahoe” alerts and System Settings indicator

Based on some comments on my Mastodon post, this only works due to a bug in macOS 15.7.3! The 90 day period isn't supposed to be a rolling date, but 90 days from release date. So it should have no impact…but it does, so I hope Apple doesn't fix the bug.

Although I have to have a machine running macOS Tahoe to support our customers, I personally don't like the look of Liquid Glass, nor do I like some of the functional changes Apple has made in macOS Tahoe.

So I have macOS Tahoe on my laptop, but I'm keeping my desktop Mac on macOS Sequoia for now. Which means I have the joy of seeing things like this wonderful notification on a regular basis.

Or I did, until I found a way to block them, at least in 90 day chunks. Now when I open System Settings → General → Software Update, I see this:

The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce policies on Macs in your organization, even if that "organization" is one Mac on your desk. One of the available policies is the ability to block activities related to major macOS updates for up to 90 days at a time (the max the policy allows), which seems like exactly what I needed.

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A helper for Connections-style word games

Connections is a New York Times word game that's played with 16 words on a four-by-four grid; the objective is to correctly group four words into four sets, where the words in each set share some characteristic. Sometimes that's an easy thing to identify (colors), sometimes it's much tougher (dog breeds with first letter changed).

To play, you click on four words then click Submit to see if you got the grouping right. The way my brain works, though, I wanted to arrange the words visually first, as that makes it easier for me to process the relationships between the words. So I "created" (more on that below) a simple HTML/JS page to do just that:

Note that this is not a clone of the Connections game! It has absolutely no knowledge of the game, its rules, or which words belong where. It's not a game in any way, it's just a tool to help you rearrange words in a grid. I open it in a window next to the actual Connections puzzle, drag words around until I like what I see, then play the game for real in the other window.

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Some of my fave Lego sets are retiring soon

For way too many years, building Lego kits has been one of my favorite hobbies. I find the construction process fun, and I love seeing the engineering Lego came up with to model various systems in their models. Over the years, we've built a lot of kits—45 or so in 20+ years. I have a spreadsheet that tracks the kits we've built, and while updating it today, I noticed that a number of my favorite sets are retiring soon.

If you like building Lego sets, these four are highly recommended—the builds were interesting, the engineering in the models is amazing, and I really like the finished set.

Emirates Team New Zealand AC75 Yacht: The engineering in this kit is pretty astonishing—there's a working pneumatic system that raises and lowers the hydrofoil arms, the mast turns, and the jib can swing from side to side. At $120, this is quite the bargain in the world of Lego.

Hogwarts Icons Collectors Edition: This wasn't the most fun build (a fair bit of repetition, especially in the owl's wings), but the end result is very cool. The sheer breadth of things in the set is also impressive.

Land Rover Classic Defender 90: The original 1983 model, and this one has a working suspension and steering. Fun to build, and lots of accessories to complete the look. If you're a Lego Insider (free), it's on sale for $60 off right now.

X-Wing Starfighter™: Luke's X-Wing wasn't pretty in the original Star Wars, and this one's not pretty either. It's beat up, missing a panel or two, and has some mismatched colors. But it's a fun build, and the engineering behind the x-wing technology is very impressive to see as you build it.

Once Lego retires a set, they get very hard to find—you can sometimes find remaining stock in stores, but if that fails, you're off to eBay to hope someone's selling a clean, complete set in good condition. What you'll usually find, though, are scalpers with unopened sets they're trying to sell for twice or thrice the actual list price.

So if you want them, buy them before they retire. These four in particular are amongst my favorite builds.