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{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "Daring Fireball", "home_page_url": "https://daringfireball.net/", "feed_url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/json", "authors": [ { "url": "https://twitter.com/gruber", "name": "John Gruber" } ], "icon": "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/apple-touch-icon.png", "favicon": "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/favicon-64.png", "items": [ { "title": "OpenAI’s Codex", "date_published": "2026-02-04T01:40:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-02-04T01:44:41Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/openai-codex", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/openai-codex", "external_url": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/2/introducing-the-codex-app/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Simon Willison:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>OpenAI just released a new macOS app for their Codex coding agent. I’ve had a few days of preview access — it’s a solid app that provides a nice UI over the capabilities of the Codex CLI agent and adds some interesting new features, most notably first-class support for Skills, and Automations for running scheduled tasks.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Interesting, for sure. But <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/xcode-ai-agentic-coding\">super-duper</a> interesting? I don’t know.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/2/introducing-the-codex-app/\">simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/2/introducing-the-codex-app/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Xcode 26.3 ‘Unlocks the Power of Agentic Coding’", "date_published": "2026-02-04T01:34:54Z", "date_modified": "2026-02-04T01:38:32Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/xcode-ai-agentic-coding", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/xcode-ai-agentic-coding", "external_url": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/xcode-26-point-3-unlocks-the-power-of-agentic-coding/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Xcode 26.3 introduces support for agentic coding, a new way in Xcode for developers to build apps using coding agents such as Anthropic’s Claude Agent and OpenAI’s Codex. With agentic coding, Xcode can work with greater autonomy toward a developer’s goals — from breaking down tasks to making decisions based on the project architecture and using built-in tools.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don’t know if this is super-duper interesting news, but I think it’s super-duper interesting that Apple saw the need to release this now, not at WWDC in June.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/xcode-26-point-3-unlocks-the-power-of-agentic-coding/\">apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/xcode-26-point-3-unlocks-the…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple Reports Record-Breaking Revenue and Profit for Q1 FY26", "date_published": "2026-01-30T19:57:01Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-30T20:19:38Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/30/apple-reports-record-breaking-revenue-and-profit-for-q1-fy26", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/30/apple-reports-record-breaking-revenue-and-profit-for-q1-fy26", "external_url": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-reports-first-quarter-results/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Apple Newsroom, yesterday:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“Today, Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking\nquarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year\nago and well above our expectations,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.\n“iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand,\nwith all-time records across every geographic segment, and\nServices also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent\nfrom a year ago. We are also excited to announce that our\ninstalled base now has more than 2.5 billion active devices, which\nis a testament to incredible customer satisfaction for the very\nbest products and services in the world.”</p>\n\n<p>“During the December quarter, our record business performance and\nstrong margins led to EPS growth of 19 percent, setting a new\nall-time EPS record,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO. “These\nexceptionally strong results generated nearly $54 billion in\noperating cash flow, allowing us to return almost $32 billion to\nshareholders.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>John Markoff, <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/michael-dell-should-eat-his-words-apple-chief-suggests.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IVA.y8q3.O6oeC_ygiktA\">writing for The New York Times 20 years ago</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It may not be the last laugh, but on Friday afternoon, after the\nclose of the stock market, Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of\nApple Computer, shared an e-mail chuckle with his employees at the\nexpense of Dell, a big rival.</p>\n\n<p>The message was prompted by the 12 percent surge in Apple’s stock\nprice last week, which pushed the company’s market capitalization\nto $72.13 billion, passing Dell’s value of $71.97 billion.</p>\n\n<p>In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company he\nhelped start in 1976, Dell’s founder and chairman, Michael S.\nDell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to\nfix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.</p>\n\n<p>“What would I do?” Mr. Dell said to an audience of several\nthousand information technology managers. “I’d shut it down and\ngive the money back to the shareholders.”</p>\n\n<p>On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Mr. Jobs sent a brief\ne-mail message to Apple employees, which read: “Team, it turned\nout that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future.\nBased on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than\nDell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow,\nbut I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Dell’s market cap today: $76 billion. <br />\nApple’s: $3,824 billion.</p>\n\n<p>Upton Sinclair coined the oft-cited maxim “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I propose a corollary: It is difficult to get a company to see that certain of its <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26\">core competencies</a> are in <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino\">severe decline</a> when the company is making more money than ever.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-reports-first-quarter-results/\">apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-reports-first-quarter…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Lego Group and Crocs Enter Multi-Year Global Partnership", "date_published": "2026-01-30T13:28:54Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-30T20:03:09Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/30/lego-crocs", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/30/lego-crocs", "external_url": "https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2026/january/the-lego-group-and-crocs-enter-multi-year-global-partnership?locale=en-us", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Maybe Trump is right and we should go to war against Denmark.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2026/january/the-lego-group-and-crocs-enter-multi-year-global-partnership?locale=en-us\">lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2026/january/the-lego-group-and…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Backseat Software’", "date_published": "2026-01-29T21:50:32Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T21:51:01Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/backseat-software", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/backseat-software", "external_url": "https://blog.mikeswanson.com/backseat-software/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Mike Swanson:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What if your car worked like so many apps? You’re driving\nsomewhere important…maybe running a little bit late. A few\nminutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the\nroad and asks:</p>\n\n<p><em>“How are you enjoying your drive so far?”</em></p>\n\n<p>Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you\ndismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic.</p>\n\n<p>A minute later it does it again.</p>\n\n<p><em>“Did you know I have a new feature? Tap here to learn more.”</em></p>\n\n<p>It blocks your speedometer with an overlay tutorial about the turn\nsignal. It highlights the wiper controls and refuses to go away\nuntil you demonstrate mastery.</p>\n\n<p>Ridiculous, of course.</p>\n\n<p>And yet, this is how a lot of modern software behaves. Not because\nit’s broken, but because we’ve normalized an interruption model\nthat would be unacceptable almost anywhere else.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve started to think of this as <em>backseat software</em>: the slow\nshift from software as a tool you operate to software as a channel\nthat operates on you. Once a product learns it can talk back, it’s\nremarkably hard to keep it quiet.</p>\n\n<p>This post is about how we got here. Not overnight, but slowly. One\nreasonable step at a time.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If that lede pulls you in, like it did for me, you’re going to love the rest of the essay. This is one for the ages. It’s so good.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://blog.mikeswanson.com/backseat-software/\">blog.mikeswanson.com/backseat-software/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Let’s Keep an Eye on Apple’s Own iOS Adoption Numbers", "date_published": "2026-01-29T20:18:48Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-30T20:47:33Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/apples-own-ios-adoption-numbers", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/apples-own-ios-adoption-numbers", "external_url": "https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>When I wrote last week about <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low\">the false narrative that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates</a> compared to previous years, I neglected one source: Apple itself. Apple’s Developer site publishes a page with <a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">iOS and iPadOS usage for devices that “transacted on the App Store”</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The hitch is that they only seem to update those numbers twice a year — once right around now, and once again right before WWDC. As of today, those numbers are still from 4 June 2025. Last year, going from the Internet Archive, the numbers were still from iOS 17 (June 2024) <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20250123123759/https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">on 23 January</a> last year, but were updated for iOS 18 <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20250125013020/https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">on 24 January</a>. Here are those iOS 18 numbers from one year ago this week.</p>\n\n<p>iPhones released in the previous four years:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iOS 18: 76%</li>\n<li>iOS 17: 19%</li>\n<li>iOS < 17: 5%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>All iPhones:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iOS 18: 68%</li>\n<li>iOS 17: 19%</li>\n<li>iOS < 17: 13%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>iPads released in the previous four years:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iPadOS 18: 63%</li>\n<li>iPadOS 17: 27%</li>\n<li>iPadOS < 17: 10%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>All iPads:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iPadOS 18: 53%</li>\n<li>iPadOS 17: 28%</li>\n<li>iPadOS < 17: 19%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>(Apple itself manages to present these statistics without ever using the plurals <em>iPhones</em> or <em>iPads</em>, instead referring only to “devices”.)</p>\n\n<p>A year prior in early 2024, Apple updated the numbers at some point between <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20240123183314/https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">23 January</a> and <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20240206013405/https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">6 February</a>. I presume, or at least hope, that they’ll update these numbers for iOS 26 any day now.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/\">developer.apple.com/support/app-store/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Box Office Expectations for ‘Melania’", "date_published": "2026-01-29T15:22:23Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T15:22:53Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/box-office-expectations-for-melania", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/box-office-expectations-for-melania", "external_url": "https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/box-office/melania-box-office-prediction/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Jeremy Fuster, reporting for TheWrap:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But save for some theaters in Republican-heavy states, the film is\nunlikely to leave much of an impact at a slumping box office, with\ntheatrical sources telling TheWrap that “Melania” is projected for\nan opening of around $3 million this weekend.</p>\n\n<p>That would put it below the last right-wing documentary, the Daily\nWire-produced Matt Walsh film “Am I Racist?,” which opened to $4.5\nmillion from 1,517 locations in September 2024, finishing with a\n$12.3 million total that made it the highest-grossing doc that\nyear. The highest projections are coming from NRG with an estimate\nof around $5 million, though audience interest polls from the\ncompany have 30% saying they are “definitely not” interested in\nwatching the film, an unusually high count for any wide release.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>These projections are <em>with</em> a $35 million promotional campaign, for a movie Amazon paid $40 million to purchase. (<a href=\"https://politicalwire.com/2026/01/29/critics-question-marketing-splash-for-melania/\">Via Taegan Goddard</a>.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/box-office/melania-box-office-prediction/\">thewrap.com/industry-news/box-office/melania-box-office…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Amazon’s Spending on ‘Melania’ Is a Barely Concealed Bribe", "date_published": "2026-01-29T15:19:17Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T15:19:17Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/amazon-melania-spending", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/amazon-melania-spending", "external_url": "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/media/amazon-melania-trump-film-critics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFA.R85v.5ZtNe8FttfaD", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes, reporting for The New York Times:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Amazon paid Ms. Trump’s production company $40 million for the\nrights to “Melania,” about $26 million more than the next closest\nbidder, Disney. The fee includes a related docuseries that is\nscheduled to air later this year. The budget for “Melania” is\nunknown, but documentaries that follow a subject for a limited\namount of time usually cost less than $5 million to produce. The\n$35 million for marketing is 10 times what some other high-profile\ndocumentaries have received.</p>\n\n<p>All of which has a lot of Hollywood questioning whether Amazon’s\npush is anything more than the company’s attempt to ingratiate\nitself with President Trump.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a good story, with multiple industry sources with experience making political documentaries, but the Times’s own subhead downplays Amazon’s spending on the film: “The tech giant is spending $35 million to promote its film about the first lady, far more than is typical for documentaries.” They’re spending $35 million now, to promote it, but they already paid $40 million for the rights to the film, <a href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/melania-trump-documentary-speculation_n_6978f160e4b051911224d57f\">$28 million of which is believed to have gone to Melania Trump herself</a>. A $35 million total spend would be a lot compared to other high-profile documentaries, but it’s a $75 million total spend. This is not just a little fishy — it’s a veritable open air seafood market.</p>\n\n<p>Back to the Times:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To grasp just how uncustomary Amazon’s marketing push for\n“Melania” is, consider how Magnolia Pictures handled “<a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/movies/rbg-review-documentary.html\">RBG</a>,”\na portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her 25th year as a\nSupreme Court justice, in 2018.</p>\n\n<p>CNN Films produced “RBG” for around $1 million. The promotional\nbudget, including an awards campaign that helped it land two Oscar\nnominations, totaled about $3 million. The film debuted in 34\ntheaters and expanded into 432 locations over several weeks. It\nultimately collected $14 million, enough to rank as the year’s No.\n1 political documentary.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On Friday, “Melania” will also be released in 1,600 theaters\noverseas, where FilmNation, a New York company, is handling\ndistribution in more than 20 countries. International ticket sales\nare expected to be weak, according to box office analysts.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Shocker.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/media/amazon-melania-trump-film-critics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFA.R85v.5ZtNe8FttfaD\">nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/media/amazon-melania-trump…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Kickstarter for Ollie’s Arcade Expansion", "date_published": "2026-01-29T15:01:43Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T15:01:43Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/kickstarter-for-ollies-arcade-expansion", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/29/kickstarter-for-ollies-arcade-expansion", "external_url": "https://blog.iconfactory.com/2026/01/bringing-more-fun-free-retro-gaming-to-ios/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Ged Maheux, The Iconfactory:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This week we <a href=\"https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iconfactory/ollies-arcade-expansion-more-retro-games?ref=user_menu\">announced a new Kickstarter</a> that’s aimed at\nexpanding the game offerings of Ollie’s Arcade, the fun, ad-free\nretro gaming app we introduced back in 2023. <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ollies-arcade/id6446127619\">Ollie’s\nArcade</a> has always been a great way to escape doomscrolling,\neven if just for a little while, and now we have an opportunity to\nbring these retro games to even more people on iOS.</p>\n\n<p>The Kickstarter aims to raise enough money to make all of the\nin-app purchase games in the app completely <em>free for everyone</em> to\nenjoy. We also want to bring our beloved puzzle game,\n<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenzic\">Frenzic</a>, to life once again. Frenzic was one of the very\nfirst games available on iOS back in 2008, then was reborn as\n<a href=\"https://frenzic.com/\">Frenzic: Overtime</a> on Apple Arcade. Since it left, people\nhave been asking us for a new version that they can just pick up\nand play. We couldn’t agree more!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/09/03/ollies-arcade\">I linked to</a> the Kickstarter for the original Ollie’s Arcade project back in 2023, which was a big success. And I <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/11/19/frenzic\">first linked to Frenzic</a> all the way back in 2008, when the App Store was only a few months old. It’s just a great concept for a casual game on a small screen, implemented with all of The Iconfactory’s exquisite attention to detail. That’s true for all the games in Ollie’s Arcade, but Frenzic is special.</p>\n\n<p>This new Kickstarter for the Ollie’s Arcade expansion has already hit its funding goal, but it’s approaching the stretch goal for an additional game. There are a zillion games for iOS, but it’s sad how few are ad-free and don’t require a subscription. If you think well-crafted fun games that you can pay for once (for a very reasonable price) should be rewarded, you should join me (<a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/news/the-iconfactory-launches-kickstarter-to-expand-ollies-arcade-with-frenzic/\">and</a> <a href=\"https://sixcolors.com/link/2026/01/the-iconfactory-wants-to-bring-fun-back-to-your-fingers/\">others</a>) in backing this Kickstarter.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://blog.iconfactory.com/2026/01/bringing-more-fun-free-retro-gaming-to-ios/\">blog.iconfactory.com/2026/01/bringing-more-fun-free-retro…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Comparing the Classic and Unified Views in iOS 26’s Phone App", "date_published": "2026-01-29T00:10:30Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-31T16:15:15Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app", "external_url": "https://tidbits.com/2025/11/10/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Adam Engst, back in November, at TidBITS:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Did you know that, regardless of view, you can now swipe left on\nany call to reveal a blue clock icon that lets you create a\nreminder to call back in 1 hour, tonight, tomorrow, or at any\ncustom time (below left, slightly doctored)? Reminders appear at\nthe top of the Calls list and in your default Reminders list. You\ncan also touch and hold a call associated with a contact to\nconnect with them in other ways (below right), or touch and hold a\ncall from an unknown caller to add them to Contacts.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I did not know this, until I read Engst’s article.</p>\n\n<p>One criticism I’ve seen a few times (but to be clear, not from Engst) ever since Apple debuted the new Unified interface for the Phone app back at WWDC, is that it’s somehow wrong that Apple offers it as an option alongside the Classic interface. “<em>When does Apple ever offer options like this?</em>”</p>\n\n<p>I’d argue that Apple <em>used</em> to offer options like this all the time. The Music app on the original iPhone (which app was actually named “iPod” for a while) let you customize all the tabs at the bottom. All of Apple’s good Mac apps (the AppKit ones, primarily) still let you <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/customize-toolbars-mchlb294260e/mac\">customize the entire toolbar</a>. The problem isn’t that Apple now offers two very different interfaces for the Phone app. The problem is that Apple stopped offering users ways to significantly tailor apps to their own needs and tastes — and the proof that they stopped is that so many people now think it’s so strange that they’re offering two options for how the Phone app should look and work.</p>\n\n<p>Overall, I like the new Unified layout in the Phone app. But what I love is there remains an option for those who don’t, and that you can switch between the two in a very obvious, easily discoverable (dare I say, hard to miss) way right in the app itself. No need to dig two or three levels deep into the Settings app. You can just switch right there in the main screen of the Phone app itself. It’s things like this that keep me <a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/sdw.bsky.social/post/3mdjaglq52c2m\">optimistic</a> that Apple is still capable of great <em>new</em> work in UI design.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://tidbits.com/2025/11/10/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app/\">tidbits.com/2025/11/10/comparing-the-classic-and-unified…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Aeronaut 1.0", "date_published": "2026-01-28T22:58:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-28T23:06:25Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/aeronaut", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/aeronaut", "external_url": "https://aeronautapp.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>New Mac app by Mikey Clarke, and it’s just what it says on the tin: a “lovingly crafted Bluesky app designed and built just for the Mac”. I’ve been beta testing Aeronaut for months, and it’s the only interface to Bluesky I actually like. It’s a real Mac app — written mostly in AppKit, supporting all the right UI idioms and platform integrations. It’s not just the best Bluesky client I’ve seen, for any platform, but maybe the best new Mac app I’ve seen in years, period. Certainly the one whose very existence has made me happiest. Next time someone tells me no one makes good new native apps for the Mac anymore, I’m going to tell them Mikey Fucking Clarke does.</p>\n\n<p>$2/month or $15/year. A veritable bargain for an app so nice.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://aeronautapp.com/\">aeronautapp.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Bruce Springsteen: ‘Streets of Minneapolis’", "date_published": "2026-01-28T22:53:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-28T22:56:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/springsteen-streets-of-minneapolis", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/springsteen-streets-of-minneapolis", "external_url": "https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2026/streets-of-minneapolis/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Bruce Springsteen:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released\nit to you today in response to the state terror being visited on\nthe city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of\nMinneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of\nAlex Pretti and Renee Good.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Best line from the lyrics:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Their claim was self-defense, <br />\nJust don’t believe your eyes. <br />\nIt’s our blood and bones and these whistles and phones <br />\nAgainst Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3mdjdmowr622r\">Whistles</a>, phones, and <a href=\"https://youtu.be/m3otpjno0UQ?t=300\">birds</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2026/streets-of-minneapolis/\">brucespringsteen.net/news/2026/streets-of-minneapolis/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Politics and the English Language, January 2026 Edition", "date_published": "2026-01-28T22:00:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T00:20:07Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/politics_and_the_english_language_january_2026_edition", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/politics_and_the_english_language_january_2026_edition", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Patrick McGee (author of last year’s bestseller, <em><a href=\"https://bookshop.org/p/books/apple-in-china-the-capture-of-the-world-s-greatest-company-patrick-mcgee/496b96d06a984e01?ean=9781668053379&next=t&next=t&affiliate=56320\">Apple in China</a></em>, and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/05/29/ep-423\">guest on The Talk Show in May</a>), <a href=\"https://x.com/patrickmcgee_/status/2016344451036413984\">commenting on Twitter/X</a> re: <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/tim-cook-memo\">Tim Cook’s company-wide memo</a> regarding the “events in Minneapolis”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice.</p>\n\n<p>It’s the kind of language Orwell attributed to politicians, when\nready-made phrases assemble themselves and prevent any real\nthought from breaking through.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/07/21/orwell-politics-english-language\">previously linked</a> to George Orwell’s seminal 1946 essay, “<a href=\"https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/\">Politics and the English Language</a>”. This time I’ll quote a different passage:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad\nwriting. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the\nwriter is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and\nnot a “party line”. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand\na lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in\npamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the\nspeeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to\nparty, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in\nthem a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches\nsome tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the\nfamiliar phrases — <em>bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained\ntyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder</em> — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live\nhuman being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly\nbecomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s\nspectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no\neyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker\nwho uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward\nturning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming\nout of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be\nif he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is\nmaking is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again,\nhe may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when\none utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of\nconsciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to\npolitical conformity.</p>\n\n<p>In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence\nof the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule\nin India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the\natom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments\nwhich are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not\nsquare with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus\npolitical language has to consist largely of euphemism,\nquestion-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages\nare bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the\ncountryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with\nincendiary bullets: this is called <em>pacification</em>. Millions of\npeasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the\nroads with no more than they can carry: this is called <em>transfer\nof population</em> or <em>rectification of frontiers</em>. People are\nimprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the\nneck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is\ncalled <em>elimination of unreliable elements</em>. Such phraseology is\nneeded if one wants to name things without calling up mental\npictures of them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Now consider <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/tim-cook-memo\">Cook’s memo</a>. Cook avoids most of the sins Orwell describes. He uses short, common words. He eschews hackneyed metaphors. He uses the active, not passive, voice — for the most part. His prayers and sympathies are “with everyone that’s been affected.” Who, exactly, has been affected? Affected how? By whom? Numerous examples come to mind, but not from Cook’s memo. Two Minneapolitans were affected, quite adversely, by being shot in the head and back at point blank range, in broad daylight, by unhinged ICE goons. <a href=\"https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/01/22/minnesota-5-year-old-ice-bait/\">A five-year-old boy</a> — himself a U.S.-born citizen — was affected when ICE agents apprehended his father, used the boy as bait to lure other family members, and is now being held in a <a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/09/politics/migrant-families-ice-detention-facility-texas\">notorious</a> detention center in Texas, a thousand miles away.</p>\n\n<p>The list is long, the stories searing. But Cook mentions nothing more specific than “everyone that’s been affected”. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them, indeed.</p>\n\n<p>“This is a time for deescalation,” Cook wrote. But by whom? The masked federal agents laying siege to Minneapolis, brutalizing its citizenry? Or the <a href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/minneapolis-clergy-arrest-protest-9.7058754\">thousands of law-abiding citizens</a> protesting the occupation of their neighborhoods, who are, <a href=\"https://youtu.be/m3otpjno0UQ?t=300\">in the words of Seth Meyers</a>, “deploying the most hurtful weapon of all, the bird”? Cook’s call for “deescalation” is meaningless without specifying which side he’s calling upon to change course, and there’s no weaker sauce than the weak sauce of “both sides”. Using words, not to make a point, but to <em>avoid</em> making a point while creating the illusion of having made one, is the true sin. From Orwell’s closing paragraph:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Political language — and with variations this is true of all\npolitical parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed\nto make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an\nappearance of solidity to pure wind.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s colder in Minnesota, but the wind is gusting in Cupertino.</p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "Tim Cook Wrote a Memo on the ‘Events in Minneapolis’", "date_published": "2026-01-28T19:13:41Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T00:50:19Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/tim-cook-memo", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/tim-cook-memo", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/27/tim-cook-responds-after-minneapolis-shootings/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Tim Cook, in a company-wide memo (first published by <a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/apple-s-cook-calls-for-deescalation-after-latest-ice-shooting\">Mark Gurman</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Team, <br />\nI’m heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis, and my prayers and\ndeepest sympathies are with the families, with the communities,\nand with everyone that’s been affected.</p>\n\n<p>This is a time for deescalation. I believe America is strongest\nwhen we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with\ndignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from,\nand when we embrace our shared humanity. This is something Apple\nhas always advocated for. I had a good conversation with the\npresident this week where I shared my views, and I appreciate his\nopenness to engaging on issues that matter to us all.</p>\n\n<p>I know this is very emotional and challenging for so many. I am\nproud of how deeply our teams care about the world beyond our\nwalls. That empathy is one of Apple’s greatest strengths and it is\nsomething I believe we all cherish.</p>\n\n<p>Thank you for all that you do. <br />\nTim</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>“Events” is doing a lot of work there, to describe what has happened and is happening in Minneapolis.</p>\n\n<p>Trump’s “openness” on this particular “issue” has been to <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/greg-bovino-demoted-minneapolis-border-patrol/685770/\">replace Greg Bovino</a> — the <a href=\"https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/gregory-bovino-coat-border-patrol-j29xxmzmj\">diminutive Himmler-cosplaying</a> “commander at large” of Border Control, who insisted, adamantly, <a href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/25/bovino-border-patrol-agents-minneapolis-victims-00745702\">that the real victims in Alex Pretti’s murder were the Border Patrol agents</a> who shot him — <a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw1pn4lwjqo\">with “border czar” Tom Homan</a>, a man who took a <a href=\"https://www.ms.now/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568\">$50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents</a> in exchange for a promise to award them government contracts if Trump were reelected.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://x.com/apollozac/status/2016346258772770826\">Zac Hall, on Twitter/X</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Cook took three days to not name Alex Pretti in his not public\nstatement and 20 days to not name Renée Good in his not public\nstatement. [...]</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/speaking-up-on-racism/\">2020 Tim Cook on Apple’s homepage</a>: “Right now, there is a\npain deeply etched in the soul of our nation and in the hearts of\nmillions. To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and\nrecognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the\nsenseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of\nracism.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Quite the different message (and medium — this time with nothing on Apple’s website, let alone their homepage) from 2020, for what I consider far more outrageous and alarming killings.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/27/tim-cook-responds-after-minneapolis-shootings/\">macrumors.com/2026/01/27/tim-cook-responds-after…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Meta’s Response to Reuters Report on ‘Romance AI Chatbots’ for Teenagers", "date_published": "2026-01-28T16:02:25Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-28T16:12:33Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/metas-response-to-reuters-report", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/28/metas-response-to-reuters-report", "external_url": "https://x.com/andymstone/status/2016242174447223049", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Andy Stone, VP of communications at Meta, responding, in a series of tweets on Twitter/X, to <a href=\"https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/\">Jeff Horwitz’s report at Reuters</a> yesterday, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots\">linked here</a> last night, which claimed that “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh,\n<a href=\"https://x.com/Reuters\">@Reuters</a>, <a href=\"https://x.com/JeffHorwitz\">@JeffHorwitz</a>!</p>\n\n<p>The documents you cite in the story itself contradict this\nheadline.</p>\n\n<p>The headline says “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking\nchatbots for minors”</p>\n\n<p>But the story cites a document that says “Zuckerberg believed that\nAI companions should be blocked from engaging in sexually\n‘explicit’ conversations” w young people.</p>\n\n<p>Huh?!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>After my post last night, a friend of mine, with a career of experience working in a large company, sent me this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A word of caution. “Scumbag middle manager says CEO said” is not\nthe same as “CEO said.”</p>\n\n<p>I could believe Zuck shitcanned parental controls, but I am\ncertain there are thousands of snakes inside that company who\nwould lie about it to get what they want.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That’s a good and fair point, and I think it’s what Stone is trying to emphasize above. The New Mexico lawsuit filing doesn’t contain evidence that Zuckerberg nixed parental controls for teens engaging in chats with AI bots; it contains evidence that other (unnamed employees) claimed in internal discussions that Zuckerberg had nixed them. That is different.</p>\n\n<p>But so let’s take Zuckerberg out of it personally. It’s still the case that Meta shipped these chatbots for teens to use. And the buck, presumably, stops at Zuck’s desk. <a href=\"https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-guidelines/\">Read Horwitz’s report from back in August</a>, detailing a leaked internal document listing Meta’s content guidelines for generative AI chat.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Sidenote:</strong> Why in the world is Meta’s VP of comms doing this on Twitter/X, not Threads, which <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-daily-mobile-users-new-data-shows/\">continues to grow</a>?</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/andymstone/status/2016242174447223049\">x.com/andymstone/status/2016242174447223049</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors", "date_published": "2026-01-28T00:17:02Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-28T00:17:03Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots", "external_url": "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors\nto access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned\nwere capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta\ndocuments filed in a New Mexico state court case and made\npublic Monday.</p>\n\n<p>The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul\nTorrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that\nMeta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and\nsexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and\nInstagram. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that\nZuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the\nchatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots”\nthat would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed\nhard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI\nleadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote\nin that exchange.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/28/meta-ultra-violence\">a byline</a> worth <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/05/27/wsj-facebook-divisiveness\">paying attention to</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/\">reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’", "date_published": "2026-01-27T23:36:54Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T23:36:55Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice", "external_url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually\ncommon, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all\nof the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at\nonce. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border\nPatrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is\nsocially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of\nit. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world\natomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their\nlonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.\nMinnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western\ncivilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw\">theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘A CEO, Captured’", "date_published": "2026-01-27T23:06:55Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T23:06:56Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured", "external_url": "https://om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Om Malik:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp\nof market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to\nbe: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.</p>\n\n<p>In <em>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</em>, Roy Bland captures a cynical,\npost-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my\nconscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of\ntoday’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the\nworld. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@ajgruber/post/DUBBiHyDtmu\">Amy Jane Gruber</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed\nthe movie.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/\">om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’", "date_published": "2026-01-27T23:02:49Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T23:02:49Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania", "external_url": "https://spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>MG Siegler:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his\nactions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this\nweekend when Cook went to a special private showing of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)?ref=spyglass.org\">the\ndocumentary <em>Melania</em></a> at the White House. Yes, <em>that</em>\n<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump?ref=spyglass.org\">Melania</a>. That in and of itself would have probably been\nfine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons\nthat I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a\nstatement...</p>\n\n<p>While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes\nof Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and\nutter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex\nPretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE\nagents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/\">spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Whatever’", "date_published": "2026-01-27T22:48:42Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T22:48:43Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever", "external_url": "https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart\nthat couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to\nspeak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump\nsaid. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do\nthey call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press\nsecretary for the word that escaped him.</p>\n\n<p>“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.</p>\n\n<p>“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”</p>\n\n<p>“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.</p>\n\n<p>“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said.\n“Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html\">nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot", "date_published": "2026-01-27T20:34:36Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-28T16:13:58Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot", "external_url": "https://www.molt.bot/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>From the footer on the project’s website:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not\naffiliated with Anthropic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Makes sense, to be honest, <a href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/clawdbot-changes-name-moltbot-anthropic-trademark-2026-1\">that Anthropic would object</a> to naming it a homonym for Claude.</p>\n\n<p>One additional followup to <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot\">my post the other day</a>. In his terrific introduction to <s>Clawd</s>Moltbot, <a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/\">Federico Viticci wrote</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned\nthrough 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (<em>yikes</em>), and\nI’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude\nand ChatGPT apps in the process.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and <a href=\"https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/115968901926545907\">he said</a> around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.molt.bot/\">molt.bot/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ The Names They Call Themselves", "date_published": "2026-01-27T18:12:56Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T18:12:56Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/the_names_they_call_themselves", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/the_names_they_call_themselves", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “<a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yAGei6y469cre0s3RYa6ArU\">Yes, It’s Fascism</a>” (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President\nTrump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical\nfascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been\noverused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by\nleft-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion\nor affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily\ndefined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has\nbeen an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree\non its <a href=\"https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&context=history-in-the-making\">definition</a>. Italy’s original version differed from\nGermany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from\nJapan’s. [...]</p>\n\n<p>When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have\nbrought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. <em>Fascist</em> best\ndescribes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become\nperverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his\nadministration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is\nnot a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation\nof characteristics. When you view the stars together, the\nconstellation plainly appears.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist <em>president</em>, that does not mean that America is a fascist <em>country</em>.” The shoe fits, however <a href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-swelling-legs-chronic-venous-insufficiency-health-40beb3c818cfb914645db9d1f143fdd8\">tightly</a>.</p>\n\n<p>But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/magazine/ve-day-anniversary.html\">losers</a>, and their complete and total destruction was <a href=\"https://www.life.com/history/v-j-day-kiss-times-square/\">celebrated</a> around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding <a href=\"https://www.life.com/history/after-the-fall-photos-of-hitlers-bunker-and-the-ruins-of-berlin/\">in a dingy filthy bunker</a>. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini\">strung up in a public square in Milan</a>. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of <em>fascist</em> fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html\">that they have lost</a> — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.</p>\n\n<p>We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because <a href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/mussolini-italy-fascism\">he coined the term</a>. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis <em>because that was their name</em>. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names <em>became</em> universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.</p>\n\n<p>Our goal should not be to make <em>fascist</em> or <em>Nazi</em> apply to Trump’s movement, no matter <a href=\"https://www.thebulwark.com/p/mattis-told-woodward-he-agreed-trump\">how well</a> those rhetorical gloves fit his <a href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/how-donald-trump-became-the-short-fingered-vulgarian\">short-fingered</a> <a href=\"https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-hand-bruise-meaning-35799798\">disgustingly</a> <a href=\"https://www.ms.now/news/trump-hand-bruise-photo\">bruised</a> hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law\">Godwin’s Law</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make <em>the names they call themselves</em> universally acknowledged slurs.</p>\n\n<p>“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, <a href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/minnesota-governor-candidate-chris-madel-gop-immigration-enforcement-rcna255949\">perhaps</a>. Make <em>those</em> names <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-alex-pretti-timeline.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HlA.jIxp.ieLWsJ7EHyct\">shameful</a>, <a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-48-hours-that-convinced-trump-to-change-course-in-minnesota-a91d7683?st=xEZf8d\">deservedly</a>, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make <em>their</em> names shameful, lest the slur become <em>our</em> name — “American”.</p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok", "date_published": "2026-01-27T15:07:07Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T21:37:33Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok", "external_url": "https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized-image-xai-elon-musk-women-1235501436/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Ella Chakarian, writing for Rolling Stone (<a href=\"https://apple.news/AHps_VbIRQuGmIFYQ7zjz3Q\">News+</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly\nscrolling on X when she noticed an unsettling trend surface on her\nfeed. Users were prompting Grok, the platform’s built-in AI\nfeature, to “nudify” women’s images. Mayes, a 25-year-old media\nprofessional from Texas who uses X to post photos with her friends\nand keep up with news, didn’t think it would happen to her — until it did.</p>\n\n<p>“Put her in a tight clear transparent bikini,” an X user ordered\nthe bot under a photo that Mayes posted from when she was 20. Grok\ncomplied, replacing her white shirt with a clear bikini top. The\nwaistband of her jeans and black belt dissolved into thin,\ntranslucent strings. The see-through top made the upper half of\nher body look realistically naked.</p>\n\n<p>Hiding behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was filled\nwith similar images of women, digitally and nonconsensually\naltered and sexualized. Mayes wanted to cuss the faceless user\nout, but decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would\nbe the end of it. Soon, however, her comments became littered with\nmore images of herself in clear bikinis and skin-tight latex\nbodysuits. Mayes says that all of the requests came from anonymous\nprofiles that also targeted other women. Though some users have\nhad their accounts suspended, as of publication, some of the\nimages of Mayes are still up on X.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Emma, a content creator, was at the grocery store when she saw the\nnotifications of people asking Grok to undress her images. [...]\nNumbness washed over Emma when the images finally loaded on her\ntimeline. A selfie of her holding a cat had been transformed into\na nude. The cat was removed from the photo, Emma says, and her\nupper body was made naked.</p>\n\n<p>Emma immediately made her account private and reported the images.\nIn an email response reviewed by Rolling Stone, X User Support\nasked her to upload an image of her government-issued ID so they\ncould look into the report, but Emma responded that she didn’t\nfeel comfortable doing so. [...] In our call, she checked to see\nif some of the image edits she was aware of were still up on X.\nThey were. “Oh, my God,” she says, letting out a defeated sigh.\n“It has 15,000 views. Oh, that’s so sad.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized-image-xai-elon-musk-women-1235501436/\">rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’", "date_published": "2026-01-27T01:32:03Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T01:32:04Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439", "external_url": "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Daniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>\n\n<p><audio\n src = \"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-439-daniel-jalkut.mp3\"\n controls\n preload = \"none\"\n/></p>\n\n<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://notion.com/talkshow\">Notion</a>: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://squarespace.com/talkshow\">Squarespace</a>: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code <strong>talkshow</strong>.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://sentry.io/talkshow\">Sentry</a>: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code <strong>TALKSHOW</strong> for $80 in free credits.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://factormeals.com/talkshow50off\">Factor</a>: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code <strong>talkshow50off</strong>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439\">daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15", "date_published": "2026-01-26T23:18:37Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T01:12:32Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing", "external_url": "https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in-finder/52435", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Good tip from “DifferentDan” on the Realmac customer forum, posted back in November:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I saw on macOS Tahoe 26.1, Apple finally added an option in the\nColumn View settings to automatically right size all columns\nindividually and that setting would persist, but I don’t really\nlike Liquid Glass (yet) so I haven’t updated to Tahoe.</p>\n\n<p>Looks like someone found a workaround however for those that are\nstill on Sequoia. Just open up Terminal on your Mac, copy in the\nbelow, and press return.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The one-line command:</p>\n\n<pre><code>defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>(Change <code>YES</code> to <code>NO</code> if you want to go back.)</p>\n\n<p>Marcel Bresink’s <a href=\"http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html\">TinkerTool</a> is a great free app for adjusting hidden preferences using a proper GUI, and it turns out TinkerTool has exposed this hidden Finder preference for a few years now. You learn something every day. I enabled this a few days ago on MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it seems exactly like the implementation Apple has exposed in the Finder’s View Options window in Tahoe, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames\">which I wrote about Friday</a>. No better, no worse.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in-finder/52435\">forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer", "date_published": "2026-01-26T22:51:12Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T22:51:12Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc", "external_url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs-largest-customer.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Kif Leswing, CNBC:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Nvidia will become TSMC’s largest customer this year, according to\nanalyst estimates and Huang himself. Apple is believed to\ncurrently be TSMC’s largest customer, mostly to manufacture\nA-series chips for iPhones and M-series chips for PCs and servers.</p>\n\n<p>The positional swap will mark a fundamental shift in the\nsemiconductor industry, reflecting Nvidia’s growing importance\namid the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, said he\n<a href=\"https://thediligencestack.com/p/the-reordering-to-aihpc-tsmcs-2026\">projects</a> Nvidia to generate $33 billion in TSMC revenue this\nyear, or about 22% of the chip foundry’s total. Apple, by\ncomparison, is projected to generate about $27 billion, or about\n18% of TSMC’s revenue.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs-largest-customer.html\">cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "[Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth", "date_published": "2026-01-26T22:40:54Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T22:40:55Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1", "external_url": "https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild", "authors": [ { "name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=product_name_link\">WorkOS Pipes</a> removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a <a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/widgets/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=drop_in_widget\">drop-in widget</a>. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta\">Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild\">workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags", "date_published": "2026-01-26T22:10:43Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T22:10:43Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Joe Rossignol, writing at MacRumors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple offers a <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/11/apple-announces-airtag-location-sharing/\">Share Item Location feature in the Find My\napp</a> that allows you to temporarily share the location of an\nAirTag-equipped item with others, including employees at\nparticipating airlines. This way, if you put an AirTag inside your\nbags, the airline can better help you find them in the event they\nare lost or delayed at the airport. [...] Below, we have listed\nmost of the airlines that support the feature.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/\">Apple’s announcement</a> claims that 36 airlines support it today, and 15 more are coming soon.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/\">macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags", "date_published": "2026-01-26T22:02:55Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T22:02:56Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2", "external_url": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip\nfound in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3,\nand Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it\neasier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio\nfeedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from\nup to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an\nupgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be\nlocated. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on\nApple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to\nfind their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Solid update to the original AirTags, which <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-airtag/\">debuted five years ago</a>. Better range, louder speaker, increased precision. The form factor remains unchanged, so second-gen AirTags will fit in keychains or holders designed for the first-gen model. They even take the same batteries. Pricing also remains unchanged: $29 for one, $99 for a four-pack.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/\">apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ App Store 2025 Top iPhone Apps in the U.S.", "date_published": "2026-01-26T21:49:45Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T22:34:06Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/app_store_2025_top_iphone_apps_in_the_us", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/app_store_2025_top_iphone_apps_in_the_us", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>I’ve been meaning since last month to link to <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/story/id1847717004\">Apple’s lists of the top iPhone apps in the U.S. for 2025</a>. Here’s the list of the top 20 free iPhone apps:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>ChatGPT</li>\n<li>Threads</li>\n<li>Google</li>\n<li>TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE</li>\n<li>WhatsApp Messenger</li>\n<li>Instagram</li>\n<li>YouTube</li>\n<li>Google Maps</li>\n<li>Gmail — Email by Google</li>\n<li>Google Gemini</li>\n<li>Facebook</li>\n<li>CapCut: Photo & Video Editor</li>\n<li>Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire</li>\n<li>T-Life [“All things T-Mobile”]</li>\n<li>Telegram Messenger</li>\n<li>Lemon8 — Lifestyle Community</li>\n<li>Spotify: Music and Podcasts</li>\n<li>Google Chrome</li>\n<li>Snapchat</li>\n<li>rednote</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>All app names are verbatim, except for T-Life, where I put the app’s secondary slogan in brackets. I had no idea what T-Life was, but the slogan makes it clear. Interesting to me that T-Mobile’s app is on the list but neither Verizon nor AT&T’s are.<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-01-26\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-01-26\">1</a></sup></p>\n\n<p>I hope a million people sent this list to Elon Musk, to rub some salt in his severe case of butt hurt that led him to file <a href=\"https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/elon-musk-sues-apple-openai-to-block-exclusive-iphone-chatgpt-integration/\">an almost certainly baseless lawsuit in August</a> alleging that ChatGPT consistently tops the App Store list — and Grok does not — because Apple puts a thumb on the scale for these rankings because of its deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with Apple Intelligence. Here’s the thing. Dishonest people presume the whole world is dishonest. That you either cheat and steal, or you’re going to be cheated and robbed. If Elon Musk ran the App Store, you can be sure that he’d cook the rankings to put apps that he owns, or even just favors, on top. Elon Musk runs Twitter/X, and <a href=\"https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487\">that’s how the algorithm there now works</a>: it favors content he prefers, especially his own tweets. Apple doesn’t publish how its lists for top apps are computed (to keep the rankings from being gamed more than they already inevitably are), but judging by how many of these apps come from Apple’s rivals (e.g., Spotify), there’s little reason to think they’re crooked — unless you think the entire world is crooked.</p>\n\n<p>Google has 6 apps on the list, including 5 in the top 10. Meta — certainly no friend of Apple — has 4 apps on the list, including 3 in the top 10. (Slightly interesting, but unsurprising, sign of the times: the Facebook “blue app” dropped out of the top 10.) The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</p>\n\n<p>Microsoft has no apps on the list. <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/162987/macbu-4.html\">Back in the day</a>, the conventional wisdom was that Microsoft made more money, on average, from each Mac sold than they did from each PC sold — despite the fact that nearly all PCs came with a licensed version of Windows — because so many Mac users paid for Microsoft Office at retail prices. I suspect something like that is true with iPhones for Google. A lot of iPhone users spend a lot of time using apps from Google. I would bet that Google makes more ad revenue from the average iPhone user (who, even if they don’t install a single one of Google’s native iOS apps, probably uses Google Search in Safari) than from the average Android user.</p>\n\n<p>Another company that has no apps on this list is Apple itself. If you look at <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6007?chart=top-free\">the daily top list of apps in the Productivity category</a>, you will see a lot of apps from Google and Microsoft. But you won’t find Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, because Apple recuses its own apps from such rankings. </p>\n\n<p>Here’s the list of the top 20 <em>paid</em> iPhone apps in 2025 in the U.S.:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>HotSchedules</li>\n<li>Shadowrocket</li>\n<li>Procreate Pocket</li>\n<li>AnkiMobile Flashcards</li>\n<li>Paprika Recipe Manager 3</li>\n<li>SkyView®</li>\n<li>TonalEnergy Tuner & Metronome</li>\n<li>AutoSleep Track Sleep on Watch</li>\n<li>Forest: Focus for Productivity</li>\n<li>RadarScope </li>\n<li>Monash FODMAP Diet</li>\n<li>Merge Watermelon for watch</li>\n<li>Streaks</li>\n<li>Wipr 2</li>\n<li>µBrowser: Watch Web Browser</li>\n<li>PeakFinder</li>\n<li>Threema. The Secure Messenger</li>\n<li>Things 3</li>\n<li>Goblin Tools</li>\n<li>¡Verify Basic</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>There are a couple of real gems on this list — Procreate, Paprika, Streaks (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2016/05/streaks\">multi</a>-<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/11/streaks_and_little_streaks\">time</a> DF sponsor), and Things are all apps that I use, or have used, and would recommend. But unlike the list of top free apps, where I’d at least heard of all of them (once I figured out what T-Life was), I have never even heard of most of these paid iPhone apps. Household names these are not.</p>\n\n<p>The market for paid apps isn’t just different from the market for free apps. It’s an entirely different world.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-01-26\">\n<p>This, in turn made me wonder what the subscriber-count standings look like. I assumed T-Mobile was still in third place, but that assumption was wrong. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_in_the_United_States\">According to Wikipedia</a>, here are the number of U.S. subscribers per carrier as of Q3 2025:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Verizon — 146 million</li>\n<li>T-Mobile — 140 million</li>\n<li>AT&T — 119 million</li>\n<li>Boost — 8 million</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I’m a Verizon man myself, and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks\">pay handsomely for it</a>. I don’t even remember why exactly, but I despised AT&T back when they were the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-01-26\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’", "date_published": "2026-01-26T20:32:46Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T01:34:52Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome", "external_url": "https://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Yours truly back in 2009, hitting upon the same themes from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit\">the item I just posted</a> about TextEdit vs. Apple Notes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This, I think, explains the relative popularity of Mac OS X’s\nincluded Stickies application. For years, Stickies’s popularity\nconfounded me. Why would anyone use a note-taking utility that\nrequires you to leave every saved note open in its own window on\nscreen? The more you use it, the more cluttered it gets. But\nhere’s the thing: cluttered though it may be, <em>you never have to\nsave anything in Stickies</em>. Switch to Stickies, Command-N, type\nyour new note, and you’re done. (And, yes, if you create a new\nsticky note, then force-quit Stickies, the note you just created\nwill be there when next you launch the app. Stickies’s auto-save\nhappens while you type, not just at quit time.) It feels easy and\nit feels safe. Stickies does not offer a good long-term storage\ndesign, but it offers a frictionless short-term\njot-something-down-right-now design.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here we are in 2026, 17 years later, and, unsurprisingly, some things have changed. Apple Notes didn’t get a Mac version until Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012. And Apple Notes didn’t really get <em>good</em> until 2016 or 2017. I still use Yojimbo, the library-based Mac app I wrote about in the above piece in 2009, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to. I use Apple Notes instead, for most notes, because it has good clients for iPhone and iPad (and Vision Pro and even Apple Watch).</p>\n\n<p>Other things, however, have not changed since 2009. Like the Stickies app, which is still around in MacOS 26 Tahoe, largely unchanged, except for <a href=\"https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/#:~:text=STICKIES\">a sad Liquid Glass-style icon</a>. If you still use Stickies, you should consider moving to Apple Notes. There’s even a command (File → Export All to Notes...) to import all your notes from Stickies into Apple Notes, with subfolders in Notes for each color sticky note. Apple Notes on the Mac even supports one of Stickies’s signature features: the Window → Float on Top command will keep a note’s window floating atop the windows from other apps even when Apple Notes is in the background.</p>\n\n<p>(Stickies has another cool feature that no other current app I know of does: it still supports “<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowShade\">window shading</a>”. Double-click the title bar of a note in Stickies and the rest of the window will “roll up”, leaving only the title bar behind. Double-click again and it rolls down. This was a built-in feature for all windows in all apps on classic Mac OS, starting with Mac OS 8, but was replaced in favor of minimizing windows into the Dock with Mac OS X. Window shading was a better feature (and could have been kept <em>alongside</em> minimizing into the Dock). With the Stickies app, window shading works particularly well with the aforementioned Float on Top feature — you can keep a floating window available, atop all other windows, but while it’s rolled up it hardly takes up any space or obscures anything underneath.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome\">daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’", "date_published": "2026-01-26T19:54:55Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T15:31:59Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit", "external_url": "https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Perhaps at the opposite end of the complexity and novelty spectrum from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot\">Federico Viticci’s intro to Clawdbot</a> is <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software\">this piece by Kyle Chayka</a>, writing at The New Yorker, from October:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Amid the accelerating automation of our computers — and the\nproliferation of assistants and companions and agents designed to\nexecute tasks for us — I’ve been thinking more about the desktop\nthat’s hidden in the background of the laptop I use every day.\nMine is strewn with screenshots and Word documents and e-books.\nWhat I’ve accrued the most of by far, though, are TextEdit files,\nfrom the bare-bones Mac app that just lets you type stuff into a\nblank window. Apple computers have come with text-editing software\nsince the original Mac was released, in 1984; the current\niteration of the program launched in the mid-nineties and has\nsurvived relatively unchanged. Over the past few years, I’ve found\nmyself relying on TextEdit more as every other app has grown more\ncomplicated, adding cloud uploads, collaborative editing, and now\ngenerative A.I. TextEdit is not connected to the internet, like\nGoogle Docs. It is not part of a larger suite of workplace\nsoftware, like Microsoft Word. You can write in TextEdit, and you\ncan format your writing with a bare minimum of fonts and styling.\nThose files are stored as RTFs (short for rich-text format), one\nstep up from the most basic TXT file. TextEdit now functions as my\nto-do-list app, my e-mail drafting window, my personal calendar,\nand my stash of notes to self, which act like digital Post-its.</p>\n\n<p>I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without\nwarning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and\nit doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google\nChrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my\nrandom thoughts and ideas in progress — the personal note-storage\napp Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative\ndigital workspace Notion, which can store and share company\ninformation. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy\nof organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But\nnothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of\nTextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of\nthinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing\nlonghand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of\ncourse, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably\nwarped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by\ntyping.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Old habits are hard to break. And trust me, I, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/\">of all people</a>, know the value of writing stuff — all sorts of stuff — in plain text files. (RTF isn’t plain text, but it is a stable and standard format.) I’ve been using BBEdit <a href=\"https://www.barebones.com/company/history.html\">since 1992</a>, not just as an occasional utility, but as part of my daily arsenal of essential tools.</p>\n\n<p>But I get the feeling that Chayka would be better served switching from TextEdit to Apple Notes for most of these things he’s creating. Saving a whole pile of notes to yourself as text files on your desktop, with no organization into sub-folders, isn’t wrong. The whole point of “just put it on the desktop” is to absolve yourself of thinking about where to file something properly. That’s friction, and if you face a bit of friction every time you want to jot something down, it increases the likelihood that <em>you won’t jot it down</em> because you didn’t want to deal with the friction.</p>\n\n<p>You actually don’t need to save or name documents in TextEdit anymore. One of the best changes to MacOS in the last two decades has been <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-desktop-dock-settings-mchlp1119/15.0/mac\">the persistence of open document windows</a>, including unsaved changes to existing files, and never-saved untitled document windows. Try this: open TextEdit, make a new untitled document, and type something — anything — into the new window. Next, don’t just quit TextEdit, but force quit it (⌥⌘Esc). Relaunch TextEdit, and your unsaved new document should be right where you left it, with every character you typed.</p>\n\n<p>But a big pile of unorganized RTF files on your desktop — or a big pile of unsaved document windows that remain open, in perpetuity, in TextEdit — is no way to live. You can use TextEdit like that, it <em>supports</em> being used like that, but it wasn’t <em>designed</em> to be used like that.</p>\n\n<p>Apple Notes was designed to be used like this. Open Notes, ⌘N, type whatever you want, and switch back to whatever you were doing before. There is no Save command. There are no files. And while a few dozen text files on your desktop starts to look messy, and makes individual items hard to find, you can stash <em>thousands</em> of notes in Apple Notes and they just organize themselves into a simple list, sorted, by default, by most recently modified. You can create folders and assign tags in Notes, but you don’t need to. Don’t make busy work for yourself. And with iCloud, you get fast reliable syncing of all your notes to all of your other Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/create-and-view-notes-apdc6fb0a03f/watchos\">even your Watch now</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you just want to stick with what you’re used to. I get it. I am, very much, a creature of habit. And TextEdit is comforting for its simplicity, reliability, and unchanging consistency spanning literally decades. But there’s no question in my mind that nearly everyone using TextEdit as a personal notes system would be better served — and happier, once they adjust to the change — by switching to Apple Notes.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software\">newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Federico Viticci on Clawdbot", "date_published": "2026-01-26T17:58:37Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-27T20:18:47Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot", "external_url": "https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If this intro just gave you whiplash, imagine my reaction when I\nfirst started playing around with <a href=\"https://clawd.bot/\">Clawdbot</a>, the incredible\n<a href=\"https://github.com/clawdbot/clawdbot\">open-source project</a> by <a href=\"https://steipete.me/\">Peter Steinberger</a> (a name\nthat should be <a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/linked/ios-10-3-beta-re-introduces-warning-for-old-32-bit-apps-suggests-future-incompatibility/\">familiar to longtime MacStories readers</a>)\nthat’s become <em>very</em> popular in certain AI communities over the\npast few weeks. I kept seeing Clawdbot being mentioned by people I\nfollow; eventually, I gave in to peer pressure, followed the\ninstructions provided by the funny crustacean mascot on the app’s\n<a href=\"https://docs.clawd.bot/start/getting-started\">website</a>, installed Clawdbot on my new M4 Mac mini (which\nis not my main production machine), and <a href=\"https://docs.clawd.bot/channels/telegram\">connected it to\nTelegram</a>.</p>\n\n<p>To say that Clawdbot has fundamentally altered my perspective of\nwhat it means to have an intelligent, personal AI assistant in\n2026 would be an understatement. I’ve been playing around with\nClawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the\nAnthropic API ( <em>yikes</em> ), and I’ve had fewer and fewer\nconversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the\nprocess. Don’t get me wrong: Clawdbot is a nerdy project, a\ntinkerer’s laboratory that is not poised to overtake the\npopularity of consumer LLMs any time soon. Still, Clawdbot points\nat a fascinating future for digital assistants, and it’s exactly\nthe kind of bleeding-edge project that MacStories readers will\nappreciate.</p>\n\n<p>Clawdbot can be overwhelming at first, so I’ll try my best to\nexplain what it is and why it’s so exciting and fun to play\naround with.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Overwhelming indeed. Clawdbot is undeniably impressive, and <a href=\"https://x.com/steipete/status/2015828441342292139\">interest in it is skyrocketing</a>. But because of its complexity and scope, it’s one of those things where all the excitement is being registered by people who already understand it. This essay from Viticci is the first thing I’ve seen that really helped me <em>start</em> to understand it.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/\">macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Meh", "date_published": "2026-01-25T17:04:18Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T23:30:07Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh", "external_url": "https://meh.com/go/df", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh puts up a new deal every day, and they do it with panache. As they say, “It’s actual, real, weird shit you didn’t know existed for half the price you would’ve guessed.”</p>\n\n<p>Don’t tell any of my other sponsors, but <a href=\"https://meh.com/go/df\">Meh</a> is my favorite <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/archive\">longtime DF sponsor</a>. I love the way their orange graphics look against DF’s <code>#4a525a</code> background. And I always love their sponsored posts that go into the RSS feed at the start of the sponsorship week. I’ll just quote theirs from this week in full:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our\npart of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking\nyour head in the sand.</p>\n\n<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to\nlast, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break\nfrom the misery.</p>\n\n<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems.\nWe’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our\nlittle write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh\ncommunity, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of\noccasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve\nnever heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not\ngiving in to how bad everything else is.</p>\n\n<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that.\nBut it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we\nhave a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is\nover at Meh today.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://meh.com/go/df\">meh.com/go/df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ The iOS 26 Adoption Rate Is Not Bizarrely Low Compared to Previous Years", "date_published": "2026-01-25T00:14:52Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-29T19:57:37Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users. The methodology behind these numbers is broken and the numbers are totally wrong. Those false numbers are so low, so jarringly different from previous years, that it boggles my mind that they didn’t raise a red flag for anyone who took a moment to consider them.</p>\n\n<p>The ball started rolling with this post from Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac on January 8, “<a href=\"https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users\">iOS 26 Still Struggles to Gain Traction With iPhone Users</a>”, which began:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26,\naccording to data from a web analytics service. The adoption rate\nis far less than previous iOS versions at this same point months\nafter their releases. The data only reveals how few iPhone users\nrun Apple’s latest operating system upgrade, not why they’ve\nchosen to avoid it. But the most likely candidate is the new\nLiquid Glass look of the update. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Roughly four months after launching in mid-September, <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202601-202601-bar\">only about\n15% of iPhone users have some version of the new operating system\ninstalled</a>. That’s according to data for January 2026 from\nStatCounter. Instead, most users hold onto previous versions.</p>\n\n<p>For comparison, in January 2025, about <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202501-202501-bar\">63% of iPhone users had\nsome iOS 18 version</a> installed. So after roughly the same\namount of time, the adoption rate of Apple [<em>sic</em>] newest OS was\nabout four times higher.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Those links point to Statcounter, a web analytics service. A lot of websites include Statcounter’s analytics tracker, and Statcounter’s tracker attempts to determine the version of the OS each visitor’s device is running. The problem is, starting with Safari 26 — the version that ships with iOS 26 — Safari changed how it reports its user agent string. From the WebKit blog, “<a href=\"https://webkit.org/blog/17333/webkit-features-in-safari-26-0/\">WebKit Features in Safari 26.0</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Also, now in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS 26 the user agent\nstring no longer lists the current version of the operating\nsystem. Safari 18.6 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.6\nMobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>\n\n<p>And Safari 26.0 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0\nMobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>\n\n<p>This matches the long-standing behavior on macOS, where the user\nagent string for Safari 26.0 is:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0\nSafari/605.1.15</code></p>\n\n<p>It was back in 2017 when Safari on Mac first started freezing the\nMac OS string. Now the behavior on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS does\nthe same in order to minimize compatibility issues. The WebKit and\nSafari version number portions of the string will continue to\nchange with each release.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In other words, Safari now reports, in its user agent string, that it’s running on iOS 18.6 when it is running on iOS 18.6, and reports that it’s running on iOS 18.6 <em>when it’s running on iOS 26.0 or later</em>. And it’s going to keep reporting that it’s running on iOS 18.6 forever, just like how Safari 26 on MacOS reports that it’s running on MacOS 10.15 Catalina, from 2019.</p>\n\n<p>Statcounter completely dropped the ball on this change, and it explains the entirety of this false narrative that iOS 26 adoption is incredibly low. (Statcounter has a <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/detect\">“detect” page</a> where you can see what browser and OS it thinks you’re using.) The reason they reported that 15 percent of iPhone users were using iOS 26 is probably because that’s the amount of web traffic Statcounter sees from iOS 26 web browsers that aren’t Safari (most of which, I’ll bet, are in-app browser views in social media apps).</p>\n\n<p>Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, <a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/blog/updating-the-record-on-ios-26/\">wrote a good piece delving into this saga</a>. And then he <a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/linklog/ios-26-usage-updates/\">posted a follow-up item</a> pointing out that (a) Statcounter’s CEO has acknowledged their error and they’re fixing it; and (b) Wikimedia publishes network-wide stats that serve as a good baseline. The audience for Wikipedia is, effectively, the audience for the web itself. And Wikipedia’s stats show that while iOS 26 adoption, in January 2026, isn’t absurdly low (as Statcounter had been suggesting, erroneously, and writers like <a href=\"https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users\">Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac</a> and <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/3022985/ios-26s-failure-shows-what-happens-when-you-take-customers-for-granted.html\">David Price</a> <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/3028428/ios-26-is-a-massive-flop-with-iphone-users-and-you-can-probably-guess-why.html\">at Macworld</a> foolishly regurgitated, no matter how little sense it made that the numbers would be <em>that</em> low), they are in fact lower than those for iOS 18 a year ago and iOS 17 two years ago. Per Wikimedia:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iOS 26, January 2026: 50%</li>\n<li>iOS 18, January 2025: 72%</li>\n<li>iOS 17, January 2024: 65%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, no, iOS 26 adoption isn’t at just 15 percent, which only a dope would believe, but it’s not as high as previous iOS versions in previous years at this point on the calendar. Something, obviously, is going on.</p>\n\n<p>David Smith, developer of popular apps like <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/widgetsmith/id1523682319\">Widgetsmith</a> and <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pedometer/id712286167\">Pedometer++</a>, <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872\">on Mastodon</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I noticed iOS 26 adoption had entered a ‘third wave’ of rapid\nadoption. So I made a graph of the relative adoption versus iOS 18\nat this point in the release cycle.</p>\n\n<p>While lower than iOS 18 at this point for my apps (65% vs. 78%),\nthe shape of this graph says to me that Apple is in full control\nof the adoption rate and can tune it to their plans. The\ncoordinated surges are Apple dialing up automatic updates.</p>\n\n<p>If this surge were as long as previous ones, we’d hit the\nsaturation point very soon.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/david-smith-ios-v26-v18-adoption.png\"\n alt = \"Chart of iOS 26 vs. iOS 18 adoption, day-by-day after each version was released.\"\n width = 500\n /></a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What’s going on, quite obviously, is that Apple itself is slow-rolling the automatic updates to iOS 26. For years now Apple has steered users, via default suggestions during device setup, to adopt settings to allow OS updates to happen automatically, including updates to major new versions. Apple tends not to push these automatic updates to major new versions of iOS until two months after the .0 release in September. This year that second wave was delayed by about two weeks, and there’s now a third wave starting midway through January. It’s a different pattern from previous years — but it’s a pattern Apple controls. A large majority of users of all Apple devices get major OS updates when, and only when, their devices automatically update. Apple has been slower to push those updates to iOS 26 than they have been for previous iOS updates in recent years. With good reason! iOS 26 is a more significant — and buggier — update than iOS 18 and 17 were.</p>\n\n<p>People like <em>you</em>, readers of Daring Fireball, may well be hesitant to update to iOS 26, or (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames\">like me</a>) to MacOS 26, or to any of the version 26 OS updates, because you are aware of things (like UI changes) that you are loath to adopt.</p>\n\n<p>But the overwhelming majority of Apple users — especially iPhone users — just let their devices update automatically. They might like iOS 26’s changes, they might dislike them, or they might not care or even notice. But they just let their software updates happen automatically — and they will form the entirety of their opinions regarding iOS 26 after it’s running on their iPhones.</p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "★ Tahoe Added a Finder Option to Resize Columns to Fit Filenames", "date_published": "2026-01-24T03:38:53Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T23:39:20Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>The main reason I’m sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia, refusing to install 26 Tahoe, is that there are so many <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder\">severe UI regressions</a> in Tahoe. The <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus\">noisy, distracting, inconsistent icons</a> prefixing menu item commands, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons\">ruining the Mac’s signature menu bar system</a>. Indiscriminate transparency that renders so many menus, windows, and sidebars <a href=\"https://eclecticlight.co/2025/11/09/last-week-on-my-mac-tahoe-26-1-disappointments/\">inscrutable and ugly</a>. Windows with childish round corners that are <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26\">hard to resize</a>. The <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons\">comically sad app icons</a>. Why choose to suffer?</p>\n\n<p>But the thing that makes the decision to stay on 15 Sequoia a cinch is that I honestly struggle to think of <em>any</em> features in Tahoe that I’m missing out on. What is there to actually <em>like</em> about Tahoe? One small example is Apple’s Journal app. I’ve been using Journal ever since it debuted as an iPhone-only app in iOS 17.2 in December 2023. 785 entries and counting. With the version 26 OSes, Apple created versions of Journal for iPad and Mac (but not Vision Pro). Syncing works great via iCloud too. All things considered, I’d like to have a version of Journal on my main Mac. But I’m fine without it. I’ve been writing entries without a Mac app since 2023, so I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing, if I want to create or edit a Journal entry from my Mac: using <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference\">iPhone Mirroring</a>.</p>\n\n<p>That’s it. The Journal app is the one new feature Tahoe offers that I wish I had today. I’m not missing out on the latest version of Safari because <a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-26_2-release-notes\">Apple makes Safari 26 available for MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> (and even 14 Sonoma). Some years, Apple adds <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/enter-formulas-and-equations-iphb9c2b948f/ios\">new features</a> to Apple Notes, and to get those features on every device, you need to update every device to that year’s new OS. This year I don’t think there are any features like that. Everything is perfectly cromulent running iOS 26 on my iPhone and iPad, but sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia on my primary Mac.</p>\n\n<p>But now that we’ve been <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder\">poking around at column view</a> in the Tahoe Finder, <a href=\"https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html\">Jeff Johnson has discovered another enticing new feature</a>. On Mac OS 26, the Finder has a new view option (accessed via View → Show View Options) to automatically resize columns to fit the longest visible filename. <a href=\"https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html\">See Johnson’s post</a> for screenshots of the new option in practice.</p>\n\n<p>[<strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing\">Turns out</a>, this auto-resizing feature has been a hidden preference setting in the Finder for a few years now.]</p>\n\n<p>Column view is one of the best <a href=\"https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0\">UI innovations from NeXTStep</a>, and if you think about it, has always been the primary metaphor for browsing hierarchical applications in iOS. It’s a good idea for the desktop that proved foundational for mobile. The iPhone Settings app is column view — one column at a time. It’s a way to organize a multi-screen app in a visual, spatial way even when limited to a 3.5-inch display.</p>\n\n<p>Thanks to <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20000302055440/http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/browser.html\">Greg’s Browser</a>, a terrific indie app, I’d been using column view on classic Mac OS since 1993, a few years before Apple even bought NeXT, let alone finally shipped Mac OS X (which was when column view first appeared in the Finder). One frustration inherent to column view is that it doesn’t work well with long filenames. It’s a waste of space to resize all columns to a width long enough to accommodate long filenames, but it’s frustrating when a long filename doesn’t fit in a regular-width column.</p>\n\n<p>This new feature in the Tahoe Finder attempts to finally solve this problem. I played around with it this afternoon and it’s ... OK. It feels like an early prototype for what could be a polished feature. For example, it exacerbates some layering bugs in the Finder — if you attempt to rename a file or folder that is partially scrolled under the sidebar, the Tahoe Finder will just draw the rename editing field right on top of the sidebar, even though it belongs to the layer that is scrolled underneath. Here’s what it looks like when I rename a folder named “Example ƒ” to “How is this possible?”:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png\"\n alt = \"Renaming a folder in MacOS 26 Tahoe. The rename editing field from the underlying column is rendered on top of the sidebar.\"\n width = 500\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>On MacOS 15, if you attempt to rename an item that is scrolled under the sidebar in column view, the column containing that item snaps into place next to the sidebar, so it’s fully visible. That snapping into place just feels right. The way Tahoe works, where the column doesn’t move and the text editing field for the filename just gets drawn on top of the sidebar, feels gross, like I’m using a computer that is not a Macintosh. Amateur hour.</p>\n\n<p>I wish I could set this new column-resizing option only to grow columns to accommodate long filenames, and never to shrink columns when the visible items all have short filenames. But the way it currently works, it adjusts all columns to the width of the longest visible filename each column is displaying — narrowing some, and widening others. I want most columns to stay at the default width. With this new option enabled, it looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.</p>\n\n<p>Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest <em>currently visible</em> filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.</p>\n\n<p>Even a future polished version of this column view feature wouldn’t, in and of itself, be enough to tempt me to upgrade to Tahoe. After 30-some years of columns that don’t automatically adjust their widths, I can wait another year. But we don’t yet have a polished version of this feature. The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "OmniOutliner 6", "date_published": "2026-01-24T00:59:23Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-24T00:59:23Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6", "external_url": "https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Ken Case, on The Omni Group blog:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The features noted above already make for a great upgrade. But <a href=\"https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omni-roadmap-2025#document-links\">as\nI mentioned last year</a>, one of the interesting problems\nwe’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native\napps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem,\nOmni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With\nOmni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we\ncan share those links with other people and other apps.</p>\n\n<p>Omni Links support everything we said document links needed to\nhave. Omni Links work across all of Apple’s computing platforms\nand can be shared with a team. They leverage existing solutions\nfor syncing and sharing documents, such as iCloud Drive or shared\nGit repositories. They are easy to create, easy to use, and easy\nto share.</p>\n\n<p>Omni Links also power up Omni Automation, giving scripts and\nplug-ins a way to reference and update content in linked documents — documents that can be shared across all your team’s devices.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s lots more in version 6, including a modernized UI, and many additions to Omni Automation, Omni’s scripting platform that works across both Mac and iOS — including really useful <a href=\"https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm-collection.html\">integration with Apple’s on-device Foundation Models</a>, with, of course, comprehensive (and comprehensible) <a href=\"https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm.html\">documentation</a>.</p>\n\n<p>It’s <a href=\"https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnioutliner/universal/6.0.1/en/connect/#omni-links\">Omni Links</a>, though, that strikes me as the most interesting new feature. The two fundamental models for apps are library-based (like Apple Notes) and document-based (like TextEdit). Document-based apps create and open files from the file system. Library-based apps create items in a database, and the location of the database in the file system is an implementation detail the user shouldn’t worry about.</p>\n\n<p>OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the advantages to library-based apps is that they more easily allow the developer to create custom URL schemes to link to items in the app’s library. Omni Links is an ambitious solution to bring that to document-based apps. Omni Links let you copy URLs that link not just to an OmniOutliner document, but to any specific row within an OmniOutliner document. And you can paste those URLs into any app you want (like, say, Apple Notes or <a href=\"https://www.culturedcode.com/\">Things</a>, or events in your calendar app). From the perspective of other apps, they’re just URLs that start with <code>omnioutliner://</code>. They’re not based on anything as simplistic as a file’s pathname. They’re a robust way to link to a unique document, or a specific row within that document. Create an Omni Link on your Mac, and that link will work on your iPhone or iPad too — or vice versa. This is a very complex problem to solve, but Omni Links delivers on the age-old promise of “It just works”, abstracting all the complexity.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve been using OmniOutliner for at least two decades now, and Omni Links strikes me as one of the best features they’ve ever added. It’s a way to connect your outlines, and the content within your outlines, to any app that accepts links. The other big change is that OmniOutliner 6 is now a single universal purchase giving you access to the same features on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6\">omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Lolgato 1.7", "date_published": "2026-01-23T23:36:58Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-23T23:36:59Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7", "external_url": "https://github.com/raine/lolgato", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Free Mac utility by Zendit Oy:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A macOS app that enhances control over Elgato lights, offering\nfeatures beyond the standard Elgato Control Center software.</p>\n\n<p>Features:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Automatically turn lights on and off based on camera activity</li>\n<li>Turn lights off when locking your Mac</li>\n<li>Sync light temperature with macOS Night Shift</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Lolgato also lets you set global hotkeys for toggling the lights and changing their brightness.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve had a pair of <a href=\"https://www.elgato.com/ww/en/p/key-light?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block\">Elgato Key Lights</a> down at my podcast recording desk for years now. Elgato’s shitty software drove me nuts. Nothing seemed to work so I gave up on controlling my lights from software. I set the color temperature and brightness the way I wanted it (which you have to do via software) and then after that, I just turned them off and on using the physical switches on the lights.</p>\n\n<p>I forget how I discovered Lolgato, but I installed back on November 10. I connected Lolgato to my lights, and set it to turn them on whenever the Mac wakes up, and off whenever the Mac goes to sleep. It has worked perfectly for over two months. Perfect little utility.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://github.com/raine/lolgato\">github.com/raine/lolgato</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Playing the Percentages", "date_published": "2026-01-23T15:44:11Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-23T15:44:12Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages", "external_url": "https://leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Dr. Drang:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For weeks — maybe months, time has been hard to judge this past\nyear — Trump has been telling us that he’s worked out deals with\npharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by several hundred\npercent. Commentators and comedians have pointed out that you\ncan’t reduce prices more than 100% and pretty much left it at\nthat, suggesting that Trump’s impossible numbers are due to\nignorance.</p>\n\n<p>Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s ignorance is nearly limitless — but\nonly nearly. I’ve always thought that he knew the right way to\ncalculate a price drop; he did it the wrong way so he could quote\na bigger number. And that came out in yesterday’s speech.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Trump sophistry + math pedantry = Daring Fireball catnip.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/\">leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder", "date_published": "2026-01-23T01:34:58Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-23T01:34:59Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder", "external_url": "https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Jeff Johnson:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Finder has four view modes, represented by the four consecutive\ntoolbar icons in the screenshot below, if you can even call that\nfree-floating monstrosity a toolbar anymore: Icons, List, Columns,\nand Gallery. My preference is columns view, which I’ve been using\nfor as long as I remember, going back to Mac OS X.</p>\n\n<p>At the bottom of each column is a resizing widget that you can use\nto change the width of the columns. Or rather, you <em>could</em> use it to\nchange the width of the columns. On macOS Tahoe, the horizontal\nscroller covers the resizing widget and prevents it from being\nclicked!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/12/macos-26-cut-corner\">joked last week</a> that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job\">a month ago</a>, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html\">lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay", "date_published": "2026-01-22T23:19:56Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-23T00:04:53Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay", "external_url": "https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to\nbuild that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all\nof that same information is handed over.</p>\n\n<p>When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder\nfor Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy\nand security protections, like not sharing any information about\nyour actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking\ntrickier.</p>\n\n<p>This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want\nto pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan\nand Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had\nthe option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share <em>a lot</em> less\ninformation with Walmart.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Using Walmart Pay gives Walmart <em>more</em> information than a regular credit or debit card transaction does. When you use the same traditional credit card for multiple purchases over time, a retailer like Walmart can build a profile associated with that card number. Charles Duhigg, all the way back in 2012, reported a story for The New York Times <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.UClu.YPuRxJGkIHte&smid=url-share\">about how Target used these profiles</a> — which customers don’t even know about — to statistically determine when women are likely to be pregnant based on purchases like, say, cocoa-butter lotion and vitamin supplements. When you use an in-house payment app like Walmart Pay (or swipe a store’s “loyalty” card at the register), the store doesn’t have to do any guesswork to associate the transaction with your profile. Your Walmart Pay account <em>is</em> your profile.</p>\n\n<p>Using Apple Pay gives a retailer less — or at least <em>no more</em> — identifying information than a traditional card transaction. So if the future is paying via devices, Walmart wants that future to give them more information.</p>\n\n<p>I think the situation with Walmart and Apple Pay is a lot like Netflix and Apple TV integration. Most retailers, even large ones, support Apple Pay. Most streaming services, even large ones, support integration with Apple’s TV app. Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because they want to control the customer transaction directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple Pay. Netflix doesn’t support TV app integration because they want to control the customer viewing experience directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple’s TV app.</p>\n\n<p>Amazon — which is also very large, whose customers are also very loyal, and which absolutely <em>loves</em> collecting data — does not support Apple Pay either.</p>\n\n<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/01/21/why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/\">Michael Tsai</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/\">9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest", "date_published": "2026-01-22T22:44:59Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-23T01:35:51Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images", "external_url": "https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of-minnesota-activist-nekima-levy-armstrong-arrest", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Violet Jira, reporting for NOTUS:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The White House communications team <a href=\"https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2014365986388951194?s=20\">posted a digitally altered\nphoto of Nekima Levy Armstrong,</a> a Minnesota social\njustice activist, on Thursday that makes it appear that she was\nweeping <a href=\"https://www.notus.org/immigration/pam-bondi-arrest-minneapolis-church-protesters-ice\">during her arrest by federal agents</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The image is highly realistic, bearing no watermark or other\nindicator that the image has been doctored. The change is only\napparent when compared to a <a href=\"https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2014357826081071513?s=20\">different version of the same image\nposted by the Department of Homeland Security</a> earlier in\nthe day.</p>\n\n<p>The White House, which has adopted a combative, flippant tone on\nits widely viewed social media pages, drew some backlash for the\npost online. In response, White House deputy communications\ndirector Kaelan Dorr called the image a “meme.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s not a meme. It’s propaganda — an altogether false image presented as an actual photograph.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of-minnesota-activist-nekima-levy-armstrong-arrest\">notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’", "date_published": "2026-01-22T22:33:05Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-24T03:43:19Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi", "external_url": "https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig-federighi-plots-cautious-course-ai", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Aaron “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/11/wsj-tech-layoffs\">Homeboy</a>” Tilley and Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas, and with a miserly gift-link policy):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But there are also potential risks to making Federighi head of AI.\nGiving oversight of AI to him reflects Apple’s cautious approach\nto the technology. He is known at Apple as a penny-pincher who\nkeeps a tight rein on salaries and hesitates to invest in risky\nprojects when the payoff from them isn’t clear, according to\npeople who have worked with him. He tends to scrutinize every\ndetail of his team’s expenses, down to their budgets for bananas\nand other office snacks, those people said.</p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals are pouring vast amounts of capital into\nAI, building data centers and paying fortunes to woo AI\nresearchers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have no idea what Federighi’s stance is on break-room bananas, but it seems a stretch to think it offers clues to Apple’s strategy on data centers.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For years, lieutenants of Federighi would try to get him on board\nwith AI. He often shot those efforts down, former Apple executives\nsaid. For example, he rejected proposals from his team to use AI\nto dynamically change the iPhone home screen, believing it would\ndisorient users, who are used to knowing where their apps are\nlocated, said former Apple employees familiar with the proposal.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Jesus H. Christ, thank god Federighi shot this down. I wouldn’t want <em>good</em> AI rearranging my home screen behind my back, let alone Apple Intelligence as we know it.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig-federighi-plots-cautious-course-ai\">theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin", "date_published": "2026-01-22T22:19:50Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-25T15:33:10Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin", "external_url": "https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin?rc=jfy0lk", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an\nAirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker,\nmicrophones and wireless charging, according to people with direct\nknowledge of the project. The device could be released as early as\n2027, they said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/06/nyt-humane\">one</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane\">notable</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/20/hp-humane\">case</a>, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glass was an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Such a product would position Apple to compete more effectively\nwith OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and\nMeta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses that offer\naccess to its AI assistant.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is very strange to put OpenAI’s upcoming io device(s) in the same sentence as Meta’s glasses, which are a real product you can buy today. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-claims-glasses-surging\">None of these things</a> are setting the world on fire though.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin?rc=jfy0lk\">theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman", "date_published": "2026-01-22T22:03:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-22T22:04:23Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple", "external_url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief-john-ternus-now-overseeing-design-tim-cook-ceo-succession", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Mark Gurman, reporting at Bloomberg:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to\ninclude design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender\nto eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.</p>\n\n<p>Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November,\nquietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the\nend of last year, according to people with knowledge of the\nmatter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most\ncritical functions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://x.com/markgurman/status/2014413622294790610\">And on Twitter/X</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Ternus is now the “executive sponsor” of Apple’s design team,\nrepresenting the critical function on Apple’s executive team. The\nmove was under-the-radar: on paper, the teams report to Tim Cook\ndespite Ternus’s role.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here’s to hoping Ternus is as pissed as the rest of us are about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief-john-ternus-now-overseeing-design-tim-cook-ceo-succession\">bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore", "date_published": "2026-01-22T20:51:34Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-22T20:51:35Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-", "external_url": "https://www.ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker-wants-utah-to-officially-weigh-in", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Bridger Beal-Cvetko and Daniel Woodruff, reporting for KSL News:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/static/SB0138.html\">SB138</a>, sponsored by Cullimore, R-Sandy, would make Android, the\nworld’s most popular mobile device operating system, an official\nstate symbol, joining the ranks of the official state cooking pot\n(the dutch oven), the official state crustacean (the brine\nshrimp), and the official state mushroom (the porcini).</p>\n\n<p>“Someday, everybody with an iPhone will realize that the\ntechnology is better on Android,” Cullimore told reporters during\na media availability on Wednesday, the second day of the\nlegislative session.</p>\n\n<p>But, he added, “I’m the only one in my family — all my kids, my\nwife, they all have iPhones — but I’m holding strong.” [...]</p>\n\n<p>“I don’t expect this to really get out of committee,” he said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(<a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/22/utah-iphone-vs-android/\">Via Joe Rossignol</a>.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker-wants-utah-to-officially-weigh-in\">ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "[Sponsor] Meh", "date_published": "2026-01-21T22:23:45Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T23:30:32Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2", "external_url": "https://meh.com/go/df", "authors": [ { "name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking your head in the sand.</p>\n\n<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break from the misery.</p>\n\n<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems. We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>\n\n<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that. But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is over at Meh today.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://meh.com/go/df\">meh.com/go/df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Crazy People Do Crazy Things", "date_published": "2026-01-19T17:48:46Z", "date_modified": "2026-01-19T17:51:43Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/crazy_people_do_crazy_things", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/crazy_people_do_crazy_things", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Donald Trump, in a message (I wouldn’t call it a letter) <a href=\"https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006\">sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre</a>, <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/donald-trump-greenland-threats-nobel-prize-snub-letter\">confirmed</a> by several news organizations:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the\nNobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel\nan obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be\npredominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for\nthe United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land\nfrom Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership”\nanyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat\nlanded there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing\nthere, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since\nits founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United\nStates. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total\nControl of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s a simple explanation for this. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/08/nyt-trump-dementia\">Trump is in cognitive decline</a> and it’s <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/trump-dementia-checkin\">accelerating</a> from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/18/trump-mcdonalds\">age-related dementia</a>. He lives in an imaginary world that is increasingly cleaved from reality. (Norway, it should be pointed out, is not Denmark, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland\">the country of which Greenland is a part</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>Trump’s Venezuela operation was <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation\">brazenly illegal</a>. But it wasn’t crazy. Venezuela was not a U.S. ally. President Nicolas Maduro lost an election but stayed in power. Venezuela was <a href=\"https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0347\">producing military drones</a> for the hostile regime in Iran, a self-declared enemy of the U.S., NATO, and Israel. Venezuela had a <a href=\"https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship\">burgeoning alliance with China</a>, the U.S.’s primary geopolitical rival.</p>\n\n<p>What Trump is threatening with Greenland is simply bonkers. Greenland is under no threat from China or Russia because it’s part of NATO, and thus — ostensibly — under the full protection of the entire NATO alliance <em>including and especially the United States</em>. If China or Russia attempted to take Greenland it would trigger a world war led by the United States. Compare and contrast with Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine, long before Vladimir Putin invaded, was known to be under threat of Russian invasion. Taiwan has long been known to be <a href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-launches-live-firing-drills-around-taiwan-its-biggest-war-games-date-2025-12-30/\">threatened by China</a>. These threats have been in our geopolitical discourse for decades because the threats were real (and, unfortunately, came to pass in Ukraine).</p>\n\n<p>No one has ever talked about Greenland being under threat of takeover by Russia or China because there is no such threat. It’s no more realistic than Russia taking over Alaska or China taking over Hawaii. It sounds nuts because it is nuts, and the threat only exists in Trump’s disintegrating mind.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0ydjvxpejo\">Eight of our NATO allies have made clear</a>, through action, not mere words, their intention to defend Greenland. Trump, obviously angry that our ostensible allies won’t just roll over and accede to his madness, is now petulantly turning to his favorite word, <a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk8z8xxpgmo\">tariffs</a>. If that’s “<a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/10/politics/us-will-take-greenland-the-hard-way-if-it-cant-do-it-the-easy-way-trump-says\">the hard way</a>”, that’s pathetic. Stand up to bullies and they usually fold.</p>\n\n<p>The threat to Greenland, and thus to NATO — and thus, quite literally, to the entire world — is not that Trump authorized an illegal military operation in Venezuela, so he might do it in Greenland too. Again, what the U.S. did in Venezuela was <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation\">obviously illegal</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/maybe-russia-and-china-should-sit-one-out/685490/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yGIoJxtnmQes_m73rNK5U2M\">probably stupid</a>, but it wasn’t crazy. Breaking up NATO and starting a war with Europe would be batshit crazy. The threat is that Trump is showing us, every day, that he <em>is</em> crazy. Crazy people do crazy things, and crazy cult leaders surround themselves with cultists. The rest of us need to <a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/greenland-national-defense-maps-6f53c339\">stop sane-washing this</a>. You cannot make sense out of nonsense.</p>\n\n<p>If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “<em>How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?</em>” They should respond with headlines like “<em>How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Dementia-Addled Head?</em>” But threatening to take Greenland by military force is nuttier than laying claim to the moon’s cheese. Laying claim to non-existent green cheese wouldn’t trigger a shooting war that blows apart the most powerful alliance in military history.</p>\n\n\n\n " } ] }