Check whether your feed is valid. For more information about JSON Feed, see the specification. Find the validator source code on GitHub.
GET validation response in JSON format.
{ "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": "Another Dyson Presentation", "date_published": "2025-09-08T16:47:00Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-08T16:52:23Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/08/dyson", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/08/dyson", "external_url": "https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xTE2EuAt8", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>I loved watching this. My takeaway: don’t just say what it does, explain how it does what it does.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xTE2EuAt8\">m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xTE2EuAt8</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "TextJam", "date_published": "2025-09-07T23:05:55Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-08T18:18:07Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/07/textjam", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/07/textjam", "external_url": "https://textjam.com/show/demo?df", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to TextJam for sponsoring this past week at DF. TextJam just launched last week, it’s a remarkable “1.0” release — a multi-player text editor / word processor with a novel twist on how humans interact with AI. TextJam introduces the metaphors of “pen” mode for writing in ink, when you know exactly what words you want to write, with “pencil” mode for text you want to use a prompt or just a simple dashed-off starting point for AI assistance. It sounds like it makes intuitive sense, and when you actually try it, it <em>feels</em> even more natural. I really love this metaphor of ink vs. pencil. It leaves you, the writer, in control, but also gives all the assistance you want.</p>\n\n<p>TextJam also has other very clever ideas, like using “pinch” multitouch gestures for resizing text — pinch in to get AI suggestions for making the selected text shorter, pinch out to expand it. TextJam has integrations with all of the most popular LLM systems: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Llama, and more.</p>\n\n<p>And that’s just talking about the cutting-edge AI-type features. TextJam is also a great collaborative editor, where you and your teammates can work together on the same document with really clever interface elements who made — or is currently in the processing of making — which changes.</p>\n\n<p>You can say, “<em>Well, why don’t I just use Google Docs for this?</em>” Right? My answer is just look at the two of them. Google Docs is like 98 percent stuff no one uses and therefore everyone ignores. TextJam is focused on the features people actually use and understand. It just looks and feels so much more more comfortable and stylish.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://textjam.com/show/demo?df\">Try it today for free</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://textjam.com/show/demo?df\">textjam.com/show/demo?df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "A Cynical Read on Anthropic’s Book Settlement", "date_published": "2025-09-06T18:34:55Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-06T18:38:25Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/06/siegler-cynical-read", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/06/siegler-cynical-read", "external_url": "https://spyglass.org/cynical-read-on-anthropics-book-settlement/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>And so you can’t help but wonder if part of the equation in this settlement wasn’t decidedly more cynical. Fresh off <a href=\"https://spyglass.org/signal-the-google-antitrust-nuance/#:~:text=%F0%9F%A7%A0%20Anthropic%27s%20%2413B,%5BBloomberg%20%F0%9F%94%92%5D\">a new massive fundraise</a> — one in which they raised <a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-02/anthropic-completes-new-funding-round-at-183-billion-valuation?embedded-checkout=true&ref=spyglass.org\">far more</a> than they were initially targeting, I might add — Anthropic has a lot of money. More than perhaps <a href=\"https://spyglass.org/openai-ipo-ish/\">all but one of their competitors</a> on the startup side. By settling for $1.5B, is Anthropic sort of pulling up a drawbridge, making it so that other startups can’t possibly come into their castle? I mean, am I crazy?</p>\n\n<p>I’m not so sure I am. At $1.5B, there are only a handful of companies that could afford to pay such fines. Certainly OpenAI is one. Maybe xAI. And of course all the tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, <a href=\"https://spyglass.org/meta-operation-kick-puppies/\">and Meta</a>. But could any other startup that has done any level of model training with such data? Probably not.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Kind of dastardly when you think about it this way.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://spyglass.org/cynical-read-on-anthropics-book-settlement/\">spyglass.org/cynical-read-on-anthropics-book-settlement/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion to Authors in Landmark AI Settlement", "date_published": "2025-09-05T21:22:46Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-06T00:14:05Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/05/anthropic-copyright-settlement", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/05/anthropic-copyright-settlement", "external_url": "https://www.theverge.com/anthropic/773087/anthropic-to-pay-1-5-billion-to-authors-in-landmark-ai-settlement", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Hayden Field, reporting for The Verge:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In what’s potentially the first major payout to creatives whose work was used to train AI systems, Anthropic has reached an agreement to pay “at least” a staggering $1.5 billion, plus interest, to authors to settle its class-action lawsuit. The amount breaks down to smaller payouts expected to be approximately $3,000 per book or work. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said it’s “believed to be the largest publicly reported recovery in the history of US copyright litigation.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/anthropic/773087/anthropic-to-pay-1-5-billion-to-authors-in-landmark-ai-settlement\">theverge.com/anthropic/773087/anthropic-to-pay-1-5-billion…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Atlassian Acquires The Browser Company for $610 Million", "date_published": "2025-09-04T21:35:42Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-04T22:15:34Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/atlassian-the-browser-company", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/atlassian-the-browser-company", "external_url": "https://www.theverge.com/web/770947/browser-company-arc-dia-acquired-atlassian", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>David Pierce, writing for The Verge:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software giant\n<a href=\"https://www.atlassian.com/\">Atlassian</a>, was one of the first users of <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/23462235/arc-web-browser-review\">the Arc\nbrowser</a>. Over the last several years, he has been a prolific\nbug reporter and feature requester. Now he’ll own the thing:\nAtlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the New York-based\nstartup that makes both Arc and the <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/web/685232/dia-browser-ai-arc\">new AI-focused Dia\nbrowser</a>. Atlassian is paying $610 million in cash for The\nBrowser Company, and plans to run it as an independent entity.</p>\n\n<p>The conversations that led to the deal started about a year ago,\nsays Josh Miller, The Browser Company’s CEO. Lots of Atlassian\nemployees were using Arc, and “they reached out wondering, how\ncould we get more enterprise-ready?” Miller says. Big companies\nrequire data privacy, security, and management features in the\nsoftware they use, and The Browser Company didn’t offer enough\nof them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I get it. Later in the same article, there’s this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As for what this all means for The Browser Company’s browsers,\nit’s still too early to say for sure. Miller promises no\nfavored-nation features for Atlassian products, nor any Microsoft\nEdge-style popups begging you to sign up for Jira. Miller says the\nteam is even more committed to being a truly cross-platform\nproduct, and that Windows in particular is about to get a lot more\nattention.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>But “<em>How could we get more enterprise-ready?</em>” has never been a north-star principle for great user-focused software. I personally have never seen the appeal of Arc or Dia, but Safari truly speaks to me and my taste. Alternative browsers, by definition, are meant for people who are dissatisfied with existing browsers. So while I don’t use Arc or Dia, I’ve always been rooting for The Browser Company. I even dig the company name.</p>\n\n<p>But this seems like bad news. I just don’t see how Atlassian/Jira DNA can possibly be a good thing to inject into an innovative user-focused web browser.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/web/770947/browser-company-arc-dia-acquired-atlassian\">theverge.com/web/770947/browser-company-arc-dia-acquired…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Investors Score the US-v.-Google Remedies Ruling a Win for Google and Apple", "date_published": "2025-09-04T21:00:46Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-04T21:02:41Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/investors-google-apple-mehta-decision", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/investors-google-apple-mehta-decision", "external_url": "https://www.wsj.com/tech/judge-bars-google-from-exclusive-search-deals-orders-data-sharing-e65a2191?st=VJ33DJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Dave Michaels and Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow\nmarket forces to do the work,” Mehta wrote.</p>\n\n<p>Wall Street analysts scored the ruling a huge win for Google and\nApple since it allowed an existing arrangement to continue in\nwhich Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the\ndefault search provider on the Safari browser.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m picking nits here, but I think part of the ruling is that Google can no longer pay to be the default search engine. And, in my opinion, they never needed to, and never should have put that into their contracts for these deals. They’re just paying Apple (and Mozilla, and Samsung, and others) for the actual search traffic that goes to Google from those companies’ browsers. It’s up to Apple whether Google is the <em>default</em> Safari search engine (which it is, and will continue to be). It just won’t be in the terms of the deal that Google search has to be the default.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The ruling paves the way for the two companies to partner further\non AI-related services on Apple devices, analysts said. Apple\ncurrently has a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into various\niPhone services. Apple and Google have had talks about striking a\nsimilar deal for Google’s AI system called Gemini.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I wonder if this antitrust ruling was the holdup on Apple announcing Gemini as an Apple Intelligence partner? Apple, famously, almost never talks about future plans, but at last year’s WWDC, <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/10/apple-confirms-plans-to-work-with-googles-gemini-in-the-future/\">Craig Federighi made conspicuous mention</a> of Google Gemini as a potential Apple Intelligence partner — and now here we are 14 months later and it hasn’t yet happened.</p>\n\n<p>Also, re: this decision being largely a win for Google — <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/is_chrome_even_a_sellable_asset\">it just never made sense to me that Chrome even is a sellable asset</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/tech/judge-bars-google-from-exclusive-search-deals-orders-data-sharing-e65a2191?st=VJ33DJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink\">wsj.com/tech/judge-bars-google-from-exclusive-search-deals…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Instagram Finally Launches an iPad App", "date_published": "2025-09-04T20:22:25Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-04T20:22:26Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/instagram-ipad", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/instagram-ipad", "external_url": "https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-for-ipad/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>There are finallys, and there are <em>finallys</em>. Apple shipped the original iPad in April 2010. Instagram shipped in October 2010 — <a href=\"https://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/04/19/phil-schiller-quits-instagram/\">and was iPhone-exclusive until 2012</a>. That Instagram didn’t ship a native iPad version of its app until now is really one of the strangest things in tech. But here it is.</p>\n\n<p>One significant difference from Instagram on phones is that on iPad, it defaults to the Reels view, and you have to tap below Reels in the sidebar to get to your following timeline. Adam Mosseri explains their thinking behind this <a href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOJWGJyETYq/?igsh=MWFwMXNsdWFwNHp1ZQ==\">in this Reel</a> (natch).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-for-ipad/\">about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-for-ipad/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Google Avoids Harshest Penalties in Search Monopoly Ruling", "date_published": "2025-09-04T19:48:38Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-04T19:48:38Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/google-avoids-harshest-penalties-in-search-monopoly-ruling", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/04/google-avoids-harshest-penalties-in-search-monopoly-ruling", "external_url": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/google-search-antitrust-decision.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival\ncompanies but does not need to break itself up by selling its\nChrome web browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The\ndecision, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for\nthe District of Columbia, falls short of the sweeping changes\nproposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley.</p>\n\n<p>Judge Mehta said in the 223-page ruling that Google must share\nsome of its search data with “qualified competitors” to resolve\nits monopoly. The Justice Department had asked the judge to force\nthe company to share even more of its data, arguing it was key to\nGoogle’s dominance.</p>\n\n<p>Judge Mehta also put restrictions on payments that Google uses to\nensure its search engine gets prime placement in web browsers and\non smartphones. But he stopped short of banning those payments\nentirely and did not grant the government’s request that Google be\nforced to sell Chrome, which the government said was necessary to\nremedy the company’s power as a search monopoly.</p>\n\n<p>“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of\ncrafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Judge Mehta\nsaid in Tuesday’s decision. “This court has done so.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No forced divestiture of Chrome or Android, and Google is allowed to continue making traffic acquisition cost payments to companies like Apple (for search in Safari) and Mozilla (for search in Firefox). The decision seems very reasonable to me. And while <a href=\"https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_4.pdf\">the entire ruling</a> is 223 pages, Judge Mehta included a good summary at the front. You can get a feel for it just by reading the first few pages.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/google-search-antitrust-decision.html\">nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/google-search-antitrust…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "[Sponsor] TextJam", "date_published": "2025-09-02T23:00:49Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-02T23:00:49Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/09/textjam", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/09/textjam", "external_url": "https://textjam.com/show/demo?df", "authors": [ { "name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>We’re excited to launch TextJam this week, a multi-player editor with a novel twist on how humans interact with AI. Ever tried to “AI chat” your way to a polished piece of writing, and wanted more control over the result?</p>\n\n<p>TextJam has new inventions that make it easy to tell the AI what to keep and what to change, so you can get from draft to done faster. From typing in pen and pencil, to multi-touch gestures that intelligently resize text, TextJam is a bold new take on what a word processor can be. <a href=\"https://textjam.com/show/demo?df\">Try it today for free</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://textjam.com/show/demo?df\">textjam.com/show/demo?df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Bernie Sanders: Kennedy Must Resign", "date_published": "2025-09-01T22:16:02Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-01T22:16:02Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/sanders-rfk-jr-resign", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/sanders-rfk-jr-resign", "external_url": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/opinion/bernie-sanders-robert-f-kennedy-jr-resign-hhs.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Bernie Sanders, in a NYT op-ed:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services,\nis endangering the health of the American people now and into the\nfuture. He must resign.</p>\n\n<p>Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over\nand over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a\ngreat slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming\ninto office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the\nopposite.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Powerful and to the point. Sanders, unlike the nine former CDC directors whose joint op-ed ran the next day, doesn’t pull punches. But there’s no point demanding Kennedy resign, because he won’t. Sanders, and the rest of us, should call on Trump to fire him. The buck stops with Trump. Trump fires his appointees all the time. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_short-tenure_Donald_Trump_political_appointments\">Almost no one lasted long</a> in the Trump 1.0 administration, and it’s unlikely anyone will last long in the Trump 2.0 administration. (Including, perhaps, Trump himself, <a href=\"https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/it-s-time-to-have-a-serious-conversation-about-trump-s-health\">who is clearly unwell</a>.) Kennedy ought to be the first to go.</p>\n\n<p>Trump smells it too, hence <a href=\"https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115128985245605660\">this “both sides” post on his blog this morning</a>. Public opinion is strongly against this abject vaccine quackery.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/opinion/bernie-sanders-robert-f-kennedy-jr-resign-hhs.html\">nytimes.com/2025/08/30/opinion/bernie-sanders-robert-f…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Nine Former Directors of the CDC: ‘RFK Jr. Is Endangering Every American’s Health’", "date_published": "2025-09-01T22:05:14Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-01T22:05:14Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/former-cdc-directors", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/former-cdc-directors", "external_url": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/opinion/cdc-leaders-kennedy.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen — all of them former directors of the CDC, under every president from Jimmy Carter to Trump — in a co-bylined op-ed for the NYT:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy\nJr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health\nsystem over the past several months — culminating in his decision\nto fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike\nanything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our\ncountry had ever experienced.</p>\n\n<p>Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and\n<a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/health/cdc-layoffs-kennedy.html\">severely weakened</a> programs designed to protect Americans\nfrom cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury,\nviolence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United\nStates in a generation, he’s <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/health/measles-treatments-vaccines-kennedy.html\">focused on</a> unproven\ntreatments while downplaying vaccines. He <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/health/rfk-jr-vaccine-funding.html\">canceled</a>\ninvestments in promising medical research that will leave us ill\nprepared for future health emergencies. He <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/well/vaccines-cdc-rfk-jr.html\">replaced</a>\nexperts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified\nindividuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He\nannounced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs\nthat protect millions of children and keep Americans safe,\n<a href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2025/07/02/rfk-jr-vaccines-former-cdc-director-tom-frieden-says-kennedy-mangled-science-in-gavi-decision/\">citing</a> flawed research and making inaccurate statements.\nAnd he <a href=\"https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1940089073391018352\">championed</a> federal legislation that will cause\nmillions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to\n<a href=\"https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-06/Wyden-Pallone-Neal_Letter_6-4-25.pdf\">lose</a> their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to\nthe resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel\nto this raging fire. [...]</p>\n\n<p>This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American,\nregardless of political leanings.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s good that they’re speaking up, but it’s too mealy-mouthed. What’s going on at HHS under Kennedy isn’t merely “unacceptable” and “alarming”. It’s outrageous and shocking.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/opinion/cdc-leaders-kennedy.html\">nytimes.com/2025/09/01/opinion/cdc-leaders-kennedy.html</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Talk Show: ‘Ersatz PopSocket’", "date_published": "2025-09-01T19:30:03Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-01T19:30:03Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/the-talk-show-430", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/01/the-talk-show-430", "external_url": "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/31/ep-430", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>For your holiday listening enjoyment: Special guest Andru Edwards joins the show. Topics include Google’s Pixel 10 event and the Pixel 10 family of devices, AI’s effect on computational photography, foldable phones, and some speculation on Apple’s September 9 “Awe Dropping” event.</p>\n\n<p><audio\n src = \"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-430-andru-edwards.mp3\"\n controls\n preload = \"none\"\n/></p>\n\n<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\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. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://notion.com/talkshow\">Notion</a>: The best AI tool for work, with your notes, docs, and projects in one space.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/31/ep-430\">daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/31/ep-430</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Walk the World", "date_published": "2025-08-31T15:59:00Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-01T19:27:53Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/walk-the-world", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/walk-the-world", "external_url": "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to Impending for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their new app, Walk the World. You surely know some of Impending’s other apps, like the innovative checklist/task app <a href=\"https://www.useclear.com/\">Clear</a>. Walk the World turns your steps — your real-world activity — into a new kind of virtual globe-trotting adventure. </p>\n\n<p>Wouldn’t it be cool to know you’ve walked the length of the Boston Marathon this past week? You can conquer iconic hikes and trails from around the world presented as gorgeous map milestones to complete with your hard earned steps. It’s a genuinely novel idea for gamifying activity, executed with an exquisite attention to detail and exuberant sense of joy. Walk the World isn’t quite a game, but it delivers game-like fun.</p>\n\n<p>If you enjoy or aspire to go on walks more regularly, and beautiful indie apps with fun new twists, this is your new healthy addiction. <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929\">Try Walk the World free today for your iPhone</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929\">apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Vintage Macintosh Programming Book Library", "date_published": "2025-08-31T15:11:58Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-31T15:44:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library", "external_url": "https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>One more for my <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/30/notable-improvements-to-coding-intelligence-in-xcode-26-beta-7\">weekend</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/sosumi-ai\">spate</a> of developer posts, but from the opposite of the LLM-assisted cutting edge: this wonderful collection of classic-era Mac programming books, carefully scanned as PDFs. These evoke nostalgia both for the classic Mac era <em>and</em> for the entire notion of “programming books”. (Via <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/08/29/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library/\">Michael Tsai</a> and <a href=\"https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2025/07/24/2130\">Rui Carmo</a>.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html\">vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "sosumi.ai: Apple Developer Docs for LLMs", "date_published": "2025-08-31T13:54:38Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-31T15:02:42Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/sosumi-ai", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/sosumi-ai", "external_url": "https://sosumi.ai/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Sosumi.ai:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Ever notice Claude struggling to write Swift code? It might not be\ntheir fault!</p>\n\n<p>Apple Developer docs are locked behind JavaScript, making them\ninvisible to most LLMs. If they try to fetch it, all they see is\n“<em>This page requires JavaScript. Please turn on JavaScript in your\nbrowser and refresh the page to view its content.</em>”</p>\n\n<p>This service translates Apple Developer documentation pages into\nAI-friendly Markdown.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Perfect little audio easter egg on the page. Beautiful Markdown output too. Look at <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/\">my boy</a>, all grown up, teaching robots how to program.</p>\n\n<p>I do regret, though, that I didn’t define or influence the <a href=\"https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/working-with-advanced-formatting/creating-and-highlighting-code-blocks\">fenced style for code blocks</a>. If I had, instead of this:</p>\n\n<pre><code>```swift\n// An array of 'Int' elements\nlet oddNumbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15]\n```\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>You could do this, which looks so much better:</p>\n\n<pre><code>``` Swift:\n// An array of 'Int' elements\nlet oddNumbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15]\n```\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Those all-lowercase language identifiers, with no preceding space, just look a little lazy. I realize why GitHub’s <code>```</code>-fenced code blocks took off (they’re the only code block style most Markdown users know, I suspect), but they <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/31/sosumi-ai.text\">don’t look nearly as nice</a>, to human readers, as <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode\">my original tab-indented style</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://sosumi.ai/\">sosumi.ai/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Notable Improvements to Coding Intelligence in Xcode 26 Beta 7", "date_published": "2025-08-30T16:01:43Z", "date_modified": "2025-09-01T14:22:36Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/30/notable-improvements-to-coding-intelligence-in-xcode-26-beta-7", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/30/notable-improvements-to-coding-intelligence-in-xcode-26-beta-7", "external_url": "https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26-release-notes", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>From Apple’s Xcode 26 Beta 7 release notes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n<li><p>Claude in Xcode is now available in the Intelligence settings\npanel, allowing users to seamlessly add their existing paid\nClaude account to Xcode and start using Claude Sonnet 4.\n(155826755)</p></li>\n<li><p>When using ChatGPT in Xcode, users can now start a new\nconversation with either GPT-4.1 or GPT-5, with GPT-5 set as the\ndefault. (158342780)</p></li>\n<li><p>ChatGPT in Xcode provides two model choices. “GPT-5” is\noptimized for quick, high-quality results, and should work well\nfor most coding tasks. For difficult tasks, choose “GPT-5\n(Reasoning)“, which spends more time thinking before responding,\nand can provide more accurate results for complex coding tasks.</p>\n\n<p>In the OpenAI API, “GPT-5” corresponds to the “minimal”\nreasoning level, and “GPT-5 (Reasoning)” corresponds to the\n“low” reasoning level. (159135374)</p></li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That’s just three weeks from the <a href=\"https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5/\">launch of ChatGPT 5</a> to shipping support in Xcode. Also, these are just the built-in integrations. As announced at WWDC, Xcode 26 allows developers to use their API keys from other AI providers, or connect to models running locally, on-device (if they’re using an Apple Silicon Mac).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26-release-notes\">developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Trump Fires CDC Director, Anti-Vax Wingnuts Now Running Asylum", "date_published": "2025-08-28T14:49:45Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-28T14:49:46Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/28/trump-fires-cdc-director", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/28/trump-fires-cdc-director", "external_url": "https://www.semafor.com/article/08/28/2025/white-house-fires-cdc-director-over-vaccine-disagreements", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Shelby Talcott, reporting under the euphemistic headline “White House Fires CDC Director Over Vaccine Disagreements”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A showdown at the CDC culminated in the White House formally\nfiring its director, Susan Monarez, <a href=\"https://x.com/shelbytalcott/status/1960879360870633833\">on Wednesday night</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Monarez was ousted earlier in the day, after Health and Human\nServices Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked her to step down\namid disagreements over changing vaccine policies, The Washington\nPost <a href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/27/susan-monarez-cdc-director-ousted/\">reported</a> — and HHS confirmed her departure.</p>\n\n<p>But Monarez’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, pushed back. Zaid said in a\nstatement later that a White House staffer had delivered the news,\nand given that Monarez is a Senate-confirmed officer, “only the\npresident himself can fire” her. “For this reason, we reject the\nnotification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she\nremains as CDC Director,” Zaid said.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/health/cdc-monarez-kennedy-vaccines.html\">Four other top</a> CDC directors also resigned Wednesday.\n“These high profile departures will require oversight by the”\nSenate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, panel\nchair Bill Cassidy, R-La., <a href=\"https://x.com/senbillcassidy/status/1960895774079799344?s=46\">posted</a> on X.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The “White House” didn’t fire Monarez. Donald Trump did. And while technically, she was fired over “vaccine disagreements”, yes, those disagreements weren’t scientific or medical. It was science on one side, and abject quackery on the other. We really needed the CDC five years ago. We’re in big trouble if we need them again before the US electorate ousts these wingnuts.</p>\n\n<p>Here’s a headline, and coverage, from The Guardian that captures the situation with clarity and without mincing words: “<a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/aug/27/cdc-resignation-susan-monarez-trump-administration-us-politics-updates-rfk-jr\">CDC Chief ‘Targeted’ for Refusing to ‘Rubber-Stamp Unscientific, Reckless Directives’, Lawyers Say</a>”</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.semafor.com/article/08/28/2025/white-house-fires-cdc-director-over-vaccine-disagreements\">semafor.com/article/08/28/2025/white-house-fires-cdc…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "How AirPods Work", "date_published": "2025-08-28T14:18:39Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-28T22:27:49Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/28/how-airpods-work", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/28/how-airpods-work", "external_url": "https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-hidden-design-of-the-apple-airpod/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Truly phenomenal video from Real Engineering about a genuinely phenomenal product. In my <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2023/09/airpods_pro_2_usbc\">review of the AirPods Pro 2 in 2023</a> — a year after they originally shipped, when the cases were changed to use USB-C — I called them “the best single expression of Apple as a company today”. That remains true. AirPods exemplify everything that sets Apple apart: miniaturization, “it just works” ease of use, opinionated design (you get them in any color you want, so long as it’s white), and, most of all, joyfulness.</p>\n\n<p>It occurs to me that Apple doesn’t brag enough about its engineering accomplishments these days. Under their previous CEO, they’d spend more time in product introduction explaining how things work, like a lecture in a 101 college course. I miss that. This Real Engineering video fills in those gaps.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-hidden-design-of-the-apple-airpod/\">nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-hidden-design-of-the…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Masimo Sues U.S. Customs and Border Protection Over Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Ruling", "date_published": "2025-08-27T15:47:20Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-31T14:21:23Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/27/masimo-sues-cbp", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/27/masimo-sues-cbp", "external_url": "https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/masimo-sues-us-customs-over-apple-restoring-watchs-oxygen-tool", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Christopher Yasiejko, reporting last week for Bloomberg Law:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>CBP exceeded its authority in an Aug. 1 internal advice ruling\nthat overturned its own January decision without notice or input\nfrom Masimo, the medical-device maker said in a <a href=\"https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/MASIMOCORPORATIONvUNITEDSTATESCUSTOMSANDBORDERPROTECTIONetalDocke?doc_id=X7CR5AGJN19VIQVF66HVETLJRF\">complaint</a>\nfiled Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of\nColumbia. Masimo brought claims under the Administrative Procedure\nAct and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://rulings.cbp.gov/ruling/H351038\">The CBP ruling is available here</a>. <!-- Hosted copy in /misc/ for posterity. --> As I read the CPB ruling, Apple’s argument goes something like this:</p>\n\n<p>Masimo’s patents (the validity of which Apple disputes, but that’s neither here nor there for this ruling) cover a non-invasive device worn on the user’s body, that reads blood oxygen levels by shining light of various wavelengths through the skin, computes the reading on the device, and shows the result on device. With Apple’s workaround for watches sold in the US, the computation and the display of results occur off-device (on the paired iPhone), and thus the “redesigned” blood oxygen feature doesn’t violate Masimo’s patents.</p>\n\n<p>The CBP’s investigation centered around whether the Masimo patents were “limiting” — which seems to mean a device that does all these things: the sensors, the computation of results, and the display of results. Masimo argued that the patents weren’t limiting, and apparently made no argument for how the import ban on Apple Watches should stand if the patents were found by CBP to be limiting. The CBP asked the International Trade Commission — the outfit that instituted the import ban — whether they considered the Masimo patents to be limiting, and the ITC responded yes, they did, that that was the entire basis of the import ban.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/MASIMOCORPORATIONvUNITEDSTATESCUSTOMSANDBORDERPROTECTIONetalDocke?doc_id=X7CR5AGJN19VIQVF66HVETLJRF\">Masimo’s new complaint against the CBP</a> makes mention of Apple’s Trump-pleasing <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more-than-500-billion-usd-in-the-us-over-the-next-four-years/\">series</a> <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/07/apple-expands-us-supply-chain-with-500-million-usd-commitment/\">of</a> <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/apple-increases-us-commitment-to-600-billion-usd-announces-ambitious-program/\">announcements</a> related to investments in US manufacturing, leaving it to the reader to interpet the implication that there’s a quid pro quo at play with the CBP ruling. But the CBP ruling’s timeline makes clear that much of the investigation took place during the Biden administration in 2024. It reads to me like that same decision would have been made, at the same time, if Kamala Harris had won last year’s election. But that’s the problem with a pay-to-play corrupt government like Trump’s, and Tim Cook’s willingness to play along to any degree, no matter how mild. By currying favor with Trump, it now looks like any decision from the U.S. government that goes in Apple’s favor might be <em>because</em> Apple curried favored with Trump. I genuinely do not believe that’s the case here. The ITC ruling was based on an interpretation of Masimo’s patents that they were limited to user-worn devices that read, compute, <em>and</em> display blood oxygen levels non-invasively, and given that U.S. Apple Watches no longer compute or display the results, they no longer violate Masimo’s patents.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/masimo-sues-us-customs-over-apple-restoring-watchs-oxygen-tool\">news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/masimo-sues-us-customs-over…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Talk Show: ‘Weird Turtle Fake Out’", "date_published": "2025-08-27T02:19:37Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T02:19:53Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/the-talk-show-429", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/the-talk-show-429", "external_url": "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/25/ep-429", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Matthew Panzarino returns to the show. Topics include 007 logo creator Joe Caroff’s death at 103, Google’s weird “Made by Google” event hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the UK supposedly dropping its demand for an iCloud encryption backdoor, and Apple’s workaround for the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor patent stalemate.</p>\n\n<p><audio\n src = \"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-429-matthew-panzarino.mp3\"\n controls\n preload = \"none\"\n/></p>\n\n<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\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. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://factormeals.com/$CODE\">Factor</a>: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/25/ep-429\">daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/25/ep-429</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "MacSurfer Returns Under New Ownership", "date_published": "2025-08-27T01:37:16Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T01:37:17Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/macsurfer-returns", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/macsurfer-returns", "external_url": "https://macsurfer.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>After a 25-year run, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/02/macsurfer\">the website MacSurfer closed in 2020</a>. But, as brought to my attention <a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/linklog/macsurfer-returns/\">two weeks ago by Nick Heer</a>, MacSurfer quietly returned in June. No one seemed to notice until this month.</p>\n\n<p>The original MacSurfer was a bit of a weird site. Content-wise it was a daily headline aggregator, with no original news or commentary. That made a lot of sense in 1995 and for a few years thereafter, when the web was new. I remember reading it somewhat regularly back then. But one never really “read” MacSurfer — you scanned it. Even the name harks back to the very early web, when, <a href=\"https://www.netmom.com/surfing/who-invented-surfing-the-internet\">somehow</a>, the idiom “surfing the Internet” took hold. (Thus <a href=\"https://music.apple.com/us/album/surfin-safari/1442871699\">leading to</a> the name “Safari” for a web browser.) But MacSurfer stopped making as much sense with the advent of RSS, when it became easy to create your own custom aggregated collection of website sources. I didn’t want to dance on MacSurfer’s grave when it closed shop in 2020, but at the time, I couldn’t believe it hadn’t closed long before.</p>\n\n<p>The revived MacSurfer hasn’t changed the concept, so I’m not sure who will read it now either. A firehose has a purpose, but it’s not for drinking.</p>\n\n<p>The other thing that always struck me as strange about MacSurfer is that it was anonymous. There was no credit as to who was behind it. <a href=\"https://macdailynews.com/\">MacDailyNews</a> is similar: longstanding and anonymous, and, to a lesser degree than MacSurfer, a bit of a firehose. But MacDailyNews’s unnamed author adds commentary to his posts. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/11/imessage-for-android\">Crackpot</a> <a href=\"https://macdailynews.com/tag/president-trump/\">wingnut</a> commentary, oftentimes, but commentary nonetheless. Pseudonyms have a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain\">long</a>, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell\">storied</a> history. But I think it’s weird — and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2024/12/on_the_accountability_of_unnamed_public_relations_spokespeople#fn3-2024-12-14\">somewhat suspicious</a> — not to put any name at all on your work.</p>\n\n<p>The new MacSurfer, like the old one, remains unsigned. But after <a href=\"https://schwarztech.net/articles/macsurfer-is-back\">Eric Schwarz started blogging about</a> the mysterious return of the site after its half-decade absence, the new owner, Ken Turner, reached out and <a href=\"https://schwarztech.net/articles/interview-with-macsurfers-new-owner-ken-turner\">agreed to an interview</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://macsurfer.com/\">macsurfer.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple to Debut TechWoven Cases for iPhone 17 Lineup", "date_published": "2025-08-27T00:51:45Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T01:40:12Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/majin-bu-techwoven", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/majin-bu-techwoven", "external_url": "https://majinbuofficial.com/iphone-17-new-tech-woven-case-unveiled/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Supply chain leaker Majin Bu has the scoop, including photos of the cases and their packaging, of Apple’s second attempt at a fabric-based successor to leather iPhone cases. Apple’s first attempt two years ago, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/search/finewoven\">FineWoven</a>, was so unpopular that they didn’t even offer a premium level of Apple-branded cases last year with the iPhones 16.</p>\n\n<p>Apple dropped all use of leather two years ago, including watch bands and wallets. FineWoven was kind of shitty for those too — it just wasn’t a durable material, but Apple put it to use on products that demand durability. I mean that’s the entire point of an iPhone case in particular. These new TechWoven cases look good, and I doubt Apple will make the same durability mistake twice. The new cases have metal buttons (yay) but also a bottom lip on the case (boo). No word yet on whether Apple will replace FineWoven with TechWoven for <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/shop/watch/bands/finewoven\">Apple Watch bands</a> and <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MA6W4ZM/A/iphone-finewoven-wallet-with-magsafe-black\">MagSafe Wallets</a> too, but I bet they will. I doubt we’ll ever hear the word “FineWoven” again.</p>\n\n<p>(Majin Bu has <a href=\"https://majinbuofficial.com/iphone-17-new-liquid-silicone-cases-official-colors-revealed/\">leaked photos of Apple’s new silicone cases</a>, too.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://majinbuofficial.com/iphone-17-new-tech-woven-case-unveiled/\">majinbuofficial.com/iphone-17-new-tech-woven-case-unveiled/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Elon Musk Bullshit Watch", "date_published": "2025-08-26T22:36:56Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-26T22:36:57Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/musk-bullshit-watch", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/musk-bullshit-watch", "external_url": "https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1958852874236305793", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Elon Musk, Friday:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Join @xAI and help build a purely AI software company called\nMacrohard. It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is\nvery real!</p>\n\n<p>In principle, given that software companies like Microsoft do not\nthemselves manufacture any physical hardware, it should be\npossible to simulate them entirely with AI.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If it’s “a purely AI software company” why do they need to hire anyone?</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1958852874236305793\">x.com/elonmusk/status/1958852874236305793</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Tulsi Gabbard Says the U.K. Government Has Backed Down From Its Demand for an iCloud Backdoor", "date_published": "2025-08-26T22:35:51Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T03:01:01Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/gabbar-uk-icloud-backdoor", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/gabbar-uk-icloud-backdoor", "external_url": "https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1957623737232007638", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Tulsi Gabbard — who, believe it or not, is the US director of national intelligence — on X last week:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with our\npartners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans’\nprivate data remains private and our Constitutional rights and\ncivil liberties are protected.</p>\n\n<p>As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to\nprovide a “back door” that would have enabled access to the\nprotected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on\nour civil liberties.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdj2m3rrk74o\">BBC News</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The BBC understands Apple has not yet received any formal\ncommunication from either the US or UK governments. “We do not\ncomment on operational matters, including confirming or denying\nthe existence of such notices,” a UK government spokesperson said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Back in February, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/apple_pulls_advanced_data_protection_from_the_uk\">Apple pulled the Advanced Data Protection feature of iCloud from the UK</a>, in what it deemed a necessary move to comply with the UK demand. Until and if Apple restores the ADP feature in the UK, I wouldn’t consider this over. I hope it’s true, but a Trump official tweeting that it’s true doesn’t make it true.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1957623737232007638\">x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1957623737232007638</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Less Fun Than a Barrel of Crackers’", "date_published": "2025-08-26T21:42:17Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T15:03:06Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/cracker-barrel-mccoy", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/cracker-barrel-mccoy", "external_url": "https://johnmccoy.org/2025/08/25/less-fun-than-a-barrel-of-crackers/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>John McCoy, on the supposedly controversial Cracker Barrel rebranding:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But just because I doubt that these choices were motivated by\npolitics doesn’t mean the detractors don’t have a point: something\nbasic is being lost here. In both cases the companies have\ndiscarded character and context in an effort to streamline their\nidentity. <a href=\"https://johnmccoy.org/2016/05/12/give-us-those-nice-bright-colors-give-us-the-greens-of-summer/\">I have written previously</a> about the often\nmisguided penchant art directors have towards simplifying their\nbrands. I suspect that the lion’s share (ha) of this tendency is\nsimply following trends, and the current fashion in corporate\ndesign is simple, flat typography and short (often single-word)\nbrand names. To the extent that someone actually gave this a\nthought, the rationale is to remove any attributes that might\ncomplicate a consumer’s attitude towards the brand. It also\nreflects the desire of new executives to mark their territory by\npeeing on it — see <a href=\"https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/branding-experts-max-renamed-hbo-max-1236399788/\">HBO’s constant rebranding</a>, or Elon\nMusk <a href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcuscollins/2023/07/30/the-real-lesson-to-be-learned-from-twitters-rebrand/\">destroying the only part of Twitter that had any\nvalue</a>, its name recognition.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to be charitable, and I try to be when I can, the move\ntowards brand simplification also reflects a longstanding adage in\ndesign — be it visual art, design, writing, or engineering: “less\nis more.” This saying, often misattributed to Mies van der Rohe,\nemphasizes clarity and utility. The goal is to focus on what is\nessential. Practitioners of this belief make outsized claims about\nthe effects of this approach.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is <a href=\"https://sixcolors.com/link/2025/08/the-relentless-drive-toward-simplified-design/\">via Jason Snell at Six Colors</a>, and, on the presumption that all of you have the good sense to read Six Colors regularly, I’d let you encounter McCoy’s post there, but for my need to make a few side points, gleaned from Threads:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The “controversy” is regarding the removal of the Uncle Herschel mascot (the <a href=\"https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/ezbx27y\">cracker</a>) and the barrel. But <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@jw/post/DN0oNKqYtO_\">Josh Williams argues</a> that the lettering itself is nicely done in the new mark, and I agree. But I also agree with McCoy’s larger point that minimalistic rebrandings are simply trendy and Cracker Barrel is <a href=\"https://x.com/paulg/status/1959366015382589502\">very late to the trend</a>, which, like all trends, will surely soon reverse.</p></li>\n<li><p>That it’s a controversy at all <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@spleenyone/post/DNsmnCf4sfx\">is the work of activist investor Sardar Biglari</a>, CEO of midwest chain Steak ’n Shake. (Biglari’s father was a general under the Shah of Iran, and the family had to flee after the revolution.) Biglari has been trying to take over Cracker Barrel, Carl Icahn corporate-raider-style, for 15 years. That’s why Steak ’n Shake has been <a href=\"https://x.com/SteaknShake/status/1958956619070677489\">stoking the supposed controversy about Cracker Barrel on its X account</a>. And Steak ’n Shake, under Biglari’s leadership, <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/forwardsfromgrandma/comments/1m9s3wz/whats_been_going_on_with_steak_n_shake/\">has been all-in as a MAGA brand</a> whilst <a href=\"https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/evolving-steak-n-shake-has-closed-200-locations-since-2018/\">closing over 200 restaurants in the last 7 years</a>. You can like or dislike the Cracker Barrel rebranding, but it’s not “woke”. It’s just minimal. The idea that it’s “woke” is just nonsense promulgated by Biglari to get the result we’re actually seeing, where pro-Trump media outlets (like Fox News) pick up on the rebranding as somehow “woke”, Cracker Barrel gets bad publicity and their stock price suffers, and maybe Biglari gets a chance to take over the chain, which is all he cares about.</p></li>\n<li><p>Last word <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@dreamwieber/post/DNyPmXmUk-0\">goes to Gregory Wieber</a>.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Update, 27 August:</strong> <a href=\"https://x.com/crackerbarrel/status/1960475658116632865?\">Cracker Barrel cries uncle</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://johnmccoy.org/2025/08/25/less-fun-than-a-barrel-of-crackers/\">johnmccoy.org/2025/08/25/less-fun-than-a-barrel-of-crackers…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple Event on September 9: ‘Awe Dropping’", "date_published": "2025-08-26T17:55:32Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-26T17:55:32Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/apple-event-awe-dropping", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/apple-event-awe-dropping", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/26/apple-september-2025-event/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Right on schedule: second Tuesday of September, so long as that second Tuesday doesn’t fall on September 11. (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/08/26/apple-event-glowtime\">Last year’s event</a> went on Monday 9 September, probably because the Harris-Trump debate was already scheduled for Tuesday the 10th.) There’s <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/26/apple-event-2025-interactive-logo/\">an interactive animated version</a> of the “heat map” event logo on <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/\">Apple’s homepage</a>. (A little bit odd that the second item below the event announcement, after a back-to-school promotion, is a “Meet the iPhone 16 family” promotion.)</p>\n\n<p>Expected announcements for this event include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iPhones 17 (regular, Pro, Air)</li>\n<li>Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/25/airpods-pro-3-coming-this-fall-heres-what-we-know/\">AirPods Pro 3</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/26/apple-september-2025-event/\">macrumors.com/2025/08/26/apple-september-2025-event/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Calvinball Makes the Supreme Court", "date_published": "2025-08-26T16:22:24Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-26T16:22:34Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/calvinball-scotus", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/26/calvinball-scotus", "external_url": "https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, on page 17 of her dissent in <em>National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association</em>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with\nthis Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary\nshould be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s\nconstraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule\nof law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as\ndifficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a\ntwist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.<sup>6</sup>\nWe seem to have two: that one, and this Administration\nalways wins.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The footnote refers to the <a href=\"https://www.oed.com/dictionary/calvinball_n\">OED’s entry for “Calvinball”</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf\">supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "[Sponsor] Walk the World", "date_published": "2025-08-26T15:14:10Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-26T15:14:11Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/08/walk_the_world", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/08/walk_the_world", "external_url": "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929", "authors": [ { "name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Do you miss being excited about cool new apps?</p>\n\n<p>We’ve made some before like <a href=\"https://www.useclear.com/\">Clear</a> and <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heads-up/id623592465\">Heads Up!</a>, and today, we have a new one for you.</p>\n\n<p>Walk the World turns your steps into a new kind of virtual globe-trotting adventure. </p>\n\n<p>Wouldn’t it be cool to know you’ve walked the length of the Boston Marathon this past week?</p>\n\n<p>You can conquer iconic hikes and trails from around the world presented as gorgeous map milestones to complete with your hard earned steps.</p>\n\n<p>If you enjoy or aspire to go on walks more regularly, and beautiful indie apps with a fun new twist, this is your new healthy addiction.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929\">Try it free today for your iPhone</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails/id6743502929\">apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ MacOS 26 Tahoe’s Dead-Canary Utility App Icons", "date_published": "2025-08-26T00:02:43Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T20:29:16Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/macos_26_tahoes_dead_canary_utility_app_icons", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/macos_26_tahoes_dead_canary_utility_app_icons", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>MacOS has shipped with a collection of “utility” apps since the prehistoric era of classic Mac OS. A good rule of thumb for what makes an app a “utility” is that it’s a tool for doing something <em>to</em> or <em>about</em> your computer. Ever since Mac OS X 10.0, most of these apps have been neatly filed away in <em>/Applications/Utilities/</em>. Others — some because they’re obscure (e.g. Ticket Viewer), some because they’re effectively deprecated (e.g. DVD Player, whose copyright date in MacOS 15 Sequoia is 2019), and some because they present themselves, when launched, not as apps but as system-level features (e.g. About This Mac) — are tucked away in <em>/System/Library/CoreServices/</em> or <em>/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/</em>.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115089810537348465\">Basic Apple Guy posted a screenshot to Mastodon</a> comparing the current MacOS 15 icons for four of these utilities (Disk Utility, Expansion Slot Utility, Wireless Diagnostics, and AppleScript Utility) to their new icons in MacOS 26 Tahoe, beta 7 (click to enlarge for detail):</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/tahoe-utility-icons-via-basic-apple-guy.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/tahoe-utility-icons-via-basic-apple-guy.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Screenshots of the MacOS 15 and MacOS 26 (beta 7) icons for Disk Utility, Expansion Slot Utility, Wireless Diagnostics, and AppleScript Utility.\"\n width = 500\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “<a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115050148901528749\">icons</a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115072885331562510\">look</a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/114948306713250918\">cool</a>” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible. The only one of this bunch that’s maybe sort of OK is Wireless Diagnostics. They all look like placeholder icons made by a developer who would be the first to admit that they’re not an artist. Disk Utility, which is an important app, doesn’t even look like it involves a disk.</p>\n\n<p>These new icons all use the same “wrench” motif, which is a lazy, limiting concept to start with. Tahoe, at the system level, enforces a squircle shape on all application icons. Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “<a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/08/macos-tahoe-fix-gray-box-icons/\">squircle jail</a>” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance. But these Apple utility apps have an entire sub-motif — inside their base squircle shape is a large wrench fitted against a bolt. Only inside the bolt — which is inside the wrench’s jaws, which wrench is inside the squircle — goes the part of the icon that identifies the app itself. So maybe like 10 percent of the area of the icon is the area where the app can show something that identifies its purpose.</p>\n\n<p>So the entire concept for these icons sucks. But the conceptual execution sucks too. The wrench is incredibly stupid-looking. Whoever drew it has obviously never used an open-end wrench because the jaws on the wrench head are <em>way</em> too thin. They’d break off under any significant torque. Just look at a real-life wrench, or just <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115092733884236020\">look at the wrench heads in the older MacOS icons</a> (or Apple’s 🔧 emoji, for that matter).</p>\n\n<p>Individually the icons mostly suck too:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Disk Utility — a very important app — has an icon that’s just an Apple logo (inside the bolt that’s inside the wrench that’s inside the squircle). Not a hard disk, not an external drive, not an SD card. Just an Apple logo. If I just showed you this icon without telling you which app it represented, how in the world could you guess what it is? Even if you know the “Apple utility app icon” motif of the big dumb wrench and bolt, the best you could guess is “a utility app for something Apple-related” which, for an Apple computer, could be anything.</p></li>\n<li><p>Expansion Slot Utility — This app only runs on Mac Pros because Mac Pros are the only Macs with expansion slots. So the old icon naturally shows a Mac Pro. The new icon shows ... three rectangular empty sockets?</p></li>\n<li><p>AppleScript Utility — A fine concept for this icon (within the confines of the terrible wrench-and-bolt utility icon concept). Everyone who knows AppleScript knows the scroll that represents AppleScript scripts. So just put the iconic AppleScript scroll in the bolt in the wrench in the squircle. But here, the placement of the scroll is botched — it’s rotated a few degrees counterclockwise. It makes the scroll look like it’s falling over. Here’s how the scroll is canonically oriented, via the glyphs in SF Symbols:</p>\n\n<p><img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/applescript-icons-sf-symbols.png\"\n alt = \"The “applescript” and “applescript.fill” icon glyphs from the SF Symbols font.\"\n/></p>\n\n<p>and via the default icon for a script application (with a line added showing the center):</p>\n\n<p><img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/macos-15-script-application-icon.png\"\n alt = \"The default application for an AppleScript “script application”, with a vertical orange line showing the center.\"\n width = 440\n/></p>\n\n<p>But here’s a close-up of the Tahoe AppleScript Utility icon, with a center line added:</p>\n\n<p><img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/tahoe-applescript-utility-icon-drunk.png\"\n alt = \"Close-up of the MacOS 26 Tahoe icon for AppleScript Utility, with a center line added to show that the script “scroll” is tilted incorrectly.\"\n/></p>\n\n<p>It’s wrong.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These are the not the work of carpenters <a href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445621-when-you-re-a-carpenter-making-a-beautiful-chest-of-drawers\">who care about the backs of the cabinets</a> they’re building. These icons are so bad, they look like the work of untrained “How hard can it be?” dilettante carpenters who only last a few days on the job before sawing off one of their own fingers. The whole collection looks like the work from someone with no artistic ability <em>nor</em> an eye for detail. From <em>Apple</em>, of all companies.</p>\n\n<p>Is it a big deal in the grand scheme of things that the icons for these seldom-used utility apps have gone to shit? No. But consider the proverbial canary in a coal mine. The problem isn’t that one little bird has died. The problem is that the bird might be dead because the whole mine is filling with deadly carbon monoxide or highly flammable methane gas. The icons in <em>/Applications/Utilities/</em> in MacOS 26 Tahoe represent a folder full of dead canaries. </p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "Phoenix.new", "date_published": "2025-08-24T00:26:17Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-24T00:26:18Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/23/phoenix-new", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/23/phoenix-new", "external_url": "https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to <a href=\"https://fly.io/\">Fly.io</a> for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Phoenix.new, their new AI app-builder. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by <a href=\"https://fly.io/\">Fly.io</a>, deploy wherever you want. <a href=\"https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df\">Just try it</a>, and see how far you can go.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df\">phoenix.new/?utm_source=df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Base 3.0", "date_published": "2025-08-22T16:12:42Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-22T17:52:13Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/22/base-3", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/22/base-3", "external_url": "https://menial.co.uk/blog/2025/08/16/base-3.0-released/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Nice update to Menial’s excellent SQLite developer tool for the Mac. Worth the <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/02/22/base\">wait</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://menial.co.uk/blog/2025/08/16/base-3.0-released/\">menial.co.uk/blog/2025/08/16/base-3.0-released/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple TV+ Subscription Price Increasing From $10 to $13 Per Month, but the Annual Price Remains Unchanged at $99", "date_published": "2025-08-22T02:27:03Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-22T02:28:42Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/apple-tv-plus-price-increase", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/apple-tv-plus-price-increase", "external_url": "https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/21/apple-tv-subscription-price-increase/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple today announced that the monthly price of Apple TV+ is\nrising in the United States and some international markets. From\ntoday, the monthly subscription will cost $12.99, up from $9.99.</p>\n\n<p>Existing subscribers will see the price change 30 days after the\nnext renewal date. The pricing for yearly TV+ subscriptions and\nthe Apple One services bundle remains unchanged.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The annual price for a standalone TV+ subscription — unchanged, as Mayo reports — remains $99. The usual rule-of-thumb for subscriptions of any sort seems to be to charge 10× the monthly rate for an annual subscription. That’s exactly where the TV+ month/annual prices were before today. Now, the annual subscription price isn’t just a little bit cheaper than 12× the monthly price ($156), but a <em>lot</em> cheaper.</p>\n\n<p>This seems to be a clear sign that streaming services are different than most subscriptions. People subscribe to newspapers or blog/newsletters and they stay subscribed, because they want to read regularly. Same for a music subscription, like Spotify or Apple Music — people want to listen to music all the time. Churn is just naturally higher with streaming video — people subscription hop. Subscribe, catch up on all the exclusive content you’ve missed, then unsubscribe. Subscribe again when there are a few more exclusive shows you’ve missed again. Unsubscribe again. And Apple TV+ <a href=\"https://churnkey.co/blog/churn-rates-for-streaming-services/\">has been reported to have higher than average churn</a>. So I think today’s price hike, affecting only the monthly price, is about dealing with that. If you want to subscription hop, Apple TV+ is going to cost a bit more. If you want to stay subscribed to Apple TV+, you really ought to subscribe annually (or subscribe to Apple One and get Music, Arcade, and additional iCloud storage bundled together).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/21/apple-tv-subscription-price-increase/\">9to5mac.com/2025/08/21/apple-tv-subscription-price-increase…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Fox One Streaming Service Launches", "date_published": "2025-08-22T02:10:34Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-22T02:36:49Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/fox-one-streaming", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/fox-one-streaming", "external_url": "https://www.foxcorporation.com/news/business/2025/fox-one-now-available-to-stream-across-web-mobile-and-connected-tv-devices/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Fox (capitalization verbatim):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Fox Corporation today announced the official launch of FOX One, a\nbold new streaming service that brings together the full portfolio\nof FOX’s News, Sports and Entertainment branded content — all in\none place, both live and on demand.</p>\n\n<p>Available today across major web, mobile and connected TV\nplatforms, FOX One is priced at $19.99/month with a 7-day free\ntrial or $199.99/year, with the option to add-on B1G+ or bundle\nFOX Nation for an even greater value. Starting October 2,\ncustomers will also have the opportunity to bundle FOX One with\nESPN DTC Unlimited for $39.99/month.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I just mentioned yesterday, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding\">re: MS NOW’s idiotic backronym</a>, that Fox often styles its name in all caps without pretending the f-o-x letters stand for anything. Anyway, $20/month seems steep, but Fox carries <em>a lot</em> of sports.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1828048872\">Apple is promoting the launch prominently in the App Store</a> (including Fox’s preferred all-caps styling), no doubt because Fox — unlike <a href=\"https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/disney-and-apple-are-breaking-up-over-app-store-fees/ar-AA1sJlmU\">certain</a> <a href=\"https://www.netflix.com/tudum\">well-established</a> streaming services — offers its subscriptions via IAP.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.foxcorporation.com/news/business/2025/fox-one-now-available-to-stream-across-web-mobile-and-connected-tv-devices/\">foxcorporation.com/news/business/2025/fox-one-now-available…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Meta’s Ray-Bans Have Sold 2 Million Pairs, Total, as of February", "date_published": "2025-08-22T00:33:56Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-22T00:56:34Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/meta-ray-ban-sales", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/meta-ray-ban-sales", "external_url": "https://www.theverge.com/news/613292/meta-ray-ban-2-million-10-million-capacity-subscription-essilor-luxottica-earnings", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge back in February:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Two weeks ago, <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/meta/603674/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-sales\">we exclusively reported Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s\nremarks</a> on how many pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses\nthe company had recently sold and might theoretically sell: 1\nmillion pairs in 2024, with the possibility of reaching 2 million\nor even 5 million by the end of 2025.</p>\n\n<p>But glasses giant EssilorLuxottica, which produces those glasses\nfor Meta, has now publicly revealed 2 million pairs of Meta\nRay-Bans have sold since their October 2023 debut, and that it’s\naiming to produce 10 million Meta glasses <em>each</em> year by the end\nof 2026.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/18/bezos-numbers-smart-glasses-counterpoint\">I mocked a report from Counterpoint Research</a> this week for its Bezos Numbers on smart glasses sales growth. Here are some real numbers from the current market leader. For context, Steve Jobs’s stated goal for the iPhone, at launch in mid-2007, was 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008 — a goal they reached <a href=\"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/apple-officially-surpasses-10-million-iphones-sold-in-2008/\">before the holiday quarter of 2008 even started</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I feel close to certain that smart glasses are going to be a big product category. But they’re not there yet. A few million units is something, but it’s not a hit. Given the current capabilities — a camera on your face, speakers on the temples, and a microphone for talking to the system — I don’t see how they currently beat a smartphone and wireless earbuds. If you already carry a phone and earbuds everywhere you go, when would you want Meta Glasses? For taking lower-quality photos and videos, and listening to lower-quality audio? I don’t think the product category is going to take off until there’s a visual HUD in the lenses, and that still seems years away, at any price.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/news/613292/meta-ray-ban-2-million-10-million-capacity-subscription-essilor-luxottica-earnings\">theverge.com/news/613292/meta-ray-ban-2-million-10-million…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Herdling", "date_published": "2025-08-22T00:22:19Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-22T00:29:07Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/herdling", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/herdling", "external_url": "https://herdling.game/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>New video game, just out:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Herdling is a brand new adventure from <a href=\"https://okomotive.ch/\">Okomotive</a>, creators of\nthe atmospheric and acclaimed FAR games, and <a href=\"https://panic.com/\">Panic</a>,\npublishers of Firewatch.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Looks absolutely beautiful. Painterly. <a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/darthbluesky.bsky.social/post/3lww42zzkjs2q\">Darth says it’s good</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Available now for Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Epic Games Store. Not (yet?) in the Mac App Store — not because of any hassles regarding the App Store, but because there’s not (yet?) a Mac port of the game, period.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://herdling.game/\">herdling.game/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Micro-Soft’", "date_published": "2025-08-21T19:49:04Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-21T19:57:17Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/micro-soft", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/micro-soft", "external_url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding#fn1-2025-08-20", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Added this footnote just now to yesterday’s piece on MSNBC’s rebranding to “MS NOW”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Historical pedantry: from 1975–1979, <a href=\"https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Microsoft\">Microsoft spelled its name “Micro-Soft”</a>, with, yes, an uppercase <em>S</em>. But that’s not camel-case, and that hyphenated spelling is as much a footnote to Microsoft’s brand history as the <a href=\"https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/29/how-apples-logo-started-out-as-the-most-expensive-and-became-the-most-iconic\">woodcut Isaac-Newton-under-a-tree logo</a> is to Apple. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/Microsoft_(1975).svg\">Microsoft’s logo from that era</a> was very disco-’70s and kind of cool — but while “Micro” and “Soft” were broken across two lines, there’s no hyphen in the logotype.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding#fn1-2025-08-20\">daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding#fn1-2025…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ MSNBC, Spinning Out of NBCUniversal, Rebrands as ‘MS NOW’ With a Godawful Backronym and Even Worse Logo", "date_published": "2025-08-21T01:20:10Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T22:16:28Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p><a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/08/18/msnbc-rebrand-ms-now-versant\">Sara Fischer, Axios</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>MSNBC, the progressive cable network owned by NBCUniversal, is\nrebranding to MS NOW, an acronym that stands for My Source for\nNews, Opinion and the World.</p>\n\n<p>The rebrand is part of a wider effort by NBCU to create a\ndistinction between the cable networks it plans to spin out and\nthe remaining NBCU parent company. As part of the rebrand, select\ncable networks that will be spun out into <a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/all-eyes-on-versant-media-trends\">Versant</a>, including\nCNBC, Golf Channel, GolfNow, MSNBC and SportsEngine, will all\ndrop the iconic peacock logo that has for decades served as\nNBCU’s logo.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s a lot to unpack here. First, “Versant” itself is a pretty bad name (feels so vague — seems like the name of a fake company in a movie or TV show) so it’s no surprise that the same nitwits are botching Versant’s rebranded properties. But given that NBCUniversal is apparently forcing MSNBC to take the “NBC” out of its name, “MSNOW” isn’t a bad new name. But it’s not a <em>good</em> new name either. And they’re apparently using a space: “MS NOW”, yet <a href=\"https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/msnbc-new-name-ms-now-1236491621/\">also seem confused</a> (or haven’t even decided yet) whether it’s supposed to be pronounced letter-by-letter (<em>em ess en oh dubya</em>) or as two letters and a word (<em>em ess now</em>). Saying the “NOW” as the word <em>now</em> makes sense for a 24/7 channel, but if it’s a word, the whole name should be styled “MS Now”. (Fox News styles their name as “FOX News” in some places, but never pretends the f-o-x is an acronym.)</p>\n\n<p>The “My Source News Opinion World” backronym is so dumb it boggles the mind. I genuinely wonder if someone had ChatGPT do that. You can have a series of letters as a name — especially as a TV channel — without those letters really standing for anything. CNN is technically an acronym for “Cable News Network” but they’ve effectively just been “CNN” for decades now. The name “MSNBC” came from the fact that, at launch in the 1990s, <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@mossbergwalt/post/DNipvTJt4HW\">it debuted as a collaboration</a> <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_MSNBC:_1996–2007\">between Microsoft’s MSN and NBC News</a>. But Microsoft hasn’t been involved with the cable channel <a href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-fi-msnbc24-story.html\">for 20 years</a> — the “MS” in “MSNBC” hasn’t stood for anything since 2005. (In fact, MSN itself is another good example. It originally stood for “Microsoft Network”, even though Microsoft has never styled their name with a camel-cased <em>S</em>.<sup id=\"fnr1-2025-08-20\"><a href=\"#fn1-2025-08-20\">1</a></sup> But it’s really just “MSN” now.)<sup id=\"fnr2-2025-08-20\"><a href=\"#fn2-2025-08-20\">2</a></sup></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@tomgara/post/DNgNQeQOlIB\">Tom Gara, writing on Threads</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The only real fuck up with the MSNBC rebrand is that they made up\na dumb sounding fake acronym. It’s completely unnecessary! Just\nsay “we’re changing our name to MS NOW to reflect the urgency of\nthe moment.” Nobody has ever thought about what the old acronym\nstood for and nobody needed a new fake one.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There <em>is</em> another fuck up, though: the <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/msnow.png\">logo</a> is atrocious. What is that flag? It looks like the Austrian flag (🇦🇹), not America’s. But are we sure it even <em>is</em> a flag? Maybe it’s a paper receipt and the red stripes are those marks <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/DollarGeneral/comments/p7sl4t/why_does_the_printer_do_the_pink_streak_near_the/\">when it’s time to replace the roll</a>? <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@jonathanhoefler/post/DNk64Vxgah-\">Jonathan Hoefler, on Threads</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>My personal benchmark for a logo is that it shouldn’t look like a\npension fund.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The oddest part about the whole situation is that CNBC is being spun out into Versant, too, but while they’re losing the NBC peacock logo, they’re just keeping their name, unchanged. <a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/18/comcast-versant-rename-msnbc-peacock-logos.html\">From CNBC’s own coverage of MSNBC’s rebranding</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>While MSNBC and NBC News will have duplications in coverage,\nCNBC’s news organization is already separate enough from NBC News\nthat executives decided it didn’t need a name change. Also,\ntechnically, the “NBC” in “CNBC” never stemmed from National\nBroadcasting Co. Rather, CNBC stands for “Consumer News and\nBusiness Channel.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Lastly, shoutout to M.G. Siegler for <a href=\"https://spyglass.org/ms-now-msnbc/\">coining the term <em>peacockblocked</em></a> to describe MSNBC’s branding plight.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2025-08-20\">\n<p>Historical pedantry: from 1975–1979, <a href=\"https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Microsoft\">Microsoft spelled its name “Micro-Soft”</a>, with, yes, an uppercase <em>S</em>. But that’s not camel-case, and that hyphenated spelling is as much a footnote to Microsoft’s brand history as the <a href=\"https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/29/how-apples-logo-started-out-as-the-most-expensive-and-became-the-most-iconic\">woodcut Isaac-Newton-under-a-tree logo</a> is to Apple. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/Microsoft_(1975).svg\">Microsoft’s logo from that era</a> was very disco-’70s and kind of cool — but while “Micro” and “Soft” were broken across two lines, there’s no hyphen in the logotype. <a href=\"#fnr1-2025-08-20\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2025-08-20\">\n<p>If I’d been in the room, my spitball idea for a new name would have been MNC. Take out every other letter to break both the NBC <em>and</em> Microsoft connotations, but leave behind an acronym that looks and sounds like a tighter, more efficient version of MSNBC. If they really insisted that the acronym stand for something, it could be Modern (or Major?) News Channel. <a href=\"#fnr2-2025-08-20\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "Claim Chowder: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Five Months Ago", "date_published": "2025-08-20T15:27:51Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-20T15:27:52Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/claim-chowder-amodei", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/claim-chowder-amodei", "external_url": "https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Kwan Wei Kevin Tan, reporting for Business Insider five months ago:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI startup Anthropic, said on Monday\nthat AI, and not software developers, could be writing all of the\ncode in our software in a year.</p>\n\n<p>“I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is\nwriting 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a\nworld where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Amodei\nsaid at a Council of Foreign Relations event on Monday.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Complete bullshit, but, I guess he still has one month to go. (<a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@davew/post/DNhTsistxCs\">Via Dave Winer</a> on Threads.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3\">businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘No Frame Missed’", "date_published": "2025-08-20T15:14:59Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-20T15:15:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/no-frame-missed", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/no-frame-missed", "external_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEalzEnT70k", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Five-minute short film from Apple, about people with severe hand tremors from Parkinson’s disease using the iPhone’s Action mode to shoot steady video — including filmmaker Brett Harvey, who was diagnosed at the way-too-young age of 37. There’s also a brief short with Harvey explaining the settings to <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X7Y262xvV94\">shoot in Action mode by default</a>, or to use voice controls to avoid needing to tap buttons.</p>\n\n<p>Apple at its very best. If this doesn’t hit you, you’re not hooked up right.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEalzEnT70k\">youtube.com/watch?v=hEalzEnT70k</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘American’", "date_published": "2025-08-20T01:46:59Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-20T01:54:16Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/19/kieran-healy-american", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/19/kieran-healy-american", "external_url": "https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/06/28/american/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Kieran Healy on, just now — amidst all <em>this</em> — becoming an American citizen:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relationship of individuals to the state. These have all been in the news recently; perhaps you have heard about it. These questions ask how polities work, how they impose themselves upon us, how power is exercised. They are tied up with deep-rooted principles, claims and myths — as you please — about where authority comes from and how it is or whether it ever has been justly applied. These are not easy matters to understand in principle or resolve in practice. Nor can they simply be dismissed. But I am not writing this note because I want to take on these questions, even though I acknowledge them. I am writing this because I do not want to forget how I felt yesterday.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Beautiful.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/06/28/american/\">kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/06/28/american/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ How to Use iPhone Mirroring With More Than One iPhone", "date_published": "2025-08-20T01:17:47Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-20T01:17:47Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/iphone_mirroring_more_than_one_iphone", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/iphone_mirroring_more_than_one_iphone", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>I’ve been using two iPhones throughout the summer — one running iOS 18, the other running iOS 26 betas. I found myself wanting to switch between them with iPhone Mirroring on my Mac, but couldn’t figure out how. The answer, from Apple Support, “<a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/120421\">iPhone Mirroring: Use your iPhone from your Mac</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have more than one iPhone that is both signed in to your\nApple Account and nearby, you can choose the one that your Mac\nuses for mirroring and iPhone notifications:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Desktop &\nDock in the sidebar.</p></li>\n<li><p>Choose your iPhone from the iPhone pop-up menu on the right.\nThis menu appears just below the “Use iPhone widgets” setting.\nIt appears only when your Mac detects more than one nearby\niPhone that can be used for mirroring.</p></li>\n</ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That pop-up menu is about halfway down the screen in Desktop & Dock, in the “Widgets” section.<sup id=\"fnr1-2025-08-19\"><a href=\"#fn1-2025-08-19\">1</a></sup> I suspected this was possible, but I had to search the web (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/try_switching_to_kagi\">via Kagi</a>, the best search engine in the world, of course) to find the answer. I never would have thought to look in System Settings → Desktop & Dock, let alone, even if I happened to look in that panel, all the way down under “Widgets”.</p>\n\n<p>Places where I <em>did</em> look:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>On the Mac, in the iPhone Mirroring app’s own Settings window. Nope.</li>\n<li>On the iPhone, in Settings → General → Airplay & Continuity. This is where you can control which Mac or Macs your iPhone is available from with iPhone Mirroring (e.g. you can go here to revoke access from a certain Mac), but it doesn’t help you change which iPhone, among multiple, that any particular Mac connects to.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To Apple’s credit, searching for “mirroring” in MacOS System Settings <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/macos-18.6-settings-desktop-dock.png\">does lead you to the correct setting</a>, but because it’s under “Widget settings”, I suspect some people who search for “mirroring” here will see that in the results list and not even bother clicking it, because “Widget settings” at first doesn’t sound like where you should go to choose between multiple phones for iPhone Mirroring. (It kind of makes sense, when you realize that the same iPhone that provides widgets to your Mac is the one available for iPhone Mirroring to connect to.)</p>\n\n<p>To Apple’s discredit, Siri is no help, despite Apple Intelligence’s supposed <a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/26/this-is-every-apple-intelligence-feature-thats-available-now/\">ability to harness “product knowledge”</a> from LLM training on Apple’s own support documents. After asking Siri, “How do I use multiple iPhones with iPhone mirroring?” on either a Mac or iPhone, I get a brief answer that says “You can set up more than one iPhone to use iPhone Mirroring with your Mac, but you can only connect to one iPhone at a time”, with a link to the iPhone User Guide that opens in the Tips app. That page in the iPhone User Guide, however — also available on the web as “<a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/mac\">Control Your iPhone From Your Mac</a>” — doesn’t contain any mention of using more than one iPhone with iPhone Mirroring. So <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/120421\">this Apple Support document</a> on iPhone Mirroring does explain it (that’s the one I linked to at the top of this post), but <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/mac\">this one does not</a>. No wonder Apple Intelligence’s “product knowledge”, trained on these documents, is somewhat confused.</p>\n\n<p>But it gets worse. I gave Siri a second chance on my Mac, asking the same question, something along the lines of “How do I use multiple iPhones with iPhone mirroring?” (I can’t be sure exactly which words I used because Siri doesn’t show a chat transcript<sup id=\"fnr2-2025-08-19\"><a href=\"#fn2-2025-08-19\">2</a></sup>), and the second time, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/siri-mirroring-nonsense.png\">it responded thus</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To use multiple iPhones with iPhone Mirroring:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Open the iPhone Mirroring app on your Mac.</li>\n<li>Click the “Connect” button.</li>\n<li>Enter your iPhone passcode and choose how to authenticate.</li>\n<li>Select the iPhone you want to use from the list of available\niPhones.</li>\n</ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This answer certainly describes one possible way that using multiple iPhones with iPhone Mirroring <em>should</em> work, but as an answer for how it actually <em>does</em> work, it’s abject nonsense. There is no “list of available iPhones” in the iPhone Mirroring app. If there were such a list to choose from, I’d never have had a question about this whole fucking thing in the first place.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2025-08-19\">\n<p>The first time I looked in the Desktop & Dock panel in System Settings, there was no “iPhone” pop-up menu visible, despite the fact that both of my active iPhones were on my desk, right next to my MacBook Pro. But I remembered that in the last few days, I’d been having problems with <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/102430\">Continuity’s Universal Clipboard</a> feature too. In the past, when Universal Clipboard has gone on the fritz, I’ve solved the problem by toggling Bluetooth off and back on. I toggled Bluetooth on my Mac and boom, the “iPhone” menu appeared in the Desktop & Dock panel in System Settings, with the pop-up menu correctly listing both of my active iPhones. Universal Clipboard started working correctly again too. I bet the <em>next</em> version of Bluetooth is actually going to be reliable. <a href=\"#fnr1-2025-08-19\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2025-08-19\">\n<p>From Wayne Ma’s blockbuster report back in April at The Information, “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/04/10/wayne-ma-the-information-apple-siri-fumble\">How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Giannandrea often has described to employees his belief that\nmachine learning can lead to incremental improvements in products,\neventually adding up to major gains, a concept he refers to as\nhill climbing. He also has expressed a dim view of chatbots in the\npast, telling Apple employees before and immediately after the\nrelease of ChatGPT that he didn’t believe they added much value\nfor users.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875\">ChatGPT reported 700 million weekly active users this month</a>, up from 500 million in March, and up 4× from last year. <a href=\"#fnr2-2025-08-19\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "Bezos Numbers of the Week: Counterpoint Research on ‘Smart Glasses’", "date_published": "2025-08-19T01:44:09Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-19T02:40:05Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/18/bezos-numbers-smart-glasses-counterpoint", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/18/bezos-numbers-smart-glasses-counterpoint", "external_url": "https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/post-insight-research-briefs-blogs-global-smart-glasses-shipments-soared-110-yoy-in-h1-2025-with-meta-capturing-over-70-share", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Counterpoint Research, in a report titled “Global Smart Glasses Shipments Soared 110 Percent YoY in H1 2025, With Meta Capturing Over 70 Percent Share”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The global smart glasses market grew by 110% YoY in H1 2025,\nfueled by robust demand for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and the\nentry of new players such as Xiaomi and TCL-RayNeo.</p>\n\n<p>Meta’s share of the global smart glasses market rose to 73% in H1\n2025, driven by strong demand and expanded manufacturing capacity\nat Luxottica, its key production partner.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not a single absolute sales number in the whole report, not even estimated. Just percentages. Pure Bezos Numbers — which is not quite the same thing as a <a href=\"https://x.com/jsnell/status/481863414180896769\">Bezos Chart</a>, which has no numbers at all. How do you compute percentage change without the underlying numbers? What goes unsaid is that surely any reasonable estimate of “smart glasses” sales numbers is tiny. If you go from 1 to 2 that’s 100 percent growth!</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/post-insight-research-briefs-blogs-global-smart-glasses-shipments-soared-110-yoy-in-h1-2025-with-meta-capturing-over-70-share\">counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/post-insight-research…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Joe Caroff, Designer of the James Bond 007 Logo, Dies at 103", "date_published": "2025-08-18T20:50:43Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-18T21:02:05Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/joe_caroff_007_logo_designer", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/joe_caroff_007_logo_designer", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p><a href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/joe-caroff-dead-designer-james-bond-007-logo-1236346509/\">Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For his first movie job — he would work on more than 300\ncampaigns during his career — United Artists executive David\nChasman hired him to design the poster for <em>West Side Story</em>\n(1961), then asked him to come up with the letterhead for a\npublicity release tied to the first Bond film, <em>Dr. No</em>. (Chasman\nhad designed the poster for the 1962 movie.)</p>\n\n<p>“He said, ‘I need a little decorative thing on top,’” Caroff\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A76NPoZRY8c\">recalled</a> in 2021. “I knew [Bond’s] designation was 007,\nand when I wrote the stem of the seven, I thought, ‘That looks\nlike the handle of a gun to me.’ It was very spontaneous, no\neffort, it was an instant piece of creativity.”</p>\n\n<p>Inspired by Ian Fleming’s favorite gun, a Walther PPK, Caroff\nattached a barrel and trigger to the 007 and for his work received\n$300, the going rate for such an assignment, he said. Even though\nthe logo, though altered in subtle ways, has been featured on\nevery Bond film and on millions of pieces of merchandise, he\nreceived no credit, no residuals, no royalties.</p>\n\n<p>The logo did, however, bring him “a lot of business,” he said. “It\nwas like a little publicity piece for me.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s rare for a logomark to have such staying power. Just <a href=\"https://www.designweek.co.uk/tributes-paid-to-the-james-bond-007-logo-designer-joe-caroff/\">a perfect logo</a>. Kind of wild that it was created, initially, only as letterhead for stationery. Perusing vintage movie posters, it seems like EON didn’t really lean into using the logo consistently until <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-on-her-majestys-secret-service.jpeg\"><em>On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</em></a> (1969) — the sixth film, and the first without Sean Connery. EON had used the mark prior to that (including at least <a href=\"https://posteritati.com/poster/8500/dr-no-1962-us-one-sheet-poster\">one excellent poster for <em>Dr. No</em></a>), but it didn’t appear on most of the posters for Connery’s initial run in the role: <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-from-russia-with-love.jpeg\"><em>From Russia With Love</em></a>, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-goldfinger.jpeg\"><em>Goldfinger</em></a>, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-thunderball.jpeg\"><em>Thunderball</em></a>, and <em>You Only Live Twice</em> (variations <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-you-only-live-twice-A.jpeg\">A</a> and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-you-only-live-twice-B.jpeg\">B</a>). Amongst those, the logo only appears on the <em>Goldfinger</em> poster. They used to make multiple posters for every movie back then, so there might exist examples for all of them with the logo. But I think until <em>On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</em>, EON leaned on Connery’s face as the symbol of the franchise. From that point forward, though, Caroff’s 007-cum-gun logo was the symbol of the franchise.<sup id=\"fnr1-2025-08-18\"><a href=\"#fn1-2025-08-18\">1</a></sup> I can’t seem to find an official movie poster after <em>OHMSS</em> that doesn’t feature it.</p>\n\n<p>I will quibble with one detail from The Hollywood Reporter description above: the gun in Caroff’s original 007 mark clearly looked like a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luger_pistol\">Luger</a>, a rather distinctive German pistol with a long skinny barrel, not the more compact Walther PPK that Bond actually carried. Variations of the Luger-esque logo appear on the posters for all seven of the movies starring Roger Moore. EON updated the logomark to resemble a Walther PPK <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-the-living-daylights.jpeg\">for <em>The Living Daylights</em></a> in 1987, the first (and better) of two Bond movies starring Timothy Dalton. As a kid it always bothered me — ever so slightly — that the logo resembled a gun that James Bond never actually used, but until today, researching this post, I never noticed that they addressed that in 1987. That said, I think the Luger-esque mark was a bit cooler. As a kid, that was my assumption: that “they” made it look like a Luger, not the sort of pistol Bond actually carried, because it looked cooler that way. I accepted that.</p>\n\n<hr />\n\n<p>Caroff had a remarkably accomplished career. <a href=\"https://posteritati.com/unfolding/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story\">He created iconic posters for dozens of terrific films</a> across a slew of genres. The fact that he created the 007 logo but only earned $300 from it is more like a curious footnote than anything.</p>\n\n<p>From <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/obituaries/joe-caroff-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fE8.pObu.ZW1jiWahs32T&smid=url-share\">Jeré Longman’s excellent obituary for The New York Times</a> (gift link), after observing that Caroff died just one day short of his 104th birthday:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Mr. Caroff’s designs were familiar, but his name was not. He did\nnot sign much of his work and largely avoided self-promotion. He\nwas not included among the more than 60 celebrated designers,\namong them like <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/27/movies/saul-bass-75-designer-dies-made-art-out-of-movie-titles.html\">Saul Bass</a>, <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/17/nyregion/leo-lionni-89-dies-versatile-creator-of-children-s-books.html\">Leo Lionni</a> and <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/28/arts/paul-rand-82-creator-of-sleek-graphic-designs-dies.html\">Paul\nRand</a>, in the 2017 book <a href=\"https://themodernsbook.com/\"><em>The Moderns: Midcentury American\nGraphic Design</em></a>, written by Steven Heller and Greg\nD’Onofrio.</p>\n\n<p>“That he was unknown is shocking,” Mr. Heller, co-chairman\nemeritus of the Master of Fine Arts Design program at the School\nof Visual Arts in Manhattan, said in a recent interview.</p>\n\n<p>Still, Mr. Caroff’s abundant output became widely recognizable for\nan interpretive style that could be bold, elegant, theatrical,\nwhimsical, sensual and deceptively simple in promoting a book or\nmovie and conveying its essence with a single image.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No better example of that reduced-to-its-essence genius than his 007 logo:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“I knew that 007 meant license to kill; that, I think, at an\nunconscious level, was the reason I knew the gun had to be in the\nlogo,” Mr. Caroff said in a 2022 documentary, <a href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/movies/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story/63f45e42-315c-469d-a0d4-501989f339eb\"><em>By Design: The Joe\nCaroff Story</em></a>.</p>\n\n<p>Mark Cerulli, who directed the documentary, said in an interview\nthat the logo was a “marvel of simplicity that telegraphs\neverything you would want to know about 007.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/movies/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story/63f45e42-315c-469d-a0d4-501989f339eb\">By Design</a></em> is streaming on HBO Max. I’ve added it to the top of my to-watch list.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2025-08-18\">\n<p>You will not catch me making any jokes about the fact that “007 cum gun” could serve as a three-word plot synopsis for many of the films in the Connery/Moore era. <a href=\"#fnr1-2025-08-18\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "Dekáf Coffee Roasters", "date_published": "2025-08-17T15:30:29Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-17T15:30:30Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/17/dekaf-coffee-roasters", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/17/dekaf-coffee-roasters", "external_url": "https://dekaf.com/df", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to Dekáf Coffee Roasters for sponsoring last week at DF. Dekáf believes that people who drink coffee for its flavor are the true connoisseurs. While other roasters treat decaf as a side project, they’ve made it their entire mission. They’re dedicated to creating exceptional decaffeinated coffee that stands toe-to-toe with the world’s finest caffeinated beans.</p>\n\n<p>I drink coffee every single day. I literally can’t remember the last day I didn’t have coffee in the morning. A few years ago, though, age started catching up to me and I stopped drinking coffee after lunch or so, lest it screw with my sleep. I really missed my afternoon coffee though. Why I didn’t think to try decaf I don’t know, but Dekáf sent me a few samples when they first sponsored DF back in April, and it’s been a revelation. In addition to fully decaffeinated roasts, they also have some half-decaffeinated roasts, and they’re absolutely delicious — my style of roast, for sure — <em>and</em> they don’t leave me jolted into the evening. Maybe you like tea, but I don’t. I like coffee, and I love being able to have a cup or two late in the afternoon again. It’s so good.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I’m a big believer that you <em>can</em> judge a book by its cover. Just look at the Dekáf brand. It’s perfect. Color, typography, artwork — so cool, so spot-on for what they do.</p>\n\n<p>Dekáf offers 9 single origins, 6 signature blends, and 4 Mizudashi cold brews (perfect for summer). All shipped to you within 24 hours of roasting. No shortcuts. You won’t believe it’s decaf. That’s the point. Even better, get 20% off with code: <strong>DF</strong>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://dekaf.com/df\">dekaf.com/df</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Woz: ‘I Am the Happiest Person Ever’", "date_published": "2025-08-16T01:45:00Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-16T03:49:23Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/woz-on-slashdot", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/woz-on-slashdot", "external_url": "https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Steve Wozniak turned 75 (!) and was <a href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-wozniak-on-fighting-internet-scams/\">profiled by John Blackstone for CBS News</a> (also <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLpmjXRQf6k\">posted to YouTube</a>). <a href=\"https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/10/1938248/its-steve-wozniaks-75th-birthday-whatever-happened-to-his-youtube-lawsuit\">Slashdot linked to it</a>, and in the comments, someone gently jabbed at Woz for having sold, rather than hoarded, his stock in Apple. Woz himself chimed in, with this comment for the ages:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not\nwhat I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot\nof important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my\nbirth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now\nspeak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much\nI have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a\ncouple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn\nmoney from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it.\nI am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about\naccomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns.\nI developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I\nnever sold out.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Apple never would have existed without Woz, and Woz personified “insanely great” engineering. He never contributed anything technical to Apple after the Apple II in the early 1980s, but, man, so much of his spirit and personality is infused in Apple’s DNA. He’s a hero to so many people who went on to work at Apple, and to so many of us on the outside too. The two Steves were so very different in so many ways, yet at heart, both exemplified that intersection between technology and the liberal arts.</p>\n\n<p>His little comment above describing his philosophy on life brought to mind one of my favorite Woz stories, from Michael Moritz’s <a href=\"https://archive.org/details/littlekingdompri00mori\">long-out-of-print</a> 1984 book <em>The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer</em>, pp. 281–282:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Wozniak, who seemed determined to follow Samuel Johnson’s advice\nthat it was better to live rich than to die rich, was always\nlouder, splashier, and more cavalier about his fortune. As a\nstudent and an engineer he had always managed his financial\naffairs haphazardly and nothing changed as he grew wealthy. He\ncould never keep track of receipts, for months didn’t bother to\nseek financial advice, and made a habit of filing his tax returns\nlate. Wozniak turned into an approachable teddy bear and a soft\ntouch. When friends, acquaintances, or strangers asked him for a\nloan he often wrote out a check on the spot.</p>\n\n<p>Unlike Jobs, who guarded his founder’s stock carefully, Wozniak\ndistributed some of his. He gave stock worth $4 million to his\nparents, sister, and brother and $2 million to friends. He made\nsome investments in start-up companies. He bought a Porsche and\nfastened the license plates <span class=\"caps\">APPLE II</span> to\nthe car. His father found $250,000 worth of uncashed checks strewn\nabout the car and said of his son, “A person like him shouldn’t\nhave that much money.” After Wozniak finally did arrange for some\nfinancial advice, he arrived at Apple one day to announce, “My\nlawyer said to diversify so I just bought a movie theater.” Even\nthat turned into a complicated venture. The theater, located among\nthe barrios on the east side of San Jose, provoked angry community\nprotests after it screened a gang movie, <em>The Warriors</em>. Wozniak\nattended a few community meetings, listened to the concerns of the\nlocal leaders, promised that his theater wouldn’t show violent or\npornographic movies, and accompanied by Wigginton, spent a few\nafternoons in the empty, darkened theater screening movies and\nplaying censor.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466\">yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Trump’s BLS Pick E.J. Antoni Is — Shocker — a Crackpot Hack", "date_published": "2025-08-16T00:47:50Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-16T01:02:38Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/trump-bls-antoni-crackpot", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/trump-bls-antoni-crackpot", "external_url": "https://www.axios.com/2025/08/12/trump-bls-ej-antoni-economists", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Jason Lalljee, reporting for Axios Tuesday:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>President Trump’s nomination of Heritage Foundation economist E.J.\nAntoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday drew\ncriticism from economists across the political spectrum. <em>Why it\nmatters</em>: The growing negative consensus among conservative\neconomists is unusual given Antoni’s own conservative pedigree.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here we go with “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements\">unusual</a>” as a euphemism for “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/quid-pro-quo-financial-times\">unprecedented</a>” — or perhaps, most accurately, “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/mad-king-watch-intel\">crazy</a>” — again. The dichotomy here is that Trump and MAGA have flipped what “conservative” means in US politics. Some legitimate economists are left-leaning, some are right-leaning. It’s a field of study, like the law, that attracts from across the political spectrum. But all legitimate economists believe in trying to objectively measure the economy. MAGA kooks have overrun Republican elected politics, but not so with economics. So of course legitimate conservative economists are objecting to Trump’s nomination of <a href=\"https://www.heritage.org/staff/ej-antoni-phd\">this guy Antoni</a>, who both is a crackpot kook <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/11/30/the-paranoid-style\">of the paranoid style</a> <em>and</em> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/ej-antoni.jpeg\">looks like one</a>, with crazy eyes and, of all things, a devil beard.</p>\n\n<p>To the commentary:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Antoni’s “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary\nerrors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the\nsame partisan direction,” Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the\nconservative American Enterprise Institute, told Axios’ Courtenay\nBrown and Emily Peck.</p>\n\n<p>Dave Hebert, an economist at the conservative American Institute\nfor Economic Research, <a href=\"https://x.com/dave_hebert/status/1955054062325444659?s=42\">wrote in a post on X</a> that he’s\nworked with Antoni before and implored the Senate to block the\nnomination. “I’ve been on several programs with him at this point\nand have been impressed by two things: his inability to\nunderstand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone\nMAGA,” Hebert said. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Jessica Riedl, a senior Manhattan Institute fellow, shared another\nexample from X, in which Antoni appeared not to know that the BLS’\nmeasure of import prices did not account for the impact of\ntariffs. “The articles and tweets I’ve seen him publish are\nprobably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right\nnow,” she <a href=\"https://x.com/jessicabriedl/status/1955044169598242849?s=42\">wrote</a>. “I hope we see better at BLS.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That’s the take on Antoni from <em>conservative</em> economists.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/08/12/trump-bls-ej-antoni-economists\">axios.com/2025/08/12/trump-bls-ej-antoni-economists</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Apple Issues a Workaround for the Blood Oxygen Sensor Ban for U.S. Apple Watches", "date_published": "2025-08-14T21:45:42Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-17T00:43:16Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/apple_workaround_blood_oxygen_ban", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/apple_workaround_blood_oxygen_ban", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Apple Newsroom this morning, “<a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/an-update-on-blood-oxygen-for-apple-watch-in-the-us/\">An Update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch in the U.S.</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for\nsome Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2\nusers through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming\nlater today.</p>\n\n<p>Users with these models in the U.S. who currently do not have the\nBlood Oxygen feature will have access to the redesigned Blood\nOxygen feature by updating their paired iPhone to iOS 18.6.1 and\ntheir Apple Watch to watchOS 11.6.1. Following this update, sensor\ndata from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and\ncalculated on the paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the\nRespiratory section of the Health app. This update was enabled by\na recent U.S. Customs ruling.</p>\n\n<p>There will be no impact to Apple Watch units previously purchased\nthat include the original Blood Oxygen feature, nor to Apple Watch\nunits purchased outside of the U.S.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The iOS 18.6.1 and WatchOS 11.6.1 updates appeared a few hours after Apple’s announcement.</p>\n\n<p>If you have an Apple Watch with the blood oxygen sensor purchased <em>outside</em> the US, you can ignore today’s news. You were never affected by the US International Trade Commission import ban (which stems from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/search/masimo\">a patent lawsuit from a company named Masimo</a>), so today’s workaround isn’t necessary. The same goes for Series 9 and Ultra 2 models sold in the US prior to the ban taking effect in January 2024.</p>\n\n<p>What today’s workaround does is process <em>and</em> display the blood oxygen sensor data on your watch’s paired iPhone, rather than on the Apple Watch itself. That, apparently, is what the new US Customs ruling holds does not violate Masimo’s patent. No processing of the sensor data on the watch, and no display of the results on the watch. But the sensor that takes the measurements, of course, is on your watch. If you bought your Apple Watch before the ban, or you bought it outside the US, you still get on-watch processing and on-watch display of results. (Which means users outside the US still have a slightly better blood oxygen experience.)</p>\n\n<p>If your Apple Watch was affected by the import ban, after today’s software updates, you should be able to both initiate a blood oxygen reading manually (using the Blood Oxygen app on the Watch) and get automatic background readings, like when you’re wearing your watch while sleeping. What is different for Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models in the US that didn’t have the original Blood Oxygen feature, compared to models not affected by the US ban, is where the measurement is <em>calculated</em> and <em>visible</em>. If you initiate a measurement while your watch is out of range of its paired iPhone, the results will be calculated on the iPhone once it is back in range.</p>\n\n<p>Also important, and not clear at all from Apple’s initial announcement this morning: After the iOS 18.6.1 and WatchOS 11.6.1 software updates, the iPhone and Apple Watch need to download an over-the-air asset to enable the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature. This apparently may take up to 24 hours. Until this asset download happens, the Blood Oxygen app on your Apple Watch will still say “The Blood Oxygen app is no longer available”. To jump-start the download, users can open the Health app on their iPhone, and the ECG app on their Apple Watch. I was in this boat personally with an Ultra 2 from last year, and opening the Health app on my iPhone and taking an ECG reading on the watch did the trick — after that, launching the Blood Oxygen app on the watch <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/blood-oxygen-app-watchos-11.6.1.png\">showed a new message</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The Blood Oxygen App Has Changed</p>\n\n<p>You will now find Blood Oxygen results in the Health app on your iPhone.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(<strong>Update:</strong> I am reliably informed that you don’t need to take an ECG reading on the watch. Just opening the ECG app is enough to trigger the asset download needed by the Blood Oxygen app. I figured why not take a reading while I was in there, though.)</p>\n\n<p>The US Customs ruling that Apple is citing to allow them to offer this workaround — “HQ H351038”, per a source at Apple — <a href=\"https://rulings.cbp.gov/\">is not yet publicly available</a>. But reading between the lines, the implication is that US Customs has decided that Masimo’s patents only apply to on-device sensor processing (and display of results?).</p>\n\n<p>I continue to think that Masimo is a patent troll. At the time they filed their complaint with the ITC, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/11/apple-masimo-appeals-court\">they didn’t even have a smartwatch on the market</a>. And <a href=\"https://www.masimo.com/products/monitors/masimo-w1-medical-watch/\">the smartwatch they now sell</a> — years after filing the complaint — looks like an Apple Watch with a second button instead of a digital crown. The two patents in question (<a href=\"https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en\">10,912,502</a> and <a href=\"https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en\">10,945,648</a>) are set to expire in August 2028, and I suspect this patent suit has been a last-ditch attempt to monetize them before they expire by extorting a settlement from Apple. Good luck with that now.</p>\n\n\n\n " }, { "title": "★ Max Read’s ‘A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials’", "date_published": "2025-08-13T21:05:50Z", "date_modified": "2025-08-13T21:44:18Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/max_read_literary_history_fake_apple_texts", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/max_read_literary_history_fake_apple_texts", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Max Read, two years ago, “<a href=\"https://maxread.substack.com/p/a-literary-history-of-fake-texts?r=71ygg\">A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I’m talking about the mocked-up texts and emails Apple puts\ntogether to demonstrate new messaging features in its\noperating-system updates, presumably written by some well-paid\nprofessionals in Apple’s marketing department. These eerily\ncheery, aggressively punctuated messages suggest an alternate\ndimension in which polite, good-natured, rigorously diverse groups\nof friends and coworkers use Apple products exactly how they are\ndesigned to be used, without complaint or error. [...]</p>\n\n<p>If there is still mystery in Apple events, it is located here,\nin the uncanny fictional world suggested in these images: Who\nare these people? And what is wrong with them that they text\nlike this?</p>\n\n<p>A proper literary study of fake Apple texts has yet to be\nundertaken, but with the help of the Wayback Machine, we can sift\nthrough more than a decade’s work of marketing materials to\nidentify certain trends and themes. For the sake of precision,\nlet’s begin our survey in 2011, with the launch of iMessage in iOS\n5. Here, so far as I can tell, is the first-ever fake Apple\niMessage conversation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ve been sitting on this one since shortly after Read published it, and came upon it again today in my pile of I-should-post-about-this-but-I-have-a-lot-I-need-to-say-about-it links. Now — just under four weeks away from Apple’s expected keynote for the iPhones 17 and new Apple Watches — seems as good a time as ever to finally link to it. It really is a lot of fun, and Read seemingly found every marketing screenshot of Messages or Mail from 2011–2023 that he could.</p>\n\n<p>But re-reading it today, I realize why I sat on it. There’s a cynicism to the whole thing that grates. Read is disdainful of everything about these messages — their cheerful tone, professional-grade photography, even their attentive punctuation. But of course they’re not realistic. Of course every person in every chat “use[s] Apple products exactly how they are designed to be used, without complaint or error.” Of course everyone is always happy and friendly and having a good time. Of course the groups are always diverse.<sup id=\"fnr1-2025-08-13\"><a href=\"#fn1-2025-08-13\">1</a></sup> What other kinds of fictional people are going to be portrayed by Apple in their marketing screenshots? Ugly unhappy illiterates who take bad photos and never go anywhere? It’d be really weird if Apple’s fake texts for keynotes were anything other than idyllic — if the photos kinda sucked, if words were misspelled and entirely lowercase, if punctuation were omitted.</p>\n\n<p>So of course the fake texts in Apple marketing are, upon consideration, obviously phony. What I’ve long thought interesting is just how much effort Apple clearly puts into them. They’re <em>good</em> phony. Pitch-perfect for Apple’s Designed-in-California brand. A lot of work goes into the fake trips and parties portrayed and described in these threads, and it shows. But they’re not <em>so</em> interesting as to distract from the keynote. Imagine if a screenshot flew by with a Messages thread between colleagues gossiping about someone getting fired for expense account fraud, or about an extramarital affair. The purpose of these fake texts is the opposite of the supposed intention of the Liquid Glass design language: it’s fake content meant to put the emphasis on the real software. They’re actually worth the deep dive Max Read produced to document them. They’re genuinely interesting for what they are — but somehow Read can’t bring himself to say that, despite taking the time to document them. The withering cynicism of his tone is at odds with the fact that he took the time to document their history so thoroughly.</p>\n\n<p>Searching the DF archive for Read’s name, I came up with <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/roman_a_clef_computer_maker\">one hit</a>, and it explains his overly-cynical schtick. Read was editor-in-chief at Gawker, before Peter Thiel and his puppet Hulk Hogan (RIP) <a href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thiels-war-on-gawker-a-timeline/\">sued them out of business in 2016</a>. And when I previously mentioned Read (in 2020), <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/roman_a_clef_computer_maker\">it was because he was one of two ex-Gawkerites who sold a show to Apple TV+ called <em>Scraper</em></a><sup id=\"fnr2-2025-08-13\"><a href=\"#fn2-2025-08-13\">2</a></sup> about a thinly-veiled fictional version of Gawker, but which show was nixed, after several episodes had already been filmed, <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/business/media/apple-gawker-tim-cook.html\">supposedly by Tim Cook himself</a>, out of his personal loathing for Gawker. To be clear, I’m not suggesting Read took an overly snarky attitude to describing Apple’s fake-text literary history because Cook pulled the plug on <em>Scrapers</em>. I’m saying that Gawker was infused by the sort of attitude that holds all marketing in contempt. I, of course, firmly believe that many subjects are worthy of withering scorn. But the Gawker attitude was that no subject was worthy of anything but withering scorn. I never could abide that, and there’s something like it undergirding this otherwise splendid piece from Read. It’s like an otherwise delightful cocktail with one distinctive unpleasant ingredient, which ingredient was added, deliberately, to imbue the libation with an aftertaste of spite.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2025-08-13\">\n<p>Except for age. You’ll spot few, if any, gray hairs in the photos and Memojis these characters share. That’s not a complaint. Youth is aspirational, and there are gray hairs enough amongst <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/leadership/\">the executives</a> who present these keynote segments. <a href=\"#fnr1-2025-08-13\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2025-08-13\">\n<p>A perfect title, I have to say. “Scraper” would have been a better name for Gawker than “Gawker” was. (Much like how <em>The Studio</em>’s “Continental Studios” sounds like a real century-old peer to Paramount and Columbia Pictures.) <a href=\"#fnr2-2025-08-13\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n " } ] }