09-21-23 -

Craptacular Is More Like It
Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie, reporting for The Wall Street Journal under the not-at-all-clickbait-y headline “Inside Apple’s Spectacular Failure to Build a Key Part for Its New iPhones” (News+ link): The new iPhone models unveiled last wee...

09-19-23 -

The iPhones 15 Pro (and iPhones 15)
Blah blah blah, something something something about how most people don’t upgrade their phones every year, so we ought not review new ones based on year-over-year comparisons. But, I get a new iPhone every year. A lot of you probably do too. So ...

09-18-23 -

[Sponsor] MultiMultiplayer Collaboration for macOS
Multi is a new macOS collaboration layer that makes any app multiplayer. Shared control for any app or display Drawing & deep links for faster communication Native app; crafted to feel like part of macOS Since launching last month, we�...

09-18-23 -

AirPods Pro 2, Now With USB-C Charging Case
Among the oft-quoted Alan Kay’s numerous aphorisms is “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” A sort-of corollary to that, which I believe, is that the best way to appreciate new technology is to go back to using an older versi...

09-15-23 -

Thoughts and Observations on This Weeks Wonderlust Apple Event
Was Tuesday’s “Wonderlust” event mostly predictable? Yes. Does that mean it was boring? For some people, yes. But for most people, it was the biggest tech news event of the year, just like Apple’s iPhone event is every year of late. That�...

09-11-23 -

Apples Two-Pronged Annual iPhone Strategy
In 2017 the iPhone X marked an obvious inflection point in iPhone history: the switch from the original home-button system interface, with Touch ID, to the “all-screen” interface with Face ID. But it also marked a widely misunderstood/under-ap...

09-10-23 -

The China-Apple Cold War Heats Up
Yoko Kubota, reporting from Beijing for The Wall Street Journal Wednesday (News+ link): China ordered officials at central government agencies not to use Apple’s iPhones and other foreign-branded devices for work or bring them into the offic...

09-04-23 -

[Sponsor] Oh Dear
Every time your website is unavailable, you could be losing out on revenue. Whether you have a webshop or just an informational site, if potential visitors can’t reach it, they’ll move on to the next one. After all, when was the last time you...

08-29-23 -

Idle Speculation on the Widely-Assumed Switch to USB-C Ports on the Upcoming ...
Tim Hardwick, writing for MacRumors: Apple may offer a USB-C data transfer accessory cable for iPhone 15 Pro models that is capable of Thunderbolt or USB4 speeds of up to 40Gbps. That is the latest claim made by Kosutami, who posted details of...

08-23-23 -

Changes to U.K. Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law
Ioannis Kouvakas, writing for Just Security: While the proposal does not specify what technical changes would require notification, these may include changes in the architecture of software that would interfere with the U.K.’s current survei...

08-17-23 -

Walt Disneys Mid-Century Business Strategy Charts
My Dithering co-host Ben Thompson referenced this famous 1957 Disney org/strategy chart in a (very good) Stratechery post this week. I just now added a link to it in the footnote regarding company org charts in my Disney/Apple piece from yesterday...

08-16-23 -

Disney and Apple, Sitting in a Tree
Kim Masters and Alex Weprin, writing for The Hollywood Reporter under the headline “A Disney Sale to Apple? Don’t Count It Out This Time”: There clearly is no buyer like Apple, which is sitting on $62 billion in cash and cash equivalents...

08-15-23 -

Holy Hell, Trump Did Use Twitter Direct Messages, There Were Many of Them, an...
Katelyn Polantz, reporting for CNN: The special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump and the aftermath of the 2020 election sought the former president’s Twitter direct messages, of which there were many, federal prosecutors and lawye...

08-14-23 -

[Sponsor] Rewatch
Collaboration shouldn’t require endless meetings that take away from real work. It’s too tempting for people to “grab some time” off your calendar and create costly interruptions with meetings you could’ve skipped if there were quality n...

08-10-23 -

Was Trump Using Twitter Direct Messages? (Please Let the Answer Be Yes.)
Rachel Weiner, reporting for The Washington Post yesterday, “Twitter Was Fined $350,000 for Failing to Turn Over Trump’s Data”: The social media company Twitter was forced to hand over records from former president Donald Trump’s accou...

08-05-23 -

Whats the Deal With Sensor Tower?
Hayden Field, reporting for CNBC last month: Last week, the text-based social media platform reported a record 100 million sign-ups in just five days, but according to data from Sensor Tower and Similarweb, the service has seen some dropoff in...

08-03-23 -

Oh to Be a Fly on the Wall During the Conversation Where Elon Musk Asks Tim C...
Elon Musk, on Twitter/X: If you can afford it, please subscribe to as many creators on this platform as you find interesting. People from every corner of the world post incredible content on X, but often live in tough circumstances, where even...

07-31-23 -

Nobody Uses Threads Anymore, Its Too Crowded
Katie Paul and Sheila Dang, reporting for Reuters, “Meta Plans Retention ‘Hooks’ for Threads as More Than Half of Users Leave App”: Meta Platforms executives are heavily focused on boosting retention on their new Twitter rival Threads,...

07-31-23 -

[Sponsor] WarpYour Terminal, Reimagined
Warp is a modern, Rust-based terminal with AI built in so you and your team can build great software, faster. Edit your commands like in an IDE, with selections, autosuggestions, and completion menus. Generate commands from natural language using...

07-29-23 -

Jackasses of the Week: TechRadar (Foldable Phones Edition)
Actual headline on ZDNet this week: “Apple Needs a Foldable iPhone Soon or iPhones Won’t Be Worth Buying”. Philip Berne writes: Since I bought my iPhone 14 Pro, much cooler phones have come along, and all of them are foldable phones. If ...

07-26-23 -

Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarinos Compa...
Company-wide memo from nominal X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino, sent this morning: Hi team, What a momentous weekend. Everyone said to me, “Linda, what are you thinking? You don’t want to work for that guy. He’s crazy and impulsive. You’...

07-21-23 -

Aptos, Microsofts New Default Font for Office Documents
Si Daniels, principal program manager for fonts and typography, Microsoft Office design (my god do people at Microsoft have long titles), in a much-noted post last week on Medium,1 “A Change of Typeface: Microsoft’s New Default Font Has Arrive...

07-19-23 -

Of Course Apple Has an LLM AI Chatbot in the Works, and of Course the Bloombe...
Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg, “Apple Tests ‘Apple GPT,’ Develops Generative AI Tools to Catch OpenAI”: The iPhone maker has built its own framework to create large language models — the AI-based systems at the heart of ne...

07-19-23 -

Nerding Out With Maestral, LaunchControl, and Keyboard Maestro
Item 1: Dropbox remains an excellent service, seemingly utterly reliable, with fair pricing. Item 2: Dropbox’s official Mac client has been a confusing, ugly, resource-heavy mess for years, and is only getting worse. Item 3: Maestral is an ope...

07-17-23 -

[Sponsor] Jigx
Jigx empowers anyone with basic dev and SQL skills to build native iOS apps. Not squashed websites in a native container. But powerful, pixel-perfect mobile apps that run natively on Apple phones and tablets. Apps that you can be proud of and that...

07-10-23 -

[Sponsor] KolideDevice Trust for Okta. Watch the demo today.
It seems like every company is scrambling to stake their claim in the AI goldrush — check out the CEO of Kroger promising to bring LLMs into the dairy aisle. And front line workers are following suit–experimenting with AI so they can work ...

07-07-23 -

Now Apollo Faces the Cliff
When Twitter unceremoniously pulled the plug on third-party clients earlier this year, commercial Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific were left in a perilous position. I wrote: Twitter’s kneecapping of third-party clients didn’t...

07-05-23 -

Threads
Facebook’s much-anticipated Twitter rival Threads — branded “an Instagram app” — is out. Some initial thoughts and observations: The website’s home page contains just a link to the apps for iPhone and Android, but you can vie...

07-03-23 -

[Sponsor] Nylas for Email and Calendar APIs
Power email, calendar, and contacts features in your app. Launch for free today.  ★ 

07-03-23 -

[Sponsor] Nylas for Email and Calendar APIs
Power email, calendar, and contacts features in your app. Launch for free today.  ★ 

06-28-23 -

Ahead of Season 1 Finale, Apple Has Made the Entire First Episode of Silo Fre...
Apple TV, yesterday on Twitter: 3 days until the #Silo finale. Here’s the entire first episode. Embedded right in that promoted tweet is the entire series premiere.1 Putting aside, for this paragraph, the politics surrounding Twitter, th...

06-26-23 -

FTC Sues Amazon, Claiming Deceptive Prime Sign-Up and Cancellation Process
Annie Palmer, reporting for CNBC last week: The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Amazon, alleging the nation’s dominant online retailer intentionally duped millions of consumers into signing up for its mainstay Prime program and �...

06-26-23 -

[Sponsor] Axiom
Logging, re-invented. Stop sampling, get Axiom. Give developers and everyone else in your organization the power to gain instant, actionable insights on all their data as efficiently as possible. Starting at $25/mo for 1TB/mo logs. Get all you...

06-20-23 -

More on Preemptively Blocking Facebooks Imminent ActivityPub Entry
My brief “Not That Kind of ‘Open’” piece yesterday struck a chord for some. Chris Messina: Not federating is certainly a choice admins can make, but it’s unlikely to have an impact considering that Threads is being bootstrapped off ...

06-10-23 -

The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2023
Back in San Jose’s historic California Theatre for the first time since 2019, special guests John Ternus, Mike Rockwell, Craig Federighi, and Greg Joswiak join me to discuss the news and announcements from WWDC 2023. Presented by Kolide: The...

06-07-23 -

First Impressions of Vision Pro and VisionOS
I got to spend about 30 minutes Monday afternoon using a Vision Pro and VisionOS at Apple Park, in a temporary “field house” building Apple constructed specifically for this experience. This was a one-on-one guided tour with someone from the V...

05-29-23 -

[Sponsor] Sky Guide
Sky Guide brings the beauty of the stars down to Earth. Thanks to AR, understanding the cosmos has never been simpler — just hold it overhead to automatically identify any star, constellation, planet or satellite. Developed as a native iOS a...

05-19-23 -

On Apple Fitting a Headset Announcement Into the Always-Packed WWDC Keynote
Ben Bajarin on Twitter: If Apple is releasing a VR/AR headset this year, it makes more sense for a dedicated event or bundle it with a Mac event in the fall. There is too much ground to cover at WWDC, and 30 min is not enough to tell the full...

05-18-23 -

Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read The Wall Street Journal?
Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie, reporting last week for The Wall Street Journal, “Apple Is Breaking Its Own Rules With a New Headset” (News+): Apple’s launch plans break many of its traditions and rules about new products that have become the...

05-18-23 -

Lets Check in on Supermicro, the Target of Bloombergs The Big Hack
Kim Ahlberg, posting on Mastodon: Putting some money into SMCI after reading @gruber’s posts calling out Bloomberg¹ on their bullshit story has been a good move so far… ¹ Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The ...

05-16-23 -

Proposed Name for GMs Upcoming In-House Software Platform (You Know, the One ...
Michael Wayland, reporting last week for CNBC: General Motors has hired former Apple executive Mike Abbott to lead a newly created software unit for the Detroit automaker. Abbott, former vice president of engineering for Apple’s cloud servic...

05-15-23 -

[Sponsor] Onin Keyboard Calendar
Only 40% of the plans we make in messaging apps end up in our calendar. Onin is the free iPhone keyboard that brings your calendar into every conversation. Check your calendar, add events, and share invites inside any app. Onin works with all your...

05-02-23 -

Browser and OS Market Share Trends in the Post-Mobile Age
Joshua Benton on Twitter, linking to Statcounter’s U.S. browser share data for March: For the first time ever, Safari has more than 20% of desktop browser share in the U.S. Since last June, Chrome is down 6% (61.35% to 55.28%), while Safari...

05-02-23 -

Browser and OS Market Share Trends in the Mobile Age
Joshua Benton on Twitter, linking to Statcounter’s U.S. browser share data for March: For the first time ever, Safari has more than 20% of desktop browser share in the U.S. Since last June, Chrome is down 6% (61.35% to 55.28%), while Safari...

05-01-23 -

Follow-Up on Adware for Apple Services in iOS
Yours truly, two weeks ago: For the last several weeks, I’ve noticed an ad in Settings on my iPhone, in the iCloud section at the very top of the first screen: “Apple Arcade Free for 3 Months”. The reason this is dumb is that I pay for a...

04-28-23 -

[Sponsor] Limited Edition: Atoms MKBHD Sneaker M251
Introducing Atoms × MKBHD. A first of its kind collaboration between Atoms and Marques Brownlee over a shared passion for creativity, craftsmanship and storytelling. The limited edition mid-top sneaker Model 251 features a sleek design that blend...

04-21-23 -

Brief Clips of Humanes Wearable AI Projector in Action
Raymond Wong, reporting for Inverse: Humane, the top-secret tech startup founded by ex-Apple vets Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, just showed off the first demo for its projector-based wearable at a TED talk. Axios’s Ina Fried broke th...

04-21-23 -

If You Come at the King
Raymond Wong, reporting for Inverse, “Watch Humane’s Wearable AI Projector in Action”: Humane, the top-secret tech startup founded by ex-Apple vets Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, just showed off the first demo for its projector-ba...

04-20-23 -

Adware for Apple Services in iOS
Steve Streza, all the way back in February 2020 (innocent times, that month): Over the years, Apple has built up a portfolio of services and add-ons that you pay for. Starting with AppleCare extended warranties and iCloud data subscriptions, t...

04-12-23 -

Warner Bros. Discovery Is Really Going to Drop the HBO Brand and Just Call It...
Warner Bros. Discovery: Warner Bros. Discovery today introduced Max, its enhanced streaming service, which will launch in the U.S. on May 23. Max is the destination for HBO Originals, Warner Bros. films, Max Originals, the DC universe, the Wiz...