09-02-25 -

[Sponsor] TextJam
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? TextJam has new in...

08-26-25 -

[Sponsor] Walk the World
Do you miss being excited about cool new apps? We’ve made some before like Clear and Heads Up!, and today, we have a new one for you. Walk the World turns your steps into a new kind of virtual globe-trotting adventure. Wouldn’t it be cool ...

08-25-25 -

MacOS 26 Tahoes Dead-Canary Utility App Icons
MacOS has shipped with a collection of “utility” apps since the prehistoric era of classic Mac OS. A good rule of thumb what makes an app a “utility” is that it’s a tool for doing something about your computer. Ever since Mac OS X 10.0, ...

08-20-25 -

MSNBC, Spinning Out of NBCUniversal, Rebrands as MS NOW With a Godawful Backr...
Sara Fischer, Axios: MSNBC, the progressive cable network owned by NBCUniversal, is rebranding to MS NOW, an acronym that stands for My Source for News, Opinion and the World. The rebrand is part of a wider effort by NBCU to create a distinct...

08-19-25 -

How to Use iPhone Mirroring With More Than One iPhone
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 Su...

08-18-25 -

Joe Caroff, Designer of the James Bond 007 Logo, Dies at 103
Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter: For his first movie job — he would work on more than 300 campaigns during his career — United Artists executive David Chasman hired him to design the poster for West Side Story (1961), then aske...

08-14-25 -

Apple Issues a Workaround for the Blood Oxygen Sensor Ban for U.S. Apple Watches
Apple Newsroom this morning, “An Update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch in the U.S.””: Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 users through an iPhone and A...

08-13-25 -

Max Reads A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apples Marketing Materials
Max Read, two years ago, “A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials”: I’m talking about the mocked-up texts and emails Apple puts together to demonstrate new messaging features in its operating-system updates, pre...

08-11-25 -

OpenAI Brings Back Legacy ChatGPT 4o Model in Response to Outcry From Users W...
Sam Altman, in a long post yesterday on X, following up on OpenAI’s decision last week to make GPT-4o available as a legacy model, at least temporarily: If you have been following the GPT-5 rollout, one thing you might be noticing is how muc...

08-08-25 -

Gold, Frankincense, and Silicon
A list of various related news items and clips from this, and recent, weeks: Apple Newsroom, on Wednesday — “Apple Increases U.S. Commitment To $600 Billion, Announces American Manufacturing Program”: Apple today announced a new $1...

08-03-25 -

Substack Raised Another $100 Million, Which, I Bet, Is Already Being Flushed ...
One last post on my recent Substack kick. Yesterday I linked to Ana Marie Cox’s scathing analysis of Substack’s financials. She published that on June 23, and wrote about Substack’s $100 million funding round, with a $1 billion valuation, in...

08-02-25 -

The Substack Branding and Faux Prestige Trap
Among the handful of oft-discussed problems with Substack: Their 90/10 subscription revenue split isn’t usurious, but it’s high compared to competing platforms — especially once you reach an even mid-tier level of popularity. The only ...

07-30-25 -

Tea, the Womens Dating Gossip App Riddled With Security Vulnerabilities, Rema...
Tea remains #3 overall in the US iPhone App Store. Here’s a screenshot of the top free iPhone apps today, and a list of the current top 10, using the full names the apps choose to display: ChatGPT Wingstop Tea Dating Advice Threads Google Goog...

07-28-25 -

[Sponsor] Hello Weather
One of the best indie weather apps just got a major overhaul for 2025, and it’s worth checking out. Hello Weather is well known for its simple, friendly design, but the new update rounds it out with more depth and customization. You’ll get b...

07-24-25 -

ICEBlock, an iOS Exclusive
ICEBlock: ICEBlock is an innovative, completely anonymous crowdsourced platform that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with just two taps on their phone. In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alle...

07-21-25 -

[Sponsor] SafeBase by Drata
Eliminate the friction of inbound security reviews. SafeBase helps you automate inbound requests, use AI to answer questionnaires, and share your security posture proactively — all through a centralized Trust Center.  ★ 

07-20-25 -

[Sponsor] WorkOS: Summer Launch Week
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their summer launch week. You may recall their previous launch week back in spring, when I emphasized that their launch week announcements were worth checking out just to admire the ret...

07-18-25 -

Curse Not the King
Why CBS’s Cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” Stinks to High Hell Even back in the now-comparatively-sane Trump 1.0 administration, it seemed palpably true to me that the best check against Trump’s authoritarian instincts...

07-09-25 -

Save Yourself Some Dough on Apple Kit and Make Me Rich on Amazon Prime Day
It’s Amazon’s annual Prime Day sale, and if you click through this link, or any of the ones below, you can show your support for Daring Fireball by throwing the referral revenue from any purchases you make my way. You don’t pay a penny more ...

07-08-25 -

Jeff Williams, 62, Is Retiring as Apples COO
Apple Newsroom, this afternoon: Apple today announced Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations as part of a long-planned succession. William...

07-07-25 -

[Sponsor] Drata
Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.  ★ 

07-07-25 -

Full-Screen Ad for F1 The Movie in Apples TV App Linked Directly to the Web, ...
MG Siegler, on Threads last week: We’re already beyond ridiculous with the full-on ad assault from Apple as everyone is well aware by now. But the wild thing here — in this full screen pop-up in the Apple TV app — is that it’s ...

07-01-25 -

[Sponsor] Phoenix.new
Resurrect your side projects with Phoenix.new, the new AI app-builder from Fly.io. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, ...

06-28-25 -

Apple Announces Sweeping but Complicated Policy Changes for Apps in the EU, A...
Let’s start with Apple’s own announcement at Apple Developer News: The European Commission has required Apple to make a series of additional changes under the Digital Markets Act: Communication and Promotion of Offers Today, we’re int...

06-27-25 -

More on Apples Trust-Eroding F1 The Movie Wallet Ad
This is a funny gag from Claude Zeins, but if you think about it, it shows just how destructive Apple’s decision was to send a push notification from the Wallet app promoting F1 The Movie. It’s a fact that no company can inject an ad into you...

06-19-25 -

One Week Out, Some Brief Thoughts and Observations on WWDC 2025
“This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away — to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless!”...

06-14-25 -

The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2025
Recorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose Tuesday evening, special guests Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel join me to discuss Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2025. 3D video with spatial audio: Coming soon, exclusiv...

06-12-25 -

Apples Spin on the Personalized Siri Apple Intelligence Reset
Michael Tsai, “Apple’s Spin on AI and iPadOS Multitasking”: I do want to call out that, in multiple interviews, they are kind of setting up strawmen to knock down. They keep saying that people say Apple is behind in AI because it doesn�...

06-09-25 -

[Sponsor] DetailsPro
With WWDC25 bringing the biggest design overhaul since iOS 7, you’ll want to prototype your new interfaces fast. DetailsPro lets you build real SwiftUI layouts directly on your iPhone — no Mac required, no code needed. Mock up your WWDC-in...

06-08-25 -

Gurman Says New UI Is Named Liquid Glass (and Makes a Terrible Analogy Regard...
Mark Gurman, in his eve-of-WWDC Power On column at Bloomberg: The Liquid Glass interface is going to be the most exciting part of this year’s developer conference. It will also be a bit of a distraction from the reality facing Apple: The com...

06-08-25 -

Gurman Says New UI Is Named Liquid Glass (and Makes a Terrible Analogy Regard...
Mark Gurman, in his eve-of-WWDC Power On column at Bloomberg: The Liquid Glass interface is going to be the most exciting part of this year’s developer conference. It will also be a bit of a distraction from the reality facing Apple: The com...

06-06-25 -

Truth Social Is Just Trumps Blog
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, “The Trump-Musk Feud Has Been Great for X, Which Jumped Up the App Store Charts”: The feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump may be bad for the MAGA camp, but it’s proven to be beneficial for X, which ...

06-02-25 -

Apple Appeals EUs March Ruling on Interoperability Requirements Under the DMA
Benjamin Mayo, writing at 9to5Mac: Apple has appealed parts of the Digital Markets Act law citing user privacy concerns. Specifically, Apple is contesting the interoperability requirements that say data like notification content and WiFi netwo...

05-27-25 -

[Sponsor] Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer
Established industries don’t get disrupted all that often. We at Ooni are lucky enough to have changed the game in pizza ovens over the past decade by rethinking them from ground up and in the process enabling the home pizza revolution. From...

05-24-25 -

Idiocy or Jackassery, You Make the Call: Tripp Mickle on Whether Trumps Made ...
The New York Times ran a really dumb Tripp Mickle piece yesterday under the headline “Is Trump’s ‘Made in America’ iPhone a Fantasy?” The answer should have simply been “Yes, it’s sheer fantasy”, perhaps with explanations why. Inst...

05-19-25 -

[Sponsor] Drata
Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.  ★ 

05-19-25 -

More Insight and Not-Negativity
Some “thank god some of you remembered because I thought I was going nuts” follow-up regarding my remembrance the other day, “15 Years Later: ‘Very Insightful and Not Negative’”. I wrote: So, what would you do if Steve Jobs was quo...

05-15-25 -

15 Years Later: Very Insightful and Not Negative
Earlier this week Nilay Patel was working on the show notes for the episode of Decoder I guested on, and he texted me to ask if I could recall the time Steve Jobs sent some random developer a link to an article I wrote about the App Store. He want...

05-15-25 -

That EU App Store Warning About External Purchases Is Not New, and Apple Prop...
Some interesting follow-up on that piece yesterday about the warning — with a prominent red “!” icon — in App Store listings for apps in the EU that use their own payment processing. Apple told me that exact same warning has been i...

05-14-25 -

Single-Story as in Very Early Versions of Macintosh System 1
Following up on my gripe regarding the alternative a glyph used in Apple Notes, here’s Kevin Fox, tweeting on Threads: While we’re waxing nostalgic on the Original Mac, a Daring Fireball post today (below) reminded me of another piece of M...

05-12-25 -

[Sponsor] Bolt: What Do You Want to Build?
Prompt, run, edit, and deploy full-stack web and mobile apps with Bolt, the AI-powered web development agent that brings coding to your browser. Bolt lets you build, edit, and test web applications in real time with simple, chat-based prompts. No...

04-30-25 -

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers Rules, in Excoriating Decision, That Apple Viola...
I’m linking here to Techmeme’s roundup of news coverage and commentary, but I highly recommend you start by reading Gonzalez Rogers’s 80-page decision. It is excoriating. I’ve read few legal decisions quite like it. But it’s also incredi...

04-28-25 -

Is Chrome Even a Sellable Asset?
There are two ways to consider a forced divestiture of Chrome by Google, as the U.S. Department of Justice has, for months now, been requesting after Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google has illegally maintained its monopoly in web search. One is...

04-28-25 -

Another Periodic Suggestion to Try, Just Try, Switching to Kagi for Search
Aaron Pressman, writing earlier this month in The Boston Globe, “Why I Abandoned Google Search After 27 Years — and What I’m Using Instead”: The UK now requires travelers from America to obtain an electronic travel authorization, o...

04-14-25 -

[Sponsor] Dekf Coffee Roasters
Coffee has always been about bringing people together. For us, it started with a simple question over a late-night cup of decaf: why do coffee lovers who skip the caffeine have to skip the craft too? At Dekáf, we believe those who drink coffee p...

04-09-25 -

WebKit Adds Support for text-wrap: pretty, Now Shipping in Safari Technology ...
Jen Simmons, writing on the WebKit blog, “Better Typography With text-wrap pretty”: For over 30 years, the web had only one technique for determining where to wrap text. The browser starts with the first line of text, and lays out each wo...

04-09-25 -

How Many New iPhones Can Fit on a Freight Plane?
This sounds like one of those puzzles job interviewers often ask, but there’s a practical relevance at the moment: What’s a ballpark estimate for how many iPhones Apple might have hustled to ship into the US on those five freight planes ahead ...

04-04-25 -

Tired: Irresistable Force vs. Immovable ObjectWired: Unchanging Prices vs. No...
Akash Sriram, reporting for Reuters under the headline “A $2,300 Apple iPhone? Trump Tariffs Could Make That Happen.”: Most iPhones are still made in China, which was hit with a 54% tariff. If those levies persist, Apple, opens new tab has...

03-31-25 -

[Sponsor] Democracy
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Pos...

03-31-25 -

France Fines Apple $162M for App Tracking Transparency, Taking the Side of Su...
Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica, “France Fines Apple €150M for “Excessive” Pop-Ups That Let Users Reject Tracking”: France’s competition regulator fined Apple €150 million, saying the iPhone maker went overboard in its im...