Some Lakers Games This Season Will Be Broadcast Live in Immersive Video for Vision Pro 

Jacob Krol, writing for Techradar:

We’ve seen a broad range of content, but I’ve been waiting for something live — specifically, live sports. Seeing that Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball is capturing games with the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max gave me some hope, and now we have a confirmed release. In what might be the start of something new, select Los Angeles Lakers games will be live-streamed in Apple Immersive for the Vision Pro this coming season.

It’s not every game, but for those that are streaming — exclusive to the $3,500 Spatial Computer — you’ll get access to views that put you right in the middle of the action. Special cameras that support the format will be set courtside and under each basket to give you perspectives that amp up the immersion. The Lakers’ games will be shot using a special version of Blackmagic Design’s URSA Cine Immersive Live camera.

Kind of weird, to me, that it wasn’t Apple’s own Friday Night Baseball broadcasts first, but I can’t wait to try this.

Apple’s Justification for Removing DeICER From the App Store 

Pablo Manríquez, reporting for Migrant Insider:

Apple has quietly removed DeICER, a civic-reporting app used to log immigration enforcement activity, from its App Store after a law enforcement complaint — invoking a rule normally reserved for protecting marginalized groups from hate speech.

According to internal correspondence reviewed by Migrant Insider, Apple told developer Rafael Concepcion that the app violated Guideline 1.1.1, which prohibits “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content” directed at “religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups.”

But Apple’s justification went further. “Information provided to Apple by law enforcement shows that your app violates Guideline 1.1.1 because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group,” the company wrote in its removal notice.

The decision effectively treats federal immigration agents as a protected class — a novel interpretation of Apple’s hate-speech policy that shields one of the most powerful arms of government from public scrutiny.

Delicate flowers, these ICE agents are. And it’s a lie, anyway. There’s not one story about any of these apps being used to harm ICE agents. And even if such an attack happened, that wouldn’t imply it’s the purpose of these apps. The purpose of these apps is to protect people — citizens and non-citizens alike — from ICE.

Alas, there’s no more courage, conviction, or honesty from Google on the Android side of the fence either.

It’d be both interesting and honest if either Apple or Google justified these app bannings by simply saying the Trump administration demanded them and that they — Apple and Google — fear reprisal from Trump if they don’t comply.

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses 

Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media:

Apple removed an app for preserving TikToks, Instagram reels, news reports, and videos documenting abuses by ICE, 404 Media has learned. The app, called Eyes Up, differs from other banned apps such as ICEBlock which were designed to report sightings of ICE officials in real-time to warn local communities. Eyes Up, meanwhile, was more of an aggregation service pooling together information to preserve evidence in case the material is needed in the future in court.

The news shows that Apple and Google’s crackdown on ICE-spotting apps, which started after pressure from the Department of Justice against Apple, is broader in scope than apps that report sightings of ICE officials. It has also impacted at least one app that was more about creating a historical record of ICE’s activity during its mass deportation effort.

“Our goal is government accountability, we aren’t even doing real-time tracking,” the administrator of Eyes Up, who said their name was Mark, told 404 Media. Mark asked 404 Media to only use his first name to protect him from retaliation. “I think the [Trump] admin is just embarrassed by how many incriminating videos we have.”

Sometimes consistency is a bad thing.

Apple Faces French Investigation Over Opt-In Siri Voice Recordings 

Benoit Berthelot and Gaspard Sebag, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. faces an investigation in France over the use of voice recordings made with its assistant Siri. The probe has been referred to the Office for Combating Cybercrime, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Monday. An Apple spokesperson referred to a blog post the company published in January about its use of voice recordings, and declined to comment further.

Politico earlier reported the investigation.

The investigation concerns Apple’s collection of user recordings through Siri, the digital assistant available on most of its devices. Apple can record and retain audio interactions through Siri to help improve its services, a feature the company says is opt-in. Some of that data can be retained for up to two years and reviewed by “graders”, or subcontractors, according to Apple.

Sending recorded Siri voice interactions to Apple is opt-in, and the opt-in screen is very clear and cogent. It’s not just something Apple claims.

Amazing stuff continues to happen in the EU.

Katie Notopoulos on the Difference Between Sora and Meta Vibes 

Katie Notopoulos, on Threads:

Me looking at Vibes feed: this is screensaver. So boring. Why would anyone want it?

Me looking at videos I made of my own face in Sora 2: heheh I love this it’s funny it’s ME.

My feelings exactly.

I even like staring at screensavers sometimes. But the screensavers I like watching are Apple’s aerial (and occasionally, underwater) screensavers on Apple TV. They’re slow, peaceful, and real. Vibes is chaotic, fast, and phony.

‘Sora’s Slop Hits Different’ 

MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass:

I think that’s the real revelation here. It’s less about consumption and more about creation. I previously wrote about how I was an early investor in Vine in part because it felt like it could be analogous to Instagram. Thanks in large part to filters, that app made it easy for anyone to think they were good enough to be a photographer. It didn’t matter if they were or not, they thought they were — I was one of them — so everyone posted their photos. Vine felt like it could have been that for video thanks to its clever tap-to-record mechanism. But actually, it became a network for a lot of really talented amateurs to figure out a new format for funny videos on the internet. When Twitter acquired the company and dropped the ball, TikTok took that idea and scaled it (thanks to ByteDance paying um, Meta billions of dollars for distribution, and their own very smart algorithms).

In a way, Sora feels like enabling everyone to be a TikTok creator.

I don’t want to predict if Sora is a fad or has staying power, but so far I enjoy it in a way that I haven’t enjoyed a new social network in years. It’s just fun to dash off a stupid video with no more work than a quick text prompt, and the friends I’m following are making some damn funny clips every day.

Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded for Work in Quantum Mechanics 

The New York Times:

John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday in Sweden for showing that two properties of quantum mechanics, the physical laws that rule the subatomic realm, could be observed in a system large enough to see with the naked eye.

“There is no advanced technology today that does not rely on quantum mechanics,” Olle Eriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates’ discoveries, he added, paved the way for technologies like the cellphone, cameras and fiber optic cables. It also helped lay the groundwork for current attempts to build a quantum computer, a device that could compute and process information at speeds that would not be possible with classical computers.

Can you believe these woke dopes gave this award to three people, and not one of them is Donald Trump?

What’s New or Changed in iOS 26.1 Beta 2 

Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac:

Alarms and timers are now harder to dismiss thanks to a new ‘Slide to stop’ gesture. Both alarms and timers were updated in iOS 26 to utilize a new design with much larger on-screen buttons than before. Now in iOS 26.1 beta 2, Apple has replaced the ‘Stop’ button with a new sliding gesture that requires a little more intentionality. This should make accidental alarm dismissals more rare.

That’s one of several changes that caught my eye. Seems like a great idea. Another notable change: Slide Over returns to iPadOS.

See also: Juli Clover’s rundown of changes in iOS 26.1 beta 2 for MacRumors.

AltStore State of the Union 

Riley Testut, co-founder of AltStore:

By far our number one request, we’re planning to launch AltStore PAL in more countries later this year in response to various regulatory changes around the world. Specifically, we plan to launch in Japan, Brazil, and Australia before the end of the year, with the UK to follow in 2026. This is great news for the fight to open app distribution, as it will give consumers more options to install apps they otherwise couldn’t from the App Store — such as my clipboard manager Clip.

While we wait to hear more from Apple on exact timing, if you’re a developer interested in distributing your app through AltStore PAL in one of these countries feel free to check out our documentation now to get a head start. Overall though, we couldn’t be more excited to make AltStore PAL available to millions of more people; we truly believe it’s a matter of time before alternative app marketplaces are available worldwide, and each new country brings us one step closer to that goal.

Apple’s cowardly abandonment of ICEBlock in the face of the first whiff of pressure from the Trump administration is perhaps the best evidence yet that Apple’s arguments in favor of their App Store being the single source for third-party software do not hold water. I’m not going to argue that ICEBlock is an essential app, or super duper popular, but it is a very serious app that aims to address a very serious situation. In Apple’s email to developer Joshua Aaron informing him of their decision to pull ICEBlock from the App Store, they justified the decision on the spurious basis that the app contained “objectionable content”. The only content ICEBlock contains is the location of law enforcement activity. Waze — and more notably, Apple’s own Maps app — do the exact same thing for highway speed traps.

Apple’s decision shows that developers cannot trust the App Store to distribute apps that anyone in the Trump administration might “object to”. ICEBlock is an iOS exclusive app and service for serious privacy reasons that are grounded in technical merit. But, exactly as many critics of the App-Store-as-exclusive-distribution-point-for-native-software model have long warned, it’s proven to be a choke point that Apple was unwilling to defend. Apple frequently invokes the word trust as a reason for the App Store model. But their treatment of ICEBlock indicates they are untrustworthy when it comes to showing any sort of backbone regarding Trump’s mad-king slide into authoritarianism, and thus, so too is the entire iOS platform in jurisdictions like the US, where the App Store remains the exclusive distribution source. What good is building the most privacy-focused, user-friendly platform in the world when Apple will disallow an app for which airtight privacy is essential? What happens when Trump lickspittles go after women’s healthcare apps like Planned Parenthood?

If there were a way to distribute apps outside the App Store in the US (TestFlight doesn’t count, as it has hard limits on how many users can get the app — and it’s not clear that Apple hasn’t blocked ICEBlock from TestFlight too), US iPhone users would still have access to ICEBlock. If that were the case, perhaps the Trump administration would then “demand” that Apple revoke Aaron’s developer account. But if that happened, at least we’d know just how pants-wettingly terrified Apple is of the president, in our purported liberal democracy.

There’s lots of other interesting news in Testut’s AltStore status report, including the news that they’re adding Fediverse support to AltStore to distribute app updates and news (and more); converting to a public benefit corporation; have raised $6 million in funding; and are donating $500,000 of that money to help fund indie iOS Fediverse apps like Tapbots’s Ivory (Mastodon) and Phoenix (Bluesky) clients and The Iconfactory’s Tapestry feed aggregator.

Wiley Hodges’s Open Letter to Tim Cook Regarding ICEBlock 

Wiley Hodges, a 22-year veteran of Apple product marketing, who retired in 2022, in an open letter he sent to Tim Cook:

I don’t know where this leaves me as an Apple customer, but I do know that it upsets me as an Apple shareholder. I am asking you and your team to more clearly explain the basis on which you made the decision to remove ICEBlock — and how the government showed good faith and strong evidence in making its demand of Apple, or that you reinstate the app in the App Store.

I hope that as a man of integrity and principle you can understand how outrageous this situation is. Even more, I hope you recognize how every inch you voluntarily give to an authoritarian regime adds to their illegitimately derived power. We are at a critical juncture in our country’s history where we face the imminent threat of the loss of our constitutional republic. It is up to all of us to demand that the rule of law rather than the whims of a handful of people — even elected ones — govern our collective enterprise. Apple and you are better than this. You represent the best of what America can be, and I pray that you will find it in your heart to continue to demonstrate that you are true to the values you have so long and so admirably espoused.

When you give a bully your lunch money, they always come back for more.

Disney learned this. Last December, Disney settled a lawsuit Trump had filed against ABC News and host George Stephanopoulos for $15 million. The lawsuit was bullshit; nearly all experts agreed that if Disney/ABC had taken the case to court, they’d have won. Disney settled — with both the $15 million and “a note of regret” — thinking, surely, that this would get Trump off their back. Put them on Trump’s good side. Then came the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco, when they finally stood up and said, effectively, “Fuck you, make me.”

Hodges, earlier in his letter, makes reference to Apple’s 2016 standoff with the FBI over a locked iPhone belonging to the mass shooter in San Bernardino, California. The FBI and Justice Department pressured Apple to create a version of iOS that would allow them to backdoor the iPhone’s passcode lock. Apple adamantly refused.

The message Trump and his lickspittles surely took from Apple acceding to their “demand” regarding ICEBlock — a demand made without an iota of legal justification, nor any factual justification that the app was being used to put ICE law enforcements agents in harm’s way — is that when they make a demand to Apple, Apple will respond not with the four words “Fuck you, make me” (as they did in the 2016 San Bernardino case), but instead “Whatever you say goes”. It was, obviously, easier for Apple to stand on principle in 2016, when Barack Obama, a man who deeply respected the Constitution and the principle of rule of law, was president. But it’s more important to stand on those same principles with Trump — a would-be mad king with no respect nor even understanding of the Constitution or rule of law — in office.

If not now, when? Apple will, I believe, find out.

OpenAI Looks to Take 10 Percent Stake in AMD Through AI Chip Deal 

MacKenzie Sigalos, CNBC:

OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices have reached a deal that could see Sam Altman’s company take a 10% stake in the chipmaker. AMD stock skyrocketed more than 30% on Monday following the news.

OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct graphics processing units over multiple years and across multiple generations of hardware, the companies said Monday. It will kick off with an initial 1-gigawatt rollout of chips in the second half of 2026.

It only happens once a decade or so, but the most exciting times in tech occur when there’s a breakthrough that’s severely hardware constrained. That includes hardware like infrastructure — bandwidth was a massive constraint during the dot-com boom. It wasn’t even feasible to download audio, like podcasts, for the first decade of the consumer internet boom, let alone video. But it was inevitable that we’d get there.

Right now we’re severely constrained on compute for AI. In a few years, we’ll look back on today’s state of affairs the way we look back on dial-up modems.

S&P Global 

My thanks to S&P Global for sponsoring this last week at DF. S&P Global believes that the future of information delivery is AI — and AI thrives on clean, trustworthy metadata. That’s why they’re embracing open web standards to make data more accessible and machine-readable. Explore their open data at dunl.org, their open data portal, and discover rich metadata at S&P’s Metadata Marketplace.

Cheap Batteries Are Dangerous 

Andrew Liszewski, The Verge:

Lumafield has released the results of a new study of lithium-ion batteries that “reveals an enormous gap in quality between brand-name batteries and low-cost cells” that are readily available through online stores including Amazon and Temu. The company used its computed tomography (CT) scanners, capable of peering inside objects in 3D using X-rays, to analyze over 1,000 lithium-ion batteries. It found dangerous manufacturing defects in low-cost and counterfeit batteries that could potentially lead to fires and explosions.

My gut feeling has long been that cheap battery packs and cheap products with integrated batteries (like all the junk Temu sells) are dangerous. This analysis basically proves it. (I’d have linked directly to Lumafield’s report, but it’s only available by submitting your name and email address, so Liszewski’s summary at The Verge is a better quick read.)


Complying With ‘Demand’ From Trump Administration, Apple Removes ICEBlock From App Store

Ashley Oliver, reporting for Fox Business:

DOJ officials, at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, asked Apple to take down ICEBlock, a move that comes as Trump administration officials have claimed the tool, which allows users to anonymously report ICE agents’ presence, puts agents in danger and helps shield illegal immigrants.

“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so,” Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed,” Bondi added. “This Department of Justice will continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe.”

Fox, in its opening paragraph, describes Bondi as having “asked” Apple to remove ICEBlock from the App Store, but Bondi’s own statement uses the verb “demand”. The difference is not nitpicking. No one, not even Bondi, is claiming any aspect of ICEBlock is illegal. Thus it’s not merely inappropriate but outrageous — and yet another among dozens of other causes for alarm regarding Trump 2.0’s decidedly authoritarian turn — for the DOJ to “demand” that Apple do anything about it. But demand they did, and comply did Apple. (Check those lips for Cheetos dust before heading home today.)

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, Peter Kafka, and Kwan Wei Kevin Tan, reporting for Business Insider:

Apple has removed ICEBlock, an app that allowed users to monitor and report the location of immigration enforcement officers, from the App Store.

“We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps,” Apple said in a statement to Business Insider. “Based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store.”

ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron, posting on the ICEBlock Bluesky account:

We just received a message from Apple’s App Review that #ICEBlock has been removed from the App Store due to “objectionable content”. The only thing we can imagine is this is due to pressure from the Trump Admin.

We have responded and we’ll fight this! #resist

There is clearly nothing illegal about ICEBlock.1 It’s just information, obviously protected by the First Amendment. Law enforcement officers in the United States have no right to avoid being recorded nor their actions being reported and shared. Reporting and publishing where police are policing is free speech and fundamental to the civil rights and liberties of a free society.

We can all wish Apple had fought this “demand”. I certainly do. John Oliver’s “Fuck you, make me” argument sprung to mind for me this morning. But that’s wishful thinking. I believe there are many lines Apple would not cross, even if it means taking on the ire of Trump administration lickspittles, if not the barely literate wrath of the mad king himself on his sad little blog. Apple may well eventually — if not soon — be forced to define those lines. But keeping ICEBlock in the App Store isn’t one of them. You might believe it should be. There’s a big part of me that believes it should be. But I can also see why it’s not. Pick your battles.

I wrote about ICEBlock twice back in late July. Quoting extensively from my initial post:

The ICEBlock app is interesting in and of itself (and from my tire-kicking test drive, appears to be a well-crafted and designed app), as will be Apple’s response if (when?) the Trump administration takes offense to the app’s existence. Back in 2019, kowtowing to tacit demands from China, Apple removed from the App Store an app called HKmap.live which helped pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong know the location of police and protest activity. The app broke no Hong Kong laws, but scared the thin-skinned skittish lickspittles in the Chinese Communist Party. (Remember too that in 2019, Apple removed the Taiwan flag emoji (🇹🇼) from the iOS 13 keyboard for users in Hong Kong and Macau.)

One defense from Apple regarding HKmap.live, however, was that the iOS app was a thin wrapper around the website, which website remained fully functional and could be saved to an iPhone user’s home screen. Removing the app from the App Store thus did not prevent Hongkongers from accessing it. (That website today seems to be defunct.)

ICEBlock is different. It is only available as a native iOS app. According to the developers, this is for technical reasons. From their web page explaining why they can’t offer an Android version:

At ICEBlock, user privacy and security are paramount. Our application is designed to provide as much anonymity as possible without storing any user data or creating accounts. While we understand the desire for an Android version of ICEBlock, achieving this level of anonymity on Android is not feasible due to the inherent requirements of push notification services.

To send push notifications on Android, it is necessary to use a mechanism that requires storing device IDs. This means that we would need to maintain a privately hosted database to store these identifiers. Storing such data, even if it’s anonymized, introduces significant privacy risks. [...]

In contrast, iOS offers us the flexibility to deliver push notifications while adhering strictly to our design philosophy. Apple’s ecosystem allows for push notifications to be sent without requiring us to store any user-identifiable information. This ensures that ICEBlock remains completely anonymous and secure.

To deliver push notifications on Android, the developers claim they would need to maintain a database of device IDs, create a user account system to manage those device IDs, and all of that server-stored data would be susceptible to law enforcement subpoenas and pro-ICE red hat hackers. (What “brown shirts” were to the Nazis, we should make “red hats” to MAGA.)

To maintain anonymity and store zero user data, there is and can be no web app version of ICEBlock. There is and can be no Android version. Only iOS supports the security and privacy features for ICEBlock to offer what it does, the way it does. Here’s to hoping that Apple will proudly defend it if push comes to shove.

Apple’s removal of ICEBlock from the App Store is, in multiple ways, worse than Apple’s removal of HKmap.live from the App Store back in 2019. First, you cannot take a disagreement with the Chinese government to court. Here in the United States, you can. But Apple chose not to. That’s a display of weakness.

Second, from the perspective of users, without the HKmap.live “app”, Hong Kong iPhone users could still access all the functionality via the website, and the website could be saved to their home screens as a web app that was, I believe, functionally identical to the version from the App Store. I put “app” in quotes above because the HKmap.live app was really just a thin wrapper around the service’s mobile website. Hongkongers lost some convenience, and they lost the ability to tell non-technical protestor friends “just get it from the App Store”, but it’s not that much more complex to explain how to add a website to your iPhone home screen as a web app.

With ICEBlock, the entire thing is simply no longer available. If you already have ICEBlock installed, the installed version still functions on your iPhone, but, until and if Apple changes its mind, there will be no further software updates and new users are unable to download it. Nor will current users be able to re-download the app on a new iPhone — and now is “new iPhone” season. And, seemingly, there can be no web app (or Android) version of ICEBlock that offers the same level of anonymity as the native iOS version — with notifications, but without user accounts nor any database of device IDs for notifications that would be subject to subpoena from ICEBlock.

The gist of my second post on ICEBlock from back in July is that ICEBlock’s privacy-protecting architecture isn’t magic. It’s based on trust in Apple itself. Joshua Aaron doesn’t have access to ICEBlock users’ device IDs (let alone their personal identities), but ICEBlock can send push notifications to devices because Apple itself does know device IDs and users’ identities.

It’s rather chilling to consider what Apple would have done if the Trump administration had “demanded” a list of device IDs and user identities for everyone who had installed ICEBlock. Or what Apple will do if such a demand pops into one of their dimwitted but cruel minds.2 I suspect that’s one of the lines Apple would not cross. That Apple would stand its ground there and say “Fuck you, make us” and take it to court. But there’s only one way to find out. 


  1. It’s interesting to consider how Aaron might “fight this”. I don’t think suing the Department of Justice is an option. All Pam Bondi did was issue a “demand” to Apple. That’s inappropriate and an embarrassment, and in any normal administration would be just cause for her immediate dismissal from the job. But it’s not against the law. She didn’t issue an unconstitutional legal demand to Apple. She just issued a verbal request with an implicit threat of turning the nation’s MAGA derps and Fox News junkies against Apple. What Apple was afraid of wasn’t fighting this demand in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion.

    So maybe Aaron sues Apple? I’m not sure he has grounds for that either, but it’d be interesting to see Apple’s lawyers argue in court that the App Store is no place for apps that protect users’ civil liberties and personal privacy. ↩︎︎

  2. A few people have already asked me why it took the Trump administration several months to put ICEBlock in its crosshairs and issue a takedown “demand” to Apple. Aaron shipped the first release of ICEBlock back in April, and it achieved a significant amount of well-deserved publicity in July after Trump’s ICE goons began large-scale deportation raids in Los Angeles. My answer is simple: it took them months to issue this demand because they’re so goddamn stupid and incompetent. We should be thankful for that. In a competent regime attempting an authoritarian takeover of a liberal democracy, it would have been taken down in days, not months. ↩︎


‘Fuck You, Make Me’ 

John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, uh, last week, regarding Disney’s initial (but brief) caving to Trump’s demands that they suspend or even fire Jimmy Kimmel for his having the temerity to mock the mad king for being a sociopathic ghoul sliding into the depths of dementia:

Look, at some point you’re going to have to draw a line. So I’d argue, why not draw it right here? And when they come to you with stupid, ridiculous demands, picking fights that you know you could win in court, instead of rolling over, why not stand up and use four key words they don’t tend to teach you in business school? Not, “OK, you’re the boss.” Not, “Whatever you say goes.” But instead, the only phrase that can genuinely make a weak bully go away. And that is, “Fuck you. Make me.”

“Fuck you, make me” is, to me, the founding principle of this nation. That was our message to King George III, a tyrant descending into madness (who even suffered from swollen legs and feet, which rings yet another bell with our current wannabe mad king). And it needs to be our response to Trump.

MLB Average Game Time Under Three Hours for Third Straight Year 

Jason Foster, reporting for MLB.com:

Nine-inning games during the 2025 season have, on average, clocked in at 2 hours, 38 minutes through Thursday, marking the third straight season in which the average game time was 2:40 or shorter.

Regular Season nine-inning @MLB games of three hours and thirty minutes (3:30) or longer:

  • 2021: 391
  • 2022: 232
  • 2023: 9
  • 2024: 7
  • 2025: 3 (through 9/25)

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) September 26, 2025

The trend marks the first time since 1983-85 that the average nine-inning game time was 2:40 or shorter in three consecutive seasons. The average nine-inning game time was 2:36 last season and 2:40 in 2023.

I disagree with many of MLB’s recent rules changes (e.g. the 10th-inning “Manfred Man” ghost runners), but the pitch clock and limit on mound visits have been unambiguous changes for the better. They don’t make the game feel hurried at all, but prior to the pitch clock, the game often felt ponderous.

Folder Quick Look 

New Mac app from Martin Lexow, the developer behind App Ahead (which offers a slew of good and intriguing Mac apps):

Preview folder and archive contents (ZIP, RAR, and more) instantly in macOS Quick Look. Just select a folder and press the Space bar.

It’s just that simple. Install it from the Mac App Store — free of charge — and you can Quick Look inside archives and folders. Looks, feels, and works like a feature that ought to be built into the Finder itself. Cool.

Adobe Premiere Ships for iPhone and iPad 

Adobe:

Today, Adobe announced that the company is bringing its industry leading Adobe Premiere video editor to mobile in a powerful new iPhone app that empowers creators to make pro-quality video on the go. The Adobe Premiere mobile app makes it fast, free and intuitive for creators to edit their videos with precision editing on a lightning-fast multi-track timeline, produce studio-quality audio with crystal clear voiceovers and perfectly timed AI sound effects, generate unique content and access millions of free multimedia assets, and send work directly to Premiere desktop for fine tuning further on a larger screen. The new mobile app offers all the video editing essentials for free, with upgrades available for additional generative credits and storage.

It’s a little thing, but from Adobe’s press release, you’d think this new mobile version of Premiere is only available for iOS, but, as you’d hope, it’s in fact a universal app that properly supports iPadOS too. The word “iPad” doesn’t appear in Adobe’s press release.

(Via Michael Tsai.)

U.K. Makes New Attempt to Access Apple Cloud Data — This Time, iCloud Backups of U.K. Citizens 

Anna Gross and Tim Bradshaw, reporting for the Financial Times (updated link to a syndicated version at Ars Technica, outside the FT’s parsimonious paywall):

The UK government has ordered Apple to allow access to encrypted cloud backups of British users, after a previous attempt to issue a broader demand that included US customers drew a furious backlash from the Trump administration.

The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a backdoor into users’ cloud storage service, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens’ data, according to people briefed on the matter. [...]

In February, Apple withdrew its most secure cloud storage service, iCloud Advanced Data Protection, from the UK.

“Apple is still unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users,” Apple said on Wednesday. “We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP are not available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.” It added: “As we have said many times before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”

This is, as I understand it, a demand from the UK government to allow warrantless access to all UK citizens’ iCloud backups. And your iCloud backups, once decrypted, contain just about everything on your device. With Apple unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the UK, if Apple complies, there’s no way around it. And, to make it even worse, the perversity of the UK Investigatory Powers Act is such that it’s a crime for Apple to even say they’ve been issued such a demand, to warn their UK users about it. Just brutal. The UK government could not be more wrong about this stance.

OpenAI Launches Sora, a Social Feed App for AI-Generated Short Videos 

Hayden Field, The Verge:

OpenAI has a new version of the Sora AI video generator that it launched at the end of last year, and it’s arriving today alongside a new social video app, also called Sora, for iPhones. The currently invite-only app resembles TikTok with a feed of videos you can shuffle through. But instead of encouraging people to stitch together duets, it asks you to record short videos that anyone can spin into new AI-generated deepfakes — with your consent.

In a briefing with reporters on Monday, employees called it the potential “ChatGPT moment for video generation.” The Sora app is currently only available to US and Canada users, with other countries set to follow, and when someone receives access, they also get four additional invites to share with friends. There’s no word on when an Android version might be released.

Sora, though invitation-only at the moment, is currently #3 in the U.S. App Store. Meta’s Meta AI app, which contains, in a tab, their Vibes AI-generated video feed, is #97.

Also, I’m sure Sora will eventually come to Android. But, to play with it now, you need an iPhone. So tell me again how Apple is behind on AI? If you have an Android phone, you’re behind on everything except what Google itself offers (which, admittedly, is some great stuff). If you have an iPhone, you’re ahead on everything except what’s baked into iOS. Including the fact that the #1 app on the App Store today is ... Google Gemini.

America’s Pants: A Special Investigation Into the Dallas Cowboys’ Pants 

This exemplary deep dive from Don Patterson at Uni Watch is a nice capper to the Cowboys’ 40-40 victory over the Green Bay Packers Sunday night.

The Talk Show: ‘Iconic Pig Lipstick’ 

John Moltz returns to the show to talk about the iPhone 17 lineup: the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 17, and the no-number iPhone Air. Not one word about baseball, but some Star Wars talk may or may not have snuck in.

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Apple Started Using iPhone 17 Pros as Cameras for Friday Night Baseball Broadcasts 

Jason Snell:

According to Apple, four iPhone 17 Pros will be positioned at Fenway Park — in the Green Monster, the home dugout, and roaming the stands. In contrast to the secrecy of last week, the Tigers-Red Sox game will feature a bug in the corner of the screen that shows off the shots that are coming from an iPhone.

Is it a self-promotional gimmick? Sure, but Apple is paying a lot of money for MLB rights. Also, it’s not as if the company hasn’t pushed its MLB telecasts in a bunch of different ways. The Friday Night Baseball broadcasts look great, and have featured loads of helmet and body cams, a cinematic depth-of-field camera, and even in-stadium drone shots. Apple has probably earned at least one night of iPhone Pro product integration.

I skipped through the archive of the game and the footage from the iPhones was indistinguishable from the regular cameras. If not for the (subtle!) “Shot on iPhone” bug in the top right corner, I’d never have even suspected they were shot on anything other than the regular cameras Apple has been using for these broadcasts.

The 25th Anniversary of The Onion Classic: ‘William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior’ 

This one will never get old.

Let’s Check in With HP Employee Imran Chaudhri 

Allison Johnson, The Verge:

Remember the Humane AI pin? And that serious-as-a-heart-attack TED talk about the future of computing? Well, Qualcomm featured Chaudhri in its Snapdragon Summit keynote today, where he’s talking less about lasers you wear on your shirt and more about the amazing battery life on the OmniBook 5 series. How it started, how it’s going, etc. etc.

Johnson’s link above goes directly to Chaudhri’s bit in Qualcomm’s keynote. Looks like a hostage video.

Drata 

My thanks to Drata for sponsoring this last week at DF. Their message is short and sweet: Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.

James Barnard on the Alignment Mistakes in HBO’s Logo 

A few weeks ago designer James Barnard made this TikTok video about what seemed to be a few mistakes in HBO’s logo. He got a bunch of crap from commenters arguing that they weren’t mistakes at all. Then he heard from the designer of the original version of the logo, from the 1970s.


Apple on the Digital Markets Act

Apple, “The Digital Markets Act’s Impacts on EU Users”:

The DMA requires Apple to make certain features work on non-Apple products and apps before we can share them with our users. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of engineering work, and it’s caused us to delay some new features in the EU:

  • Live Translation with AirPods uses Apple Intelligence to let Apple users communicate across languages. Bringing a sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either.

  • iPhone Mirroring lets our users see and interact with their iPhone from their Mac, so they can seamlessly check their notifications, or drag and drop photos between devices. Our teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a user’s iPhone at risk. And as a result, we have not been able to bring the feature to the EU. [...]

We’ve suggested changes to these features that would protect our users’ data, but so far, the European Commission has rejected our proposals. And according to the European Commission, under the DMA, it’s illegal for us to share these features with Apple users until we bring them to other companies’ products. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and potentially forced to stop shipping our products in the EU.

Live Translation with AirPods and iPhone Mirroring are both amazing features. And EU users are missing out on them. I think Apple structured this piece exactly right, by emphasizing first that the most direct effect of the DMA is that EU users are getting great features late — or never. And that list of features is only going to grow over time.

Under the section “Is the DMA Achieving Its Goals?”:

Regulators claimed the DMA would promote competition and give European consumers more choices. But the law is not living up to those promises. In fact, it’s having some of the opposite effects:

  • Fewer choices: When features are delayed or unavailable, EU users don’t get the same options as users in the rest of the world. They lose the choice to use Apple’s latest technologies, and their devices fall further behind.

  • Less differentiation: By forcing Apple to build features and technologies for non-Apple products, the DMA is making the options available to European consumers more similar. For instance, the changes to app marketplaces are making iOS look more like Android — and that reduces choice.

  • Unfair competition: The DMA’s rules only apply to Apple, even though Samsung is the smartphone market leader in Europe, and Chinese companies are growing fast. Apple has led the way in building a unique, innovative ecosystem that others have copied — to the benefit of users everywhere. But instead of rewarding that innovation, the DMA singles Apple out while leaving our competitors free to continue as they always have.

This is all true. But I have a better way to put this. If Apple were to just switch the iPhone’s OS from iOS to Android, these DMA conflicts would all go away. Apple’s not going to do that, of course, but to me it’s a crystallizing way of looking at it. The DMA is supposedly intended to increase “competition”, which in turn should increase consumer choice. But the easiest way for Apple to comply with the DMA would be to switch EU iPhones to Android — which, by a significant margin, already has majority mobile OS market share in the EU. Here’s a link to StatCounter’s mobile OS stats for Europe (which is not the same as the EU, but as good a proxy as I could find). It’s two-thirds Android, one-third iOS — a 2-1 ratio.

If Apple just shipped all EU iPhones with Android instead of iOS, all of their DMA problems would be off the table. EU iPhone users would lose all iOS exclusive features and Apple device Continuity integrations. EU consumers would effectively have no choice at all in mobile OSes. They’d just get to choose which brand of Android phone to buy.

How in the world would that increase competition? iOS’s unique and exclusive features — which, yes, in many cases, are exclusive to the Apple device ecosystem — are competition


Trump Clears Way for Cronies to Buy TikTok for $14 Billion 

The New York Times:

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that would help clear the way for a coalition of investors to run an American version of TikTok, one that is separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, so that it can keep operating in the United States.

The administration has been working for months to find non-Chinese investors for a U.S. TikTok company, which Vice President JD Vance said would be valued at $14 billion. [...]

The White House hasn’t said exactly who would own the U.S. version of TikTok, but the list of potential investors includes several powerful allies of Mr. Trump. The software giant Oracle, whose co-founder is the billionaire Larry Ellison, will take a stake in U.S. TikTok. Mr. Trump has also said that the media mogul Rupert Murdoch is involved. A person familiar with the talks said the Murdoch investments would come through Fox Corporation.

$14 billion is a ridiculous valuation. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, but a fair valuation on the open market would surely be at least 10× that value. They’re not even pretending this is on the up-and-up. And it doesn’t answer the core problem at the heart of the PAFACA Act:

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is focused on U.S.-China relations, said the White House’s executive order would stoke those questions only because it says “the divestiture includes intense monitoring of software updates, algorithms and data flows.”

“If you control it, why would you need intense monitoring to know what’s happening with it?” Mr. Sobolik said. “Monitoring the algorithm is not the same as controlling it. That’s the head fake the administration appears to be trying to pull here.”

Bloomberg: ‘Intel Is Seeking an Investment From Apple as Part of Its Comeback Bid’ 

Ryan Gould and Liana Baker, reporting for Bloomberg:

Intel Corp. has approached Apple Inc. about securing an investment in the ailing chipmaker, according to people familiar with the matter, part of efforts to bolster a business that’s now partially owned by the US government.

Apple and Intel also have discussed how to work more closely together, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The talks have been early-stage and may not lead to an agreement, the people said.

Juicy notion, for sure, but I really don’t see what Intel could offer Apple. There’s zero chance Apple is going to go back to x86 CPUs. Apple already bought Intel’s cellular modem business six years ago (and has used that purchase to produce the excellent C1 and C1X modems now used in the iPhone 16e and iPhone Air, respectively). Intel can’t come close to TSMC for fabricating Apple’s own chip designs.

So what’s left? Palm-rest stickers for laptops?

Jimmy Kimmel Returns, Ratings Soar 

John Koblin, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

Jimmy Kimmel’s broadcast return scored big in the ratings.

Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” averaged 6.2 million viewers, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen. That is nearly four times bigger than his usual audience, even though more than 20 percent of ABC affiliates boycotted the show.

The preliminary Nielsen figures are expected to grow in the coming days as more data comes in. It does not include streaming viewership.

Kimmel’s monologue last night was a masterpiece. Watch it, I implore you.

Donald Trump, jackass, a week ago:

“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else [...]”

Donald Trump, today, on his blog:

I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his “talent” was never there. Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE. He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers! Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad Ratings.

Doesn’t sound like a mob boss at all. And remember, the Republicans were the party that spent all of last year’s election cycle proclaiming to be the party of “free speech”, and opposed to “cancel culture”. Just sheer projection.

The way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them. Give them your lunch money once, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Joe Betz, Owner of House of Prime Rib, Dies at 86 

George Kelly, The Standard:

Joe Betz, the owner of San Francisco’s House of Prime Rib, who transformed the Van Ness Avenue restaurant into an institution beloved by locals and visitors, has died. He was 86. […]

Joe Betz purchased House of Prime Rib in 1985 from Lou Balaski, who founded it in 1949, and over four decades preserved its old-world charm while building it into one of the city’s most enduring dining destinations.

My favorite restaurant in San Francisco, and one of my favorite restaurants anywhere in the world. Incredibly consistent excellent food, impeccable service, and a one-of-a-kind atmosphere.

‘Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Is a Wake-Up Call’ 

Taegan Goddard, a few days ago at Political Wire:

The sudden suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show after threats from FCC chair Brendan Carr was a jolt. It looked like the next step in Donald Trump’s campaign to silence dissent.

But there’s another way to see it: an opportunity.

It’s been clear since the last election that conservatives dominate the independent media space. Trump rode the reach of right-wing podcasts to victory while Kamala Harris stuck to traditional television.

But those old outlets are collapsing — and they’re never coming back.

That means the stars of late-night TV — Kimmel, Colbert and others — could thrive outside corporate networks. They can build their own platforms, reach bigger audiences, and escape the grip of billionaires and timid executives.

While Goddard didn’t say it in this piece, the subtext should be that building the alternative on Substack or social media is not the answer, either. The Internet is decentralized and built exactly to counter these forces our country is facing under Trump 2.0.

The big problem is YouTube. With YouTube, Google has a centralized chokehold on video. We need a way that’s as easy and scalable to host video content, independently, as it is for written content. I don’t know what the answer to that is, technically, but we ought to start working on it with urgency.

The Kimmel Joke That Got Him Suspended Was Not About Charlie Kirk, It Was About Trump Being a Ghoul 

ABC is putting Kimmel’s show back on tonight, which is great. But I think it’s essential to watch the joke that triggered his suspension. I’m linking here to a CNN post with the full clip. CNN headlined their post “What Kimmel Said About Charlie Kirk That Yanked His Show Off Air”, and that’s basically how most news outlets have phrased it.

But the joke wasn’t about Charlie Kirk. It wasn’t about Charlie Kirk’s assassin. It was about Donald Trump being a sociopathic ghoul. Trump was asked how he’s holding up after the death of “his friend Charlie Kirk”. You really have to watch it — a transcript of Trump’s answer does no justice to how sociopathic it was. And Kimmel called him out on it with mockery.

David Letterman Slams Jimmy Kimmel Suspension 

Variety:

“This is misery,” Letterman said when asked about Kimmel’s suspension, speaking at The Atlantic Festival 2025 Thursday in New York. “I feel bad about this,” he continued. “We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”

“In the world of somebody who is an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched,” said Letterman.

Letterman also said, “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.” Kimmel’s removal from late-night TV, he said, “was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert got walked off, so you’re telling me this isn’t premeditated at some level?” [...]

On Wednesday, ABC suspended Kimmel’s late-night show “indefinitely.” That came after FCC chairman Brendan Carr just hours earlier threatened ABC and its affiliates if they didn’t “take action” on Kimmel over what he perceived as objectionable comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a conservative podcast. [...]

Regarding Carr’s comment that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Letterman said, “Who is hiring these goons — Mario Puzo?”, referring to the author of The Godfather. Letterman said when he was on TV, he never got pressure from a presidential administration, the FCC or any other government agency about his on-air commentary.

“Goons” is exactly the right word. Letterman’s commentary on this is, by far, the best I’ve seen, because it’s been the most clear-eyed. I quoted a lot above, but there’s more, so please read the whole piece. But this one extra snippet from the piece puts it on the right scale:

Goldberg posited that today, despite Trump’s attacks on the press, “we still have a free media,” to which Letterman responded, “Do we?”

Dan Moren’s iOS 26 Review 

Dan Moren, Six Colors:

The redesign is more than skin deep, however. Apple has rethought the way some of its most fundamental interactions work. For example, the increasingly long horizontal popover menus that hid options behind an interminable scroll have morphed into a dual-stage design. Tapping and holding on the screen brings up a popover with a few common options, but it now doesn’t make you scroll; instead, there’s an arrow indicating more options. Tap that, and you’ll get a big pop-up panel of all the available commands in a much easier-to-read and use format. As someone who frequently finds himself swiping through a very long list to find the one command I want (and somehow, it’s always the last one), this is a tangible improvement.

The big improvement here is that in the old popover (from iOS 3 — when copy and paste were finally added to iOS, and the popover typically only contained three or four items — until last year’s iOS 18), the scrolling you had to do was horizontal. And a lot of items were added to that menu over the years. And it wasn’t really scrolling, it was panning. And panning sideways through a long list of options is just a bad interaction experience. For me, a lot of the times I used this popover, I wanted the “Share...” command, and that was the last one, all the way on the right.

In iOS 26’s new tap-and-hold popover, it’s a vertical menu, just like a Mac contextual menu. And you don’t really have to scroll at all most of the time, because all the contextual menu options fit on screen. And even if you do have to scroll (which happens when the keyboard is open, reducing vertical screen real estate), you don’t have to scroll much to get to the bottom.

It’s one of the very best, most thoughtful, most useful changes in iOS 26. But also one of the most overdue: we know how contextual menus should be oriented. Vertically. We naturally make lists vertically, not horizontally. I sort of suspect Apple resisted making iOS contextual popovers vertical for so long because they didn’t want to make iOS more like a desktop computer OS.

Dekáf Coffee Roasters 

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.

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 — and 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.

Also, I’m a big believer that you can 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.

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: DF.


Personal Note

Hello dear readers. Daring Fireball has been silent for the last week. I realize how unusual it is for the site to go un-updated any week of the year, let alone this particular week of the year. I’m so sorry about that, and also sorry about not being able to write this note to you sooner.

I have been dealing with — and working through — a very personal situation for the past week. It’s OK. I’m going to be OK. But it has kept me offline for some time. Given the one-man nature of this site, that has meant that nothing has been published.

I look forward to getting back to writing very soon. I can feel it: I will be back soon. I’m itching to go. I mean, jiminy, it’s new iPhones week. But it’ll be a few more days before I get those reviews out. In the meantime, I so profoundly appreciate your patience and understanding.

Your faithful correspondent,
John Gruber 


iPhones 17 and the Sugar Water Trap 

Ben Thompson has a wonderful take on yesterday’s event and what it says about Apple overall:

Apple, to be fair, isn’t selling the same sugar water year-after-year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies. Their sugar water is getting better, and I think this year’s seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products — I definitely plan on getting new AirPod Pro 3s! — the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates.

Apple’s Slate of Announcements Yesterday 

Apple Newsroom posts:

Trump Hosts Dinner Humiliating Tech CEOs 

The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

President Trump on Thursday led leaders of the world’s biggest technology companies in a version of his cabinet meetings, in which each participant takes a turn thanking and praising him, this time for his efforts to promote investments in chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

Tech titans including Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “thank you” to the president, with some laying out how much their companies plan to invest in the U.S.

“Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president. It’s a very refreshing change,” Altman said. “I think it’s going to set us up for a long period of leading the world, and that wouldn’t be happening without your leadership.”

Cook said Apple is expected to invest $600 billion in the U.S. “I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we can make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing here. I think it says a lot about your leadership and focus on innovation,” Cook said.

This whole thing was so weird. I know this sounds crazy, but I genuinely think these CEOs were unaware that this dinner was going to be open to the press and filmed. They’re all unprepared and awkward. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t know what number to declare for Meta’s upcoming US infrastructure spend. Tim Cook said this:

I want to thank you for including me this evening. It’s incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the first lady. I’ve always enjoyed having dinner and interacting.

Those are not prepared remarks. I mean, what? He enjoys “having dinner and interacting”?

I’m not going to argue that any of these CEOs, Cook included, are playing this situation right. But it really shows the profound power imbalance. The president of the United States is so astonishingly powerful. And Trump is wielding that power in unprecedented ways. This entire fiasco is embarrassing, but the criticism really ought to be directed at Trump.

Apple Announces ‘Memory Integrity Enforcement’ 

Apple Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR):

Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) is the culmination of an unprecedented design and engineering effort, spanning half a decade, that combines the unique strengths of Apple silicon hardware with our advanced operating system security to provide industry-first, always-on memory safety protection across our devices — without compromising our best-in-class device performance. We believe Memory Integrity Enforcement represents the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.

That is, to say the least, an incredibly bold statement. But I think it’s true. This is a fascinating post, cogently written.

Base Storage is 256 GB Across Entire iPhone 17 Lineup 

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

For the first time, every model in Apple’s latest flagship iPhone 17 lineup features a base 256GB storage capacity, up from the lowest 128GB option in the iPhone 16 series. The regular iPhone 17 now comes in 256GB and 512GB storage options, while the all-new ultra-thin iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro come in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities.

Meanwhile, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is offered in the same three capacities as the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro, but with the addition of a maximum 2TB option.

I know it’s been 18 years, but it’s kind of wild to compare today’s storage tiers to the original iPhone’s 4, 8, and 16 GB options.