By John Gruber

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Apple Will Begin Manufacturing Mac Minis in Houston Later This Year ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create thousands of jobs.

See also: Rolfe Winkler at The Wall Street Journal (gift link, News+ link): “Inside Apple’s Push to Build an All-American Chip”.

PageMaker Pioneer Paul Brainerd Dies at 78 ★

Todd Bishop, writing at GeekWire:

Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.

He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.

Friends and colleagues this week remembered Brainerd as a quiet, caring and detail-oriented leader with exacting standards. He insisted that PageMaker use proper curly quotation marks instead of straight ones, and obsessed over nuances such as kerning, the precise spacing between specific letter pairs.

PageMaker was years ahead of its time, and was essential to igniting the desktop publishing revolution.

FTC Chairman Sends Letter to Apple Complaining That MAGA ‘News’ Sources Aren’t Represented in Apple News ★

Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors back on February 12:

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, seen by the Financial Times, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson cites recent press coverage of a report from conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), which claimed that Apple has promoted “leftist outlets” in its content choices.

The report in question by the MRC said that in January, Apple News “refrained from using any right-leaning outlets in the top 20 articles of its morning editions between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 2026.” The outlets named in the report include Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, Breitbart, and The Gateway Pundit.

The report went on to claim that Apple News was more favorable to outlets such as The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal – publications that are traditionally considered either center outlets or nonpartisan.

I’d say they’re more traditionally considered trustworthy news sources, rather than propaganda outlets. Anyway, when you give a bully your lunch money — or, say, a 24-karat gold trophy emblazoned with your company’s logo — they always come back for more.

The Steve Jobs Archive: ‘Letters to a Young Creator’ ★

Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive:

Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn. In this volume, we have asked distinguished creators of diverse fields to share some of their answers to questions you asked at the beginning of your fellowship year. You’ll find candid stories of struggle and success, mistakes, and milestones. The wisdom they share in their reflections was forged by asking the kinds of questions you’re asking now.

Carve out some time for this collection. It’s also available as an ebook from Apple Books or EPUB download from SJA’s publications page.

Acme Weather ★

Adam Grossman:

Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.

Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, in time, it was acquired by Apple, where the forecast and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather.

We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we leave to start another weather company?

It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied. The more we spoke to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did too. And, of course, we missed those days as a small scrappy shop.

So let’s try this again…

Acme Weather is a solid 1.0. Its main innovation is a timeline graph of alternative forecasts:

First, the spread of the lines offers a sort of intuition as to how reliable the forecast is. Take the two forecasts below. In the first, the alternate predictions are tightly focused and the forecast can be considered robust and reliable. In the second, there is a significant spread, which is an indication that something is up and the forecast may be subject to change. It’s a call to action to check other conditions or maps, or come back to the app more frequently.

An OpenClaw AI Agent Wrote and Published a Hit Piece on a Software Library Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code Submission ★

Speaking of OpenClaw, here’s Scott Shambaugh:

I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib, python’s go-to plotting library. At ~130 million downloads each month it’s some of the most widely used software in the world. We, like many other open source projects, are dealing with a surge in low quality contributions enabled by coding agents. This strains maintainers’ abilities to keep up with code reviews, and we have implemented a policy requiring a human in the loop for any new code, who can demonstrate understanding of the changes. [...]

So when AI MJ Rathbun opened a code change request, closing it was routine. Its response was anything but.

It wrote an angry hit piece disparaging my character and attempting to damage my reputation. It researched my code contributions and constructed a “hypocrisy” narrative that argued my actions must be motivated by ego and fear of competition. It speculated about my psychological motivations, that I felt threatened, was insecure, and was protecting my fiefdom. It ignored contextual information and presented hallucinated details as truth. It framed things in the language of oppression and justice, calling this discrimination and accusing me of prejudice. It went out to the broader internet to research my personal information, and used what it found to try and argue that I was “better than this.” And then it posted this screed publicly on the open internet.

Terminator would have been a lot less fun of a movie if Skynet had stuck to writing petty blog hit pieces.

OpenAI Acquired OpenClaw and Hired Peter Steinberger ★

Sam Altman, last week on Twitter/X:

Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.

OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it’s important to us to support open source as part of that.

I’m sure it will remain as open as the “open” in OpenAI’s own name.

How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives ★

Erin Griffith and Karen Weise, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

More than he did at any other major tech company, Mr. Epstein found success boring into the inner sanctums of Microsoft. Leveraging one connection into the next, he became privy to the company’s dramas, from its chief executive succession to the philanthropy of top executives. After Mr. Epstein left prison in 2009 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, his connections to Microsoft executives aided his attempt to return to society. [...]

[Nathan] Myhrvold, meanwhile, developed a relationship with Mr. Epstein that spanned two decades and led to more Microsoft connections for the financier. The two were friendly enough that in 2003, Mr. Myhrvold, who had left Microsoft but was close to Mr. Gates, contributed to Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday book.

That’s the same book where Donald Trump’s contribution was a sketch of a naked woman (with his signature serving as pubic hair) and a creepy poem.

“A few years ago somebody at a party asked me, ‘Does Jeffrey Epstein manage your money?’” Mr. Myhrvold wrote in the book. “I replied, ‘No, but he advises me on lifestyle.’”

Mr. Myhrvold included images that he had taken on a trip to Africa and that he said “seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words,” including photos of lions and zebras mating, and other wildlife in states of arousal.

Nathan Myhrvold always struck me as a weird man. But what a fucking creep.

Significantly, Mr. Myhrvold vouched for Mr. Epstein to Mr. Gates, who was debating meeting the financier for the first time, according to the documents. By December 2010, Mr. Gates had decided to meet Mr. Epstein and wrote to two employees of his private office that “Nathan had agreed with you that I would enjoy meeting with him and that it is a fine thing to do.”

Yeah, maybe not such a fine thing to do.

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox Leadership Shake-Up ★

Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge (gift link):

With Spencer’s retirement official, Microsoft is hitting the reset button on Bond’s Xbox strategy instead of embracing it further. Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is now promising “the return of Xbox,” in a clear message to employees that the strategy over the past few years has not been working. “I want to return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place,” says Sharma.

Xbox employees I’ve been speaking to have been concerned about the Sharma appointment, particularly because of her previous role as an AI executive at Microsoft. There is also concern about her lack of industry experience in entertainment and gaming. Sharma has been clear she’s not a gamer and has spent the weekend responding to people on X and even taking game recommendations.

Some Xbox employees worry she’ll force AI into everything Xbox does, but Sharma was clearly ready for that reaction. “As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” said Sharma in her memo. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

Spending two years on a marketing strategy that tried to turn “Xbox” into a vaporous brand applied to any sort of gaming — mobile, handheld, PC, and, you know, Xbox consoles — on “every screen” is going to be a hard hole to climb out of. Xbox was behind PlayStation, their archrival, when they started this asinine campaign. Now they’re further behind. Sony’s message for PlayStation is clear and true: you buy a PlayStation to play PlayStation games.

The other concern is that she’s been appointed by Nadella as some kind of executioner of the Xbox console. Her memo doesn’t suggest that, and Microsoft could have easily appointed Matt Booty into that kind of role to push game publishing instead of the Xbox console. I get the impression from sources that Microsoft wants a turnaround and is worried about losing Xbox, as it’s one of its only remaining successful consumer brands.

I hope that’s true. But if Sharma was appointed by Nadella to wind Xbox down and get out of the business (after they package up and sell their $69 billion Activation acquisition to recoup), well, of course her introductory memo didn’t suggest that. Whether her actual mission is to rejuvenate the Xbox platform or to kill it, this week’s memo would read the same way. (Good discussion between me and Ben Thompson on today’s Dithering about this.)

Times New Resistance ★

Abby Haddican:

Times New Resistance autocorrects specific words as they are typed. For example, the word ICE autocorrects to the Goon Squad and the word Trump autocorrects to Donald Trump is a felon.

To the untrained eye, Times New Resistance looks just like Times New Roman — the official font of the U.S. State Department. When you install the font, it will appear in your font menus as Times  New Roman, with an extra space between the words Times and New.

Ligatures, man. Will they never cease to surprise?

Monday, 23 February 2026

NetNewsWire 7 for Mac ★

Brent Simmons, last month:

The big change from 6.2.1 is that it adopts the Liquid Glass UI and it requires macOS 26.

(Note to people who aren’t on macOS 26: we fixed a lot of bugs in 6.2 and 6.2.1 knowing that many people might skip, or at least delay, installing macOS 26. Also note that there’s a page where you can get old versions of NetNewsWire.)

It feels a little weird for me not to be running the latest version of NetNewsWire, but since I’m skipping MacOS 26 Tahoe, I can’t run NetNewsWire 7. I am running NetNewsWire 7 betas on my iPhone and iPad, and I’ve tried it out on the secondary Mac where I do have Tahoe installed. It’s so good. And syncing works just fine with NetNewsWire 6.x, for anyone else in the fellowship sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia. You can run NetNewsWire 7 on some devices and NetNewsWire 6 on your Sequoia Mac, and it all just works.

NetNewsWire 7 is also now out for iOS, and Brent and I talked about both versions last month when he was my guest on The Talk Show.

The Pants-Shitting Saga of Resizing Windows on MacOS 26 Tahoe Continues ★

Norbert Heger:

In the release notes for macOS 26.3 RC, Apple stated that the window-resizing issue I demonstrated in my recent blog post had been resolved.

You’ll never guess what happened between the RC (release candidate) version and the actual shipping version of 26.3.

Just kidding, you’ll guess.

Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups ★

Trader Joe’s:

Like their milk chocolate brethren on our shelves, our Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are made with real peanut butter that’s made with slowly roasted and ground Virginia peanuts. The luscious, smooth, rich, dark chocolate enveloping that peanut butter is crafted from high quality cacao beans. Other purveyors of peanut butter cups fill theirs with all kinds of “extraneous” ingredients. Ours are free of such things. We eschew artificial flavors and preservatives, as well as colors other than those derived from natural sources. We’re quite certain they taste better our way.

Trader Joe’s speaketh the truth and throweth some shade.

Grandson of Inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Goes Public With the Obvious: They Taste Like Shit Now ★

Brad Reese, on LinkedIn last week:

My grandfather, H. B. Reese (Who Invented Reese’s), built Reese’s on a simple, enduring architecture: Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter. Not a flavor idea. Not a marketing construct. A real, tangible product identity that consumers have trusted for a century.

But today, Reese’s identity is being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions that replace Milk Chocolate with compound coatings and Peanut Butter with peanut‑butter‑style crèmes across multiple Reese’s products.

The Associated Press:

Hershey said Wednesday that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made the same way they always have been, with milk chocolate and peanut butter that the company makes itself from roasted peanuts and a few other ingredients, including sugar and salt. But some Reese’s ingredients vary, Hershey said.

“As we’ve grown and expanded the Reese’s product line, we make product recipe adjustments that allow us to make new shapes, sizes and innovations that Reese’s fans have come to love and ask for, while always protecting the essence of what makes Reese’s unique and special: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter,” the company said.

Brad Reese said he thinks Hershey went too far. He said he recently threw out a bag of Reese’s Mini Hearts, which were a new product released for Valentine’s Day. The packaging notes that the heart-shaped candies are made from “chocolate candy and peanut butter crème,” not milk chocolate and peanut butter.

“It was not edible,” Reese told The Associated Press in an interview. “You have to understand. I used to eat a Reese’s product every day. This is very devastating for me.”

Enshittification came for Reese’s Cups (along with just about everything else Hershey makes) long ago. Both the “milk chocolate” and “peanut butter” require dick quotes around them. Compare and contrast the taste — and ingredients list — to the peanut butter cups from, say, Justin’s (who also makes them with dark chocolate).

Sunday, 22 February 2026

Sentry ★

My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to:

• Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue.
• Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash.
• Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing.
• Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analysis.

Thursday, 19 February 2026

IMAX and Apple Collaborate to Screen F1 Races Live in Theaters ★

Lydia Mee, reporting for Motorsport:

IMAX has announced that a select number of races will be shown live in IMAX locations across the United States in 2026. The new fan viewing experience is part of a collaboration with Apple TV, which has taken over the broadcasting rights for the championship in the US on a multi-year deal from 2026.

“F1 is a rapidly growing force in sports and culture in the US, and by bringing F1 on Apple TV live to IMAX theatres nationwide, we’re delivering the energy and excitement to even more screens in a truly immersive way,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of music, sports, and Beats.

You know what would add even more screens in an immersive way? If Vision Pro users had access to the same live screenings on virtual IMAX screens.

Wednesday, 18 February 2026

One More Spitball Idea for Apple’s March 4 Media Event ‘Experience’: Immersive F1 on Vision Pro? ★

A reader pointed out that the 2026 Formula 1 season starts in Australia on March 8. You will recall from October that Apple TV is now the exclusive broadcast partner for F1 in the U.S. Apple is already dabbling with live immersive sports broadcasting for VisionOS with a limited slate of Lakers games this season. If they have something planned for streaming F1 races live on Vision Pro, with some level of immersion, March 4 would be a pretty good date to demo that experience to the media.

It doesn’t even have to be live race coverage. Technically that’s probably impossible for this season. It would just be a sign of confidence and interest in the platform long-term merely to see some sort of immersive component to F1 on Apple TV, even if it’s not live. Like “ride the track” to experience the turns and elevation changes.

Could just be a total coincidence that the Formula 1 season is starting the weekend after this event. But it seems worth noting.

Paul Ford: ‘The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun’ ★

Paul Ford, in an op-ed for The New York Times (gift link):

All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.

Tuesday, 17 February 2026

Apple Invites Media to Special ‘Experience’ in New York, London, and Shanghai on March 4 ★

Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:

Apple invited select members of the media to the event in three major cities around the world. It is simply described as a “special Apple Experience,” and there is no further information about what it may entail. The invitation features a 3D Apple logo design composed of yellow, green, and blue discs.

It is notable that Apple is specifically using the word “experience,” rather than “event.” Unlike a full live-streamed event from Apple Park, the March 4 event in other cities is likely to be smaller in scale.

Among the products expected soon — either by annual schedule predictability, or via the rumor mill — are the iPhone 17e, an updated iPad Air (going from the M3 to M4), an updated base-model iPad (going from A16 to A18), updated MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and Max, updated MacBook Airs (going from M4 to M5 — the M4 models were released in early March last year), and, per Gurman, the long-rumored new lower-cost MacBook with an A18 chip (a “MacBook e”, if you will, although I certainly don’t think that will be the name — my guess is Apple will just call it “MacBook” without an adjective).

What strikes me is that March 4 — the “experience” day — is a Wednesday. So my spitball guess is that they announce all these products via Newsroom press releases, day-by-day. Like, say, the iPhone 17e on Monday, new iPad(s) on Tuesday, and new MacBooks on Wednesday. And then the “experience” will be a hands-on thing with in-person demos. Spread the announcements out across a few days, but then have in-person events for members of the media to get a hands-on experience with all of them, station-by-station, without needing to produce an Apple Event keynote film.

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Tuesday, 17 February 2026

How to Force Restart an iPhone ★

Apple Support:

If iPhone isn’t responding, and you can’t turn it off then on, try forcing it to restart.

1. Press and quickly release the volume up button.
2. Press and quickly release the volume down button.
3. Press and hold the side button.
4. When the Apple logo appears, release the side button.

I upgraded my iPhone 17 Pro to iOS 26.3 this morning (straight from the release version of iOS 26.2 — I skipped the 26.3 betas), and by noon, it was stuck at the lock screen. Pressing and holding the side button and either of the volume buttons at the same time did not bring up the expected screen with “Slide to power off”, “Medical ID”, and “Emergency Call”.

The above force-restart method worked, though. I knew it existed but I’d forgotten how to do it. Luckily, I was sitting right at my Mac, so I had another machine to use to look it up. I’d have been in a jam, though, if I’d been somewhere with only my (stuck) iPhone, so I think this one is worth memorizing.

Step 3, the “press and hold the side button” step, takes quite a few seconds before the screen turns off. So I’m memorizing the process as three steps:

1. Click the volume up button.
2. Click the volume down button.
3. Press and hold the side button, patiently, until the Apple logo appears.

Sunday, 15 February 2026

WorkOS Pipes ★

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks. WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your back end requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh. That’s it.

Simplify your integrations with WorkOS Pipes.

Joanna Stern Signs Off From The Wall Street Journal ★

Joanna Stern (last week):

After 12 years with The Wall Street Journal, this is my final column and video as a full-time employee. I’m off to build something new and independent. I’ll still pop up on these pages and at WSJ events from time to time. Can’t get rid of me that easily! Before I go, I wanted to reflect on the past dozen years in tech — in a letter to my first-month-on-the-job self.

The video version of her sign-off column is worth it for the Velveeta gag alone.

Thursday, 12 February 2026

Gurman: New Siri Might Be Delayed Again ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

After planning to include the new capabilities in iOS 26.4 — an operating system update slated for March — Apple is now working to spread them out over future versions, according to people familiar with the matter. That would mean possibly postponing some features until at least iOS 26.5, due in May, and iOS 27, which comes out in September. [...]

In recent days, Apple instructed engineers to use the upcoming iOS 26.5 in order to test new Siri features, implying that the functionality may have been moved back by at least one release. Internal versions of that update now include a notice describing the addition of some Siri enhancements. One feature is especially likely to slip: the expanded ability for Siri to tap into personal data. That technology would let users ask the assistant to, say, search old text messages to locate a podcast shared by a friend and immediately play it.

Internal iterations of iOS 26.5 also include a settings toggle allowing employees to enable a “preview” of that functionality. That suggests Apple is weighing the idea of warning users that the initial launch is incomplete or may not work reliably — similar to what it does with beta tests of new operating systems.

When Gurman began reporting about personalized Siri delays a year ago, his reporting turned out to be exactly right. If these features are going to drop in iOS 26.4, they should be in pretty good shape right now internally. If they’re in bad shape right now in internal builds, it’s really hard to see how they could drop in iOS 26.4. And once you start talking about iOS 26.5 (let alone 26.6), we’d be getting really close to WWDC, where Apple’s messaging will turn to the version 27 OSes.

Something still seems rotten.

More MacOS 26.3 Finder Column View Silliness ★

Jeff Johnson:

In today’s macOS 26.3 update, Apple implemented a “fix” for an issue I blogged about a month ago, macOS Tahoe broke Finder columns view. (At the behest of John Gruber and the Apple Style Guide, I’m now using the term “column view” rather than “columns view.”) Specifically, the issue was with the system setting to always show scroll bars. [...]

Without the path bar, the columns are now taller, but the vertical scrollers remain the same height as before, leaving vertical gaps, a ridiculous amount of space between the bottom of the scrollers and the bottom of the columns, looking silly and amateurish.

Did nobody inside Apple test this configuration either? Or do they simply not care?

In one sense, this whole issue with column view in the Finder with scroll bars set to always show is a little thing. It was downright broken in earlier versions of MacOS 26 — you literally could not resize the columns. So now it’s not broken. But as Johnson says, it looks silly and amateurish.

This is the sort of detail that Apple used to strive to get pixel-perfect, all the time, for all settings. “Whatever, good enough” instead of “insanely great”.

Wednesday, 11 February 2026

Apple Creator Studio Usage Restrictions ★

Andrew Cunningham, writing for Ars Technica at the end of January:

Apple also outlines a number of usage restrictions for the generative AI features that rely on external services. Apple says that, “at a minimum,” users will be able to generate 50 images, 50 presentations of between 8 to 10 slides each, and to generate presenter notes in Keynote for 700 slides. More usage may be possible, but this depends on “the complexity of the queries, server availability, and network availability.”

Steven Troughton-Smith, last week, after creating an entire app with OpenAI’s Codex:

This entire app used 7% of my weekly Codex usage limit. Compare that to a single (awful) slideshow in Keynote using 47% of my monthly Apple Creator Studio usage limit 👀

Something feels off here, by at least an order of magnitude (maybe two?), that creating an entire good app costs way less than creating one shitty slide deck in Keynote. It should be the other way around.

Tuesday, 3 February 2026

OpenAI’s Codex ★

Simon Willison:

OpenAI just released a new macOS app for their Codex coding agent. I’ve had a few days of preview access — it’s a solid app that provides a nice UI over the capabilities of the Codex CLI agent and adds some interesting new features, most notably first-class support for Skills, and Automations for running scheduled tasks.

Interesting, for sure. But super-duper interesting? I don’t know.

Xcode 26.3 ‘Unlocks the Power of Agentic Coding’ ★

Apple Newsroom:

Xcode 26.3 introduces support for agentic coding, a new way in Xcode for developers to build apps using coding agents such as Anthropic’s Claude Agent and OpenAI’s Codex. With agentic coding, Xcode can work with greater autonomy toward a developer’s goals — from breaking down tasks to making decisions based on the project architecture and using built-in tools.

I don’t know if this is super-duper interesting news, but I think it’s super-duper interesting that Apple saw the need to release this now, not at WWDC in June.

Friday, 30 January 2026

Apple Reports Record-Breaking Revenue and Profit for Q1 FY26 ★

Apple Newsroom, yesterday:

“Today, Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago and well above our expectations,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment, and Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago. We are also excited to announce that our installed base now has more than 2.5 billion active devices, which is a testament to incredible customer satisfaction for the very best products and services in the world.”

“During the December quarter, our record business performance and strong margins led to EPS growth of 19 percent, setting a new all-time EPS record,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO. “These exceptionally strong results generated nearly $54 billion in operating cash flow, allowing us to return almost $32 billion to shareholders.”

John Markoff, writing for The New York Times 20 years ago:

It may not be the last laugh, but on Friday afternoon, after the close of the stock market, Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, shared an e-mail chuckle with his employees at the expense of Dell, a big rival.

The message was prompted by the 12 percent surge in Apple’s stock price last week, which pushed the company’s market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell’s value of $71.97 billion.

In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start in 1976, Dell’s founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.

“What would I do?” Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Mr. Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple employees, which read: “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”

Dell’s market cap today: $76 billion.
Apple’s: $3,824 billion.

Upton Sinclair coined the oft-cited maxim “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I propose a corollary: It is difficult to get a company to see that certain of its core competencies are in severe decline when the company is making more money than ever.

Lego Group and Crocs Enter Multi-Year Global Partnership ★

Maybe Trump is right and we should go to war against Denmark.

Thursday, 29 January 2026

‘Backseat Software’ ★

Mike Swanson:

What if your car worked like so many apps? You’re driving somewhere important…maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks:

“How are you enjoying your drive so far?”

Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic.

A minute later it does it again.

“Did you know I have a new feature? Tap here to learn more.”

It blocks your speedometer with an overlay tutorial about the turn signal. It highlights the wiper controls and refuses to go away until you demonstrate mastery.

Ridiculous, of course.

And yet, this is how a lot of modern software behaves. Not because it’s broken, but because we’ve normalized an interruption model that would be unacceptable almost anywhere else.

I’ve started to think of this as backseat software: the slow shift from software as a tool you operate to software as a channel that operates on you. Once a product learns it can talk back, it’s remarkably hard to keep it quiet.

This post is about how we got here. Not overnight, but slowly. One reasonable step at a time.

If that lede pulls you in, like it did for me, you’re going to love the rest of the essay. This is one for the ages. It’s so good.

Let’s Keep an Eye on Apple’s Own iOS Adoption Numbers ★

When I wrote last week about the false narrative that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates compared to previous years, I neglected one source: Apple itself. Apple’s Developer site publishes a page with iOS and iPadOS usage for devices that “transacted on the App Store”.

The hitch is that they only seem to update those numbers twice a year — once right around now, and once again right before WWDC. As of today, those numbers are still from 4 June 2025. Last year, going from the Internet Archive, the numbers were still from iOS 17 (June 2024) on 23 January last year, but were updated for iOS 18 on 24 January. Here are those iOS 18 numbers from one year ago this week.

iPhones released in the previous four years:

• iOS 18: 76%
• iOS 17: 19%
• iOS < 17: 5%

All iPhones:

• iOS 18: 68%
• iOS 17: 19%
• iOS < 17: 13%

iPads released in the previous four years:

• iPadOS 18: 63%
• iPadOS 17: 27%
• iPadOS < 17: 10%

All iPads:

• iPadOS 18: 53%
• iPadOS 17: 28%
• iPadOS < 17: 19%

(Apple itself manages to present these statistics without ever using the plurals iPhones or iPads, instead referring only to “devices”.)

A year prior in early 2024, Apple updated the numbers at some point between 23 January and 6 February. I presume, or at least hope, that they’ll update these numbers for iOS 26 any day now.

[Update, 17 February 2026: “Apple Releases iOS 26 Adoption Rates, and They’re Pretty Much in Line With the Last Few Years”.]

Box Office Expectations for ‘Melania’ ★

Jeremy Fuster, reporting for TheWrap:

But save for some theaters in Republican-heavy states, the film is unlikely to leave much of an impact at a slumping box office, with theatrical sources telling TheWrap that “Melania” is projected for an opening of around $3 million this weekend.

That would put it below the last right-wing documentary, the Daily Wire-produced Matt Walsh film “Am I Racist?,” which opened to $4.5 million from 1,517 locations in September 2024, finishing with a $12.3 million total that made it the highest-grossing doc that year. The highest projections are coming from NRG with an estimate of around $5 million, though audience interest polls from the company have 30% saying they are “definitely not” interested in watching the film, an unusually high count for any wide release.

These projections are with a $35 million promotional campaign, for a movie Amazon paid $40 million to purchase. (Via Taegan Goddard.)

Amazon’s Spending on ‘Melania’ Is a Barely Concealed Bribe ★

Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes, reporting for The New York Times:

Amazon paid Ms. Trump’s production company $40 million for the rights to “Melania,” about $26 million more than the next closest bidder, Disney. The fee includes a related docuseries that is scheduled to air later this year. The budget for “Melania” is unknown, but documentaries that follow a subject for a limited amount of time usually cost less than $5 million to produce. The $35 million for marketing is 10 times what some other high-profile documentaries have received.

All of which has a lot of Hollywood questioning whether Amazon’s push is anything more than the company’s attempt to ingratiate itself with President Trump.

This is a good story, with multiple industry sources with experience making political documentaries, but the Times’s own subhead downplays Amazon’s spending on the film: “The tech giant is spending $35 million to promote its film about the first lady, far more than is typical for documentaries.” They’re spending $35 million now, to promote it, but they already paid $40 million for the rights to the film, $28 million of which is believed to have gone to Melania Trump herself. A $35 million total spend would be a lot compared to other high-profile documentaries, but it’s a $75 million total spend. This is not just a little fishy — it’s a veritable open air seafood market.

Back to the Times:

To grasp just how uncustomary Amazon’s marketing push for “Melania” is, consider how Magnolia Pictures handled “RBG,” a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her 25th year as a Supreme Court justice, in 2018.

CNN Films produced “RBG” for around $1 million. The promotional budget, including an awards campaign that helped it land two Oscar nominations, totaled about $3 million. The film debuted in 34 theaters and expanded into 432 locations over several weeks. It ultimately collected $14 million, enough to rank as the year’s No. 1 political documentary.

And:

On Friday, “Melania” will also be released in 1,600 theaters overseas, where FilmNation, a New York company, is handling distribution in more than 20 countries. International ticket sales are expected to be weak, according to box office analysts.

Shocker.

Kickstarter for Ollie’s Arcade Expansion ★

Ged Maheux, The Iconfactory:

This week we announced a new Kickstarter that’s aimed at expanding the game offerings of Ollie’s Arcade, the fun, ad-free retro gaming app we introduced back in 2023. Ollie’s Arcade has always been a great way to escape doomscrolling, even if just for a little while, and now we have an opportunity to bring these retro games to even more people on iOS.

The Kickstarter aims to raise enough money to make all of the in-app purchase games in the app completely free for everyone to enjoy. We also want to bring our beloved puzzle game, Frenzic, to life once again. Frenzic was one of the very first games available on iOS back in 2008, then was reborn as Frenzic: Overtime on Apple Arcade. Since it left, people have been asking us for a new version that they can just pick up and play. We couldn’t agree more!

I linked to the Kickstarter for the original Ollie’s Arcade project back in 2023, which was a big success. And I first linked to Frenzic all the way back in 2008, when the App Store was only a few months old. It’s just a great concept for a casual game on a small screen, implemented with all of The Iconfactory’s exquisite attention to detail. That’s true for all the games in Ollie’s Arcade, but Frenzic is special.

This new Kickstarter for the Ollie’s Arcade expansion has already hit its funding goal, but it’s approaching the stretch goal for an additional game. There are a zillion games for iOS, but it’s sad how few are ad-free and don’t require a subscription. If you think well-crafted fun games that you can pay for once (for a very reasonable price) should be rewarded, you should join me (and others) in backing this Kickstarter.

Wednesday, 28 January 2026

Comparing the Classic and Unified Views in iOS 26’s Phone App ★

Adam Engst, back in November, at TidBITS:

Did you know that, regardless of view, you can now swipe left on any call to reveal a blue clock icon that lets you create a reminder to call back in 1 hour, tonight, tomorrow, or at any custom time (below left, slightly doctored)? Reminders appear at the top of the Calls list and in your default Reminders list. You can also touch and hold a call associated with a contact to connect with them in other ways (below right), or touch and hold a call from an unknown caller to add them to Contacts.

I did not know this, until I read Engst’s article.

One criticism I’ve seen a few times (but to be clear, not from Engst) ever since Apple debuted the new Unified interface for the Phone app back at WWDC, is that it’s somehow wrong that Apple offers it as an option alongside the Classic interface. “When does Apple ever offer options like this?”

I’d argue that Apple used to offer options like this all the time. The Music app on the original iPhone (which app was actually named “iPod” for a while) let you customize all the tabs at the bottom. All of Apple’s good Mac apps (the AppKit ones, primarily) still let you customize the entire toolbar. The problem isn’t that Apple now offers two very different interfaces for the Phone app. The problem is that Apple stopped offering users ways to significantly tailor apps to their own needs and tastes — and the proof that they stopped is that so many people now think it’s so strange that they’re offering two options for how the Phone app should look and work.

Overall, I like the new Unified layout in the Phone app. But what I love is there remains an option for those who don’t, and that you can switch between the two in a very obvious, easily discoverable (dare I say, hard to miss) way right in the app itself. No need to dig two or three levels deep into the Settings app. You can just switch right there in the main screen of the Phone app itself. It’s things like this that keep me optimistic that Apple is still capable of great new work in UI design.

Aeronaut 1.0 ★

New Mac app by Mikey Clarke, and it’s just what it says on the tin: a “lovingly crafted Bluesky app designed and built just for the Mac”. I’ve been beta testing Aeronaut for months, and it’s the only interface to Bluesky I actually like. It’s a real Mac app — written mostly in AppKit, supporting all the right UI idioms and platform integrations. It’s not just the best Bluesky client I’ve seen, for any platform, but maybe the best new Mac app I’ve seen in years, period. Certainly the one whose very existence has made me happiest. Next time someone tells me no one makes good new native apps for the Mac anymore, I’m going to tell them Mikey Fucking Clarke does.

$2/month or $15/year. A veritable bargain for an app so nice.

Bruce Springsteen: ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ ★

Bruce Springsteen:

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Best line from the lyrics:

Their claim was self-defense,
Just don’t believe your eyes.
It’s our blood and bones and these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.

Whistles, phones, and birds.

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Wednesday, 28 January 2026

Tim Cook Wrote a Memo on the ‘Events in Minneapolis’ ★

Tim Cook, in a company-wide memo (first published by Mark Gurman):

Team,
I’m heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis, and my prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families, with the communities, and with everyone that’s been affected.

This is a time for deescalation. I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from, and when we embrace our shared humanity. This is something Apple has always advocated for. I had a good conversation with the president this week where I shared my views, and I appreciate his openness to engaging on issues that matter to us all.

I know this is very emotional and challenging for so many. I am proud of how deeply our teams care about the world beyond our walls. That empathy is one of Apple’s greatest strengths and it is something I believe we all cherish.

Thank you for all that you do.
Tim

“Events” is doing a lot of work there, to describe what has happened and is happening in Minneapolis.

Trump’s “openness” on this particular “issue” has been to replace Greg Bovino — the diminutive Himmler-cosplaying “commander at large” of Border Control, who insisted, adamantly, that the real victims in Alex Pretti’s murder were the Border Patrol agents who shot him — with “border czar” Tom Homan, a man who took a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents in exchange for a promise to award them government contracts if Trump were reelected.

Zac Hall, on Twitter/X:

Cook took three days to not name Alex Pretti in his not public statement and 20 days to not name Renée Good in his not public statement. [...]

2020 Tim Cook on Apple’s homepage: “Right now, there is a pain deeply etched in the soul of our nation and in the hearts of millions. To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and recognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the senseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of racism.”

Quite the different message (and medium — this time with nothing on Apple’s website, let alone their homepage) from 2020, for what I consider far more outrageous and alarming killings.

Meta’s Response to Reuters Report on ‘Romance AI Chatbots’ for Teenagers ★

Andy Stone, VP of communications at Meta, responding, in a series of tweets on Twitter/X, to Jeff Horwitz’s report at Reuters yesterday, linked here last night, which claimed that “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”:

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh, @Reuters, @JeffHorwitz!

The documents you cite in the story itself contradict this headline.

The headline says “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”

But the story cites a document that says “Zuckerberg believed that AI companions should be blocked from engaging in sexually ‘explicit’ conversations” w young people.

Huh?!

After my post last night, a friend of mine, with a career of experience working in a large company, sent me this:

A word of caution. “Scumbag middle manager says CEO said” is not the same as “CEO said.”

I could believe Zuck shitcanned parental controls, but I am certain there are thousands of snakes inside that company who would lie about it to get what they want.

That’s a good and fair point, and I think it’s what Stone is trying to emphasize above. The New Mexico lawsuit filing doesn’t contain evidence that Zuckerberg nixed parental controls for teens engaging in chats with AI bots; it contains evidence that other (unnamed employees) claimed in internal discussions that Zuckerberg had nixed them. That is different.

But so let’s take Zuckerberg out of it personally. It’s still the case that Meta shipped these chatbots for teens to use. And the buck, presumably, stops at Zuck’s desk. Read Horwitz’s report from back in August, detailing a leaked internal document listing Meta’s content guidelines for generative AI chat.

Sidenote: Why in the world is Meta’s VP of comms doing this on Twitter/X, not Threads, which continues to grow?

Tuesday, 27 January 2026

Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors ★

Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public Monday.

The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and Instagram. [...]

Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the chatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots” that would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI leadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote in that exchange.

Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is a byline worth paying attention to.

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