Linked List: June 23, 2025

Monday, 23 June 2025

OS 26 Betas Are Out 

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple today provided developers with the second betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple seeded the first betas following the WWDC keynote.

MacOS, tvOS, WatchOS, and VisionOS too. All sorts of good stuff in these second betas — an option to have a real big boy menu bar in MacOS Tahoe, a much better-looking Control Center, and more.

Pixar’s Newest Movie, ‘Elio’, Is a Box-Office Dud 

Brooks Barnes, writing for The New York Times:

Pixar knew that Elio, an original space adventure, would most likely struggle in its first weekend at the box office.

Animated movies based on original stories have become harder sells in theaters, even for the once-unstoppable Pixar. At a time when streaming services have proliferated and the broader economy is unsettled, families want assurance that spending the money for tickets will be worth it.

But the turnout for Elio was worse — much worse — than even Pixar had expected. The film, which cost at least $250 million to make and market, collected an estimated $21 million from Thursday evening through Sunday at theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. It was Pixar’s worst opening-weekend result ever. The previous bottom was Elemental, which arrived to $30 million in 2023.

Harry McCracken:

I wasn’t aware this movie had come out, and still can’t tell you what it’s about. And I’ve been a Pixar fan since before they made movies. That seems like a problem.

I hadn’t heard of this movie until today either. Disney and Pixar have a marketing problem. One part of the problem is that Pixar has made some decidedly meh movies in recent years. “Pixar” used to stand for nothing less than excellence. Now it stands for “somewhere in the range of OK to great”. But another is that even when they make a good one — which Elio might be — they suck at getting word out.

Trademark Dispute Leads to the Disappearance of ‘io’, OpenAI and LoveFrom’s Secretive AI Collaboration 

Hayden Field, reporting for The Verge:

OpenAI has scrubbed mentions of io, the hardware startup co-founded by famous Apple designer Jony Ive, from its website and social media channels. The sudden change closely follows their recent announcement of OpenAI’s nearly $6.5 billion acquisition and plans to create dedicated AI hardware.

OpenAI tells The Verge the deal is still happening, but it scrubbed mentions due to a trademark lawsuit from Iyo, the hearing device startup spun out of Google’s moonshot factory.

If you visit the “Sam and Jony” page on OpenAI’s website — where the short film teasing io used to be — it now simply says:

This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name “io.” We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.

Perhaps I’m not paying close enough attention, but this is the first I’ve heard of iyO. The two names certainly sound alike but they don’t look alike. Are homophones trademarkable? I would expect a terse letter from Coca-Cola’s lawyers if I tried selling soda under name “Koke” (or like Ted Nancy tried, Kiet Doke), so I guess so.

I suppose the question is how did OpenAI not see this coming, knowing that Google is probably their biggest rival? (Not to mention that Google might feel salty about the encroachment on their I/O developer conference name.)