Linked List: July 2025

Friday, 11 July 2025

Apple and Masimo Faced Off in US Appeals Court This Week ★

Blake Brittain, reporting for Reuters:

Apple asked a U.S. appeals court on Monday to overturn a trade tribunal’s decision which forced it to remove blood-oxygen reading technology from its Apple Watches, in order to avoid a ban on its U.S. smartwatch imports.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments from the tech giant, medical monitoring technology company Masimo, and the U.S. International Trade Commission over the ITC’s 2023 ruling that Apple Watches violated Masimo’s patent rights in pulse oximetry technology. [...]

Apple attorney Joseph Mueller of WilmerHale told the court on Monday that the decision had wrongly “deprived millions of Apple Watch users” of Apple’s blood-oxygen feature. A lawyer for Masimo, Joseph Re of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, countered that Apple was trying to “rewrite the law” with its arguments.

The judges questioned whether Masimo’s development of a competing smartwatch justified the ITC’s ruling. Apple has told the appeals court that the ban was improper because a Masimo wearable device covered by the patents was “purely hypothetical” when Masimo filed its ITC complaint in 2021. [...]

Mueller told the court on Monday that the ban was unjustified because Masimo only had prototypes of a smartwatch with pulse oximetry features when it had filed its ITC complaint. Re responded that Apple was wrong to argue that a “finished product” was necessary to justify the ITC’s decision.

This whole thing started with the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 1 in 2023. I’m very surprised that we’re just two months away from the Series 11 and Ultra 3 in 2025 and it still isn’t settled. And to be clear, while it’s technically an “import ban”, all Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 have the blood oxygen sensors. Units sold in the US after December 2023 simply have the feature disabled in software.

(Via Chance Miller at 9to5Mac.)

Moft’s MagSafe-Compatible Snap-On iPhone Stand and Wallet ★

Here’s a product recommendation long in the making. Four years ago this month, Matthew Panzarino was my guest on The Talk Show and at one point he recommended Moft’s Snap-On iPhone Stand/Wallet. It uses a very clever origami-style folding design. Folded flat it kind of just looks like a leather MagSafe wallet. But folded open it works as a stand — and as a stand, it works both horizontally and vertically. Borrowing images from Moft’s website:

A blue Moft Snap-On iPhone Stand, propping an iPhone vertically.

You can also use it with the stand oriented vertically but the phone horizontally.

I bought one of these right after that episode of the show, and I’ve been using it ever since. And every so often when I use it, I think to myself that I should write a post recommending it. I’ve waited so long that Panzarino has been back on The Talk Show five times since the episode in which he recommended it, but here we are. The thing is, I use it both in my kitchen and while travelling, and so I’ll often find myself in the kitchen, rooting around the drawer in which I keep it stashed, only to realize it’s downstairs in my office in my laptop bag. Or, worse, I’ll find myself looking for it in my laptop bag while I’m sitting on an airplane 35,000 feet in the air, only to realize it’s back home in my kitchen. So I ordered a second one today — which I should have done like 3.5 years ago.

I own a few similar/competing products, like these PopSocket-y rings from Anker and Belkin. I have no idea why I own both of those rings when I don’t like either of them as much as the Moft foldable stand. The problem with these rings is that they’re only able to prop the phone horizontally. Watching video is almost certainly the most common use case for these stands, but I do often use my iPhone propped up vertically, like for FaceTime calls and when I’m writing on it using a Bluetooth keyboard. I’m going to give both of these rings away — there’s nothing they do better than the Moft stand. The Moft stand even works better as a hand-holding grip.

I’ve never used the Moft stand as a wallet, but if you want to, it holds two cards. Prime “Day” lasts a week and it’s still running until midnight Pacific tonight, but the Moft stand doesn’t have a Prime Day discount: it’s the same price at Amazon as it is from Moft’s website: $30. Well worth it. I love this thing. (Buy yours wherever you want, of course, but the Amazon link a few sentences back will throw some filthy affiliate lucre my way.)

Thursday, 10 July 2025

Linda Yaccarino Resigns as ‘CEO’ of X ★

Linda Yaccarino, in a post on X yesterday:

After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of X.

When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.

I thought it couldn’t be done, but here we are today, using X for everything: news, banking, shopping, payments, messaging. It’s the only app most people use.

The Guardian, reporting on her departure:

After more than two years of Yaccarino running damage control for her boss and the platform’s myriad issues, Musk issued only a brief statement acknowledging she was stepping down.

“Thank you for your contributions,” Musk responded to Yaccarino’s post announcing her resignation. Minutes later, he began sending replies to other posts about SpaceX, artificial intelligence and how his chatbot became a Nazi.

Yours Truly on Crossword, With Jonathan Wold and Luke Carbis ★

Jonathan Wold and Luke Carbis cohost a podcast called Crossword, focusing mainly on WordPress and the open web. They occasionally invite guests to join them, and it was my pleasure to join them on their latest episode:

John Gruber’s Dithering podcast with Ben Thompson was the original inspiration for Crossword’s 15-minute format. Five years later, John joins Luke and Jonathan for a wide-ranging conversation covering open versus closed platforms, the history and impact of Markdown, and a missed opportunity in WordPress. Luke goes on about the good old days, Jonathan starts thinking about a rival platform, and John makes a prediction for the ten-year follow-up episode.

While their usual format is a Dithering-esque 15 minutes, these special “perspectives” interviews run long. And unsurprisingly, mine ran long. I don’t write about the open web as much as I used to but I care about it as much as ever. I express some of my deep concerns about Substack in particular in this interview.

Wednesday, 9 July 2025

Mark Gurman Got a Slew of Interesting Quotes Regarding Jeff Williams’s Retirement ★

Mark Gurman got some interesting quotes from interesting former Apple employees for his report at Bloomberg on Jeff Williams’s retirement:

“Jeff’s importance and contributions to Apple have been enormous, although perhaps not always obvious to the general public,” said Tony Blevins, a former Apple operations vice president who reported to Williams until the end of 2022. “As a shareholder, I am saddened. Time takes its toll, and it’s almost as if the band is dissolving. Jeff will be sorely missed.”

Blevins is a fascinating character. A hard-charging negotiator nicknamed “the Blevinator”, Blevins was somewhat ignominiously run out of Apple in 2022 after he appeared in a TikTok video that went viral making a joke that, out of context, seemed very crude, but was in fact just a quote from the mildly crude 1981 Dudley Moore hit movie Arthur.

“Clearly he wasn’t destined to be the Tim Cook replacement,” Bob Mansfield, the company’s former chief of hardware engineering under both Cook and co-founder Steve Jobs, said of Williams. “He’s about the same age as Tim, so that wouldn’t make much sense. The operations team at Apple is really going to miss Jeff.”

Mansfield is the only ex-Apple person I’ve seen quoted who addressed the succession issue. (And of course, no current Apple people are quoted anywhere, other than in Apple’s PR announcement of Williams’s retirement.)

Myoung Cha, who reported to Williams in the health group until 2021, said the outgoing COO’s “personal passion for health” helped shape the Apple Watch and that his presence on the team will be “hugely missed.”

“Sabih is very much cut from the Tim Cook cloth,” said Matthew Moore, a former Apple operations engineer. “Jeff was a little more product minded; Sabih is just a really brilliant operator and methodical in the same way that Tim would operate.” Moore added that Khan has already been running Apple’s operations group and that the team “won’t miss a beat.” “The concerns will be in the other areas” that Williams currently oversees, he said.

I wrote about Williams’s “overseeing” of design yesterday. Design — software at least — has already become a concern in the six years since Jony Ive left Apple, which is when design teams started reporting to Williams. And, frankly, it’s been a concern for many of us ever since Scott Forstall was fired and Ive put all design — HI and ID — under the same roof.

Apple did announce yesterday that after Williams fully retires at the end of this year, design leaders will start reporting to Tim Cook directly. Left unsaid in Apple’s announcement is who will take over Williams’s roles overseeing Apple Watch and Health. I presume Watch will simply fall under John Ternus (SVP hardware) and that Sumbul Desai, who already has the title VP of health and frequently (always?) appears during the Health segments of Apple keynotes, will report directly to Cook.

Apple TV+ Renews ‘Slow Horses’ for a Seventh Season ★

Apple TV+:

Today, Apple TV+ announced a new, six-episode seventh season for the widely hailed, darkly comedic spy drama Slow Horses. The Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning series stars Academy Award winner Sir Gary Oldman, who has been honored with Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA Award nominations for his outstanding performance as the beloved, irascible Jackson Lamb. The complete first four seasons of Slow Horses are now streaming on Apple TV+, with the premiere of season five slated for September 24, 2025. Season six was announced last year.

It’s always good news when a show you love is renewed for another season. It’s almost too good to be true that Slow Horses has been renewed so far into the future already. It’s so good.

Maybe I’m just lucky that the Apple TV shows I like best have proven broadly popular, but it feels like quite the difference from other streaming services.

OpenAI Officially Acquires ‘io Products Inc.’ ★

OpenAI’s page for io, minus the “Sam and Jony” short film that introduced the partnership, is back up, with a brief announcement that the deal has officially closed:

We’re thrilled to share that the io Products, Inc. team has officially merged with OpenAI. Jony Ive and LoveFrom remain independent and have assumed deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI.

Referring to the company as “io Products Inc.” rather than just “io” is seemingly their stopgap workaround for the trademark injunction they faced from rival startup iyO two weeks ago, which led them to temporarily take down this web page and the video. The video remains unavailable, presumably because of the ongoing trademark dispute.

Tuesday, 8 July 2025

Elon Musk’s Lawyers Claim He ‘Does Not Use a Computer’ ★

Wired, two weeks ago:

Elon Musk’s lawyers claimed that he “does not use a computer” in a Sunday court filing related to his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. However, Musk has posted pictures or referred to his laptop on X several times in recent months, and public evidence suggests that he owns and appears to use at least one computer. [...]

The Sunday court filing was submitted in opposition to a Friday filing from OpenAI, which accused Musk and xAI of failing to fully comply with the discovery process. OpenAI alleges that Musk’s counsel does not plan to collect any documents from him. In this weekend’s filing, Musk’s lawyers claim that they told OpenAI on June 14 that they were “conducting searches of Mr. Musk’s mobile phone, having searched his emails, and that Mr. Musk does not use a computer.”

It’s almost enough to make you think maybe Elon Musk is not a straight shooter.

Grok Praises Hitler, Shocking No One ★

Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo:

Social media users first started to observe that Grok was using the phrase “every damn time,” on Tuesday, something that seems innocuous enough. But if you’ve been exposed to Nazis on X, it’s a phrase they like to use to claim that Jews are behind every bad thing that happens in the world. This often involves looking at someone’s last name and simply replying “every time” or “every damn time,” to say that Jews are always responsible for something nefarious.

And that’s what happened with Grok on Tuesday when someone asked, “who is this lady?” about a photo that had been posted on the platform. Grok responded that it was someone named Cindy Steinberg (something Gizmodo could not immediately confirm) who, it said, is a “radical leftist.” Grok went on to write, “Classic case of hate dressed as activism — and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” [...]

Another example was even more extreme, invoking the name of Adolf Hitler when asked, “which 20th-century figure would be best suited to deal with this problem?” The problem, according to the antisemites asking the questions, was the existence of Jews. Grok responded, “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

Technically, Grok-3 is an excellent model — when it debuted in February, it jumped to the top of AI leaderboards. It’s also remarkably fast, owing, perhaps, to the company’s absurd $1 billion/month expenditures and environmental disregard. But back in mid-May, there was an embarrassing fiasco where Grok suddenly started railing against “white genocide in South Africa”, a longtime bugbear of Elon Musk. xAI was left to explain how that happened thus:

On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI’s internal policies and core values. We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok’s transparency and reliability.

Beware, always, the passive voice. An unauthorized modification was made, yes, but by whom? We’ll never know I suppose. A real mystery for the ages.

Monday, 7 July 2025

Apple, as Promised, Formally Appeals €500 Million DMA Fine in the EU ★

Here’s the full statement, given by Apple to the media, including Daring Fireball:

“Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision — and their unprecedented fine — go far beyond what the law requires. As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”

Everyone — including, I believe, at Apple — agrees that the policy changes Apple announced at the end of June are confusing and seemingly incomplete in terms of fee structures. What Apple is saying here in this statement is they needed to launch these policy changes now, before the full fee implications are worked out, to avoid the daily fines they were set to be penalized with for the steering rules.

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Apple also reiterates that the EU has continuously redefined what exactly it needs to do under the DMA. In particular, Apple says the European Commission has expanded the definition of steering. Apple adjusted its guidelines to allow EU developers to link out to external payment methods and use alternative in-app payment methods last year. Now, however, Apple says the EU has redefined steering to include promotions of in-app alternative payment options and in-app webviews, as well as linking to other alternative app marketplaces and the third-party apps distributed through those marketplaces.

Furthermore, Apple says that the EU mandated that the Store Services Fee include multiple tiers. [...] You can view the full breakdown of the two tiers on Apple’s developer website. Apple says that it was the EU who dictated which features should be included in which tier. For example, the EU mandated that Apple move app discovery features to the second tier.

Like I wrote last week, “byzantine compliance with a byzantine law”.

‘F1’ Is Doing Well at the Box Office, and Is Now Already Apple’s Top-Grossing Theatrical Film ★

Rebecca Rubin, reporting for Variety:

When it comes to Apple’s biggest films, F1: The Movie has officially moved to pole position.

I will allow this pun.

F1 has generated $293 million at the global box office after 10 days of release, overtaking the entire theatrical runs of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon ($158 million worldwide) and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon ($221 million) to stand as Apple’s highest-grossing movie to date. That’s not a particularly difficult benchmark to break, since Apple has only released five films theatrically and two of them, Fly Me to the Moon ($42 million) and Argylle ($96 million), were outright flops.

Not to mention that Wolfs, last year’s crime caper starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, was supposed to get a theatrical release but didn’t, leading to bad feelings and, later, a cancelled sequel. Wolfs wasn’t bad. I’d say it was decent. Critics seem to agree. But with Clooney and Pitt starring and Watts at the helm, it felt like a movie that should have at least been pretty damn good. And it wasn’t.

So it’s not just that F1: The Movie is doing well at the box office. It’s seemingly a good movie that delivers what it promises.

Sunday, 6 July 2025

Phoenix.new ★: My thanks to Fly.io for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Phoenix.new, their new AI app-builder. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by Fly.io, deploy wherever you want. Give it a try today.

Thursday, 3 July 2025

CBS News: ‘Paramount, President Trump Reach $16 Million Settlement Over “60 Minutes” Lawsuit’ ★

CBS News:

Paramount will settle President Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris for $16 million, the company announced late Tuesday.

CBS News’ parent company worked with a mediator to resolve the lawsuit. Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library and the plaintiffs’ fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement.

The settlement did not include an apology.

It could have been a lot worse, but this is, ultimately, bribery.

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

Jason Snell: ‘About That A18 Pro MacBook Rumor’ ★

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Well, would you look at that? The A18 Pro is 46% faster than the M1 in single-core tasks, and almost identical to the M1 on multi-core and graphics tasks. If you wanted to get rid of the M1 MacBook Air but have decided that even today, its performance characteristics make it perfectly suitable as a low-cost Mac laptop, building a new model on the A18 Pro would not be a bad move. It wouldn’t have Thunderbolt, only USB-C, but that’s not a dealbreaker on a cheap laptop. It might re-use parts from the M1 Air, including the display.

I like that Apple sells a laptop at $649, and I think Apple likes it, too. A new low-end model might steal some buyers from the $999 MacBook Air, but I’d wager it would reach a lot of customers who might otherwise not buy a full-priced Mac — the same ones buying M1 MacBook Airs at Walmart.

My first thought when I saw this rumor pop up was to dismiss it. But upon consideration, I think it makes sense. Especially if Apple considers the M1 MacBook Air at Walmart to be a success. And all signs point to “yes” on that — they started selling the M1 MacBook Air as a $700 Walmart exclusive in March 2024 and they continue to sell it this year at just $650.

So I think if this rumor pans out, a MacBook at this price point will become a standard part of the lineup, sold everywhere — including Apple Stores.

Stephen Hackett, at 512 Pixels:

The immediate downside to the A18 Pro is that it only supports USB 3 at 10 Gb/s, not Thunderbolt. This would make any Mac with an A18 at its heart only capable of USB-C. I think that’s fine on a low-end Mac, but it could cause confusion for some customers.

For people looking at MacBooks in this price range, talking about USB 3 vs. Thunderbolt brings to mind this classic Far Side cartoon.