Linked List: April 1, 2026

Wednesday, 1 April 2026

Chris Espinosa, Employee #8, Profiled in The New York Times ★

Kalley Huang, writing for The New York Times (gift link):

As that happened, Apple laid off staff “again and again and again,” Mr. Espinosa said. His manager told him that he had been spared because he had worked for the company for so long that his severance package would be too expensive.

“I was wondering what I was going to do because I had no college degree and I had only worked at one company,” Mr. Espinosa said. Then he figured: “I was here when we turned the lights on. I might as well stick around until we turn the lights off.”

Lovely read.

The Talk Show: ‘Apple at 50’ ★

Who better to join the show to commemorate Apple’s 50th anniversary than John Siracusa?

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More on Apple’s Fun ‘Rewind’ Video ★

Lex Friedman (with an embedded video to prove it):

If you reverse the new Apple video that plays in “rewind,” it’s the Think Different ad music, pitched up.

Of course it is.

And, regarding that “◀︎◀︎ REW” button where the “REW” was set in bitmapped Chicago 12” but the “◀︎◀︎” was modern, Craig Hockenberry fixed it:

I pretended to be Susan Kare and fixed it, bottom is the original, top is my interpretation.

Ben Cohen of the WSJ Tours Apple’s Archive of Prototype Hardware ★

Lots of fun things I’ve never seen before in this 7-minute video. Best not to spoil them.

New Jersey, the Jackass State ★

By far the dumbest Internet Jackass Day “joke” I’ve seen so far is this one from the official New Jersey state account on Twitter/X, claiming that effective immediately, they’re lifting the statewide ban on self-service gasoline. For those of you who’ve never been there, I swear, you cannot pump your own gas anywhere in the state. It’s so ridiculous — and the historical reason so crooked — that people have a hard time believing it. You have to wait for an attendant, who is generally rude and almost always slow. Back in the day, they were extra slow returning with change when you paid in cash, hoping you’d just give up and leave. I’d rather run out of gas and just abandon my car on the side of the road than buy a single gallon of gas in New Jersey. And yet here’s the official state Twitter account yucking it up like the joke isn’t on them.

Ryan D’Agostino Profiles Tim Cook for Esquire on Apple’s 50th ★

Ryan D’Agostino, writing at Esquire (News+ link, in case Esquire stiffs you with their paywall):

Cook was at Jobs’s house the day he died. As he drove back to the office to announce it to the employees and, in so doing, to the world, he felt a strange kind of shock — strange because Jobs had been sick for so long, had even refused medicine when he was first diagnosed, instead trying to cure the disease with fruit juices, and so there should have been no shock at all.

“By that time, unfortunately, there was an inevitability to it,” Cook says. “But I was in denial for so long about the disease and where it would go, because I had watched him bounce back so many times, I assumed he always would. When I took the CEO role, I thought he was going to be executive chairman forever — that’s what I thought literally six weeks earlier. Looking back, I know somebody could say, How could you think that, given the circumstances? But that’s not the way I was wired in that moment.”

D’Agostino, fondly recalling the Apple IIe his family got for Christmas in 1983, wrongly remembers that, “When we turned it on, there was a little trash can in the corner of the screen.” Don’t let that conflation of the IIe and the Macintosh (yet to come in 1983) turn you off. It’s a good profile. Cook’s thoughts on Steve Jobs are touching, and D’Agostino gets Cook to expound upon his strategy of “engagement” with the Trump administration to a degree that I don’t think any other interviewer has. Cook’s answer is over 400 words, and Esquire, to their credit, ran the whole thing.

Inside Apple’s AirPods Max 2 and the H2 Chip Upgrade ★

Jacob Krol, writing at TechRadar:

To understand exactly what that means five years on, TechRadar sat down with Apple VP of Platform Architecture Tim Millet and Director of Audio Product Marketing Eric Treski to unpack how AirPods Max 2 is finally catching up to its own ambitions. [...]

One of the boldest claims Apple makes for AirPods Max 2 is a 1.5× improvement in active noise cancellation — achieved without changing a single physical component. “Getting those improvements to ANC and especially that 1.5 times more powerful ANC, which of course is a feat in itself, considering we didn’t change the actual design of the headphone at all from a form factor or material standpoint,” says Treski.

That improvement isn’t limited to a specific frequency band either. “We take that average at 1.5 times across an average of all frequencies. We’re not cherry-picking individual frequencies or a certain range,” he adds. That means AirPods Max 2 should perform better whether it’s blocking louder, booming sounds or higher-pitched ones — and that’s a high bar, given that the original AirPods Max were no slouches when it came to blocking out sound.

Hershey Says It Will Shift Back to Classic Recipe for All Reese’s Products After Criticism ★

The AP:

Hershey said Wednesday it will use classic recipes for all Reese’s products starting next year, a change that comes after the grandson of Reese’s founder criticized the company for shifting to cheaper ingredients.

Running to the press never works.

(Stick to Trader Joe’s, I say.)

Apple Marks 50th Anniversary ★

The Apple.com homepage has a nice little animation showing sketches of the company’s most iconic products. The video file itself is hosted here, but I’m not sure how permanent that link is.

Tim Cook posted a different video on Twitter/X, a VHS-style “rewind” through Apple product history. This one’s more fun. There’s an absolutely exquisite audio glitch at a certain moment — chef’s kiss. Bit of a shame that it’s only on X as far I know. Update: Ah, Apple posted the same video to their homepage, linked to a “◀︎◀︎ REW” button set in bitmapped Chicago 12, but it’s seemingly only shown when you visit on an iPhone. I don’t see the button from my Mac or iPad. But you should be able to watch the video from any device at this link. (I would have awarded bonus points for making the “◀︎◀︎” triangles pixel art too. I mean, come on!)

And, last night, Paul McCartney played a full concert at Apple Park for Apple employees. Good to see the two Apples burying the hatchet.