Linked List: July 10, 2026

Friday, 10 July 2026

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“You know who this is.”

“Yes I do, yes I do. I sent a guy to deliver the package ... he didn’t call. Is everything alright?”

“Tell you what. Forget the money.”

Drew Pusateri, director of communications at OpenAI, on Twitter/X (or XCancel):

Our statement in response to this suit: We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.

Let’s say I think you stole my wallet. I approach a police officer and tell him my suspicion and describe the evidence that makes me think you have my wallet in your pocket. “Is that his wallet in your pocket?” the cop asks.

“I have no interest in other people’s wallets” would be a rather curious answer.

Ice Cold ★

Alex Heath, on Threads:

At WWDC, Apple execs I met with were ice-cold when I asked about their OpenAI partnership.

Now we know why: Apple just sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to consumer hardware (Apple and OAI senior leaders are in Sun Valley this week. Yikes!)

I noticed the same ice-cold reaction to my questions about ChatGPT and Siri. (In fact, I think Heath and I even talked about it together when we bumped into each other at the end of the day on Monday during WWDC week.) At the time I took it as Apple execs not wanting to distract from the fact that Siri AI with Apple Intelligence, with no third-party plug-in, was truly competitive. But in hindsight their coolness, I think, was about this.

There was no response like, say, “We think ChatGPT is great and we’re happy to keep it available in iOS 27 as an option for our customers who love that experience, but the new Siri AI truly stands on its own.” That’s a typical Apple answer. But what they actually said was just more like “The ChatGPT extension remains available.” I didn’t think much of it at the time but now it stands out.

Ryanair Literally Sucks ★

The AP:

Fellow passengers pulled back a man who was partially sucked out of a dislodged airplane window on Friday, a few minutes after takeoff on a flight from northern Greece to Germany. The plane subsequently returned to the airport in Greece.

The incident happened on a morning flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen, near Munich, operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier.

Worse than bad date math.

Newly Renamed Trump Airport in Palm Beach Has an AI Slop Logo ★

Frank Landymore, writing for Futurism:

Look past its gaudiness, though, and you’ll notice some things that’re a little off in the finer details. The talons are horribly deformed and shaped differently from each other. The entire legs are uneven, too, and the base of them are represented as a strange conglomeration of blobs, which are also inconsistent. In fact, the whole thing is slightly asymmetrical. The wings have an uneven number of feathers. The two olive branches — another error in itself, because the eagle is supposed to be clutching a bundle of arrows in its right-side talon — have differing numbers of leaves. And the shield only has eleven stripes, as opposed to the thirteen that the actual Great Seal is supposed to feature.

The fourth star is crooked. What a mess. Perfect logo for Trump Airport.

Mac OS 9’s Finder Had a ‘View as Buttons’ Mode ★

Cryan.com:

The “View as Buttons” option was a distinctive feature of the Macintosh OS 9 Finder. It allowed users to view the contents of a folder as clickable buttons, each representing a file or application. This view was particularly useful for quickly accessing frequently used programs and documents.

I totally forgot this view existed, despite using Mac OS 9 for many years, because I never used it myself. This didn’t just turn apps into buttons with tiled square backgrounds — it turned every item in the file system into a button. I was reminded of it by a reader who used it in theater class in school to turn a folder full of sound files into, effectively, a soundboard app. Cool.

So many of the best UI ideas are little things like this. Sure, most Mac users didn’t want or need this view. But for those who did, they could do something cool with it.

Squircle Jail Isn’t (or at Least Shouldn’t Be) About Upcoming Touchscreen Macs ★

Another bit of follow-up on squircle jail on MacOS. The most-asked question in my inbox from readers is this: Is mandating the squircle a concession to the much-rumored upcoming touchscreen MacBooks?

No.

The visible shape and appearance of an app icon is unrelated to its clickable — or, perhaps soon, tappable — area. Rendering a visible squircle doesn’t change the shape of the clickable/tappable target area around an icon. In the bygone days when MacOS permitted delicious app icons — and Apple crafted delicious icons for its own apps — you could click in the middle of, say, the QuickTime Player icon and it just worked. It would have been pretty nutty if it didn’t.

Screenshot of the old QuickTime Player’s “Q” icon, with a transparent hole.

Apple Sues OpenAI, io, and Former Employees, Alleging Theft of Trade Secrets ★

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

The lawsuit names Chang Liu and Tang Tan as two of the defendants. Tang Tan served as VP of product design at Apple, leading iPhone and Apple Watch product design. He departed the company in February 2024 to work with Jony Ive. Chang Liu, meanwhile, worked at Apple for eight years and was a senior system electrical engineer before departing to join OpenAI in January 2026.

Apple’s lawsuit also names OpenAI and io Products as defendants.

OpenAI’s hardware efforts are being led by Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer. OpenAI acquired Ive’s startup io as part of a $6.5 billion deal last year. OpenAI’s takeover of the company included more than 50 engineers, developers, and other employees. In its original announcement, OpenAI touted that Ive founded io in collaboration with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tan.

Hankey led Apple’s design team for several years after Ive departed the company. She departed in 2022 before reuniting with Ive as part of io. Cannon also previously worked at Apple.

Ive, Hankey, and Cannon are not personally mentioned anywhere in Apple’s initial filing today.

Here’s a copy of Apple’s complaint I’m hosting. You should read the complaint to form your own opinion on the allegations. The complaint goes so far out of its way to avoid mentioning Ive or Hankey by name that it describes io’s founding thus, on page 4 (italics added):

OpenAI and its cohorts have been engaging in a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level as well. This includes io (which OpenAI acquired), a venture co-founded by Mr. Tan and other former Apple leaders. The Corporate Defendants, with or through their employees or partners, have been acting in concert and as an enterprise, exploiting Apple’s confidential information to advance OpenAI’s efforts to enter the consumer hardware market. They have used confidential Apple information in approaching Apple’s trusted partners, even having one carry out a specific trade secret metal-finishing technique for OpenAI, misleading the partner to believe they had Apple’s permission to do so.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Apple lacks visibility into what’s been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership. This much is clear, however: at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information. As a natural result, OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.

Footnote 13 on p. 15 states:

Apple and OpenAI have a commercial relationship involving the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence. The companies have entered into a written agreement governing that integration. That agreement is not at issue here. OpenAI’s acts of trade secret misappropriation alleged herein do not arise from and have no connection to that agreement.

Be that as it may legally speaking, in practical terms it seems untenable for that Apple Intelligence partnership to continue after this.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup.