Linked List: January 2026

Friday, 23 January 2026

Dr. Drang:

For weeks — maybe months, time has been hard to judge this past year — Trump has been telling us that he’s worked out deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by several hundred percent. Commentators and comedians have pointed out that you can’t reduce prices more than 100% and pretty much left it at that, suggesting that Trump’s impossible numbers are due to ignorance.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s ignorance is nearly limitless — but only nearly. I’ve always thought that he knew the right way to calculate a price drop; he did it the wrong way so he could quote a bigger number. And that came out in yesterday’s speech.

Trump sophistry + math pedantry = Daring Fireball catnip.

Thursday, 22 January 2026

MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder ★

Jeff Johnson:

Finder has four view modes, represented by the four consecutive toolbar icons in the screenshot below, if you can even call that free-floating monstrosity a toolbar anymore: Icons, List, Columns, and Gallery. My preference is columns view, which I’ve been using for as long as I remember, going back to Mac OS X.

At the bottom of each column is a resizing widget that you can use to change the width of the columns. Or rather, you could use it to change the width of the columns. On macOS Tahoe, the horizontal scroller covers the resizing widget and prevents it from being clicked!

I joked last week that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not a month ago, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.

Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay ★

Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:

When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to build that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all of that same information is handed over.

When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder for Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy and security protections, like not sharing any information about your actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking trickier.

This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want to pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan and Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had the option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share a lot less information with Walmart.

Using Walmart Pay gives Walmart more information than a regular credit or debit card transaction does. When you use the same traditional credit card for multiple purchases over time, a retailer like Walmart can build a profile associated with that card number. Charles Duhigg, all the way back in 2012, reported a story for The New York Times about how Target used these profiles — which customers don’t even know about — to statistically determine when women are likely to be pregnant based on purchases like, say, cocoa-butter lotion and vitamin supplements. When you use an in-house payment app like Walmart Pay (or swipe a store’s “loyalty” card at the register), the store doesn’t have to do any guesswork to associate the transaction with your profile. Your Walmart Pay account is your profile.

Using Apple Pay gives a retailer less — or at least no more — identifying information than a traditional card transaction. So if the future is paying via devices, Walmart wants that future to give them more information.

I think the situation with Walmart and Apple Pay is a lot like Netflix and Apple TV integration. Most retailers, even large ones, support Apple Pay. Most streaming services, even large ones, support integration with Apple’s TV app. Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because they want to control the customer transaction directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple Pay. Netflix doesn’t support TV app integration because they want to control the customer viewing experience directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple’s TV app.

Amazon — which is also very large, whose customers are also very loyal, and which absolutely loves collecting data — does not support Apple Pay either.

See also: Michael Tsai.

Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest ★

Violet Jira, reporting for NOTUS:

The White House communications team posted a digitally altered photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minnesota social justice activist, on Thursday that makes it appear that she was weeping during her arrest by federal agents.

The image is highly realistic, bearing no watermark or other indicator that the image has been doctored. The change is only apparent when compared to a different version of the same image posted by the Department of Homeland Security earlier in the day.

The White House, which has adopted a combative, flippant tone on its widely viewed social media pages, drew some backlash for the post online. In response, White House deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr called the image a “meme.”

It’s not a meme. It’s propaganda — an altogether false image presented as an actual photograph.

The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’ ★

Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley and Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas, and with a miserly gift-link policy):

But there are also potential risks to making Federighi head of AI. Giving oversight of AI to him reflects Apple’s cautious approach to the technology. He is known at Apple as a penny-pincher who keeps a tight rein on salaries and hesitates to invest in risky projects when the payoff from them isn’t clear, according to people who have worked with him. He tends to scrutinize every detail of his team’s expenses, down to their budgets for bananas and other office snacks, those people said.

Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals are pouring vast amounts of capital into AI, building data centers and paying fortunes to woo AI researchers.

I have no idea what Federighi’s stance is on break-room bananas, but it seems a stretch to think it offers clues to Apple’s strategy on data centers.

For years, lieutenants of Federighi would try to get him on board with AI. He often shot those efforts down, former Apple executives said. For example, he rejected proposals from his team to use AI to dynamically change the iPhone home screen, believing it would disorient users, who are used to knowing where their apps are located, said former Apple employees familiar with the proposal.

The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin ★

Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):

Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an AirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker, microphones and wireless charging, according to people with direct knowledge of the project. The device could be released as early as 2027, they said.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in one notable case, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glasses were an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.

Such a product would position Apple to compete more effectively with OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and Meta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses that offer access to its AI assistant.

It is very strange to put OpenAI’s upcoming io device(s) in the same sentence as Meta’s glasses, which are a real product you can buy today. None of these things are setting the world on fire though.

Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman ★

Mark Gurman, reporting at Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender to eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.

Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November, quietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the end of last year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most critical functions.

And on Twitter/X:

Ternus is now the “executive sponsor” of Apple’s design team, representing the critical function on Apple’s executive team. The move was under-the-radar: on paper, the teams report to Tim Cook despite Ternus’s role.

Here’s to hoping Ternus is as pissed as the rest of us are about MacOS 26 Tahoe.

Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore ★

Bridger Beal-Cvetko and Daniel Woodruff, reporting for KSL News:

SB138, sponsored by Cullimore, R-Sandy, would make Android, the world’s most popular mobile device operating system, an official state symbol, joining the ranks of the official state cooking pot (the dutch oven), the official state crustacean (the brine shrimp), and the official state mushroom (the porcini).

“Someday, everybody with an iPhone will realize that the technology is better on Android,” Cullimore told reporters during a media availability on Wednesday, the second day of the legislative session.

But, he added, “I’m the only one in my family — all my kids, my wife, they all have iPhones — but I’m holding strong.” [...]

“I don’t expect this to really get out of committee,” he said.

(Via Joe Rossignol.)

Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’ ★

Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire, in a post that pairs perfectly with Om Malik’s re: velocity bestowing authority:

The new Democratic argument isn’t about restoring guardrails. It’s about moving fast — and using power unapologetically — to undo what Trump has done.

New Jersey will inaugurate Mikie Sherrill as governor today, one of the party’s rising stars who steamrolled Republicans in November. She has promised to govern with urgency — leaning on emergency powers, acting decisively, and skipping the old incrementalism. This, she argues, is what voters now expect. She told The New Yorker that if Democrats don’t learn to work at Donald Trump’s pace, “we’re going to get played.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is even more explicit: “In order for us to correct the abuses that are happening now, we have to act in the same capacities that Trump has given himself.”

The only way to counter “move fast and break things” is to move fast and fix things.

Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’ ★

Om Malik:

That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You don’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It demands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure shakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention and push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone can get their cut. [...]

We built machines that prize acceleration and then act puzzled that everything feels rushed and slightly manic.

Crackerjack essay. Malik is focused here on the ways we’ve changed media and how those changes to media have changed us — as a society, and as individuals. But I think it explains how the Trump 2.0 administration has been so effective (such that it can be said to be effective). They recognize that velocity is authority and are moving as fast as they can. It’s an adaptation to a new media age.

‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’ ★

The Wall Street Journal (gift link; News+ link):

When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alps on Wednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his efforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic conflagration. By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.

After a meeting with Rutte on Wednesday, Trump called off promised tariffs on European nations, contending that he had “formed the framework of a future deal” with respect to the largest island in the world. [...] During an hourlong speech at the World Economic Forum, the U.S. president said he wouldn’t deploy the military to take control of Greenland. It was a stark shift in tone for Trump, who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military to secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the territory with an American flag plastered across it.

No need for panic. Alarm, yes. Panic, no. The TACO theory holds. Stand up to Trump and he’ll chicken out.

The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota ★

Margaret Killjoy, in a thread on Bluesky (via Kottke):

I came to Minneapolis to report on what’s going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is “just what is the scale of the resistance?” After all, we’re all used to the news calling Portland a “war zone” or whatever when it’s just some protests in one part of town. [...]

Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk of life, including republicans — standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.

I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.

It’s genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other those skills, and people are collectively refining them.

Apple’s “whatever you say, boss” compliance with the Trump administration’s “demand” back in October that they remove ICEBlock from the App Store — with no legal basis, nor any evidence backing the administration’s claims that the app was being used to put members of the ICE goon squads in danger — is looking more and more like a decision on the wrong side of popular opinion. And, ultimately, on the wrong side of history.

ICEBlock was designed for exactly what these protestors are doing.

Wednesday, 21 January 2026

Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes ★

Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg (gift link):

Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the digital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence chatbot, thrusting the iPhone maker into a generative AI race dominated by OpenAI and Google. [...]

The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining the current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the coming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features unveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen content and tap into personal data. It also will be better at searching the web.

The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The company aims to unveil that technology in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference and release it in September.

Campos, which will have both voice- and typing-based modes, will be the primary new addition to Apple’s upcoming operating systems. The company is integrating it into iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, both code-named Rave, as well as macOS 27, internally known as Fizz.

Apple ought to just go back to calling it “iOS” on both iPhone and iPad, because it’s always been the same system fundamentally. If they really do have the same codename, it sure suggests that Apple’s engineering teams see it that way too.

The 180° turn on chatbots is welcome, and I think inevitable. The chat interface is just too useful. One of the most maddening things about Siri is that even when it’s helpful today, even when it gets things right, you can never refer back to previous interactions. I refer back to previous chats in ChatGPT almost every day.

Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, said in a June interview with Tom’s Guide that releasing a chatbot was never the company’s goal. Apple didn’t want to send users “off into some chat experience in order to get things done,” he said.

I quote this paragraph only to point out that Gurman/Bloomberg could have, but chose not to, link to the interview with Federighi (and Joz) at Tom’s Guide. Every single link in the article goes to another page at bloomberg.com. [Update, next day: As of this morning, Bloomberg’s article now has a link to the interview at Tom’s Guide. Nice.]

The iOS 26.4 update of Siri, the one before the true chatbot, will rely on a Google-developed system internally known as Apple Foundation Models version 10. That software will operate at 1.2 trillion parameters, a measure of AI complexity. Campos, however, will significantly surpass those capabilities. The chatbot will run a higher-end version of the custom Google model, comparable to Gemini 3, that’s known internally as Apple Foundation Models version 11.

In a potential policy shift for Apple, the two partners are discussing hosting the chatbot directly on Google servers running powerful chips known as TPUs, or tensor processing units. The more immediate Siri update, in contrast, will operate on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers, which rely on high-end Mac chips for processing.

A policy shift indeed, if that comes to pass.

John Higgins, The Verge (gift link):

As of today, Sony already relies on different manufacturing partners to create its TV lineup. While display panel manufacturers never reveal who they sell panels to, Sony is likely already using panels for its LCD TVs from TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), in addition to OLED panels from LG Display and Samsung Display. With this deal, a relationship between Sony and TCL CSOT LCD panels is guaranteed (although I doubt this would affect CSOT selling panels to other manufacturers). And with TCL CSOT building a new OLED facility, there’s a potential future in which Sony OLEDs will also get panels from TCL. Although I should point out that we’re not sure yet if the new facility will have the ability to make TV-sized OLED panels, at least to start.

The gist I take from this is that Sony is already dependent upon TCL. I think the mistake Sony made was ever ceding ownership and control over their display technology.

There’s some concern from fans that this could lead to a Sharp, Toshiba, or Pioneer situation where the names are licensed and the TVs produced are a shell of what the brands used to represent. I don’t see this happening with Sony. While the electronics side of the business hasn’t been as strong as in the past, Sony — and Bravia — is still a storied brand. It would take a lot for Sony to completely step aside and allow another company to slap its name on an inferior product. And based on TCL’s growth and technological improvements over the past few years, and the shrinking gap between premium and midrange TVs, I don’t expect Sony TVs will suffer from a partnership with TCL.

I’m heartened by Higgins’s optimism. (And I’ve heard good things already from DF readers who own TCL TVs.)

Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL ★

Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge:

Sony has announced plans to spin off its TV hardware business, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two companies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony’s home entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in the new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. [...]

The new company is expected to retain “Sony” and “Bravia” branding for its future products and will handle global operations from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, and logistics for TVs and home audio equipment.

I’ve only ever purchased three main TVs in my life. The first was a 32-inch Sony Trinitron CRT, like this one. Might have even been exactly that model — that sure looks like it. I bought it in 1999 at a Best Buy. One of the last curved Trinitrons ever made. For CRTs I always kind of liked a slight curve — flat CRTs never looked quite right to me. It weighed like 150 pounds and came in a very big box. My now-wife and I had just moved into a fourth-floor walk-up. I remember bringing it home. I’d always wanted a Sony TV, and this one confirmed my lifelong desire to own one. It was great. I introduced my son to video games on that TV.

We replaced it in 2008 with a 50-inch plasma from Pioneer that cost about $2,100. It was only 720p but I’d worked out the math for our then-living room viewing distance, and the math said 1080p wouldn’t make a noticeable difference for a 50-inch screen from our sofa distance. That Pioneer is one of the most beloved purchases I’ve ever made in my life. Just remarkable color. We still have that thing in our guest room. Sony wasn’t even in the running for that purchase. They sold Sony-branded plasma TV for a while but never made their own panels, and as I recall, no one with taste recommended them. What made Sony TVs Sony TVs back in the day was that they made their own CRTs, and they were the best. (All of my favorite CRT computer monitors had Trinitron tubes, as I recall.)

In 2020 we bought our current TV, a 77-inch 4K OLED from LG that cost about $5,000 at the time. I’ll go to my grave believing that plasma looks better than OLED when watching movies in a dark room, but overall, LG’s super-bright OLED looks fantastic. And it’s big as hell, which I love. Sony was at least in the running when I shopped for this, but they didn’t have anything that compared to this LG’s size and quality. It wasn’t a hard decision to rule Sony out. (This history also means I’m likely to go to my grave never having owned a 1080p TV, nor an LCD TV.)

So, I’m sad to see Sony selling control of their TV business to TCL. But I think the writing has been on the wall for decades. Sony TVs haven’t been the Sony TVs of yore for a very long time.

Update: John Siracusa tells me I need to run a retraction — he even used an exclamation mark — on the grounds that Sony Bravia models have won “best TV in the world” awards several years running, including 2025 for the Bravia 8 II. I’m happy to retract, and glad Sony has regained its place at or near the top of the industry in recent years. I hope they stay there.

Monday, 19 January 2026

Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History ★

Is there anyone who doesn’t find this sad?

Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference? ★

From Apple’s iPhone Mirroring documentation, boldface emphasis added:

Click to tap: Click your mouse or trackpad to tap. You can also swipe and scroll in the iPhone Mirroring app, and use your keyboard to type.

Open the App Switcher: Move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen until the menu bar appears, then click to open the App Switcher.

Go to the Home Screen: If you’re in an app and want to return to the Home Screen, move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen until the menu bar appears, then click .

It certainly sounds like these instructions are for users who, sadly, have the menu bar hidden by default. But there are no or buttons in the menu bar. These buttons are in the iPhone Mirroring window title bar, which is, for all users, hidden by default:

but which presents a proper window title bar when the mouse pointer is hovering in the area where the title bar will appear:

Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll chalk this up to an absentminded mistake on the part of Apple’s documentation team. If I were feeling cynical, I would instead suspect that Apple has so lost the plot on the Mac that they now employ documentation writers and editors who do not understand the difference between the menu bar and window title bars. (It doesn’t help that the iPhone Mirroring window title bar, like so many windows in Apple’s recent Mac apps, doesn’t have a title.)

For what it’s worth, this documentation is the same for both MacOS 15 Sequoia and 26 Tahoe.

Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts ★

Matthew Butterick:

But more importantly, in practical terms — what would be the point? Since 2011, I’ve run a small font business. Not long after I release a font, it will be uploaded to some public pirate-software website. I can’t control that. Like every other kind of digital-media file, anyone who wants to pirate my fonts can do so if sufficiently motivated.

For that reason — and independent of copyright law — my business necessarily runs on something more akin to the honor system. I try to make nice fonts, price my licenses fairly, and thereby make internet strangers enthusiastic about sending me money rather than going to pirate websites. Enough of them do. My business continues. (Indeed, in terms of rational economic choice, I’ve argued that software piracy doesn’t exist.)

Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs ★

Tom Fairless, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; here’s a News+ link too):

The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign producers.

By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%. [...]

Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said. “There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to the U.S. in the form of tariffs,” said Julian Hinz, an economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who co-authored the study.

This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance. But this one feels like we could file it next to “Sun continues to rise in east, set in west.”

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.

Friday, 16 January 2026

Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage ★

Verizon, in an announcement on Twitter/X regarding their daylong outage this week:

Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence you expect and that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to those affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. You will receive a text message when the credit is available. On average, this covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be contacted directly about their credits.

This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us.

I got the text message last night (screenshot), and redeemed it this morning. It wasn’t too hard to redeem, partly because I already had the My Verizon app installed and had my account credentials saved.

But you know what would actually be easy, and would actually acknowledge our time and show that this really matters to Verizon? If they just took $20 off every customer’s next bill. Automatic. Just take $20 off next month. If a good restaurant screws up an item you ordered, they apologize and take the item off your bill (and maybe give you a free dessert or something). They don’t give you a code to redeem.

It would also better show that they care if the text message spelled the app “My Verizon”, which is the app’s actual name.

As for how many days of service $20 covers, we pay $329/month for a “5G Do More” family plan for me, my wife, and son. Three phones, three Apple Watches, and two iPads. (I’m the one without a cellular iPad plan, because I so seldom use an iPad.) That’s about $11/day. Verizon only sent us one $20 credit, not three, so that covers roughly two days of service — which is, indeed, multiple days.

ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads ★

OpenAI:

With this launch, ChatGPT now offers three subscription tiers globally:

ChatGPT Go at $8 USD/month

ChatGPT Plus at $20 USD/month

ChatGPT Pro at $200 USD/month

And perhaps the bigger news:

We plan to begin testing ads in the free tier and ChatGPT Go in the US soon. Ads support our commitment to making AI accessible to everyone by helping us keep ChatGPT available at free and affordable price points.

Their pricing page has a comparison chart showing the differences in their four consumer tiers (free, Go, Plus, Pro). Screenshot, for posterity. The big difference that will keep me on the $20/month Plus plan for now is that the Go plan doesn’t have access to the Thinking model.

Emoji Design Convergence Review: 2018–2026 ★

Keith Broni, writing at Emojipedia, has a good illustrated survey of how most emoji sets have converged in meaning — almost entirely toward Apple’s designs:

There are several structural reasons why Apple’s designs so often become the gravitational center of emoji convergence.

First, Apple is widely regarded as the “default” emoji design set in the West. This status dates back to 2008, when Apple introduced emoji support on the iPhone years before emoji were formally incorporated into Unicode.

It’s also the case that Apple’s emoji icons are the best, and they’re the most consistent. The only ones Apple has changed the meaning of are ones where the Unicode Consortium has changed or clarified the standard description. The pistol emoji is the exception that proves the rule. Apple, and Apple alone, changed its pistol emoji (🔫) from a realistic firearm to a green plastic squirt gun in 2016. By 2018, all the other major emoji sets had changed their pistols from firearms to plastic toys — almost all of them green squirt guns in particular. (Broni’s post documents this progression year by year.)

One thing that remains interesting to me is that Apple left its emoji style alone when they instituted the great flattening with iOS 7. Apple’s emoji icons are, loosely, in the style of Apple’s application and toolbar icon designs from the Aqua era. People love emoji, and at this point, changing their style to something that felt aligned with the icon designs for Apple’s version 26 OSes would generate outrage. But if Apple were to change its icon style back to this rich 3D textured style, the majority of users wouldn’t object — they’d think it was fun.

Basically, Apple’s emoji style is fun. Apple’s icon style is no-fun. People like having fun.

Wednesday, 14 January 2026

The Explosive, Immediate, Early Growth of the iPhone ★

Matt Richman, back in 2012:

In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. Last year, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined. The pattern continued.

I referenced this old post earlier today, attempting to put into context Meta’s “leak” that they’ve got concepts of a plan to ramp Meta Glasses production up to 20 million units per year. It’s easy to forget — or if you’re young enough, to just accept as history — just how astonishing the growth of the iPhone was in its early years. Every year wasn’t just bigger than the previous year — it was bigger than all previous years combined. Year after year. That pattern only ended after Apple had run out of new countries, new carriers, and new customers to introduce it to.

There’s never been a product like it before, and quite possibly never will be again. In January 2007 no one had ever even seen a device like an iPhone. By 2015 or so, almost everyone in the world who could afford one either had an iPhone or they had an Android phone that looked and worked like an iPhone.

Meta Shutters Three VR Studios ★

Karissa Bell, Engadget:

Several of Meta’s VR studios have been affected by the company’s metaverse-focused layoffs. The company has shuttered three of its VR studios, including Armature, Sanzaru and Twisted Pixel. VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content.

Employees at Twisted Pixel, which released Marvel’s Deadpool VR in November, and Sanzaru, known for Asgard’s Wrath, posted on social media about the closures. Bloomberg reported that Armature, which brought Resident Evil 4 to Quest back in 2021 has also closed and that the popular VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer get updates.

“Due to recent organizational changes to our Studio, Supernatural will no longer receive new content or feature updates starting today,” the company wrote in an update on Facebook. The app “will remain active” for existing users. [...]

The cuts raise questions about Meta’s commitment to supporting a VR ecosystem it has invested heavily in.

Raises questions, indeed! It was only four years ago that Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company from Facebook to Meta and proclaimed the entire company would now be “metaverse-first”.

A reader told me today that a friend of his who works (well, worked) at one of Meta’s now-shuttered VR studios was vaguely concerned just last weekend because he suspected “about 20 percent” of the company to be laid off. Not him, but probably some people he was required to stack-rank. Turns out he was correct to be worried but his “about 20 percent” guess was off by ... checks with calculator ... about 80 percent. People within Meta who believed Zuckerberg’s public statements have clearly been caught flat-footed by the fact that he’s clearly lost all interest in VR and the so-called metaverse.

The workout app Supernatural is a perfect example. Meta announced their intention to acquire Supernatural in 2021, at the start of their all-in-on-the-metaverse phase, for $400 million. They battled the FTC for approval and it finally went through in February 2023. Now, less than three years later, they’re shutting it down. Devoted Supernatural users are, unsurprisingly, not happy.

It really does raise questions about Meta’s commitment.

Google Launches Beta of ‘Personal Intelligence’, Connecting Gemini to Google Apps ★

Josh Woodward, VP of Gemini and AI Studio, on the Google blog:

The best assistants don’t just know the world; they know you and help you navigate it. Today, we’re answering a top user request: you can now personalize Gemini by connecting Google apps with a single tap. Launching as a beta in the U.S., this marks our next step toward making Gemini more personal, proactive and powerful.

Personal Intelligence securely connects information from apps like Gmail and Google Photos to make Gemini uniquely helpful. If you turn it on, you control exactly which apps to link, and each one supercharges the experience. It connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search in a single tap, and we’ve designed the setup to be simple and secure. [...]

Starting today, access is rolling out over the next week to eligible Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. Once enabled, it works across Web, Android and iOS and with all of the models in the Gemini model picker. We’re starting with this limited group to learn, but we will over time expand to more countries and to the free tier.

In the small print on the Gemini Personal Intelligence product page, they say “In the coming months, and with your permission, Gemini will be able to draw context from even more of your Google apps and services.” Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search are obvious services to start with. Calendar, surely, is forthcoming. But a big one for me — an inveterate note-taker — would be my notes app. I’d rather have an AI assistant know everything in my notes app than everything in my email. For Google, I presume, that will be Google Keep (which I consider a serviceable, but overall crummy app that never seems to have gotten much attention).

This is nicely honest, and sets expectations:

We’ve tested this beta version of Personal Intelligence extensively to minimize mistakes, but we haven’t eliminated them. You may encounter inaccurate responses or “over-personalization,” where the model makes connections between unrelated topics. When you see this, please provide feedback by giving the response a “thumbs down.”

Gemini may also struggle with timing or nuance, particularly regarding relationship changes, like divorces, or your various interests. For instance, seeing hundreds of photos of you at a golf course might lead it to assume you love golf. But it misses the nuance: you don’t love golf, but you love your son, and that’s why you’re there. If Gemini gets this wrong, you can just tell it (“I don’t like golf”).

I feel like it’s unlikely a coincidence that Google announced Personal Intelligence a few days after the short joint announcement that Apple is licensing Gemini technology to power the models for Apple Intelligence. What Google is making available today — in beta, to paid personal users only — is basically the feature set that Apple promised back in June 2024 but had to postpone for an entire additional year last March.

Verizon’s Cell Network Is Down, and AT&T and T-Mobile Are Sassing Them About It ★

Jacob Krol, reporting for Techradar:

While Verizon had a good few months, with the last major outage occurring in October 2024, it seems that the popular United States wireless carrier is having some issues. So, if you’re on Verizon and seeing ‘SOS’ in place of network bars, you’re not alone.

Countless users have taken to social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Threads to shout issues, but reported problems with Verizon have spiked on Down Detector to over 46,000.

This outage matters, because I’m on Verizon and my phone hasn’t had a signal for two hours.

T-Mobile, on Twitter/X:

T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected. However due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time.

AT&T, in such a hurry to pile on that their punctuation was slapdash:

Our network? Solid. If you’re experiencing issues, it’s not us.....it’s the other guys. Some things are just out of our hands! - BUT if you’re interested in giving us a try — https://att.com/wireless/free-trial/

Full point awarded to T-Mobile for the better, colder, burn.

Update: Service returned for me around 5pm, but the outage wasn’t completely resolved until 10pm ET. Yikes.

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Personal Letter to Rep. James Comer ★

The letter speaks for itself, and is very much worth reading in full. I’ll quote only from the conclusion, which rhetorically feels very Bill:

Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it.

Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are signing away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history.

Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.

The New York Times also published a copy of the legal letter the Clintons’ lawyers (two law firms, actually) sent to Comer. It’s not as good a read as their personal letter.

I’ll just add, revisiting a recent topic, that the legal letter from the Clintons’ lawyers was set in Times New Roman. That’s unremarkable, which is Times New Roman’s calling card. The Clintons’ personal letter, on very nice joint stationery, was set in Courier New, an interesting but disappointing choice. The intention is to evoke the effect of a typewriter — to add a personal touch. The letter is very clearly, from the first word to the last, a personal message from Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves. I suspect they jointly crafted every single word of it themselves. It’s not a short letter, but it’s not long, either. Not a word is wasted. But it would have looked so much better in Courier than Courier New (or, even better, the best version of Courier ever made, Courier Prime). The worst aspect of Courier New is that it’s inexplicably thin and wispy. It looks like it should be called Courier Thin, but there’s no good reason for there to exist a thin variant of Courier. The second worst aspect of Courier New is that a handful of punctuation glyphs are inexplicably not thin, and thus stand out excessively, grating on the eyes. Take note of how the commas and apostrophes appear almost bold in the Clintons’ personal letter. I gripe about Arial more frequently, but Courier New is a worse crime against typography. (Both crimes, of course, were set loose upon the world by Microsoft.)

Meta, a Completely Trustworthy Company, Leaks That Demand for Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Is Surging ★

Daniele Lepido and Antonio Vanuzzo, reporting for Bloomberg (paywalled, alas):

Meta Platforms Inc. and EssilorLuxottica SA are discussing potentially doubling production capacity for AI-powered smart glasses by the end of this year, in a bid to capture growing demand and head off rivals, according to people familiar with the matter.

With sales of Ray-Ban Meta frames taking hold, Facebook-owner Meta has suggested increasing annual capacity to 20 million units or more by the end of 2026, said the people, asking not to be named because the deliberations are private.

20 million units is a real number. But building the capacity for 20 million units isn’t the same as selling 20 million units, and, to my knowledge, actual sales of Meta Glasses are only Bezos Numbers. And for historical context, 20 million units annually would put Meta Glasses somewhere between the second and third years of iPhone sales. If they’re really on pace for 20 million sales per year that’s a real thing. But in 2009 I was seeing a lot of iPhones out and about in the world. I’ve only noticed one guy wearing Meta Ray-Bans in the last few months. That’s personal anecdata, for sure, and it’s possible I’m walking past more people wearing these than I realize because they’re supposed to look like regular Ray-Bans. I don’t think they’re on anything even close to the astounding growth pattern of the early iPhone, but Meta is trying hard to create the perception that they are, and that they’re locking in a first-mover advantage.

And again, leaking that they’re “discussing potentially doubling production capacity” is as different from actually selling 20 million annual units as “going all in” on the metaverse is from laying off another thousand-plus employees from the metaverse division three years later.

Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Apple Announces Apple Creator Studio (Including Apple’s Take on Pixelmator) ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators around the world. [...]

Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with a one-month free trial, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad; Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac; and intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

One-time purchase pricing, from the footnotes:

One-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro ($299.99 U.S.), Logic Pro ($199.99 U.S.), Pixelmator Pro ($49.99 U.S.), Motion ($49.99 U.S.), Compressor ($49.99 U.S.), and MainStage ($29.99 U.S.) are available on the Mac App Store.

I’ll have more to say later today, but my first observation is that with the exception of the new version of Pixelmator, the user interfaces of these apps completely ignore Liquid Glass. That could be a statement from the design teams for these apps, or could be a factor only of version requirements:

Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later. The Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 26. [...]

The one-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, Logic Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, and Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 12.0 or later. MainStage is available for any Mac supported by macOS 15.6 or later. Motion requires macOS 15.6 or later. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or later and some features require a Mac with Apple silicon.

My hope is that the UI shown today for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and MainStage is a flat-out rejection of Liquid Glass for “serious” apps. My fear is that it’s only a result of their continued support for MacOS 15 Sequoia. (But I think they need to continue supporting MacOS 15 Sequoia because so many pro users are rejecting MacOS 26 Tahoe.)

Monday, 12 January 2026

Sarah Perez on Core Devices, the Sequel to Pebble ★

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch:

“We’ve structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully, long-running enterprise, but not a startup,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. [...]

“I want a companion to my phone, rather than a replacement for my phone. I want it to be more like a Swatch than a Rolex. I want it to be a little bit more fun, casual, playful, and plasticky.” Plus, he added, with the reboot of Pebble, he’s now okay with a watch that doesn’t try to do it all.

“I’m okay with a limited vision and a limited scope of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Migicovsky said.

Under the new company, Core Devices, the team has announced the Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, a round-faced Pebble Round 2, and a $75 AI smart ring, called the Index 01.

What a great profile from Perez. I think she captured the current moment for Core Devices. I personally don’t want their new watches, and I don’t see the appeal (especially ergonomically, given that it needs to be on your index finger) of the Index 01 ring, but I can see why some people might. And I’m delighted to see a small company trying these things. Better to make things a few people might love than to try to make something zillions might like.

MacOS 26’s Cut Corners ★

Here’s an illustrated follow-up regarding the absurdity of MacOS 26’s “looks like they’re rounded off like a child’s toy but actually they’re still rectangles with corners” windows. If you turn on always-visible scroll bars (which you should) and scroll to the bottom, they look like this:

Screenshot of the bottom right corner of a window in MacOS 26 showing a scroll bar thumb cut off by the rounded corner.

(That’s Safari, which I think is a somewhat popular app.)

It would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta a year ago and deliberately sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur.

Jackass of the Week: Elon Musk ★

Elon Musk, in a tweet responding to Google’s announcement of their deal to provide Gemini to Apple for use in Apple Intelligence:

This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that the also have Android and Chrome

I’m sure that if Grok were as popular as Gemini, Musk would turn down a deal with Apple to avoid concentrating “power” in his hands.

Eddy Cue on Apple’s 2025 Year in Services ★

Eddy Cue, in a rare bylined post on Apple Newsroom:

The numbers reflect the incredible enthusiasm of our customers, whether it’s downloading an exciting new app or game, watching the hottest new show with family and friends, listening to their favorite songs, or shopping with peace of mind. The App Store alone saw over 850 million average weekly users globally, with developers earning over $550 billion on our platform since 2008. Apple Pay also made a significant impact by eliminating well over $1 billion in fraud, while generating more than $100 billion in incremental merchant sales globally, and purchases made through Apple Pay significantly outpaced the overall growth in consumer spending levels during the peak holiday shopping period in November and December.

Those are numbers.

Apple TV eclipsed all prior viewership records in December 2025, while Apple Music reached all-time highs in both listenership and new subscribers.

Those are not numbers.

Apple TV’s engagement this past December soared, with total hours viewed up 36 percent compared to the previous year, setting a new record for monthly engagement.

That’s a number, but it’s a Bezos Number.

Apple, Rather Quietly and With No Details, Announces Partnership With Google to Use Gemini Technology for Apple Foundation Models, and Presumably, the Year-Overdue More Personalized Siri ★

CNBC:

The multi-year partnership will lean on Google’s Gemini and cloud technology for future Apple foundational models, according to a joint statement obtained by CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple said in a statement on Monday.

The models will continue to run on Apple devices and the company’s private cloud compute, they added. Apple declined to comment on the terms of the deal. Google referred CNBC to the joint statement.

That’s the whole announcement, at least for now. A statement that, as far as I can see, went only to CNBC (and Jim Cramer specifically, of all people).

There’s slightly more detail in this brief announcement from Google, on, of all places, Twitter/X:

Joint Statement: Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.

After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al [sic] technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.

I suspect more details will be forthcoming from Apple sooner rather than later. But for now, that’s it.

This phrasing, in both Apple’s statement to Cramer and the joint Apple/Google statement released by Google, is, I think subtly telling about how significant this news is: “Google’s AI technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models”. There’s a slight redundancy with foundation appearing twice in the span of four words. Imagine if WebKit had been named “Safari Rendering Engine” — there would be times when one might need to write “the rendering engine is Safari Rendering Engine”, because that’s what it is, and that’s the name. But in this case, it’s a bit incongruous. A foundation is a foundation; it doesn’t have a foundation. So this brief bit of phrasing reveals the obvious, awkward truth that Apple Foundation Models didn’t actually have a foundation.

Also, perhaps some evidence of OCR copy-and-pasting: in the tweet of the joint statement, marked by “[sic]” above, AI is spelled uppercase-A lowercase-L. Update: Same misspelling in the version of the announcement hosted on Google’s own news site.

Sunday, 11 January 2026

Statement From Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell ★

Shit’s getting real, folks.

Copilot Money ★

My thanks to Copilot Money for sponsoring last week at DF. Copilot is a personal finance app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and they’ve always deeply believed in the value of embracing the design idioms and technical features of truly native apps for Apple platforms. Apple has noticed, awarding Copilot an App Store Editor’s Choice and featuring Copilot earlier this year on Apple Developer for their use of Swift Charts.

Copilot’s big news this month is they’ve launched a new web app, bringing access to Copilot from any device, anywhere. It’s designed with all the attention to detail — and concern for privacy and security — as their native apps.

Copilot Money brings all your spending, budgets, investments, and net worth into one organized dashboard, with intelligent categorization and insights that help you stay on track without spreadsheets or app-hopping. Designed to feel calm and intuitive, Copilot makes it easy to understand your finances across all your devices.

Copilot first sponsored DF back in 2021. My wife and I started using it then to track our finances, and we haven’t looked back. Copilot Money isn’t just better than anything we’d used before, it absolutely blew everything else away. It’s easy to connect to your financial accounts, and once you do, you don’t need to spend any effort at all to enter transactions. Copilot just tracks it all automatically, and most importantly, presents it to you in clear, intuitive ways. It’s so good. I’m not saying that because they sponsored DF last week — I’m saying that as a happy paying customer for over four years now.

Copilot is offering DF readers two months free with code DARING, plus 26% off your first year for a limited time, available through this link.

U.S. Senators Ask Cook and Pichai to Remove X and Grok From App Store and Play Store ★

U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), and Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico), in a letter addressed to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai:

Your app stores’ policies are clear. Google’s terms of service require apps to “prohibit users from creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children” including prohibiting the “portrayal of children in a manner that could result in the sexual exploitation of children.” Apps that do not are said to be subject to “immediate removal from Google Play” for violations. Similarly, Apple’s terms of service bar apps from including “offensive” or “just plain creepy” content, which under any definition must include nonconsensually-generated sexualized images of children and women. Further, Apple’s terms explicitly bar apps from including content that is “[o]vertly sexual or pornographic material” including material “intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.”

Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices. Indeed, not taking action would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones. This principle has been core to your advocacy against legislative reforms to increase app store competition and your defenses to claims that your app stores abuse their market power through their payment systems.

Emphasizing that leaving X and Grok available in the App Store and Play Store directly contradicts Apple and Google’s stated reasons for maintaining control over software distribution is a good pressure point. Do they selectively enforce content moderation based on whims and/or shifting political winds, or rigorously enforce the plain language of their own content guidelines? Which is it? It can’t be both.

Saturday, 10 January 2026

MAGA’s Foundational Lie ★: Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic (gift link), on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and the first year of the second Trump presidency:

We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander — they were actually aroused by it — and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.

Friday, 9 January 2026

Jim Moylan and the Moylan Arrow ★

Ben Cohen, writing last week for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

One rainy day 40 years ago, Moylan was headed to a meeting across Ford’s campus and hopped in a company car. When he saw the fuel tank was nearly empty, he stopped at a gas pump. What happened next is something that’s happened to all of us: He realized that he’d parked on the wrong side.

Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t infuriated. He was inspired. By the time he pulled his car around, he was already thinking about how to solve this everyday inconvenience that drives people absolutely crazy. And because the gas pump wasn’t covered by an overhead awning, he was also soaking wet. But when he got back to the office, Moylan didn’t even bother taking off his drenched coat when he started typing the first draft of a memo.

“I would like to propose a small addition,” he wrote, “in all passenger car and truck lines.” The proposal he had in mind was a symbol on the dashboard that would tell drivers which side of the car the gas tank was on. [...]

As soon as they read his memo, they began prototyping his little indicator that would be known as the Moylan Arrow. Within months, it was on the dashboard of Ford’s upcoming models. Within years, it was ripped off by the competition. Before long, it was a fixture of just about every car in the world.

What a fantastic story. I’m old enough that I remember learning to drive on cars that didn’t have the Moylan Arrow. Then I remember spotting one sometime in the 1990s, and wondering if I’d just never noticed them before. But no: this seemingly incredibly obvious design element had only recently been invented. The Journal has a copy of Moylan’s original memo, and it’s a delight to read. Clear, concise, persuasive.

“Society loves the founder who builds new companies, like Henry Ford,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told me. “I would argue that Jim Moylan is an equally compelling kind of disrupter: an engineer in a large company who insisted on making our daily lives better.”

These days, there are two types of drivers: the ones aware of the Moylan Arrow and the ones who get to find out.

Rest in peace, Jim Moylan.

Thursday, 8 January 2026

The New York Times Profiles John Ternus ★

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

Threading the needle between adding new bells and whistles to Apple’s products while watching the bottom line has defined the careful, low-profile style of Mr. Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001. He is now considered by some company insiders to be the front-runner to replace Tim Cook, Apple’s longtime chief executive, if Mr. Cook decides to step aside.

Apple last year began accelerating its planning for Mr. Cook’s succession, according to three people close to the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity about Apple’s confidential deliberations. Mr. Cook, 65, has told senior leaders that he is tired and would like to reduce his workload, the people said. Should he step down, Mr. Cook is likely to become the chairman of Apple’s board, according to three people close to the company.

Cook may well be preparing to retire as CEO. He is 65! But it doesn’t ring true to me that he’s telling “senior leaders” that he’s tired. First, I’ve heard otherwise from actual senior leaders at the company. Second, any senior leader he’d tell that to, if true, wouldn’t share it.

It seems to me that aside from the utterly normal and plainly obvious speculation that, at age 65, he might be on the cusp of retiring as CEO, there’s something going on where a narrative is being spread that Cook is in poor health. Mark Gurman included two paragraphs about a tremor in Cook’s hands in his colossal fuck-up at Bloomberg a month ago, falsely reporting that Johny Srouji was unhappy and on the cusp of leaving Apple for a competitor.

Despite his low profile, Mr. Ternus appears to have shot to the front of the pack to be Apple’s next C.E.O., according to four people close to the company.

The Times report describes Ternus as “low-profile” three times. This makes no sense. Ternus is one of Apple’s highest-profile executives. I would guess that over the last five years he’s appeared in more keynotes, for more time, than anyone but Cook and Craig Federighi.

But Mr. Cook is also preparing several other internal candidates to be his potential successor, two of the people said. They could include Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software; Eddy Cue, its head of services; Greg Joswiak, its head of worldwide marketing; and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and human resources.

I don’t think there’s any chance that Cook’s successor will be someone who isn’t a frequent presence in Apple keynotes. I can’t recall O’Brien ever appearing in a keynote, and Cue hasn’t appeared in one for several years. Also, Cue is 61 and Joz is 62. Neither is that much younger than Cook.

Two interesting tidbits re: Ternus:

Within about three years, he became a manager, said Steve Siefert, Mr. Ternus’s first boss at Apple. During that time, their team moved office floors, switching from a closed office plan to mostly open seating with a few offices. When he was promoted, Mr. Ternus had the option to move into one of those offices but declined.

Mr. Ternus was “a man of the people,” Mr. Siefert said, adding that the decision to sit with his team likely helped Mr. Ternus manage and motivate his staff. When Mr. Siefert retired in 2011, freeing up his office, Mr. Ternus once again said he wanted to remain in the open space.

And:

“If you want to make an iPhone every year, Ternus is your guy,” said Cameron Rogers, who worked on product and software engineering management at Apple from 2005 to 2022. [...]

“He’s a nice guy,” Mr. Rogers said. “He’s someone you want to hang out with. Everyone loves him because he’s great. Has he made any hard decisions? No. Are there hard problems he’s solved in hardware? No.”

This guy Cameron Rogers sounds like a real asshole.

What complaints does anyone have about Apple hardware over the last five years? Off the top of my head I can’t think of any that are serious. Ternus has overseen what I’d argue is the best sustained stretch of Apple hardware, across more product lines than ever, in the company’s 50-year history. But he didn’t make any hard decisions or solve any hard problems. Sure. Hardware is easy.

Know Your Rights: Filming and Photographing the Police ★

The ACLU:

Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right — and that includes police and other government officials carrying out their duties.

However, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places and harassing, detaining, and arresting those who fail to comply.

Here’s their advice on what to say and do if you are stopped or detained for taking photographs or video.

Also, as good a time as ever for one of my periodic reminders to remember how to hard-lock your iPhone to temporarily disable Face ID: press and hold the side button and either one of the volume buttons at the same time for a few seconds.

Chase to Become New Issuer of Apple Card ★

Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple and Chase announced that Chase will become the new issuer of Apple Card, with an expected transition in approximately 24 months.

Apple Card users can continue to enjoy the award-winning experience of Apple Card, which includes up to 3 percent unlimited Daily Cash back on every purchase, easy-to-navigate spending tools, Apple Card Family, access to a high-yield Savings account, and more. Mastercard will remain the payment network for Apple Card, and Apple Card users can continue to access Mastercard’s global acceptance and benefits. [...]

During this transition, Apple Card users can continue to use their card as they normally do. More information, including FAQs, is available at learn.applecard.apple/transition. Additional details will be shared with users as the transition date approaches.

In the press release, Apple’s only mention of the current issuer, Goldman Sachs, is in the small gray fine print footnotes. (Goldman is mentioned prominently in the linked FAQ.)

Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores? ★

Caroline Haskins, writing for Wired (News+ link, in case Wired’s paywall blocks you):

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is being used to flood X with thousands of sexualized images of adults and apparent minors wearing minimal clothing. Some of this content appears to not only violate X’s own policies, which prohibit sharing illegal content such as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but may also violate the guidelines of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store.

Apple and Google both explicitly ban apps containing CSAM, which is illegal to host and distribute in many countries. The tech giants also forbid apps that contain pornographic material or facilitate harassment. The Apple App Store says it doesn’t allow “overtly sexual or pornographic material,” as well as “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content,” especially if the app is “likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.” The Google Play store bans apps that “contain or promote content associated with sexually predatory behavior, or distribute non-consensual sexual content,” and well as programs that “contain or facilitate threats, harassment, or bullying.”

Over the past two years, Apple and Google removed a number of “nudify” and AI image-generation apps after investigations by the BBC and 404 Media found they were being advertised or used to effectively turn ordinary photos into explicit images of women without their consent.

But at the time of publication, both the X app and the standalone Grok app remain available in both app stores. Apple, Google, and X did not respond to requests for comment.

I just browsed through the last five minutes of replies generated by Grok on Twitter/X, and saw both seeming CSAM (all young Asian women) and just outright hardcore pornographic video (that, for what it’s worth, seemed to feature adults, whether real or generated).

It was a barely concealed secret before Musk bought Twitter that Twitter had an active dark underbelly of pornographic content. But you had to know where to look for it. It really wasn’t something you might just stumble upon. Now you get hardcore porno just by looking at the profile page for Grok. And any user can send any photo they want to @grok and tell it to change or remove the subject’s clothing and change their pose. Lord only knows what people are generating privately using the standalone Grok app.

If a new social network app launched featuring this content, it surely would be removed from the App Store and Play Store. X is seemingly untouchable for political reasons.

Update: Recall that Apple pulled the Tumblr app from the App Store in 2018 for similar content.

The Gold Trump Phone Still Hasn’t Shipped ★

Maybe “next year” meant “next next year”?

(They’re still accepting $100 deposits for pre-orders.)

Wednesday, 7 January 2026

The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible ★

This 2021 post from Jason Fried is a good chaser to his “The Big Regression” this week (which I linked to yesterday):

Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which things go in which bucket is critical to fully understanding how to make something useful.

Shouldn’t everything be obvious? Unless you’re making a product that just does one thing — like a paperclip, for example — everything won’t be obvious. You have to make tough calls about what needs to be obvious, what should be easy, and what should be possible. The more things something (a product, a feature, a screen, etc) does, the more calls you have to make.

This isn’t the same as prioritizing things. High, medium, low priority doesn’t tell you enough about the problem. “What needs to be obvious?” is a better question to ask than “What’s high priority?” Further, priority doesn’t tell you anything about cost. And the first thing to internalize is that everything has a cost.

Obvious / easy / possible is a good filter through which to create — and critique — designs. To borrow an example from yesterday: old-fashioned analog light switches are exemplars of obviousness; most new-fashioned smart switches are exemplars of possibility.

Tuesday, 6 January 2026

Howard Oakley on the MacOS 26 Tahoe UI ★

Howard Oakley, writing at The Eclectic Light Company

macOS Tahoe’s visual interface:

Fits largely rectangular contents into windows with excessively rounded corners.

Enlarges controls without any functional benefit.

Results in app icons being more uniform, thus less distinguishable and memorable.

Fails to distinguish tools, controls and other interface elements using differences in tone, so making them harder to use.

Makes a mess where transparent layers are superimposed, and won’t reduce transparency when that’s needed to render its interface more accessible.

Maybe this is because I’m getting older, but that gives me the benefit of having experienced Apple’s older interfaces, with their exceptional quality and functionality.

It’s just remarkable how much better-looking MacOS was 10 years ago, compared to MacOS 26 Tahoe at its best. And it’s equally remarkable just how bad MacOS 26 Tahoe looks in many typical, non-contrived situations, where entire menus, search fields, and window titles are rendered completely illegible.

‘Icons in Menus Everywhere — Send Help’ ★

Jim Nielsen:

It’s extra noise to me. It’s not that I think menu items should never have icons. I think they can be incredibly useful (more on that below). It’s more that I don’t like the idea of “give each menu item an icon” being the default approach.

This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space” instead of an attitude of “Does the addition of an icon here, and the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt how someone would use this menu system?”

The former doesn’t require thinking. It’s just templating — they all have icons, so we need to put something there. The latter requires care and thoughtfulness for each use case and its context.

To defend my point, one of the examples I always pointed to was macOS. For the longest time, Apple’s OS-level menus seemed to avoid this default approach of sticking icons in every menu item.

That is, until macOS Tahoe shipped.

Nielsen’s post on MacOS 26 Tahoe’s tragic “icons for every menu item” design edict was published a month ago, before Nikita Prokopov’s post on the same subject yesterday. Both posts are crackerjack good, and complement each other. Nielsen makes the point that the Mac stood as a counter to platforms and systems that put icons next to every menu item. Of course Google Docs has icons next to every menu item. It sucks. Google sucks at UI design. We Mac users laugh at their crappy designs.

Well, who’s laughing now? It might sound hyperbolic but this change is the reason why I’ve decided not to upgrade to MacOS 26 Tahoe. I could put up with the rest of Liquid Glass’s half-baked who-thought-this-was-OK-to-ship? nonsense, but not the whole menu bar. I can tolerate being angry about UI changes Apple makes to the Mac. But I can’t tolerate being heartbroken.

‘The Big Regression’ ★

Jason Fried:

My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.

It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.

And it’s terrible. What a regression.

Examples include: light switches that require a demo to use, a Miele dishwasher that requires the use of a companion phone app, a confusing-to-use TV (of course), inscrutable thermostats, and:

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet.

In this period of the computerization of everything, so many systems have lost the innate intuitiveness from their analog counterparts. Light switches were easy and obvious. Flip the switch. Thermostats were easy and obvious. Turn the dial until the indicator points to the temperature you want. Light switches and Honeywell thermostats were so simple they seemed like they weren’t “interfaces” at all, which is why they were such great interfaces. The best interfaces almost literally disappear.

One of the mottos of the Perl programming language is that easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible. That’s the ideal when designing anything. But the more important part is keeping easy things easy. A house full of old-fashioned analog light switches is better than a house full of smart switches that need a demo to use at all, even though with the old-fashioned switches, you can’t do hard things like turn off the lights remotely, or turn off every light in the house with one action. The smart switches might seem like an improvement because they make possible hard things that were previously impossible. Making possible the impossible is surely a win, right? But not necessarily. Making possible the heretofore impossible isn’t axiomatically a win. It’s a loss if it comes at the expense of keeping the easy things easy, consistent, reliable, and intuitive. Nothing exemplifies that more than the decline in user experience of watching TV, and attempting something as previously simple as flipping between two games on two different channels.

The guiding principle when creating computerized versions of analog systems ought to be “First, do no harm.” Everything should be as easy, obvious, reliable, and intuitive as in the old system. Only add to that what doesn’t introduce any regressions on those fronts.

Alas, that’s not how the world has proceeded.

‘Who’s Who at X, the Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter’ ★

The Financial Times has a nice illustrated guide to the leadership team at Twitter/X, where things are going about as you’d expect.

Don Mattingly Joins Phillies as Bench Coach ★

Welcome to Philadelphia, Donnie Baseball.

Monday, 5 January 2026

‘It’s Hard to Justify Tahoe Icons’ ★

This essay from UI critic Nikita Prokopov is just devastatingly good. If you’ve looked at MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’re surely appalled by the new UI guideline that recommends putting icons next to every single menu item. Prokopov argues — with copious screenshot illustrations every step of the way — that this is a terrible idea in the first place, and that Apple has implemented it poorly. There’s no defense for any of this. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Apple just needs better, more consistent icons. The fact that Tahoe’s menu item icons are glaringly inconsistent and often utterly inscrutable is the fudge icing on a shit cake, but the real embarrassment is that the idea ever got past the proposal stage. No real UI or icon designers think this is a good idea. None.

A shitty idea that works against usability, inconsistently implemented, all in the name of adding some ugly visual bling to the UI. Perhaps the epitome of a Dye job.

Simply a must-read piece. I have much more to say about the menus in Tahoe, but thanks to Prokopov, I don’t have to say it all.

Sunday, 4 January 2026

NFL Playoff Scenarios ★: What a great site (and Bluesky account) this is. Just what it says on the tin: all the scenarios for how the NFL playoff seedings can shake out, presented very plainly but clearly. The old-school World Wide Web still has a beating heart.

Saturday, 3 January 2026

Listen Later ★

My thanks to Listen Later for sponsoring this week at DF. Listen Later is a super simple, super useful service that turns articles into podcast episodes. When you sign up, you get a custom email address to send articles to; every article you forward to your Listen Later address is transformed into very human-like narration, and gets delivered to your private podcast feed. You can subscribe to your private Listen Later podcast feed in any podcast app.

In addition to the email gateway, there’s a Shortcut for sending articles from Safari (on Mac or iOS), a web extension for Chrome, and a simple web interface for submitting new articles. It’s very simple and the narrated versions sound great.

Sign up for free and start listening today. New users get $2 in credits to try it out — no commitment. And if you like it, you simply prepay for credits as you go. There’s no subscription — you simply pay for what you use. I wish more services had a pay-as-you-go model like Listen Later’s.

Matthew Dowd Exposes the Pickle 1 XR Glasses as a Preposterous Fraud ★

Matthew Dowd, in a long, devastatingly careful post on Twitter/X:

If they’re suggesting their waveguide displays are bright enough and vibrant enough to see clearly in direct sunlight, that would be yet another innovation they’ve discovered that every other player in the market (including the Chinese manufacturers where the waveguide displays come from) has missed.

Meta has access to every display manufacturer and their Display Glasses’ peak brightness is ~5,000 nits, itself very power heavy. These glasses came out just last fall and there is no sign of significantly brighter waveguides shipping for commercial products since then. It’s also worth noting that Meta Display Glasses users have noted poor readability in direct sunlight, suggesting a greater leap would be necessary to meet Pickle’s claims.

Put simply, Pickle having much brighter waveguides that also have a 30-degree FOV is extremely unlikely. It would mean that some waveguide manufacturer out there (there aren’t many) recently achieved a breakthrough and has chosen Pickle to be the first device it’s found in. Oh, and it’s going to ship next quarter.

I don’t know what these scammers at Pickle think is going to happen, but they sure as shit aren’t going to ship a product that does anything vaguely close to what they claim they’re on the cusp of shipping. I doubt they’re going to ship anything at all, ever. The whole thing is like the Big Lie, but for technology not politics.

One of two scenarios is true:

Pickle, a 15-person startup founded in 2024 that has raised less than $10 million, is the most advanced personal computer hardware company in the world, on the cusp of launching multiple hardware and software technologies that put the company 5-10 years ahead of established rivals like Apple, Meta, Samsung, Google, Sony, and Zeiss. The Pickle 1 glasses are the most amazing consumer electronics device since the original iPhone. CEO Daniel Park will go down in history as one of the most innovative leaders and inventors in the history of the world. Or:
Pickle is a complete and utter sham that is accepting $200 pre-orders for a product that exists only as a fabricated fake in its launch video. CEO Daniel Park is a liar and fraud, and, depending upon what they do with the pre-order payments they are now collecting, perhaps a thief.

Either (a) is mostly true or (b) is mostly true. Given that there exists not one single independent person other than Park himself who vouches that the Pickle 1 actually exists and functions in prototype form, I think it’s pretty obvious which scenario is the case. Which makes me wonder what the hell is going on at Y Combinator these days.