The only way Pickle could sound *more* like a cult would be if their “employees” (are any of them actually getting paid?) all shaved their heads and wore Hare Krishna-style robes. | Continue reading
I just love the chutzpah of these guys. They started with a good minimal launch product and are back two years later with what looks like a *much* better idea for a phone keyboard accessory. But they’re also now making their own whole goddamn phone. | Continue reading
A look back at Apple’s 2025, with special guest Rene Ritchie. Sponsored by: Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code … | Continue reading
Kubrick on the Icarus myth. | Continue reading
Some follow-up on the looks-like-AI-slop “painting” Tim Cook posted on Twitter/X on Christmas Eve to promote the Pluribus season finale. Slashdot contacted the credited artist, Keith Thomson, and quoted this interaction with him: Slashdot: I just wanted to confirm that that’s y … | Continue reading
Special guest Quinn Nelson returns for a two-topic holiday spectacular: the iPad in the wake of iPadOS 26, and Apple’s executive changes as Tim Cook seemingly nears the end of his time as CEO. Sponsored by: Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done tog … | Continue reading
It’s the practical results of legislation and regulation that matter, not the intentions. The Japanese government seemingly gets that, and acts accordingly. | Continue reading
Yesterday I wrote: For the last 40 years Apple has only gone through three identity fonts: Garamond → Myriad → San Francisco. DF reader CM emailed to observe: “It strikes me that Apple changes CPU architectures (68K → PowerPC → Intel → ARM) more often than identity fonts. T … | Continue reading
I despise this design pattern, because it’s inherently slower than signing in using an email/password combination that was saved to my passwords app (which is Apple Passwords) and autofilled by my web browser. It’s not just a little slower but *a lot* slower. | Continue reading
Apple released all of its OS 26.2 updates a week ago today. A little unusual for Apple to release OS updates on a Friday, but I think they wanted to get these out before Christmas week. And I don’t think it was rushed — for iOS 26.2 at least, there were two release candidates bui … | Continue reading
Netflix’s “tadum” is so iconic that it’s the name of their company blog. HBO’s static + chanted om is the OG standard-setter. I suspect the new Apple TV fanfare will be seen in that class. The old one was not. | Continue reading
Back on November 28, I bought a new cap from New Era’s web store. They offered a discount of some sort if I gave them a phone number and permitted them to send me marketing messages. That got me curious about what they’d do with my number, and it was a $50-some dollar cap, so I t … | Continue reading
Good on Rubio for rescinding a bad decision, and even better for doing so with a fair and informative explanation. | Continue reading
Draw your own conclusions about cellular carriers and enterprise network administrators being similar to authoritarian governments. | Continue reading
Joz might want to use the word now, just to make jokes. | Continue reading
Link: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job?ref=daniel.pizza Putting Alan Dye in charge of user interface design was the one big mistake Jony Ive made as Apple’s Chief Design Officer. Dye had no background in user interface design — he came from a brand and print adverti … | Continue reading
This interview was both interesting and a lot of fun. Worth a listen or re-listen. ★ | Continue reading
I did not enjoy them as much as Apple did. | Continue reading
How could someone who would even *consider* leaving Apple for Meta rise to a level of such prominence at Apple, including as one of the few public faces of the company? | Continue reading
It might have made some sense to bring someone from the fashion/brand world to lead software design for Apple Watch, but it sure didn’t seem to make sense for the rest of Apple’s platforms. And the decade of Dye’s HI leadership has proven it. | Continue reading
A user-hostile “lose your phone, lose your account history” architecture may well be “secure” in a technical sense, but it’s the sort of brittleness that’s kept Signal from achieving more mainstream use. | Continue reading
Special guest: Tyler Hayes. Topics include how to get a small phone today, which way foldables should fold, the state of Apple TV (including its new “sonic logo”), and some holiday gift gadget recommendations. Sponsored by: Clic for Sonos: No lag. No hassle. Just Clic. Squar … | Continue reading
Regarding my earlier post on similarities between the 2010 App Store Guidelines and today’s: Notably absent from the current guidelines (I think for a very long time) is the specious but very Jobsian claim that “If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.” Getting the p … | Continue reading
The bottom line is that users setting up new Apple Watches in the EU will now get a somewhat slightly worse experience in the name of parity with accessories made by third-party companies. It remains to be seen whether users of third-party iPhone accessories and peripherals in th … | Continue reading
For your weekend listening enjoyment: a new episode of America’s favorite 3-star podcast, with special guest Stephen Robles. Topics include indie media and YouTube, Shortcuts and automation, and the state of podcasting. Sponsored by: Uncommon Goods: Out of the ordinary gifts … | Continue reading
Special guest Dan Frommer returns to the show. Topics include the indie media business, the iPhone Pocket, the iPhone Air (including rumors about the second generation model), AI “personalities”, and five years of Apple Silicon Macs. Also, six years of Dan’s site, The New Consume … | Continue reading
The question is, did Meta scrap its native Windows app because they don’t care that much about Windows in particular? Or because they don’t care that much about native desktop apps, period — and a crude web app wrapper is coming to Mac next? | Continue reading
With the other personalities, you’re choosing between flavors of bullshit. With Efficient, you’re choosing no bullshit. | Continue reading
From Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, chapter 28, “CEO: Still Crazy After All These Years”, p. 361: On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony’s chairman, Akio Morita, why everyone in his company’s factories wore uniforms. “He looked very ashamed and told me that aft … | Continue reading
Why the Info panel presented by clicking the “(i)” button *next to Sequoia* defaults to installing the upgrade to 26.1 Tahoe, I don’t know. But it sure makes it seem like we need to be more careful than we actually do if we want to stick with MacOS 15 Sequoia for now. | Continue reading
It makes sense in this scenario for neither company to want to publicize a white-label version of Gemini behind Apple Intelligence. | Continue reading
It makes sense in this scenario for neither company to want to publicize a white-label version of Gemini behind Apple Intelligence. | Continue reading
John Dvorak back in 2014, two months before Apple Watch was announced: I got a lecture from a potential buyer, who will only purchase an iTime as a replacement for the iPhone rather than an accessory. But all evidence leads me to believe this device will be an accessory. Doi … | Continue reading
Special guest Brian Mueller, developer of Carrot Weather, joins the show to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his utterly ridiculous but totally serious weather app. Sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Unc … | Continue reading
Most people’s primary computing devices are their phones — and even for people whose primary devices are desktop computers, their phones are much-used satellite devices. And on both iOS and Android alike, people live their mobile digital lives through native apps, not websites. | Continue reading
The best time to adjust the rules of the App Store — its exclusivity on app distribution for the entire iOS platform, the exclusivity of Apple’s IAP for purchasing digital content, the commission percentage splits on IAP — was over a decade ago. The next best time to make those a … | Continue reading
For your weekend listening enjoyment, a new episode of America’s favorite 3-star podcast, with special guest Dan Moren. Topics include Atlas, ChatGPT’s new web browser (or anti-web browser) for the Mac; Apple’s loss in a “landmark” regulatory lawsuit in the UK regarding App Store … | Continue reading
Yours truly on Friday, regarding the news that Meta is going to ban rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp: Perhaps because I’m only a light user of WhatsApp, I had no idea that rival AI chatbots had accounts there. I just tried it with 1-800-ChatGPT and it seems pointless. It’s not … | Continue reading
Here’s an update I just posted to yesterday’s piece on organized phone theft rings in London: I forgot to apply one of the core tenets of Brian Kernighan’s wonderful book Millions, Billions, Zillions ($19 in hardcover from Amazon; BookShop.org link to indie booksellers): alwa … | Continue reading
Yours truly, yesterday: The problem I see with the MacBook power adapter situation in Europe is that while power users — like the sort of people who read Daring Fireball and Pixel Envy — will have no problem buying exactly the sort of power adapter they want, or simply re-usi … | Continue reading
Two new(ish) iPhone camera apps that take decidedly different approaches to distinguish themselves from Apple’s built-in Camera app. | Continue reading
Thoughts and observations on the new M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Pros, and Vision Pro. | Continue reading
It’s rather chilling to consider what Apple would have done if the Trump administration had “demanded” a list of device IDs and user identities for everyone who had installed ICEBlock. Or what Apple *will* do if such a demand pops into one of their dimwitted but cruel minds. | Continue reading
John Moltz returns to the show to talk about the iPhone 17 lineup: the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 17, and the no-number iPhone Air. Not one word about baseball, but some Star Wars talk may or may not have snuck in. Sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first pu … | Continue reading
How in the world would that increase competition? iOS’s unique and exclusive features — which, yes, in many cases, are exclusive to the Apple device ecosystem — *are competition*. | Continue reading
Hello dear readers. Daring Fireball has been silent for the last week. I realize how unusual it is for the site to go un-updated any week of the year, let alone this particular week of the year. I’m so sorry... | Continue reading
For your holiday listening enjoyment: Special guest Andru Edwards joins the show. Topics include Google’s Pixel 10 event and the Pixel 10 family of devices, AI’s effect on computational photography, foldable phones, and some speculation on Apple’s September 9 “Awe Dropping” event … | Continue reading
Matthew Panzarino returns to the show. Topics include 007 logo creator Joe Caroff’s death at 103, Google’s weird “Made by Google” event hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the UK supposedly dropping its demand for an iCloud encryption backdoor, and Apple’s workaround for the Apple Watch bloo … | Continue reading