Patrick McGee joins the show to discuss his must-read new book, Apple in China — one of the best books about Apple anyone has ever written.
Sponsored by:
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
Special Guest(s): See below
Price: $50
Ever since I started doing these live shows from WWDC, I’ve kept the guest(s) secret, until showtime. I’m still doing that this year. But in recent years the guests have seemed a bit predictable: senior executives from Apple. This year I again extended my usual invitation to Apple, but, for the first time since 2015, they declined.
I think this will make for a fascinating show, but I want to set everyone’s expectations accordingly. I’m invigorated by this. See you at the show, I hope.
Link: ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2025
politicalwire.com/2025/05/28/the-resistance-is-working-better-than-you-think/
Taegan Goddard:
For all the bluster and bravado, Donald Trump is losing. A lot.
Keep the faith.
Link: politicalwire.com/2025/05/28/the-resistance-is-working…
Daring Fireball
• Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Established industries don’t get disrupted all that often.
We at Ooni are lucky enough to have changed the game in pizza ovens over the past decade by rethinking them from ground up and in the process enabling the home pizza revolution.
From our deep knowledge in pizza dough we found our next category: the stand mixer.
Domestic kitchen stand mixers have stayed the same for nearly hundred years. There’s a very well established incumbent in the market who only really innovate in color trends.
We’re bringing spiral mixer technology reserved only for professional bakeries to your kitchen counter. The journey wasn’t trivial but we’ve created a product that has just the right features and best-in-class performance.
Link: ooni.com/products/ooni-halo-pro-spiral-mixer?utm_source…
Michael Flarup:
Whatever we call it (Diamorph or otherwise), I’m just glad to see interfaces getting weird and wonderful again. We’re not going back. We’re going forward — with depth, with texture, and maybe even with a little joy.
Depth is good — humans innately understand three dimensions. Texture is good. We’ve lost so much over the last decade. I hope that’s where Apple is heading back.
Link: flarup.email/p/the-future-is-colourful-and-dimensional
Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, on their decision to abandon their new browser Arc in favor of going all-in on their newer browser Dia:
Early on, Scott Forstall told us Arc felt like a saxophone — powerful but hard to learn. Then he challenged us: make it a piano. Something anyone can sit down at and play. This is now the idea behind Dia: hide complexity behind familiar interfaces.
Forstall’s advice sounds perfect, but I don’t know how they square this with the people — and I know a few — who went all-in on Arc personally. Like the old “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” adage, how do you commit to a new browser from the same people who just pulled the rug out from under you on their last one?
Link: browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-2025
Max Roberts:
I hate to say it, but the Puzzmo app is not a good experience. It is a real shame that Zach and team launched it in this state. What makes the shame heavier is that Zach is a superb designer. I know he works with excellent designers too. The team has fallen short in an off-putting way.
Thankfully, Gruber is not a betting man.
I have to say, I do like having a Puzzmo app, but I don’t think the experience is that much better than the web app version.
theverge.com/cryptocurrency/674327/trump-coin-short-sell-hedge-contest-dinner-winner
Tina Nguyen at The Verge:
I interviewed an enthusiastic crypto trader who figured out how to win the contest without losing any money: buy enough $TRUMP to get onto the leaderboard — and then in a separate wallet on a separate exchange, buy $TRUMP perpetual futures that would be profitable if (or as he saw it, when) the value of $TRUMP dropped. Yes, he did The Big Short, except with Donald Trump’s meme coin. “Bet you 10 percent of dinner participants are doing this,” he told me before the contest ended. “Everyone knows $TRUMP price will fall inevitably as more supply comes online in the future and gets dumped on retail.”
Fascinating interview — half hilarious, half infuriating.
Link: theverge.com/cryptocurrency/674327/trump-coin-short-sell…
Stephen Hackett, proprietor of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay (purveyor of many fine podcasts), joins the show. Topics include: IO (or if you will, io), the new joint venture of OpenAI and Jony Ive’s LoveFrom; the sheer fantasy of “Made in America” iPhones; and Fortnite’s return to the US App Store.
Sponsored by:
Here’s a spoof commercial from the 1990 movie Crazy People, starring Dudley Moore and Daryl Hannah, which TMDB synopsizes:
A bitter ad executive, who has reached his breaking point, finds himself in a mental institution, where his career actually begins to thrive with the help of the hospital’s patients.
The New York Times would have you believe this is relevant to Apple’s supply chain reliance on China.
world.hey.com/dhh/hey-is-finally-for-sale-on-the-iphone-a08cb218
My thanks to Drata for sponsoring this last week at DF. Their message is short and sweet: Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.
Link: drata.com/daring
theverge.com/news/672924/mozilla-pocket-fakespot-shutting-down
www-cdn.anthropic.com/4263b940cabb546aa0e3283f35b686f4f3b2ff47.pdf
macrumors.com/2025/05/19/google-translate-default-option-ios/
spyglass.org/epics-feigning-floundering-to-keep-apple-under-pressure/
PJ Vogt, in a very fun episode of his podcast, Search Engine:
A small group of Americans becomes convinced they’ve discovered something strange about their iPhones: a forbidden phrase the phone will refuse to transmit. A crack podcasting team searches for answers, wherever they may lead.
The bug is that if you send an audio voice message in Apple Messages, and mention the name “Dave & Busters”, the recipient will never receive the message. I had a good guess, right away, what was happening. But I don’t want to spoil it — it’s a fun listen.
But when you’re done listening, and you want a thorough explanation, check out Guilherme Rambo’s thorough investigation. So good.