To celebrate the start of WWDC, Apple will also host an in-person
experience on June 9 that will provide developers with the
opportunity to watch the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union
at Apple Park, meet with Apple experts one-on-one and in group
labs, and take part in special activities. Space will be limited;
details on how to apply to attend can be found on the WWDC25
website.
Right on time: in recent years, WWDC dates have been announced on:
Yours truly back in May 2023, in a thread on Mastodon (at the time, you needed an invitation code to get into Bluesky, and it was just a few months after Musk’s takeover and remaking of what was once Twitter):
Bluesky is going to skyrocket to mainstream popularity and
ac...
Jon Passantino, writing at Status:
Now Threads feels rather lifeless. While users still post there,
for many it has become something of a second-tier platform — a place
that they dump content out of habit, not because they’re having
real conversations or finding meaningf...
Bryan Irace:
Barring a sharp correction, Apple looks increasingly likely to
miss out on a generation of developers conditioned to first reach
for tools like Cursor, Replit, or v0 — especially as Apple’s own AI tooling remains notably absent.
This goes well beyond enablin...
Lex.Games is an iOS app (and website) for playing eight daily word games.
I paid Gruber many thousands of dollars to run this ad for free games which themselves have no ads. Please keep reading.
The games:
Conlextions: Inspired by NYT’s Connections Lexicogs: Solve crossword-style clues by assembling letter “cogs” By a Vowel: A word jumble game with missing vowels Six Appeal: Wordle with six-letter words
There’s also a daily Mini Crossword; a Full-Size Crossword; and Mind Control, which is a whole lot like Mastermind and not actually a word game at all; don’t sue me.
Oh, and if you only counted seven games here, the eighth is iOS-only. It’s called Letter Opener, and it’s my favorite.
Next month, a new software update will bring lossless audio and
ultra-low latency audio to AirPods Max, delivering the ultimate
listening experience and even greater performance for music
production. With the included USB-C cable, users can enjoy the
highest-quality audio across music, movies, and games, while music
creators can experience significant enhancements to songwriting,
beat making, production, and mixing.
Apple also started selling a new $40 USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable — male USB-C on the side that goes into your AirPods Max, male headphone jack on the other side to go into the audio-out port on a Mac or, say, an airplane seat.
I have been diving into the world of large language models (LLMs),
and a question began to gnaw at me: could I bring the cutting-edge
of AI to the nostalgic glow of my trusty 2005 PowerBook G4? Armed
with a 1.5GHz processor, a full gigabyte of RAM, and a limiting
32-bit address space, I embarked on an experiment that actually
yielded results. I have successfully managed to achieve LLM
inference on this classic piece of Apple history, proving that
even yesteryear’s hardware can have a taste of tomorrow’s AI.
A fun project, well-explained. Even a great choice of computer to run it on — the 12-inch PowerBook G4 is one of the best-looking computers ever made. (Via Joe Rossignol.)
I read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny after the election. A collection of 20 essays — each relatively brief, some exceptionally brief — it’s more booklet than book, and can easily be consumed in an afternoon or a few evenings. I finished it with an unsettled feeling. I read it ...
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic (News+ link):
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15
that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that
the attack ...
How has your week been? My week was ... busy. That includes a new episode of The Talk Show recorded yesterday, dropping in your favorite podcast app soon. Amidst all the writing (and talking) I’ve been doing, I’m also working on filling up open weeks on the sponsorship sched...
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF, once again, this last week. This has been WorkOS’s Launch Week, and they’ve got a slew of new features to show. Honestly, though, you should check out their Launch Week page just to look at it — it’s beautiful, fun retro-modern pixel-art goodness. Great typography too. I wish every website looked even half this cool.
Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest download/upload bandwidth testing app:
Although it’s early in the adoption curve for the iPhone 16e, we
analyzed the performance of the new device from March 1st through
March 12th, and compared it to the performance of iPhone 16, ...
My number one tip for becoming a Mac power user is to get into Keyboard Maestro. Using Keyboard Maestro feels like gaining superpowers. I keep meaning to write more about Keyboard Maestro, and so I’m just going to start documenting all the little use cases I find for it. Her...
TechCrunch has a new owner, again. Yahoo has sold the tech news
site to the private equity firm Regent for an undisclosed sum,
according to an announcement on Friday.
Regent is the same company that snapped up Foundry, the firm
behind outlets like PCWorld, Macworld, and TechAdvisor on
Thursday. Founded in 2005, TechCrunch has experienced many
shakeups in ownership after AOL acquired the site in 2010.
A lot of shakeups in a lot of media companies’ ownership lately. Steady as she goes here at The Daring Fireball Company, a subsidiary of Fedora World Media Industries.
Matthew Belloni has a very good take on Apple TV+ at Puck (that’s a gift link that should get you through their paywall — but which requires you creating a free account, sorry):
All of which fed into the self-centered fears of my lunch date.
What, if anything, does the c...
Jill Goldsmith, Deadline:
Apple is losing more than $1 billion a year on streamer Apple TV+,
according to a report in the Information that cited two people
familiar with the matter. The tech giant has spent over $5 billion
a year on content since launching Apple TV+ in 2...
Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors last week:
With new iOS software updates, Apple has been automatically
turning Apple Intelligence on again even for users who have
disabled it, a decision that has become increasingly frustrating
for those that don’t want to use Apple I...
Ina Fried, reporting for Axios:
The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose,
seeks class action status and unspecified financial damages on
behalf of those who purchased Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones
and other devices.
“Apple’s advertisements satur...
Mark Gurman, with a blockbuster scoop for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks,
aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track
after months of delays and stumbles, according to people familiar
with the situation.
Ch...
Here’s an update I just appended to my post yesterday, after linking to Gus Mueller’s suggestion that Apple open up a semantic index to third-party AI apps:
HealthKit already works a lot like what Mueller is suggesting here
(for, say, “SemanticKit”). With explicit user p...
Last March, when Apple introduced the then new M3 MacBook Airs, they moved the base model 13-inch M2 MacBook Air into the magic $999 spot in their own lineup, replacing the M1 MacBook Air. But mid-March it was announced that Walmart would begin selling the M1 MacBook Air — i...
Whole Reddit thread examining this simple question: “What month is it?” and Siri’s “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to “What month is it currently?” and got the answer “It is 2025.”
Update: Ask Siri (with Apple Intelligence™) “ChatGPT, what month is it?” and, though you’ll have to wait a few extra seconds, you’ll get the right answer each time. Perhaps the current month is “broad world knowledge” and Siri shouldn’t even attempt to answer such a complex question on its own?
News from Apple that I let slip by a few weeks ago, but that seems apt again today:
Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that delivers
helpful and relevant intelligence, will soon be available in more
languages, including French, German, Italian, Portugue...
The European Commission, today:
Today, the European Commission adopted two decisions under the
Digital Markets Act (DMA) specifying the measures that Apple has
to take to comply with certain aspects of its interoperability
obligation. [...]
The first set of measures con...
You can speculate what the ‘e’ in ‘16e’ stands for, but in my head
it stands for ‘essential’. Some things that I consider
particularly essential to the iPhone are all there: fantastic
build quality, an OLED screen, iOS and all its apps, and Face ID.
It even has satellite connectivity. Some other things I also
consider essential are not here: MagSafe is very missed, for
instance, but also multiple cameras. It would be reasonable to look at
Apple’s Camera app, then, and see what comprises the ‘essential’
iPhone camera experience according to Apple.
Alex Cheema is the founder of EXO Labs, an AI company focused on “AI you can trust with your data” by making systems that run locally, on computers you own and control. Apple provided him with two M3 Ultra Mac Studios, each maxed out with 512 GB of unified memory. Within a d...
Gus Mueller:
A week or so ago I was grousing to some friends that Apple needs
to open up things on the Mac so other LLMs can step in where Siri
is failing. In theory we (developers) could do this today, but I
would love to see a blessed system where Apple provided APIs t...
Scharon Harding, writing for Ars Technica:
Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play
before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing
online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted
yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an ... ...
