ElevationLab has withdrawn its AirTag Silencer from sale. The device precisely destroyed the speaker in an AirTag while leaving tracking functions intact. Two weeks ago, I strongly suggested it stop selling it because their precision product offered abusers and stalkers a useful tool—true, available from other sources, but none with the high production quality or the stellar reputation among Apple users that ElevationLab has.…

On Tuesday as a part of its deluge of smart home announcements, Apple has launched something a bit different: a series of products called Apple Home Collection that are… not quite Apple products, but not not Apple products.…

In an announcement sure to shock the very foundations of the world, Apple rolled out a new Apple Siri Remote with support for Find My with Precision Finding and a speaker that can play a noise, ensuring you’ll never again lose it in your couch cushions for months on end.…

Among its smart home product announcements on Tuesday, Apple announced the new HomePod mini 2, priced at $149 and powered by an S10 chip (introduced in the Apple Watch Series 10).…

As was widely expected, Apple today took the wraps off its “HomePod with a screen”, dubbed the HomeView.

The device features a seven-inch Liquid Retina display with multitouch, at 1088-by-1088 resolution and is powered by an A18 chip.…

It’s a real grab bag of apps in this week’s report, but that seems wholly appropriate somehow. After all, most of us turn to our Macs for a variety of reasons, so why not a selection of apps that speed up image processing, give you new controls over your tunes or help you keep a cleaner, better organized desktop?…

Mark Gurman has last-minute Apple product details in his Sunday newsletter:

The centerpiece is a new smart home hub called the HomeView. Equipped with a display and an A18 chip, the product essentially serves as the Siri command center for an Apple-powered household…

The HomeView comes in two versions: a countertop model with a metal speaker base and a wall-mounted version with a flat, square base that sits against the wall beneath the display.

The announcement that Apple’s making a home-related announcement on Tuesday was hardly unexpected. Most things Apple does these days are reported in advance, usually by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.…

In this bonus episode, Jason interviews former Apple SVP of Retail Ron Johnson about why Steve Jobs wanted to get into retail, understanding what Apple’s brand represents, the customer-service model of the Apple Store, and much more.…

I got a weird email the other day from OpenAI that ended up causing a great deal of work for me:

As part of our continuous upgrade process, we are deprecating the following legacy audio models: tts-1, tts-hd, gpt-4o-mini-tts.

Apple has announced that it’s planning something for October 13. The assumption—amplified by the “Welcome Home” slogan—is that Apple is going to roll out a bunch of new home-oriented products, most notably a touchscreen home hub that’s been rumored for a couple of years now.…

Leaked Apple smart home gadgets, Apple’s upcoming smart home hub with a screen, our feelings on smart recording tech, and whether we want a touchscreen on our MacBook.…

Sometimes, putting these columns about intriguing macOS and iOS apps together feels a little like improvisational jazz — I’m not always sure where this is going or how it’s going to wind up, but hopefully there’s a note or two that someone gets some enjoyment out of.…

MacRumors’s Hartley Charlton has a post detailing the designs of some rumored upcoming smart home devices co-developed by LG and Apple, thanks to FCC filings:

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working with LG Electronics on accessories for its upcoming home hub and other home products, citing regulatory documents without sharing the filings.

Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs make a deal that will change the future trajectory of Mac OS, Apple, and the tech industry. But is Steve happy to be the CEO at Pixar, or is he secretly plotting to take over Apple?…

Late last month I got several emails from Spotify, all pretty much the same:

Hello,

Our automatic review tools determined that this podcast may contain content that infringes the rights of a third party.

Credit cards, dryers, and, if we have time, the two Apple events expected this month.…

Back in June, I tried to elaborate on why building software is more than coding in an age of AI coding assistants:

Whatever you call it, whether it’s being a producer or product manager or something else that isn’t a programmer, creating good software in the AI era still requires the power of a human brain: being creative, solving problems, and making decisions.

Apple introduced iMessage within Messages in 2011 as its house-brand, end-to-end encrypted messaging product. The promise of iMessage is that posts are always encrypted, using servers and technology developed by Apple and controlled by it.…

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, writing at The Verge, illuminates some challenges with the new parental controls Apple added in this year’s software updates:

I’m not even trying to use Screen Time on my son’s devices.

Together in Memphis, Myke and Jason discuss John Ternus prodding Apple to move faster, Apple’s regret about giving apps Full Disk Access, and the impending release of Apple’s long-rumored home hub product.…

Way back in January I noted that one of the features that had kept me from using Passwords as my only password management app was its inability to manage SSH keys, a feature offered by competitor 1Password.…

In a post on Apple’s Developer News site, the company says it will be updating the Full Disk Access permissions:

Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action.

Hello from Memphis, where we are currently hosting the 8th annual 12-hour Podcastathon. I’m here for the fourth straight year, along with Stephen Hackett, Myke Hurley, Kathy Campbell, Casey Liss, and Brad Dowdy.…

Amazon on Thursday announced new Kindles, including a new base model, Paperwhite, and Colorsoft. All three models come in multiple varieties (plastic and aluminum) and in a variety of new colors.…

ElevationLab has released an AirTag product I find appalling, and I strongly urge they immediately withdraw it from sale and recall all inventory. The AirTag Silencer is a simple device: remove the back panel and battery from an AirTag, position the Silencer’s highly engineered pin over the speaker, tap the pin with a hammer, and the AirTag’s speaker is destroyed.…

Apple has become one of the world’s most valuable companies because of its products: the Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch and most especially the iPhone.…

Scary children, speculating about Apple’s October event and touchscreen Macs.…

Minor bugs that drive us mad, app blasts from the past, smart home infrastructure, and our non-car navigation systems.…

When Apple updated its iWork suite in April of last year, I complained that the company didn’t break out the full list of functions that it had added to Numbers in its 14.4 release.…