Yours truly back in 2009, hitting upon the same themes from the item I just posted about TextEdit vs. Apple Notes:
This, I think, explains the relative popularity of Mac OS X’s
included Stickies application. For years, Stickies’s popularity
confounded me. Why would anyon...
Perhaps at the opposite end of the complexity and novelty spectrum from Federico Viticci’s intro to Clawdbot is this piece by Kyle Chayka, writing at The New Yorker, from October:
Amid the accelerating automation of our computers — and the
proliferation of assistants and...
Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:
If this intro just gave you whiplash, imagine my reaction when I
first started playing around with Clawdbot, the incredible
open-source project by Peter Steinberger (a name
that should be familiar to longtime MacStories readers)
t...
My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh puts up a new deal every day, and they do it with panache. As they say, “It’s actual, real, weird shit you didn’t know existed for half the price you would’ve guessed.”
Don’t tell any of my other sponsors, but Meh is my f...
A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users. The methodology behind these numbers is broken and the numbers are totally wrong. Those false numbers are so low, so jarringly different from previous ...
The main reason I’m sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia, refusing to install 26 Tahoe, is that there are so many severe UI regressions in Tahoe. The noisy, distracting, inconsistent icons prefixing menu item commands, ruining the Mac’s signature menu bar system. Indiscriminate tr...
Ken Case, on The Omni Group blog:
The features noted above already make for a great upgrade. But as
I mentioned last year, one of the interesting problems
we’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native
apps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to...
Free Mac utility by Zendit Oy:
A macOS app that enhances control over Elgato lights, offering
features beyond the standard Elgato Control Center software.
Features:
Automatically turn lights on and off based on camera activity
Turn lights off when locking your Mac
Syn...
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.
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 u...
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
...
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 ...
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 technolog...
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 ...
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...
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.
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 do...
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 rol...
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 se...
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...
Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking your head in the sand.
And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy,...
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. [...]
T...
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 S...
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 stak...
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 ...
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.)
Donald Trump, in a message (I wouldn’t call it a letter) sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, confirmed by several news organizations:
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the
Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no lon...
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 ...
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.
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