FeedCity: Daring Fireball

Daring Fireball
16 Mar 18:15 • John Gruber

‘The Last Quiet Thing’

terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Another crackerjack essay on design and attention from Terry Godier. (Note that the Casio in the essay not only shows the actual time, but has functional buttons.)

Link: terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Daring Fireball
16 Mar 18:15 • John Gruber

Apple Introduces AirPods Max 2

apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-airpods-max-2-powered-by-h2/

Apple Newsroom today: Apple today announced AirPods Max 2, bringing even better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), elevated sound quality, and intelligent features to the iconic over-ear design. Powered by H2, features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Iso...

Daring Fireball
16 Mar 17:42 • John Gruber

★ Apple Exclaves and the Secure Design of the MacBook Neo’s On-Screen Camera Indicator

Some camera-equipped Apple devices have dedicated camera indicator lights. E.g. recent MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have them in the notch, next to the camera itself. The Studio Display has one in the bezel, next to its camera. Other devices — like iPhones and, now, the Mac...

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 23:12 • John Gruber

CHM Live: Apple at 50

youtube.com/live/eCSNJgI2LFI

David Pogue absolutely killed it hosting this live event last week. Glad I saved it to watch on my TV. Special guests include Chris Espinosa, John Sculley, and Avie Tevanian. A legit treat.

Link: youtube.com/live/eCSNJgI2LFI

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 17:54 • John Gruber

Finalist 3.6

finalist.works/finalist-36/

My thanks to Finalist for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Finalist is a remarkable, ambitious, and novel app for iPhone, iPad, and the Mac from indie developer Slaven Radic. It’s a planner — a digital take on traditional paper planners — that (with permission) pulls...

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 17:54 • John Gruber

Blaming AI for Layoffs: ‘It Plays Better’

resume.org/the-great-turnover-9-in-10-companies-plan-to-hire-in-2026-yet-6-in-10-will-have-layoffs-2/

Resume.org, summarizing their survey of 1,000 U.S. hiring managers:

59% admit they emphasize AI when explaining hiring freezes or layoffs because it plays better with stakeholders than citing financial constraints.

Reminds me of the “Not Me” ghost in Bil Keane’s The Family Circus comic strip.

Link: resume.org/the-great-turnover-9-in-10-companies-plan-to…

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 16:18 • John Gruber

Horace Dediu on Apple Sitting Out the AI Spending Race

asymco.com/2026/03/10/the-most-brilliant-move-in-corporate-history/

Horace Dediu, under the headline “The Most Brilliant Move in Corporate History?”: Apple used to be the biggest capex spender, mainly because it paid for most of the property plant and equipment in the factories that made its phones and computers. [...] But that all chan...

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 15:48 • John Gruber

Reuters: ‘Meta Planning Sweeping Layoffs as AI Costs Mount’

reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning-sweeping-layoffs-ai-costs-mount-2026-03-14/

Katie Paul, Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman, reporting for Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastruct...

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 15:48 • John Gruber

‘This Is Not the Computer for You’

samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-computer-for-you/?ref=birchtree.me

Sam Henri Gold: Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pre...

Daring Fireball
15 Mar 00:39 • John Gruber

Matt Mullenweg Documents a Dastardly Clever Apple Account Phishing Scam

ma.tt/2026/03/gone-almost-phishin/

Matt Mullenweg: One evening last month, my Apple Watch, iPhone, and Mac all lit up with a message prompting me to reset my password. This came out of nowhere; I hadn’t done anything to elicit it. I even had Lockdown Mode running on all my devices. It didn’t matter. Someo...

Daring Fireball
14 Mar 22:36 • John Gruber

iFixit’s MacBook Neo Teardown

ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years

iFixit: Is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever also one of its most repairable? For years, opening a MacBook has usually meant fighting your way through glue and buried parts. But the Neo stands out, with increasingly good day-one manuals, less-painful keyboard repairs,...

Daring Fireball
14 Mar 20:24 • John Gruber

PC Makers Are Not Ready for the MacBook Neo

theverge.com/report/894090/macbook-neo-pc-windows-laptop-competition-asus-footinmouth

Antonio G. Di Benedetto, The Verge: Somehow, the PC makers still don’t see it coming. Here’s how [Asus CFO Nick] Wu described the MacBook Neo, specifically its 8GB of RAM limitation: “I think when Apple positioned the product, it’s probably focused more on content consu...

Daring Fireball
14 Mar 17:30 • John Gruber

Ars Technica Fires Reporter Benj Edwards After He Published Story With AI-Fabricated Quotes

futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ars-technica-fires-reporter-ai-quotes

Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism: Earlier this month, Ars retracted the story after it was found to include fake quotes attributed to a real person. The article — a write-up of a viral incident in which an AI agent seemingly published a hit piece about a human...

Daring Fireball
14 Mar 16:30 • John Gruber

Lil Finder Guy

basicappleguy.com/basicappleblog/lil-finder-guy

Basic Apple Guy:

Where I and the rest of the internet take this from here remains to be seen. All I know is that Apple should definitely keep this Lil Finder around.

But no, I do not think this is the last we’ve seen of Lil Finder Guy…

Apple’s MacBook Neo ad campaign on TikTok — and seemingly exclusive to TikTok — is the most fun they’ve had with a campaign in ages. I love it.

Link: basicappleguy.com/basicappleblog/lil-finder-guy

Daring Fireball
14 Mar 00:09 • John Gruber

Tim Cook: ‘50 Years of Thinking Different’

apple.com/50-years-of-thinking-different/

Tim Cook: At Apple, we’re more focused on building tomorrow than remembering yesterday. But we couldn’t let this milestone pass without thanking the millions of people who make Apple what it is today — our incredible teams around the world, our developer community, and e...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 17:33 • John Gruber

NYT: ‘Meta Delays Rollout of New AI Model After Performance Concerns’

nytimes.com/2026/03/12/technology/meta-avocado-ai-model-delayed.html?unlocked_article_code=1.S1A.vI_6.4j717gwtFem0

Eli Tan, reporting for The New York Times: Meta’s new foundational A.I. model, which the company has been working on for months, has fallen short of the performance of leading A.I. models from rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic on internal tests for reasoning, codi...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 17:03 • John Gruber

Sports Programming Accounts for Almost 30 Percent of All Ad-Supported TV Viewing

deadline.com/2026/03/sports-tv-viewing-advertising-nielsen-1236750721/

Dade Hayes, reporting for Deadline: While the rise of sports programming in recent years has been well-documented, new figures from Nielsen illustrate the extent of its dominance. The measurement firm said sports accounted for 29.2% of all advertising-supported TV viewin...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 16:33 • John Gruber

Claim Chowder: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the Percentage of Code Being Generated by AI Today

businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3

Business Insider, one year ago: Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI startup Anthropic, said on Monday that AI, and not software developers, could be writing all of the code in our software in a year. “I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% ...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 14:57 • John Gruber

‘Software Bonkers’

craigmod.com/essays/software_bonkers/

Craig Mod, on creating his own custom accounting software with Claude Code: Simply put: It’s a big mess, and no off-the-shelf accounting software does what I need. So after years of pain, I finally sat down last week and started to build my own. It took me about five day...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 14:27 • John Gruber

‘Grief and the AI Split’

blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/grief-and-the-ai-split/

Les Orchard: I started programming in 1982. Every language I’ve learned since then has been a means to an end — a new way to make computers do things I wanted them to do. AI-assisted coding feels like the latest in that progression. Not a rupture, just another rung on th...

Daring Fireball
13 Mar 00:27 • John Gruber

Accents

mahdi.jp/apps/accents

Mahdi Bchatnia:

Accents is an app that lets you use the iMac/MacBook Neo accent colors on any Mac.

It’s a fun idea from Apple to have default accent colors that are, by default, exclusive to specific Mac hardware. But what exemplifies the Mac is that a clever developer like Bchatnia can make these accent colors available to any user on any Mac via a simple utility like Accents. (Via Michael Tsai.)

Link: mahdi.jp/apps/accents

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 23:57 • John Gruber

Apple’s Platform Security Guide Adds a Brief Note on the MacBook Neo’s On-Screen Camera Indicator

support.apple.com/guide/security/mac-on-screen-camera-indicator-light-sec75a2d237d/1/web/1

Apple Platform Security Guide: MacBook Neo combines system software and dedicated silicon elements within A18 Pro to provide additional security for the camera feed. The architecture is designed to prevent any untrusted software — even with root or kernel privileges in m...

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 23:57 • John Gruber

Eddy Cue Says F1 on Apple TV Opened to Increased Viewership

hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/apple-tv-formula-1-ratings-eddy-cue-strong-start-1236529359/

Alex Weprin, reporting for The Hollywood Reporter:

In a sign of strength for the streaming platform, Apple’s senior VP of services Eddy Cue tells The Hollywood Reporter that viewership for last week’s Australian Grand Prix was up year over year compared to the 2025 race, which aired on ESPN.

“The 2026 Formula 1 season on Apple TV is off to a strong start, with fans responding positively and viewership up year over year for the first weekend, exceeding both F1 and Apple expectations,” Cue says.

As is typical for Apple, the company declined to give any specific numbers, though last year’s Australian GP averaged 1.1 million viewers for ESPN.

So we don’t know the viewership number, but we know it’s higher than 1.1 million. That’s like a semi-Bezos number.

Link: hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/apple-tv-formula-1-ratings…

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 19:06 • John Gruber

Tech Re-Nu’s MacBook Neo Teardown

youtube.com/watch?v=5k7Lv7f-5CQ

Tech Re-Nu, on YouTube: That leaves us with a fully disassembled laptop. We’ve done this in less than 10 minutes, which is absolutely amazing for an Apple laptop. I can’t say we’ve ever had a Mac that looks as repairable and as modular as this one. No sticky tape, no tri...

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 15:57 • John Gruber

Software Proprioception

unsung.aresluna.org/software-proprioception/

Marcin Wichary:

There are fun things you can do in software when it is aware of the dimensions and features of its hardware. [...]

The rule here would be, perhaps, a version of “show, don’t tell.” We could call it “point to, don’t describe.” (Describing what to do means cognitive effort to read the words and understand them. An arrow pointing to something should be easier to process.)

I just learned the word proprioception a few weeks ago, in the context of how you can close your eyes and put your fingertip on the tip of your nose. Perfect word for this sort of hardware/software integration too.

Link: unsung.aresluna.org/software-proprioception/

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 01:09 • John Gruber

Jason Snell Is on Jeopardy Next Week

sixcolors.com/post/2026/03/ill-take-beach-reading-for-1000-ken/

Jason Snell:

So here we are: Six Colors now has three Jeopardy! players as contributors.

Come on, Moltz, get your shit together.

Link: sixcolors.com/post/2026/03/ill-take-beach-reading-for-1000…

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 00:39 • John Gruber

Another One From the Archive: ‘Web Kit’ vs. ‘WebKit’

daringfireball.net/2006/05/web_kit_vs_webkit

When I re-read my 2006 piece “And Oranges” today before linking to it, I paused when I read this:

And while it is easy to find ways to complain that Apple is not open enough — under-documented and undocumented security updates and system revisions, under-documented and undocumented file formats — it would be hard to argue with the premise that Apple today is more open than it has ever been before. (Exhibit A: the Web Kit project.)

It’s not often I get to fix 20-year-old typos, and to my 2026 self, “Web Kit” looks like an obvious typo. But after a moment, I remembered: in 2006, that wasn’t a typo.

Link: daringfireball.net/2006/05/web_kit_vs_webkit

Daring Fireball
12 Mar 00:39 • John Gruber

★ Modifier Key Order for Keyboard Shortcuts

Dr. Drang, back in 2017: If you write about Mac keyboard shortcuts, as I did yesterday, you should know how to do it right. Just as there’s a proper order for adjectives in English, there’s a proper order for listing the modifier keys in a shortcut. I haven’t found any ...

Daring Fireball
11 Mar 23:36 • John Gruber

Apple Has Changed Several Key Cap Labels From Words to Glyphs on Its Latest U.S. MacBook Keyboards

x.com/ClassicII_MrMac/status/2028869838870069447

“Mr. Macintosh”, on Twitter/X last week: Small change: Looks like Apple updated the keyboard on the new M5 16‑inch MacBook Pro. The Backspace, Return, Shift, and Tab labels are gone, replaced with symbols instead. All the new MacBook keyboards sport this same change, ...

Daring Fireball
11 Mar 23:36 • John Gruber

Halide Cofounder Sebastiaan de With Joined Apple’s Design Team in January

9to5mac.com/2026/01/28/halide-cofounder-sebastiaan-de-with-joins-apples-design-team/

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac back on January 28: Halide and Lux co-founder and designer Sebastiaan de With announced today that he is joining Apple’s human interface design team. This marks a return to Apple for de With, who previously worked as a freelancer for ...