Adam Engst returns to the show to talk, in detail, about certain of the UI changes in iOS 26 and Apple’s version 26 OSes overall. In particular, the new Unified view in the Phone app, and the Filter pop-up menu in both the Phone and Messages apps. Also: a shoutout to Balloon Help.
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Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5 Google:
When activated, Privacy Display changes how the pixels in your
display emit light, making it harder or near-impossible to view
the display at an off-angle. At its default setting, it definitely
works, but the contents of the display a...
This week Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025. As I’ve done in the past — for the report-card years 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category ...
Jim Vorel, writing just yesterday for Jezebel:
It can be hard to know what exactly to call the substances that
are now found coating many major candy bars such as Butterfinger,
Baby Ruth, Almond Joy, Mr. Goodbar or Rolos. Food scientists refer
to it as “compound chocolat...
Verdict: Excellent. Both chocolates taste like chocolate, not candle wax, and the peanut butter is creamy and smooth — you know, like peanut butter. Not the sand-and-sawdust mix that Hershey fills Reese’s cups with now.
We discuss the results of the Six Colors Apple Report Card for
2025 in depth, with our added opinions on every category. Jason
chooses to be a rascal, and Myke tries to give ten out of five.
Upgrade is always a good podcast, and their annual “Jason discusses this year’s Apple Report Card” episode is always one of my favorites. But when Jason got “rascally” regarding MacOS 26 Tahoe in this one, I wanted to reach out and strangle him.
Jason Snell:
It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during
the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors,
developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of
time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad
...
Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory
operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini
to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand
advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide
hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center
beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations
will create thousands of jobs.
Todd Bishop, writing at GeekWire:
Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing”
and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining
programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on
Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living fo...
Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors back on February 12:
In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, seen by the Financial Times, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson cites recent press coverage of a report from conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), which claimed tha...
Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive:
Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a
Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the
questions for now. Perhaps then you will graduall...
Adam Grossman:
Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.
Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including
more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the
process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, ...
Speaking of OpenClaw, here’s Scott Shambaugh:
I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib, python’s go-to plotting
library. At ~130 million downloads each month it’s some of the
most widely used software in the world. We, like many other open
source projects, are dealing w...
Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation
of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas
about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other
to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly
become core to our product offerings.
OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that
OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be
extremely multi-agent and it’s important to us to support open
source as part of that.
I’m sure it will remain as open as the “open” in OpenAI’s own name.
Erin Griffith and Karen Weise, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):
More than he did at any other major tech company, Mr. Epstein
found success boring into the inner sanctums of Microsoft.
Leveraging one connection into the next, he became privy to the
company’s...
Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
With Spencer’s retirement official, Microsoft is hitting the reset
button on Bond’s Xbox strategy instead of embracing it further.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is now promising “the return of
Xbox,” in a clear message ...
Times New Resistance autocorrects specific words as they are
typed. For example, the word ICE autocorrects to the Goon
Squad and the word Trump autocorrects to Donald Trump is
a felon.
To the untrained eye, Times New Resistance looks just like Times
New Roman — the official font of the U.S. State
Department. When you install the font, it will appear in
your font menus as Times New Roman, with an extra space
between the words Times and New.
Ligatures, man. Will they never cease to surprise?
Brent Simmons, last month:
The big change from 6.2.1 is that it adopts the Liquid Glass UI
and it requires macOS 26.
(Note to people who aren’t on macOS 26: we fixed a lot of bugs in
6.2 and 6.2.1 knowing that many people might skip, or at least
delay, installing macOS ...
Like their milk chocolate brethren on our shelves, our Dark
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are made with real peanut butter
that’s made with slowly roasted and ground Virginia peanuts. The
luscious, smooth, rich, dark chocolate enveloping that peanut
butter is crafted from high quality cacao beans. Other purveyors
of peanut butter cups fill theirs with all kinds of “extraneous”
ingredients. Ours are free of such things. We eschew artificial
flavors and preservatives, as well as colors other than those
derived from natural sources. We’re quite certain they taste
better our way.
Trader Joe’s speaketh the truth and throweth some shade.
Brad Reese, on LinkedIn last week:
My grandfather, H. B. Reese (Who Invented Reese’s), built Reese’s
on a simple, enduring architecture: Milk Chocolate + Peanut
Butter. Not a flavor idea. Not a marketing construct. A real,
tangible product identity that consumers have tr...
My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to:
Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue.
Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash.
Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing.
Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analysis.
IMAX has announced that a select number of races will be shown
live in IMAX locations across the United States in 2026. The new
fan viewing experience is part of a collaboration with Apple TV,
which has taken over the broadcasting rights for the championship
in the US on a multi-year deal from 2026.
“F1 is a rapidly growing force in sports and culture in the US,
and by bringing F1 on Apple TV live to IMAX theatres nationwide,
we’re delivering the energy and excitement to even more screens in
a truly immersive way,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice
president of music, sports, and Beats.
A reader pointed out that the 2026 Formula 1 season starts in Australia on March 8. You will recall from October that Apple TV is now the exclusive broadcast partner for F1 in the U.S. Apple is already dabbling with live immersive sports broadcasting for VisionOS with a limi...
Paul Ford, in an op-ed for The New York Times (gift link):
All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.
Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:
Apple invited select members of the media to the event in three
major cities around the world. It is simply described as a
“special Apple Experience,” and there is no further information
about what it may entail. The invitation features a 3D ...
Speaking of iOS 26, here’s Joe Rossignol reporting for MacRumors:
Apple has shared updated iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 adoption
figures, revealing how many iPhones and iPads are running
those software versions. These adoption numbers are based on
iPhones and iPads that transact...
Apple Support:
If iPhone isn’t responding, and you can’t turn it off then
on, try forcing it to restart.
Press and quickly release the volume up button.
Press and quickly release the volume down button.
Press and hold the side button.
When the Apple logo appears, relea...
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