Joe Rosensteel: I have no plan to purchase a GM vehicle, but I do rent cars. GM makes up a sizable portion of rental car fleets. At some point in the future those cars will no longer support CarPlay. I’m not going to sign up for a GM federated ID that stores my login cre...

Tom Ellison, at McSweeney’s:

How are my competitors doing, the ones you all insisted students use instead of me? That’s right, they were supposed to go to the American Journal of Social Sciences, Powered by OpenAI. Or museums, like the Smithsonian’s Charlie Kirk Shrine to American Greatness. I guess they can still count on credible journalism, once they get past the paywall for Palantir Presents: The Washington Post, so they read the Pulitzer-Bezos Prize–winning work of coeditors-in-chief Bari Weiss and Grok.

Jay Peters, writing for The Verge: However, despite Elon Musk promising that Grokipedia would be a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia, some articles appear to be cribbing information from Wikipedia. At the bottom of the page for the MacBook Air, for example, you can se...

Nick Vadala, reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer: Longtime WMMR-FM host Pierre Robert was found dead in his home Wednesday. He was 70. Robert’s surname, I must point out, rhymes with Pierre (and with Colbert). A native of Northern California, Robert joined WMMR...

James Thomson:

I’ve released a small PCalc 4.11.1 update that’s out now for the Mac.

There was a bug with the theme getting reset, which I could have fixed in five minutes, but I ended up doing what I should have done over three decades ago, and added a dedicated section to the settings that puts all the visual customisation in one place.

No more having to search for all this stuff in a submenu somewhere!

After the glum news this week regarding Nisus Writer, it feels good to link to a similarly-aged Mac app that’s still thriving. If you’ve never tried PCalc, you’re missing out.

Tim Hardwick, writing for MacRumors:

The Apple Maps EV Routing option will allow Toyota BEV users to plan travel routes that include stops for charging. Without it, drivers would have had to exit out of CarPlay in order to create a route that included charging stops.

Apple Maps’ EV Routing feature uses real-time data from the vehicle to guide drivers to their destinations more efficiently, automatically suggesting charging stops when needed. The system takes into account elevation changes and other driving conditions to decide when a recharge is necessary. If the vehicle’s battery level becomes too low, Apple Maps will automatically direct the driver to the nearest compatible charging station.

Meanwhile GM CEO Mary Barra is spending her lunch hour eating another jar of paste.

The Economist: Presidents’ popularity tends to wane. In his second term Donald Trump’s has fallen faster than that of his recent predecessors. Since modern polling began most presidents have started their terms with positive net approval ratings (the share of voters who...

The Onion, in February 2004: “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades”.

Other Mac-related news from OpenAI last week:

Sky is a powerful natural language interface for the Mac. With Sky, AI works alongside you, whether you’re writing, planning, coding, or managing your day. Sky understands what’s on your screen and can take action using your apps.

We will bring Sky’s deep macOS integration and product craft into ChatGPT, and all members of the team will join OpenAI.

Two of the founders of Software Applications Incorporated, the company behind Sky, are Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer, who a decade ago co-created Workflow, which Apple acquired in 2017 and turned into Shortcuts.

Federico Viticci got an advanced look at Sky and wrote a glowing preview back in May.

Most people’s primary computing devices are their phones — and even for people whose primary devices are desktop computers, their phones are much-used satellite devices. And on both iOS and Android alike, people live their mobile digital lives through native apps, not websites.

Joe Kissell, writing at TidBITS: For more than a year, we’ve heard scattered complaints: problems with Nisus Software’s website, particularly the user discussion forum; slow or absent responses to support requests; assorted bugs; and other issues. But earlier this week, ...

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The best time to adjust the rules of the App Store — its exclusivity on app distribution for the entire iOS platform, the exclusivity of Apple’s IAP for purchasing digital content, the commission percentage splits on IAP — was over a decade ago. The next best time to make those adjustments is now.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple might be preparing iPad apps for Pixelmator Pro, Compressor, Motion, and MainStage, according to new App Store IDs uncovered by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. All four of the apps are currently available on the Mac only. A quick overview of each app:

• Pixelmator Pro: Professional image editing app acquired by Apple earlier this year
• Compressor: Final Cut Pro companion app for compressing audio and video files
• Motion: Final Cut Pro companion app for creating 2D/3D titles, transitions, and effects
• MainStage: Logic Pro companion app for live performances

There is already a less-capable Pixelmator app available for the iPad and iPhone.

Interesting though that — just like Final Cut and Logic — these new pro apps are reportedly iPad-only, with no support for iPhone.

Also: still no Xcode, even for iPad.

Joe Rosensteel, writing at Six Colors, regarding the demise of Apple’s Clips app: It’s not that it was completely inept, but it was an aimless showcase to demonstrate what Apple could do. It withered over the course of eight years before it was quietly killed. At no poi...

Mark Gurman, in his weekly paywalled Power On column for Bloomberg: I reported a few years ago that Apple was working to bring more advertising to iOS. Well, now that effort is gaining traction — with a plan to start the ads as early as next year. The company is focusing...

Dian Zhang and Ignacio Calderon, reporting for USA Today: Even before Terry Rozier dropped out of the 2023 NBA game in which he’s accused of rigging his statistics, computers at an “integrity monitor” firm flagged a flood of bets that did not match a mathematical model o...

Adobe Design profiles Adobe’s new Premiere app for iOS, and interviews Christopher Azar, group design manager for Adobe Video, regarding the thinking behind the app and its design: What was the primary goal when you set out to design Premiere on iOS? Christopher Azar: O...

For your weekend listening enjoyment, a new episode of America’s favorite 3-star podcast, with special guest Dan Moren. Topics include Atlas, ChatGPT’s new web browser (or anti-web browser) for the Mac; Apple’s loss in a “landmark” regulatory lawsuit in the UK regarding App Store commission rates; multiple reports of poor sales for the iPhone Air; and Apple’s M5 product announcements: MacBook Pro, iPads Pro, and Vision Pro.

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Worth a re-link, following up on my post yesterday linking to Stephen Hackett’s “Boring Is What We Wanted”, here’s Rogue Amoeba co-founder Quentin Carnicelli, writing back in 2018: At the time of the writing, with the exception of the $5,000 iMac Pro, no Macintosh has be...

Yours truly on Friday, regarding the news that Meta is going to ban rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp: Perhaps because I’m only a light user of WhatsApp, I had no idea that rival AI chatbots had accounts there. I just tried it with 1-800-ChatGPT and it seems pointless. It’...

Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels: Apple silicon has been nothing but upside for the Mac, and yet some seem bored already. In the days since Apple announced the M5, I’ve seen and heard this sentiment more than I expected: This is just another boring incremental ...

My thanks to WorkOS for their continuing support of DF with another sponsorship week. With WorkOS you can start selling to enterprises with just a few lines of code. WorkOS provides a complete user management solution along with SSO, SCIM, and RBAC. The APIs are modular and easy-to-use, allowing integrations to be completed in minutes instead of months. WorkOS simplifies MCP authorization with a single API built on five OAuth standards.

Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including OpenAI, Cursor, and Vercel.

For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.

Katie Notopoulos, writing at Business Insider: There are really two separate issues at hand: Should users be allowed to make fetish content of any woman who is stupid enough (like me) to allow anyone to make cameos of her? And how do you stop people from making fetish co...

Eric Hal Schwarz, reporting for TechRadar: Meta is closing the door on third-party AI assistants inside WhatsApp. Starting January 15, 2026, no general-purpose AI chatbot, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others, will be allowed to operate on the platform. The change i...

At the bottom of their “Use Cases” page, SerpApi lists the following companies and organizations as customers (“They trust us. You are in good company. Join them.”):

• Airbnb
• Nvidia
• Meta
• Shopify
• Perplexity
• KPMG
• Ahrefs
• Grubhub
• Samsung
• AI21labs
• United Nations (!)
• Thomson Reuters
• BrightLocal
• Experian

From an August 21, 2025 report in The Information (paywalled up the wazoo, alas), however:

OpenAI also isn’t the only Google rival to use SerpApi data. SerpApi’s website previously listed Apple as a customer. In addition to partnering with Google on search, the iPhone maker develops technology to power searches in Safari — a lucrative deal that the judge overseeing the DOJ case could also nix.

Was Apple removed from the list because they’re no longer (or never were?) a customer, or because they remain a customer but don’t want to be listed?

Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times: Eight years ago, SerpApi, a start-up in Austin, Texas, dived headlong into the byzantine world of using robots to “scrape” Google’s search algorithms, so it could collect information to help customers appear higher in search ...

Tony Maglio, The Hollywood Reporter: The Savant, which originally had a Sept. 26 premiere date, was yanked in the weeks following the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk. Language on the landing page for the series has since vacillated fr...

MacRumors:

Apple’s upcoming wave of new smart home devices, including a smart home display, indoor security camera, and tabletop robot, will also be made in Vietnam, according to Bloomberg.

Nick Statt, The Verge:

GM plans to drop support for phone projection on all new vehicles in the near future, and not just its electric car lineup, according to GM CEO Mary Barra.

In a Decoder interview with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, published Wednesday, Barra confirmed GM will eventually end support of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on both gas-powered and electric cars. The timing is unclear, but Barra pointed to a major rollout of what the company is calling a new centralized computing platform, set to launch in 2028, that will involve eventually transitioning its entire lineup to a unified in-car experience.

Someone should investigate whether Mary Barra is a mole planted at GM by Ford. (Previously.)