Next month, a new software update will bring lossless audio and
ultra-low latency audio to AirPods Max, delivering the ultimate
listening experience and even greater performance for music
production. With the included USB-C cable, users can enjoy the
highest-quality audio across music, movies, and games, while music
creators can experience significant enhancements to songwriting,
beat making, production, and mixing.
Apple also started selling a new $40 USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable — male USB-C on the side that goes into your AirPods Max, male headphone jack on the other side to go into the audio-out port on a Mac or, say, an airplane seat.
I have been diving into the world of large language models (LLMs),
and a question began to gnaw at me: could I bring the cutting-edge
of AI to the nostalgic glow of my trusty 2005 PowerBook G4? Armed
with a 1.5GHz processor, a full gigabyte of RAM, and a limiting
32-bit address space, I embarked on an experiment that actually
yielded results. I have successfully managed to achieve LLM
inference on this classic piece of Apple history, proving that
even yesteryear’s hardware can have a taste of tomorrow’s AI.
A fun project, well-explained. Even a great choice of computer to run it on — the 12-inch PowerBook G4 is one of the best-looking computers ever made. (Via Joe Rossignol.)
I read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny after the election. A collection of 20 essays — each relatively brief, some exceptionally brief — it’s more booklet than book, and can easily be consumed in an afternoon or a few evenings. I finished it with an unsettled feeling. I read it ...
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic (News+ link):
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15
that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that
the attack ...
How has your week been? My week was ... busy. That includes a new episode of The Talk Show recorded yesterday, dropping in your favorite podcast app soon. Amidst all the writing (and talking) I’ve been doing, I’m also working on filling up open weeks on the sponsorship sched...
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF, once again, this last week. This has been WorkOS’s Launch Week, and they’ve got a slew of new features to show. Honestly, though, you should check out their Launch Week page just to look at it — it’s beautiful, fun retro-modern pixel-art goodness. Great typography too. I wish every website looked even half this cool.
Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest download/upload bandwidth testing app:
Although it’s early in the adoption curve for the iPhone 16e, we
analyzed the performance of the new device from March 1st through
March 12th, and compared it to the performance of iPhone 16, ...
My number one tip for becoming a Mac power user is to get into Keyboard Maestro. Using Keyboard Maestro feels like gaining superpowers. I keep meaning to write more about Keyboard Maestro, and so I’m just going to start documenting all the little use cases I find for it. Her...
TechCrunch has a new owner, again. Yahoo has sold the tech news
site to the private equity firm Regent for an undisclosed sum,
according to an announcement on Friday.
Regent is the same company that snapped up Foundry, the firm
behind outlets like PCWorld, Macworld, and TechAdvisor on
Thursday. Founded in 2005, TechCrunch has experienced many
shakeups in ownership after AOL acquired the site in 2010.
A lot of shakeups in a lot of media companies’ ownership lately. Steady as she goes here at The Daring Fireball Company, a subsidiary of Fedora World Media Industries.
Matthew Belloni has a very good take on Apple TV+ at Puck (that’s a gift link that should get you through their paywall — but which requires you creating a free account, sorry):
All of which fed into the self-centered fears of my lunch date.
What, if anything, does the c...
Jill Goldsmith, Deadline:
Apple is losing more than $1 billion a year on streamer Apple TV+,
according to a report in the Information that cited two people
familiar with the matter. The tech giant has spent over $5 billion
a year on content since launching Apple TV+ in 2...
Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors last week:
With new iOS software updates, Apple has been automatically
turning Apple Intelligence on again even for users who have
disabled it, a decision that has become increasingly frustrating
for those that don’t want to use Apple I...
Ina Fried, reporting for Axios:
The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose,
seeks class action status and unspecified financial damages on
behalf of those who purchased Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones
and other devices.
“Apple’s advertisements satur...
Mark Gurman, with a blockbuster scoop for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks,
aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track
after months of delays and stumbles, according to people familiar
with the situation.
Ch...
Here’s an update I just appended to my post yesterday, after linking to Gus Mueller’s suggestion that Apple open up a semantic index to third-party AI apps:
HealthKit already works a lot like what Mueller is suggesting here
(for, say, “SemanticKit”). With explicit user p...
Last March, when Apple introduced the then new M3 MacBook Airs, they moved the base model 13-inch M2 MacBook Air into the magic $999 spot in their own lineup, replacing the M1 MacBook Air. But mid-March it was announced that Walmart would begin selling the M1 MacBook Air — i...
Whole Reddit thread examining this simple question: “What month is it?” and Siri’s “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to “What month is it currently?” and got the answer “It is 2025.”
Update: Ask Siri (with Apple Intelligence™) “ChatGPT, what month is it?” and, though you’ll have to wait a few extra seconds, you’ll get the right answer each time. Perhaps the current month is “broad world knowledge” and Siri shouldn’t even attempt to answer such a complex question on its own?
News from Apple that I let slip by a few weeks ago, but that seems apt again today:
Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that delivers
helpful and relevant intelligence, will soon be available in more
languages, including French, German, Italian, Portugue...
The European Commission, today:
Today, the European Commission adopted two decisions under the
Digital Markets Act (DMA) specifying the measures that Apple has
to take to comply with certain aspects of its interoperability
obligation. [...]
The first set of measures con...
You can speculate what the ‘e’ in ‘16e’ stands for, but in my head
it stands for ‘essential’. Some things that I consider
particularly essential to the iPhone are all there: fantastic
build quality, an OLED screen, iOS and all its apps, and Face ID.
It even has satellite connectivity. Some other things I also
consider essential are not here: MagSafe is very missed, for
instance, but also multiple cameras. It would be reasonable to look at
Apple’s Camera app, then, and see what comprises the ‘essential’
iPhone camera experience according to Apple.
Alex Cheema is the founder of EXO Labs, an AI company focused on “AI you can trust with your data” by making systems that run locally, on computers you own and control. Apple provided him with two M3 Ultra Mac Studios, each maxed out with 512 GB of unified memory. Within a d...
Gus Mueller:
A week or so ago I was grousing to some friends that Apple needs
to open up things on the Mac so other LLMs can step in where Siri
is failing. In theory we (developers) could do this today, but I
would love to see a blessed system where Apple provided APIs t...
Scharon Harding, writing for Ars Technica:
Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play
before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing
online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted
yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an ... ...
Eric Migicovsky:
We’re excited to announce two new smartwatches that run open
source PebbleOS and are compatible with thousands of your beloved
Pebble apps.
Core 2 Duo has an ultra crisp black and white display,
polycarbonate frame, costs $149 and starts shipping in Ju...
Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire regarding pollster David Shor’s appearance on Ezra Klein’s podcast:
His surveys indicate a clear causal relationship: People who
relied on TikTok for news were much more likely to swing toward
Trump than those who got their infor...
Random Augustine has written a splendidly nerdy but very approachable overview of the evolution of Apple’s XNU kernel over the last decade:
2017 — Page Protection Layer
With the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X containing the A11
processor, Apple introduced a securi...
Nick Heer:
They are impressive, but my interpretation of statistics like
these is that one often finds percentages used like this when
neither actual number is very large. Nevertheless, another
indication that browser choice screens can have a positive
effect for smaller...
Ten years ago I bought a pair of Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones for use while podcasting. My product research was rigorous and exhaustive: I asked Marco Arment which headphones I should buy, he said these, so I bought them. They’re offered in three impedance variants: 32...
