Joe Flint, Brian Schwartz, and Natalie Andrews, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link, also in News+): “Just tried calling you about new bid we have submitted,” Ellison texted Zaslav. “I heard you on all your concerns and believe we have addressed them in our ...

The Guardian:

There on a plinth, with “Donald J Trump” emblazoned on it in capital letters, was the uncoveted trophy: a golden globe resting on five golden hands big enough to compensate any tiny-handed recipient feeling sore about the Nobel peace prize.

But wait, there was more. “There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” added Infantino, knowing that with Trump there is no such thing as too much.

Glowing oranger than usual under the stage lights, Trump eagerly put the medal around his neck without waiting for Infantino to do the honours. He told the audience of 2,000 people: “This is truly one of the great honours of my life.”

It’s just perfect that Trump put the medal around his own neck.

The jokes practically wrote themselves.

Link: theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-peace-prize-fifa…

Donald Trump, on his blog: The only reason Marjorie “Traitor” Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!). Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas ...

Ben Thompson at Stratechery yesterday: It’s important to note that the President does not have final say in the matter: President Trump directed the DOJ to oppose AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, but the DOJ lost in federal court, much to AT&T’s detriment. Inde...

The Wall Street Journal yesterday: Paramount launched a $77.9 billion hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros. Discovery Monday, taking its case for acquiring the storied entertainment company directly to shareholders just days after Warner agreed to a deal with Netflix. ...

CNBC: Apple chip leader Johny Srouji addressed rumors of his impending exit in a memo to staff on Monday, saying he doesn’t plan on leaving the company anytime soon. “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” he wrote. Bloomb...

Great coffee changes the day. Since 2005, our family-owned roastery has taken the slow and careful approach, sourcing small-lot coffees, roasting in small batches and shipping every bag fresh. Award-winning coffee delivered to your home or office.

Holiday gifts? Fresh coffee is a gift that never misses, easy to give, even better to receive.

DF readers get 20% off with code DF.

Fresh beans shipped nationwide.

Give better coffee this season.

Link: jaho.com/s/df

Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors (regarding a report at Reuters): Apple could ultimately have to pay up to an estimated 637 million euros to address the damage suffered by 14 million iPhone and iPad users in the Netherlands. That’s about €45/user. The lawsuit date...

Dasha Litvinova, reporting for the AP: Russian authorities said Thursday they have imposed restrictions on Apple’s video calling service FaceTime, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet and communications online. State internet regulator Roskom...

Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times, “Meta Weighs Cuts to Its Metaverse Unit” (gift link): Meta is considering making cuts to a division in its Reality Labs unit that works on the so-called metaverse, said three employees with knowledge of the matter. The cuts ...

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bot attacks and brute force attempts?

WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. A simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior. Your users trust you. WorkOS Radar lets you keep it that way.

Link: workos.com/radar?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=RSS…

One small update I just appended to my piece Friday taking a look at the winning apps from this year’s App Store Awards:

Lastly, I have questions — some really hard questions — regarding Tiimo’s app icon. Such as, “What is that?”

Perhaps it got picked because it makes Apple’s new OS 26 icons look good by comparison?

Link: daringfireball.net/2025/12/2025_app_store_award_winners

Aaron Tilley and Wayne Ma, in a piece headlined “Why Silicon Valley is Buzzing About Apple CEO Succession” at the paywalled-up-the-wazoo The Information: Prediction site Polymarket places Ternus’ odds of getting the job at nearly 55%, ahead of other current Apple executi...

Dithering is my and Ben Thompson’s twice-a-week podcast — 15 minutes per episode, not a minute less, not a minute more. It’s a $7/month or $70/year subscription, and included in the Stratechery Plus bundle (a bargain). This year our CMS (Passport — check it out) gained a feature that lets us make some episodes free for everyone to listen to on the website. Today’s episode, regarding Alan Dye leaving Apple for Meta, seems like a good one to do that with. (And, once again, this month’s album art serendipitously captures my mood.)

Give it a listen. Subscribe if you enjoy it.

Link: dithering.passport.online/member/episode/alan-dye-leaves…

Apple Newsroom, yesterday: Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice presid...

This interview was both interesting and a lot of fun. Worth a listen or re-listen.

Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2017/04/21/ep-188

Apple, today: “Announcing the 2025 App Store Awards”: This year’s winners represent the best-in-class apps and games we returned to again and again. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. I did not enjoy all of them as much as Apple did. Tiimo iPhone app of the yea...

Meg James, reporting for The Los Angeles Times (News+ link): The two companies announced the blockbuster deal early Friday morning. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters as Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone. Fred Flintstone? “Our mission ha...

NBC News, back in March 2018: Speaking at a town hall event hosted by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Recode’s Kara Swisher, Cook said Facebook put profits above all else when it allegedly allowed user data to be taken through connected apps. [...] When asked what he would do i...

Straight/dumb quotation marks. Some default Instagram typeface. That period just hanging there, outside the closing quote. This is the post from the man who led Apple’s software design for a decade.

Not to mention the gall to use any quote from Steve Jobs, let alone this particular one, which is enshrined by Apple on the wall outside Town Hall at the old Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, and provides the title for the splendid book published (in a delightful interactive version on the web, and in gorgeous limited print editions) by the Steve Jobs Archive and LoveFrom.

“Just figure out what’s next” for Alan Dye, after his supposedly wonderful accomplishments at Apple, is ... going to work for Meta? Jiminy H. Christ, that takes stones.

Link: x.com/sdw/status/1996431428561822093?s=46

In my post earlier today on the then-breaking news that Alan Dye has left Apple to join Meta as chief design officer (a new title at the company1), I wrote: It sounds like Dye chose to jump ship, and wasn’t squeezed out (as it seems with former AI chief John Giannandrea ...

Back in July, I was lucky enough to have my friend Louie Mantia on The Talk Show to talk about Liquid Glass and (as I wrote in the show notes) “the worrisome state of Apple’s UI design overall”. This was probably my favorite episode of the show all year, and I think it holds...

Tyler Hall, just one week ago: Maybe it’s because my eyes are getting old or maybe it’s because the contrast between windows on macOS keeps getting worse. Either way, I built a tiny Mac app last night that draws a border around the active window. I named it “Alan”. In A...

That doesn’t look like one of the fancy Mitsubishi traction elevators at Apple Park, but otherwise, this jibes.

Link: pxlnv.com/linklog/dye-exit/

Mark Gurman, with blockbuster news at Bloomberg: Meta Platforms Inc. has poached Apple Inc.’s most prominent design executive in a major coup that underscores a push by the social networking giant into AI-equipped consumer devices. The company is hiring Alan Dye, who ha...

Todd Vaziri, on the HBO Max Mad Men fiasco: It appears as though this represents the original photography, unaltered before digital visual effects got involved. Somehow, this episode (along with many others) do not include all the digital visual effects that were in the ...

Alan Sepinwall, writing for Wired (News+ link in case Wired’s paywall busts your balls): Last month, HBO Max announced a major new addition to its library. Not only would the streamer be adding Mad Men — a show that HBO execs infamously passed on back when Matthew Weiner...

Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, reporting for Reuters: Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey its concerns to New Delhi, three sources said, after the government’s move sparked survei...

Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bot attacks and brute force attempts?

WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. A simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior.

Your users trust you. Let’s keep it that way.

Link: workos.com/radar?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=RSS…

Speaking of Apple executive HR news, in his Power On Bloomberg column last weekend, Mark Gurman pooh-poohed the Financial Times’s recent report that Tim Cook was likely to retire early next year (paywalled, alas, but summarized by MacRumors): In October, I wrote that the...