WhatsApp: In addition to reading and responding to messages, for the first time WhatsApp on Apple Watch will now support many requested features: Call notifications: You can see who’s calling without needing to look at your iPhone. Full messages: You can read full Wh...

News from Apple’s Podcasts for Creators site, regarding new features in the iOS 26.2 beta releases: When you supply chapters in your episode description or in your RSS feed, they display in Apple Podcasts. If you submit chapters through your hosting provider, you can inc...

John Dvorak back in 2014, two months before Apple Watch was announced:

I got a lecture from a potential buyer, who will only purchase an iTime as a replacement for the iPhone rather than an accessory. But all evidence leads me to believe this device will be an accessory.

Doing that limits the appeal to people who were promised a sleeker gadget profile, which they desperately need, because they never manage to pare down anything. It’s tablet computing all over again.

If he’d meant that Apple Watch would be like the iPad, in terms of being a durable long-term many-billion-dollars-in-sales-per-quarter platform, he’d have been correct. But he meant that both were duds.

Dvorak is still writing, but alas, only occasionally.

Link: daringfireball.net/linked/2014/07/30/dvorak

Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge: The details of how, when, and where Google would charge its fees are complicated, and they seem to be somewhat tailored to the needs of a game developer like Epic Games. Google can charge 20 percent for an in-app purchase that pro...

John Voorhees, writing at MacStories: With iOS 26, Apple placed two big buttons onscreen when an alarm went off. One was for stop and the other snooze. That wasn’t a big deal for many of the alarms you set throughout the day, but when you’re waking up in the morning blur...

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Apple has launched a dramatic new web interface for the App Store. You can now get the full App Store experience right in your browser, with dedicated pages for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision, Watch, and TV app libraries.

Previously, Apple’s “apps.apple.com” domain simply redirected you to a generic page about the App Store on Apple’s website. Now, it takes you to a full-fledged version of the App Store you can browse on your computer.

This new website is nice, but it’s not the “full” App Store experience, insofar as you can’t buy or download apps from it. It’s more like a full website mirror of the App Store than a web version of the App Store.

Link: 9to5mac.com/2025/11/03/apple-launches-rich-new-web…

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Mark Gurman, in his weekly Power On column for Bloomberg (paywalled, alas): Even with the rosy sales forecast, the road ahead won’t be easy. Apple is betting heavily on the new Siri, which will lean on Google’s Gemini model and introduce features like AI-powered web sear...

Anthony Castrovince, writing for MLB (News+ link): Behind a stunning, game-tying swat from Miguel Rojas in the top of the ninth, a first-of-its-kind, go-ahead blast from Will Smith in the top of the 11th and the absurd extra work World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto provi...

Paul Lukas, founder of Uni Watch: Due to a perfect storm of negative developments, I have reluctantly come to the unfortunate conclusion that continuing to publish Uni Watch is no longer viable. This will be the site’s final post. Yes, I’m serious. And no, this isn’t a ...

The president of the United States, on his blog: Seth Meyers of NBC may be the least talented person to “perform” live in the history of television. In fact, he may be the WORST to perform, live or otherwise. I watched his show the other night for the first time in years...

My thanks to Jaho Coffee Roaster for sponsoring this week at DF. Jaho has been family-owned since 2005, and they’re guided by their slogan: “Live Slow”. Jaho knows that great coffee takes care. From sourcing small-lot single origins to blending coffees for balance, they smal...

Special guest Brian Mueller, developer of Carrot Weather, joins the show to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his utterly ridiculous but totally serious weather app.

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Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/10/31/ep-433

Tim Bray: Last night I had a very strange experience: About two thirds of the way through reading a Web page about myself, Tim Bray, I succumbed to boredom and killed the tab. Thus my introduction to Grokipedia. Here are early impressions. My Grokipedia entry has over s...

Jason Koebler, writing at 404 Media: Wednesday, as part of his ongoing war against Wikipedia because he does not like his page, Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, a fully AI-generated “encyclopedia” that serves no one and nothing other than the ego of the world’s richest man...

Apple Support:

This update includes enhancements to the Shortcuts app across all platforms, including new intelligent actions and an improved editing experience. Shortcuts on macOS now supports personal automations that can be triggered based on events such as time of day or when you take actions like saving a file to a folder, as well as new integrations with Control Center and Spotlight.

Via Matthew Cassinelli.

Link: support.apple.com/en-us/125148

Claudie Moreau, reporting for Euractiv:

Earlier in their presidency, Denmark had revived a controversial provision in the draft law that would mean online platforms — such as messaging apps — could be served with mandatory CSAM detection orders, including services protected by end-to-end encryption. However opposition from several other EU countries derailed any agreement in the Council.

Today, Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told local press that the Council presidency would move away from mandatory detection orders — and instead support CSAM detections remaining voluntary.

Sanity prevails.

Link: euractiv.com/news/danish-presidency-backs-away-from-chat…

TechRadar, summarizing this German-language report from Handelsblatt: The International Criminal Court (ICC) is looking to replace its internal work environments to move away from US-made software in fear of retaliation from the US administration. The Microsoft software...

Travis M. Andrews, Jeremy B. Merrill, and Shelly Tan, reporting for The Washington Post (News+ link:) “We had spent way too much on programming that doesn’t bring in any revenue,” Richard Grenell, a Trump ally and former ambassador to Germany, told the Washington Reporte...

Kif Leswing at CNBC interviewed Tim Cook ahead of yesterday’s Apple earnings report: Cook said that the company still plans to release an updated version of Siri next year, and said that there were more forthcoming partnerships like the company’s agreement to integrate O...

Speaking of vaporware, Dominic Preston at The Verge on the T1 Trump phone, which was announced back in June:

In fairness, for months now, the store page has only promised an arrival “later this year,” a change made at the same time Trump Mobile stopped claiming the T1 would be made in America. That gives the company two more months to release it and still pretend it’s on time.

Trump Mobile never responded to my request last month for an update on the phone’s release date, and it hasn’t replied to my latest email either. People of lesser faith might worry that this phone is no more than vaporware, but I refuse to give up. Place your bets now on whether I’ll be back here in another month’s time, still asking: where is the Trump phone?

Link: theverge.com/news/810500/where-is-the-trump-phone

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): It was wild to watch. Sure, Neo nearly toppled over while closing the dishwasher, took two minutes to fold the shirt and twisted its arm attempting to dance the Macarena. But shhh. Remember the rule. Oh, did ...

Matt Rosoff, writing for The Register: If Microsoft owns 27 percent of OpenAI, it stands to reason under equity accounting that it bears 27 percent of OpenAI’s losses. Microsoft’s admission that it shaved $3.1 billion off its net income to account for its share of OpenAI...

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors: In the post-results call with financial analysts, Wamsi Mohan of Bank of America asked Cook for a little more detail about Apple’s search revenue, given its lucrative deal with Google, and whether that revenue growth might decelerate i...

Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter ended September 27, 2025. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $102.5 billion, up 8 percent year over year. Diluted earnings per share was $1.85, up 13 percent year over year on...

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.

Link: mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-its-me-wikipedia-and-i-am-ready…

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.

Link: mastodon.social/@jamesthomson/115458178673560956