WikiTok is the creation of Isaac Gemal. The premise is that it’s a TikTok-style interface for random articles from Wikipedia. One thing at a time on screen, swipe up to scroll down to the next item whenever you’re ready, and you can keep going forever if you want. But instea...
Allison Johnson, writing at The Verge:
Samsung’s Galaxy S-series is in its software era. Maybe the whole
smartphone industry is, too, save for a few phones with hinges
(Samsung’s included). But overall, we have exited the
hardware-driven innovation cycle and are firmly i...
Qianer Liu and Jing Yang, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas — MacRumors summary):
Apple has recently started working with Chinese internet and
e-commerce giant Alibaba Group to roll out artificial intelligence
features in China, according to one person with ...
From the Apple Newsroom archive, dateline “Macworld Expo, San Francisco — January 5, 2000”:
Apple today took the wraps off its highly anticipated Internet
strategy, introducing a new category of Internet services called
iTools; a completely redesigned Apple.com web site ...
Pixelmator last year announced that it was being acquired
by Apple, and today the company confirmed that the acquisition has
been completed after Apple received regulatory approval. The
Pixelmator for iOS, Pixelmator Pro, and Photomator apps were today
updated with a new splash screen announcing the deal.
New Apple support document dropped today:
You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you’ve
purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary
Apple Account. The secondary Apple Account might be an account
that’s used only for purchases. You’ll ...
Angela Watercutter, with a great behind-the-scenes look at the Apple-Music-sponsored halftime show by Kendrick Lamar:
While “making it work” means one thing when you’re putting on a
Madonna concert or the Democratic National Convention, it means
something different when ...
A scorebug is industry jargon for the sub-genre of chyron (itself jargon) that shows ever-present information about a televised sporting event while you’re watching. These graphics display the teams, the score, the time remaining, and other metadata pertaining to the current...
Well, the Philadelphia Eagles, of course, won the actual Super Bowl, winning in a romp so one-sided that they would have embarrassed the Chiefs less if they had pantsed Patrick Mahomes at the 50-yard line. But the second contest is for best commercial. And my vote goes to Ni...
Integrate authentication and user management services with applications made for the Apple ecosystem with Clerk’s iOS SDK. Built with Swift, the SDK adheres to modern standards, delivering the idiomatic and consistent developer experience you expect from Clerk. Our iOS SDK makes use of the latest in Swift networking, allowing your code to be as readable and expressive as possible. Authenticate with your favorite social providers in just a few lines of code. Let the iOS SDK take care of managing your users’ authentication state so you can get back to building your app.
Looks like more of an Eddy scene than a Tim scene, but everyone’s having fun. There’s a reason this is the 11th Super Bowl held in New Orleans.
Should be a good football game, too. The Chiefs and Eagles are both very good teams (and both very well-run franchises). There’s a...
Zara Stone, reporting for The Standard:
“There’s a renaissance happening now in Aaron Swartz-land,” said
Lisa Rein, the co-founder of Creative Commons, a nonprofit devoted
to expanding public access to information. She founded Aaron
Swartz Day in 2013, an annual hackatho...
TikTok, on X:
We’re enhancing ways for our community to continue using TikTok by
making Android Package Kits available at
http://TikTok.com/download so that our U.S. Android users can
download our app and create, discover, and connect on TikTok.
Tens of millions of use...
Jason Snell, in a column for Macworld back in November (same column at Six Colors, for members):
This is an important moment. Apple has built two separate models
for running software on our devices. In one, there’s a gradient of
trustworthiness that strongly encourages u...
Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica on new details from an authors group lawsuit alleging Meta trained its AI models on a trove of pirated books:
Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large
dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of million...
This week Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2024. As I’ve done in the past — 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category scores ranging from 5 to 1; I’ve...
Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:
Last year, we reported that Apple sued its former software
engineer Andrew Aude for providing journalists with
confidential information about the company’s future plans,
including details about the Journal app, Vision Pro
headset, ...
Dave Nanian, last week at the Shirt Pocket blog:
Just a quick post: macOS 15.3 is now out, and with it, a fix for
the broken replicator. As such, macOS copying will work again with
Erase, Then Copy backups. No update to SuperDuper is necessary
(but feel free to install o...
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, on X:
Apple is being extremely disingenuous in attacking the European
Union here. The iOS App Store hosts the Reddit app, which provides
access to massive amounts of porn. Apple knows this, permits it,
and gave Reddit a 17+ (!!!) rating and Editors ...
Apple, in its media statement re: Hot Tub (the you-have-to-admit-it’s-a-fun-name hardcore porn app now available in the AltStore PAL alternative app marketplace in the EU), closed its statement with the following: “The truth is that we are required by the European Commission...
From an AltStore announcement yesterday:
iPhone turns 18 this year, which means it’s finally old enough for
some more ~mature~ apps…
Introducing Hot Tub by c1d3r, the world’s 1st Apple-approved
porn app!
The screenshots and video previews are blurred-for-obfuscation b...
If you enjoy podcasts, you should subscribe to Dithering, the twice-weekly 15-minutes-on-the-button podcast I do with Ben Thompson. Dithering as a standalone subscription costs just $7/month or $70/year. (It’s also included in Ben’s excellent Stratechery Plus bundle.) People who try Dithering seem to love it, too — we have remarkably little churn.
If you’re on the fence, subscribe for a month and you’re only out $7 — but I bet you’ll stick around. Trust me. And thanks to everyone who’s already subscribed.
The LBJ Presidential Library, regarding a largely ad-libbed address Lyndon Johnson gave to a group of 150 non-incumbent Democratic candidates for Congress in 1966:
He talked about the difference between Republicans and Democrats:
“We’re for something, and they are agains...
Speaking of books, Simon & Schuster announced a new one:
Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company
and creator of the twenty-first century’s defining product. The
iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But
Apple is now a v...
Speaking of cheating, my favorite book from Trump’s first term was Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat, which I linked to, with an excerpt still available at The Guardian, when it came out in 2019. I’ve been a fan of Reilly’s writing since I was a teenager and he was the back-page columnist for Sports Illustrated; this is the book Reilly was born to write. I just picked my copy off my shelf and started to re-read it, and got sucked right back in. Posting this link is my way of forcing myself to put it down until tonight.
(Main link here is an Amazon affiliate one, which will make me rich if you purchase through it. If you prefer not to buy books from Amazon, here’s a link to Bookshop.org.)
Drew Harwell, at The Washington Post (gift link, via Harwell himself on Bluesky — which seemingly uses a ludicrously long 397-character token in the URL):
But after poring over his live-streamed gameplay, online sleuths
recently made a shocking accusation: Musk had cheat...
Ezra Klein in an audio essay/transcribed column at The New York Times:
That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump
is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a
president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He
is hopi...
(My one suggestion for 2025’s list: My Dad’s Chips. Holy hell are these good potato chips. I’ve got a particular weakness for the French Onion ones. Chef’s kiss. Distribution seems mostly limited to the northeast for now.)
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, bots attacks and brute force attempts?
WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. Their simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior.
Interesting detail with the latest update to Apple’s app for learning and tinkering with Swift: it’s now named Playground, singular, not Playgrounds, plural. I’m not going to argue that much should be made of the name change, but I like it. The app is the playground — a place for playing with Swift — not a factory for making playgrounds.
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