Every phone now ships with an assistant. You ask, it answers. Lame. We built a phone that writes software instead. The app idea you’ve had in your notes for years. The side hustle you will never get around to building. The weird thing only you would want. Describe it, answer a few questions, and it’s on your home screen — yours, working, sendable to a friend. No app store between you and your ideas. The first fifty units go to teams who’ll push on it and tell us what breaks.
Jason Snell:
Apple’s most valuable asset is its brand. Not its real estate,
not its intellectual property, not even any particular product.
Even the mighty iPhone has no value if, over time, the traits
that differentiate it from competitor products are erased.
Apple’s br...
Regarding my recent pieces regarding Apple’s shitty ads in the App Store and Apple News (and, perhaps soon, Apple Maps), a friend sent me this pithy take:
The ads Apple is happy to inflict on us in its apps are the
equivalent of the stickers it would never allow on its p...
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their MCP server. Debugging SSO, managing users, adjusting auth policies, configuring branding: every configuration task has lived behind a UI that only a human can drive.
The WorkOS MCP server gives agents the same access as your dashboard login. Hundreds of operations, discoverable at runtime. Connect in one command via OAuth, with scoped tokens instead of a master API key. Pass a screenshot of your marketing site and ask your agent to match the login page. If a human had to do it before, an agent can do it now. Connect your agent today.
Fascinating essay by Nikhil Suresh:
On a trip overseas, I had the privilege of a meeting with one of
the Fortune 500 executives mentioned at the beginning of the post,
who will remain anonymous so that they are not executed by firing
squad by their board. As we were chat...
The European Commission on Thursday:
The Commission found that Google gives preferential treatment to
its own services, including shopping, hotels, transport and sports
results, over those of third parties in Google Search, thereby
breaching its obligations under the DMA...
Julien Khaleghy, CEO of SerpApi:
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
granted our motion to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, marking a win not
just for SerpApi, but for all who depend on an open internet.
We’re pleased that the court rejected Google’s...
Apple and Ford today announced that Apple Maps will be integrated
directly into Ford’s upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV)
Platform through Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK. Coming to
Ford’s UEV Platform in 2027, this integration will deliver a
beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple
Maps directly to the vehicle’s displays. Road-level Maps
information will also enable Ford’s Latitude AI team to build a
seamless hands-free driving experience.
Teddy Rosenbluth, reporting for The New York Times:
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so
far this year. The case count toppled the record set last
year, when measles infected more tha...
For a long time the best native Mac IRC client was Textual, but although Textual still works, it’s been sunset by the author. Not to fear, however. Fredrik Blank just launched bIRC:
Creating an IRC client in 2026 is not something that will pay the
bills : ) It would be j...
Following up on the previous item today, re: content blockers and ad-blocking, I ran into a weird situation a few weeks ago with my column “John Ternus Should Reverse Apple’s Slide Down the Advertising Slippery Slope”. That article contains this sentence, in Markdown:
And -...
Speaking of dickovers, here’s Cory Doctorow, writing this week at Pluralistic:
Seizing the means of computation isn’t theft, it’s bargaining.
Commercial surveillance companies will tell you that by spying on
you, they are simply engaged in a marketplace exchange in which...
The betting odds for the Sixers to win the NBA championship went from 20-1 to 10-1. Here’s James on Twitter/X, explaining his decision:
This is my last decision. I’m not going for money. I’m not going
for family. What am I really playing for at this point?
I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to
grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the
feeling of winning another championship.
I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship
team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this
incredible journey one last time.
Here’s a real gem that a reader sent me. Tomtoc is a maker of laptop bags and sleeves. Visit their homepage and, of course, you’ll get a dickover asking you to join their mailing list “for exclusive updates and get a chance to win a free tech pouch every month.” But here’s the gem. If you do subscribe, and you decide later to unsubscribe, you get this:
Quinn Nelson returns to the show to discuss OpenAI’s ChatGPT/Codex “native” app migration fiasco, Siri AI in Apple’s OS 27 betas, MacOS 27 Golden Gate, and the hottest new cell phone of the year, the Trump T1.
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Kirk McElhearn, back in February:
I use Apple News to keep up on topics that I don’t find in sources
I pay for (The Guardian and The New York Times). But there’s no
way I’m going to pay the exorbitant price Apple wants for Apple
News+ — £13 — because, while you get more ...
Dvorak is best known for allthetakes he was jacktastically wrong about, but what gave his schtick staying power is that he was technically savvy. His take here on the PS/2 was actually spot-on: that it was technically impressive in many ways, especially the way it was assembled without any cables, but that it was doomed in the market against ugly mess-of-cables commodity PCs.
“Computer Chronicles” was the real show from the 1980s that Adam Lisagor so lovingly and spectacularly spoofed with “Computer Show” a decade ago.
William Gallagher, AppleInsider:
Legendary technology columnist, pundit, author and podcast host
John C. Dvorak has died, age 80. He is survived by his wife
Mimi Dvorak.
Today Dvorak is best known for co-hosting the “No Agenda” podcast
with Adam Curry, where he would cr...
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
Flighty’s new Connection Assistant feature includes step-by-step
information for your specific connection. This includes things
like terminal changes, security checkpoints, passport control, and
more. Connection Assistant also gives you estimates ...
The European Commission, last week:
Today, the European Commission has issued two sets of binding
specification measures to Google under the Digital Markets Act.
The aim of the first specification measures is to ensure that
competitors’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) serv...
Debugging SSO, managing users, adjusting auth policies, configuring branding: every configuration task has lived behind a UI that only a human can drive.
The WorkOS MCP server gives agents the same access as your dashboard login. Hundreds of operations, discoverable at runtime. Connect in one command via OAuth, with scoped tokens instead of a master API key. Pass a screenshot of your marketing site and ask your agent to match the login page. If a human had to do it before, an agent can do it now.
Ben Thompson, on the hype regarding Kimi K3, at Stratechery:
This is a point that bears repeating: because U.S. open weight
model makers must follow the frontier labs’ terms of service, they
(1) are worse than Chinese alternatives and (2) end up distilling
the distillati...
My thanks to Paper for sponsoring last week at DF. Paper is a new professional design tool where every layer is real HTML and CSS. Your design is already code, which means fewer handoffs, translations, and layers of abstraction between what you design and what you actually ship.
Paper works both ways: code to design, and design to code. Connect any AI agent through MCP and the agent can read and edit your designs. Or use Paper Snapshot to capture your live site as editable layers and make new iterations. Agents handle the tedious work so you can focus on your craft and the decisions that matter.
9to5Mac:
Brazilian users browsing the App Store rankings in categories
such as Navigation, Travel, and Weather have noticed a growing
number of poorly made games appearing among the top results, many
of them featuring AI-generated illustrations of animals as their
app ic...
‘It Seems You Have a Different Policy’
Ben Thompson, in a subscriber-only Stratechery update Tuesday:
I got a fun email from former Apple executive, Nest founder, and
one-time Stratechery Interview subject Tony Fadell in response to
yesterday’s Update about Apple suing ...
Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times from San Francisco:
About 40 former employees now working at OpenAI have been sent
letters directing them to preserve documents and communications
and demanding meetings with Apple’s lawyers, according to multiple
people familiar with the matter. Apple and OpenAI declined to
comment.
The decision to hit employees with personal legal letters
highlights Apple’s aggressive tactics after it last week launched
a blockbuster lawsuit accusing OpenAI and two employees of
stealing secret hardware plans.
Joanna Stern at New Things, last month:
Last month, just days after my book went on sale, AI knockoffs of
the ebook version flooded Apple Books. There was Joanna Stern On
I Am Not A Robot by Sophie Mercer. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Finn
Tech. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Joana Stern — ...
Arjun Kharpal, reporting for CNBC, back on July 2:
Europe’s top court on Thursday upheld Google’s fine of around 4.1
billion euros ($4.67 billion) over alleged anti-competitive
practices.
In 2018, the European Commission slapped Google with the
record-breaking penalty o...
Roblox executives Nick Tornow and Vlad Loktev, on the Roblox blog:
Twenty years ago, Roblox launched with a simple idea: “You make
the game.” At the time, that was a radical proposition — most
games were made by studios and professionals, and the idea that
anyone could b...
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