I posted this update a bit ago, but it’s worth making a separate post so you don’t miss it if you read the original post before I added the update:
It goes without saying that any consumer survey is only as good as
the surveyor. But CIRP, in particular, has posted some dubious
ones, to say the least. Jeff Johnson pointed out on Mastodon
that back in 2023, CIRP published a survey that claimed the Mac
Pro accounted for 43 percent of all Mac desktop sales, with
the Mac Mini and Mac Studio each accounting for only 4 percent
each. That’s just bananas. That’s not like maybe wrong, that’s
not gotta be a little wrong, that’s how could anyone publish
this? wrong. It’s hard to believe anything from CIRP after they
published that.
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:
“The experience supports Markdown style input and files for users
who prefer to work directly with the lightweight markup language,”
explains Dave Grochocki, principal product manager lead for
Microsoft’s Windows inbox apps. “You can sw...
I think it’s become tradition for Mark Gurman to run a mega spoiler report on the WWDC keynote the Friday before. Don’t read it if you don’t want to see a lot of genuine spoilers. But here are a few non-spoilers:
The AI changes will be surprisingly minor and are unlikely...
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, “The Trump-Musk Feud Has Been Great for X, Which Jumped Up the App Store Charts”:
The feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump may be
bad for the MAGA camp, but it’s proven to be beneficial for X,
which has seen engagement soaring over t...
Ryan Christoffel, writing at 9to5Mac regarding a paywalled survey report from CIRP:
CIRP recently performed a survey of Apple customers to get a sense
of how the company’s three tentpole products — iPhone, iPad, and
Mac — are performing. One focus was on understanding th...
Jake Schumacher, director of the 2017 documentary App: The Human Story, sent me a note that Sebastiaan de With’s post this week, “Physicality: The New Age of UI” (my thoughts here), reminded him of a clip from the movie where Neven Mrgan compared Skeuomorphic design to classic cars from the 1940s and ’50s. So true. If you’ve got two and a half minutes to spare, watch this.
Jérôme Marin, writing at Cafétech:
The disagreement between Apple and Brussels centers on Article
5.4. In its English version, the article states that the
gatekeeper — the term used by the Commission for the seven major
tech companies subject to the DMA — “shall allow bu...
Nice write-up from Zac Hall at 9to5Mac:
Theater for visionOS premiered a year ago with a clever
software launch campaign: exclusively streaming John Gruber’s The
Talk Show post-WWDC event live with 3D video.
The Apple Vision Pro app has continued to mature since its deb...
Sandwich Vision:
Theater, the premier platform for spatial media, cinema and events
on Apple Vision Pro, is proud to announce the immersive livestream
of The Talk Show Live from WWDC on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Following last year’s groundbreaking first-ever immersive
li...
Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge:
In April, a federal judge demanded that Apple begin allowing web
links, cease restricting how links are formatted, and enable
developers to offer external payment options without giving the
company a cut of their revenue. Apple promptly appe...
Marco Arment, moved to write his first blog post in 11 months:
For unspecified reasons, Apple has declined to participate this
year, ending what had become a beloved tradition in our
community — and I can’t help but suspect that it won’t come back.
(A lot has changed in ...
Marcus Mendes, in a piece at 9to5Mac with multiple spoilers for next week’s keynote:
Apple is working on supporting the ability to export notes in
Markdown from Apple Notes, which is something third-party apps
have supported for years. Granted, this is a niche feature, b...
Wayne Ma, reporting last month at The Information (a paywalled website so obnoxious that they force $300/year subscribers to click through an article-blocking popover pitching them on upgrading to a $500/year subscription), and summarized here by MacRumors:
However, the ...
A team of researchers has uncovered a scheme they’ve dubbed “Local Mess” — used by Meta since September 2024, and Russian search engine Yandex since 2017 (!) — to de-anonymize Android users’ web browsing across millions of websites that include Meta’s and Yandex’s respective...
Dan Goodin, writing at Ars Technica:
This abuse has been observed only in Android, and evidence
suggests that the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica target only
Android users. The researchers say it may be technically feasible
to target iOS because browsers on that platform a...
Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto, reporting last week for NOTUS (“News of The United States” — a seriously good up-and-coming national affairs publication):
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America
Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard”
science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up
its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from
broken links to misstated conclusions.
Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all.
Shocking that these dipshits would generate their report with whatever came out of an LLM and not actually check — let alone, you know, read — the cited studies.
Join James Dyson as he introduces the new Dyson PencilVac
Fluffycones cleaner. Our latest, most advanced floorcare
technology — now available in Japan.
Nine minutes, short and sweet. I watched the whole thing and loved it. If it had been pre-recorded, I bet I wouldn’t have gotten more than two or three minutes into it, even though the video would have been more polished. There’s just something compelling about a live demo, even when you’re watching on YouTube.
(The new PencilVac looks cool too, but it seems too good to be true. I’ll be interested to hear from reviewers whether it, uh, actually sucks or kinda sucks.)
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose Showtime: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm) Special Guest(s): Definitely, but keep in mind what I announced last week Price: $50
I’ll have more to announce about the show soon, but one week out, I just want to remind everyone that tickets are on sale now, and selling at about the same pace as the last two years. (In 2018 and 2019, when WWDC was a real in-person conference in San Jose, tickets sold out almost instantaneously.)
Also: at least one sponsorship slot is still available. If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to see me promote at the start of the show, shoot me an email.
Sebastiaan de With, in a wonderfully-illustrated piece (a) examining, in detail, where iOS UI has been, and (b) speculating, with detailed mockups, where he thinks/hopes it’s about to go, starting at WWDC next week:
I’d like to imagine what could come next. Both by rende...
From my 2011 post linking to Fantastical 1.0:
Fantastical’s primary innovation is its natural language parser
for event creation — you type something like “Yanks-Rays tonight
at 6:40” and Fantastical not only parses that into a new event,
but, using some very clever anim...
Flexibits:
Just forward emails to email@fantastical.app from any email
address linked with your Flexibits Account and Fantastical will
convert them into events or tasks to quickly add to your
calendar. After a few seconds you’ll see detected events appear
in Fantastical ...
Matthew Garrahan, in the Financial Times:
Sir Jony Ive remembers the day in 1997 when he first met Laurene
Powell Jobs, outside the house she shared with her late husband,
Steve. [...]
“I was often at the house,” Ive says. “Certainly on the weekends,”
says Powell Jobs, ...
Benjamin Mayo, writing at 9to5Mac:
Apple has appealed parts of the Digital Markets Act law citing
user privacy concerns. Specifically, Apple is contesting the
interoperability requirements that say data like
notification content and WiFi networks should be made available...
WhatsApp:
As one of our biggest requests, we’re excited to announce that
WhatsApp is now available on iPad.[...]
We’ve made WhatsApp for iPad ideal for multitasking so you can get
more done. Take advantage of iPadOS multitasking features such as
Stage Manager, Split Vie...
Mark Alldritt, Late Night Software:
The day has finally come. After 30 years of continuous
development, Script Debugger has been retired and will no longer
be available for sale. Please see this post for more
information.
Over the last few months we have received a wond...
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose Showtime: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm) Special Guest(s):See below Price: $50
Ever since I started doing these live shows from WWDC, I’ve kept the guest(s) secret, until showtime. I’m still doing that this year. But in recent years the guests have seemed a bit predictable: senior executives from Apple. This year I again extended my usual invitation to Apple, but, for the first time since 2015, they declined.
I think this will make for a fascinating show, but I want to set everyone’s expectations accordingly. I’m invigorated by this. See you at the show, I hope.
Tony Romm and Ana Swanson, reporting for The New York Times (paywall-busting gift link):
A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump
from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S.
trading partners, finding that federal law did not g...
