After last year, Apple could’ve been forgiven for wanting to soft-pedal this year, Apple Intelligence and regroup. It didn’t do that, nor did it double down on last year. Instead, it’s chosen a middle ground — a bit safe and familiar but also a place where Apple can feel a bit more like itself. In the long run, it needs to get this right. In the short term, maybe it should focus on meeting its users where they are, rather than pretending to be something it’s not.
Stephen Hackett has a list of the Intel Macs that MacOS 26 Tahoe supports, and the ones they’re dropping support for this year.
Apple has gone through three CPU architecture transitions in the Mac’s history:
68K to PowerPC starting in 1994
PowerPC to Intel starting in 20...
Apple’s AI rollout has been rocky, from Siri delays to underwhelming Apple Intelligence features. WSJ’s Joanna Stern sits down with software chief Craig Federighi and marketing head Greg Joswiak to talk about the future of AI at Apple — and what the heck happened to that smarter Siri.
To that end, while I understand why many people were underwhelmed by this WWDC, particularly in comparison to the AI extravaganza that was Google I/O, I think it was one of the more encouraging Apple keynotes in a long time. Apple is a company that went too far in too many areas, and needed to retreat. Focusing on things only Apple can do is a good thing; empowering developers and depending on partners is a good thing; giving even the appearance of thoughtful thinking with regards to the App Store (it’s a low bar!) is a good thing. Of course we want and are excited by tech companies promising the future; what is a prerequisite is delivering in the present, and it’s a sign of progress that Apple retreated to nothing more than that.
I’ve got iOS 26 installed on a spare phone already, and I like the new UI a lot. In addition to just plain looking cool, Apple has tackled a lot of longstanding minor irritants.
For example, the iOS contextual menu for text selections — the one with Cut/Copy/Paste. For year...
Stephen Hackett, noting the biggest news of the day:
Something jumped out at me in the macOS Tahoe segment of the WWDC keynote today: the Finder icon is reversed. […]
The Big Sur Finder icon has been with us ever since, and I hope Apple reverses course here.
I’m obviously joking about this being the biggest news of the day, but it really does feel just plain wrong to swap the dark/light sides. The Finder icon is more than an icon, it’s a logo, a brand.
With WWDC25 bringing the biggest design overhaul since iOS 7, you’ll want to prototype your new interfaces fast. DetailsPro lets you build real SwiftUI layouts directly on your iPhone — no Mac required, no code needed. Mock up your WWDC-inspired designs during coffee breaks. Export clean SwiftUI code straight to Xcode when you’re ready. While everyone else is still thinking, you’re already building. Free to use, with pro features if you need them. Perfect for the design renaissance.
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose Showtime: Tuesday, 10 June 2025, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm) Special Guest(s):Indeed Price: $50
A different type of show this year, and I’m excited for it. If you can make it, you should come. You’ll even enjoy the prelude, mingling with fellow DF readers and listeners.
Scharon Harding, writing at Ars Technica:
“Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and use an Apple
TV box.”
That’s the common guidance you’ll hear from Ars readers for those
seeking the joys of streaming without giving up too much privacy.
Based on our research and t...
Filipe Espósito, in a scoop for 9to5Mac all the way back in October:
9to5Mac has learned details about the new project from reliable
sources familiar with the matter. The new app combines
functionality from the App Store and Game Center in one place. The
gaming app is no...
Parshin Shojaee, Iman Mirzadeh, Keivan Alizadeh, Maxwell Horton, Samy Bengio, and Mehrdad Farajtabar, from Apple’s Machine Learning Research team:
Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced
Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking...
Mark Gurman, in his eve-of-WWDC Power On column at Bloomberg:
The Liquid Glass interface is going to be the most exciting part
of this year’s developer conference. It will also be a bit of a
distraction from the reality facing Apple: The company is behind
in artificial i...
Mark Gurman, in his eve-of-WWDC Power On column at Bloomberg:
The Liquid Glass interface is going to be the most exciting part
of this year’s developer conference. It will also be a bit of a
distraction from the reality facing Apple: The company is behind
in artificial i...
Kyle Hughes, in a brief thread on Mastodon last week:
At work I’m developing a new iOS app on a small team alongside a
small Android team doing the same. We are getting lapped to an
unfathomable degree because of how productive they are with
Kotlin, Compose, and Cursor. ...
Thomas Ptacek:
LLMs can write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll
ever need to write. And most code on most projects is tedious.
LLMs drastically reduce the number of things you’ll ever need to
Google. They look things up themselves. Most importantly, they
do...
I don’t use the web interface to Movable Type, my moribund-but-works-just-great CMS, very often. But I was using it today and noticed something odd. Next to the small-text metadata that says I’ve written 35,086 entries in total, it said I had one draft. One. I don’t use the ...
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Modern authentication should be seamless and secure. WorkOS makes it easy to integrate features like MFA, SSO, and RBAC. Whether you’re replacing passwords, stopping fraud, or adding enterprise auth, WorkOS can help you build frictionless auth that scales.
New features they launched just last month include:
From his family, on Atkinson’s Facebook page:
We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and
stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away on the night of Thursday,
June 5th, 2025, due to pancreatic cancer. He was at home in
Portola Valley in his bed, surrounded by fami...
WhatsApp, on their official blog back in April 2023:
Last year, we introduced the ability for users globally to
message seamlessly across all their devices, while
maintaining the same level of privacy and security.
Today, we’re improving our multi-device offering furthe...
A brief follow-up to my love letter to Apple’s discontinued MagSafe Battery Pack this week. I wrote:
They’re the only Lightning devices left in my life and they’re so
good I’m happy to still keep one Lightning cable in my travel bag
to use them.
Among its other unique ...
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...
