Latest posts
- Trump’s Enormous Gamble on Regime Change in IranFeb 28, 2026John Gruber
Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic: When the 2003 war with Iraq ended, U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine said that when American diplomats embarked on reconstruction, they ruefully joked that “there were 500 ways to do it wrong and two or three ways to do it right. And what we didn’t understand is that we were going to go through all 500.” ★
- West Virginia’s Anti-Apple CSAM Lawsuit Would Help Child Predators Walk FreeFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Mike Masnick, writing for Techdirt: Read that again. If West Virginia wins — if an actual court orders Apple to start scanning iCloud for CSAM — then every image flagged by those mandated scans becomes evidence obtained through a warrantless government search conducted without probable cause. The Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule means defense attorneys get to walk into court and demand that ev
- How to Block the ‘Upgrade to Tahoe’ Alerts and System Settings IndicatorFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Rob Griffiths, writing at The Robservatory: So I have macOS Tahoe on my laptop, but I’m keeping my desktop Mac on macOS Sequoia for now. Which means I have the joy of seeing things like this wonderful notification on a regular basis. Or I did, until I found a way to block them, at least in 90 day chunks. [...] The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce policies on Macs in
- ★ A Sometimes-Hidden Setting Controls What Happens When You Tap a Call in the iOS 26 Phone AppFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Back in December, Adam Engst wrote this interesting follow-up to his feature story at TidBITS a few weeks prior exploring the differences between the new Unified and old Classic interface modes for the Phone app in iOS 26. It’s also a good follow-up to my month-ago link to Engst’s original feature, as well as a continuation of my recent theme on the fundamentals of good UI design. The gist of Engs
- TUDUMBFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass: Of course, Netflix could have absorbed such a cost. It’s a $400B company (well, before this deal, anyway) — double Disney! Paramount Skydance? They’re worth $11B. Yes, they’re paying almost exactly $100B more than they’re worth for WBD. Yes, it’s looney. But really, it’s leverage. To be clear, Netflix was going to pay for the deal with debt too, but they have a cle
- Block Lays Off 4,000 (of 10,000) EmployeesFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
CNBC: Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its head count. The stock skyrocketed as much as 24% in extended trading. “Today we shared a difficult decision with our team,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in a letter to shareholders. “We’re reducing Block by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000, which means that over 4,000
- Apple Announces F1 Broadcast Details, and a Surprising Netflix PartnershipFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors: Perhaps the most surprising announcement on Thursday was that Apple and Netflix, which have had a rather stand-offish relationship when it comes to video programming, have struck a deal to swap some Formula One-related content. Formula One’s growing popularity in the United States is due, perhaps in large part, to the high-profile success of the Netflix docuseri
- EnergymFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
“An interview from 2036 with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman.” This is what AI video generation was meant for. ★
- Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for Paramount TakeoverFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
The New York Times: Netflix said on Thursday that it had backed away from its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a stunning development that paves the way for the storied Hollywood media giant to end up under the control of a rival bidder, the technology heir David Ellison. Netflix said that it would not raise its offer to counter a higher bid made earlier this week by Mr. Ellison’s company,
- iPhone and iPad Approved to Handle Classified NATO InformationFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Today, Apple announced iPhone and iPad are the first and only consumer devices in compliance with the information assurance requirements of NATO nations. This enables iPhone and iPad to be used with classified information up to the NATO restricted level without requiring special software or settings — a level of government certification no other consumer mobile device has met. That
- ‘Steve Jobs in Exile’Feb 26, 2026John Gruber
New book, shipping May 19, from author Geoffrey Cain: For twelve years, from 1985 to 1997, Jobs wandered the business wilderness with his new venture, NeXT. It was a period of spectacular failures, near-bankruptcy, and brutal humiliation. But out of this crucible of defeat emerged the visionary leader who would go on to create the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, transforming Apple into the most valuable c
- Microsoft Adds Additional Markdown Features to Windows NotepadFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
Still feels a bit ridiculous to me that Markdown is now an editing mode in Notepad. ★
- Prediction ‘Market’ Kalshi Accuses MrBeast Editor of Insider TradingFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR: An editor who works for YouTube’s biggest creator, MrBeast, has been suspended from the prediction market platform Kalshi and reported to federal regulators for insider trading, Kalshi officials said on Wednesday. It’s the first time the company has publicly revealed the results of an investigation into market manipulation on the popular app. The MrBeast employee, w
- Research Firm Says Podcasts Have Passed AM/FM Talk Radio in Spoken-Word Listening TimeFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
Edison Research: In 2015, AM/FM radio accounted for 75% of the time Americans spent with spoken-word audio sources. AM/FM radio was not only the most dominant spoken-word audio listening platform, but it was fully sixty-five percentage points higher than podcasts, which accounted for 10% of listening time back then. Quarter by quarter and year over year, time spent using AM/FM radio to listen to s
- New York Sues Valve, Says Its ‘Loot Boxes’ Are GamblingFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
Reuters: New York’s attorney general sued Valve, a video game developer whose franchises include Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Dota, accusing it of promoting illegal gambling and threatening to addict children through its use of “loot boxes.” In a complaint filed on Wednesday in a state court in Manhattan, Attorney General Letitia James said Valve’s loot boxes amounted to “quintessential gambl
- ‘H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright Typographic Mystery’Feb 25, 2026John Gruber
When re-hanging signage, “Mind your P’s and Q’s” ought to be “Mind your H’s and S’s”. ★
- Terry Godier: ‘Phantom Obligation’Feb 25, 2026John Gruber
Terry Godier, in a thoughtful essay on the design of RSS feed readers: There’s a particular kind of guilt that visits me when I open my feed reader after a few days away. It’s not the guilt of having done something wrong, exactly. It’s more like the feeling of walking into a room where people have been waiting for you, except when you look around, the room is empty. There’s no one there. There nev
- Bill Gates Apologizes to Foundation Staff Over Epstein TiesFeb 25, 2026John Gruber
Emily Glazer, reporting for The Wall Street Journal: The billionaire said he met with Epstein starting in 2011, years after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution. Gates said he was aware of some “18-month thing” that had limited Epstein’s travel but said he didn’t properly check his background. Gates said he continued meeting with Epstein even after his then-wif
- Greg Knauss: ‘Lose Myself’Feb 25, 2026John Gruber
Greg Knauss: People will argue that speaking English to LLMs is just another level of abstraction away from the physics of how the machine actually works. And while that’s technically true — the worst kind of true — it also misses the point. Industrialization fundamentally changes things, by quantum degrees. A Ding Dong from a factory is not the same thing as a gâteau au chocolat et crème chantill
- The Talk Show: ‘Serious Opinionators’Feb 25, 2026John Gruber
Adam Engst returns to the show to talk, in detail, about certain of the UI changes in iOS 26 and Apple’s version 26 OSes overall. In particular, the new Unified view in the Phone app, and the Filter pop-up menu in both the Phone and Messages apps. Also: a shoutout to Balloon Help. Sponsored by: Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. S
- Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy DisplayFeb 25, 2026John Gruber
Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5 Google: When activated, Privacy Display changes how the pixels in your display emit light, making it harder or near-impossible to view the display at an off-angle. At its default setting, it definitely works, but the contents of the display are visible at less-sharp angles. Samsung has a “maximum” setting that takes this up a notch, and that setting makes it even harde
- ★ My 2025 Apple Report CardFeb 25, 2026John Gruber
This week Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025. As I’ve done in the past — for the report-card years 2024, 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 translated these to letter grades, A to F, which is how I consider them. (See footnote 1 fro
- Major Candy Brands Are Switching From Actual Chocolate to ‘Chocolatey Candy’ (Read: Brown Candle Wax)Feb 25, 2026John Gruber
Jim Vorel, writing just yesterday for Jezebel: It can be hard to know what exactly to call the substances that are now found coating many major candy bars such as Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Almond Joy, Mr. Goodbar or Rolos. Food scientists refer to it as “compound chocolate” coating, because it’s made from actual cocoa powder, but replaces the more expensive source of fat (cocoa butter) with cheaper
- I Am Nothing if Not a Man of ScienceFeb 25, 2026John Gruber
After writing a few days ago about the current brouhaha over the severe decline in the edibility of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and linking to Trader Joe’s shade-throwing description of their own, I of course had to try theirs. In the name of science, I bought both the milk and dark chocolate variants. Verdict: Excellent. Both chocolates taste like chocolate, not candle wax, and the peanut butter
- [Sponsor] Hands-On Workshop: Fix It Faster — Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in SentryFeb 25, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. This on-demand session covers how to: Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue. Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash. Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing. Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analy
- Upgrade: ‘The Shifting Sands of Liquid Glass’Feb 24, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell and Myke Hurley: We discuss the results of the Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025 in depth, with our added opinions on every category. Jason chooses to be a rascal, and Myke tries to give ten out of five. Upgrade is always a good podcast, and their annual “Jason discusses this year’s Apple Report Card” episode is always one of my favorites. But when Jason got “rascally” regarding Ma
- Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report CardFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell: It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment — the “vibe in the room” — regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even se
- Apple Will Begin Manufacturing Mac Minis in Houston Later This YearFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create tho
- PageMaker Pioneer Paul Brainerd Dies at 78Feb 24, 2026John Gruber
Todd Bishop, writing at GeekWire: Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old. He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the
- FTC Chairman Sends Letter to Apple Complaining That MAGA ‘News’ Sources Aren’t Represented in Apple NewsFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors back on February 12: In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, seen by the Financial Times, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson cites recent press coverage of a report from conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), which claimed that Apple has promoted “leftist outlets” in its content choices. The report in question by the MRC said that in January, Apple News
- The Steve Jobs Archive: ‘Letters to a Young Creator’Feb 24, 2026John Gruber
Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive: Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.” This is a time to live your questions. The
- Acme WeatherFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Adam Grossman: Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app. Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, in time, it was acquired by Apple, where the forecast and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather. We enjoyed our
- An OpenClaw AI Agent Wrote and Published a Hit Piece on a Software Library Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code SubmissionFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of OpenClaw, here’s Scott Shambaugh: I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib, python’s go-to plotting library. At ~130 million downloads each month it’s some of the most widely used software in the world. We, like many other open source projects, are dealing with a surge in low quality contributions enabled by coding agents. This strains maintainers’ abilities to keep up with code revie
- OpenAI Acquired OpenClaw and Hired Peter SteinbergerFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Sam Altman, last week on Twitter/X: Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings. OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that
- How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft ExecutivesFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Erin Griffith and Karen Weise, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): More than he did at any other major tech company, Mr. Epstein found success boring into the inner sanctums of Microsoft. Leveraging one connection into the next, he became privy to the company’s dramas, from its chief executive succession to the philanthropy of top executives. After Mr. Epstein left prison in 2009 for sol
- Inside Microsoft’s Xbox Leadership Shake-UpFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge (gift link): With Spencer’s retirement official, Microsoft is hitting the reset button on Bond’s Xbox strategy instead of embracing it further. Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is now promising “the return of Xbox,” in a clear message to employees that the strategy over the past few years has not been working. “I want to return to the renegade spirit that built
- Times New ResistanceFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Abby Haddican: Times New Resistance autocorrects specific words as they are typed. For example, the word ICE autocorrects to the Goon Squad and the word Trump autocorrects to Donald Trump is a felon. To the untrained eye, Times New Resistance looks just like Times New Roman — the official font of the U.S. State Department. When you install the font, it will appear in your font menus as Times New
- NetNewsWire 7 for MacFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Brent Simmons, last month: The big change from 6.2.1 is that it adopts the Liquid Glass UI and it requires macOS 26. (Note to people who aren’t on macOS 26: we fixed a lot of bugs in 6.2 and 6.2.1 knowing that many people might skip, or at least delay, installing macOS 26. Also note that there’s a page where you can get old versions of NetNewsWire.) It feels a little weird for me not to be running
- The Pants-Shitting Saga of Resizing Windows on MacOS 26 Tahoe ContinuesFeb 24, 2026John Gruber
Norbert Heger: In the release notes for macOS 26.3 RC, Apple stated that the window-resizing issue I demonstrated in my recent blog post had been resolved. You’ll never guess what happened between the RC (release candidate) version and the actual shipping version of 26.3. Just kidding, you’ll guess. ★
- Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter CupsFeb 23, 2026John Gruber
Trader Joe’s: Like their milk chocolate brethren on our shelves, our Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are made with real peanut butter that’s made with slowly roasted and ground Virginia peanuts. The luscious, smooth, rich, dark chocolate enveloping that peanut butter is crafted from high quality cacao beans. Other purveyors of peanut butter cups fill theirs with all kinds of “extraneous” ingredi
- Grandson of Inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Goes Public With the Obvious: They Taste Like Shit NowFeb 23, 2026John Gruber
Brad Reese, on LinkedIn last week: My grandfather, H. B. Reese (Who Invented Reese’s), built Reese’s on a simple, enduring architecture: Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter. Not a flavor idea. Not a marketing construct. A real, tangible product identity that consumers have trusted for a century. But today, Reese’s identity is being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions that repla
- SentryFeb 22, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to: Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue. Use Logs and Breadcr
- IMAX and Apple Collaborate to Screen F1 Races Live in TheatersFeb 19, 2026John Gruber
Lydia Mee, reporting for Motorsport: IMAX has announced that a select number of races will be shown live in IMAX locations across the United States in 2026. The new fan viewing experience is part of a collaboration with Apple TV, which has taken over the broadcasting rights for the championship in the US on a multi-year deal from 2026. “F1 is a rapidly growing force in sports and culture in the US
- ★ Apple Releases iOS 26 Adoption Rates, and They’re Pretty Much in Line With the Last Few YearsFeb 17, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of iOS 26, here’s Joe Rossignol reporting for MacRumors: Apple has shared updated iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 adoption figures, revealing how many iPhones and iPads are running those software versions. These adoption numbers are based on iPhones and iPads that transacted on the App Store on February 12, 2026, according to Apple. The statistics are as follows: 74% of all iPhones introduced in the
- [Sponsor] Hands-On Workshop: Fix It Faster — Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in SentryFeb 17, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. This on-demand session covers how to: Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue. Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash. Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing. Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analy
- ★ Politics and the English Language, January 2026 EditionJan 28, 2026John Gruber
Patrick McGee (author of last year’s bestseller, Apple in China, and guest on The Talk Show in May), commenting on Twitter/X re: Tim Cook’s company-wide memo regarding the “events in Minneapolis”: This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice. It’s the kind of language Orwell attributed to politicians, when ready-made phrases assemble themselves and prevent any real thought from breakin
- ★ The Names They Call ThemselvesJan 27, 2026John Gruber
Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “Yes, It’s Fascism” (gift link): Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirma
- ★ App Store 2025 Top iPhone Apps in the U.S.Jan 26, 2026John Gruber
I’ve been meaning since last month to link to Apple’s lists of the top iPhone apps in the U.S. for 2025. Here’s the list of the top 20 free iPhone apps: ChatGPT Threads Google TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE WhatsApp Messenger Instagram YouTube Google Maps Gmail — Email by Google Google Gemini Facebook CapCut: Photo & Video Editor Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire T-Life [“All things T-Mobile”] Telegram