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- [Sponsor] PaperJul 14, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Paper is a professional design tool where every layer is real HTML and CSS. Your design is already code, which means fewer handoffs and fewer translations between what you design and what ships. Paper works both ways: code to design, and design to code. Connect any agent through MCP and it can read and edit your designs. Or use Paper Snapshot to capture your live site as editable layers and make n
- Remember Musk’s Suit Alleging a Conspiracy Between Apple and OpenAI?Jul 13, 2026John Gruber
Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica back in August 2025: After a public outburst over Grok’s App Store rankings, on Monday, Elon Musk followed through on his threat to sue Apple and OpenAI. At first, Musk appeared fixated on ChatGPT consistently topping Apple’s “Must Have” app list — which Grok has never made — claiming Apple seemed to preference OpenAI, an Apple partner, over all chatbot
- WorkOS PipesJul 12, 2026John Gruber
My thanks, once again, to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. Users expect apps and agents to reach the tools they already work in. Every integration that gets you there is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, and weeks of infrastructure before you write a line of product code. WorkOS Pipes handles it with one API call. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Dri
- Paulo Andrade: ‘A WWDC 27 Update on Building a Mac-Assed App With SwiftUI’Jul 12, 2026John Gruber
Paulo Andrade: My last post on using SwiftUI to build a Mac-assed app got a bit more traction than I expected. It was mentioned on Mastodon several times, included in iOS Dev Weekly, inspired May’s edition of the Swift Blog Carnival, and was eventually mentioned by John Gruber, arguably the person most to blame for popularizing the term “Mac-assed”, on Daring Fireball. All this attention also resu
- How UIs Degrade Over TimeJul 12, 2026John Gruber
These examples are from Windows, but the same degradation is true for the standard look for MacOS alerts too. There was a time when system UI chrome was improving in clarity, everywhere. Today we live in an age when it’s degrading in clarity, everywhere. It’s rather inexplicable. ★
- ‘Every Frame Perfect’Jul 12, 2026John Gruber
Nikita “Tonsky” Prokopov: The rule of thumb is: If I take a screenshot of your app at any moment, you should be able to explain what I see. Why care about every frame? It builds trust. Users can’t see the code, so UI is the only way for them to judge the quality of the app. If UI looks good, that means developers had time to polish it, which means that they probably spent a comparable amount of ti
- TwoMillionKit: Use Private Cloud Compute in MacOS 27 Foundation Models Without an EntitlementJul 12, 2026John Gruber
Guilherme Rambo: Apple ships the fm command-line tool in macOS 27, which can be used to run inference with the local system model or Private Cloud Compute from Terminal or scripts. You know what else can run command-line tools? Mac apps! 😃 I decided to spend some of my Codex tokens and take GPT 5.6 Sol for a spin. I asked it to create this Swift package. All it does is provide a LanguageModel imp
- Sam Altman and Elon Musk Argue Over Who’s Running the Bigger ScamJul 12, 2026John Gruber
Elon Musk, linking to his own tweet from March that “Sam Altman is super good at scamming”: He takes scamming to a whole new level Sam Altman: homeboy you’re the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters Musk: We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’
- Lunacy — Jeff Halter’s Lunatic Fringe PlayerJul 12, 2026John Gruber
After linking to Stacks, his remarkable new modern HyperCard player, I made the terrible mistake of clicking around the rest of Jeff Halter’s website, and fell upon Lunacy: Created by Ben Haller and released in the early ’90s as part of the Macintosh More After Dark software package, Lunatic Fringe was unique among screensavers in that it was not just a passive animation to watch, but an interacti
- Stacks — HyperCard Player for Modern MacOSJul 12, 2026John Gruber
Well this is just delightful: Run HyperCard stacks directly on your modern Mac. No emulator required! Browse the Internet Archive’s HyperCard collection and run stacks with one-click. Period-accurate typography. Sound, instruments, and MacinTalk speech synthesis. Cross-stack navigation. Stacks is a really beautiful native Mac app, and its presentation of classic HyperCard stacks is exquisitely fai
- Can Someone Explain to Me How to Get ‘ChatGPT Classic’?Jul 11, 2026John Gruber
One more link from OpenAI’s Help Center, this one explaining how to upgrade from the old Mac app to the new “super” app version: Follow the prompt in the app to download the new ChatGPT desktop app. Then sign in with the same ChatGPT account. The new app may install alongside your current app. If both remain installed, you will see: ChatGPT: The new app with Chat, Work, and Codex. ChatGPT Classic:
- OpenAI Help Center Describes What Is Wrong With the New ChatGPTJul 11, 2026John Gruber
OpenAI Help Center, “Where Work and Codex are available”: Work is available on ChatGPT web and mobile for eligible paid plans. Work is also available in the ChatGPT desktop app when included for your plan and workspace. Work on web and mobile runs in the cloud. Work in the desktop app can also use local files and desktop apps with your permission. At launch, cloud Work conversations do not appear
- Benedict Evans on the New ‘Super App’ ChatGPTJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Benedict Evans with a succinct review on Threads: Wow, what a total mess. What is the difference between a project, a task and a chat? Why did chats get a crappy floating window but tasks and projects don’t? Why does choosing ‘plugins’ get me ‘templates’? Am I not allowed to finish ‘setup’ if I don’t use Slack or Google Drive? I forget how I made the Setup dickbar disappear despite my not using Sl
- ★ Exactly Like Om MalikJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Fred Vogelstein (Om’s partner at Crazy Stupid Tech): We met a week later at his outdoor office — a bench in SF’s South Park. He told me that he was going emeritus at True Ventures, the VC firm, and that he was going to spend more of his time writing. It was awesome to see him. Sitting on a bench with Om could be quasi religious. He talked so softly and deliberately that it forced you to slow down,
- Gurman on Tang Tan and Paul MeadeJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg (paywalled, alas): Apple was quickly alarmed by OpenAI’s recruiting drive, which included poaching senior hardware and design leaders and ravaging several teams across its engineering organizations. The practice continued as recently as June, when OpenAI lured away Apple’s smart glasses chief. That executive, Paul Meade, was quickly shown the door at Apple and
- John Ternus Calls Sam AltmanJul 11, 2026John Gruber
“Yeah, who’s this?” “You know who this is.” “Yes I do, yes I do. I sent a guy to deliver the package ... he didn’t call. Is everything alright?” “Tell you what. Forget the money.” ★
- ‘No Interest’Jul 11, 2026John Gruber
Drew Pusateri, director of communications at OpenAI, on Twitter/X (or XCancel): Our statement in response to this suit: We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere. Let’s say I think you stole my wallet. I approach a police officer and tell him my suspicion and describe the evidence that makes me think y
- Ice ColdJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Alex Heath, on Threads: At WWDC, Apple execs I met with were ice-cold when I asked about their OpenAI partnership. Now we know why: Apple just sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to consumer hardware (Apple and OAI senior leaders are in Sun Valley this week. Yikes!) I noticed the same ice-cold reaction to my questions about ChatGPT and Siri. (In fact, I think Heath and I even
- Ryanair Literally SucksJul 11, 2026John Gruber
The AP: Fellow passengers pulled back a man who was partially sucked out of a dislodged airplane window on Friday, a few minutes after takeoff on a flight from northern Greece to Germany. The plane subsequently returned to the airport in Greece. The incident happened on a morning flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen, near Munich, operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of R
- Newly Renamed Trump Airport in Palm Beach Has an AI Slop LogoJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Frank Landymore, writing for Futurism: Look past its gaudiness, though, and you’ll notice some things that’re a little off in the finer details. The talons are horribly deformed and shaped differently from each other. The entire legs are uneven, too, and the base of them are represented as a strange conglomeration of blobs, which are also inconsistent. In fact, the whole thing is slightly asymmetr
- Mac OS 9’s Finder Had a ‘View as Buttons’ ModeJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Cryan.com: The “View as Buttons” option was a distinctive feature of the Macintosh OS 9 Finder. It allowed users to view the contents of a folder as clickable buttons, each representing a file or application. This view was particularly useful for quickly accessing frequently used programs and documents. I totally forgot this view existed, despite using Mac OS 9 for many years, because I never used
- Squircle Jail Isn’t (Or at Least Shouldn’t Be) About Upcoming Touchscreen MacsJul 11, 2026John Gruber
Another bit of follow-up on squircle jail on MacOS. The most-asked question in my inbox from readers is this: Is mandating the squircle a concession to the much-rumored upcoming touchscreen MacBooks? No. The visible shape and appearance of an app icon is unrelated to its clickable — or, perhaps soon, tappable — area. Rendering a visible squircle doesn’t change the shape of the clickable/tappable t
- Apple Sues OpenAI, io, and Former Employees, Alleging Theft of Trade SecretsJul 10, 2026John Gruber
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: The lawsuit names Chang Liu and Tang Tan as two of the defendants. Tang Tan served as VP of product design at Apple, leading iPhone and Apple Watch product design. He departed the company in February 2024 to work with Jony Ive. Chang Liu, meanwhile, worked at Apple for eight years and was a senior system electrical engineer before departing to join OpenAI in January 2026. A
- Shocking No One, Fidji Simo, Would-Be Usurper, Is Out at OpenAIJul 10, 2026John Gruber
Berber Jin and Anissa Gardizy, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 executive, plans to step down from her full-time role after an extended medical leave. She communicated her decision in a note to staff Thursday, saying that her medical condition had worsened and her road to recovery would be much longer than anticipated. She will become a part-time advise
- Today’s the Day OpenAI Fucked Up the ChatGPT Mac AppJul 09, 2026John Gruber
Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac about OpenAI’s sprawling product announcements today: To summarize today’s desktop app changes: The existing ChatGPT app is now ChatGPT Classic. Codex is now the new ChatGPT desktop app. It still looks like Codex and includes the Codex icon as an option, but it’s now called ChatGPT. ChatGPT for desktop includes ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT Codex, which share plug-ins.
- Apple’s Classic Mac Era Forays Into ‘Apps as Tiled Buttons’ Simplified Computing: At Ease and LauncherJul 09, 2026John Gruber
Some historical follow-up regarding just-click-it launching and apps as tiled buttons with a uniform square shape. Back in the System 7 era in the 1990s, Apple sold (sold!) a product called At Ease (via Nathan Lineback’s venerable GUI Galley): I don’t recall ever using At Ease, nor seeing anyone who did. A few years later, Apple built a feature called Launcher into Mac OS 8 (via LinkedResourc
- ★ John Ternus Should Reverse Apple’s Slide Down the Advertising Slippery SlopeJul 09, 2026John Gruber
In September 2014, in the wake of a series of hacks that stole private photos from the iCloud accounts of multiple celebrities, Tim Cook wrote an open letter to customers that was published at apple.com/privacy. Apple seemingly no longer hosts a copy of the letter. (That tends to happen to memorable open letters from Apple CEOs.) The Wall Street Journal’s fast-loading website still hosts a copy of
- Meta Sets Default for Instagram Accounts to Permit Content Reuse by AIJul 09, 2026John Gruber
Eli Tan, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): The company’s new A.I. image generator has a surprising twist: It allows people to use images from public Instagram accounts. When Meta unveiled an artificial intelligence image generator called Muse Image on Tuesday, it came with a feature that let users create A.I. images based on people’s Instagram photos. Any adult with a public Instagram
- ★ What’s Good for the iOS Goose Is Often Not Good for the MacOS GanderJul 09, 2026John Gruber
Tobias Steinke, replying on Mastodon to my “Apple Should Eliminate the App Icon ‘Squircle Jail’” piece: But iOS app icons (and iPadOS) were always in squircle shape. Why is and was this okay for you, but it’s not for macOS? This is a good and fair question. But I not only have an answer, I have an answer that clarifies why this entire debate is important. That “design is how it works” applies even
- ‘Parry Encounters the Doctor’ — Chatbot on Chatbot Action Circa 1973Jul 08, 2026John Gruber
Back in the primordial days of AI, Parry was an ELIZA-style chatbot created by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby to simulate the words of a paranoid schizophrenic. Someone had the genius idea to connect it to Eliza (a.k.a. “Doctor”). Vint Cerf published the transcript as an RFC in 1973, and I laughed my ass off reading it. A taste: Do you know anything about bookies? What makes you think I know anything
- Mac Apps Can Escape From Squircle Jail If They’re Not in the Mac App StoreJul 08, 2026John Gruber
Tyler Hall: We all know about macOS Tahoe’s terrible app icons and how 3rd party developers have been confined to squircle jail. If you’re lucky enough to distribute an app outside the Mac App Store, you can break free of squircle jail using NSDockTilePlugIn. It’s not strictly the intended use-case of that API. And it’s not allowed in the Mac App Store, either. But it can solve the problem. So tod
- ‘Searching for SmarterChild’ KickstarterJul 08, 2026John Gruber
After reading my posts earlier today about Eliza, the first “hit” chatbot from the 1960s, DF reader AP sent me a link to the Kickstarter page for Searching for SmarterChild, a project from documentary filmmakers Lindsey Sitz and Zan Gillies to make a movie about SmarterChild, an AOL Instant Messenger chatbot that once had 30 million “friends” (a.k.a. users). I don’t recall ever hearing of SmarterC
- My Conversation With ElizaJul 08, 2026John Gruber
I vaguely recall first trying some version of Eliza back in the 1990s. I never found it all that impressive nor understood its stature in the AI literature. It’s better than a bunch of if/then statements but not by much. There’s some natural language grammar parsing that is somewhat interesting, but I never thought it came close to passing the Turing Test, and I was always skeptical of claims that
- The Eliza Archaeology ProjectJul 08, 2026John Gruber
The Eliza Archaeology Project: ELIZA is the original and highly influential chatbot that launched the genre of human-computer interactions using text-based agents. It was created at MIT in the 1960s as part of Project MAC by it’s [sic] designer and programmer, Joseph Weizenbaum. ELIZA not only allowed Weizenbaum to develop a mode of interaction with computers that is highly interactive, it also co
- App Icon Conventions From the Original MacintoshJul 08, 2026John Gruber
Dr. Drang, in a post replete with examples of icons of popular apps from the original Macintosh, in their one-bit glory: You can see that Apple liked the idea of app icons being a tilted rectangle with some image inside the rectangle to indicate what the app did. The hand was Apple’s way of telling you that this icon was for doing things, and the rectangle was tilted to match the orientation of th
- [Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: More Context Makes for Smarter ProductsJul 08, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Users expect apps and agents to reach the tools they already work in. Every integration that gets you there is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of infrastructure before you write a line of product code. WorkOS Pipes handles it with one API call. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential s
- OS 27 Developer Beta 3 Enables New ‘Pace’ and ‘Expressivity’ Sliders for Siri’s New VoicesJul 07, 2026John Gruber
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch: With the latest iOS 27 developer beta, Apple is giving testers an early look at one of the upcoming improvements to its AI-powered Siri: the ability to adjust how quickly and expressively the AI assistant speaks. In iOS 27 beta 3, out today, Apple has enabled the voice controls for “Pace” and “Expressivity” that were previously labeled as “Coming soon” in the f
- ★ Apple Should Eliminate the App Icon ‘Squircle Jail’Jul 06, 2026John Gruber
Paul Kafasis, in a post at Rogue Amoeba’s blog titled “Free the Icons”: Apple’s prohibition on shapes is a step backward for both usability and creativity in app icons. Icons are now harder to distinguish because they’re no longer allowed to be distinctive. But there’s no technical reason for it. Apple could, and should, once again allow icons to take on a wide variety of shapes. It’s clear that s
- Markdown Now Has a Uniform Type Identifer (UTI) in Apple’s Version 27 OSesJul 06, 2026John Gruber
The third developer betas of Apple’s 27 OSes dropped today, and this new page in Apple’s developer documentation drew my attention — a built-in Uniform Type Identifier for Markdown data: The identifier for this type is net.daringfireball.markdown. This type conforms to [utf8PlainText]. My main link here is to the Swift documentation, but it’s available in good old Objective-C too. I had previously
- Backblaze Versus DropboxJul 06, 2026John Gruber
There’s a been a lot of (justified) concern and consternation over the last year regarding Backblaze — an online backup service whose simple pitch is that it backs up your entire computer, including the startup drive and external drives — and online file storage services like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Backblaze stopped including the contents of such services in i
- Allen Pike, Back in November: ‘Why Is ChatGPT for Mac So Good?’Jul 06, 2026John Gruber
Allen Pike, back in November (and corresponding Hacker News thread): Still, I wouldn’t count out the possibility of a change in course here. While mobile is king, desktop is still where work happens. While OpenAI has acquired Sky to double down on desktop, Google has long been all-in on the browser. That leaves Anthropic as the challenger on desktop, with their latest models begging to be paired w
- ATP Member Special: Mac-Assed Mac AppsJul 06, 2026John Gruber
A banger of an Accidental Tech Podcast members-only special, right on time. ATP memberships are just $8/month or $88/year, and the members-only episodes alone are worth the price. They do a great job explaining what makes for a Mac-assed Mac app, but an even better job talking about why users and developers should care about them. ★
- Maestral, the Open Source Splendidly Simple Mac Dropbox Client, Has Been RetiredJul 06, 2026John Gruber
Maestral developer Sam Schott, on the Maestral website: As of June 2026, Maestral is no longer actively maintained. The current version will continue to work until certificates expire. Schott, on Maestral’s GitHub project page: As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these day
- Jason Snell Ends His Column, and 28-Year Run, at MacworldJul 06, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell, at Macworld: My first day on the job at Macworld, Apple was perilously close to going out of business. It was the fall of 1997, and Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and engineered the ejection of Gil Amelio as CEO, but there was no iMac yet, no visible turnaround in terms of products at all. Beyond the release of the iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, there was nothing. Apple’s sur
- Day One JournalJul 04, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to Day One Journal for once again sponsoring Daring Fireball. Day One first launched in 2011 and has been the stalwart of journaling apps on Mac and iOS ever since. Day One’s apps exhibit a commitment to technical and design excellence, and, more importantly, everything they do is deeply informed by the intense personal nature of keeping a journal. (Or journals — Day One lets you create
- From the DF Archive: ‘Electron and the Decline of Native Apps’Jul 04, 2026John Gruber
Yours truly, back in 2018: I don’t share the depth of their pessimism regarding native apps, but Electron is without question a scourge. I think the Mac will prove more resilient than Windows, because the Mac is the platform that attracts people who care. But I worry. In some ways, the worst thing that ever happened to the Mac is that it got so much more popular a decade ago. In theory, that shoul
- ★ Claude’s Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside JobJul 03, 2026John Gruber
Anthropic released the first version of the Claude “desktop” app for MacOS in October 2024 — an Electron clunker that did not impress UI designers. When it came out, I wrote: ChatGPT’s native Mac app, on the other hand, is a truly native Mac app. It looks like a Mac app and feels like a Mac app because it really is a Mac app. I’ve liked it ever since it launched back in May, and it keeps getting b
- ★ A Tale of Two ModemsJul 01, 2026John Gruber
Marko Zivkovic, reporting for AppleInsider regarding some of the data revealed by Tata Electronics’s massive data breach: For the U.S. variant of the iPhone 18 Pro, which will feature mmWave compatibility, Apple seemingly plans to use Qualcomm modem hardware. Multiple Qualcomm components, including the SDX80M, SDR875, QDM8771, QDM8720, PMK75, PMX75, and QET7100A, are referenced in a bill of materi