Latest posts
- Nieman Journalism Lab: Twitter/X Punishes Accounts That Post LinksJun 05, 2026John Gruber
Laura Hazard Owen, writing for Nieman Journalism Lab back in April: I used Claude to help me scrape the 200 most recent tweets from 18 large publishers’ X accounts and track the engagement (likes + comments + retweets) on each. Six of those publishers have paywalls: Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Nine don’t: Al Jazeera English, AP, BBC
- Elon Musk’s X Is a Freak ShowJun 05, 2026John Gruber
Nate Silver, back in April, under the headline “Social Media Is Turning Into a Freak Show”, where by “social media” he mostly discusses Twitter/X: But what does that remaining traffic consist of? I recently came across a bubble chart depicting the Twitter accounts that had received the most “engagement” in February 2026. It was depressing: most of the top accounts were extremely low-quality and hi
- Checking in on PerplexityJun 05, 2026John Gruber
Yours truly, last August: I can’t see why Apple would want to get involved with a company like this though. Gurman’s report makes it sound like his sources are inside Apple, but man, this “Apple + Perplexity” thing feels more like something Perplexity would be seeding than one that Apple executives would be leaking. Perplexity is still occasionally in the news (often not in good ways), but it seem
- Some People Rooted for The Empire in ‘Star Wars’, TooJun 05, 2026John Gruber
Ed Morrissey, writing for Hot Air, thinks Scott Pelley got what he deserved and Bari Weiss is doing a good job running CBS News: And Pelley forgot the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Instead, Pelley convinced himself of his own virtue and torched his own position — and if Bilton’s letter is accurate, in as mean-spirited and conceited a manner as possible. Pelley could have chosen
- The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2026: Tuesday in San JoseJun 04, 2026John Gruber
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose Showtime: Tuesday, 9 June 2026, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm) Special Guest(s): For sure Price: $45 The annual live audience episode of The Talk Show during the week of WWDC. If you can make it, you should come. You’ll even enjoy the prelude, mingling with fellow DF readers and listeners. ★
- ‘The Insider’Jun 04, 2026John Gruber
All this Sturm und Drang surrounding 60 Minutes has me thinking about a re-watch of The Insider, Michael Mann’s great 1999 movie. Letterboxd’s synopsis: “A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.” It’s a great movie, and feels apt AF at the moment. Here’s the original segment on 60 Minutes, which ran an entire h
- ‘Microsoft and OpenAI Broke Up — Now They’re Ready to Fight’Jun 04, 2026John Gruber
Hayden Field and Tom Warren, writing for The Verge (gift link): This year’s Build had the vibe of a freshly single divorcée posting a thirst trap on Instagram. “It’s always fun to be at developer conferences in times of great change,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said onstage Tuesday, adding that events like this are about “coming to grips with the new opportunity.” AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an
- Lingon and Lingon Pro 10Jun 04, 2026John Gruber
Peter Borg: Lingon makes scheduling apps, scripts, shortcuts, and commands feel simple. Create a task in minutes, run it on a schedule, and stay in control. Lingon helps you run whatever you want whenever you want without living in Terminal. Schedule apps, scripts, shortcuts, and commands with a clear, friendly UI. Run tasks at specific times, on intervals or at login. Optional notifications make
- Remember When Chrome Went Bad on MacOS?Jun 04, 2026John Gruber
Loren Brichter, back in 2020: Short story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on your computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive unexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process)[1], and made my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t running. Deleting Chrome and Keystone made my computer way, way faster, all the time. Long story: I noticed my brand new 16” MacBoo
- Google’s Gemini Mac App Is Native, in a Distinctly Google Way, But Annoyingly PresumptuousJun 04, 2026John Gruber
Two months ago Google launched a new native Mac app for Gemini. I’ve been trying it, on and off, since. It’s ... not bad. Certainly better than Claude’s Electron shitbox. But the Gemini app isn’t all that good, either. I’m sticking with ChatGPT, which remains far and away the best native Mac client to an LLM. (And ChatGPT is not that great of a Mac app — it’s just the closest to good of the bunch.
- The AI-Driven Resurgence of Native Mac App DevelopmentJun 04, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell at Six Colors, looking ahead to WWDC next week: These days, I’m getting emails pitching me for an endless stream of new Mac apps. It’s quite remarkable because there was a period five or ten years ago when it seemed like all app development on Apple’s platforms was focused on iOS. Even more interesting, these are all indie Mac apps that seem to be built using native Mac frameworks, not
- Another Gem From the Annals of Nick Bilton JackasseryJun 04, 2026John Gruber
I look forward to pseudoscience like this finally getting some airtime on 60 Minutes. For 58 long years the program has been hopelessly biased toward actual science. ★
- If There’s One Thing Nick Bilton Knows, It’s TelevisionJun 04, 2026John Gruber
Back in 2011, when he was a tech columnist at The New York Times, Nick Bilton figured out that Apple was soon going to launch an Apple branded-television set, with no remote control. You’d just talk to it. This made no sense of course, as I pointed out. Bilton closed his column thus: The company is now close enough that it could announce the product by late 2012, releasing it to consumers by 2013.
- Scott Pelley on Leaving ‘60 Minutes’: ‘Incompetence and Unprofessionalism in the New Management Have Wreaked Havoc’Jun 03, 2026John Gruber
Scott Pelley, in a statement posted on Instagram (which I’ll quote in full, as the original is locked behind a dickwall if you’re not signed in to an Instagram account): There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes. The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its re
- The ‘60 Minutes’ PurgeJun 03, 2026John Gruber
Paramount’s “Press Express” page promoting 60 Minutes still lists all eight correspondents from the 2025–2026 season, the program’s 58th. (Perhaps they fired the person responsible for keeping the cast page up to date.) In the order they appear on Paramount’s listing: Lesley Stahl Scott Pelley — fired today Bill Whitaker Anderson Cooper — left on his own after 20 years Sharyn Alfonsi — fired last
- CBS News Fires Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’Jun 03, 2026John Gruber
Benjamin Mullin and Michael M. Grynbaum: In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been “terminated for cause effective immediately.” The letter is a must-read. No summary of it can capture just how pathetic a man Nick Bilton is. He disputes nothing Pelley said in the Monday staff meeting, and firing Pelley proves that P
- The Underworld Market to Remove the Recording Indicator Light on Meta GlassesJun 03, 2026John Gruber
Joanna Stern, on YouTube: People across the country are offering a service on Facebook Marketplace to disable the recording light on Ray-Ban Meta glasses. They call it “Stealth Mode.” Joanna paid $100 for the modification and went inside the growing business of turning smart glasses into covert cameras. She investigates who is doing it, whether it’s legal and what some are doing to try and stop it
- Meta Reportedly Has a Slew of New Smart Glasses Planned for This YearJun 02, 2026John Gruber
James Pero, summarizing for Gizmodo this paywalled report by Jyoti Mann for The Information: But, wait, there’s more: in addition to the fall releases, The Information reports that Meta also has a pair slated for December, codenamed “Mojito VIP.” There are also two prototypes being tested in the fall, according to the report, including one called “Artemis” and another called “SSG,” which is short
- Apple, the Anti-‘Metaverse’ VR CompanyJun 02, 2026John Gruber
One more bit of “metaverse fever dream” follow-up. The one company in the field that Nick Heer doesn’t mention is Apple, makers of the best-known (albeit not best-selling) virtual reality headset. Think and say what you want about the Vision platform (I still think it’s the first inning of a long game), but no one at Apple ever once gave a hint of endorsing “metaverse” hype. In fact, as I’ve noted
- The Metaverse Was Snake Oil for IsolationJun 02, 2026John Gruber
A follow-up point from my post yesterday linking to Nick Heer’s blockbuster “The Metaverse Fever Dream”. In particular, the connection Heer draws between the rise of “metaverse” hype and the pandemic. I always sort of knew that metaverse hype roughly coincided with the Covid lockdown and our collective period of isolation and loneliness, a year-plus stretch when we relied mostly on computer platfo
- Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’Jun 02, 2026John Gruber
Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): CBS News faced a fresh wave of turmoil on Monday after Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, laced into the show’s newly hired executive producer during a staff meeting and accused Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, of “murdering” the longstanding Sunday news program. In an extraordinary exchange
- Three Ways to Get PaidJun 02, 2026John Gruber
Jason Zweig, back in 2018: My father, who died in 1981, was an inexhaustible font of wisdom and wit. I don’t know when he told me this particular three-part rule, but I’ve never forgotten it. I tweeted it three years ago, but people keep asking for it in one place, so here it is. There are three ways to make a living: Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. Tell the truth to t
- The First-Time-Buyer-Discount Dickover SchemeJun 02, 2026John Gruber
Neil Panchal, on Twitter/X (XCancel link): Of all the dickovers, the dickover that blueballs you with some first-time buyer incentive. “Sign up and get 10% discount, new accounts only”, the dickover boasts. Never understood why you’d ever penalize returning customers with a dickover, blue-balling them with 10% off teaser that they’re ineligible for. wtf? And for first time buyers, they’d always fe
- [Sponsor] Mux — Video for DevelopersJun 02, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Mux is what developers reach for when they need to do more with video. Video files are packed with data and context waiting to be unlocked. Mux Robots are AI workflows that unlock that data inside your video for summarization, caption translation, moderation, and more. Configure once and your workflows run automatically on new uploads. Mux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and
- ‘The Metaverse Fever Dream’Jun 02, 2026John Gruber
Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, last week published a remarkable essay surveying — with copious receipts — the rise and fall of “metaverse” hype: The obsession with the metaverse seems to have solidified in Silicon Valley after Matthew Ball published an essay in January 2020 in which he forecasted that, at the very least… …it is likely to produce trillions in value as a new computing platform or content
- ‘If You Take the Weasel Job Then You Must Be the Weasel’Jun 01, 2026John Gruber
Hamilton Nolan, writing at How Things Work: There are only a few reasons why you might be hired for a prestigious job that you are obviously not qualified for. One is “they have recognized you for the genius that you are.” The urge to conclude that this is, in fact, the reason must be overwhelming, if you are the person in question. But this is rarely the explanation. Another possibility is “the p
- ‘We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World’Jun 01, 2026John Gruber
Om Malik: The Adventures of Pinocchio was published in serial form in 1881, aimed at Italian children in the way the 19th century aimed things at children, full of suffering, consequence, and moral instruction delivered through catastrophe. The puppet is hanged. He is swallowed by a giant fish. He watches companions degrade into beasts of burden. The world he moves through is predatory at every le
- Amazon Made AI Podcasts for ProductsJun 01, 2026John Gruber
Katie Notopoulos, a month ago at Business Insider: Amazon has launched a new feature that uses AI to generate a short, podcast-like audio segment where two “hosts” discuss the merits and reviews of a specific product. I think it could be one of the funniest, closest endpoints to human civilization we’ve seen yet in our new AI-enabled world. If this sounds a little confusing, here’s an example. I t
- The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2026: Tuesday June 9Jun 01, 2026John Gruber
Location: The California Theatre, San Jose Showtime: Tuesday, 9 June 2026, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm) Special Guest(s): For sure Price: $45 The annual live audience episode of The Talk Show during the week of WWDC. If you can make it, you should come. You’ll even enjoy the prelude, mingling with fellow DF readers and listeners. Also: at least one sponsorship slot is still available. If you’ve got
- exe.devJun 01, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to exe.dev for sponsoring last week at DF (with a very cool graphic ad — just love the way it looks). exe.dev is a cloud for the agent era — it gives you a pool of VMs with SSH, root, and web auth by default. Secrets injected at the network edge stay out of the LLM’s hands. Persistent servers, internal tools, vibe coding, disposable devboxes, whatever. You can share your web server as ea
- Take TwoJun 01, 2026John Gruber
Mark Gurman, on Twitter/X (XCancel link) Kelsey Peterson, the Apple AI employee who introduced the never-launched Siri revamp in 2024, just started at OpenAI — so we’ll be getting someone new next month for Attempt 2 at WWDC. Pretty sure we were going to get someone different for the second crack at a next-gen Siri introduction at WWDC no matter what. If they had made a Titanic II, they would have
- Meta Is Launching Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Subscriptions for ‘Fun Features’May 30, 2026John Gruber
Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch: Meta is doubling down on its subscription offerings. On Wednesday, the social networking giant announced it’s now rolling out its consumer subscription plans globally for its flagship apps, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and beginning tests of new subscriptions for businesses, creators, and Meta AI users. For a few dollars per month, consumers subscribing
- Daniel Jalkut on AIMay 30, 2026John Gruber
Daniel Jalkut, on Mastodon (cross-posted to Bluesky and Threads): My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it. I concur with this take completely. (Sidenote: The different reply threads on the three networks speak loudly to the cultural and algorithmic differences between them. Good lord has Meta steered Threads into “make pe
- One Group, Clearly, Is DerangedMay 29, 2026John Gruber
Paul Krugman, describing a few striking data visualizations: YouGov’s surveys subdivide Republicans into those who do and those who don’t support MAGA — and the economic views of these two groups are very different. A remarkable 65 percent of non-MAGA Republicans say that the economy is getting worse, while only 11 percent say that it is getting better. [...] Aside from MAGA Republicans, Americans
- Footage From the LA-Houston MLS Match That Apple Shot Using iPhone 17 Pro CamerasMay 28, 2026John Gruber
I’m not sure if this link works outside the US, but Apple TV’s MLS Wrap-Up show has highlight from the LA Galaxy vs. Houston Dynamo FC match they shot exclusively using iPhone 17 Pros. Follow the link, choose “English”, and then choose “Full Replay” — then skip to 40m:15s or so. They show one of the professional camera rigs they used, with a long lens attached. I’d say the match footage looks good
- Researchers Publish Method to Surveil Web Page Visitors by Analyzing Their SSD ActivityMay 28, 2026John Gruber
Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica: The technique, laid out in a research paper, exploits a side channel, a form of leak resulting from physical manifestations such as electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or the time required to complete a task. By measuring the manifestations, attackers can decrypt encrypted traffic and infer other confidential data. [...] “Web browsers have evolved from
- [Sponsor] exe.devMay 25, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
A cloud for the agent era. Use exe.dev to get a pool of VMs with SSH, root, and web auth by default. Secrets injected at the network edge stay out of the LLM’s hands. Persistent servers, internal tools, vibe coding, disposable devboxes, whatever. It’s just a computer. ★
- Awarding Jay Haynes His Being Right Points for Predicting Apple Hitting $3 Trillion in Market CapMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Here’s a fun one. Back in 2014 I linked to a post by Jay Haynes in which he projected that with a very reasonable level of annual growth, Apple ought to reach a $3 trillion market cap within 10 years. At the time of his writing, Apple’s market cap was “just” $450 billion, and no company had hit the $1 trillion market. So projecting a $3 trillion valuation in 10 years was a bold prediction. Apple h
- Thieves Are Texting Threats to Victims of iPhone Theft in LondonMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Lizzie Dearden and Amelia Nierenberg, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): The crime Alex Pikula reported to the police was one they had heard before: An e-bike rider had zoomed past as Mr. Pikula left a theater in London’s West End, ripping his phone from his hands. It was frustrating, Mr. Pikula thought, but that was that. He was wrong. His mother soon started receiving strange texts, c
- Trump Mobile Website Exposed the Number of Pre-Orders — Both Completed and Abandoned — and the Associated Customer InformationMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Catie McLeod, The Guardian: Trump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the issue — “with the assistance of independent cybersecurity professionals” — in which the full names, addresses and phone numbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be exposed. [...] Jonathan Soma, a programmer and professor at New York’s Columbia University, reviewed the code that the Austral
- The History of ‘OK’May 25, 2026John Gruber
Merriam-Webster: The 1820s and 1830s shared another linguistic fad with today: an appreciation for deliberate misspellings. (Kewl, rite?) This trend, which had humorists adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas with ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings, turned no go into know go and no use into know yuse (lol). Abbreviations were not immune, and no go became K.G.. So too all right became O.W.
- ★ The Fonts of the U.S. Federal CourtsMay 22, 2026John Gruber
The 13 circuits of the U.S. federal courts of appeals operate with a fair amount of independence, including their typographic choices. I was reminded of this today while reading the aforelinked decision from the Ninth Circuit in Epic v. Apple, because the Ninth Circuit sets their decisions in Times New Roman — a font that came up back in December in the context of the Trump State Department. Long
- ★ AI Is Technology, Not a ProductMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Steven Levy, writing for Wired last month after Apple’s CEO transition was announced, under the provocative headline “Apple’s Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product” (News+ link to get around Wired’s miserly paywall): Much more recently, I quizzed Ternus and global marketing head Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, specifically its plans to get ahead of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowled
- ★ Nextpad++May 13, 2026John Gruber
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Microsoft has started beefing it up, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown support. Which still blows my mind.
- ★ Software as the Product of Obsession Times VoiceMay 05, 2026John Gruber
Back in 2009, Merlin Mann and I jointly gave a talk at SxSW titled “Obsession Times Voice”. Regarding how it turned out, I wrote: My muse for the session was this quote from Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies.” To me, that’s it. That’s the thing. Merlin and I were talking about independent writers and podcasters, because that’s what we were (and rem
- ★ Y Combinator’s Stake in OpenAIMay 05, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of companies with valuable minority stakes in AI companies, there’s one thing that stuck in my craw about the blockbuster Ronan Farrow / Andrew Marantz investigative piece on Sam Altman and OpenAI last month for The New Yorker. It didn’t come up during Nilay Patel’s excellent interview with Farrow on Decoder, either. Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator for several years, and left