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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>Daring Fireball</title>
<subtitle>By John Gruber</subtitle>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/"/>
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main"/>
<id>https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main</id>
<updated>2026-01-28T00:17:03Z</updated>
<rights>Copyright © 2026, John Gruber</rights>
<entry>
<title>Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvv"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42619</id>
<published>2026-01-28T00:17:02Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-28T00:17:03Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors
to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned
were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta
documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made
public Monday.</p>
<p>The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul
Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that
Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and
sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and
Instagram. [...]</p>
<p>Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that
Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the
chatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots”
that would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed
hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI
leadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote
in that exchange.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/28/meta-ultra-violence">a byline</a> worth <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/05/27/wsj-facebook-divisiveness">paying attention to</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvu"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42618</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:36:54Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:36:55Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually
common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all
of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at
once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border
Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is
socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of
it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world
atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their
lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.
Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western
civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘A CEO, Captured’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvt"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42617</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:06:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:06:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp
of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to
be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.</p>
<p>In <em>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</em>, Roy Bland captures a cynical,
post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my
conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of
today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the
world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.threads.com/@ajgruber/post/DUBBiHyDtmu">Amy Jane Gruber</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed
the movie.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘A CEO, Captured’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvs"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42616</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:02:49Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:02:49Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>MG Siegler:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his
actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this
weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)?ref=spyglass.org">the
documentary <em>Melania</em></a> at the White House. Yes, <em>that</em>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump?ref=spyglass.org">Melania</a>. That in and of itself would have probably been
fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons
that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a
statement...</p>
<p>While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes
of Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and
utter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE
agents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘Whatever’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvr"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42615</id>
<published>2026-01-27T22:48:42Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T22:48:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart
that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to
speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump
said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do
they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press
secretary for the word that escaped him.</p>
<p>“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.</p>
<p>“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”</p>
<p>“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.</p>
<p>“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said.
“Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Whatever’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.molt.bot/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvq"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42614</id>
<published>2026-01-27T20:34:36Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T22:02:01Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>From the footer on the project’s website:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not
affiliated with Anthropic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.</p>
<p>One additional followup to <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot">my post the other day</a>. In his terrific introduction to <s>Clawd</s>Moltbot, <a href="https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/">Federico Viticci wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned
through 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (<em>yikes</em>), and
I’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude
and ChatGPT apps in the process.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and <a href="https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/115968901926545907">he said</a> around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/the_names_they_call_themselves"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvp"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42613</id>
<published>2026-01-27T18:12:56Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T18:12:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">*Fascist* and *Nazi* weren’t slurs that were applied to the Italians and Germans by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves. The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make *the names Trump’s regime calls themselves* universally acknowledged slurs.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yAGei6y469cre0s3RYa6ArU">Yes, It’s Fascism</a>” (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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 affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily
defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has
been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree
on its <a href="https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&context=history-in-the-making">definition</a>. Italy’s original version differed from
Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from
Japan’s. [...]</p>
<p>When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have
brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. <em>Fascist</em> best
describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become
perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his
administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is
not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation
of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the
constellation plainly appears.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist <em>president</em>, that does not mean that America is a fascist <em>country</em>.” The shoe fits, however <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-swelling-legs-chronic-venous-insufficiency-health-40beb3c818cfb914645db9d1f143fdd8">tightly</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/magazine/ve-day-anniversary.html">losers</a>, and their complete and total destruction was <a href="https://www.life.com/history/v-j-day-kiss-times-square/">celebrated</a> around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding <a href="https://www.life.com/history/after-the-fall-photos-of-hitlers-bunker-and-the-ruins-of-berlin/">in a dingy filthy bunker</a>. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini">strung up in a public square in Milan</a>. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of <em>fascist</em> fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">that they have lost</a> — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.</p>
<p>We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/mussolini-italy-fascism">he coined the term</a>. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis <em>because that was their name</em>. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names <em>became</em> universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.</p>
<p>Our goal should not be to make <em>fascist</em> or <em>Nazi</em> apply to Trump’s movement, no matter <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/mattis-told-woodward-he-agreed-trump">how well</a> those rhetorical gloves fit his <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/how-donald-trump-became-the-short-fingered-vulgarian">short-fingered</a> <a href="https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-hand-bruise-meaning-35799798">disgustingly</a> <a href="https://www.ms.now/news/trump-hand-bruise-photo">bruised</a> hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law">Godwin’s Law</a>.</p>
<p>The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make <em>the names they call themselves</em> universally acknowledged slurs.</p>
<p>“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/minnesota-governor-candidate-chris-madel-gop-immigration-enforcement-rcna255949">perhaps</a>. Make <em>those</em> names <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-alex-pretti-timeline.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HlA.jIxp.ieLWsJ7EHyct">shameful</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-48-hours-that-convinced-trump-to-change-course-in-minnesota-a91d7683?st=xEZf8d">deservedly</a>, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make <em>their</em> names shameful, lest the slur become <em>our</em> name — “American”.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ The Names They Call Themselves</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized-image-xai-elon-musk-women-1235501436/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvo"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42612</id>
<published>2026-01-27T15:07:07Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T21:37:33Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ella Chakarian, writing for Rolling Stone (<a href="https://apple.news/AHps_VbIRQuGmIFYQ7zjz3Q">News+</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly
scrolling on X when she noticed an unsettling trend surface on her
feed. Users were prompting Grok, the platform’s built-in AI
feature, to “nudify” women’s images. Mayes, a 25-year-old media
professional from Texas who uses X to post photos with her friends
and keep up with news, didn’t think it would happen to her — until it did.</p>
<p>“Put her in a tight clear transparent bikini,” an X user ordered
the bot under a photo that Mayes posted from when she was 20. Grok
complied, replacing her white shirt with a clear bikini top. The
waistband of her jeans and black belt dissolved into thin,
translucent strings. The see-through top made the upper half of
her body look realistically naked.</p>
<p>Hiding behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was filled
with similar images of women, digitally and nonconsensually
altered and sexualized. Mayes wanted to cuss the faceless user
out, but decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would
be the end of it. Soon, however, her comments became littered with
more images of herself in clear bikinis and skin-tight latex
bodysuits. Mayes says that all of the requests came from anonymous
profiles that also targeted other women. Though some users have
had their accounts suspended, as of publication, some of the
images of Mayes are still up on X.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Emma, a content creator, was at the grocery store when she saw the
notifications of people asking Grok to undress her images. [...]
Numbness washed over Emma when the images finally loaded on her
timeline. A selfie of her holding a cat had been transformed into
a nude. The cat was removed from the photo, Emma says, and her
upper body was made naked.</p>
<p>Emma immediately made her account private and reported the images.
In an email response reviewed by Rolling Stone, X User Support
asked her to upload an image of her government-issued ID so they
could look into the report, but Emma responded that she didn’t
feel comfortable doing so. [...] In our call, she checked to see
if some of the image edits she was aware of were still up on X.
They were. “Oh, my God,” she says, letting out a defeated sigh.
“It has 15,000 views. Oh, that’s so sad.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvn"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42611</id>
<published>2026-01-27T01:32:03Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T01:32:04Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Daniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>
<p><audio
src = "https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-439-daniel-jalkut.mp3"
controls
preload = "none"
/></p>
<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://notion.com/talkshow">Notion</a>: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together.</li>
<li><a href="https://squarespace.com/talkshow">Squarespace</a>: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code <strong>talkshow</strong>.</li>
<li><a href="https://sentry.io/talkshow">Sentry</a>: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code <strong>TALKSHOW</strong> for $80 in free credits.</li>
<li><a href="https://factormeals.com/talkshow50off">Factor</a>: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code <strong>talkshow50off</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in-finder/52435"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvm"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42610</id>
<published>2026-01-26T23:18:37Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T19:58:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Good tip from “DifferentDan” on the Realmac customer forum, posted back in November:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I saw on macOS Tahoe 26.1, Apple finally added an option in the
Column View settings to automatically right size all columns
individually and that setting would persist, but I don’t really
like Liquid Glass (yet) so I haven’t updated to Tahoe.</p>
<p>Looks like someone found a workaround however for those that are
still on Sequoia. Just open up Terminal on your Mac, copy in the
below, and press return.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The one-line command:</p>
<pre><code>defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder`
</code></pre>
<p>(Change <code>YES</code> to <code>NO</code> if you want to go back.)</p>
<p>Marcel Bresink’s <a href="http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html">TinkerTool</a> is a great free app for adjusting hidden preferences using a proper GUI, and it turns out TinkerTool has exposed this hidden Finder preference for a few years now. You learn something every day. I enabled this a few days ago on MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it seems exactly like the implementation Apple has exposed in the Finder’s View Options window in Tahoe, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames">which I wrote about Friday</a>. No better, no worse.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs-largest-customer.html"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvl"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42609</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:51:12Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:51:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Kif Leswing, CNBC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nvidia will become TSMC’s largest customer this year, according to
analyst estimates and Huang himself. Apple is believed to
currently be TSMC’s largest customer, mostly to manufacture
A-series chips for iPhones and M-series chips for PCs and servers.</p>
<p>The positional swap will mark a fundamental shift in the
semiconductor industry, reflecting Nvidia’s growing importance
amid the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. [...]</p>
<p>Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, said he
<a href="https://thediligencestack.com/p/the-reordering-to-aihpc-tsmcs-2026">projects</a> Nvidia to generate $33 billion in TSMC revenue this
year, or about 22% of the chip foundry’s total. Apple, by
comparison, is projected to generate about $27 billion, or about
18% of TSMC’s revenue.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvk"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42608</id>
<author>
<name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name>
</author>
<published>2026-01-26T22:40:54Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:40:55Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=product_name_link">WorkOS Pipes</a> removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a <a href="https://workos.com/docs/widgets/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=drop_in_widget">drop-in widget</a>. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta">Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvj"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42607</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:10:43Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:10:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Joe Rossignol, writing at MacRumors:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple offers a <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/11/apple-announces-airtag-location-sharing/">Share Item Location feature in the Find My
app</a> that allows you to temporarily share the location of an
AirTag-equipped item with others, including employees at
participating airlines. This way, if you put an AirTag inside your
bags, the airline can better help you find them in the event they
are lost or delayed at the airport. [...] Below, we have listed
most of the airlines that support the feature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/">Apple’s announcement</a> claims that 36 airlines support it today, and 15 more are coming soon.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvi"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42606</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:02:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:02:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip
found in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3,
and Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it
easier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio
feedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from
up to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an
upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be
located. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on
Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to
find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Solid update to the original AirTags, which <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-airtag/">debuted five years ago</a>. Better range, louder speaker, increased precision. The form factor remains unchanged, so second-gen AirTags will fit in keychains or holders designed for the first-gen model. They even take the same batteries. Pricing also remains unchanged: $29 for one, $99 for a four-pack.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/app_store_2025_top_iphone_apps_in_the_us"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvh"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42605</id>
<published>2026-01-26T21:49:45Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:34:06Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>I’ve been meaning since last month to link to <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/story/id1847717004">Apple’s lists of the top iPhone apps in the U.S. for 2025</a>. Here’s the list of the top 20 free iPhone apps:</p>
<ol>
<li>ChatGPT</li>
<li>Threads</li>
<li>Google</li>
<li>TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE</li>
<li>WhatsApp Messenger</li>
<li>Instagram</li>
<li>YouTube</li>
<li>Google Maps</li>
<li>Gmail — Email by Google</li>
<li>Google Gemini</li>
<li>Facebook</li>
<li>CapCut: Photo & Video Editor</li>
<li>Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire</li>
<li>T-Life [“All things T-Mobile”]</li>
<li>Telegram Messenger</li>
<li>Lemon8 — Lifestyle Community</li>
<li>Spotify: Music and Podcasts</li>
<li>Google Chrome</li>
<li>Snapchat</li>
<li>rednote</li>
</ol>
<p>All app names are verbatim, except for T-Life, where I put the app’s secondary slogan in brackets. I had no idea what T-Life was, but the slogan makes it clear. Interesting to me that T-Mobile’s app is on the list but neither Verizon nor AT&T’s are.<sup id="fnr1-2026-01-26"><a href="#fn1-2026-01-26">1</a></sup></p>
<p>I hope a million people sent this list to Elon Musk, to rub some salt in his severe case of butt hurt that led him to file <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/elon-musk-sues-apple-openai-to-block-exclusive-iphone-chatgpt-integration/">an almost certainly baseless lawsuit in August</a> alleging that ChatGPT consistently tops the App Store list — and Grok does not — because Apple puts a thumb on the scale for these rankings because of its deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with Apple Intelligence. Here’s the thing. Dishonest people presume the whole world is dishonest. That you either cheat and steal, or you’re going to be cheated and robbed. If Elon Musk ran the App Store, you can be sure that he’d cook the rankings to put apps that he owns, or even just favors, on top. Elon Musk runs Twitter/X, and <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487">that’s how the algorithm there now works</a>: it favors content he prefers, especially his own tweets. Apple doesn’t publish how its lists for top apps are computed (to keep the rankings from being gamed more than they already inevitably are), but judging by how many of these apps come from Apple’s rivals (e.g., Spotify), there’s little reason to think they’re crooked — unless you think the entire world is crooked.</p>
<p>Google has 6 apps on the list, including 5 in the top 10. Meta — certainly no friend of Apple — has 4 apps on the list, including 3 in the top 10. (Slightly interesting, but unsurprising, sign of the times: the Facebook “blue app” dropped out of the top 10.) The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</p>
<p>Microsoft has no apps on the list. <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/162987/macbu-4.html">Back in the day</a>, the conventional wisdom was that Microsoft made more money, on average, from each Mac sold than they did from each PC sold — despite the fact that nearly all PCs came with a licensed version of Windows — because so many Mac users paid for Microsoft Office at retail prices. I suspect something like that is true with iPhones for Google. A lot of iPhone users spend a lot of time using apps from Google. I would bet that Google makes more ad revenue from the average iPhone user (who, even if they don’t install a single one of Google’s native iOS apps, probably uses Google Search in Safari) than from the average Android user.</p>
<p>Another company that has no apps on this list is Apple itself. If you look at <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6007?chart=top-free">the daily top list of apps in the Productivity category</a>, you will see a lot of apps from Google and Microsoft. But you won’t find Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, because Apple recuses its own apps from such rankings. </p>
<p>Here’s the list of the top 20 <em>paid</em> iPhone apps in 2025 in the U.S.:</p>
<ol>
<li>HotSchedules</li>
<li>Shadowrocket</li>
<li>Procreate Pocket</li>
<li>AnkiMobile Flashcards</li>
<li>Paprika Recipe Manager 3</li>
<li>SkyView®</li>
<li>TonalEnergy Tuner & Metronome</li>
<li>AutoSleep Track Sleep on Watch</li>
<li>Forest: Focus for Productivity</li>
<li>RadarScope </li>
<li>Monash FODMAP Diet</li>
<li>Merge Watermelon for watch</li>
<li>Streaks</li>
<li>Wipr 2</li>
<li>µBrowser: Watch Web Browser</li>
<li>PeakFinder</li>
<li>Threema. The Secure Messenger</li>
<li>Things 3</li>
<li>Goblin Tools</li>
<li>¡Verify Basic</li>
</ol>
<p>There are a couple of real gems on this list — Procreate, Paprika, Streaks (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2016/05/streaks">multi</a>-<a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/11/streaks_and_little_streaks">time</a> DF sponsor), and Things are all apps that I use, or have used, and would recommend. But unlike the list of top free apps, where I’d at least heard of all of them (once I figured out what T-Life was), I have never even heard of most of these paid iPhone apps. Household names these are not.</p>
<p>The market for paid apps isn’t just different from the market for free apps. It’s an entirely different world.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2026-01-26">
<p>This, in turn made me wonder what the subscriber-count standings look like. I assumed T-Mobile was still in third place, but that assumption was wrong. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_in_the_United_States">According to Wikipedia</a>, here are the number of U.S. subscribers per carrier as of Q3 2025:</p>
<ol>
<li>Verizon — 146 million</li>
<li>T-Mobile — 140 million</li>
<li>AT&T — 119 million</li>
<li>Boost — 8 million</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m a Verizon man myself, and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks">pay handsomely for it</a>. I don’t even remember why exactly, but I despised AT&T back when they were the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. <a href="#fnr1-2026-01-26" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ App Store 2025 Top iPhone Apps in the U.S.</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvg"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42604</id>
<published>2026-01-26T20:32:46Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T01:34:52Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Yours truly back in 2009, hitting upon the same themes from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit">the item I just posted</a> about TextEdit vs. Apple Notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This, I think, explains the relative popularity of Mac OS X’s
included Stickies application. For years, Stickies’s popularity
confounded me. Why would anyone use a note-taking utility that
requires you to leave every saved note open in its own window on
screen? The more you use it, the more cluttered it gets. But
here’s the thing: cluttered though it may be, <em>you never have to
save anything in Stickies</em>. Switch to Stickies, Command-N, type
your new note, and you’re done. (And, yes, if you create a new
sticky note, then force-quit Stickies, the note you just created
will be there when next you launch the app. Stickies’s auto-save
happens while you type, not just at quit time.) It feels easy and
it feels safe. Stickies does not offer a good long-term storage
design, but it offers a frictionless short-term
jot-something-down-right-now design.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here we are in 2026, 17 years later, and, unsurprisingly, some things have changed. Apple Notes didn’t get a Mac version until Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012. And Apple Notes didn’t really get <em>good</em> until 2016 or 2017. I still use Yojimbo, the library-based Mac app I wrote about in the above piece in 2009, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to. I use Apple Notes instead, for most notes, because it has good clients for iPhone and iPad (and Vision Pro and even Apple Watch).</p>
<p>Other things, however, have not changed since 2009. Like the Stickies app, which is still around in MacOS 26 Tahoe, largely unchanged, except for <a href="https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/#:~:text=STICKIES">a sad Liquid Glass-style icon</a>. If you still use Stickies, you should consider moving to Apple Notes. There’s even a command (File → Export All to Notes...) to import all your notes from Stickies into Apple Notes, with subfolders in Notes for each color sticky note. Apple Notes on the Mac even supports one of Stickies’s signature features: the Window → Float on Top command will keep a note’s window floating atop the windows from other apps even when Apple Notes is in the background.</p>
<p>(Stickies has another cool feature that no other current app I know of does: it still supports “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowShade">window shading</a>”. Double-click the title bar of a note in Stickies and the rest of the window will “roll up”, leaving only the title bar behind. Double-click again and it rolls down. This was a built-in feature for all windows in all apps on classic Mac OS, starting with Mac OS 8, but was replaced in favor of minimizing windows into the Dock with Mac OS X. Window shading was a better feature (and could have been kept <em>alongside</em> minimizing into the Dock). With the Stickies app, window shading works particularly well with the aforementioned Float on Top feature — you can keep a floating window available, atop all other windows, but while it’s rolled up it hardly takes up any space or obscures anything underneath.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvf"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42603</id>
<published>2026-01-26T19:54:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T15:31:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps at the opposite end of the complexity and novelty spectrum from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot">Federico Viticci’s intro to Clawdbot</a> is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software">this piece by Kyle Chayka</a>, writing at The New Yorker, from October:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Amid the accelerating automation of our computers — and the
proliferation of assistants and companions and agents designed to
execute tasks for us — I’ve been thinking more about the desktop
that’s hidden in the background of the laptop I use every day.
Mine is strewn with screenshots and Word documents and e-books.
What I’ve accrued the most of by far, though, are TextEdit files,
from the bare-bones Mac app that just lets you type stuff into a
blank window. Apple computers have come with text-editing software
since the original Mac was released, in 1984; the current
iteration of the program launched in the mid-nineties and has
survived relatively unchanged. Over the past few years, I’ve found
myself relying on TextEdit more as every other app has grown more
complicated, adding cloud uploads, collaborative editing, and now
generative A.I. TextEdit is not connected to the internet, like
Google Docs. It is not part of a larger suite of workplace
software, like Microsoft Word. You can write in TextEdit, and you
can format your writing with a bare minimum of fonts and styling.
Those files are stored as RTFs (short for rich-text format), one
step up from the most basic TXT file. TextEdit now functions as my
to-do-list app, my e-mail drafting window, my personal calendar,
and my stash of notes to self, which act like digital Post-its.</p>
<p>I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without
warning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and
it doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google
Chrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my
random thoughts and ideas in progress — the personal note-storage
app Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative
digital workspace Notion, which can store and share company
information. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy
of organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But
nothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of
TextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of
thinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing
longhand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of
course, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably
warped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by
typing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Old habits are hard to break. And trust me, I, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">of all people</a>, know the value of writing stuff — all sorts of stuff — in plain text files. (RTF isn’t plain text, but it is a stable and standard format.) I’ve been using BBEdit <a href="https://www.barebones.com/company/history.html">since 1992</a>, not just as an occasional utility, but as part of my daily arsenal of essential tools.</p>
<p>But I get the feeling that Chayka would be better served switching from TextEdit to Apple Notes for most of these things he’s creating. Saving a whole pile of notes to yourself as text files on your desktop, with no organization into sub-folders, isn’t wrong. The whole point of “just put it on the desktop” is to absolve yourself of thinking about where to file something properly. That’s friction, and if you face a bit of friction every time you want to jot something down, it increases the likelihood that <em>you won’t jot it down</em> because you didn’t want to deal with the friction.</p>
<p>You actually don’t need to save or name documents in TextEdit anymore. One of the best changes to MacOS in the last two decades has been <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-desktop-dock-settings-mchlp1119/15.0/mac">the persistence of open document windows</a>, including unsaved changes to existing files, and never-saved untitled document windows. Try this: open TextEdit, make a new untitled document, and type something — anything — into the new window. Next, don’t just quit TextEdit, but force quit it (⌥⌘Esc). Relaunch TextEdit, and your unsaved new document should be right where you left it, with every character you typed.</p>
<p>But a big pile of unorganized RTF files on your desktop — or a big pile of unsaved document windows that remain open, in perpetuity, in TextEdit — is no way to live. You can use TextEdit like that, it <em>supports</em> being used like that, but it wasn’t <em>designed</em> to be used like that.</p>
<p>Apple Notes was designed to be used like this. Open Notes, ⌘N, type whatever you want, and switch back to whatever you were doing before. There is no Save command. There are no files. And while a few dozen text files on your desktop starts to look messy, and makes individual items hard to find, you can stash <em>thousands</em> of notes in Apple Notes and they just organize themselves into a simple list, sorted, by default, by most recently modified. You can create folders and assign tags in Notes, but you don’t need to. Don’t make busy work for yourself. And with iCloud, you get fast reliable syncing of all your notes to all of your other Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/create-and-view-notes-apdc6fb0a03f/watchos">even your Watch now</a>.</p>
<p>Sometimes you just want to stick with what you’re used to. I get it. I am, very much, a creature of habit. And TextEdit is comforting for its simplicity, reliability, and unchanging consistency spanning literally decades. But there’s no question in my mind that nearly everyone using TextEdit as a personal notes system would be better served — and happier, once they adjust to the change — by switching to Apple Notes.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Federico Viticci on Clawdbot</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wve"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42602</id>
<published>2026-01-26T17:58:37Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T20:18:47Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If this intro just gave you whiplash, imagine my reaction when I
first started playing around with <a href="https://clawd.bot/">Clawdbot</a>, the incredible
<a href="https://github.com/clawdbot/clawdbot">open-source project</a> by <a href="https://steipete.me/">Peter Steinberger</a> (a name
that should be <a href="https://www.macstories.net/linked/ios-10-3-beta-re-introduces-warning-for-old-32-bit-apps-suggests-future-incompatibility/">familiar to longtime MacStories readers</a>)
that’s become <em>very</em> popular in certain AI communities over the
past few weeks. I kept seeing Clawdbot being mentioned by people I
follow; eventually, I gave in to peer pressure, followed the
instructions provided by the funny crustacean mascot on the app’s
<a href="https://docs.clawd.bot/start/getting-started">website</a>, installed Clawdbot on my new M4 Mac mini (which
is not my main production machine), and <a href="https://docs.clawd.bot/channels/telegram">connected it to
Telegram</a>.</p>
<p>To say that Clawdbot has fundamentally altered my perspective of
what it means to have an intelligent, personal AI assistant in
2026 would be an understatement. I’ve been playing around with
Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the
Anthropic API ( <em>yikes</em> ), and I’ve had fewer and fewer
conversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the
process. Don’t get me wrong: Clawdbot is a nerdy project, a
tinkerer’s laboratory that is not poised to overtake the
popularity of consumer LLMs any time soon. Still, Clawdbot points
at a fascinating future for digital assistants, and it’s exactly
the kind of bleeding-edge project that MacStories readers will
appreciate.</p>
<p>Clawdbot can be overwhelming at first, so I’ll try my best to
explain what it is and why it’s so exciting and fun to play
around with.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Overwhelming indeed. Clawdbot is undeniably impressive, and <a href="https://x.com/steipete/status/2015828441342292139">interest in it is skyrocketing</a>. But because of its complexity and scope, it’s one of those things where all the excitement is being registered by people who already understand it. This essay from Viticci is the first thing I’ve seen that really helped me <em>start</em> to understand it.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Federico Viticci on Clawdbot’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Meh</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://meh.com/go/df"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvd"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42601</id>
<published>2026-01-25T17:04:18Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:30:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh puts up a new deal every day, and they do it with panache. As they say, “It’s actual, real, weird shit you didn’t know existed for half the price you would’ve guessed.”</p>
<p>Don’t tell any of my other sponsors, but <a href="https://meh.com/go/df">Meh</a> is my favorite <a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/archive">longtime DF sponsor</a>. I love the way their orange graphics look against DF’s <code>#4a525a</code> background. And I always love their sponsored posts that go into the RSS feed at the start of the sponsorship week. I’ll just quote theirs from this week in full:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our
part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking
your head in the sand.</p>
<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to
last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break
from the misery.</p>
<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems.
We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our
little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh
community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of
occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve
never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not
giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>
<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that.
But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we
have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is
over at Meh today.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Meh’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvc"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42600</id>
<published>2026-01-25T00:14:52Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-25T17:05:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">A change to how Safari reports the OS it is running on led many in the media to lose their minds.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users. The methodology behind these numbers is broken and the numbers are totally wrong. Those false numbers are so low, so jarringly different from previous years, that it boggles my mind that they didn’t raise a red flag for anyone who took a moment to consider them.</p>
<p>The ball started rolling with this post from Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac on January 8, “<a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users">iOS 26 Still Struggles to Gain Traction With iPhone Users</a>”, which began:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26,
according to data from a web analytics service. The adoption rate
is far less than previous iOS versions at this same point months
after their releases. The data only reveals how few iPhone users
run Apple’s latest operating system upgrade, not why they’ve
chosen to avoid it. But the most likely candidate is the new
Liquid Glass look of the update. [...]</p>
<p>Roughly four months after launching in mid-September, <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202601-202601-bar">only about
15% of iPhone users have some version of the new operating system
installed</a>. That’s according to data for January 2026 from
StatCounter. Instead, most users hold onto previous versions.</p>
<p>For comparison, in January 2025, about <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202501-202501-bar">63% of iPhone users had
some iOS 18 version</a> installed. So after roughly the same
amount of time, the adoption rate of Apple [<em>sic</em>] newest OS was
about four times higher.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those links point to Statcounter, a web analytics service. A lot of websites include Statcounter’s analytics tracker, and Statcounter’s tracker attempts to determine the version of the OS each visitor’s device is running. The problem is, starting with Safari 26 — the version that ships with iOS 26 — Safari changed how it reports its user agent string. From the WebKit blog, “<a href="https://webkit.org/blog/17333/webkit-features-in-safari-26-0/">WebKit Features in Safari 26.0</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Also, now in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS 26 the user agent
string no longer lists the current version of the operating
system. Safari 18.6 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.6
Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>
<p>And Safari 26.0 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0
Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>
<p>This matches the long-standing behavior on macOS, where the user
agent string for Safari 26.0 is:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0
Safari/605.1.15</code></p>
<p>It was back in 2017 when Safari on Mac first started freezing the
Mac OS string. Now the behavior on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS does
the same in order to minimize compatibility issues. The WebKit and
Safari version number portions of the string will continue to
change with each release.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, Safari now reports, in its user agent string, that it’s running on iOS 18.6 when it is running on iOS 18.6, and reports that it’s running on iOS 18.6 <em>when it’s running on iOS 26.0 or later</em>. And it’s going to keep reporting that it’s running on iOS 18.6 forever, just like how Safari 26 on MacOS reports that it’s running on MacOS 10.15 Catalina, from 2019.</p>
<p>Statcounter completely dropped the ball on this change, and it explains the entirety of this false narrative that iOS 26 adoption is incredibly low. (Statcounter has a <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/detect">“detect” page</a> where you can see what browser and OS it thinks you’re using.) The reason they reported that 15 percent of iPhone users were using iOS 26 is probably because that’s the amount of web traffic Statcounter sees from iOS 26 web browsers that aren’t Safari (most of which, I’ll bet, are in-app browser views in social media apps).</p>
<p>Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, <a href="https://pxlnv.com/blog/updating-the-record-on-ios-26/">wrote a good piece delving into this saga</a>. And then he <a href="https://pxlnv.com/linklog/ios-26-usage-updates/">posted a follow-up item</a> pointing out that (a) Statcounter’s CEO has acknowledged their error and they’re fixing it; and (b) Wikimedia publishes network-wide stats that serve as a good baseline. The audience for Wikipedia is, effectively, the audience for the web itself. And Wikipedia’s stats show that while iOS 26 adoption, in January 2026, isn’t absurdly low (as Statcounter had been suggesting, erroneously, and writers like <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users">Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac</a> and <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/3022985/ios-26s-failure-shows-what-happens-when-you-take-customers-for-granted.html">David Price</a> <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/3028428/ios-26-is-a-massive-flop-with-iphone-users-and-you-can-probably-guess-why.html">at Macworld</a> foolishly regurgitated, no matter how little sense it made that the numbers would be <em>that</em> low), they are in fact lower than those for iOS 18 a year ago and iOS 17 two years ago. Per Wikimedia:</p>
<ul>
<li>iOS 26, January 2026: 50%</li>
<li>iOS 18, January 2025: 72%</li>
<li>iOS 17, January 2024: 65%</li>
</ul>
<p>So, no, iOS 26 adoption isn’t at just 15 percent, which only a dope would believe, but it’s not as high as previous iOS versions in previous years at this point on the calendar. Something, obviously, is going on.</p>
<p>David Smith, developer of popular apps like <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/widgetsmith/id1523682319">Widgetsmith</a> and <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pedometer/id712286167">Pedometer++</a>, <a href="https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872">on Mastodon</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I noticed iOS 26 adoption had entered a ‘third wave’ of rapid
adoption. So I made a graph of the relative adoption versus iOS 18
at this point in the release cycle.</p>
<p>While lower than iOS 18 at this point for my apps (65% vs. 78%),
the shape of this graph says to me that Apple is in full control
of the adoption rate and can tune it to their plans. The
coordinated surges are Apple dialing up automatic updates.</p>
<p>If this surge were as long as previous ones, we’d hit the
saturation point very soon.</p>
<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/david-smith-ios-v26-v18-adoption.png"
alt = "Chart of iOS 26 vs. iOS 18 adoption, day-by-day after each version was released."
width = 500
/></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>What’s going on, quite obviously, is that Apple itself is slow-rolling the automatic updates to iOS 26. For years now Apple has steered users, via default suggestions during device setup, to adopt settings to allow OS updates to happen automatically, including updates to major new versions. Apple tends not to push these automatic updates to major new versions of iOS until two months after the .0 release in September. This year that second wave was delayed by about two weeks, and there’s now a third wave starting midway through January. It’s a different pattern from previous years — but it’s a pattern Apple controls. A large majority of users of all Apple devices get major OS updates when, and only when, their devices automatically update. Apple has been slower to push those updates to iOS 26 than they have been for previous iOS updates in recent years. With good reason! iOS 26 is a more significant — and buggier — update than iOS 18 and 17 were.</p>
<p>People like <em>you</em>, readers of Daring Fireball, may well be hesitant to update to iOS 26, or (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames">like me</a>) to MacOS 26, or to any of the version 26 OS updates, because you are aware of things (like UI changes) that you are loath to adopt.</p>
<p>But the overwhelming majority of Apple users — especially iPhone users — just let their devices update automatically. They might like iOS 26’s changes, they might dislike them, or they might not care or even notice. But they just let their software updates happen automatically — and they will form the entirety of their opinions regarding iOS 26 after it’s running on their iPhones.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ The iOS 26 Adoption Rate Is Not Bizarrely Low Compared to Previous Years</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvb"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42599</id>
<published>2026-01-24T03:38:53Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:39:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>The main reason I’m sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia, refusing to install 26 Tahoe, is that there are so many <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder">severe UI regressions</a> in Tahoe. The <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus">noisy, distracting, inconsistent icons</a> prefixing menu item commands, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons">ruining the Mac’s signature menu bar system</a>. Indiscriminate transparency that renders so many menus, windows, and sidebars <a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2025/11/09/last-week-on-my-mac-tahoe-26-1-disappointments/">inscrutable and ugly</a>. Windows with childish round corners that are <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26">hard to resize</a>. The <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons">comically sad app icons</a>. Why choose to suffer?</p>
<p>But the thing that makes the decision to stay on 15 Sequoia a cinch is that I honestly struggle to think of <em>any</em> features in Tahoe that I’m missing out on. What is there to actually <em>like</em> about Tahoe? One small example is Apple’s Journal app. I’ve been using Journal ever since it debuted as an iPhone-only app in iOS 17.2 in December 2023. 785 entries and counting. With the version 26 OSes, Apple created versions of Journal for iPad and Mac (but not Vision Pro). Syncing works great via iCloud too. All things considered, I’d like to have a version of Journal on my main Mac. But I’m fine without it. I’ve been writing entries without a Mac app since 2023, so I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing, if I want to create or edit a Journal entry from my Mac: using <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference">iPhone Mirroring</a>.</p>
<p>That’s it. The Journal app is the one new feature Tahoe offers that I wish I had today. I’m not missing out on the latest version of Safari because <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-26_2-release-notes">Apple makes Safari 26 available for MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> (and even 14 Sonoma). Some years, Apple adds <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/enter-formulas-and-equations-iphb9c2b948f/ios">new features</a> to Apple Notes, and to get those features on every device, you need to update every device to that year’s new OS. This year I don’t think there are any features like that. Everything is perfectly cromulent running iOS 26 on my iPhone and iPad, but sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia on my primary Mac.</p>
<p>But now that we’ve been <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder">poking around at column view</a> in the Tahoe Finder, <a href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html">Jeff Johnson has discovered another enticing new feature</a>. On Mac OS 26, the Finder has a new view option (accessed via View → Show View Options) to automatically resize columns to fit the longest visible filename. <a href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html">See Johnson’s post</a> for screenshots of the new option in practice.</p>
<p>[<strong>Update:</strong> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing">Turns out</a>, this auto-resizing feature has been a hidden preference setting in the Finder for a few years now.]</p>
<p>Column view is one of the best <a href="https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0">UI innovations from NeXTStep</a>, and if you think about it, has always been the primary metaphor for browsing hierarchical applications in iOS. It’s a good idea for the desktop that proved foundational for mobile. The iPhone Settings app is column view — one column at a time. It’s a way to organize a multi-screen app in a visual, spatial way even when limited to a 3.5-inch display.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20000302055440/http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/browser.html">Greg’s Browser</a>, a terrific indie app, I’d been using column view on classic Mac OS since 1993, a few years before Apple even bought NeXT, let alone finally shipped Mac OS X (which was when column view first appeared in the Finder). One frustration inherent to column view is that it doesn’t work well with long filenames. It’s a waste of space to resize all columns to a width long enough to accommodate long filenames, but it’s frustrating when a long filename doesn’t fit in a regular-width column.</p>
<p>This new feature in the Tahoe Finder attempts to finally solve this problem. I played around with it this afternoon and it’s ... OK. It feels like an early prototype for what could be a polished feature. For example, it exacerbates some layering bugs in the Finder — if you attempt to rename a file or folder that is partially scrolled under the sidebar, the Tahoe Finder will just draw the rename editing field right on top of the sidebar, even though it belongs to the layer that is scrolled underneath. Here’s what it looks like when I rename a folder named “Example ƒ” to “How is this possible?”:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png"
alt = "Renaming a folder in MacOS 26 Tahoe. The rename editing field from the underlying column is rendered on top of the sidebar."
width = 500
/></a></p>
<p>On MacOS 15, if you attempt to rename an item that is scrolled under the sidebar in column view, the column containing that item snaps into place next to the sidebar, so it’s fully visible. That snapping into place just feels right. The way Tahoe works, where the column doesn’t move and the text editing field for the filename just gets drawn on top of the sidebar, feels gross, like I’m using a computer that is not a Macintosh. Amateur hour.</p>
<p>I wish I could set this new column-resizing option only to grow columns to accommodate long filenames, and never to shrink columns when the visible items all have short filenames. But the way it currently works, it adjusts all columns to the width of the longest visible filename each column is displaying — narrowing some, and widening others. I want most columns to stay at the default width. With this new option enabled, it looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.</p>
<p>Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest <em>currently visible</em> filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.</p>
<p>Even a future polished version of this column view feature wouldn’t, in and of itself, be enough to tempt me to upgrade to Tahoe. After 30-some years of columns that don’t automatically adjust their widths, I can wait another year. But we don’t yet have a polished version of this feature. The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ Tahoe Added a Finder Option to Resize Columns to Fit Filenames</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>OmniOutliner 6</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wva"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42598</id>
<published>2026-01-24T00:59:23Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-24T00:59:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ken Case, on The Omni Group blog:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The features noted above already make for a great upgrade. But <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omni-roadmap-2025#document-links">as
I mentioned last year</a>, one of the interesting problems
we’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native
apps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem,
Omni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With
Omni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we
can share those links with other people and other apps.</p>
<p>Omni Links support everything we said document links needed to
have. Omni Links work across all of Apple’s computing platforms
and can be shared with a team. They leverage existing solutions
for syncing and sharing documents, such as iCloud Drive or shared
Git repositories. They are easy to create, easy to use, and easy
to share.</p>
<p>Omni Links also power up Omni Automation, giving scripts and
plug-ins a way to reference and update content in linked documents — documents that can be shared across all your team’s devices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s lots more in version 6, including a modernized UI, and many additions to Omni Automation, Omni’s scripting platform that works across both Mac and iOS — including really useful <a href="https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm-collection.html">integration with Apple’s on-device Foundation Models</a>, with, of course, comprehensive (and comprehensible) <a href="https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm.html">documentation</a>.</p>
<p>It’s <a href="https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnioutliner/universal/6.0.1/en/connect/#omni-links">Omni Links</a>, though, that strikes me as the most interesting new feature. The two fundamental models for apps are library-based (like Apple Notes) and document-based (like TextEdit). Document-based apps create and open files from the file system. Library-based apps create items in a database, and the location of the database in the file system is an implementation detail the user shouldn’t worry about.</p>
<p>OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the advantages to library-based apps is that they more easily allow the developer to create custom URL schemes to link to items in the app’s library. Omni Links is an ambitious solution to bring that to document-based apps. Omni Links let you copy URLs that link not just to an OmniOutliner document, but to any specific row within an OmniOutliner document. And you can paste those URLs into any app you want (like, say, Apple Notes or <a href="https://www.culturedcode.com/">Things</a>, or events in your calendar app). From the perspective of other apps, they’re just URLs that start with <code>omnioutliner://</code>. They’re not based on anything as simplistic as a file’s pathname. They’re a robust way to link to a unique document, or a specific row within that document. Create an Omni Link on your Mac, and that link will work on your iPhone or iPad too — or vice versa. This is a very complex problem to solve, but Omni Links delivers on the age-old promise of “It just works”, abstracting all the complexity.</p>
<p>I’ve been using OmniOutliner for at least two decades now, and Omni Links strikes me as one of the best features they’ve ever added. It’s a way to connect your outlines, and the content within your outlines, to any app that accepts links. The other big change is that OmniOutliner 6 is now a single universal purchase giving you access to the same features on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘OmniOutliner 6’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Lolgato 1.7</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://github.com/raine/lolgato"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv9"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42597</id>
<published>2026-01-23T23:36:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T23:36:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Free Mac utility by Zendit Oy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A macOS app that enhances control over Elgato lights, offering
features beyond the standard Elgato Control Center software.</p>
<p>Features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Automatically turn lights on and off based on camera activity</li>
<li>Turn lights off when locking your Mac</li>
<li>Sync light temperature with macOS Night Shift</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Lolgato also lets you set global hotkeys for toggling the lights and changing their brightness.</p>
<p>I’ve had a pair of <a href="https://www.elgato.com/ww/en/p/key-light?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block">Elgato Key Lights</a> down at my podcast recording desk for years now. Elgato’s shitty software drove me nuts. Nothing seemed to work so I gave up on controlling my lights from software. I set the color temperature and brightness the way I wanted it (which you have to do via software) and then after that, I just turned them off and on using the physical switches on the lights.</p>
<p>I forget how I discovered Lolgato, but I installed back on November 10. I connected Lolgato to my lights, and set it to turn them on whenever the Mac wakes up, and off whenever the Mac goes to sleep. It has worked perfectly for over two months. Perfect little utility.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Lolgato 1.7’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Playing the Percentages</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv8"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42596</id>
<published>2026-01-23T15:44:11Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T15:44:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Dr. Drang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For weeks — maybe months, time has been hard to judge this past
year — Trump has been telling us that he’s worked out deals with
pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by several hundred
percent. Commentators and comedians have pointed out that you
can’t reduce prices more than 100% and pretty much left it at
that, suggesting that Trump’s impossible numbers are due to
ignorance.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s ignorance is nearly limitless — but
only nearly. I’ve always thought that he knew the right way to
calculate a price drop; he did it the wrong way so he could quote
a bigger number. And that came out in yesterday’s speech.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump sophistry + math pedantry = Daring Fireball catnip.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Playing the Percentages’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv7"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42595</id>
<published>2026-01-23T01:34:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T01:34:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jeff Johnson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Finder has four view modes, represented by the four consecutive
toolbar icons in the screenshot below, if you can even call that
free-floating monstrosity a toolbar anymore: Icons, List, Columns,
and Gallery. My preference is columns view, which I’ve been using
for as long as I remember, going back to Mac OS X.</p>
<p>At the bottom of each column is a resizing widget that you can use
to change the width of the columns. Or rather, you <em>could</em> use it to
change the width of the columns. On macOS Tahoe, the horizontal
scroller covers the resizing widget and prevents it from being
clicked!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/12/macos-26-cut-corner">joked last week</a> that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job">a month ago</a>, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv6"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42594</id>
<published>2026-01-22T23:19:56Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T00:04:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to
build that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all
of that same information is handed over.</p>
<p>When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder
for Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy
and security protections, like not sharing any information about
your actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking
trickier.</p>
<p>This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want
to pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan
and Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had
the option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share <em>a lot</em> less
information with Walmart.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Using Walmart Pay gives Walmart <em>more</em> information than a regular credit or debit card transaction does. When you use the same traditional credit card for multiple purchases over time, a retailer like Walmart can build a profile associated with that card number. Charles Duhigg, all the way back in 2012, reported a story for The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.UClu.YPuRxJGkIHte&smid=url-share">about how Target used these profiles</a> — which customers don’t even know about — to statistically determine when women are likely to be pregnant based on purchases like, say, cocoa-butter lotion and vitamin supplements. When you use an in-house payment app like Walmart Pay (or swipe a store’s “loyalty” card at the register), the store doesn’t have to do any guesswork to associate the transaction with your profile. Your Walmart Pay account <em>is</em> your profile.</p>
<p>Using Apple Pay gives a retailer less — or at least <em>no more</em> — identifying information than a traditional card transaction. So if the future is paying via devices, Walmart wants that future to give them more information.</p>
<p>I think the situation with Walmart and Apple Pay is a lot like Netflix and Apple TV integration. Most retailers, even large ones, support Apple Pay. Most streaming services, even large ones, support integration with Apple’s TV app. Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because they want to control the customer transaction directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple Pay. Netflix doesn’t support TV app integration because they want to control the customer viewing experience directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple’s TV app.</p>
<p>Amazon — which is also very large, whose customers are also very loyal, and which absolutely <em>loves</em> collecting data — does not support Apple Pay either.</p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/01/21/why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/">Michael Tsai</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of-minnesota-activist-nekima-levy-armstrong-arrest"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv5"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42593</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:44:59Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T01:35:51Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Violet Jira, reporting for NOTUS:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The White House communications team <a href="https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2014365986388951194?s=20">posted a digitally altered
photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong,</a> a Minnesota social
justice activist, on Thursday that makes it appear that she was
weeping <a href="https://www.notus.org/immigration/pam-bondi-arrest-minneapolis-church-protesters-ice">during her arrest by federal agents</a>.</p>
<p>The image is highly realistic, bearing no watermark or other
indicator that the image has been doctored. The change is only
apparent when compared to a <a href="https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2014357826081071513?s=20">different version of the same image
posted by the Department of Homeland Security</a> earlier in
the day.</p>
<p>The White House, which has adopted a combative, flippant tone on
its widely viewed social media pages, drew some backlash for the
post online. In response, White House deputy communications
director Kaelan Dorr called the image a “meme.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s not a meme. It’s propaganda — an altogether false image presented as an actual photograph.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig-federighi-plots-cautious-course-ai"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv4"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42592</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:33:05Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-24T03:43:19Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Aaron “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/11/wsj-tech-layoffs">Homeboy</a>” Tilley and Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas, and with a miserly gift-link policy):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But there are also potential risks to making Federighi head of AI.
Giving oversight of AI to him reflects Apple’s cautious approach
to the technology. He is known at Apple as a penny-pincher who
keeps a tight rein on salaries and hesitates to invest in risky
projects when the payoff from them isn’t clear, according to
people who have worked with him. He tends to scrutinize every
detail of his team’s expenses, down to their budgets for bananas
and other office snacks, those people said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals are pouring vast amounts of capital into
AI, building data centers and paying fortunes to woo AI
researchers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have no idea what Federighi’s stance is on break-room bananas, but it seems a stretch to think it offers clues to Apple’s strategy on data centers.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For years, lieutenants of Federighi would try to get him on board
with AI. He often shot those efforts down, former Apple executives
said. For example, he rejected proposals from his team to use AI
to dynamically change the iPhone home screen, believing it would
disorient users, who are used to knowing where their apps are
located, said former Apple employees familiar with the proposal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jesus H. Christ, thank god Federighi shot this down. I wouldn’t want <em>good</em> AI rearranging my home screen behind my back, let alone Apple Intelligence as we know it.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin?rc=jfy0lk"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv3"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42591</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:19:50Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-25T15:33:10Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an
AirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker,
microphones and wireless charging, according to people with direct
knowledge of the project. The device could be released as early as
2027, they said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/06/nyt-humane">one</a> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane">notable</a> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/20/hp-humane">case</a>, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glass was an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Such a product would position Apple to compete more effectively
with OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and
Meta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses that offer
access to its AI assistant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is very strange to put OpenAI’s upcoming io device(s) in the same sentence as Meta’s glasses, which are a real product you can buy today. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-claims-glasses-surging">None of these things</a> are setting the world on fire though.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief-john-ternus-now-overseeing-design-tim-cook-ceo-succession"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv2"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42590</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:03:27Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T22:04:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Mark Gurman, reporting at Bloomberg:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to
include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender
to eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.</p>
<p>Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November,
quietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the
end of last year, according to people with knowledge of the
matter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most
critical functions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://x.com/markgurman/status/2014413622294790610">And on Twitter/X</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ternus is now the “executive sponsor” of Apple’s design team,
representing the critical function on Apple’s executive team. The
move was under-the-radar: on paper, the teams report to Tim Cook
despite Ternus’s role.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here’s to hoping Ternus is as pissed as the rest of us are about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker-wants-utah-to-officially-weigh-in"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv1"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42589</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:51:34Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T20:51:35Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Bridger Beal-Cvetko and Daniel Woodruff, reporting for KSL News:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/static/SB0138.html">SB138</a>, sponsored by Cullimore, R-Sandy, would make Android, the
world’s most popular mobile device operating system, an official
state symbol, joining the ranks of the official state cooking pot
(the dutch oven), the official state crustacean (the brine
shrimp), and the official state mushroom (the porcini).</p>
<p>“Someday, everybody with an iPhone will realize that the
technology is better on Android,” Cullimore told reporters during
a media availability on Wednesday, the second day of the
legislative session.</p>
<p>But, he added, “I’m the only one in my family — all my kids, my
wife, they all have iPhones — but I’m holding strong.” [...]</p>
<p>“I don’t expect this to really get out of committee,” he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(<a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/22/utah-iphone-vs-android/">Via Joe Rossignol</a>.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://politicalwire.com/2026/01/20/trump-changed-the-presidency-and-theres-no-going-back/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv0"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/theres-no-going-back"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42588</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:30:26Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T20:31:25Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire, in a post that pairs perfectly <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority">with Om Malik’s re: velocity bestowing authority</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new Democratic argument isn’t about restoring guardrails. It’s
about moving fast — and using power unapologetically — to undo
what Trump has done.</p>
<p>New Jersey will inaugurate Mikie Sherrill as governor today, one
of the party’s rising stars who steamrolled Republicans in
November. She has promised to govern with urgency — leaning on
emergency powers, acting decisively, and skipping the old
incrementalism. This, she argues, is what voters now expect. She
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/mikie-sherrill-intends-to-move-fast">told The New Yorker</a> that if Democrats don’t learn to work
at Donald Trump’s pace, “we’re going to get played.”</p>
<p>Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.notus.org/democrats/trump-executive-power-next-democratic-president">is even more explicit</a>: “In
order for us to correct the abuses that are happening now, we have
to act in the same capacities that Trump has given himself.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The only way to counter “move fast and break things” is to move fast and fix things.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/theres-no-going-back"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://om.co/2026/01/21/velocity-is-the-new-authority-heres-why/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuz"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42587</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:25:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T21:35:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has
become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You
don’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed
and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken
the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It
demands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure
shakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention
and push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone
can get their cut. [...]</p>
<p>We built machines that prize acceleration and then act puzzled
that everything feels rushed and slightly manic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Crackerjack essay. Malik is focused here on the ways we’ve changed media and how those changes to media have changed us — as a society, and as individuals. But I think it explains how the Trump 2.0 administration has been so effective (such that it can be said to be effective). They recognize that velocity is authority and are moving as fast as they can. It’s an adaptation to a new media age.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuy"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/greenland-taco"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42586</id>
<published>2026-01-22T19:24:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T19:24:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>The Wall Street Journal (<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR">gift link</a>; <a href="https://apple.news/Ag8uXPVDtRZ-BY0oVBEESyg">News+ link</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alps on
Wednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his
efforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic
conflagration. By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.</p>
<p>After a meeting with Rutte on Wednesday, Trump called off promised
tariffs on European nations, contending that he had “formed the
framework of a future deal” with respect to the largest island in
the world. [...] During an hourlong speech at the World Economic
Forum, the U.S. president said he wouldn’t deploy the military to
take control of Greenland. It was a stark shift in tone for Trump,
who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military
to secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the
territory with an American flag plastered across it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No need for panic. Alarm, yes. Panic, no. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/trump-chickens-out-again">The TACO theory</a> holds. Stand up to Trump and he’ll chicken out.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/greenland-taco"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://bsky.app/profile/margaret.bsky.social/post/3mcyca2l2wk2j"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wux"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/the-scale-of-ice-protests-in-minnesota"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42585</id>
<published>2026-01-22T16:26:32Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T16:26:32Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Margaret Killjoy, in a thread on Bluesky (<a href="https://kottke.org/26/01/what-is-the-scale-of-the-resistance-in-minnesota">via Kottke</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came to Minneapolis to report on what’s going on, and one of the
main questions I showed up with is “just what is the scale of the
resistance?” After all, we’re all used to the news calling
Portland a “war zone” or whatever when it’s just some protests in
one part of town. [...]</p>
<p>Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk
of life, including republicans — standing guard to watch for
suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely
decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes
responders.</p>
<p>I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I
have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is
not accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman
for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more
people, from more walks of life.</p>
<p>It’s genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized
in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There
are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other
those skills, and people are collectively refining them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple’s “<em>whatever you say, boss</em>” compliance with the Trump administration’s “demand” <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/10/iceblock_removed_from_app_store">back in October</a> that they remove <a href="https://daringfireball.net/search/iceblock">ICEBlock</a> from the App Store — with no legal basis, nor <em>any</em> evidence backing the administration’s claims that the app was being used to put members of the ICE goon squads in danger — is looking more and more like a decision on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/politics/minneapolis-ice-shooting-polls-takeaways">the wrong side of popular opinion</a>. And, ultimately, on the wrong side of history.</p>
<p>ICEBlock was designed for exactly what these protestors are doing.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/the-scale-of-ice-protests-in-minnesota"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://meh.com/go/df"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wuw"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42584</id>
<author>
<name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name>
</author>
<published>2026-01-21T22:23:45Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:30:32Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking your head in the sand.</p>
<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break from the misery.</p>
<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems. We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>
<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that. But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is over at Meh today.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Meh’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] Meh</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-21/ios-27-apple-to-revamp-siri-as-built-in-iphone-mac-chatbot-to-fend-off-openai?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAyNDk2NywiZXhwIjoxNzY5NjI5NzY3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFRXOVlLR0NURlUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.awOoIDGdEkCAvho8waoXR6VVVojI3jGvQHJeDjwcyrs"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuv"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/gurman-campos-apple-google-ai-partnership"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42583</id>
<published>2026-01-21T22:18:57Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T19:12:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the
digital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence
chatbot, thrusting the iPhone maker into a generative AI race
dominated by OpenAI and Google. [...]</p>
<p>The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining
the current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the
coming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features
unveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen
content and tap into personal data. It also will be better at
searching the web.</p>
<p>The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to
the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are
private. The company aims to unveil that technology in June at its
Worldwide Developers Conference and release it in September.</p>
<p>Campos, which will have both voice- and typing-based modes, will
be the primary new addition to Apple’s upcoming operating systems.
The company is integrating it into iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, both
code-named Rave, as well as macOS 27, internally known as Fizz.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple ought to just go back to calling it “iOS” on both iPhone and iPad, because it’s always been the same system fundamentally. If they really do have the same codename, it sure suggests that Apple’s engineering teams see it that way too.</p>
<p>The 180° turn on chatbots is welcome, and I think inevitable. The chat interface is just too useful. One of the most maddening things about Siri is that even when it’s helpful today, even when it gets things right, you can never refer back to previous interactions. I refer back to previous chats in ChatGPT almost every day.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering,
said in a June interview with Tom’s Guide that releasing a chatbot
was never the company’s goal. Apple didn’t want to send users “off
into some chat experience in order to get things done,” he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I quote this paragraph only to point out that Gurman/Bloomberg could have, but chose not to, link to the <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/apple-intelligence/wwdc-interview-apples-craig-federighi-and-greg-joswiak-on-siri-delay-voice-ai-as-therapist-and-whats-next-for-apple-intelligence">interview with Federighi (and Joz) at Tom’s Guide</a>. Every single link in the article goes to another page at bloomberg.com. [<strong>Update, next day:</strong> As of this morning, Bloomberg’s article now has a link to the interview at Tom’s Guide. Nice.]</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The iOS 26.4 update of Siri, the one before the true chatbot, will
rely on a Google-developed system internally known as Apple
Foundation Models version 10. That software will operate at 1.2
trillion parameters, a measure of AI complexity. Campos, however,
will significantly surpass those capabilities. The chatbot will
run a higher-end version of the custom Google model, comparable to
Gemini 3, that’s known internally as Apple Foundation Models
version 11.</p>
<p>In a potential policy shift for Apple, the two partners are
discussing hosting the chatbot directly on Google servers running
powerful chips known as TPUs, or tensor processing units. The more
immediate Siri update, in contrast, will operate on Apple’s own
Private Cloud Compute servers, which rely on high-end Mac chips
for processing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A policy shift indeed, if that comes to pass.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/gurman-campos-apple-google-ai-partnership"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/864745/sony-tcl-tvs-partnership-explained?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkFtb3lXVUtwcTYiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvODY0NzQ1L3NvbnktdGNsLXR2cy1wYXJ0bmVyc2hpcC1leHBsYWluZWQiLCJleHAiOjE3Njk0NjQzMjYsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAzMjMyNn0.jn0NfURxbc6kV2dDcTvPelC8KFIlXD0uUk0OK6xIPfA"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuu"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/verge-sony-tcl"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42582</id>
<published>2026-01-21T21:56:36Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T00:58:19Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>John Higgins, The Verge (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As of today, Sony already relies on different manufacturing
partners to create its TV lineup. While display panel
manufacturers never reveal who they sell panels to, Sony is likely
already using panels for its LCD TVs from TCL China Star
Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), in addition to OLED panels from
LG Display and Samsung Display. With this deal, a relationship
between Sony and TCL CSOT LCD panels is guaranteed (although I
doubt this would affect CSOT selling panels to other
manufacturers). And with <a href="https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1761118790">TCL CSOT building a new OLED
facility</a>, there’s a potential future in which Sony OLEDs
will also get panels from TCL. Although I should point out that
we’re not sure yet if the new facility will have the ability to
make TV-sized OLED panels, at least to start.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The gist I take from this is that Sony is already dependent upon TCL. I think the mistake Sony made was ever ceding ownership and control over their display technology.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s some concern from fans that this could lead to a Sharp,
Toshiba, or Pioneer situation where the names are licensed and the
TVs produced are a shell of what the brands used to represent. I
don’t see this happening with Sony. While the electronics side of
the business hasn’t been as strong as in the past, Sony — and
Bravia — is still a storied brand. It would take a lot for Sony
to completely step aside and allow another company to slap its
name on an inferior product. And based on TCL’s growth and
technological improvements over the past few years, and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/857325/the-gap-between-premium-and-budget-tv-brands-is-quickly-closing">the
shrinking gap between premium and midrange TVs</a>, I don’t
expect Sony TVs will suffer from a partnership with TCL.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m heartened by Higgins’s optimism. (And I’ve heard good things <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs">already</a> from DF readers who own TCL TVs.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/verge-sony-tcl"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/864263/sony-tcl-tv-business-partnership-takeover-announcement"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wut"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42581</id>
<published>2026-01-21T20:29:43Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T01:23:45Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sony has announced plans to <a href="https://www.sony.co.jp/en/news-release/202601/26-0120E/">spin off its TV hardware
business</a>, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two
companies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony’s home
entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in
the new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. [...]</p>
<p>The new company is expected to retain “Sony” and “Bravia” branding
for its future products and will handle global operations from
product development and design to manufacturing, sales, and
logistics for TVs and home audio equipment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve only ever purchased three main TVs in my life. The first was a 32-inch Sony Trinitron CRT, <a href="https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kv-32s42">like this one</a>. Might have even been exactly that model — that sure looks like it. I bought it in 1999 at a Best Buy. One of the last curved Trinitrons ever made. For CRTs I always kind of liked a slight curve — flat CRTs never looked quite right to me. It weighed like 150 pounds and came in a very big box. My now-wife and I had just moved into a fourth-floor walk-up. I remember bringing it home. I’d always wanted a Sony TV, and this one confirmed my lifelong desire to own one. It was great. I introduced my son to video games on that TV.</p>
<p>We replaced it in 2008 with <a href="http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatvreviews/pioneer-pdp5080hd-review.html">a 50-inch plasma from Pioneer</a> that cost about $2,100. It was only 720p but I’d worked out the math for our then-living room viewing distance, and the math said 1080p wouldn’t make a noticeable difference for a 50-inch screen from our sofa distance. That Pioneer is one of the most beloved purchases I’ve ever made in my life. Just remarkable color. We still have that thing in our guest room. Sony wasn’t even in the running for that purchase. They sold Sony-branded plasma TV for a while but never made their own panels, and as I recall, no one with taste recommended them. What made Sony TVs <em>Sony TVs</em> back in the day was that they made their own CRTs, and they were the best. (All of my favorite CRT computer monitors had Trinitron tubes, as I recall.)</p>
<p>In 2020 we bought our current TV, <a href="https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-OLED77C9PUB-oled-4k-tv">a 77-inch 4K OLED from LG</a> that cost about $5,000 at the time. I’ll go to my grave believing that plasma looks better than OLED when watching movies in a dark room, but overall, LG’s super-bright OLED looks fantastic. And it’s big as hell, which I love. Sony was at least in the running when I shopped for this, but they didn’t have anything that compared to this LG’s size and quality. It wasn’t a hard decision to rule Sony out. (This history also means I’m likely to go to my grave never having owned a 1080p TV, nor an LCD TV.)</p>
<p>So, I’m sad to see Sony selling control of their TV business to TCL. But I think the writing has been on the wall for decades. Sony TVs haven’t been the Sony TVs of yore for a very long time.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> John Siracusa tells me I need to run a retraction — <a href="https://mastodon.social/@siracusa/115935970753326596">he even used an exclamation mark</a> — on the grounds that Sony Bravia models have won “best TV in the world” awards several years running, <a href="https://youtu.be/ZxzVqMp73qk">including 2025 for the Bravia 8 II</a>. I’m happy to retract, and glad Sony has regained its place at or near the top of the industry in recent years. I hope they stay there.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115888906340881425"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wus"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/creator-studio-icon-history"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42580</id>
<published>2026-01-19T22:31:20Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T22:31:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Is there anyone who doesn’t find this sad?</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/creator-studio-icon-history"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wur"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42579</id>
<published>2026-01-19T22:19:29Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T01:13:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>From Apple’s iPhone Mirroring documentation, boldface emphasis added:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Click to tap:</em> Click your mouse or trackpad to tap. You can also swipe and scroll in the iPhone Mirroring app, and use your keyboard to type.</p></li>
<li><p><em>Open the App Switcher:</em> Move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> to open the App Switcher.</p></li>
<li><p><em>Go to the Home Screen:</em> If you’re in an app and want to return to the Home Screen, move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;">.</p></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It certainly sounds like these instructions are for users who, sadly, have the menu bar hidden by default. But there are no <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> or <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> buttons in the menu bar. These buttons are in the iPhone Mirroring <em>window title bar</em>, which is, for all users, hidden by default:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png"
alt = "Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, without window title bar."
width = 325
style = "border: 1px solid #888;"
/></a></p>
<p>but which presents a proper window title bar when the mouse pointer is hovering in the area where the title bar will appear:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png"
alt = "Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, with window title bar and arrow mouse pointer."
width = 325
style = "border: 1px solid #888;"
/></a></p>
<p>Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll chalk this up to an absentminded mistake on the part of Apple’s documentation team. If I were feeling cynical, I would instead suspect that Apple has so <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26">lost the plot</a> on the Mac that they now employ documentation writers and editors who do not understand the difference between the menu bar and window title bars. (It doesn’t help that the iPhone Mirroring window title bar, like so many windows in Apple’s recent Mac apps, doesn’t have a title.)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, this documentation is the same for both <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/15.0/mac/15.7.2">MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> and <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26">26 Tahoe</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/the-copyrightability-of-fonts-revisited.html"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuq"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/butterick-on-the-copyrightability-of-fonts"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42578</id>
<published>2026-01-19T18:22:50Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T18:22:51Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Matthew Butterick:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But more importantly, in practical terms — what would be the
point? Since 2011, I’ve run a <a href="https://mbtype.com/">small font business</a>. Not long
after I release a font, it will be uploaded to some public
pirate-software website. I can’t control that. Like every other
kind of digital-media file, anyone who wants to pirate my fonts
can do so if sufficiently motivated.</p>
<p>For that reason — and independent of copyright law — my business
necessarily runs on something more akin to the honor system. I try
to make nice fonts, price my licenses fairly, and thereby make
internet strangers enthusiastic about sending me money rather than
going to pirate websites. Enough of them do. My business
continues. (Indeed, in terms of rational economic choice, I’ve
argued that <a href="https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/does-software-piracy-exist.html">software piracy doesn’t exist</a>.)</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/butterick-on-the-copyrightability-of-fonts"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/crazy_people_do_crazy_things"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wup"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42577</id>
<published>2026-01-19T17:48:46Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T17:51:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?” They should respond with headlines like “How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Head?”</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Donald Trump, in a message (I wouldn’t call it a letter) <a href="https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006">sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/donald-trump-greenland-threats-nobel-prize-snub-letter">confirmed</a> by several news organizations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the
Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel
an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be
predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for
the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land
from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership”
anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat
landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing
there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since
its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United
States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total
Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a simple explanation for this. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/08/nyt-trump-dementia">Trump is in cognitive decline</a> and it’s <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/trump-dementia-checkin">accelerating</a> from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/18/trump-mcdonalds">age-related dementia</a>. He lives in an imaginary world that is increasingly cleaved from reality. (Norway, it should be pointed out, is not Denmark, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland">the country of which Greenland is a part</a>.)</p>
<p>Trump’s Venezuela operation was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation">brazenly illegal</a>. But it wasn’t crazy. Venezuela was not a U.S. ally. President Nicolas Maduro lost an election but stayed in power. Venezuela was <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0347">producing military drones</a> for the hostile regime in Iran, a self-declared enemy of the U.S., NATO, and Israel. Venezuela had a <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship">burgeoning alliance with China</a>, the U.S.’s primary geopolitical rival.</p>
<p>What Trump is threatening with Greenland is simply bonkers. Greenland is under no threat from China or Russia because it’s part of NATO, and thus — ostensibly — under the full protection of the entire NATO alliance <em>including and especially the United States</em>. If China or Russia attempted to take Greenland it would trigger a world war led by the United States. Compare and contrast with Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine, long before Vladimir Putin invaded, was known to be under threat of Russian invasion. Taiwan has long been known to be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-launches-live-firing-drills-around-taiwan-its-biggest-war-games-date-2025-12-30/">threatened by China</a>. These threats have been in our geopolitical discourse for decades because the threats were real (and, unfortunately, came to pass in Ukraine).</p>
<p>No one has ever talked about Greenland being under threat of takeover by Russia or China because there is no such threat. It’s no more realistic than Russia taking over Alaska or China taking over Hawaii. It sounds nuts because it is nuts, and the threat only exists in Trump’s disintegrating mind.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0ydjvxpejo">Eight of our NATO allies have made clear</a>, through action, not mere words, their intention to defend Greenland. Trump, obviously angry that our ostensible allies won’t just roll over and accede to his madness, is now petulantly turning to his favorite word, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk8z8xxpgmo">tariffs</a>. If that’s “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/10/politics/us-will-take-greenland-the-hard-way-if-it-cant-do-it-the-easy-way-trump-says">the hard way</a>”, that’s pathetic. Stand up to bullies and they usually fold.</p>
<p>The threat to Greenland, and thus to NATO — and thus, quite literally, to the entire world — is not that Trump authorized an illegal military operation in Venezuela, so he might do it in Greenland too. Again, what the U.S. did in Venezuela was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation">obviously illegal</a>, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/maybe-russia-and-china-should-sit-one-out/685490/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yGIoJxtnmQes_m73rNK5U2M">probably stupid</a>, but it wasn’t crazy. Breaking up NATO and starting a war with Europe would be batshit crazy. The threat is that Trump is showing us, every day, that he <em>is</em> crazy. Crazy people do crazy things, and crazy cult leaders surround themselves with cultists. The rest of us need to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/greenland-national-defense-maps-6f53c339">stop sane-washing this</a>. You cannot make sense out of nonsense.</p>
<p>If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “<em>How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?</em>” They should respond with headlines like “<em>How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Dementia-Addled Head?</em>” But threatening to take Greenland by military force is nuttier than laying claim to the moon’s cheese. Laying claim to non-existent green cheese wouldn’t trigger a shooting war that blows apart the most powerful alliance in military history.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ Crazy People Do Crazy Things</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/americans-are-the-ones-paying-for-tariffs-study-finds-e254ed2e?st=pw4q2j"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuo"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/americans-paying-for-tariffs"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42576</id>
<published>2026-01-19T15:54:28Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T15:54:52Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Tom Fairless, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; <a href="https://apple.news/A1odNAQeJSMC7dlagkxXB9w">here’s a News+ link too</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at
Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only
a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign
producers.</p>
<p>By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and
November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign
exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S.
tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American
consumers and importers absorbed 96%. [...]</p>
<p>Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs
functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.
“There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to
the U.S. in the form of tariffs,” said Julian Hinz, an
economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who
co-authored the study.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance. But this one feels like we could file it next to “Sun continues to rise in east, set in west.”</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/americans-paying-for-tariffs"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>WorkOS Pipes</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wun"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/workos-pipes"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42575</id>
<published>2026-01-19T15:50:48Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T15:50:48Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks. WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your back end requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh. That’s it.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta">Simplify your integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/workos-pipes"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/thoughts_and_observations_regarding_apple_creator_studio"/>
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wum"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42574</id>
<published>2026-01-17T21:13:21Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T16:51:24Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">Starting with a few words on the new app icons.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<h2>Let’s Just Get It Out of the Way and Talk About the New Icons First, but Let’s Also Use the Icons as a Proxy for Talking About the Broader Software Design Problems at Apple</h2>
<p>There’s a lot of hate for the new app icons of the entire Creator Studio suite, but while I think the icons are tragically simplistic, I think the hate is misplaced.</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png"
alt = "Screenshot of the icons for the whole lineup of apps in the Apple Creator Studio."
width = 500
/></a></p>
<p>The problem isn’t with these icons in and of themselves. The problem is with the rules Apple has imposed for Liquid Glass app icons, along with their own style guidelines for how to comply with those rules. Given Apple’s own self-imposed constraints for how icons must look (with the <a href="https://atp.fm/643">mandatory squircle</a>) and how Apple has decided <a href="https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/">its own app icons <em>should</em> look</a> (a look which can best be described as <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons">crude</a>), I actually think the icons in the Creator Studio are pretty good, relatively speaking. But that’s like saying one group of kids has pretty good haircuts, relatively speaking, at a summer camp where the rule is that the kids all cut each others’ hair using only fingernail clippers.</p>
<p>The best take on these icons is <a href="https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTeOwAykwQ1">this zinger from Héliographe</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio
of someone getting really really good at icon design.</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pages-icons-benjamin-buttons.jpeg'
alt = 'The 7 icons for Pages, from newest to oldest. Each one is more artistically interesting from left to right. The original one is exquisite.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Devastating. Whatever you think of this new 2026 icon for Pages, you can’t seriously argue that it’s much worse — or really all that different — from the previous one. But go back in time and each previous Pages icon had more detail and looked cooler. And then you get back to the original Pages icon and that one clearly belongs in the App Icon Hall of Fame.</p>
<p>At some point in the previous decade, I had a product briefing with Jony Ive where we were discussing some just-announced new device that largely looked like the previous generation of the same device. I honestly don’t remember if it was an iPhone, an Apple Watch, or a MacBook. It doesn’t matter. What Ive told me is that Apple didn’t change things just for the sake of changing them. That Apple was insistent on only changing things if the change made things better. And that this was difficult, at times, because the urge to do something that looks new and different is strong, especially in tech. “New” shows that you’re doing something. “The same” is boring. What’s difficult is embracing the fact that boring can be good, especially if the alternative is different-but-worse, or even just different-but-not-better. You need confidence to ship something new that looks like the old version, because you know it’s still the best design. You need confidence to trust yourself to know the difference between familiarity (which is comforting) and complacency (which is how winners become losers).</p>
<p>Apple’s <em>hardware</em> designs remain incredibly confident. An M5 MacBook Pro looks like an M1 MacBook Pro, and really hasn’t changed much in the last decade other than getting thinner. An iPhone 17 Pro looks a lot like an iPhone 12 Pro and has only evolved in small ways since the iPhone X in 2017. A brand-new Series 11 Apple Watch is very hard to distinguish at a glance from a Series 0 Apple Watch from 2015. This is not a complaint, this is a compliment. These hardware designs do not need to change because they’re excellent. <em>Iconic</em>, dare I say.</p>
<p>This is why Apple’s software UI designs are the target of so much scorn and criticism right now, and Apple’s hardware designs are not.<sup id="fnr1-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn1-2026-01-17">1</a></sup> Yes, it’s human nature that people love to complain. But Apple’s current work isn’t receiving criticism in anything close to equal measures. Apple’s hardware is hardly the subject of any criticism at all. Not the way it looks, not the way it performs. Apple’s software design, on the other hand, is the subject of withering criticism. It’s not (just) about new features having bad designs. It’s about <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons">existing, decades-old features</a> being made <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus">so obviously worse</a>. I know a lot of talented UI designers and a lot of insightful UI critics. All of them agree that MacOS’s UI has gotten drastically worse over the last 10 years, in ways that seem so obviously worse that it boggles the mind how it happened.</p>
<p>Take a few minutes and go peruse <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/">Stephen Hackett’s extensive MacOS Screenshot Library</a> at 512 Pixels, where he’s assembled copious screenshots from every version of MacOS going back to the <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/mac-os-x-public-beta-kodiak/">Mac OS X Public Beta</a> from October 2000.<sup id="fnr2-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn2-2026-01-17">2</a></sup> Take a look in particular <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/os-x-10-11-el-capitan/">at MacOS 10.11 El Capitan</a> from 2015, exactly a decade ago. It doesn’t look <em>old</em> compared to MacOS 26 Tahoe. It just looks <em>better</em>, in every single way. I can’t think of one single thing about MacOS 26 that looks better than MacOS 10.11 from 2015, and I can quickly name dozens of things that are obviously worse. We would rejoice if MacOS 27 simply reverted to the UI of MacOS 10.11 from a decade ago, or had evolved as subtly as Mac hardware has over the same decade. The menu bar was better. The contrast between active and inactive windows was better. The standard UI controls looked better. The delineation between application chrome and content was clear, rather than deliberately obfuscated. And, to return to my point regarding Apple Creator Studio, all of the app icons — every goddamn one of them — was better. Many of the Mac app icons from MacOS 10.11 were downright exquisite. And the <em>real</em> heyday for Apple’s application icon design was the decade prior, the 2000s, under Steve Jobs. At the time, in 2015, we thought El Capitan shipped during an era of somewhat lazy icon design from Apple. If only we knew then how good we still had it.</p>
<p>Before you ask, there’s no point wondering why these new Creator Suite icons look like this if Alan Dye and his inner squircle of <a href="https://www.billysorrentino.com/">magazine-designer cowboys</a> left to work at Meta a month ago. I genuinely believe that Dye’s departure and the promotion of longtime Apple UI designer Steve Lemay to replace him will restore some measure of sanity and grace to Apple’s UI direction and style. That can’t happen in one month (let alone a month taken up by major holidays). For now, Creator Studio needs to abide by the guidelines of the OS 26 Liquid Glass world.</p>
<p>Two more zingers. <a href="https://www.threads.com/@bzamayo/post/DTdOJbJjG8g">Benjamin Mayo on the new Pixelmator icon</a> (the first new icon since <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple">Apple’s acquisition</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the ultimate icon downgrade</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pixelmator-before-after.jpeg'
alt = 'Pixelmator, before and after.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new Pixelmator icon is the most jarring of the bunch because it hasn’t been on the drip-drip-drip yearslong slide of Apple’s in-house app icons. It just switched in one fell swoop from something that looks like art that one might print, frame, and hang on their wall, to, well, whatever the new one is.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.threads.com/@asallen/post/DTdg6ehgVhi">Andy Allen</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Boringification of Software</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/andy-allen-boringification.jpeg'
alt = 'Bland icon suites from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Liquid Glass</h2>
<p>I could go on for thousands of words here, too. But let’s cut to the chase for a moment and acknowledge that “Liquid Glass”, as a catch-all term to describe the entirety of the UI changes in Apple’s version 26 OS releases, means a few different things. The most obvious thing it means is the lowercase liquid glass look. Transparency and fluidity. Let’s put that aside.</p>
<p>Liquid Glass also represents — per Apple’s own description when it was introduced by Alan Dye at WWDC — a “content-first” change to layout within an application. The content, in Liquid Glass, should take up as much of the screen, or window, as possible, and the UI of the application should be presented atop the content, not apart from the content. I’ll let Apple speak for itself and present Apple’s own video of the iOS Music app, from <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-delightful-and-elegant-new-software-design/">the Newsroom article announcing Liquid Glass back at WWDC</a>:</p>
<p><video
width = 500
controls
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/liquid-glass-apple-music.mp4">
</video></p>
<p>This design ethos may or may not work on iOS. I think it often does. But let’s put that argument aside too. In the desktop context of MacOS, I don’t think this ethos works at all for most apps. It’s a downright disaster in the context of complex productivity apps. Apps <em>should</em> have distinctive chrome. The idea that they shouldn’t, that only “content” matters, and that apps themselves should try to be invisible and indistinctive, is contrary to the idea that apps themselves can be — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlI1MR-qNt8">should be</a> — artistic works. The parts of a window that belong to the app and present the functionality of the app, and the parts of a window that represent content, should be distinct. Like separating the dashboard — sorry, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/09/moylan">instrument panel</a> — from what you see through the windshield while driving a car. One or two items of primary importance (say, the speedometer and the next step in turn-by-turn directions) are OK to project on the windshield in a heads-up display atop the “content” of the road and world around the vehicle. But it would be disastrous to eliminate the instrument panel and project every control status indicator as HUD elements on the windshield. Either the driver’s view would be overwhelmed by too many HUD elements, making it hard to see the world <em>and</em> to read the dials, or the car designer would have to eliminate many useful controls and indicators entirely. (I know, some electric car makers are doing just that. It sucks.)</p>
<p>If you look through the screenshots Apple has provided of the new versions of the apps in the Creator Studio bundle, most of them haven’t been updated with Liquid Glass at all. They don’t have UI elements that look like liquid glass (transparent and fluid), and they don’t have layouts that seek to remove or obfuscate the application from its content. <a href="https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/">Final Cut Pro</a>, <a href="https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/">Logic Pro</a>, <a href="https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/">Motion</a>: nope. Not a drop of Liquid Glass.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/">Pixelmator Pro</a> does, however. It seems to embrace Liquid Glass in both senses. I haven’t tried it yet, and it doesn’t ship until January 28, but I strongly suspect I’d prefer if the new Pixelmator Pro looked like the new Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, with solid, distinct user interface chrome. (Fingers crossed that there’s a setting for this.)</p>
<p>One possible explanation for Pixelmator Pro embracing Liquid Glass, but the other apps not, comes from the fineprint on <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/">the Apple Newsroom post</a> announcing the whole Creator Studio suite:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the
A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later. The
Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 26.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The other apps require only MacOS 15.6 Sequoia and iOS 18.6:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The one-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro requires macOS
15.6 or later, Logic Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, and
Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 12.0 or later. MainStage is
available for any Mac supported by macOS 15.6 or later. Motion
requires macOS 15.6 or later. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or
later and some features require a Mac with Apple silicon.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/macos-12-monterey/">MacOS 12 Monterey</a> came out in 2021. So I think that means you can one-time purchase and download an older version of Pixelmator, if you’re running an older version of MacOS. <s>But if you’re running MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’ll get the new Liquid-Glassified version of Pixelmator whether you get it as a one-time purchase or through a Creator Studio subscription. I think?</s> <strong>Update:</strong> That was wrong. It’s a little simpler than that, in that Pixelmator Pro is <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/125029">an outlier from the other apps in Creator Studio</a>. The new version of Pixelmator Pro — version 4.0 — is only available through the Creator Studio subscription, and requires MacOS 26 (and iPadOS 26). The one-time purchase version of Pixelmator Pro is version 3.7.1 — the existing version, last updated two months ago — and that’s the version you get from MacOS 12 through MacOS 26 if you get it via one-time purchase. Pixelmator Pro is the only app in Creator Studio where the new version is exclusively available through the Creator Studio subscription.</p>
<h2>The iWork Apps</h2>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/">Newsroom announcement</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For more than 20 years, Apple’s visual productivity apps have
empowered users to express themselves with beautiful
presentations, documents, and spreadsheets using Keynote, Pages,
and Numbers. And Freeform has brought endless possibilities for
creative brainstorming and visual collaboration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m not sure when Apple stopped referring to these apps, collectively, as iWork, but I guess it’s probably when they stopped selling them and made them free for all users in 2017. (Freeform was launched in 2022, so was never part of “iWork”. But it does feel like a fourth app in the suite.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With Apple Creator Studio, productivity gets supercharged with
all-new features that bring more intelligence and premium content
to creators’ fingertips so they can take their projects to the
next level. The Content Hub is a new space where users can find
curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations. A
subscription also unlocks new premium templates and themes in
Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.</p>
<p>In addition to Image Playground, advanced image creation and
editing tools let users create high-quality images from text, or
transform existing images, using generative models from OpenAI.
On-device AI models enable Super Resolution to upscale images
while keeping them sharp and detailed, and Auto Crop provides
intelligent crop suggestions, helping users find eye-catching
compositions for photos.</p>
<p>To help users prepare presentations even more quickly in Keynote,
Apple Creator Studio includes access to features in beta, such as
the ability to generate a first draft of a presentation from a
text outline, or create presenter notes from existing slides.
Subscribers can also quickly clean up slides to fix layout and
object placement. And in Numbers, subscribers can generate
formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition with
Magic Fill.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ll co-sign <a href="https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/01/apples-pro-bundle-makes-sense-but-making-iwork-freemium-doesnt/">Jason Snell’s column on this aspect of Creator Studio</a>. I feel like it’s just fine for new document templates and the Content Hub stock image library to be paid features. (See next section.) But I don’t think it makes sense to gate useful new <em>features</em> of these apps behind the Creator Studio subscription. Smarter autofill in Numbers, generating Keynote slides from a text outline, and Super Resolution image upscaling all sound like great features, but they sound like the sort of features all users should be getting in the iWork apps in 2026. <em>Especially</em> from on-device AI models. I could countenance an argument that AI-powered features that are processed on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers should require a subscription. But it feels like a rip-off if they’re running on-device.</p>
<p>It’s simpler for Apple to offer one single subscription bundle of “work” apps. But office productivity apps and creative design apps are very different. A word processor and spreadsheet go together. A video editor and audio editor go together. But it seems wrong for someone who just wants the new AI-powered features in Numbers and Keynote to need to pay for a subscription bundle whose value is primarily derived from Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and Pixelmator Pro — apps that many iWork users might never launch.</p>
<h2>The Content Hub</h2>
<p>Apple describes the Content Hub as “a new space where users can find curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations.” Stock imagery, basically. From Apple’s Creator Studio FAQ:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>What happens to projects and content I created if my
subscription ends?</em></p>
<p>All the projects and content you create with an active
subscription to Apple Creator Studio — including any images you
generate or add from the Content Hub — remain licensed in the
context of your original creation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What struck me about the Content Hub is its name. Despite only offering “photos, graphics, and illustrations” it is not called the Image Hub. It’s the Content Hub. I asked Apple if this meant it might eventually include other things, like music, video B-roll, and perhaps even fonts licensed from third-party type libraries. I was told — unsurprisingly<sup id="fnr3-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn3-2026-01-17">3</a></sup> — that they can’t comment on future products and features. But that was said with a smile, which smile at least acknowledged that the name Content Hub leaves the door open to other types of media.</p>
<h2>Whither Photomator?</h2>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple">When Apple acquired Pixelmator a little over a year ago</a>, they acquired two ambitious creative professional apps, not one. Pixelmator is an image editor, like Adobe Photoshop (or, from the indie world, <a href="https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/">Acorn</a>). Photomator is like Adobe Lightroom (or, from the indie world, <a href="https://darkroom.co/">Darkroom</a>.) We’ve been waiting to see what Apple’s plans were for both apps. With <a href="https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/">Pixelmator Pro</a>, we now have an answer — a major new update for the Mac (with, as mentioned above, a Liquid Glass UI) and an all-new version now available for iPad.</p>
<p>This week’s announcement of the Creator Studio bundle included no news about the future of Photomator. However, my spidey-sense says this is a case where no news might be good news. At the bottom of Apple’s new product page for Pixelmator Pro is a brief Q&A, which includes these two items:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Where can I get Photomator?</em></p>
<p>Photomator remains available as a separate purchase from the
App Store.</p>
<p><em>How does Pixelmator Pro compare to Pixelmator Classic for iPad?</em></p>
<p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is available as part of an Apple Creator
Studio subscription, alongside the Mac version and other pro apps
like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. It brings all the features that
Pixelmator Pro users love on Mac to iPad, including nondestructive
editing, AI features, tools for freely transforming layers, and
more — all optimized for touch.</p>
<p>Pixelmator Classic for iOS, released in 2014 as a companion app to
the now-discontinued Pixelmator Classic for Mac, provides basic
image editing features such as cropping, color adjustments, and
effects. It remains a functional app but is no longer being
updated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are very different answers, if you speak Cupertino-ese. Functional but no longer being updated means you should not hold your breath waiting for an updated version of Pixelmator that runs on an iPhone.</p>
<p>When Apple end-of-lifes an app — <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/clips-eol">like they recently did with Clips</a> — they’re clear about it. But when Apple has plans for something but isn’t ready to announce those plans, they’re obtuse about it. If Photomator did not have a future as part of Creator Studio, I think Apple would have used this moment to stop selling the existing version. They’d say that it too remains functional but is no longer being updated. But that’s not what they said.</p>
<p>Apple’s Aperture — a photo library manager and editor for professionals — <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/10/19Apple-Introduces-Aperture/">debuted in October 2005</a>. Adobe released the first public beta of what became Lightroom <a href="https://www.lightroomqueen.com/10-years-lightroom/">in January 2006</a>. Lightroom today remains an actively-developed popular app. But <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/27/apple-to-cease-development-of-aperture-and-transition-users-to-photos-for-os-x/">Apple ceased development of Aperture</a> in 2014. Times change. In 2014 Apple clearly did not anticipate that a decade later they’d want to take on Adobe’s Creative Suite. Here in 2026, Apple has just launched the first version of that rival to Adobe’s suite. Perhaps the biggest omission<sup id="fnr4-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn4-2026-01-17">4</a></sup> in this first release of Apple Creator Studio is the lack of a Lightroom rival, which is exactly what Photomator is — <a href="https://www.threads.com/@thebasicappleguy/post/DTdstEiEUlk">and Aperture was</a>. My guess is that Apple and the acquired Pixelmator team are hard at work on a new Creator Studio version of Photomator, including a version for iPad, and it just isn’t finished yet. I’m more unsure whether they’ll keep the Photomator name (which I think is too easily conflated with the Pixelmator name) than whether they’re working on an ambitious update to the app to include in Creator Studio.</p>
<p>I have no little birdie insider information about that, just my own hunch. I just think that if Photomator didn’t have a future, Apple’s statement about it would say so, and they’d stop selling the current version. And the lack of a professional photo library app is a glaring omission in Creator Studio. Apple Photos is an outstanding app, and iCloud Photo Library has in my experience delivered fast dependable syncing across devices for several years now. But an app like Photos, that is necessarily anchored to the needs of <em>very</em> casual users, can’t possibly scale in complexity to meet the needs of professional photographers. And Photos is not fully satisfying for prosumer users like me.</p>
<h2>Family Sharing and Student Pricing</h2>
<p>The standard subscription for Creator Studio costs $13/month or $130/year, and subscriptions are eligible for sharing with up to five other people in a family sharing group. Apple is also offering Creator Studio education pricing for students and educators for $3/month or $30/year. That’s a nice discount. But, I confirmed with Apple, the education subscription is <em>not</em> eligible for family sharing.</p>
<p>I think Apple’s pricing for Creator Studio is very fair. It’s a decent value for $130/year, a great value with the education discount, and it’s nice that Apple is still offering one-time purchasing, per app, for those who object to software subscriptions (or those who simply know they only want to use one or two of these apps). But the fact that Creator Studio is only available as a separate subscription puts the lie to the “One” in the <a href="https://www.apple.com/apple-one/">Apple One</a> subscription bundle. Apple One is a good value, and Creator Studio is a good value, but Apple One is no longer one bundle that includes all of Apple’s subscription offerings. It’s more like Apple Most now.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2026-01-17">
<p>This is also, I think, why John Ternus is <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/next-ceo-of-apple?tid=1764957040437">so heavily rumored</a> to be named Tim Cook’s successor as CEO, and everyone feels cautiously optimistic about that. In the entire 50-year history of the company, Apple has never been on a longer sustained streak of excellent hardware than they are today. No one feels the same way about Apple’s software, services, or marketing. <a href="#fnr1-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2-2026-01-17">
<p>If Hackett weren’t so lazy, he’d document the classic Mac system software era too. <a href="#fnr2-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3-2026-01-17">
<p>Now that I think about it, if Apple’s representative had answered my question by saying something like, “<em>Yes, we’re definitely thinking about other types of media that we could add to the Content Hub in the future, and that’s why we gave it that name</em>,” I would have plotzed. <a href="#fnr3-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn4-2026-01-17">
<p>Another is that Adobe Creative Cloud includes access to <a href="https://fonts.adobe.com/">Adobe’s entire library of fonts</a>, the biggest type library in the world. But like I wrote above, Apple Creator Studio’s “Content Hub” is an open-ended name. I’d love to see Apple work out licensing deals with a broad assortment of typography houses. <a href="#fnr4-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ Thoughts and Observations Regarding Apple Creator Studio</title>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/15/verizon-20-dollars-credit/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wul"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42573</id>
<published>2026-01-16T22:41:57Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-16T22:41:58Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Verizon, <a href="https://x.com/VerizonNews/status/2011820123154182420">in an announcement on Twitter/X</a> regarding their <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/verizon-out">daylong outage</a> this week:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence you expect
and that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to
those affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be
easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. You will
receive a text message when the credit is available. On average,
this covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be
contacted directly about their credits.</p>
<p>This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit
really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing
that this matters to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I got the text message last night (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/verizon-20-bucks.png">screenshot</a>), and redeemed it this morning. It wasn’t too hard to redeem, partly because I already had the My Verizon app installed and had my account credentials saved.</p>
<p>But you know what would <em>actually</em> be easy, and would <em>actually</em> acknowledge our time and show that this really matters to Verizon? If they just took $20 off every customer’s next bill. Automatic. Just take $20 off next month. If a good restaurant screws up an item you ordered, they apologize and take the item off your bill (and maybe give you a free dessert or something). They don’t give you a code to redeem.</p>
<p>It would also better show that they care if the text message spelled the app “My Verizon”, <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/my-verizon/id416023011">which is the app’s actual name</a>.</p>
<p>As for how many days of service $20 covers, we pay $329/month for a “5G Do More” family plan for me, my wife, and son. Three phones, three Apple Watches, and two iPads. (I’m the one without a cellular iPad plan, because I so seldom use an iPad.) That’s about $11/day. Verizon only sent us one $20 credit, not three, so that covers roughly two days of service — which is, indeed, multiple days.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-go/"/>
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuj"/>
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/chatgpt-go"/>
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42571</id>
<published>2026-01-16T19:59:53Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-16T20:00:15Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>OpenAI:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With this launch, ChatGPT now offers three subscription tiers globally:</p>
<ul>
<li>ChatGPT Go at $8 USD/month</li>
<li>ChatGPT Plus at $20 USD/month</li>
<li>ChatGPT Pro at $200 USD/month</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>And perhaps the bigger news:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We plan to begin testing ads in the free tier and ChatGPT Go in
the US soon. Ads support our commitment to making AI accessible to
everyone by helping us keep ChatGPT available at free and
affordable price points.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their pricing page has a comparison chart showing the differences in their four consumer tiers (free, Go, Plus, Pro). <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/chatgpt-pricing-2026-01-16.png">Screenshot</a>, for posterity. The big difference that will keep me on the $20/month Plus plan for now is that the Go plan doesn’t have access to the Thinking model.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/chatgpt-go"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry>
</feed>
<!-- THE END -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>Daring Fireball</title>
<subtitle>By John Gruber</subtitle>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/" />
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main" />
<id>https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main</id>
<updated>2026-01-28T00:17:03Z</updated><rights>Copyright © 2026, John Gruber</rights><entry>
<title>Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvv" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42619</id>
<published>2026-01-28T00:17:02Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-28T00:17:03Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors
to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned
were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta
documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made
public Monday.</p>
<p>The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul
Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that
Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and
sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and
Instagram. [...]</p>
<p>Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that
Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the
chatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots”
that would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed
hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI
leadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote
in that exchange.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/28/meta-ultra-violence">a byline</a> worth <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/05/27/wsj-facebook-divisiveness">paying attention to</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvu" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42618</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:36:54Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:36:55Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually
common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all
of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at
once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border
Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is
socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of
it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world
atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their
lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.
Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western
civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘A CEO, Captured’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvt" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42617</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:06:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:06:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp
of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to
be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.</p>
<p>In <em>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</em>, Roy Bland captures a cynical,
post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my
conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of
today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the
world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.threads.com/@ajgruber/post/DUBBiHyDtmu">Amy Jane Gruber</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed
the movie.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘A CEO, Captured’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvs" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42616</id>
<published>2026-01-27T23:02:49Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T23:02:49Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>MG Siegler:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his
actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this
weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)?ref=spyglass.org">the
documentary <em>Melania</em></a> at the White House. Yes, <em>that</em>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump?ref=spyglass.org">Melania</a>. That in and of itself would have probably been
fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons
that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a
statement...</p>
<p>While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes
of Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and
utter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE
agents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘Whatever’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvr" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42615</id>
<published>2026-01-27T22:48:42Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T22:48:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart
that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to
speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump
said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do
they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press
secretary for the word that escaped him.</p>
<p>“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.</p>
<p>“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”</p>
<p>“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.</p>
<p>“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said.
“Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Whatever’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.molt.bot/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvq" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42614</id>
<published>2026-01-27T20:34:36Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T22:02:01Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>From the footer on the project’s website:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not
affiliated with Anthropic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.</p>
<p>One additional followup to <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot">my post the other day</a>. In his terrific introduction to <s>Clawd</s>Moltbot, <a href="https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/">Federico Viticci wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned
through 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (<em>yikes</em>), and
I’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude
and ChatGPT apps in the process.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and <a href="https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/115968901926545907">he said</a> around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/the_names_they_call_themselves" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvp" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42613</id>
<published>2026-01-27T18:12:56Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T18:12:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">*Fascist* and *Nazi* weren’t slurs that were applied to the Italians and Germans by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves. The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make *the names Trump’s regime calls themselves* universally acknowledged slurs.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yAGei6y469cre0s3RYa6ArU">Yes, It’s Fascism</a>” (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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 affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily
defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has
been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree
on its <a href="https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&context=history-in-the-making">definition</a>. Italy’s original version differed from
Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from
Japan’s. [...]</p>
<p>When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have
brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. <em>Fascist</em> best
describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become
perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his
administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is
not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation
of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the
constellation plainly appears.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist <em>president</em>, that does not mean that America is a fascist <em>country</em>.” The shoe fits, however <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-swelling-legs-chronic-venous-insufficiency-health-40beb3c818cfb914645db9d1f143fdd8">tightly</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/magazine/ve-day-anniversary.html">losers</a>, and their complete and total destruction was <a href="https://www.life.com/history/v-j-day-kiss-times-square/">celebrated</a> around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding <a href="https://www.life.com/history/after-the-fall-photos-of-hitlers-bunker-and-the-ruins-of-berlin/">in a dingy filthy bunker</a>. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini">strung up in a public square in Milan</a>. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of <em>fascist</em> fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">that they have lost</a> — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.</p>
<p>We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/mussolini-italy-fascism">he coined the term</a>. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis <em>because that was their name</em>. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names <em>became</em> universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.</p>
<p>Our goal should not be to make <em>fascist</em> or <em>Nazi</em> apply to Trump’s movement, no matter <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/mattis-told-woodward-he-agreed-trump">how well</a> those rhetorical gloves fit his <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/how-donald-trump-became-the-short-fingered-vulgarian">short-fingered</a> <a href="https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-hand-bruise-meaning-35799798">disgustingly</a> <a href="https://www.ms.now/news/trump-hand-bruise-photo">bruised</a> hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law">Godwin’s Law</a>.</p>
<p>The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make <em>the names they call themselves</em> universally acknowledged slurs.</p>
<p>“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/minnesota-governor-candidate-chris-madel-gop-immigration-enforcement-rcna255949">perhaps</a>. Make <em>those</em> names <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-alex-pretti-timeline.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HlA.jIxp.ieLWsJ7EHyct">shameful</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-48-hours-that-convinced-trump-to-change-course-in-minnesota-a91d7683?st=xEZf8d">deservedly</a>, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make <em>their</em> names shameful, lest the slur become <em>our</em> name — “American”.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ The Names They Call Themselves</title></entry><entry>
<title>What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized-image-xai-elon-musk-women-1235501436/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvo" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42612</id>
<published>2026-01-27T15:07:07Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T21:37:33Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ella Chakarian, writing for Rolling Stone (<a href="https://apple.news/AHps_VbIRQuGmIFYQ7zjz3Q">News+</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly
scrolling on X when she noticed an unsettling trend surface on her
feed. Users were prompting Grok, the platform’s built-in AI
feature, to “nudify” women’s images. Mayes, a 25-year-old media
professional from Texas who uses X to post photos with her friends
and keep up with news, didn’t think it would happen to her — until it did.</p>
<p>“Put her in a tight clear transparent bikini,” an X user ordered
the bot under a photo that Mayes posted from when she was 20. Grok
complied, replacing her white shirt with a clear bikini top. The
waistband of her jeans and black belt dissolved into thin,
translucent strings. The see-through top made the upper half of
her body look realistically naked.</p>
<p>Hiding behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was filled
with similar images of women, digitally and nonconsensually
altered and sexualized. Mayes wanted to cuss the faceless user
out, but decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would
be the end of it. Soon, however, her comments became littered with
more images of herself in clear bikinis and skin-tight latex
bodysuits. Mayes says that all of the requests came from anonymous
profiles that also targeted other women. Though some users have
had their accounts suspended, as of publication, some of the
images of Mayes are still up on X.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Emma, a content creator, was at the grocery store when she saw the
notifications of people asking Grok to undress her images. [...]
Numbness washed over Emma when the images finally loaded on her
timeline. A selfie of her holding a cat had been transformed into
a nude. The cat was removed from the photo, Emma says, and her
upper body was made naked.</p>
<p>Emma immediately made her account private and reported the images.
In an email response reviewed by Rolling Stone, X User Support
asked her to upload an image of her government-issued ID so they
could look into the report, but Emma responded that she didn’t
feel comfortable doing so. [...] In our call, she checked to see
if some of the image edits she was aware of were still up on X.
They were. “Oh, my God,” she says, letting out a defeated sigh.
“It has 15,000 views. Oh, that’s so sad.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvn" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42611</id>
<published>2026-01-27T01:32:03Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T01:32:04Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Daniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>
<p><audio
src = "https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-439-daniel-jalkut.mp3"
controls
preload = "none"
/></p>
<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://notion.com/talkshow">Notion</a>: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together.</li>
<li><a href="https://squarespace.com/talkshow">Squarespace</a>: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code <strong>talkshow</strong>.</li>
<li><a href="https://sentry.io/talkshow">Sentry</a>: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code <strong>TALKSHOW</strong> for $80 in free credits.</li>
<li><a href="https://factormeals.com/talkshow50off">Factor</a>: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code <strong>talkshow50off</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in-finder/52435" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvm" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42610</id>
<published>2026-01-26T23:18:37Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T19:58:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Good tip from “DifferentDan” on the Realmac customer forum, posted back in November:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I saw on macOS Tahoe 26.1, Apple finally added an option in the
Column View settings to automatically right size all columns
individually and that setting would persist, but I don’t really
like Liquid Glass (yet) so I haven’t updated to Tahoe.</p>
<p>Looks like someone found a workaround however for those that are
still on Sequoia. Just open up Terminal on your Mac, copy in the
below, and press return.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The one-line command:</p>
<pre><code>defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder`
</code></pre>
<p>(Change <code>YES</code> to <code>NO</code> if you want to go back.)</p>
<p>Marcel Bresink’s <a href="http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html">TinkerTool</a> is a great free app for adjusting hidden preferences using a proper GUI, and it turns out TinkerTool has exposed this hidden Finder preference for a few years now. You learn something every day. I enabled this a few days ago on MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it seems exactly like the implementation Apple has exposed in the Finder’s View Options window in Tahoe, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames">which I wrote about Friday</a>. No better, no worse.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs-largest-customer.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvl" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42609</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:51:12Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:51:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Kif Leswing, CNBC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nvidia will become TSMC’s largest customer this year, according to
analyst estimates and Huang himself. Apple is believed to
currently be TSMC’s largest customer, mostly to manufacture
A-series chips for iPhones and M-series chips for PCs and servers.</p>
<p>The positional swap will mark a fundamental shift in the
semiconductor industry, reflecting Nvidia’s growing importance
amid the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. [...]</p>
<p>Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, said he
<a href="https://thediligencestack.com/p/the-reordering-to-aihpc-tsmcs-2026">projects</a> Nvidia to generate $33 billion in TSMC revenue this
year, or about 22% of the chip foundry’s total. Apple, by
comparison, is projected to generate about $27 billion, or about
18% of TSMC’s revenue.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvk" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42608</id>
<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2026-01-26T22:40:54Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:40:55Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=product_name_link">WorkOS Pipes</a> removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a <a href="https://workos.com/docs/widgets/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=drop_in_widget">drop-in widget</a>. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta">Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth</title></entry><entry>
<title>Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvj" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42607</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:10:43Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:10:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Joe Rossignol, writing at MacRumors:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple offers a <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/11/apple-announces-airtag-location-sharing/">Share Item Location feature in the Find My
app</a> that allows you to temporarily share the location of an
AirTag-equipped item with others, including employees at
participating airlines. This way, if you put an AirTag inside your
bags, the airline can better help you find them in the event they
are lost or delayed at the airport. [...] Below, we have listed
most of the airlines that support the feature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/">Apple’s announcement</a> claims that 36 airlines support it today, and 15 more are coming soon.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvi" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42606</id>
<published>2026-01-26T22:02:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:02:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip
found in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3,
and Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it
easier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio
feedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from
up to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an
upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be
located. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on
Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to
find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Solid update to the original AirTags, which <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-airtag/">debuted five years ago</a>. Better range, louder speaker, increased precision. The form factor remains unchanged, so second-gen AirTags will fit in keychains or holders designed for the first-gen model. They even take the same batteries. Pricing also remains unchanged: $29 for one, $99 for a four-pack.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/app_store_2025_top_iphone_apps_in_the_us" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvh" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42605</id>
<published>2026-01-26T21:49:45Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T22:34:06Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>I’ve been meaning since last month to link to <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/story/id1847717004">Apple’s lists of the top iPhone apps in the U.S. for 2025</a>. Here’s the list of the top 20 free iPhone apps:</p>
<ol>
<li>ChatGPT</li>
<li>Threads</li>
<li>Google</li>
<li>TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE</li>
<li>WhatsApp Messenger</li>
<li>Instagram</li>
<li>YouTube</li>
<li>Google Maps</li>
<li>Gmail — Email by Google</li>
<li>Google Gemini</li>
<li>Facebook</li>
<li>CapCut: Photo & Video Editor</li>
<li>Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire</li>
<li>T-Life [“All things T-Mobile”]</li>
<li>Telegram Messenger</li>
<li>Lemon8 — Lifestyle Community</li>
<li>Spotify: Music and Podcasts</li>
<li>Google Chrome</li>
<li>Snapchat</li>
<li>rednote</li>
</ol>
<p>All app names are verbatim, except for T-Life, where I put the app’s secondary slogan in brackets. I had no idea what T-Life was, but the slogan makes it clear. Interesting to me that T-Mobile’s app is on the list but neither Verizon nor AT&T’s are.<sup id="fnr1-2026-01-26"><a href="#fn1-2026-01-26">1</a></sup></p>
<p>I hope a million people sent this list to Elon Musk, to rub some salt in his severe case of butt hurt that led him to file <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/elon-musk-sues-apple-openai-to-block-exclusive-iphone-chatgpt-integration/">an almost certainly baseless lawsuit in August</a> alleging that ChatGPT consistently tops the App Store list — and Grok does not — because Apple puts a thumb on the scale for these rankings because of its deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with Apple Intelligence. Here’s the thing. Dishonest people presume the whole world is dishonest. That you either cheat and steal, or you’re going to be cheated and robbed. If Elon Musk ran the App Store, you can be sure that he’d cook the rankings to put apps that he owns, or even just favors, on top. Elon Musk runs Twitter/X, and <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487">that’s how the algorithm there now works</a>: it favors content he prefers, especially his own tweets. Apple doesn’t publish how its lists for top apps are computed (to keep the rankings from being gamed more than they already inevitably are), but judging by how many of these apps come from Apple’s rivals (e.g., Spotify), there’s little reason to think they’re crooked — unless you think the entire world is crooked.</p>
<p>Google has 6 apps on the list, including 5 in the top 10. Meta — certainly no friend of Apple — has 4 apps on the list, including 3 in the top 10. (Slightly interesting, but unsurprising, sign of the times: the Facebook “blue app” dropped out of the top 10.) The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</p>
<p>Microsoft has no apps on the list. <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/162987/macbu-4.html">Back in the day</a>, the conventional wisdom was that Microsoft made more money, on average, from each Mac sold than they did from each PC sold — despite the fact that nearly all PCs came with a licensed version of Windows — because so many Mac users paid for Microsoft Office at retail prices. I suspect something like that is true with iPhones for Google. A lot of iPhone users spend a lot of time using apps from Google. I would bet that Google makes more ad revenue from the average iPhone user (who, even if they don’t install a single one of Google’s native iOS apps, probably uses Google Search in Safari) than from the average Android user.</p>
<p>Another company that has no apps on this list is Apple itself. If you look at <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6007?chart=top-free">the daily top list of apps in the Productivity category</a>, you will see a lot of apps from Google and Microsoft. But you won’t find Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, because Apple recuses its own apps from such rankings. </p>
<p>Here’s the list of the top 20 <em>paid</em> iPhone apps in 2025 in the U.S.:</p>
<ol>
<li>HotSchedules</li>
<li>Shadowrocket</li>
<li>Procreate Pocket</li>
<li>AnkiMobile Flashcards</li>
<li>Paprika Recipe Manager 3</li>
<li>SkyView®</li>
<li>TonalEnergy Tuner & Metronome</li>
<li>AutoSleep Track Sleep on Watch</li>
<li>Forest: Focus for Productivity</li>
<li>RadarScope </li>
<li>Monash FODMAP Diet</li>
<li>Merge Watermelon for watch</li>
<li>Streaks</li>
<li>Wipr 2</li>
<li>µBrowser: Watch Web Browser</li>
<li>PeakFinder</li>
<li>Threema. The Secure Messenger</li>
<li>Things 3</li>
<li>Goblin Tools</li>
<li>¡Verify Basic</li>
</ol>
<p>There are a couple of real gems on this list — Procreate, Paprika, Streaks (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2016/05/streaks">multi</a>-<a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/11/streaks_and_little_streaks">time</a> DF sponsor), and Things are all apps that I use, or have used, and would recommend. But unlike the list of top free apps, where I’d at least heard of all of them (once I figured out what T-Life was), I have never even heard of most of these paid iPhone apps. Household names these are not.</p>
<p>The market for paid apps isn’t just different from the market for free apps. It’s an entirely different world.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2026-01-26">
<p>This, in turn made me wonder what the subscriber-count standings look like. I assumed T-Mobile was still in third place, but that assumption was wrong. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_in_the_United_States">According to Wikipedia</a>, here are the number of U.S. subscribers per carrier as of Q3 2025:</p>
<ol>
<li>Verizon — 146 million</li>
<li>T-Mobile — 140 million</li>
<li>AT&T — 119 million</li>
<li>Boost — 8 million</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m a Verizon man myself, and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks">pay handsomely for it</a>. I don’t even remember why exactly, but I despised AT&T back when they were the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. <a href="#fnr1-2026-01-26" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ App Store 2025 Top iPhone Apps in the U.S.</title></entry><entry>
<title>From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvg" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42604</id>
<published>2026-01-26T20:32:46Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T01:34:52Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Yours truly back in 2009, hitting upon the same themes from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit">the item I just posted</a> about TextEdit vs. Apple Notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This, I think, explains the relative popularity of Mac OS X’s
included Stickies application. For years, Stickies’s popularity
confounded me. Why would anyone use a note-taking utility that
requires you to leave every saved note open in its own window on
screen? The more you use it, the more cluttered it gets. But
here’s the thing: cluttered though it may be, <em>you never have to
save anything in Stickies</em>. Switch to Stickies, Command-N, type
your new note, and you’re done. (And, yes, if you create a new
sticky note, then force-quit Stickies, the note you just created
will be there when next you launch the app. Stickies’s auto-save
happens while you type, not just at quit time.) It feels easy and
it feels safe. Stickies does not offer a good long-term storage
design, but it offers a frictionless short-term
jot-something-down-right-now design.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here we are in 2026, 17 years later, and, unsurprisingly, some things have changed. Apple Notes didn’t get a Mac version until Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012. And Apple Notes didn’t really get <em>good</em> until 2016 or 2017. I still use Yojimbo, the library-based Mac app I wrote about in the above piece in 2009, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to. I use Apple Notes instead, for most notes, because it has good clients for iPhone and iPad (and Vision Pro and even Apple Watch).</p>
<p>Other things, however, have not changed since 2009. Like the Stickies app, which is still around in MacOS 26 Tahoe, largely unchanged, except for <a href="https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/#:~:text=STICKIES">a sad Liquid Glass-style icon</a>. If you still use Stickies, you should consider moving to Apple Notes. There’s even a command (File → Export All to Notes...) to import all your notes from Stickies into Apple Notes, with subfolders in Notes for each color sticky note. Apple Notes on the Mac even supports one of Stickies’s signature features: the Window → Float on Top command will keep a note’s window floating atop the windows from other apps even when Apple Notes is in the background.</p>
<p>(Stickies has another cool feature that no other current app I know of does: it still supports “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowShade">window shading</a>”. Double-click the title bar of a note in Stickies and the rest of the window will “roll up”, leaving only the title bar behind. Double-click again and it rolls down. This was a built-in feature for all windows in all apps on classic Mac OS, starting with Mac OS 8, but was replaced in favor of minimizing windows into the Dock with Mac OS X. Window shading was a better feature (and could have been kept <em>alongside</em> minimizing into the Dock). With the Stickies app, window shading works particularly well with the aforementioned Float on Top feature — you can keep a floating window available, atop all other windows, but while it’s rolled up it hardly takes up any space or obscures anything underneath.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvf" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42603</id>
<published>2026-01-26T19:54:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T15:31:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps at the opposite end of the complexity and novelty spectrum from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot">Federico Viticci’s intro to Clawdbot</a> is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software">this piece by Kyle Chayka</a>, writing at The New Yorker, from October:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Amid the accelerating automation of our computers — and the
proliferation of assistants and companions and agents designed to
execute tasks for us — I’ve been thinking more about the desktop
that’s hidden in the background of the laptop I use every day.
Mine is strewn with screenshots and Word documents and e-books.
What I’ve accrued the most of by far, though, are TextEdit files,
from the bare-bones Mac app that just lets you type stuff into a
blank window. Apple computers have come with text-editing software
since the original Mac was released, in 1984; the current
iteration of the program launched in the mid-nineties and has
survived relatively unchanged. Over the past few years, I’ve found
myself relying on TextEdit more as every other app has grown more
complicated, adding cloud uploads, collaborative editing, and now
generative A.I. TextEdit is not connected to the internet, like
Google Docs. It is not part of a larger suite of workplace
software, like Microsoft Word. You can write in TextEdit, and you
can format your writing with a bare minimum of fonts and styling.
Those files are stored as RTFs (short for rich-text format), one
step up from the most basic TXT file. TextEdit now functions as my
to-do-list app, my e-mail drafting window, my personal calendar,
and my stash of notes to self, which act like digital Post-its.</p>
<p>I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without
warning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and
it doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google
Chrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my
random thoughts and ideas in progress — the personal note-storage
app Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative
digital workspace Notion, which can store and share company
information. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy
of organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But
nothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of
TextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of
thinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing
longhand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of
course, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably
warped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by
typing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Old habits are hard to break. And trust me, I, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">of all people</a>, know the value of writing stuff — all sorts of stuff — in plain text files. (RTF isn’t plain text, but it is a stable and standard format.) I’ve been using BBEdit <a href="https://www.barebones.com/company/history.html">since 1992</a>, not just as an occasional utility, but as part of my daily arsenal of essential tools.</p>
<p>But I get the feeling that Chayka would be better served switching from TextEdit to Apple Notes for most of these things he’s creating. Saving a whole pile of notes to yourself as text files on your desktop, with no organization into sub-folders, isn’t wrong. The whole point of “just put it on the desktop” is to absolve yourself of thinking about where to file something properly. That’s friction, and if you face a bit of friction every time you want to jot something down, it increases the likelihood that <em>you won’t jot it down</em> because you didn’t want to deal with the friction.</p>
<p>You actually don’t need to save or name documents in TextEdit anymore. One of the best changes to MacOS in the last two decades has been <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-desktop-dock-settings-mchlp1119/15.0/mac">the persistence of open document windows</a>, including unsaved changes to existing files, and never-saved untitled document windows. Try this: open TextEdit, make a new untitled document, and type something — anything — into the new window. Next, don’t just quit TextEdit, but force quit it (⌥⌘Esc). Relaunch TextEdit, and your unsaved new document should be right where you left it, with every character you typed.</p>
<p>But a big pile of unorganized RTF files on your desktop — or a big pile of unsaved document windows that remain open, in perpetuity, in TextEdit — is no way to live. You can use TextEdit like that, it <em>supports</em> being used like that, but it wasn’t <em>designed</em> to be used like that.</p>
<p>Apple Notes was designed to be used like this. Open Notes, ⌘N, type whatever you want, and switch back to whatever you were doing before. There is no Save command. There are no files. And while a few dozen text files on your desktop starts to look messy, and makes individual items hard to find, you can stash <em>thousands</em> of notes in Apple Notes and they just organize themselves into a simple list, sorted, by default, by most recently modified. You can create folders and assign tags in Notes, but you don’t need to. Don’t make busy work for yourself. And with iCloud, you get fast reliable syncing of all your notes to all of your other Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/create-and-view-notes-apdc6fb0a03f/watchos">even your Watch now</a>.</p>
<p>Sometimes you just want to stick with what you’re used to. I get it. I am, very much, a creature of habit. And TextEdit is comforting for its simplicity, reliability, and unchanging consistency spanning literally decades. But there’s no question in my mind that nearly everyone using TextEdit as a personal notes system would be better served — and happier, once they adjust to the change — by switching to Apple Notes.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Federico Viticci on Clawdbot</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wve" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42602</id>
<published>2026-01-26T17:58:37Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-27T20:18:47Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If this intro just gave you whiplash, imagine my reaction when I
first started playing around with <a href="https://clawd.bot/">Clawdbot</a>, the incredible
<a href="https://github.com/clawdbot/clawdbot">open-source project</a> by <a href="https://steipete.me/">Peter Steinberger</a> (a name
that should be <a href="https://www.macstories.net/linked/ios-10-3-beta-re-introduces-warning-for-old-32-bit-apps-suggests-future-incompatibility/">familiar to longtime MacStories readers</a>)
that’s become <em>very</em> popular in certain AI communities over the
past few weeks. I kept seeing Clawdbot being mentioned by people I
follow; eventually, I gave in to peer pressure, followed the
instructions provided by the funny crustacean mascot on the app’s
<a href="https://docs.clawd.bot/start/getting-started">website</a>, installed Clawdbot on my new M4 Mac mini (which
is not my main production machine), and <a href="https://docs.clawd.bot/channels/telegram">connected it to
Telegram</a>.</p>
<p>To say that Clawdbot has fundamentally altered my perspective of
what it means to have an intelligent, personal AI assistant in
2026 would be an understatement. I’ve been playing around with
Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the
Anthropic API ( <em>yikes</em> ), and I’ve had fewer and fewer
conversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the
process. Don’t get me wrong: Clawdbot is a nerdy project, a
tinkerer’s laboratory that is not poised to overtake the
popularity of consumer LLMs any time soon. Still, Clawdbot points
at a fascinating future for digital assistants, and it’s exactly
the kind of bleeding-edge project that MacStories readers will
appreciate.</p>
<p>Clawdbot can be overwhelming at first, so I’ll try my best to
explain what it is and why it’s so exciting and fun to play
around with.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Overwhelming indeed. Clawdbot is undeniably impressive, and <a href="https://x.com/steipete/status/2015828441342292139">interest in it is skyrocketing</a>. But because of its complexity and scope, it’s one of those things where all the excitement is being registered by people who already understand it. This essay from Viticci is the first thing I’ve seen that really helped me <em>start</em> to understand it.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Federico Viticci on Clawdbot’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Meh</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://meh.com/go/df" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wvd" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42601</id>
<published>2026-01-25T17:04:18Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:30:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh puts up a new deal every day, and they do it with panache. As they say, “It’s actual, real, weird shit you didn’t know existed for half the price you would’ve guessed.”</p>
<p>Don’t tell any of my other sponsors, but <a href="https://meh.com/go/df">Meh</a> is my favorite <a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/archive">longtime DF sponsor</a>. I love the way their orange graphics look against DF’s <code>#4a525a</code> background. And I always love their sponsored posts that go into the RSS feed at the start of the sponsorship week. I’ll just quote theirs from this week in full:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our
part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking
your head in the sand.</p>
<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to
last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break
from the misery.</p>
<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems.
We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our
little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh
community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of
occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve
never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not
giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>
<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that.
But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we
have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is
over at Meh today.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Meh’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvc" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42600</id>
<published>2026-01-25T00:14:52Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-25T17:05:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">A change to how Safari reports the OS it is running on led many in the media to lose their minds.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users. The methodology behind these numbers is broken and the numbers are totally wrong. Those false numbers are so low, so jarringly different from previous years, that it boggles my mind that they didn’t raise a red flag for anyone who took a moment to consider them.</p>
<p>The ball started rolling with this post from Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac on January 8, “<a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users">iOS 26 Still Struggles to Gain Traction With iPhone Users</a>”, which began:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26,
according to data from a web analytics service. The adoption rate
is far less than previous iOS versions at this same point months
after their releases. The data only reveals how few iPhone users
run Apple’s latest operating system upgrade, not why they’ve
chosen to avoid it. But the most likely candidate is the new
Liquid Glass look of the update. [...]</p>
<p>Roughly four months after launching in mid-September, <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202601-202601-bar">only about
15% of iPhone users have some version of the new operating system
installed</a>. That’s according to data for January 2026 from
StatCounter. Instead, most users hold onto previous versions.</p>
<p>For comparison, in January 2025, about <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202501-202501-bar">63% of iPhone users had
some iOS 18 version</a> installed. So after roughly the same
amount of time, the adoption rate of Apple [<em>sic</em>] newest OS was
about four times higher.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those links point to Statcounter, a web analytics service. A lot of websites include Statcounter’s analytics tracker, and Statcounter’s tracker attempts to determine the version of the OS each visitor’s device is running. The problem is, starting with Safari 26 — the version that ships with iOS 26 — Safari changed how it reports its user agent string. From the WebKit blog, “<a href="https://webkit.org/blog/17333/webkit-features-in-safari-26-0/">WebKit Features in Safari 26.0</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Also, now in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS 26 the user agent
string no longer lists the current version of the operating
system. Safari 18.6 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.6
Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>
<p>And Safari 26.0 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0
Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>
<p>This matches the long-standing behavior on macOS, where the user
agent string for Safari 26.0 is:</p>
<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0
Safari/605.1.15</code></p>
<p>It was back in 2017 when Safari on Mac first started freezing the
Mac OS string. Now the behavior on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS does
the same in order to minimize compatibility issues. The WebKit and
Safari version number portions of the string will continue to
change with each release.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, Safari now reports, in its user agent string, that it’s running on iOS 18.6 when it is running on iOS 18.6, and reports that it’s running on iOS 18.6 <em>when it’s running on iOS 26.0 or later</em>. And it’s going to keep reporting that it’s running on iOS 18.6 forever, just like how Safari 26 on MacOS reports that it’s running on MacOS 10.15 Catalina, from 2019.</p>
<p>Statcounter completely dropped the ball on this change, and it explains the entirety of this false narrative that iOS 26 adoption is incredibly low. (Statcounter has a <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/detect">“detect” page</a> where you can see what browser and OS it thinks you’re using.) The reason they reported that 15 percent of iPhone users were using iOS 26 is probably because that’s the amount of web traffic Statcounter sees from iOS 26 web browsers that aren’t Safari (most of which, I’ll bet, are in-app browser views in social media apps).</p>
<p>Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, <a href="https://pxlnv.com/blog/updating-the-record-on-ios-26/">wrote a good piece delving into this saga</a>. And then he <a href="https://pxlnv.com/linklog/ios-26-usage-updates/">posted a follow-up item</a> pointing out that (a) Statcounter’s CEO has acknowledged their error and they’re fixing it; and (b) Wikimedia publishes network-wide stats that serve as a good baseline. The audience for Wikipedia is, effectively, the audience for the web itself. And Wikipedia’s stats show that while iOS 26 adoption, in January 2026, isn’t absurdly low (as Statcounter had been suggesting, erroneously, and writers like <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users">Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac</a> and <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/3022985/ios-26s-failure-shows-what-happens-when-you-take-customers-for-granted.html">David Price</a> <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/3028428/ios-26-is-a-massive-flop-with-iphone-users-and-you-can-probably-guess-why.html">at Macworld</a> foolishly regurgitated, no matter how little sense it made that the numbers would be <em>that</em> low), they are in fact lower than those for iOS 18 a year ago and iOS 17 two years ago. Per Wikimedia:</p>
<ul>
<li>iOS 26, January 2026: 50%</li>
<li>iOS 18, January 2025: 72%</li>
<li>iOS 17, January 2024: 65%</li>
</ul>
<p>So, no, iOS 26 adoption isn’t at just 15 percent, which only a dope would believe, but it’s not as high as previous iOS versions in previous years at this point on the calendar. Something, obviously, is going on.</p>
<p>David Smith, developer of popular apps like <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/widgetsmith/id1523682319">Widgetsmith</a> and <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pedometer/id712286167">Pedometer++</a>, <a href="https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872">on Mastodon</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I noticed iOS 26 adoption had entered a ‘third wave’ of rapid
adoption. So I made a graph of the relative adoption versus iOS 18
at this point in the release cycle.</p>
<p>While lower than iOS 18 at this point for my apps (65% vs. 78%),
the shape of this graph says to me that Apple is in full control
of the adoption rate and can tune it to their plans. The
coordinated surges are Apple dialing up automatic updates.</p>
<p>If this surge were as long as previous ones, we’d hit the
saturation point very soon.</p>
<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/david-smith-ios-v26-v18-adoption.png"
alt = "Chart of iOS 26 vs. iOS 18 adoption, day-by-day after each version was released."
width = 500
/></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>What’s going on, quite obviously, is that Apple itself is slow-rolling the automatic updates to iOS 26. For years now Apple has steered users, via default suggestions during device setup, to adopt settings to allow OS updates to happen automatically, including updates to major new versions. Apple tends not to push these automatic updates to major new versions of iOS until two months after the .0 release in September. This year that second wave was delayed by about two weeks, and there’s now a third wave starting midway through January. It’s a different pattern from previous years — but it’s a pattern Apple controls. A large majority of users of all Apple devices get major OS updates when, and only when, their devices automatically update. Apple has been slower to push those updates to iOS 26 than they have been for previous iOS updates in recent years. With good reason! iOS 26 is a more significant — and buggier — update than iOS 18 and 17 were.</p>
<p>People like <em>you</em>, readers of Daring Fireball, may well be hesitant to update to iOS 26, or (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames">like me</a>) to MacOS 26, or to any of the version 26 OS updates, because you are aware of things (like UI changes) that you are loath to adopt.</p>
<p>But the overwhelming majority of Apple users — especially iPhone users — just let their devices update automatically. They might like iOS 26’s changes, they might dislike them, or they might not care or even notice. But they just let their software updates happen automatically — and they will form the entirety of their opinions regarding iOS 26 after it’s running on their iPhones.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ The iOS 26 Adoption Rate Is Not Bizarrely Low Compared to Previous Years</title></entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wvb" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42599</id>
<published>2026-01-24T03:38:53Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:39:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>The main reason I’m sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia, refusing to install 26 Tahoe, is that there are so many <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder">severe UI regressions</a> in Tahoe. The <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus">noisy, distracting, inconsistent icons</a> prefixing menu item commands, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons">ruining the Mac’s signature menu bar system</a>. Indiscriminate transparency that renders so many menus, windows, and sidebars <a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2025/11/09/last-week-on-my-mac-tahoe-26-1-disappointments/">inscrutable and ugly</a>. Windows with childish round corners that are <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26">hard to resize</a>. The <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons">comically sad app icons</a>. Why choose to suffer?</p>
<p>But the thing that makes the decision to stay on 15 Sequoia a cinch is that I honestly struggle to think of <em>any</em> features in Tahoe that I’m missing out on. What is there to actually <em>like</em> about Tahoe? One small example is Apple’s Journal app. I’ve been using Journal ever since it debuted as an iPhone-only app in iOS 17.2 in December 2023. 785 entries and counting. With the version 26 OSes, Apple created versions of Journal for iPad and Mac (but not Vision Pro). Syncing works great via iCloud too. All things considered, I’d like to have a version of Journal on my main Mac. But I’m fine without it. I’ve been writing entries without a Mac app since 2023, so I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing, if I want to create or edit a Journal entry from my Mac: using <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference">iPhone Mirroring</a>.</p>
<p>That’s it. The Journal app is the one new feature Tahoe offers that I wish I had today. I’m not missing out on the latest version of Safari because <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-26_2-release-notes">Apple makes Safari 26 available for MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> (and even 14 Sonoma). Some years, Apple adds <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/enter-formulas-and-equations-iphb9c2b948f/ios">new features</a> to Apple Notes, and to get those features on every device, you need to update every device to that year’s new OS. This year I don’t think there are any features like that. Everything is perfectly cromulent running iOS 26 on my iPhone and iPad, but sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia on my primary Mac.</p>
<p>But now that we’ve been <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder">poking around at column view</a> in the Tahoe Finder, <a href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html">Jeff Johnson has discovered another enticing new feature</a>. On Mac OS 26, the Finder has a new view option (accessed via View → Show View Options) to automatically resize columns to fit the longest visible filename. <a href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html">See Johnson’s post</a> for screenshots of the new option in practice.</p>
<p>[<strong>Update:</strong> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing">Turns out</a>, this auto-resizing feature has been a hidden preference setting in the Finder for a few years now.]</p>
<p>Column view is one of the best <a href="https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0">UI innovations from NeXTStep</a>, and if you think about it, has always been the primary metaphor for browsing hierarchical applications in iOS. It’s a good idea for the desktop that proved foundational for mobile. The iPhone Settings app is column view — one column at a time. It’s a way to organize a multi-screen app in a visual, spatial way even when limited to a 3.5-inch display.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20000302055440/http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/browser.html">Greg’s Browser</a>, a terrific indie app, I’d been using column view on classic Mac OS since 1993, a few years before Apple even bought NeXT, let alone finally shipped Mac OS X (which was when column view first appeared in the Finder). One frustration inherent to column view is that it doesn’t work well with long filenames. It’s a waste of space to resize all columns to a width long enough to accommodate long filenames, but it’s frustrating when a long filename doesn’t fit in a regular-width column.</p>
<p>This new feature in the Tahoe Finder attempts to finally solve this problem. I played around with it this afternoon and it’s ... OK. It feels like an early prototype for what could be a polished feature. For example, it exacerbates some layering bugs in the Finder — if you attempt to rename a file or folder that is partially scrolled under the sidebar, the Tahoe Finder will just draw the rename editing field right on top of the sidebar, even though it belongs to the layer that is scrolled underneath. Here’s what it looks like when I rename a folder named “Example ƒ” to “How is this possible?”:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png"
alt = "Renaming a folder in MacOS 26 Tahoe. The rename editing field from the underlying column is rendered on top of the sidebar."
width = 500
/></a></p>
<p>On MacOS 15, if you attempt to rename an item that is scrolled under the sidebar in column view, the column containing that item snaps into place next to the sidebar, so it’s fully visible. That snapping into place just feels right. The way Tahoe works, where the column doesn’t move and the text editing field for the filename just gets drawn on top of the sidebar, feels gross, like I’m using a computer that is not a Macintosh. Amateur hour.</p>
<p>I wish I could set this new column-resizing option only to grow columns to accommodate long filenames, and never to shrink columns when the visible items all have short filenames. But the way it currently works, it adjusts all columns to the width of the longest visible filename each column is displaying — narrowing some, and widening others. I want most columns to stay at the default width. With this new option enabled, it looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.</p>
<p>Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest <em>currently visible</em> filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.</p>
<p>Even a future polished version of this column view feature wouldn’t, in and of itself, be enough to tempt me to upgrade to Tahoe. After 30-some years of columns that don’t automatically adjust their widths, I can wait another year. But we don’t yet have a polished version of this feature. The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ Tahoe Added a Finder Option to Resize Columns to Fit Filenames</title></entry><entry>
<title>OmniOutliner 6</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wva" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42598</id>
<published>2026-01-24T00:59:23Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-24T00:59:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Ken Case, on The Omni Group blog:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The features noted above already make for a great upgrade. But <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omni-roadmap-2025#document-links">as
I mentioned last year</a>, one of the interesting problems
we’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native
apps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem,
Omni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With
Omni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we
can share those links with other people and other apps.</p>
<p>Omni Links support everything we said document links needed to
have. Omni Links work across all of Apple’s computing platforms
and can be shared with a team. They leverage existing solutions
for syncing and sharing documents, such as iCloud Drive or shared
Git repositories. They are easy to create, easy to use, and easy
to share.</p>
<p>Omni Links also power up Omni Automation, giving scripts and
plug-ins a way to reference and update content in linked documents — documents that can be shared across all your team’s devices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s lots more in version 6, including a modernized UI, and many additions to Omni Automation, Omni’s scripting platform that works across both Mac and iOS — including really useful <a href="https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm-collection.html">integration with Apple’s on-device Foundation Models</a>, with, of course, comprehensive (and comprehensible) <a href="https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm.html">documentation</a>.</p>
<p>It’s <a href="https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnioutliner/universal/6.0.1/en/connect/#omni-links">Omni Links</a>, though, that strikes me as the most interesting new feature. The two fundamental models for apps are library-based (like Apple Notes) and document-based (like TextEdit). Document-based apps create and open files from the file system. Library-based apps create items in a database, and the location of the database in the file system is an implementation detail the user shouldn’t worry about.</p>
<p>OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the advantages to library-based apps is that they more easily allow the developer to create custom URL schemes to link to items in the app’s library. Omni Links is an ambitious solution to bring that to document-based apps. Omni Links let you copy URLs that link not just to an OmniOutliner document, but to any specific row within an OmniOutliner document. And you can paste those URLs into any app you want (like, say, Apple Notes or <a href="https://www.culturedcode.com/">Things</a>, or events in your calendar app). From the perspective of other apps, they’re just URLs that start with <code>omnioutliner://</code>. They’re not based on anything as simplistic as a file’s pathname. They’re a robust way to link to a unique document, or a specific row within that document. Create an Omni Link on your Mac, and that link will work on your iPhone or iPad too — or vice versa. This is a very complex problem to solve, but Omni Links delivers on the age-old promise of “It just works”, abstracting all the complexity.</p>
<p>I’ve been using OmniOutliner for at least two decades now, and Omni Links strikes me as one of the best features they’ve ever added. It’s a way to connect your outlines, and the content within your outlines, to any app that accepts links. The other big change is that OmniOutliner 6 is now a single universal purchase giving you access to the same features on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘OmniOutliner 6’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Lolgato 1.7</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://github.com/raine/lolgato" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv9" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42597</id>
<published>2026-01-23T23:36:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T23:36:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Free Mac utility by Zendit Oy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A macOS app that enhances control over Elgato lights, offering
features beyond the standard Elgato Control Center software.</p>
<p>Features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Automatically turn lights on and off based on camera activity</li>
<li>Turn lights off when locking your Mac</li>
<li>Sync light temperature with macOS Night Shift</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Lolgato also lets you set global hotkeys for toggling the lights and changing their brightness.</p>
<p>I’ve had a pair of <a href="https://www.elgato.com/ww/en/p/key-light?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block">Elgato Key Lights</a> down at my podcast recording desk for years now. Elgato’s shitty software drove me nuts. Nothing seemed to work so I gave up on controlling my lights from software. I set the color temperature and brightness the way I wanted it (which you have to do via software) and then after that, I just turned them off and on using the physical switches on the lights.</p>
<p>I forget how I discovered Lolgato, but I installed back on November 10. I connected Lolgato to my lights, and set it to turn them on whenever the Mac wakes up, and off whenever the Mac goes to sleep. It has worked perfectly for over two months. Perfect little utility.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Lolgato 1.7’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Playing the Percentages</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv8" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42596</id>
<published>2026-01-23T15:44:11Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T15:44:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Dr. Drang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For weeks — maybe months, time has been hard to judge this past
year — Trump has been telling us that he’s worked out deals with
pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by several hundred
percent. Commentators and comedians have pointed out that you
can’t reduce prices more than 100% and pretty much left it at
that, suggesting that Trump’s impossible numbers are due to
ignorance.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s ignorance is nearly limitless — but
only nearly. I’ve always thought that he knew the right way to
calculate a price drop; he did it the wrong way so he could quote
a bigger number. And that came out in yesterday’s speech.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump sophistry + math pedantry = Daring Fireball catnip.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Playing the Percentages’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv7" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42595</id>
<published>2026-01-23T01:34:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T01:34:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jeff Johnson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Finder has four view modes, represented by the four consecutive
toolbar icons in the screenshot below, if you can even call that
free-floating monstrosity a toolbar anymore: Icons, List, Columns,
and Gallery. My preference is columns view, which I’ve been using
for as long as I remember, going back to Mac OS X.</p>
<p>At the bottom of each column is a resizing widget that you can use
to change the width of the columns. Or rather, you <em>could</em> use it to
change the width of the columns. On macOS Tahoe, the horizontal
scroller covers the resizing widget and prevents it from being
clicked!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/12/macos-26-cut-corner">joked last week</a> that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job">a month ago</a>, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv6" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42594</id>
<published>2026-01-22T23:19:56Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T00:04:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to
build that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all
of that same information is handed over.</p>
<p>When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder
for Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy
and security protections, like not sharing any information about
your actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking
trickier.</p>
<p>This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want
to pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan
and Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had
the option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share <em>a lot</em> less
information with Walmart.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Using Walmart Pay gives Walmart <em>more</em> information than a regular credit or debit card transaction does. When you use the same traditional credit card for multiple purchases over time, a retailer like Walmart can build a profile associated with that card number. Charles Duhigg, all the way back in 2012, reported a story for The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.UClu.YPuRxJGkIHte&smid=url-share">about how Target used these profiles</a> — which customers don’t even know about — to statistically determine when women are likely to be pregnant based on purchases like, say, cocoa-butter lotion and vitamin supplements. When you use an in-house payment app like Walmart Pay (or swipe a store’s “loyalty” card at the register), the store doesn’t have to do any guesswork to associate the transaction with your profile. Your Walmart Pay account <em>is</em> your profile.</p>
<p>Using Apple Pay gives a retailer less — or at least <em>no more</em> — identifying information than a traditional card transaction. So if the future is paying via devices, Walmart wants that future to give them more information.</p>
<p>I think the situation with Walmart and Apple Pay is a lot like Netflix and Apple TV integration. Most retailers, even large ones, support Apple Pay. Most streaming services, even large ones, support integration with Apple’s TV app. Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because they want to control the customer transaction directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple Pay. Netflix doesn’t support TV app integration because they want to control the customer viewing experience directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple’s TV app.</p>
<p>Amazon — which is also very large, whose customers are also very loyal, and which absolutely <em>loves</em> collecting data — does not support Apple Pay either.</p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/01/21/why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/">Michael Tsai</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of-minnesota-activist-nekima-levy-armstrong-arrest" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv5" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42593</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:44:59Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-23T01:35:51Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Violet Jira, reporting for NOTUS:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The White House communications team <a href="https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2014365986388951194?s=20">posted a digitally altered
photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong,</a> a Minnesota social
justice activist, on Thursday that makes it appear that she was
weeping <a href="https://www.notus.org/immigration/pam-bondi-arrest-minneapolis-church-protesters-ice">during her arrest by federal agents</a>.</p>
<p>The image is highly realistic, bearing no watermark or other
indicator that the image has been doctored. The change is only
apparent when compared to a <a href="https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2014357826081071513?s=20">different version of the same image
posted by the Department of Homeland Security</a> earlier in
the day.</p>
<p>The White House, which has adopted a combative, flippant tone on
its widely viewed social media pages, drew some backlash for the
post online. In response, White House deputy communications
director Kaelan Dorr called the image a “meme.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s not a meme. It’s propaganda — an altogether false image presented as an actual photograph.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig-federighi-plots-cautious-course-ai" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv4" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42592</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:33:05Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-24T03:43:19Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Aaron “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/11/wsj-tech-layoffs">Homeboy</a>” Tilley and Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas, and with a miserly gift-link policy):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But there are also potential risks to making Federighi head of AI.
Giving oversight of AI to him reflects Apple’s cautious approach
to the technology. He is known at Apple as a penny-pincher who
keeps a tight rein on salaries and hesitates to invest in risky
projects when the payoff from them isn’t clear, according to
people who have worked with him. He tends to scrutinize every
detail of his team’s expenses, down to their budgets for bananas
and other office snacks, those people said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals are pouring vast amounts of capital into
AI, building data centers and paying fortunes to woo AI
researchers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have no idea what Federighi’s stance is on break-room bananas, but it seems a stretch to think it offers clues to Apple’s strategy on data centers.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For years, lieutenants of Federighi would try to get him on board
with AI. He often shot those efforts down, former Apple executives
said. For example, he rejected proposals from his team to use AI
to dynamically change the iPhone home screen, believing it would
disorient users, who are used to knowing where their apps are
located, said former Apple employees familiar with the proposal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jesus H. Christ, thank god Federighi shot this down. I wouldn’t want <em>good</em> AI rearranging my home screen behind my back, let alone Apple Intelligence as we know it.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin?rc=jfy0lk" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv3" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42591</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:19:50Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-25T15:33:10Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an
AirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker,
microphones and wireless charging, according to people with direct
knowledge of the project. The device could be released as early as
2027, they said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/06/nyt-humane">one</a> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane">notable</a> <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/20/hp-humane">case</a>, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glass was an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Such a product would position Apple to compete more effectively
with OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and
Meta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses that offer
access to its AI assistant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is very strange to put OpenAI’s upcoming io device(s) in the same sentence as Meta’s glasses, which are a real product you can buy today. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-claims-glasses-surging">None of these things</a> are setting the world on fire though.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief-john-ternus-now-overseeing-design-tim-cook-ceo-succession" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv2" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42590</id>
<published>2026-01-22T22:03:27Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T22:04:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Mark Gurman, reporting at Bloomberg:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to
include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender
to eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.</p>
<p>Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November,
quietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the
end of last year, according to people with knowledge of the
matter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most
critical functions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://x.com/markgurman/status/2014413622294790610">And on Twitter/X</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ternus is now the “executive sponsor” of Apple’s design team,
representing the critical function on Apple’s executive team. The
move was under-the-radar: on paper, the teams report to Tim Cook
despite Ternus’s role.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here’s to hoping Ternus is as pissed as the rest of us are about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker-wants-utah-to-officially-weigh-in" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv1" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42589</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:51:34Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T20:51:35Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Bridger Beal-Cvetko and Daniel Woodruff, reporting for KSL News:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/static/SB0138.html">SB138</a>, sponsored by Cullimore, R-Sandy, would make Android, the
world’s most popular mobile device operating system, an official
state symbol, joining the ranks of the official state cooking pot
(the dutch oven), the official state crustacean (the brine
shrimp), and the official state mushroom (the porcini).</p>
<p>“Someday, everybody with an iPhone will realize that the
technology is better on Android,” Cullimore told reporters during
a media availability on Wednesday, the second day of the
legislative session.</p>
<p>But, he added, “I’m the only one in my family — all my kids, my
wife, they all have iPhones — but I’m holding strong.” [...]</p>
<p>“I don’t expect this to really get out of committee,” he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(<a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/22/utah-iphone-vs-android/">Via Joe Rossignol</a>.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://politicalwire.com/2026/01/20/trump-changed-the-presidency-and-theres-no-going-back/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wv0" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/theres-no-going-back" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42588</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:30:26Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T20:31:25Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire, in a post that pairs perfectly <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority">with Om Malik’s re: velocity bestowing authority</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new Democratic argument isn’t about restoring guardrails. It’s
about moving fast — and using power unapologetically — to undo
what Trump has done.</p>
<p>New Jersey will inaugurate Mikie Sherrill as governor today, one
of the party’s rising stars who steamrolled Republicans in
November. She has promised to govern with urgency — leaning on
emergency powers, acting decisively, and skipping the old
incrementalism. This, she argues, is what voters now expect. She
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/mikie-sherrill-intends-to-move-fast">told The New Yorker</a> that if Democrats don’t learn to work
at Donald Trump’s pace, “we’re going to get played.”</p>
<p>Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.notus.org/democrats/trump-executive-power-next-democratic-president">is even more explicit</a>: “In
order for us to correct the abuses that are happening now, we have
to act in the same capacities that Trump has given himself.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The only way to counter “move fast and break things” is to move fast and fix things.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/theres-no-going-back"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://om.co/2026/01/21/velocity-is-the-new-authority-heres-why/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuz" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42587</id>
<published>2026-01-22T20:25:58Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T21:35:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has
become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You
don’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed
and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken
the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It
demands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure
shakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention
and push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone
can get their cut. [...]</p>
<p>We built machines that prize acceleration and then act puzzled
that everything feels rushed and slightly manic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Crackerjack essay. Malik is focused here on the ways we’ve changed media and how those changes to media have changed us — as a society, and as individuals. But I think it explains how the Trump 2.0 administration has been so effective (such that it can be said to be effective). They recognize that velocity is authority and are moving as fast as they can. It’s an adaptation to a new media age.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuy" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/greenland-taco" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42586</id>
<published>2026-01-22T19:24:55Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T19:24:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>The Wall Street Journal (<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR">gift link</a>; <a href="https://apple.news/Ag8uXPVDtRZ-BY0oVBEESyg">News+ link</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alps on
Wednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his
efforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic
conflagration. By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.</p>
<p>After a meeting with Rutte on Wednesday, Trump called off promised
tariffs on European nations, contending that he had “formed the
framework of a future deal” with respect to the largest island in
the world. [...] During an hourlong speech at the World Economic
Forum, the U.S. president said he wouldn’t deploy the military to
take control of Greenland. It was a stark shift in tone for Trump,
who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military
to secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the
territory with an American flag plastered across it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No need for panic. Alarm, yes. Panic, no. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/trump-chickens-out-again">The TACO theory</a> holds. Stand up to Trump and he’ll chicken out.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/greenland-taco"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://bsky.app/profile/margaret.bsky.social/post/3mcyca2l2wk2j" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wux" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/the-scale-of-ice-protests-in-minnesota" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42585</id>
<published>2026-01-22T16:26:32Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T16:26:32Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Margaret Killjoy, in a thread on Bluesky (<a href="https://kottke.org/26/01/what-is-the-scale-of-the-resistance-in-minnesota">via Kottke</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came to Minneapolis to report on what’s going on, and one of the
main questions I showed up with is “just what is the scale of the
resistance?” After all, we’re all used to the news calling
Portland a “war zone” or whatever when it’s just some protests in
one part of town. [...]</p>
<p>Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk
of life, including republicans — standing guard to watch for
suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely
decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes
responders.</p>
<p>I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I
have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is
not accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman
for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more
people, from more walks of life.</p>
<p>It’s genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized
in a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There
are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other
those skills, and people are collectively refining them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple’s “<em>whatever you say, boss</em>” compliance with the Trump administration’s “demand” <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/10/iceblock_removed_from_app_store">back in October</a> that they remove <a href="https://daringfireball.net/search/iceblock">ICEBlock</a> from the App Store — with no legal basis, nor <em>any</em> evidence backing the administration’s claims that the app was being used to put members of the ICE goon squads in danger — is looking more and more like a decision on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/politics/minneapolis-ice-shooting-polls-takeaways">the wrong side of popular opinion</a>. And, ultimately, on the wrong side of history.</p>
<p>ICEBlock was designed for exactly what these protestors are doing.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/the-scale-of-ice-protests-in-minnesota"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://meh.com/go/df" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wuw" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42584</id>
<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2026-01-21T22:23:45Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-26T23:30:32Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking your head in the sand.</p>
<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break from the misery.</p>
<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems. We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>
<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that. But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is over at Meh today.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Meh’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] Meh</title></entry><entry>
<title>Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-21/ios-27-apple-to-revamp-siri-as-built-in-iphone-mac-chatbot-to-fend-off-openai?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAyNDk2NywiZXhwIjoxNzY5NjI5NzY3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFRXOVlLR0NURlUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.awOoIDGdEkCAvho8waoXR6VVVojI3jGvQHJeDjwcyrs" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuv" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/gurman-campos-apple-google-ai-partnership" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42583</id>
<published>2026-01-21T22:18:57Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T19:12:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the
digital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence
chatbot, thrusting the iPhone maker into a generative AI race
dominated by OpenAI and Google. [...]</p>
<p>The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining
the current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the
coming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features
unveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen
content and tap into personal data. It also will be better at
searching the web.</p>
<p>The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to
the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are
private. The company aims to unveil that technology in June at its
Worldwide Developers Conference and release it in September.</p>
<p>Campos, which will have both voice- and typing-based modes, will
be the primary new addition to Apple’s upcoming operating systems.
The company is integrating it into iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, both
code-named Rave, as well as macOS 27, internally known as Fizz.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple ought to just go back to calling it “iOS” on both iPhone and iPad, because it’s always been the same system fundamentally. If they really do have the same codename, it sure suggests that Apple’s engineering teams see it that way too.</p>
<p>The 180° turn on chatbots is welcome, and I think inevitable. The chat interface is just too useful. One of the most maddening things about Siri is that even when it’s helpful today, even when it gets things right, you can never refer back to previous interactions. I refer back to previous chats in ChatGPT almost every day.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering,
said in a June interview with Tom’s Guide that releasing a chatbot
was never the company’s goal. Apple didn’t want to send users “off
into some chat experience in order to get things done,” he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I quote this paragraph only to point out that Gurman/Bloomberg could have, but chose not to, link to the <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/apple-intelligence/wwdc-interview-apples-craig-federighi-and-greg-joswiak-on-siri-delay-voice-ai-as-therapist-and-whats-next-for-apple-intelligence">interview with Federighi (and Joz) at Tom’s Guide</a>. Every single link in the article goes to another page at bloomberg.com. [<strong>Update, next day:</strong> As of this morning, Bloomberg’s article now has a link to the interview at Tom’s Guide. Nice.]</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The iOS 26.4 update of Siri, the one before the true chatbot, will
rely on a Google-developed system internally known as Apple
Foundation Models version 10. That software will operate at 1.2
trillion parameters, a measure of AI complexity. Campos, however,
will significantly surpass those capabilities. The chatbot will
run a higher-end version of the custom Google model, comparable to
Gemini 3, that’s known internally as Apple Foundation Models
version 11.</p>
<p>In a potential policy shift for Apple, the two partners are
discussing hosting the chatbot directly on Google servers running
powerful chips known as TPUs, or tensor processing units. The more
immediate Siri update, in contrast, will operate on Apple’s own
Private Cloud Compute servers, which rely on high-end Mac chips
for processing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A policy shift indeed, if that comes to pass.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/gurman-campos-apple-google-ai-partnership"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/864745/sony-tcl-tvs-partnership-explained?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkFtb3lXVUtwcTYiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvODY0NzQ1L3NvbnktdGNsLXR2cy1wYXJ0bmVyc2hpcC1leHBsYWluZWQiLCJleHAiOjE3Njk0NjQzMjYsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAzMjMyNn0.jn0NfURxbc6kV2dDcTvPelC8KFIlXD0uUk0OK6xIPfA" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuu" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/verge-sony-tcl" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42582</id>
<published>2026-01-21T21:56:36Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T00:58:19Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>John Higgins, The Verge (gift link):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As of today, Sony already relies on different manufacturing
partners to create its TV lineup. While display panel
manufacturers never reveal who they sell panels to, Sony is likely
already using panels for its LCD TVs from TCL China Star
Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), in addition to OLED panels from
LG Display and Samsung Display. With this deal, a relationship
between Sony and TCL CSOT LCD panels is guaranteed (although I
doubt this would affect CSOT selling panels to other
manufacturers). And with <a href="https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1761118790">TCL CSOT building a new OLED
facility</a>, there’s a potential future in which Sony OLEDs
will also get panels from TCL. Although I should point out that
we’re not sure yet if the new facility will have the ability to
make TV-sized OLED panels, at least to start.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The gist I take from this is that Sony is already dependent upon TCL. I think the mistake Sony made was ever ceding ownership and control over their display technology.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s some concern from fans that this could lead to a Sharp,
Toshiba, or Pioneer situation where the names are licensed and the
TVs produced are a shell of what the brands used to represent. I
don’t see this happening with Sony. While the electronics side of
the business hasn’t been as strong as in the past, Sony — and
Bravia — is still a storied brand. It would take a lot for Sony
to completely step aside and allow another company to slap its
name on an inferior product. And based on TCL’s growth and
technological improvements over the past few years, and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/857325/the-gap-between-premium-and-budget-tv-brands-is-quickly-closing">the
shrinking gap between premium and midrange TVs</a>, I don’t
expect Sony TVs will suffer from a partnership with TCL.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m heartened by Higgins’s optimism. (And I’ve heard good things <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs">already</a> from DF readers who own TCL TVs.)</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/verge-sony-tcl"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/864263/sony-tcl-tv-business-partnership-takeover-announcement" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wut" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42581</id>
<published>2026-01-21T20:29:43Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T01:23:45Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sony has announced plans to <a href="https://www.sony.co.jp/en/news-release/202601/26-0120E/">spin off its TV hardware
business</a>, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two
companies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony’s home
entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in
the new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. [...]</p>
<p>The new company is expected to retain “Sony” and “Bravia” branding
for its future products and will handle global operations from
product development and design to manufacturing, sales, and
logistics for TVs and home audio equipment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve only ever purchased three main TVs in my life. The first was a 32-inch Sony Trinitron CRT, <a href="https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kv-32s42">like this one</a>. Might have even been exactly that model — that sure looks like it. I bought it in 1999 at a Best Buy. One of the last curved Trinitrons ever made. For CRTs I always kind of liked a slight curve — flat CRTs never looked quite right to me. It weighed like 150 pounds and came in a very big box. My now-wife and I had just moved into a fourth-floor walk-up. I remember bringing it home. I’d always wanted a Sony TV, and this one confirmed my lifelong desire to own one. It was great. I introduced my son to video games on that TV.</p>
<p>We replaced it in 2008 with <a href="http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatvreviews/pioneer-pdp5080hd-review.html">a 50-inch plasma from Pioneer</a> that cost about $2,100. It was only 720p but I’d worked out the math for our then-living room viewing distance, and the math said 1080p wouldn’t make a noticeable difference for a 50-inch screen from our sofa distance. That Pioneer is one of the most beloved purchases I’ve ever made in my life. Just remarkable color. We still have that thing in our guest room. Sony wasn’t even in the running for that purchase. They sold Sony-branded plasma TV for a while but never made their own panels, and as I recall, no one with taste recommended them. What made Sony TVs <em>Sony TVs</em> back in the day was that they made their own CRTs, and they were the best. (All of my favorite CRT computer monitors had Trinitron tubes, as I recall.)</p>
<p>In 2020 we bought our current TV, <a href="https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-OLED77C9PUB-oled-4k-tv">a 77-inch 4K OLED from LG</a> that cost about $5,000 at the time. I’ll go to my grave believing that plasma looks better than OLED when watching movies in a dark room, but overall, LG’s super-bright OLED looks fantastic. And it’s big as hell, which I love. Sony was at least in the running when I shopped for this, but they didn’t have anything that compared to this LG’s size and quality. It wasn’t a hard decision to rule Sony out. (This history also means I’m likely to go to my grave never having owned a 1080p TV, nor an LCD TV.)</p>
<p>So, I’m sad to see Sony selling control of their TV business to TCL. But I think the writing has been on the wall for decades. Sony TVs haven’t been the Sony TVs of yore for a very long time.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> John Siracusa tells me I need to run a retraction — <a href="https://mastodon.social/@siracusa/115935970753326596">he even used an exclamation mark</a> — on the grounds that Sony Bravia models have won “best TV in the world” awards several years running, <a href="https://youtu.be/ZxzVqMp73qk">including 2025 for the Bravia 8 II</a>. I’m happy to retract, and glad Sony has regained its place at or near the top of the industry in recent years. I hope they stay there.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115888906340881425" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wus" />
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<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42580</id>
<published>2026-01-19T22:31:20Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T22:31:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Is there anyone who doesn’t find this sad?</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/creator-studio-icon-history"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wur" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42579</id>
<published>2026-01-19T22:19:29Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T01:13:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>From Apple’s iPhone Mirroring documentation, boldface emphasis added:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Click to tap:</em> Click your mouse or trackpad to tap. You can also swipe and scroll in the iPhone Mirroring app, and use your keyboard to type.</p></li>
<li><p><em>Open the App Switcher:</em> Move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> to open the App Switcher.</p></li>
<li><p><em>Go to the Home Screen:</em> If you’re in an app and want to return to the Home Screen, move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;">.</p></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It certainly sounds like these instructions are for users who, sadly, have the menu bar hidden by default. But there are no <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> or <img src="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png" alt="The App Switcher button" style="height: 1em;"> buttons in the menu bar. These buttons are in the iPhone Mirroring <em>window title bar</em>, which is, for all users, hidden by default:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png"
alt = "Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, without window title bar."
width = 325
style = "border: 1px solid #888;"
/></a></p>
<p>but which presents a proper window title bar when the mouse pointer is hovering in the area where the title bar will appear:</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png"
alt = "Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, with window title bar and arrow mouse pointer."
width = 325
style = "border: 1px solid #888;"
/></a></p>
<p>Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll chalk this up to an absentminded mistake on the part of Apple’s documentation team. If I were feeling cynical, I would instead suspect that Apple has so <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26">lost the plot</a> on the Mac that they now employ documentation writers and editors who do not understand the difference between the menu bar and window title bars. (It doesn’t help that the iPhone Mirroring window title bar, like so many windows in Apple’s recent Mac apps, doesn’t have a title.)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, this documentation is the same for both <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/15.0/mac/15.7.2">MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> and <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26">26 Tahoe</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/the-copyrightability-of-fonts-revisited.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuq" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/butterick-on-the-copyrightability-of-fonts" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42578</id>
<published>2026-01-19T18:22:50Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T18:22:51Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Matthew Butterick:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But more importantly, in practical terms — what would be the
point? Since 2011, I’ve run a <a href="https://mbtype.com/">small font business</a>. Not long
after I release a font, it will be uploaded to some public
pirate-software website. I can’t control that. Like every other
kind of digital-media file, anyone who wants to pirate my fonts
can do so if sufficiently motivated.</p>
<p>For that reason — and independent of copyright law — my business
necessarily runs on something more akin to the honor system. I try
to make nice fonts, price my licenses fairly, and thereby make
internet strangers enthusiastic about sending me money rather than
going to pirate websites. Enough of them do. My business
continues. (Indeed, in terms of rational economic choice, I’ve
argued that <a href="https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/does-software-piracy-exist.html">software piracy doesn’t exist</a>.)</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/butterick-on-the-copyrightability-of-fonts"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/crazy_people_do_crazy_things" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wup" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42577</id>
<published>2026-01-19T17:48:46Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T17:51:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?” They should respond with headlines like “How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Head?”</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Donald Trump, in a message (I wouldn’t call it a letter) <a href="https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006">sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/donald-trump-greenland-threats-nobel-prize-snub-letter">confirmed</a> by several news organizations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the
Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel
an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be
predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for
the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land
from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership”
anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat
landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing
there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since
its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United
States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total
Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a simple explanation for this. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/08/nyt-trump-dementia">Trump is in cognitive decline</a> and it’s <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/trump-dementia-checkin">accelerating</a> from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/18/trump-mcdonalds">age-related dementia</a>. He lives in an imaginary world that is increasingly cleaved from reality. (Norway, it should be pointed out, is not Denmark, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland">the country of which Greenland is a part</a>.)</p>
<p>Trump’s Venezuela operation was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation">brazenly illegal</a>. But it wasn’t crazy. Venezuela was not a U.S. ally. President Nicolas Maduro lost an election but stayed in power. Venezuela was <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0347">producing military drones</a> for the hostile regime in Iran, a self-declared enemy of the U.S., NATO, and Israel. Venezuela had a <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship">burgeoning alliance with China</a>, the U.S.’s primary geopolitical rival.</p>
<p>What Trump is threatening with Greenland is simply bonkers. Greenland is under no threat from China or Russia because it’s part of NATO, and thus — ostensibly — under the full protection of the entire NATO alliance <em>including and especially the United States</em>. If China or Russia attempted to take Greenland it would trigger a world war led by the United States. Compare and contrast with Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine, long before Vladimir Putin invaded, was known to be under threat of Russian invasion. Taiwan has long been known to be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-launches-live-firing-drills-around-taiwan-its-biggest-war-games-date-2025-12-30/">threatened by China</a>. These threats have been in our geopolitical discourse for decades because the threats were real (and, unfortunately, came to pass in Ukraine).</p>
<p>No one has ever talked about Greenland being under threat of takeover by Russia or China because there is no such threat. It’s no more realistic than Russia taking over Alaska or China taking over Hawaii. It sounds nuts because it is nuts, and the threat only exists in Trump’s disintegrating mind.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0ydjvxpejo">Eight of our NATO allies have made clear</a>, through action, not mere words, their intention to defend Greenland. Trump, obviously angry that our ostensible allies won’t just roll over and accede to his madness, is now petulantly turning to his favorite word, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk8z8xxpgmo">tariffs</a>. If that’s “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/10/politics/us-will-take-greenland-the-hard-way-if-it-cant-do-it-the-easy-way-trump-says">the hard way</a>”, that’s pathetic. Stand up to bullies and they usually fold.</p>
<p>The threat to Greenland, and thus to NATO — and thus, quite literally, to the entire world — is not that Trump authorized an illegal military operation in Venezuela, so he might do it in Greenland too. Again, what the U.S. did in Venezuela was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation">obviously illegal</a>, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/maybe-russia-and-china-should-sit-one-out/685490/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yGIoJxtnmQes_m73rNK5U2M">probably stupid</a>, but it wasn’t crazy. Breaking up NATO and starting a war with Europe would be batshit crazy. The threat is that Trump is showing us, every day, that he <em>is</em> crazy. Crazy people do crazy things, and crazy cult leaders surround themselves with cultists. The rest of us need to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/greenland-national-defense-maps-6f53c339">stop sane-washing this</a>. You cannot make sense out of nonsense.</p>
<p>If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “<em>How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?</em>” They should respond with headlines like “<em>How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Dementia-Addled Head?</em>” But threatening to take Greenland by military force is nuttier than laying claim to the moon’s cheese. Laying claim to non-existent green cheese wouldn’t trigger a shooting war that blows apart the most powerful alliance in military history.</p>
]]></content>
<title>★ Crazy People Do Crazy Things</title></entry><entry>
<title>Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/americans-are-the-ones-paying-for-tariffs-study-finds-e254ed2e?st=pw4q2j" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuo" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/americans-paying-for-tariffs" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42576</id>
<published>2026-01-19T15:54:28Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T15:54:52Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Tom Fairless, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; <a href="https://apple.news/A1odNAQeJSMC7dlagkxXB9w">here’s a News+ link too</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at
Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only
a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign
producers.</p>
<p>By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and
November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign
exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S.
tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American
consumers and importers absorbed 96%. [...]</p>
<p>Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs
functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.
“There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to
the U.S. in the form of tariffs,” said Julian Hinz, an
economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who
co-authored the study.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance. But this one feels like we could file it next to “Sun continues to rise in east, set in west.”</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/americans-paying-for-tariffs"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>WorkOS Pipes</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wun" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/workos-pipes" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42575</id>
<published>2026-01-19T15:50:48Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-19T15:50:48Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks. WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your back end requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh. That’s it.</p>
<p><a href="https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta">Simplify your integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/workos-pipes"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/thoughts_and_observations_regarding_apple_creator_studio" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wum" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42574</id>
<published>2026-01-17T21:13:21Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-22T16:51:24Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">Starting with a few words on the new app icons.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<h2>Let’s Just Get It Out of the Way and Talk About the New Icons First, but Let’s Also Use the Icons as a Proxy for Talking About the Broader Software Design Problems at Apple</h2>
<p>There’s a lot of hate for the new app icons of the entire Creator Studio suite, but while I think the icons are tragically simplistic, I think the hate is misplaced.</p>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png" class="noborder">
<img
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png"
alt = "Screenshot of the icons for the whole lineup of apps in the Apple Creator Studio."
width = 500
/></a></p>
<p>The problem isn’t with these icons in and of themselves. The problem is with the rules Apple has imposed for Liquid Glass app icons, along with their own style guidelines for how to comply with those rules. Given Apple’s own self-imposed constraints for how icons must look (with the <a href="https://atp.fm/643">mandatory squircle</a>) and how Apple has decided <a href="https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/">its own app icons <em>should</em> look</a> (a look which can best be described as <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons">crude</a>), I actually think the icons in the Creator Studio are pretty good, relatively speaking. But that’s like saying one group of kids has pretty good haircuts, relatively speaking, at a summer camp where the rule is that the kids all cut each others’ hair using only fingernail clippers.</p>
<p>The best take on these icons is <a href="https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTeOwAykwQ1">this zinger from Héliographe</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio
of someone getting really really good at icon design.</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pages-icons-benjamin-buttons.jpeg'
alt = 'The 7 icons for Pages, from newest to oldest. Each one is more artistically interesting from left to right. The original one is exquisite.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Devastating. Whatever you think of this new 2026 icon for Pages, you can’t seriously argue that it’s much worse — or really all that different — from the previous one. But go back in time and each previous Pages icon had more detail and looked cooler. And then you get back to the original Pages icon and that one clearly belongs in the App Icon Hall of Fame.</p>
<p>At some point in the previous decade, I had a product briefing with Jony Ive where we were discussing some just-announced new device that largely looked like the previous generation of the same device. I honestly don’t remember if it was an iPhone, an Apple Watch, or a MacBook. It doesn’t matter. What Ive told me is that Apple didn’t change things just for the sake of changing them. That Apple was insistent on only changing things if the change made things better. And that this was difficult, at times, because the urge to do something that looks new and different is strong, especially in tech. “New” shows that you’re doing something. “The same” is boring. What’s difficult is embracing the fact that boring can be good, especially if the alternative is different-but-worse, or even just different-but-not-better. You need confidence to ship something new that looks like the old version, because you know it’s still the best design. You need confidence to trust yourself to know the difference between familiarity (which is comforting) and complacency (which is how winners become losers).</p>
<p>Apple’s <em>hardware</em> designs remain incredibly confident. An M5 MacBook Pro looks like an M1 MacBook Pro, and really hasn’t changed much in the last decade other than getting thinner. An iPhone 17 Pro looks a lot like an iPhone 12 Pro and has only evolved in small ways since the iPhone X in 2017. A brand-new Series 11 Apple Watch is very hard to distinguish at a glance from a Series 0 Apple Watch from 2015. This is not a complaint, this is a compliment. These hardware designs do not need to change because they’re excellent. <em>Iconic</em>, dare I say.</p>
<p>This is why Apple’s software UI designs are the target of so much scorn and criticism right now, and Apple’s hardware designs are not.<sup id="fnr1-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn1-2026-01-17">1</a></sup> Yes, it’s human nature that people love to complain. But Apple’s current work isn’t receiving criticism in anything close to equal measures. Apple’s hardware is hardly the subject of any criticism at all. Not the way it looks, not the way it performs. Apple’s software design, on the other hand, is the subject of withering criticism. It’s not (just) about new features having bad designs. It’s about <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons">existing, decades-old features</a> being made <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus">so obviously worse</a>. I know a lot of talented UI designers and a lot of insightful UI critics. All of them agree that MacOS’s UI has gotten drastically worse over the last 10 years, in ways that seem so obviously worse that it boggles the mind how it happened.</p>
<p>Take a few minutes and go peruse <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/">Stephen Hackett’s extensive MacOS Screenshot Library</a> at 512 Pixels, where he’s assembled copious screenshots from every version of MacOS going back to the <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/mac-os-x-public-beta-kodiak/">Mac OS X Public Beta</a> from October 2000.<sup id="fnr2-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn2-2026-01-17">2</a></sup> Take a look in particular <a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/os-x-10-11-el-capitan/">at MacOS 10.11 El Capitan</a> from 2015, exactly a decade ago. It doesn’t look <em>old</em> compared to MacOS 26 Tahoe. It just looks <em>better</em>, in every single way. I can’t think of one single thing about MacOS 26 that looks better than MacOS 10.11 from 2015, and I can quickly name dozens of things that are obviously worse. We would rejoice if MacOS 27 simply reverted to the UI of MacOS 10.11 from a decade ago, or had evolved as subtly as Mac hardware has over the same decade. The menu bar was better. The contrast between active and inactive windows was better. The standard UI controls looked better. The delineation between application chrome and content was clear, rather than deliberately obfuscated. And, to return to my point regarding Apple Creator Studio, all of the app icons — every goddamn one of them — was better. Many of the Mac app icons from MacOS 10.11 were downright exquisite. And the <em>real</em> heyday for Apple’s application icon design was the decade prior, the 2000s, under Steve Jobs. At the time, in 2015, we thought El Capitan shipped during an era of somewhat lazy icon design from Apple. If only we knew then how good we still had it.</p>
<p>Before you ask, there’s no point wondering why these new Creator Suite icons look like this if Alan Dye and his inner squircle of <a href="https://www.billysorrentino.com/">magazine-designer cowboys</a> left to work at Meta a month ago. I genuinely believe that Dye’s departure and the promotion of longtime Apple UI designer Steve Lemay to replace him will restore some measure of sanity and grace to Apple’s UI direction and style. That can’t happen in one month (let alone a month taken up by major holidays). For now, Creator Studio needs to abide by the guidelines of the OS 26 Liquid Glass world.</p>
<p>Two more zingers. <a href="https://www.threads.com/@bzamayo/post/DTdOJbJjG8g">Benjamin Mayo on the new Pixelmator icon</a> (the first new icon since <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple">Apple’s acquisition</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the ultimate icon downgrade</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pixelmator-before-after.jpeg'
alt = 'Pixelmator, before and after.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new Pixelmator icon is the most jarring of the bunch because it hasn’t been on the drip-drip-drip yearslong slide of Apple’s in-house app icons. It just switched in one fell swoop from something that looks like art that one might print, frame, and hang on their wall, to, well, whatever the new one is.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.threads.com/@asallen/post/DTdg6ehgVhi">Andy Allen</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Boringification of Software</p>
<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/andy-allen-boringification.jpeg'
alt = 'Bland icon suites from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe.'
width = 500
/></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Liquid Glass</h2>
<p>I could go on for thousands of words here, too. But let’s cut to the chase for a moment and acknowledge that “Liquid Glass”, as a catch-all term to describe the entirety of the UI changes in Apple’s version 26 OS releases, means a few different things. The most obvious thing it means is the lowercase liquid glass look. Transparency and fluidity. Let’s put that aside.</p>
<p>Liquid Glass also represents — per Apple’s own description when it was introduced by Alan Dye at WWDC — a “content-first” change to layout within an application. The content, in Liquid Glass, should take up as much of the screen, or window, as possible, and the UI of the application should be presented atop the content, not apart from the content. I’ll let Apple speak for itself and present Apple’s own video of the iOS Music app, from <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-delightful-and-elegant-new-software-design/">the Newsroom article announcing Liquid Glass back at WWDC</a>:</p>
<p><video
width = 500
controls
src = "https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/liquid-glass-apple-music.mp4">
</video></p>
<p>This design ethos may or may not work on iOS. I think it often does. But let’s put that argument aside too. In the desktop context of MacOS, I don’t think this ethos works at all for most apps. It’s a downright disaster in the context of complex productivity apps. Apps <em>should</em> have distinctive chrome. The idea that they shouldn’t, that only “content” matters, and that apps themselves should try to be invisible and indistinctive, is contrary to the idea that apps themselves can be — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlI1MR-qNt8">should be</a> — artistic works. The parts of a window that belong to the app and present the functionality of the app, and the parts of a window that represent content, should be distinct. Like separating the dashboard — sorry, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/09/moylan">instrument panel</a> — from what you see through the windshield while driving a car. One or two items of primary importance (say, the speedometer and the next step in turn-by-turn directions) are OK to project on the windshield in a heads-up display atop the “content” of the road and world around the vehicle. But it would be disastrous to eliminate the instrument panel and project every control status indicator as HUD elements on the windshield. Either the driver’s view would be overwhelmed by too many HUD elements, making it hard to see the world <em>and</em> to read the dials, or the car designer would have to eliminate many useful controls and indicators entirely. (I know, some electric car makers are doing just that. It sucks.)</p>
<p>If you look through the screenshots Apple has provided of the new versions of the apps in the Creator Studio bundle, most of them haven’t been updated with Liquid Glass at all. They don’t have UI elements that look like liquid glass (transparent and fluid), and they don’t have layouts that seek to remove or obfuscate the application from its content. <a href="https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/">Final Cut Pro</a>, <a href="https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/">Logic Pro</a>, <a href="https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/">Motion</a>: nope. Not a drop of Liquid Glass.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/">Pixelmator Pro</a> does, however. It seems to embrace Liquid Glass in both senses. I haven’t tried it yet, and it doesn’t ship until January 28, but I strongly suspect I’d prefer if the new Pixelmator Pro looked like the new Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, with solid, distinct user interface chrome. (Fingers crossed that there’s a setting for this.)</p>
<p>One possible explanation for Pixelmator Pro embracing Liquid Glass, but the other apps not, comes from the fineprint on <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/">the Apple Newsroom post</a> announcing the whole Creator Studio suite:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the
A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later. The
Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 26.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The other apps require only MacOS 15.6 Sequoia and iOS 18.6:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The one-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro requires macOS
15.6 or later, Logic Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, and
Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 12.0 or later. MainStage is
available for any Mac supported by macOS 15.6 or later. Motion
requires macOS 15.6 or later. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or
later and some features require a Mac with Apple silicon.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/macos-12-monterey/">MacOS 12 Monterey</a> came out in 2021. So I think that means you can one-time purchase and download an older version of Pixelmator, if you’re running an older version of MacOS. <s>But if you’re running MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’ll get the new Liquid-Glassified version of Pixelmator whether you get it as a one-time purchase or through a Creator Studio subscription. I think?</s> <strong>Update:</strong> That was wrong. It’s a little simpler than that, in that Pixelmator Pro is <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/125029">an outlier from the other apps in Creator Studio</a>. The new version of Pixelmator Pro — version 4.0 — is only available through the Creator Studio subscription, and requires MacOS 26 (and iPadOS 26). The one-time purchase version of Pixelmator Pro is version 3.7.1 — the existing version, last updated two months ago — and that’s the version you get from MacOS 12 through MacOS 26 if you get it via one-time purchase. Pixelmator Pro is the only app in Creator Studio where the new version is exclusively available through the Creator Studio subscription.</p>
<h2>The iWork Apps</h2>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/">Newsroom announcement</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For more than 20 years, Apple’s visual productivity apps have
empowered users to express themselves with beautiful
presentations, documents, and spreadsheets using Keynote, Pages,
and Numbers. And Freeform has brought endless possibilities for
creative brainstorming and visual collaboration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m not sure when Apple stopped referring to these apps, collectively, as iWork, but I guess it’s probably when they stopped selling them and made them free for all users in 2017. (Freeform was launched in 2022, so was never part of “iWork”. But it does feel like a fourth app in the suite.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With Apple Creator Studio, productivity gets supercharged with
all-new features that bring more intelligence and premium content
to creators’ fingertips so they can take their projects to the
next level. The Content Hub is a new space where users can find
curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations. A
subscription also unlocks new premium templates and themes in
Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.</p>
<p>In addition to Image Playground, advanced image creation and
editing tools let users create high-quality images from text, or
transform existing images, using generative models from OpenAI.
On-device AI models enable Super Resolution to upscale images
while keeping them sharp and detailed, and Auto Crop provides
intelligent crop suggestions, helping users find eye-catching
compositions for photos.</p>
<p>To help users prepare presentations even more quickly in Keynote,
Apple Creator Studio includes access to features in beta, such as
the ability to generate a first draft of a presentation from a
text outline, or create presenter notes from existing slides.
Subscribers can also quickly clean up slides to fix layout and
object placement. And in Numbers, subscribers can generate
formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition with
Magic Fill.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ll co-sign <a href="https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/01/apples-pro-bundle-makes-sense-but-making-iwork-freemium-doesnt/">Jason Snell’s column on this aspect of Creator Studio</a>. I feel like it’s just fine for new document templates and the Content Hub stock image library to be paid features. (See next section.) But I don’t think it makes sense to gate useful new <em>features</em> of these apps behind the Creator Studio subscription. Smarter autofill in Numbers, generating Keynote slides from a text outline, and Super Resolution image upscaling all sound like great features, but they sound like the sort of features all users should be getting in the iWork apps in 2026. <em>Especially</em> from on-device AI models. I could countenance an argument that AI-powered features that are processed on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers should require a subscription. But it feels like a rip-off if they’re running on-device.</p>
<p>It’s simpler for Apple to offer one single subscription bundle of “work” apps. But office productivity apps and creative design apps are very different. A word processor and spreadsheet go together. A video editor and audio editor go together. But it seems wrong for someone who just wants the new AI-powered features in Numbers and Keynote to need to pay for a subscription bundle whose value is primarily derived from Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and Pixelmator Pro — apps that many iWork users might never launch.</p>
<h2>The Content Hub</h2>
<p>Apple describes the Content Hub as “a new space where users can find curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations.” Stock imagery, basically. From Apple’s Creator Studio FAQ:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>What happens to projects and content I created if my
subscription ends?</em></p>
<p>All the projects and content you create with an active
subscription to Apple Creator Studio — including any images you
generate or add from the Content Hub — remain licensed in the
context of your original creation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What struck me about the Content Hub is its name. Despite only offering “photos, graphics, and illustrations” it is not called the Image Hub. It’s the Content Hub. I asked Apple if this meant it might eventually include other things, like music, video B-roll, and perhaps even fonts licensed from third-party type libraries. I was told — unsurprisingly<sup id="fnr3-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn3-2026-01-17">3</a></sup> — that they can’t comment on future products and features. But that was said with a smile, which smile at least acknowledged that the name Content Hub leaves the door open to other types of media.</p>
<h2>Whither Photomator?</h2>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple">When Apple acquired Pixelmator a little over a year ago</a>, they acquired two ambitious creative professional apps, not one. Pixelmator is an image editor, like Adobe Photoshop (or, from the indie world, <a href="https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/">Acorn</a>). Photomator is like Adobe Lightroom (or, from the indie world, <a href="https://darkroom.co/">Darkroom</a>.) We’ve been waiting to see what Apple’s plans were for both apps. With <a href="https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/">Pixelmator Pro</a>, we now have an answer — a major new update for the Mac (with, as mentioned above, a Liquid Glass UI) and an all-new version now available for iPad.</p>
<p>This week’s announcement of the Creator Studio bundle included no news about the future of Photomator. However, my spidey-sense says this is a case where no news might be good news. At the bottom of Apple’s new product page for Pixelmator Pro is a brief Q&A, which includes these two items:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Where can I get Photomator?</em></p>
<p>Photomator remains available as a separate purchase from the
App Store.</p>
<p><em>How does Pixelmator Pro compare to Pixelmator Classic for iPad?</em></p>
<p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is available as part of an Apple Creator
Studio subscription, alongside the Mac version and other pro apps
like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. It brings all the features that
Pixelmator Pro users love on Mac to iPad, including nondestructive
editing, AI features, tools for freely transforming layers, and
more — all optimized for touch.</p>
<p>Pixelmator Classic for iOS, released in 2014 as a companion app to
the now-discontinued Pixelmator Classic for Mac, provides basic
image editing features such as cropping, color adjustments, and
effects. It remains a functional app but is no longer being
updated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are very different answers, if you speak Cupertino-ese. Functional but no longer being updated means you should not hold your breath waiting for an updated version of Pixelmator that runs on an iPhone.</p>
<p>When Apple end-of-lifes an app — <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/clips-eol">like they recently did with Clips</a> — they’re clear about it. But when Apple has plans for something but isn’t ready to announce those plans, they’re obtuse about it. If Photomator did not have a future as part of Creator Studio, I think Apple would have used this moment to stop selling the existing version. They’d say that it too remains functional but is no longer being updated. But that’s not what they said.</p>
<p>Apple’s Aperture — a photo library manager and editor for professionals — <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/10/19Apple-Introduces-Aperture/">debuted in October 2005</a>. Adobe released the first public beta of what became Lightroom <a href="https://www.lightroomqueen.com/10-years-lightroom/">in January 2006</a>. Lightroom today remains an actively-developed popular app. But <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/27/apple-to-cease-development-of-aperture-and-transition-users-to-photos-for-os-x/">Apple ceased development of Aperture</a> in 2014. Times change. In 2014 Apple clearly did not anticipate that a decade later they’d want to take on Adobe’s Creative Suite. Here in 2026, Apple has just launched the first version of that rival to Adobe’s suite. Perhaps the biggest omission<sup id="fnr4-2026-01-17"><a href="#fn4-2026-01-17">4</a></sup> in this first release of Apple Creator Studio is the lack of a Lightroom rival, which is exactly what Photomator is — <a href="https://www.threads.com/@thebasicappleguy/post/DTdstEiEUlk">and Aperture was</a>. My guess is that Apple and the acquired Pixelmator team are hard at work on a new Creator Studio version of Photomator, including a version for iPad, and it just isn’t finished yet. I’m more unsure whether they’ll keep the Photomator name (which I think is too easily conflated with the Pixelmator name) than whether they’re working on an ambitious update to the app to include in Creator Studio.</p>
<p>I have no little birdie insider information about that, just my own hunch. I just think that if Photomator didn’t have a future, Apple’s statement about it would say so, and they’d stop selling the current version. And the lack of a professional photo library app is a glaring omission in Creator Studio. Apple Photos is an outstanding app, and iCloud Photo Library has in my experience delivered fast dependable syncing across devices for several years now. But an app like Photos, that is necessarily anchored to the needs of <em>very</em> casual users, can’t possibly scale in complexity to meet the needs of professional photographers. And Photos is not fully satisfying for prosumer users like me.</p>
<h2>Family Sharing and Student Pricing</h2>
<p>The standard subscription for Creator Studio costs $13/month or $130/year, and subscriptions are eligible for sharing with up to five other people in a family sharing group. Apple is also offering Creator Studio education pricing for students and educators for $3/month or $30/year. That’s a nice discount. But, I confirmed with Apple, the education subscription is <em>not</em> eligible for family sharing.</p>
<p>I think Apple’s pricing for Creator Studio is very fair. It’s a decent value for $130/year, a great value with the education discount, and it’s nice that Apple is still offering one-time purchasing, per app, for those who object to software subscriptions (or those who simply know they only want to use one or two of these apps). But the fact that Creator Studio is only available as a separate subscription puts the lie to the “One” in the <a href="https://www.apple.com/apple-one/">Apple One</a> subscription bundle. Apple One is a good value, and Creator Studio is a good value, but Apple One is no longer one bundle that includes all of Apple’s subscription offerings. It’s more like Apple Most now.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2026-01-17">
<p>This is also, I think, why John Ternus is <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/next-ceo-of-apple?tid=1764957040437">so heavily rumored</a> to be named Tim Cook’s successor as CEO, and everyone feels cautiously optimistic about that. In the entire 50-year history of the company, Apple has never been on a longer sustained streak of excellent hardware than they are today. No one feels the same way about Apple’s software, services, or marketing. <a href="#fnr1-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2-2026-01-17">
<p>If Hackett weren’t so lazy, he’d document the classic Mac system software era too. <a href="#fnr2-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3-2026-01-17">
<p>Now that I think about it, if Apple’s representative had answered my question by saying something like, “<em>Yes, we’re definitely thinking about other types of media that we could add to the Content Hub in the future, and that’s why we gave it that name</em>,” I would have plotzed. <a href="#fnr3-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn4-2026-01-17">
<p>Another is that Adobe Creative Cloud includes access to <a href="https://fonts.adobe.com/">Adobe’s entire library of fonts</a>, the biggest type library in the world. But like I wrote above, Apple Creator Studio’s “Content Hub” is an open-ended name. I’d love to see Apple work out licensing deals with a broad assortment of typography houses. <a href="#fnr4-2026-01-17" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.">↩︎︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ Thoughts and Observations Regarding Apple Creator Studio</title></entry><entry>
<title>Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/15/verizon-20-dollars-credit/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wul" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42573</id>
<published>2026-01-16T22:41:57Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-16T22:41:58Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>Verizon, <a href="https://x.com/VerizonNews/status/2011820123154182420">in an announcement on Twitter/X</a> regarding their <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/verizon-out">daylong outage</a> this week:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence you expect
and that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to
those affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be
easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. You will
receive a text message when the credit is available. On average,
this covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be
contacted directly about their credits.</p>
<p>This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit
really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing
that this matters to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I got the text message last night (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/verizon-20-bucks.png">screenshot</a>), and redeemed it this morning. It wasn’t too hard to redeem, partly because I already had the My Verizon app installed and had my account credentials saved.</p>
<p>But you know what would <em>actually</em> be easy, and would <em>actually</em> acknowledge our time and show that this really matters to Verizon? If they just took $20 off every customer’s next bill. Automatic. Just take $20 off next month. If a good restaurant screws up an item you ordered, they apologize and take the item off your bill (and maybe give you a free dessert or something). They don’t give you a code to redeem.</p>
<p>It would also better show that they care if the text message spelled the app “My Verizon”, <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/my-verizon/id416023011">which is the app’s actual name</a>.</p>
<p>As for how many days of service $20 covers, we pay $329/month for a “5G Do More” family plan for me, my wife, and son. Three phones, three Apple Watches, and two iPads. (I’m the one without a cellular iPad plan, because I so seldom use an iPad.) That’s about $11/day. Verizon only sent us one $20 credit, not three, so that covers roughly two days of service — which is, indeed, multiple days.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-go/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wuj" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/chatgpt-go" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42571</id>
<published>2026-01-16T19:59:53Z</published>
<updated>2026-01-16T20:00:15Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<p>OpenAI:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With this launch, ChatGPT now offers three subscription tiers globally:</p>
<ul>
<li>ChatGPT Go at $8 USD/month</li>
<li>ChatGPT Plus at $20 USD/month</li>
<li>ChatGPT Pro at $200 USD/month</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>And perhaps the bigger news:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We plan to begin testing ads in the free tier and ChatGPT Go in
the US soon. Ads support our commitment to making AI accessible to
everyone by helping us keep ChatGPT available at free and
affordable price points.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their pricing page has a comparison chart showing the differences in their four consumer tiers (free, Go, Plus, Pro). <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/chatgpt-pricing-2026-01-16.png">Screenshot</a>, for posterity. The big difference that will keep me on the $20/month Plus plan for now is that the Go plan doesn’t have access to the Thinking model.</p>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/chatgpt-go"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
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"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42619",
"title": "Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-blocked-curbs-sex-talking-chatbots-minors-court-filing-2026-01-27/",
"published": "2026-01-28T00:17:02.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-28T00:17:03.000Z",
"content": "<p>Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors\nto access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned\nwere capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta\ndocuments filed in a New Mexico state court case and made\npublic Monday.</p>\n\n<p>The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul\nTorrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that\nMeta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and\nsexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and\nInstagram. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that\nZuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the\nchatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots”\nthat would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed\nhard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI\nleadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote\nin that exchange.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/28/meta-ultra-violence\">a byline</a> worth <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/05/27/wsj-facebook-divisiveness\">paying attention to</a>.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/horwitz-zuck-meta-teen-sexbots\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
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"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42618",
"title": "‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8L893jn-xkg4gA0ahaD_Ltw",
"published": "2026-01-27T23:36:54.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T23:36:55.000Z",
"content": "<p>Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually\ncommon, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all\nof the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at\nonce. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border\nPatrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is\nsocially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of\nit. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world\natomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their\nlonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.\nMinnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western\ncivilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/serwer-minnesota-ice\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
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{
"name": "John Gruber",
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"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
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"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42617",
"title": "‘A CEO, Captured’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://om.co/2026/01/27/a-ceo-captured/",
"published": "2026-01-27T23:06:55.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T23:06:56.000Z",
"content": "<p>Om Malik:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp\nof market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to\nbe: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.</p>\n\n<p>In <em>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</em>, Roy Bland captures a cynical,\npost-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my\nconscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of\ntoday’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the\nworld. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@ajgruber/post/DUBBiHyDtmu\">Amy Jane Gruber</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed\nthe movie.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘A CEO, Captured’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
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"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
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"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42616",
"title": "‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://spyglass.org/tim-cook-captured/",
"published": "2026-01-27T23:02:49.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T23:02:49.000Z",
"content": "<p>MG Siegler:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his\nactions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this\nweekend when Cook went to a special private showing of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)?ref=spyglass.org\">the\ndocumentary <em>Melania</em></a> at the White House. Yes, <em>that</em>\n<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump?ref=spyglass.org\">Melania</a>. That in and of itself would have probably been\nfine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons\nthat I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a\nstatement...</p>\n\n<p>While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes\nof Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and\nutter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex\nPretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE\nagents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42615",
"title": "‘Whatever’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html",
"published": "2026-01-27T22:48:42.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T22:48:43.000Z",
"content": "<p>Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart\nthat couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to\nspeak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump\nsaid. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do\nthey call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press\nsecretary for the word that escaped him.</p>\n\n<p>“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.</p>\n\n<p>“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”</p>\n\n<p>“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.</p>\n\n<p>“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said.\n“Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘Whatever’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/whatever\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42614",
"title": "Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.molt.bot/",
"published": "2026-01-27T20:34:36.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T22:02:01.000Z",
"content": "<p>From the footer on the project’s website:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not\naffiliated with Anthropic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.</p>\n\n<p>One additional followup to <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot\">my post the other day</a>. In his terrific introduction to <s>Clawd</s>Moltbot, <a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/\">Federico Viticci wrote</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned\nthrough 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (<em>yikes</em>), and\nI’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude\nand ChatGPT apps in the process.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and <a href=\"https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/115968901926545907\">he said</a> around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/clawdbot-is-now-moltbot\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42613",
"title": "★ The Names They Call Themselves",
"description": "*Fascist* and *Nazi* weren’t slurs that were applied to the Italians and Germans by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves. The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make *the names Trump’s regime calls themselves* universally acknowledged slurs.",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/the_names_they_call_themselves",
"published": "2026-01-27T18:12:56.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T18:12:56.000Z",
"content": "<p>Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “<a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yAGei6y469cre0s3RYa6ArU\">Yes, It’s Fascism</a>” (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President\nTrump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical\nfascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been\noverused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by\nleft-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion\nor affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily\ndefined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has\nbeen an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree\non its <a href=\"https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&context=history-in-the-making\">definition</a>. Italy’s original version differed from\nGermany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from\nJapan’s. [...]</p>\n\n<p>When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have\nbrought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. <em>Fascist</em> best\ndescribes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become\nperverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his\nadministration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is\nnot a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation\nof characteristics. When you view the stars together, the\nconstellation plainly appears.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist <em>president</em>, that does not mean that America is a fascist <em>country</em>.” The shoe fits, however <a href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-swelling-legs-chronic-venous-insufficiency-health-40beb3c818cfb914645db9d1f143fdd8\">tightly</a>.</p>\n\n<p>But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/magazine/ve-day-anniversary.html\">losers</a>, and their complete and total destruction was <a href=\"https://www.life.com/history/v-j-day-kiss-times-square/\">celebrated</a> around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding <a href=\"https://www.life.com/history/after-the-fall-photos-of-hitlers-bunker-and-the-ruins-of-berlin/\">in a dingy filthy bunker</a>. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini\">strung up in a public square in Milan</a>. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of <em>fascist</em> fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html\">that they have lost</a> — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.</p>\n\n<p>We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because <a href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/mussolini-italy-fascism\">he coined the term</a>. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis <em>because that was their name</em>. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names <em>became</em> universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.</p>\n\n<p>Our goal should not be to make <em>fascist</em> or <em>Nazi</em> apply to Trump’s movement, no matter <a href=\"https://www.thebulwark.com/p/mattis-told-woodward-he-agreed-trump\">how well</a> those rhetorical gloves fit his <a href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/how-donald-trump-became-the-short-fingered-vulgarian\">short-fingered</a> <a href=\"https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-hand-bruise-meaning-35799798\">disgustingly</a> <a href=\"https://www.ms.now/news/trump-hand-bruise-photo\">bruised</a> hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law\">Godwin’s Law</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make <em>the names they call themselves</em> universally acknowledged slurs.</p>\n\n<p>“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, <a href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/minnesota-governor-candidate-chris-madel-gop-immigration-enforcement-rcna255949\">perhaps</a>. Make <em>those</em> names <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-alex-pretti-timeline.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HlA.jIxp.ieLWsJ7EHyct\">shameful</a>, <a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-48-hours-that-convinced-trump-to-change-course-in-minnesota-a91d7683?st=xEZf8d\">deservedly</a>, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make <em>their</em> names shameful, lest the slur become <em>our</em> name — “American”.</p>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42612",
"title": "What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grok-sexualized-image-xai-elon-musk-women-1235501436/",
"published": "2026-01-27T15:07:07.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T21:37:33.000Z",
"content": "<p>Ella Chakarian, writing for Rolling Stone (<a href=\"https://apple.news/AHps_VbIRQuGmIFYQ7zjz3Q\">News+</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly\nscrolling on X when she noticed an unsettling trend surface on her\nfeed. Users were prompting Grok, the platform’s built-in AI\nfeature, to “nudify” women’s images. Mayes, a 25-year-old media\nprofessional from Texas who uses X to post photos with her friends\nand keep up with news, didn’t think it would happen to her — until it did.</p>\n\n<p>“Put her in a tight clear transparent bikini,” an X user ordered\nthe bot under a photo that Mayes posted from when she was 20. Grok\ncomplied, replacing her white shirt with a clear bikini top. The\nwaistband of her jeans and black belt dissolved into thin,\ntranslucent strings. The see-through top made the upper half of\nher body look realistically naked.</p>\n\n<p>Hiding behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was filled\nwith similar images of women, digitally and nonconsensually\naltered and sexualized. Mayes wanted to cuss the faceless user\nout, but decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would\nbe the end of it. Soon, however, her comments became littered with\nmore images of herself in clear bikinis and skin-tight latex\nbodysuits. Mayes says that all of the requests came from anonymous\nprofiles that also targeted other women. Though some users have\nhad their accounts suspended, as of publication, some of the\nimages of Mayes are still up on X.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Emma, a content creator, was at the grocery store when she saw the\nnotifications of people asking Grok to undress her images. [...]\nNumbness washed over Emma when the images finally loaded on her\ntimeline. A selfie of her holding a cat had been transformed into\na nude. The cat was removed from the photo, Emma says, and her\nupper body was made naked.</p>\n\n<p>Emma immediately made her account private and reported the images.\nIn an email response reviewed by Rolling Stone, X User Support\nasked her to upload an image of her government-issued ID so they\ncould look into the report, but Emma responded that she didn’t\nfeel comfortable doing so. [...] In our call, she checked to see\nif some of the image edits she was aware of were still up on X.\nThey were. “Oh, my God,” she says, letting out a defeated sigh.\n“It has 15,000 views. Oh, that’s so sad.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/what-its-like-to-get-undressed-by-grok\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42611",
"title": "The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/01/26/ep-439",
"published": "2026-01-27T01:32:03.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T01:32:04.000Z",
"content": "<p>Daniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>\n\n<p><audio\n src = \"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/daringfireball/thetalkshow-439-daniel-jalkut.mp3\"\n controls\n preload = \"none\"\n/></p>\n\n<p><strong>Sponsored by:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://notion.com/talkshow\">Notion</a>: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://squarespace.com/talkshow\">Squarespace</a>: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code <strong>talkshow</strong>.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://sentry.io/talkshow\">Sentry</a>: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code <strong>TALKSHOW</strong> for $80 in free credits.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://factormeals.com/talkshow50off\">Factor</a>: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code <strong>talkshow50off</strong>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/the-talk-show-439\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42610",
"title": "There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15",
"description": null,
"url": "https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/auto-resizing-columns-in-finder/52435",
"published": "2026-01-26T23:18:37.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T19:58:07.000Z",
"content": "<p>Good tip from “DifferentDan” on the Realmac customer forum, posted back in November:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I saw on macOS Tahoe 26.1, Apple finally added an option in the\nColumn View settings to automatically right size all columns\nindividually and that setting would persist, but I don’t really\nlike Liquid Glass (yet) so I haven’t updated to Tahoe.</p>\n\n<p>Looks like someone found a workaround however for those that are\nstill on Sequoia. Just open up Terminal on your Mac, copy in the\nbelow, and press return.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The one-line command:</p>\n\n<pre><code>defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder`\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>(Change <code>YES</code> to <code>NO</code> if you want to go back.)</p>\n\n<p>Marcel Bresink’s <a href=\"http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html\">TinkerTool</a> is a great free app for adjusting hidden preferences using a proper GUI, and it turns out TinkerTool has exposed this hidden Finder preference for a few years now. You learn something every day. I enabled this a few days ago on MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it seems exactly like the implementation Apple has exposed in the Finder’s View Options window in Tahoe, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames\">which I wrote about Friday</a>. No better, no worse.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘There’s a Hidden Preference to Auto-Resize Columns in the Finder on MacOS 14 and 15’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42609",
"title": "Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/26/nvidia-set-to-supplant-apple-as-tsmcs-largest-customer.html",
"published": "2026-01-26T22:51:12.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T22:51:12.000Z",
"content": "<p>Kif Leswing, CNBC:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Nvidia will become TSMC’s largest customer this year, according to\nanalyst estimates and Huang himself. Apple is believed to\ncurrently be TSMC’s largest customer, mostly to manufacture\nA-series chips for iPhones and M-series chips for PCs and servers.</p>\n\n<p>The positional swap will mark a fundamental shift in the\nsemiconductor industry, reflecting Nvidia’s growing importance\namid the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, said he\n<a href=\"https://thediligencestack.com/p/the-reordering-to-aihpc-tsmcs-2026\">projects</a> Nvidia to generate $33 billion in TSMC revenue this\nyear, or about 22% of the chip foundry’s total. Apple, by\ncomparison, is projected to generate about $27 billion, or about\n18% of TSMC’s revenue.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Nvidia Set to Supplant Apple as TSMC’s Largest Customer’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/nvidia-apple-tsmc\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42608",
"title": "[Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth",
"description": null,
"url": "https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild",
"published": "2026-01-26T22:40:54.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T22:40:55.000Z",
"content": "<p>Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=product_name_link\">WorkOS Pipes</a> removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a <a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/widgets/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=drop_in_widget\">drop-in widget</a>. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta\">Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes: Ship Third-Party Integrations Without Rebuilding OAuth’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/workos_pipes_ship_third-party_1\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce",
"email": null,
"url": null
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42607",
"title": "Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/26/airtag-2-airlines-lost-bags/",
"published": "2026-01-26T22:10:43.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T22:10:43.000Z",
"content": "<p>Joe Rossignol, writing at MacRumors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple offers a <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/11/apple-announces-airtag-location-sharing/\">Share Item Location feature in the Find My\napp</a> that allows you to temporarily share the location of an\nAirTag-equipped item with others, including employees at\nparticipating airlines. This way, if you put an AirTag inside your\nbags, the airline can better help you find them in the event they\nare lost or delayed at the airport. [...] Below, we have listed\nmost of the airlines that support the feature.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/\">Apple’s announcement</a> claims that 36 airlines support it today, and 15 more are coming soon.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Airlines That Support Shared Item Location for Luggage With AirTags’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airlines-airtags\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42606",
"title": "Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-airtag-with-expanded-range-and-improved-findability/",
"published": "2026-01-26T22:02:55.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T22:02:56.000Z",
"content": "<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip\nfound in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3,\nand Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it\neasier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio\nfeedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from\nup to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an\nupgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be\nlocated. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on\nApple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to\nfind their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Solid update to the original AirTags, which <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-airtag/\">debuted five years ago</a>. Better range, louder speaker, increased precision. The form factor remains unchanged, so second-gen AirTags will fit in keychains or holders designed for the first-gen model. They even take the same batteries. Pricing also remains unchanged: $29 for one, $99 for a four-pack.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Apple Introduces Second-Generation AirTags’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/airtags-gen-2\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42605",
"title": "★ App Store 2025 Top iPhone Apps in the U.S.",
"description": "The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/app_store_2025_top_iphone_apps_in_the_us",
"published": "2026-01-26T21:49:45.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T22:34:06.000Z",
"content": "<p>I’ve been meaning since last month to link to <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/story/id1847717004\">Apple’s lists of the top iPhone apps in the U.S. for 2025</a>. Here’s the list of the top 20 free iPhone apps:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>ChatGPT</li>\n<li>Threads</li>\n<li>Google</li>\n<li>TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE</li>\n<li>WhatsApp Messenger</li>\n<li>Instagram</li>\n<li>YouTube</li>\n<li>Google Maps</li>\n<li>Gmail — Email by Google</li>\n<li>Google Gemini</li>\n<li>Facebook</li>\n<li>CapCut: Photo & Video Editor</li>\n<li>Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire</li>\n<li>T-Life [“All things T-Mobile”]</li>\n<li>Telegram Messenger</li>\n<li>Lemon8 — Lifestyle Community</li>\n<li>Spotify: Music and Podcasts</li>\n<li>Google Chrome</li>\n<li>Snapchat</li>\n<li>rednote</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>All app names are verbatim, except for T-Life, where I put the app’s secondary slogan in brackets. I had no idea what T-Life was, but the slogan makes it clear. Interesting to me that T-Mobile’s app is on the list but neither Verizon nor AT&T’s are.<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-01-26\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-01-26\">1</a></sup></p>\n\n<p>I hope a million people sent this list to Elon Musk, to rub some salt in his severe case of butt hurt that led him to file <a href=\"https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/elon-musk-sues-apple-openai-to-block-exclusive-iphone-chatgpt-integration/\">an almost certainly baseless lawsuit in August</a> alleging that ChatGPT consistently tops the App Store list — and Grok does not — because Apple puts a thumb on the scale for these rankings because of its deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with Apple Intelligence. Here’s the thing. Dishonest people presume the whole world is dishonest. That you either cheat and steal, or you’re going to be cheated and robbed. If Elon Musk ran the App Store, you can be sure that he’d cook the rankings to put apps that he owns, or even just favors, on top. Elon Musk runs Twitter/X, and <a href=\"https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487\">that’s how the algorithm there now works</a>: it favors content he prefers, especially his own tweets. Apple doesn’t publish how its lists for top apps are computed (to keep the rankings from being gamed more than they already inevitably are), but judging by how many of these apps come from Apple’s rivals (e.g., Spotify), there’s little reason to think they’re crooked — unless you think the entire world is crooked.</p>\n\n<p>Google has 6 apps on the list, including 5 in the top 10. Meta — certainly no friend of Apple — has 4 apps on the list, including 3 in the top 10. (Slightly interesting, but unsurprising, sign of the times: the Facebook “blue app” dropped out of the top 10.) The only apps in the top 10 not from Google or Meta are ChatGPT (#1) and TikTok (#4).</p>\n\n<p>Microsoft has no apps on the list. <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/162987/macbu-4.html\">Back in the day</a>, the conventional wisdom was that Microsoft made more money, on average, from each Mac sold than they did from each PC sold — despite the fact that nearly all PCs came with a licensed version of Windows — because so many Mac users paid for Microsoft Office at retail prices. I suspect something like that is true with iPhones for Google. A lot of iPhone users spend a lot of time using apps from Google. I would bet that Google makes more ad revenue from the average iPhone user (who, even if they don’t install a single one of Google’s native iOS apps, probably uses Google Search in Safari) than from the average Android user.</p>\n\n<p>Another company that has no apps on this list is Apple itself. If you look at <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6007?chart=top-free\">the daily top list of apps in the Productivity category</a>, you will see a lot of apps from Google and Microsoft. But you won’t find Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, because Apple recuses its own apps from such rankings. </p>\n\n<p>Here’s the list of the top 20 <em>paid</em> iPhone apps in 2025 in the U.S.:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>HotSchedules</li>\n<li>Shadowrocket</li>\n<li>Procreate Pocket</li>\n<li>AnkiMobile Flashcards</li>\n<li>Paprika Recipe Manager 3</li>\n<li>SkyView®</li>\n<li>TonalEnergy Tuner & Metronome</li>\n<li>AutoSleep Track Sleep on Watch</li>\n<li>Forest: Focus for Productivity</li>\n<li>RadarScope </li>\n<li>Monash FODMAP Diet</li>\n<li>Merge Watermelon for watch</li>\n<li>Streaks</li>\n<li>Wipr 2</li>\n<li>µBrowser: Watch Web Browser</li>\n<li>PeakFinder</li>\n<li>Threema. The Secure Messenger</li>\n<li>Things 3</li>\n<li>Goblin Tools</li>\n<li>¡Verify Basic</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>There are a couple of real gems on this list — Procreate, Paprika, Streaks (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2016/05/streaks\">multi</a>-<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/11/streaks_and_little_streaks\">time</a> DF sponsor), and Things are all apps that I use, or have used, and would recommend. But unlike the list of top free apps, where I’d at least heard of all of them (once I figured out what T-Life was), I have never even heard of most of these paid iPhone apps. Household names these are not.</p>\n\n<p>The market for paid apps isn’t just different from the market for free apps. It’s an entirely different world.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-01-26\">\n<p>This, in turn made me wonder what the subscriber-count standings look like. I assumed T-Mobile was still in third place, but that assumption was wrong. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_in_the_United_States\">According to Wikipedia</a>, here are the number of U.S. subscribers per carrier as of Q3 2025:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Verizon — 146 million</li>\n<li>T-Mobile — 140 million</li>\n<li>AT&T — 119 million</li>\n<li>Boost — 8 million</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I’m a Verizon man myself, and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks\">pay handsomely for it</a>. I don’t even remember why exactly, but I despised AT&T back when they were the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-01-26\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42604",
"title": "From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2009/02/untitled_document_syndrome",
"published": "2026-01-26T20:32:46.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T01:34:52.000Z",
"content": "<p>Yours truly back in 2009, hitting upon the same themes from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit\">the item I just posted</a> about TextEdit vs. Apple Notes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This, I think, explains the relative popularity of Mac OS X’s\nincluded Stickies application. For years, Stickies’s popularity\nconfounded me. Why would anyone use a note-taking utility that\nrequires you to leave every saved note open in its own window on\nscreen? The more you use it, the more cluttered it gets. But\nhere’s the thing: cluttered though it may be, <em>you never have to\nsave anything in Stickies</em>. Switch to Stickies, Command-N, type\nyour new note, and you’re done. (And, yes, if you create a new\nsticky note, then force-quit Stickies, the note you just created\nwill be there when next you launch the app. Stickies’s auto-save\nhappens while you type, not just at quit time.) It feels easy and\nit feels safe. Stickies does not offer a good long-term storage\ndesign, but it offers a frictionless short-term\njot-something-down-right-now design.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here we are in 2026, 17 years later, and, unsurprisingly, some things have changed. Apple Notes didn’t get a Mac version until Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012. And Apple Notes didn’t really get <em>good</em> until 2016 or 2017. I still use Yojimbo, the library-based Mac app I wrote about in the above piece in 2009, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to. I use Apple Notes instead, for most notes, because it has good clients for iPhone and iPad (and Vision Pro and even Apple Watch).</p>\n\n<p>Other things, however, have not changed since 2009. Like the Stickies app, which is still around in MacOS 26 Tahoe, largely unchanged, except for <a href=\"https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/#:~:text=STICKIES\">a sad Liquid Glass-style icon</a>. If you still use Stickies, you should consider moving to Apple Notes. There’s even a command (File → Export All to Notes...) to import all your notes from Stickies into Apple Notes, with subfolders in Notes for each color sticky note. Apple Notes on the Mac even supports one of Stickies’s signature features: the Window → Float on Top command will keep a note’s window floating atop the windows from other apps even when Apple Notes is in the background.</p>\n\n<p>(Stickies has another cool feature that no other current app I know of does: it still supports “<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowShade\">window shading</a>”. Double-click the title bar of a note in Stickies and the rest of the window will “roll up”, leaving only the title bar behind. Double-click again and it rolls down. This was a built-in feature for all windows in all apps on classic Mac OS, starting with Mac OS 8, but was replaced in favor of minimizing windows into the Dock with Mac OS X. Window shading was a better feature (and could have been kept <em>alongside</em> minimizing into the Dock). With the Stickies app, window shading works particularly well with the aforementioned Float on Top feature — you can keep a floating window available, atop all other windows, but while it’s rolled up it hardly takes up any space or obscures anything underneath.)</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘From the DF Archive: ‘Untitled Document Syndrome’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/from-the-df-archive-untitled-document-syndrome\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42603",
"title": "‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software",
"published": "2026-01-26T19:54:55.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T15:31:59.000Z",
"content": "<p>Perhaps at the opposite end of the complexity and novelty spectrum from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot\">Federico Viticci’s intro to Clawdbot</a> is <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/textedit-and-the-relief-of-simple-software\">this piece by Kyle Chayka</a>, writing at The New Yorker, from October:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Amid the accelerating automation of our computers — and the\nproliferation of assistants and companions and agents designed to\nexecute tasks for us — I’ve been thinking more about the desktop\nthat’s hidden in the background of the laptop I use every day.\nMine is strewn with screenshots and Word documents and e-books.\nWhat I’ve accrued the most of by far, though, are TextEdit files,\nfrom the bare-bones Mac app that just lets you type stuff into a\nblank window. Apple computers have come with text-editing software\nsince the original Mac was released, in 1984; the current\niteration of the program launched in the mid-nineties and has\nsurvived relatively unchanged. Over the past few years, I’ve found\nmyself relying on TextEdit more as every other app has grown more\ncomplicated, adding cloud uploads, collaborative editing, and now\ngenerative A.I. TextEdit is not connected to the internet, like\nGoogle Docs. It is not part of a larger suite of workplace\nsoftware, like Microsoft Word. You can write in TextEdit, and you\ncan format your writing with a bare minimum of fonts and styling.\nThose files are stored as RTFs (short for rich-text format), one\nstep up from the most basic TXT file. TextEdit now functions as my\nto-do-list app, my e-mail drafting window, my personal calendar,\nand my stash of notes to self, which act like digital Post-its.</p>\n\n<p>I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without\nwarning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and\nit doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google\nChrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my\nrandom thoughts and ideas in progress — the personal note-storage\napp Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative\ndigital workspace Notion, which can store and share company\ninformation. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy\nof organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But\nnothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of\nTextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of\nthinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing\nlonghand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of\ncourse, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably\nwarped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by\ntyping.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Old habits are hard to break. And trust me, I, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/\">of all people</a>, know the value of writing stuff — all sorts of stuff — in plain text files. (RTF isn’t plain text, but it is a stable and standard format.) I’ve been using BBEdit <a href=\"https://www.barebones.com/company/history.html\">since 1992</a>, not just as an occasional utility, but as part of my daily arsenal of essential tools.</p>\n\n<p>But I get the feeling that Chayka would be better served switching from TextEdit to Apple Notes for most of these things he’s creating. Saving a whole pile of notes to yourself as text files on your desktop, with no organization into sub-folders, isn’t wrong. The whole point of “just put it on the desktop” is to absolve yourself of thinking about where to file something properly. That’s friction, and if you face a bit of friction every time you want to jot something down, it increases the likelihood that <em>you won’t jot it down</em> because you didn’t want to deal with the friction.</p>\n\n<p>You actually don’t need to save or name documents in TextEdit anymore. One of the best changes to MacOS in the last two decades has been <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-desktop-dock-settings-mchlp1119/15.0/mac\">the persistence of open document windows</a>, including unsaved changes to existing files, and never-saved untitled document windows. Try this: open TextEdit, make a new untitled document, and type something — anything — into the new window. Next, don’t just quit TextEdit, but force quit it (⌥⌘Esc). Relaunch TextEdit, and your unsaved new document should be right where you left it, with every character you typed.</p>\n\n<p>But a big pile of unorganized RTF files on your desktop — or a big pile of unsaved document windows that remain open, in perpetuity, in TextEdit — is no way to live. You can use TextEdit like that, it <em>supports</em> being used like that, but it wasn’t <em>designed</em> to be used like that.</p>\n\n<p>Apple Notes was designed to be used like this. Open Notes, ⌘N, type whatever you want, and switch back to whatever you were doing before. There is no Save command. There are no files. And while a few dozen text files on your desktop starts to look messy, and makes individual items hard to find, you can stash <em>thousands</em> of notes in Apple Notes and they just organize themselves into a simple list, sorted, by default, by most recently modified. You can create folders and assign tags in Notes, but you don’t need to. Don’t make busy work for yourself. And with iCloud, you get fast reliable syncing of all your notes to all of your other Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/create-and-view-notes-apdc6fb0a03f/watchos\">even your Watch now</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you just want to stick with what you’re used to. I get it. I am, very much, a creature of habit. And TextEdit is comforting for its simplicity, reliability, and unchanging consistency spanning literally decades. But there’s no question in my mind that nearly everyone using TextEdit as a personal notes system would be better served — and happier, once they adjust to the change — by switching to Apple Notes.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/chayka-textedit\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42602",
"title": "Federico Viticci on Clawdbot",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/",
"published": "2026-01-26T17:58:37.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-27T20:18:47.000Z",
"content": "<p>Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If this intro just gave you whiplash, imagine my reaction when I\nfirst started playing around with <a href=\"https://clawd.bot/\">Clawdbot</a>, the incredible\n<a href=\"https://github.com/clawdbot/clawdbot\">open-source project</a> by <a href=\"https://steipete.me/\">Peter Steinberger</a> (a name\nthat should be <a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/linked/ios-10-3-beta-re-introduces-warning-for-old-32-bit-apps-suggests-future-incompatibility/\">familiar to longtime MacStories readers</a>)\nthat’s become <em>very</em> popular in certain AI communities over the\npast few weeks. I kept seeing Clawdbot being mentioned by people I\nfollow; eventually, I gave in to peer pressure, followed the\ninstructions provided by the funny crustacean mascot on the app’s\n<a href=\"https://docs.clawd.bot/start/getting-started\">website</a>, installed Clawdbot on my new M4 Mac mini (which\nis not my main production machine), and <a href=\"https://docs.clawd.bot/channels/telegram\">connected it to\nTelegram</a>.</p>\n\n<p>To say that Clawdbot has fundamentally altered my perspective of\nwhat it means to have an intelligent, personal AI assistant in\n2026 would be an understatement. I’ve been playing around with\nClawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the\nAnthropic API ( <em>yikes</em> ), and I’ve had fewer and fewer\nconversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the\nprocess. Don’t get me wrong: Clawdbot is a nerdy project, a\ntinkerer’s laboratory that is not poised to overtake the\npopularity of consumer LLMs any time soon. Still, Clawdbot points\nat a fascinating future for digital assistants, and it’s exactly\nthe kind of bleeding-edge project that MacStories readers will\nappreciate.</p>\n\n<p>Clawdbot can be overwhelming at first, so I’ll try my best to\nexplain what it is and why it’s so exciting and fun to play\naround with.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Overwhelming indeed. Clawdbot is undeniably impressive, and <a href=\"https://x.com/steipete/status/2015828441342292139\">interest in it is skyrocketing</a>. But because of its complexity and scope, it’s one of those things where all the excitement is being registered by people who already understand it. This essay from Viticci is the first thing I’ve seen that really helped me <em>start</em> to understand it.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Federico Viticci on Clawdbot’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/viticci-on-clawdbot\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42601",
"title": "Meh",
"description": null,
"url": "https://meh.com/go/df",
"published": "2026-01-25T17:04:18.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T23:30:07.000Z",
"content": "<p>My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh puts up a new deal every day, and they do it with panache. As they say, “It’s actual, real, weird shit you didn’t know existed for half the price you would’ve guessed.”</p>\n\n<p>Don’t tell any of my other sponsors, but <a href=\"https://meh.com/go/df\">Meh</a> is my favorite <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/archive\">longtime DF sponsor</a>. I love the way their orange graphics look against DF’s <code>#4a525a</code> background. And I always love their sponsored posts that go into the RSS feed at the start of the sponsorship week. I’ll just quote theirs from this week in full:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our\npart of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking\nyour head in the sand.</p>\n\n<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to\nlast, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break\nfrom the misery.</p>\n\n<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems.\nWe’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our\nlittle write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh\ncommunity, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of\noccasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve\nnever heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not\ngiving in to how bad everything else is.</p>\n\n<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that.\nBut it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we\nhave a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is\nover at Meh today.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Meh’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/25/meh\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42600",
"title": "★ The iOS 26 Adoption Rate Is Not Bizarrely Low Compared to Previous Years",
"description": "A change to how Safari reports the OS it is running on led many in the media to lose their minds.",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_not_bizarrely_low",
"published": "2026-01-25T00:14:52.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-25T17:05:56.000Z",
"content": "<p>A few weeks ago there were a rash of stories claiming that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates from iPhone users. The methodology behind these numbers is broken and the numbers are totally wrong. Those false numbers are so low, so jarringly different from previous years, that it boggles my mind that they didn’t raise a red flag for anyone who took a moment to consider them.</p>\n\n<p>The ball started rolling with this post from Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac on January 8, “<a href=\"https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users\">iOS 26 Still Struggles to Gain Traction With iPhone Users</a>”, which began:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26,\naccording to data from a web analytics service. The adoption rate\nis far less than previous iOS versions at this same point months\nafter their releases. The data only reveals how few iPhone users\nrun Apple’s latest operating system upgrade, not why they’ve\nchosen to avoid it. But the most likely candidate is the new\nLiquid Glass look of the update. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Roughly four months after launching in mid-September, <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202601-202601-bar\">only about\n15% of iPhone users have some version of the new operating system\ninstalled</a>. That’s according to data for January 2026 from\nStatCounter. Instead, most users hold onto previous versions.</p>\n\n<p>For comparison, in January 2025, about <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide/#monthly-202501-202501-bar\">63% of iPhone users had\nsome iOS 18 version</a> installed. So after roughly the same\namount of time, the adoption rate of Apple [<em>sic</em>] newest OS was\nabout four times higher.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Those links point to Statcounter, a web analytics service. A lot of websites include Statcounter’s analytics tracker, and Statcounter’s tracker attempts to determine the version of the OS each visitor’s device is running. The problem is, starting with Safari 26 — the version that ships with iOS 26 — Safari changed how it reports its user agent string. From the WebKit blog, “<a href=\"https://webkit.org/blog/17333/webkit-features-in-safari-26-0/\">WebKit Features in Safari 26.0</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Also, now in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS 26 the user agent\nstring no longer lists the current version of the operating\nsystem. Safari 18.6 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.6\nMobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>\n\n<p>And Safari 26.0 on iOS has a UA string of:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_6 like Mac OS X)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0\nMobile/15E148 Safari/604.1</code></p>\n\n<p>This matches the long-standing behavior on macOS, where the user\nagent string for Safari 26.0 is:</p>\n\n<p><code>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)\nAppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.0\nSafari/605.1.15</code></p>\n\n<p>It was back in 2017 when Safari on Mac first started freezing the\nMac OS string. Now the behavior on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS does\nthe same in order to minimize compatibility issues. The WebKit and\nSafari version number portions of the string will continue to\nchange with each release.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In other words, Safari now reports, in its user agent string, that it’s running on iOS 18.6 when it is running on iOS 18.6, and reports that it’s running on iOS 18.6 <em>when it’s running on iOS 26.0 or later</em>. And it’s going to keep reporting that it’s running on iOS 18.6 forever, just like how Safari 26 on MacOS reports that it’s running on MacOS 10.15 Catalina, from 2019.</p>\n\n<p>Statcounter completely dropped the ball on this change, and it explains the entirety of this false narrative that iOS 26 adoption is incredibly low. (Statcounter has a <a href=\"https://gs.statcounter.com/detect\">“detect” page</a> where you can see what browser and OS it thinks you’re using.) The reason they reported that 15 percent of iPhone users were using iOS 26 is probably because that’s the amount of web traffic Statcounter sees from iOS 26 web browsers that aren’t Safari (most of which, I’ll bet, are in-app browser views in social media apps).</p>\n\n<p>Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, <a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/blog/updating-the-record-on-ios-26/\">wrote a good piece delving into this saga</a>. And then he <a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/linklog/ios-26-usage-updates/\">posted a follow-up item</a> pointing out that (a) Statcounter’s CEO has acknowledged their error and they’re fixing it; and (b) Wikimedia publishes network-wide stats that serve as a good baseline. The audience for Wikipedia is, effectively, the audience for the web itself. And Wikipedia’s stats show that while iOS 26 adoption, in January 2026, isn’t absurdly low (as Statcounter had been suggesting, erroneously, and writers like <a href=\"https://www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-26-adoption-struggles-with-iphone-users\">Ed Hardy at Cult of Mac</a> and <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/3022985/ios-26s-failure-shows-what-happens-when-you-take-customers-for-granted.html\">David Price</a> <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/3028428/ios-26-is-a-massive-flop-with-iphone-users-and-you-can-probably-guess-why.html\">at Macworld</a> foolishly regurgitated, no matter how little sense it made that the numbers would be <em>that</em> low), they are in fact lower than those for iOS 18 a year ago and iOS 17 two years ago. Per Wikimedia:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>iOS 26, January 2026: 50%</li>\n<li>iOS 18, January 2025: 72%</li>\n<li>iOS 17, January 2024: 65%</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, no, iOS 26 adoption isn’t at just 15 percent, which only a dope would believe, but it’s not as high as previous iOS versions in previous years at this point on the calendar. Something, obviously, is going on.</p>\n\n<p>David Smith, developer of popular apps like <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/widgetsmith/id1523682319\">Widgetsmith</a> and <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pedometer/id712286167\">Pedometer++</a>, <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872\">on Mastodon</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I noticed iOS 26 adoption had entered a ‘third wave’ of rapid\nadoption. So I made a graph of the relative adoption versus iOS 18\nat this point in the release cycle.</p>\n\n<p>While lower than iOS 18 at this point for my apps (65% vs. 78%),\nthe shape of this graph says to me that Apple is in full control\nof the adoption rate and can tune it to their plans. The\ncoordinated surges are Apple dialing up automatic updates.</p>\n\n<p>If this surge were as long as previous ones, we’d hit the\nsaturation point very soon.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/115932682921860872\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/david-smith-ios-v26-v18-adoption.png\"\n alt = \"Chart of iOS 26 vs. iOS 18 adoption, day-by-day after each version was released.\"\n width = 500\n /></a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What’s going on, quite obviously, is that Apple itself is slow-rolling the automatic updates to iOS 26. For years now Apple has steered users, via default suggestions during device setup, to adopt settings to allow OS updates to happen automatically, including updates to major new versions. Apple tends not to push these automatic updates to major new versions of iOS until two months after the .0 release in September. This year that second wave was delayed by about two weeks, and there’s now a third wave starting midway through January. It’s a different pattern from previous years — but it’s a pattern Apple controls. A large majority of users of all Apple devices get major OS updates when, and only when, their devices automatically update. Apple has been slower to push those updates to iOS 26 than they have been for previous iOS updates in recent years. With good reason! iOS 26 is a more significant — and buggier — update than iOS 18 and 17 were.</p>\n\n<p>People like <em>you</em>, readers of Daring Fireball, may well be hesitant to update to iOS 26, or (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames\">like me</a>) to MacOS 26, or to any of the version 26 OS updates, because you are aware of things (like UI changes) that you are loath to adopt.</p>\n\n<p>But the overwhelming majority of Apple users — especially iPhone users — just let their devices update automatically. They might like iOS 26’s changes, they might dislike them, or they might not care or even notice. But they just let their software updates happen automatically — and they will form the entirety of their opinions regarding iOS 26 after it’s running on their iPhones.</p>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42599",
"title": "★ Tahoe Added a Finder Option to Resize Columns to Fit Filenames",
"description": "The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resize_columns_to_fit_filenames",
"published": "2026-01-24T03:38:53.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T23:39:20.000Z",
"content": "<p>The main reason I’m sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia, refusing to install 26 Tahoe, is that there are so many <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder\">severe UI regressions</a> in Tahoe. The <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus\">noisy, distracting, inconsistent icons</a> prefixing menu item commands, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons\">ruining the Mac’s signature menu bar system</a>. Indiscriminate transparency that renders so many menus, windows, and sidebars <a href=\"https://eclecticlight.co/2025/11/09/last-week-on-my-mac-tahoe-26-1-disappointments/\">inscrutable and ugly</a>. Windows with childish round corners that are <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26\">hard to resize</a>. The <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons\">comically sad app icons</a>. Why choose to suffer?</p>\n\n<p>But the thing that makes the decision to stay on 15 Sequoia a cinch is that I honestly struggle to think of <em>any</em> features in Tahoe that I’m missing out on. What is there to actually <em>like</em> about Tahoe? One small example is Apple’s Journal app. I’ve been using Journal ever since it debuted as an iPhone-only app in iOS 17.2 in December 2023. 785 entries and counting. With the version 26 OSes, Apple created versions of Journal for iPad and Mac (but not Vision Pro). Syncing works great via iCloud too. All things considered, I’d like to have a version of Journal on my main Mac. But I’m fine without it. I’ve been writing entries without a Mac app since 2023, so I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing, if I want to create or edit a Journal entry from my Mac: using <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference\">iPhone Mirroring</a>.</p>\n\n<p>That’s it. The Journal app is the one new feature Tahoe offers that I wish I had today. I’m not missing out on the latest version of Safari because <a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-26_2-release-notes\">Apple makes Safari 26 available for MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> (and even 14 Sonoma). Some years, Apple adds <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/enter-formulas-and-equations-iphb9c2b948f/ios\">new features</a> to Apple Notes, and to get those features on every device, you need to update every device to that year’s new OS. This year I don’t think there are any features like that. Everything is perfectly cromulent running iOS 26 on my iPhone and iPad, but sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia on my primary Mac.</p>\n\n<p>But now that we’ve been <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder\">poking around at column view</a> in the Tahoe Finder, <a href=\"https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html\">Jeff Johnson has discovered another enticing new feature</a>. On Mac OS 26, the Finder has a new view option (accessed via View → Show View Options) to automatically resize columns to fit the longest visible filename. <a href=\"https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/8.html\">See Johnson’s post</a> for screenshots of the new option in practice.</p>\n\n<p>[<strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-column-resizing\">Turns out</a>, this auto-resizing feature has been a hidden preference setting in the Finder for a few years now.]</p>\n\n<p>Column view is one of the best <a href=\"https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0\">UI innovations from NeXTStep</a>, and if you think about it, has always been the primary metaphor for browsing hierarchical applications in iOS. It’s a good idea for the desktop that proved foundational for mobile. The iPhone Settings app is column view — one column at a time. It’s a way to organize a multi-screen app in a visual, spatial way even when limited to a 3.5-inch display.</p>\n\n<p>Thanks to <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20000302055440/http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/browser.html\">Greg’s Browser</a>, a terrific indie app, I’d been using column view on classic Mac OS since 1993, a few years before Apple even bought NeXT, let alone finally shipped Mac OS X (which was when column view first appeared in the Finder). One frustration inherent to column view is that it doesn’t work well with long filenames. It’s a waste of space to resize all columns to a width long enough to accommodate long filenames, but it’s frustrating when a long filename doesn’t fit in a regular-width column.</p>\n\n<p>This new feature in the Tahoe Finder attempts to finally solve this problem. I played around with it this afternoon and it’s ... OK. It feels like an early prototype for what could be a polished feature. For example, it exacerbates some layering bugs in the Finder — if you attempt to rename a file or folder that is partially scrolled under the sidebar, the Tahoe Finder will just draw the rename editing field right on top of the sidebar, even though it belongs to the layer that is scrolled underneath. Here’s what it looks like when I rename a folder named “Example ƒ” to “How is this possible?”:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/tahoe-finder-rename-glitch.png\"\n alt = \"Renaming a folder in MacOS 26 Tahoe. The rename editing field from the underlying column is rendered on top of the sidebar.\"\n width = 500\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>On MacOS 15, if you attempt to rename an item that is scrolled under the sidebar in column view, the column containing that item snaps into place next to the sidebar, so it’s fully visible. That snapping into place just feels right. The way Tahoe works, where the column doesn’t move and the text editing field for the filename just gets drawn on top of the sidebar, feels gross, like I’m using a computer that is not a Macintosh. Amateur hour.</p>\n\n<p>I wish I could set this new column-resizing option only to grow columns to accommodate long filenames, and never to shrink columns when the visible items all have short filenames. But the way it currently works, it adjusts all columns to the width of the longest visible filename each column is displaying — narrowing some, and widening others. I want most columns to stay at the default width. With this new option enabled, it looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.</p>\n\n<p>Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest <em>currently visible</em> filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.</p>\n\n<p>Even a future polished version of this column view feature wouldn’t, in and of itself, be enough to tempt me to upgrade to Tahoe. After 30-some years of columns that don’t automatically adjust their widths, I can wait another year. But we don’t yet have a polished version of this feature. The unpolished version of the feature we have today only reiterates my belief that Tahoe is a mistake to be avoided. It’s a good idea though, and there aren’t even many of those in Tahoe.</p>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42598",
"title": "OmniOutliner 6",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/introducing-omnioutliner-6",
"published": "2026-01-24T00:59:23.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-24T00:59:23.000Z",
"content": "<p>Ken Case, on The Omni Group blog:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The features noted above already make for a great upgrade. But <a href=\"https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omni-roadmap-2025#document-links\">as\nI mentioned last year</a>, one of the interesting problems\nwe’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native\napps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem,\nOmni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With\nOmni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we\ncan share those links with other people and other apps.</p>\n\n<p>Omni Links support everything we said document links needed to\nhave. Omni Links work across all of Apple’s computing platforms\nand can be shared with a team. They leverage existing solutions\nfor syncing and sharing documents, such as iCloud Drive or shared\nGit repositories. They are easy to create, easy to use, and easy\nto share.</p>\n\n<p>Omni Links also power up Omni Automation, giving scripts and\nplug-ins a way to reference and update content in linked documents — documents that can be shared across all your team’s devices.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s lots more in version 6, including a modernized UI, and many additions to Omni Automation, Omni’s scripting platform that works across both Mac and iOS — including really useful <a href=\"https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm-collection.html\">integration with Apple’s on-device Foundation Models</a>, with, of course, comprehensive (and comprehensible) <a href=\"https://omni-automation.com/shared/alm.html\">documentation</a>.</p>\n\n<p>It’s <a href=\"https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnioutliner/universal/6.0.1/en/connect/#omni-links\">Omni Links</a>, though, that strikes me as the most interesting new feature. The two fundamental models for apps are library-based (like Apple Notes) and document-based (like TextEdit). Document-based apps create and open files from the file system. Library-based apps create items in a database, and the location of the database in the file system is an implementation detail the user shouldn’t worry about.</p>\n\n<p>OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the advantages to library-based apps is that they more easily allow the developer to create custom URL schemes to link to items in the app’s library. Omni Links is an ambitious solution to bring that to document-based apps. Omni Links let you copy URLs that link not just to an OmniOutliner document, but to any specific row within an OmniOutliner document. And you can paste those URLs into any app you want (like, say, Apple Notes or <a href=\"https://www.culturedcode.com/\">Things</a>, or events in your calendar app). From the perspective of other apps, they’re just URLs that start with <code>omnioutliner://</code>. They’re not based on anything as simplistic as a file’s pathname. They’re a robust way to link to a unique document, or a specific row within that document. Create an Omni Link on your Mac, and that link will work on your iPhone or iPad too — or vice versa. This is a very complex problem to solve, but Omni Links delivers on the age-old promise of “It just works”, abstracting all the complexity.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve been using OmniOutliner for at least two decades now, and Omni Links strikes me as one of the best features they’ve ever added. It’s a way to connect your outlines, and the content within your outlines, to any app that accepts links. The other big change is that OmniOutliner 6 is now a single universal purchase giving you access to the same features on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘OmniOutliner 6’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/omnioutliner-6\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42597",
"title": "Lolgato 1.7",
"description": null,
"url": "https://github.com/raine/lolgato",
"published": "2026-01-23T23:36:58.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-23T23:36:59.000Z",
"content": "<p>Free Mac utility by Zendit Oy:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A macOS app that enhances control over Elgato lights, offering\nfeatures beyond the standard Elgato Control Center software.</p>\n\n<p>Features:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Automatically turn lights on and off based on camera activity</li>\n<li>Turn lights off when locking your Mac</li>\n<li>Sync light temperature with macOS Night Shift</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Lolgato also lets you set global hotkeys for toggling the lights and changing their brightness.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve had a pair of <a href=\"https://www.elgato.com/ww/en/p/key-light?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block\">Elgato Key Lights</a> down at my podcast recording desk for years now. Elgato’s shitty software drove me nuts. Nothing seemed to work so I gave up on controlling my lights from software. I set the color temperature and brightness the way I wanted it (which you have to do via software) and then after that, I just turned them off and on using the physical switches on the lights.</p>\n\n<p>I forget how I discovered Lolgato, but I installed back on November 10. I connected Lolgato to my lights, and set it to turn them on whenever the Mac wakes up, and off whenever the Mac goes to sleep. It has worked perfectly for over two months. Perfect little utility.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Lolgato 1.7’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/lolgato-1-7\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42596",
"title": "Playing the Percentages",
"description": null,
"url": "https://leancrew.com/all-this/2026/01/playing-the-percentages/",
"published": "2026-01-23T15:44:11.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-23T15:44:12.000Z",
"content": "<p>Dr. Drang:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For weeks — maybe months, time has been hard to judge this past\nyear — Trump has been telling us that he’s worked out deals with\npharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by several hundred\npercent. Commentators and comedians have pointed out that you\ncan’t reduce prices more than 100% and pretty much left it at\nthat, suggesting that Trump’s impossible numbers are due to\nignorance.</p>\n\n<p>Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s ignorance is nearly limitless — but\nonly nearly. I’ve always thought that he knew the right way to\ncalculate a price drop; he did it the wrong way so he could quote\na bigger number. And that came out in yesterday’s speech.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Trump sophistry + math pedantry = Daring Fireball catnip.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Playing the Percentages’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/23/playing-the-percentages\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42595",
"title": "MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder",
"description": null,
"url": "https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/4.html",
"published": "2026-01-23T01:34:58.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-23T01:34:59.000Z",
"content": "<p>Jeff Johnson:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Finder has four view modes, represented by the four consecutive\ntoolbar icons in the screenshot below, if you can even call that\nfree-floating monstrosity a toolbar anymore: Icons, List, Columns,\nand Gallery. My preference is columns view, which I’ve been using\nfor as long as I remember, going back to Mac OS X.</p>\n\n<p>At the bottom of each column is a resizing widget that you can use\nto change the width of the columns. Or rather, you <em>could</em> use it to\nchange the width of the columns. On macOS Tahoe, the horizontal\nscroller covers the resizing widget and prevents it from being\nclicked!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/12/macos-26-cut-corner\">joked last week</a> that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job\">a month ago</a>, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘MacOS 26 Tahoe Broke Column View in the Finder’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/macos-26-tahoe-broke-column-view-in-the-finder\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42594",
"title": "Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay",
"description": null,
"url": "https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/18/heres-why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/",
"published": "2026-01-22T23:19:56.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-23T00:04:53.000Z",
"content": "<p>Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to\nbuild that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all\nof that same information is handed over.</p>\n\n<p>When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder\nfor Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy\nand security protections, like not sharing any information about\nyour actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking\ntrickier.</p>\n\n<p>This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want\nto pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan\nand Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had\nthe option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share <em>a lot</em> less\ninformation with Walmart.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Using Walmart Pay gives Walmart <em>more</em> information than a regular credit or debit card transaction does. When you use the same traditional credit card for multiple purchases over time, a retailer like Walmart can build a profile associated with that card number. Charles Duhigg, all the way back in 2012, reported a story for The New York Times <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.UClu.YPuRxJGkIHte&smid=url-share\">about how Target used these profiles</a> — which customers don’t even know about — to statistically determine when women are likely to be pregnant based on purchases like, say, cocoa-butter lotion and vitamin supplements. When you use an in-house payment app like Walmart Pay (or swipe a store’s “loyalty” card at the register), the store doesn’t have to do any guesswork to associate the transaction with your profile. Your Walmart Pay account <em>is</em> your profile.</p>\n\n<p>Using Apple Pay gives a retailer less — or at least <em>no more</em> — identifying information than a traditional card transaction. So if the future is paying via devices, Walmart wants that future to give them more information.</p>\n\n<p>I think the situation with Walmart and Apple Pay is a lot like Netflix and Apple TV integration. Most retailers, even large ones, support Apple Pay. Most streaming services, even large ones, support integration with Apple’s TV app. Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because they want to control the customer transaction directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple Pay. Netflix doesn’t support TV app integration because they want to control the customer viewing experience directly, and they’re big enough, and their customers are loyal enough, that they can resist supporting Apple’s TV app.</p>\n\n<p>Amazon — which is also very large, whose customers are also very loyal, and which absolutely <em>loves</em> collecting data — does not support Apple Pay either.</p>\n\n<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/01/21/why-walmart-still-doesnt-support-apple-pay/\">Michael Tsai</a>.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Why Walmart Still Doesn’t Support Apple Pay’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/walmart-apple-pay\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42593",
"title": "Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/white-house-fake-photo-of-minnesota-activist-nekima-levy-armstrong-arrest",
"published": "2026-01-22T22:44:59.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-23T01:35:51.000Z",
"content": "<p>Violet Jira, reporting for NOTUS:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The White House communications team <a href=\"https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2014365986388951194?s=20\">posted a digitally altered\nphoto of Nekima Levy Armstrong,</a> a Minnesota social\njustice activist, on Thursday that makes it appear that she was\nweeping <a href=\"https://www.notus.org/immigration/pam-bondi-arrest-minneapolis-church-protesters-ice\">during her arrest by federal agents</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The image is highly realistic, bearing no watermark or other\nindicator that the image has been doctored. The change is only\napparent when compared to a <a href=\"https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2014357826081071513?s=20\">different version of the same image\nposted by the Department of Homeland Security</a> earlier in\nthe day.</p>\n\n<p>The White House, which has adopted a combative, flippant tone on\nits widely viewed social media pages, drew some backlash for the\npost online. In response, White House deputy communications\ndirector Kaelan Dorr called the image a “meme.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s not a meme. It’s propaganda — an altogether false image presented as an actual photograph.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Trump Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/trump-admin-doctored-images\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42592",
"title": "The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-deal-apples-craig-federighi-plots-cautious-course-ai",
"published": "2026-01-22T22:33:05.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-24T03:43:19.000Z",
"content": "<p>Aaron “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/11/wsj-tech-layoffs\">Homeboy</a>” Tilley and Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas, and with a miserly gift-link policy):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But there are also potential risks to making Federighi head of AI.\nGiving oversight of AI to him reflects Apple’s cautious approach\nto the technology. He is known at Apple as a penny-pincher who\nkeeps a tight rein on salaries and hesitates to invest in risky\nprojects when the payoff from them isn’t clear, according to\npeople who have worked with him. He tends to scrutinize every\ndetail of his team’s expenses, down to their budgets for bananas\nand other office snacks, those people said.</p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals are pouring vast amounts of capital into\nAI, building data centers and paying fortunes to woo AI\nresearchers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have no idea what Federighi’s stance is on break-room bananas, but it seems a stretch to think it offers clues to Apple’s strategy on data centers.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For years, lieutenants of Federighi would try to get him on board\nwith AI. He often shot those efforts down, former Apple executives\nsaid. For example, he rejected proposals from his team to use AI\nto dynamically change the iPhone home screen, believing it would\ndisorient users, who are used to knowing where their apps are\nlocated, said former Apple employees familiar with the proposal.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Jesus H. Christ, thank god Federighi shot this down. I wouldn’t want <em>good</em> AI rearranging my home screen behind my back, let alone Apple Intelligence as we know it.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘The Information: ‘With Google Deal, Apple’s Craig Federighi Plots a Cautious Course in AI’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-federighi\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42591",
"title": "The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin?rc=jfy0lk",
"published": "2026-01-22T22:19:50.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-25T15:33:10.000Z",
"content": "<p>Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin the size of an\nAirTag that is equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker,\nmicrophones and wireless charging, according to people with direct\nknowledge of the project. The device could be released as early as\n2027, they said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/06/nyt-humane\">one</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/18/hp-buys-humane\">notable</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/02/20/hp-humane\">case</a>, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glass was an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Such a product would position Apple to compete more effectively\nwith OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and\nMeta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses that offer\naccess to its AI assistant.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is very strange to put OpenAI’s upcoming io device(s) in the same sentence as Meta’s glasses, which are a real product you can buy today. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-claims-glasses-surging\">None of these things</a> are setting the world on fire though.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘The Information Says Apple Is Working on an AI Wearable Pin’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/information-apple-pin\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42590",
"title": "Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/apple-hardware-chief-john-ternus-now-overseeing-design-tim-cook-ceo-succession",
"published": "2026-01-22T22:03:27.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T22:04:23.000Z",
"content": "<p>Mark Gurman, reporting at Bloomberg:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to\ninclude design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender\nto eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.</p>\n\n<p>Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November,\nquietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the\nend of last year, according to people with knowledge of the\nmatter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most\ncritical functions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://x.com/markgurman/status/2014413622294790610\">And on Twitter/X</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Ternus is now the “executive sponsor” of Apple’s design team,\nrepresenting the critical function on Apple’s executive team. The\nmove was under-the-radar: on paper, the teams report to Tim Cook\ndespite Ternus’s role.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here’s to hoping Ternus is as pissed as the rest of us are about MacOS 26 Tahoe.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Ternus Now Overseeing Design at Apple, Reports Gurman’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/ternus-design-apple\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42589",
"title": "Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.ksl.com/article/51436458/iphone-vs-android-this-lawmaker-wants-utah-to-officially-weigh-in",
"published": "2026-01-22T20:51:34.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T20:51:35.000Z",
"content": "<p>Bridger Beal-Cvetko and Daniel Woodruff, reporting for KSL News:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/static/SB0138.html\">SB138</a>, sponsored by Cullimore, R-Sandy, would make Android, the\nworld’s most popular mobile device operating system, an official\nstate symbol, joining the ranks of the official state cooking pot\n(the dutch oven), the official state crustacean (the brine\nshrimp), and the official state mushroom (the porcini).</p>\n\n<p>“Someday, everybody with an iPhone will realize that the\ntechnology is better on Android,” Cullimore told reporters during\na media availability on Wednesday, the second day of the\nlegislative session.</p>\n\n<p>But, he added, “I’m the only one in my family — all my kids, my\nwife, they all have iPhones — but I’m holding strong.” [...]</p>\n\n<p>“I don’t expect this to really get out of committee,” he said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(<a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/22/utah-iphone-vs-android/\">Via Joe Rossignol</a>.)</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Jackass of the Week: Utah State Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/cullimore-utah-\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42588",
"title": "Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://politicalwire.com/2026/01/20/trump-changed-the-presidency-and-theres-no-going-back/",
"published": "2026-01-22T20:30:26.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T20:31:25.000Z",
"content": "<p>Taegan Goddard, writing at Political Wire, in a post that pairs perfectly <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority\">with Om Malik’s re: velocity bestowing authority</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The new Democratic argument isn’t about restoring guardrails. It’s\nabout moving fast — and using power unapologetically — to undo\nwhat Trump has done.</p>\n\n<p>New Jersey will inaugurate Mikie Sherrill as governor today, one\nof the party’s rising stars who steamrolled Republicans in\nNovember. She has promised to govern with urgency — leaning on\nemergency powers, acting decisively, and skipping the old\nincrementalism. This, she argues, is what voters now expect. She\n<a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/mikie-sherrill-intends-to-move-fast\">told The New Yorker</a> that if Democrats don’t learn to work\nat Donald Trump’s pace, “we’re going to get played.”</p>\n\n<p>Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href=\"https://www.notus.org/democrats/trump-executive-power-next-democratic-president\">is even more explicit</a>: “In\norder for us to correct the abuses that are happening now, we have\nto act in the same capacities that Trump has given himself.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The only way to counter “move fast and break things” is to move fast and fix things.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Taegan Goddard: ‘There’s No Going Back’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/theres-no-going-back\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42587",
"title": "Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://om.co/2026/01/21/velocity-is-the-new-authority-heres-why/",
"published": "2026-01-22T20:25:58.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T21:35:12.000Z",
"content": "<p>Om Malik:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has\nbecome the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You\ndon’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed\nand passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken\nthe role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It\ndemands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure\nshakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention\nand push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone\ncan get their cut. [...]</p>\n\n<p>We built machines that prize acceleration and then act puzzled\nthat everything feels rushed and slightly manic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Crackerjack essay. Malik is focused here on the ways we’ve changed media and how those changes to media have changed us — as a society, and as individuals. But I think it explains how the Trump 2.0 administration has been so effective (such that it can be said to be effective). They recognize that velocity is authority and are moving as fast as they can. It’s an adaptation to a new media age.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Om Malik: ‘Velocity Is the New Authority’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/velocity-is-the-new-authority\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42586",
"title": "‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR",
"published": "2026-01-22T19:24:55.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T19:24:56.000Z",
"content": "<p>The Wall Street Journal (<a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-piece-of-ice-for-world-protection-trump-demands-europe-cut-deal-on-greenland-cc1014f6?st=2XDhnR\">gift link</a>; <a href=\"https://apple.news/Ag8uXPVDtRZ-BY0oVBEESyg\">News+ link</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alps on\nWednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his\nefforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic\nconflagration. By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.</p>\n\n<p>After a meeting with Rutte on Wednesday, Trump called off promised\ntariffs on European nations, contending that he had “formed the\nframework of a future deal” with respect to the largest island in\nthe world. [...] During an hourlong speech at the World Economic\nForum, the U.S. president said he wouldn’t deploy the military to\ntake control of Greenland. It was a stark shift in tone for Trump,\nwho just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military\nto secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the\nterritory with an American flag plastered across it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No need for panic. Alarm, yes. Panic, no. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/trump-chickens-out-again\">The TACO theory</a> holds. Stand up to Trump and he’ll chicken out.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘‘Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/greenland-taco\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42585",
"title": "The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota",
"description": null,
"url": "https://bsky.app/profile/margaret.bsky.social/post/3mcyca2l2wk2j",
"published": "2026-01-22T16:26:32.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T16:26:32.000Z",
"content": "<p>Margaret Killjoy, in a thread on Bluesky (<a href=\"https://kottke.org/26/01/what-is-the-scale-of-the-resistance-in-minnesota\">via Kottke</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I came to Minneapolis to report on what’s going on, and one of the\nmain questions I showed up with is “just what is the scale of the\nresistance?” After all, we’re all used to the news calling\nPortland a “war zone” or whatever when it’s just some protests in\none part of town. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Half the street corners around here have people — from every walk\nof life, including republicans — standing guard to watch for\nsuspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely\ndecentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes\nresponders.</p>\n\n<p>I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I\nhave never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is\nnot accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman\nfor participating in this, and all that did is bring out more\npeople, from more walks of life.</p>\n\n<p>It’s genuinely a leaderless (or leaderful) movement, decentralized\nin a way that the state is absolutely unequipped to handle. There\nare a few basic skills involved, and so people teach each other\nthose skills, and people are collectively refining them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Apple’s “<em>whatever you say, boss</em>” compliance with the Trump administration’s “demand” <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/10/iceblock_removed_from_app_store\">back in October</a> that they remove <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/search/iceblock\">ICEBlock</a> from the App Store — with no legal basis, nor <em>any</em> evidence backing the administration’s claims that the app was being used to put members of the ICE goon squads in danger — is looking more and more like a decision on <a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/politics/minneapolis-ice-shooting-polls-takeaways\">the wrong side of popular opinion</a>. And, ultimately, on the wrong side of history.</p>\n\n<p>ICEBlock was designed for exactly what these protestors are doing.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘The Scale of ICE Protests in Minnesota’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/22/the-scale-of-ice-protests-in-minnesota\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/feeds/sponsors//11.42584",
"title": "[Sponsor] Meh",
"description": null,
"url": "https://meh.com/go/df",
"published": "2026-01-21T22:23:45.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-26T23:30:32.000Z",
"content": "<p>Everything sucks. The whole world’s going to shit, especially our part of it, and it can feel like anything fun or silly is sticking your head in the sand.</p>\n\n<p>And yet. It doesn’t help to just be miserable. If you’re going to last, you’ve got to find your little moments of joy, or as a break from the misery.</p>\n\n<p>Buying our crap at Meh is not how you solve the world’s problems. We’re not that crass. But maybe a minute a day of reading our little write-up, and a couple minutes of catching up with the Meh community, of making a few new online friends, and yes, of occasionally picking up a weird gadget or strange snack you’ve never heard of is just a few minutes you get to take a break, not giving in to how bad everything else is.</p>\n\n<p>Of course we would say that. Of course we benefit from that. But it is also part of why we have a quirky write-up. Why we have a community. Why we’re selling whatever weird thing is over at Meh today.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Meh’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/01/meh_2\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce",
"email": null,
"url": null
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42583",
"title": "Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-21/ios-27-apple-to-revamp-siri-as-built-in-iphone-mac-chatbot-to-fend-off-openai?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAyNDk2NywiZXhwIjoxNzY5NjI5NzY3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFRXOVlLR0NURlUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.awOoIDGdEkCAvho8waoXR6VVVojI3jGvQHJeDjwcyrs",
"published": "2026-01-21T22:18:57.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T19:12:53.000Z",
"content": "<p>Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the\ndigital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence\nchatbot, thrusting the iPhone maker into a generative AI race\ndominated by OpenAI and Google. [...]</p>\n\n<p>The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining\nthe current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the\ncoming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features\nunveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen\ncontent and tap into personal data. It also will be better at\nsearching the web.</p>\n\n<p>The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to\nthe people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are\nprivate. The company aims to unveil that technology in June at its\nWorldwide Developers Conference and release it in September.</p>\n\n<p>Campos, which will have both voice- and typing-based modes, will\nbe the primary new addition to Apple’s upcoming operating systems.\nThe company is integrating it into iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, both\ncode-named Rave, as well as macOS 27, internally known as Fizz.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Apple ought to just go back to calling it “iOS” on both iPhone and iPad, because it’s always been the same system fundamentally. If they really do have the same codename, it sure suggests that Apple’s engineering teams see it that way too.</p>\n\n<p>The 180° turn on chatbots is welcome, and I think inevitable. The chat interface is just too useful. One of the most maddening things about Siri is that even when it’s helpful today, even when it gets things right, you can never refer back to previous interactions. I refer back to previous chats in ChatGPT almost every day.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering,\nsaid in a June interview with Tom’s Guide that releasing a chatbot\nwas never the company’s goal. Apple didn’t want to send users “off\ninto some chat experience in order to get things done,” he said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I quote this paragraph only to point out that Gurman/Bloomberg could have, but chose not to, link to the <a href=\"https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/apple-intelligence/wwdc-interview-apples-craig-federighi-and-greg-joswiak-on-siri-delay-voice-ai-as-therapist-and-whats-next-for-apple-intelligence\">interview with Federighi (and Joz) at Tom’s Guide</a>. Every single link in the article goes to another page at bloomberg.com. [<strong>Update, next day:</strong> As of this morning, Bloomberg’s article now has a link to the interview at Tom’s Guide. Nice.]</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The iOS 26.4 update of Siri, the one before the true chatbot, will\nrely on a Google-developed system internally known as Apple\nFoundation Models version 10. That software will operate at 1.2\ntrillion parameters, a measure of AI complexity. Campos, however,\nwill significantly surpass those capabilities. The chatbot will\nrun a higher-end version of the custom Google model, comparable to\nGemini 3, that’s known internally as Apple Foundation Models\nversion 11.</p>\n\n<p>In a potential policy shift for Apple, the two partners are\ndiscussing hosting the chatbot directly on Google servers running\npowerful chips known as TPUs, or tensor processing units. The more\nimmediate Siri update, in contrast, will operate on Apple’s own\nPrivate Cloud Compute servers, which rely on high-end Mac chips\nfor processing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A policy shift indeed, if that comes to pass.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Gurman Scoops ‘Campos’, Apple’s Codename for a Chatbot-Based Siri in Next Year’s Version 27 OSes’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/gurman-campos-apple-google-ai-partnership\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42582",
"title": "More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.theverge.com/tech/864745/sony-tcl-tvs-partnership-explained?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkFtb3lXVUtwcTYiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvODY0NzQ1L3NvbnktdGNsLXR2cy1wYXJ0bmVyc2hpcC1leHBsYWluZWQiLCJleHAiOjE3Njk0NjQzMjYsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAzMjMyNn0.jn0NfURxbc6kV2dDcTvPelC8KFIlXD0uUk0OK6xIPfA",
"published": "2026-01-21T21:56:36.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T00:58:19.000Z",
"content": "<p>John Higgins, The Verge (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As of today, Sony already relies on different manufacturing\npartners to create its TV lineup. While display panel\nmanufacturers never reveal who they sell panels to, Sony is likely\nalready using panels for its LCD TVs from TCL China Star\nOptoelectronics Technology (CSOT), in addition to OLED panels from\nLG Display and Samsung Display. With this deal, a relationship\nbetween Sony and TCL CSOT LCD panels is guaranteed (although I\ndoubt this would affect CSOT selling panels to other\nmanufacturers). And with <a href=\"https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1761118790\">TCL CSOT building a new OLED\nfacility</a>, there’s a potential future in which Sony OLEDs\nwill also get panels from TCL. Although I should point out that\nwe’re not sure yet if the new facility will have the ability to\nmake TV-sized OLED panels, at least to start.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The gist I take from this is that Sony is already dependent upon TCL. I think the mistake Sony made was ever ceding ownership and control over their display technology.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There’s some concern from fans that this could lead to a Sharp,\nToshiba, or Pioneer situation where the names are licensed and the\nTVs produced are a shell of what the brands used to represent. I\ndon’t see this happening with Sony. While the electronics side of\nthe business hasn’t been as strong as in the past, Sony — and\nBravia — is still a storied brand. It would take a lot for Sony\nto completely step aside and allow another company to slap its\nname on an inferior product. And based on TCL’s growth and\ntechnological improvements over the past few years, and <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/tech/857325/the-gap-between-premium-and-budget-tv-brands-is-quickly-closing\">the\nshrinking gap between premium and midrange TVs</a>, I don’t\nexpect Sony TVs will suffer from a partnership with TCL.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m heartened by Higgins’s optimism. (And I’ve heard good things <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs\">already</a> from DF readers who own TCL TVs.)</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘More From The Verge: ‘What a Sony and TCL Partnership Means for the Future of TVs’’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/verge-sony-tcl\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42581",
"title": "Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.theverge.com/news/864263/sony-tcl-tv-business-partnership-takeover-announcement",
"published": "2026-01-21T20:29:43.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T01:23:45.000Z",
"content": "<p>Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Sony has announced plans to <a href=\"https://www.sony.co.jp/en/news-release/202601/26-0120E/\">spin off its TV hardware\nbusiness</a>, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two\ncompanies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony’s home\nentertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in\nthe new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. [...]</p>\n\n<p>The new company is expected to retain “Sony” and “Bravia” branding\nfor its future products and will handle global operations from\nproduct development and design to manufacturing, sales, and\nlogistics for TVs and home audio equipment.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ve only ever purchased three main TVs in my life. The first was a 32-inch Sony Trinitron CRT, <a href=\"https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kv-32s42\">like this one</a>. Might have even been exactly that model — that sure looks like it. I bought it in 1999 at a Best Buy. One of the last curved Trinitrons ever made. For CRTs I always kind of liked a slight curve — flat CRTs never looked quite right to me. It weighed like 150 pounds and came in a very big box. My now-wife and I had just moved into a fourth-floor walk-up. I remember bringing it home. I’d always wanted a Sony TV, and this one confirmed my lifelong desire to own one. It was great. I introduced my son to video games on that TV.</p>\n\n<p>We replaced it in 2008 with <a href=\"http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatvreviews/pioneer-pdp5080hd-review.html\">a 50-inch plasma from Pioneer</a> that cost about $2,100. It was only 720p but I’d worked out the math for our then-living room viewing distance, and the math said 1080p wouldn’t make a noticeable difference for a 50-inch screen from our sofa distance. That Pioneer is one of the most beloved purchases I’ve ever made in my life. Just remarkable color. We still have that thing in our guest room. Sony wasn’t even in the running for that purchase. They sold Sony-branded plasma TV for a while but never made their own panels, and as I recall, no one with taste recommended them. What made Sony TVs <em>Sony TVs</em> back in the day was that they made their own CRTs, and they were the best. (All of my favorite CRT computer monitors had Trinitron tubes, as I recall.)</p>\n\n<p>In 2020 we bought our current TV, <a href=\"https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-OLED77C9PUB-oled-4k-tv\">a 77-inch 4K OLED from LG</a> that cost about $5,000 at the time. I’ll go to my grave believing that plasma looks better than OLED when watching movies in a dark room, but overall, LG’s super-bright OLED looks fantastic. And it’s big as hell, which I love. Sony was at least in the running when I shopped for this, but they didn’t have anything that compared to this LG’s size and quality. It wasn’t a hard decision to rule Sony out. (This history also means I’m likely to go to my grave never having owned a 1080p TV, nor an LCD TV.)</p>\n\n<p>So, I’m sad to see Sony selling control of their TV business to TCL. But I think the writing has been on the wall for decades. Sony TVs haven’t been the Sony TVs of yore for a very long time.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> John Siracusa tells me I need to run a retraction — <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@siracusa/115935970753326596\">he even used an exclamation mark</a> — on the grounds that Sony Bravia models have won “best TV in the world” awards several years running, <a href=\"https://youtu.be/ZxzVqMp73qk\">including 2025 for the Bravia 8 II</a>. I’m happy to retract, and glad Sony has regained its place at or near the top of the industry in recent years. I hope they stay there.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Sony’s TV Business Is Being Taken Over by TCL’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/21/sony-tcl-tvs\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42580",
"title": "Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History",
"description": null,
"url": "https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115888906340881425",
"published": "2026-01-19T22:31:20.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-19T22:31:20.000Z",
"content": "<p>Is there anyone who doesn’t find this sad?</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Basic Apple Guy: Creator Studio Icon History’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/creator-studio-icon-history\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42579",
"title": "Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?",
"description": null,
"url": "https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26",
"published": "2026-01-19T22:19:29.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T01:13:00.000Z",
"content": "<p>From Apple’s iPhone Mirroring documentation, boldface emphasis added:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n<li><p><em>Click to tap:</em> Click your mouse or trackpad to tap. You can also swipe and scroll in the iPhone Mirroring app, and use your keyboard to type.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Open the App Switcher:</em> Move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png\" alt=\"The App Switcher button\" style=\"height: 1em;\"> to open the App Switcher.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Go to the Home Screen:</em> If you’re in an app and want to return to the Home Screen, move your pointer to the top of the iPhone Mirroring screen <b>until the menu bar appears</b>, then click <img src=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png\" alt=\"The App Switcher button\" style=\"height: 1em;\">.</p></li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It certainly sounds like these instructions are for users who, sadly, have the menu bar hidden by default. But there are no <img src=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-app-switcher-button.png\" alt=\"The App Switcher button\" style=\"height: 1em;\"> or <img src=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-home-screen-button.png\" alt=\"The App Switcher button\" style=\"height: 1em;\"> buttons in the menu bar. These buttons are in the iPhone Mirroring <em>window title bar</em>, which is, for all users, hidden by default:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-without-titlebar.png\"\n alt = \"Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, without window title bar.\"\n width = 325\n style = \"border: 1px solid #888;\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>but which presents a proper window title bar when the mouse pointer is hovering in the area where the title bar will appear:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/iphone-mirroring-screenshot-with-titlebar.png\"\n alt = \"Screenshot of iPhone Mirroring, with window title bar and arrow mouse pointer.\"\n width = 325\n style = \"border: 1px solid #888;\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll chalk this up to an absentminded mistake on the part of Apple’s documentation team. If I were feeling cynical, I would instead suspect that Apple has so <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26\">lost the plot</a> on the Mac that they now employ documentation writers and editors who do not understand the difference between the menu bar and window title bars. (It doesn’t help that the iPhone Mirroring window title bar, like so many windows in Apple’s recent Mac apps, doesn’t have a title.)</p>\n\n<p>For what it’s worth, this documentation is the same for both <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/15.0/mac/15.7.2\">MacOS 15 Sequoia</a> and <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/26/mac/26\">26 Tahoe</a>.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Menu Bar, Title Bar, What’s the Difference?’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/menu-bar-title-bar-whats-the-difference\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42578",
"title": "Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts",
"description": null,
"url": "https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/the-copyrightability-of-fonts-revisited.html",
"published": "2026-01-19T18:22:50.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-19T18:22:51.000Z",
"content": "<p>Matthew Butterick:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But more importantly, in practical terms — what would be the\npoint? Since 2011, I’ve run a <a href=\"https://mbtype.com/\">small font business</a>. Not long\nafter I release a font, it will be uploaded to some public\npirate-software website. I can’t control that. Like every other\nkind of digital-media file, anyone who wants to pirate my fonts\ncan do so if sufficiently motivated.</p>\n\n<p>For that reason — and independent of copyright law — my business\nnecessarily runs on something more akin to the honor system. I try\nto make nice fonts, price my licenses fairly, and thereby make\ninternet strangers enthusiastic about sending me money rather than\ngoing to pirate websites. Enough of them do. My business\ncontinues. (Indeed, in terms of rational economic choice, I’ve\nargued that <a href=\"https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/does-software-piracy-exist.html\">software piracy doesn’t exist</a>.)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Matthew Butterick on the Copyrightability of Fonts’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/butterick-on-the-copyrightability-of-fonts\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42577",
"title": "★ Crazy People Do Crazy Things",
"description": "If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?” They should respond with headlines like “How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Head?”",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/crazy_people_do_crazy_things",
"published": "2026-01-19T17:48:46.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-19T17:51:43.000Z",
"content": "<p>Donald Trump, in a message (I wouldn’t call it a letter) <a href=\"https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006\">sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre</a>, <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/donald-trump-greenland-threats-nobel-prize-snub-letter\">confirmed</a> by several news organizations:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the\nNobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel\nan obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be\npredominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for\nthe United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land\nfrom Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership”\nanyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat\nlanded there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing\nthere, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since\nits founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United\nStates. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total\nControl of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s a simple explanation for this. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/08/nyt-trump-dementia\">Trump is in cognitive decline</a> and it’s <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/trump-dementia-checkin\">accelerating</a> from <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/18/trump-mcdonalds\">age-related dementia</a>. He lives in an imaginary world that is increasingly cleaved from reality. (Norway, it should be pointed out, is not Denmark, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland\">the country of which Greenland is a part</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>Trump’s Venezuela operation was <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation\">brazenly illegal</a>. But it wasn’t crazy. Venezuela was not a U.S. ally. President Nicolas Maduro lost an election but stayed in power. Venezuela was <a href=\"https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0347\">producing military drones</a> for the hostile regime in Iran, a self-declared enemy of the U.S., NATO, and Israel. Venezuela had a <a href=\"https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship\">burgeoning alliance with China</a>, the U.S.’s primary geopolitical rival.</p>\n\n<p>What Trump is threatening with Greenland is simply bonkers. Greenland is under no threat from China or Russia because it’s part of NATO, and thus — ostensibly — under the full protection of the entire NATO alliance <em>including and especially the United States</em>. If China or Russia attempted to take Greenland it would trigger a world war led by the United States. Compare and contrast with Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine, long before Vladimir Putin invaded, was known to be under threat of Russian invasion. Taiwan has long been known to be <a href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-launches-live-firing-drills-around-taiwan-its-biggest-war-games-date-2025-12-30/\">threatened by China</a>. These threats have been in our geopolitical discourse for decades because the threats were real (and, unfortunately, came to pass in Ukraine).</p>\n\n<p>No one has ever talked about Greenland being under threat of takeover by Russia or China because there is no such threat. It’s no more realistic than Russia taking over Alaska or China taking over Hawaii. It sounds nuts because it is nuts, and the threat only exists in Trump’s disintegrating mind.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0ydjvxpejo\">Eight of our NATO allies have made clear</a>, through action, not mere words, their intention to defend Greenland. Trump, obviously angry that our ostensible allies won’t just roll over and accede to his madness, is now petulantly turning to his favorite word, <a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk8z8xxpgmo\">tariffs</a>. If that’s “<a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/10/politics/us-will-take-greenland-the-hard-way-if-it-cant-do-it-the-easy-way-trump-says\">the hard way</a>”, that’s pathetic. Stand up to bullies and they usually fold.</p>\n\n<p>The threat to Greenland, and thus to NATO — and thus, quite literally, to the entire world — is not that Trump authorized an illegal military operation in Venezuela, so he might do it in Greenland too. Again, what the U.S. did in Venezuela was <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brazen-illegality-of-trumps-venezuela-operation\">obviously illegal</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/maybe-russia-and-china-should-sit-one-out/685490/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yGIoJxtnmQes_m73rNK5U2M\">probably stupid</a>, but it wasn’t crazy. Breaking up NATO and starting a war with Europe would be batshit crazy. The threat is that Trump is showing us, every day, that he <em>is</em> crazy. Crazy people do crazy things, and crazy cult leaders surround themselves with cultists. The rest of us need to <a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/greenland-national-defense-maps-6f53c339\">stop sane-washing this</a>. You cannot make sense out of nonsense.</p>\n\n<p>If Trump declares that the U.S. is laying claim to all of the green cheese on the moon — say, to lower the price of dairy groceries — the news media should not respond with fact-finding articles with headlines like “<em>How Much Cheese Is on the Moon?</em>” They should respond with headlines like “<em>How Many Marbles Are Left in Trump’s Dementia-Addled Head?</em>” But threatening to take Greenland by military force is nuttier than laying claim to the moon’s cheese. Laying claim to non-existent green cheese wouldn’t trigger a shooting war that blows apart the most powerful alliance in military history.</p>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42576",
"title": "Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/americans-are-the-ones-paying-for-tariffs-study-finds-e254ed2e?st=pw4q2j",
"published": "2026-01-19T15:54:28.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-19T15:54:52.000Z",
"content": "<p>Tom Fairless, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; <a href=\"https://apple.news/A1odNAQeJSMC7dlagkxXB9w\">here’s a News+ link too</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at\nYale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only\na small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign\nproducers.</p>\n\n<p>By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and\nNovember 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign\nexporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S.\ntariff increases by lowering their prices, while American\nconsumers and importers absorbed 96%. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs\nfunctioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.\n“There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to\nthe U.S. in the form of tariffs,” said Julian Hinz, an\neconomics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who\nco-authored the study.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance. But this one feels like we could file it next to “Sun continues to rise in east, set in west.”</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Study Concludes That Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/americans-paying-for-tariffs\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42575",
"title": "WorkOS Pipes",
"description": null,
"url": "https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=no_rebuild",
"published": "2026-01-19T15:50:48.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-19T15:50:48.000Z",
"content": "<p>My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks. WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your back end requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh. That’s it.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q12026&utm_content=simplify_integrations_cta\">Simplify your integrations with WorkOS Pipes</a>.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘WorkOS Pipes’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/19/workos-pipes\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026://1.42574",
"title": "★ Thoughts and Observations Regarding Apple Creator Studio",
"description": "Starting with a few words on the new app icons.",
"url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/thoughts_and_observations_regarding_apple_creator_studio",
"published": "2026-01-17T21:13:21.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-22T16:51:24.000Z",
"content": "<h2>Let’s Just Get It Out of the Way and Talk About the New Icons First, but Let’s Also Use the Icons as a Proxy for Talking About the Broader Software Design Problems at Apple</h2>\n\n<p>There’s a lot of hate for the new app icons of the entire Creator Studio suite, but while I think the icons are tragically simplistic, I think the hate is misplaced.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png\" class=\"noborder\">\n<img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/apple-creator-suite-icons.png\"\n alt = \"Screenshot of the icons for the whole lineup of apps in the Apple Creator Studio.\"\n width = 500\n/></a></p>\n\n<p>The problem isn’t with these icons in and of themselves. The problem is with the rules Apple has imposed for Liquid Glass app icons, along with their own style guidelines for how to comply with those rules. Given Apple’s own self-imposed constraints for how icons must look (with the <a href=\"https://atp.fm/643\">mandatory squircle</a>) and how Apple has decided <a href=\"https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/11/05/tahoes-terrible-icons/\">its own app icons <em>should</em> look</a> (a look which can best be described as <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/07/tahoes-terrible-icons\">crude</a>), I actually think the icons in the Creator Studio are pretty good, relatively speaking. But that’s like saying one group of kids has pretty good haircuts, relatively speaking, at a summer camp where the rule is that the kids all cut each others’ hair using only fingernail clippers.</p>\n\n<p>The best take on these icons is <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTeOwAykwQ1\">this zinger from Héliographe</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio\nof someone getting really really good at icon design.</p>\n\n<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pages-icons-benjamin-buttons.jpeg'\n alt = 'The 7 icons for Pages, from newest to oldest. Each one is more artistically interesting from left to right. The original one is exquisite.'\n width = 500\n /></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Devastating. Whatever you think of this new 2026 icon for Pages, you can’t seriously argue that it’s much worse — or really all that different — from the previous one. But go back in time and each previous Pages icon had more detail and looked cooler. And then you get back to the original Pages icon and that one clearly belongs in the App Icon Hall of Fame.</p>\n\n<p>At some point in the previous decade, I had a product briefing with Jony Ive where we were discussing some just-announced new device that largely looked like the previous generation of the same device. I honestly don’t remember if it was an iPhone, an Apple Watch, or a MacBook. It doesn’t matter. What Ive told me is that Apple didn’t change things just for the sake of changing them. That Apple was insistent on only changing things if the change made things better. And that this was difficult, at times, because the urge to do something that looks new and different is strong, especially in tech. “New” shows that you’re doing something. “The same” is boring. What’s difficult is embracing the fact that boring can be good, especially if the alternative is different-but-worse, or even just different-but-not-better. You need confidence to ship something new that looks like the old version, because you know it’s still the best design. You need confidence to trust yourself to know the difference between familiarity (which is comforting) and complacency (which is how winners become losers).</p>\n\n<p>Apple’s <em>hardware</em> designs remain incredibly confident. An M5 MacBook Pro looks like an M1 MacBook Pro, and really hasn’t changed much in the last decade other than getting thinner. An iPhone 17 Pro looks a lot like an iPhone 12 Pro and has only evolved in small ways since the iPhone X in 2017. A brand-new Series 11 Apple Watch is very hard to distinguish at a glance from a Series 0 Apple Watch from 2015. This is not a complaint, this is a compliment. These hardware designs do not need to change because they’re excellent. <em>Iconic</em>, dare I say.</p>\n\n<p>This is why Apple’s software UI designs are the target of so much scorn and criticism right now, and Apple’s hardware designs are not.<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-01-17\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-01-17\">1</a></sup> Yes, it’s human nature that people love to complain. But Apple’s current work isn’t receiving criticism in anything close to equal measures. Apple’s hardware is hardly the subject of any criticism at all. Not the way it looks, not the way it performs. Apple’s software design, on the other hand, is the subject of withering criticism. It’s not (just) about new features having bad designs. It’s about <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/05/hard-to-justify-tahoe-icons\">existing, decades-old features</a> being made <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus\">so obviously worse</a>. I know a lot of talented UI designers and a lot of insightful UI critics. All of them agree that MacOS’s UI has gotten drastically worse over the last 10 years, in ways that seem so obviously worse that it boggles the mind how it happened.</p>\n\n<p>Take a few minutes and go peruse <a href=\"https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/\">Stephen Hackett’s extensive MacOS Screenshot Library</a> at 512 Pixels, where he’s assembled copious screenshots from every version of MacOS going back to the <a href=\"https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/mac-os-x-public-beta-kodiak/\">Mac OS X Public Beta</a> from October 2000.<sup id=\"fnr2-2026-01-17\"><a href=\"#fn2-2026-01-17\">2</a></sup> Take a look in particular <a href=\"https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/os-x-10-11-el-capitan/\">at MacOS 10.11 El Capitan</a> from 2015, exactly a decade ago. It doesn’t look <em>old</em> compared to MacOS 26 Tahoe. It just looks <em>better</em>, in every single way. I can’t think of one single thing about MacOS 26 that looks better than MacOS 10.11 from 2015, and I can quickly name dozens of things that are obviously worse. We would rejoice if MacOS 27 simply reverted to the UI of MacOS 10.11 from a decade ago, or had evolved as subtly as Mac hardware has over the same decade. The menu bar was better. The contrast between active and inactive windows was better. The standard UI controls looked better. The delineation between application chrome and content was clear, rather than deliberately obfuscated. And, to return to my point regarding Apple Creator Studio, all of the app icons — every goddamn one of them — was better. Many of the Mac app icons from MacOS 10.11 were downright exquisite. And the <em>real</em> heyday for Apple’s application icon design was the decade prior, the 2000s, under Steve Jobs. At the time, in 2015, we thought El Capitan shipped during an era of somewhat lazy icon design from Apple. If only we knew then how good we still had it.</p>\n\n<p>Before you ask, there’s no point wondering why these new Creator Suite icons look like this if Alan Dye and his inner squircle of <a href=\"https://www.billysorrentino.com/\">magazine-designer cowboys</a> left to work at Meta a month ago. I genuinely believe that Dye’s departure and the promotion of longtime Apple UI designer Steve Lemay to replace him will restore some measure of sanity and grace to Apple’s UI direction and style. That can’t happen in one month (let alone a month taken up by major holidays). For now, Creator Studio needs to abide by the guidelines of the OS 26 Liquid Glass world.</p>\n\n<p>Two more zingers. <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@bzamayo/post/DTdOJbJjG8g\">Benjamin Mayo on the new Pixelmator icon</a> (the first new icon since <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple\">Apple’s acquisition</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>the ultimate icon downgrade</p>\n\n<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/pixelmator-before-after.jpeg'\n alt = 'Pixelmator, before and after.'\n width = 500\n /></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The new Pixelmator icon is the most jarring of the bunch because it hasn’t been on the drip-drip-drip yearslong slide of Apple’s in-house app icons. It just switched in one fell swoop from something that looks like art that one might print, frame, and hang on their wall, to, well, whatever the new one is.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@asallen/post/DTdg6ehgVhi\">Andy Allen</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The Boringification of Software</p>\n\n<p><img src = 'https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/andy-allen-boringification.jpeg'\n alt = 'Bland icon suites from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe.'\n width = 500\n /></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Liquid Glass</h2>\n\n<p>I could go on for thousands of words here, too. But let’s cut to the chase for a moment and acknowledge that “Liquid Glass”, as a catch-all term to describe the entirety of the UI changes in Apple’s version 26 OS releases, means a few different things. The most obvious thing it means is the lowercase liquid glass look. Transparency and fluidity. Let’s put that aside.</p>\n\n<p>Liquid Glass also represents — per Apple’s own description when it was introduced by Alan Dye at WWDC — a “content-first” change to layout within an application. The content, in Liquid Glass, should take up as much of the screen, or window, as possible, and the UI of the application should be presented atop the content, not apart from the content. I’ll let Apple speak for itself and present Apple’s own video of the iOS Music app, from <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-delightful-and-elegant-new-software-design/\">the Newsroom article announcing Liquid Glass back at WWDC</a>:</p>\n\n<p><video\n width = 500\n controls\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/liquid-glass-apple-music.mp4\">\n</video></p>\n\n<p>This design ethos may or may not work on iOS. I think it often does. But let’s put that argument aside too. In the desktop context of MacOS, I don’t think this ethos works at all for most apps. It’s a downright disaster in the context of complex productivity apps. Apps <em>should</em> have distinctive chrome. The idea that they shouldn’t, that only “content” matters, and that apps themselves should try to be invisible and indistinctive, is contrary to the idea that apps themselves can be — <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlI1MR-qNt8\">should be</a> — artistic works. The parts of a window that belong to the app and present the functionality of the app, and the parts of a window that represent content, should be distinct. Like separating the dashboard — sorry, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/09/moylan\">instrument panel</a> — from what you see through the windshield while driving a car. One or two items of primary importance (say, the speedometer and the next step in turn-by-turn directions) are OK to project on the windshield in a heads-up display atop the “content” of the road and world around the vehicle. But it would be disastrous to eliminate the instrument panel and project every control status indicator as HUD elements on the windshield. Either the driver’s view would be overwhelmed by too many HUD elements, making it hard to see the world <em>and</em> to read the dials, or the car designer would have to eliminate many useful controls and indicators entirely. (I know, some electric car makers are doing just that. It sucks.)</p>\n\n<p>If you look through the screenshots Apple has provided of the new versions of the apps in the Creator Studio bundle, most of them haven’t been updated with Liquid Glass at all. They don’t have UI elements that look like liquid glass (transparent and fluid), and they don’t have layouts that seek to remove or obfuscate the application from its content. <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/\">Final Cut Pro</a>, <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/\">Logic Pro</a>, <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/\">Motion</a>: nope. Not a drop of Liquid Glass.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/\">Pixelmator Pro</a> does, however. It seems to embrace Liquid Glass in both senses. I haven’t tried it yet, and it doesn’t ship until January 28, but I strongly suspect I’d prefer if the new Pixelmator Pro looked like the new Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, with solid, distinct user interface chrome. (Fingers crossed that there’s a setting for this.)</p>\n\n<p>One possible explanation for Pixelmator Pro embracing Liquid Glass, but the other apps not, comes from the fineprint on <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/\">the Apple Newsroom post</a> announcing the whole Creator Studio suite:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the\nA16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later. The\nApple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 26.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The other apps require only MacOS 15.6 Sequoia and iOS 18.6:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The one-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro requires macOS\n15.6 or later, Logic Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, and\nPixelmator Pro requires macOS 12.0 or later. MainStage is\navailable for any Mac supported by macOS 15.6 or later. Motion\nrequires macOS 15.6 or later. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or\nlater and some features require a Mac with Apple silicon.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/macos-12-monterey/\">MacOS 12 Monterey</a> came out in 2021. So I think that means you can one-time purchase and download an older version of Pixelmator, if you’re running an older version of MacOS. <s>But if you’re running MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’ll get the new Liquid-Glassified version of Pixelmator whether you get it as a one-time purchase or through a Creator Studio subscription. I think?</s> <strong>Update:</strong> That was wrong. It’s a little simpler than that, in that Pixelmator Pro is <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/125029\">an outlier from the other apps in Creator Studio</a>. The new version of Pixelmator Pro — version 4.0 — is only available through the Creator Studio subscription, and requires MacOS 26 (and iPadOS 26). The one-time purchase version of Pixelmator Pro is version 3.7.1 — the existing version, last updated two months ago — and that’s the version you get from MacOS 12 through MacOS 26 if you get it via one-time purchase. Pixelmator Pro is the only app in Creator Studio where the new version is exclusively available through the Creator Studio subscription.</p>\n\n<h2>The iWork Apps</h2>\n\n<p>From the <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/\">Newsroom announcement</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For more than 20 years, Apple’s visual productivity apps have\nempowered users to express themselves with beautiful\npresentations, documents, and spreadsheets using Keynote, Pages,\nand Numbers. And Freeform has brought endless possibilities for\ncreative brainstorming and visual collaboration.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m not sure when Apple stopped referring to these apps, collectively, as iWork, but I guess it’s probably when they stopped selling them and made them free for all users in 2017. (Freeform was launched in 2022, so was never part of “iWork”. But it does feel like a fourth app in the suite.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>With Apple Creator Studio, productivity gets supercharged with\nall-new features that bring more intelligence and premium content\nto creators’ fingertips so they can take their projects to the\nnext level. The Content Hub is a new space where users can find\ncurated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations. A\nsubscription also unlocks new premium templates and themes in\nKeynote, Pages, and Numbers.</p>\n\n<p>In addition to Image Playground, advanced image creation and\nediting tools let users create high-quality images from text, or\ntransform existing images, using generative models from OpenAI.\nOn-device AI models enable Super Resolution to upscale images\nwhile keeping them sharp and detailed, and Auto Crop provides\nintelligent crop suggestions, helping users find eye-catching\ncompositions for photos.</p>\n\n<p>To help users prepare presentations even more quickly in Keynote,\nApple Creator Studio includes access to features in beta, such as\nthe ability to generate a first draft of a presentation from a\ntext outline, or create presenter notes from existing slides.\nSubscribers can also quickly clean up slides to fix layout and\nobject placement. And in Numbers, subscribers can generate\nformulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition with\nMagic Fill.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ll co-sign <a href=\"https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/01/apples-pro-bundle-makes-sense-but-making-iwork-freemium-doesnt/\">Jason Snell’s column on this aspect of Creator Studio</a>. I feel like it’s just fine for new document templates and the Content Hub stock image library to be paid features. (See next section.) But I don’t think it makes sense to gate useful new <em>features</em> of these apps behind the Creator Studio subscription. Smarter autofill in Numbers, generating Keynote slides from a text outline, and Super Resolution image upscaling all sound like great features, but they sound like the sort of features all users should be getting in the iWork apps in 2026. <em>Especially</em> from on-device AI models. I could countenance an argument that AI-powered features that are processed on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers should require a subscription. But it feels like a rip-off if they’re running on-device.</p>\n\n<p>It’s simpler for Apple to offer one single subscription bundle of “work” apps. But office productivity apps and creative design apps are very different. A word processor and spreadsheet go together. A video editor and audio editor go together. But it seems wrong for someone who just wants the new AI-powered features in Numbers and Keynote to need to pay for a subscription bundle whose value is primarily derived from Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and Pixelmator Pro — apps that many iWork users might never launch.</p>\n\n<h2>The Content Hub</h2>\n\n<p>Apple describes the Content Hub as “a new space where users can find curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations.” Stock imagery, basically. From Apple’s Creator Studio FAQ:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>What happens to projects and content I created if my\nsubscription ends?</em></p>\n\n<p>All the projects and content you create with an active\nsubscription to Apple Creator Studio — including any images you\ngenerate or add from the Content Hub — remain licensed in the\ncontext of your original creation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What struck me about the Content Hub is its name. Despite only offering “photos, graphics, and illustrations” it is not called the Image Hub. It’s the Content Hub. I asked Apple if this meant it might eventually include other things, like music, video B-roll, and perhaps even fonts licensed from third-party type libraries. I was told — unsurprisingly<sup id=\"fnr3-2026-01-17\"><a href=\"#fn3-2026-01-17\">3</a></sup> — that they can’t comment on future products and features. But that was said with a smile, which smile at least acknowledged that the name Content Hub leaves the door open to other types of media.</p>\n\n<h2>Whither Photomator?</h2>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/01/pixelmator-apple\">When Apple acquired Pixelmator a little over a year ago</a>, they acquired two ambitious creative professional apps, not one. Pixelmator is an image editor, like Adobe Photoshop (or, from the indie world, <a href=\"https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/\">Acorn</a>). Photomator is like Adobe Lightroom (or, from the indie world, <a href=\"https://darkroom.co/\">Darkroom</a>.) We’ve been waiting to see what Apple’s plans were for both apps. With <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro/\">Pixelmator Pro</a>, we now have an answer — a major new update for the Mac (with, as mentioned above, a Liquid Glass UI) and an all-new version now available for iPad.</p>\n\n<p>This week’s announcement of the Creator Studio bundle included no news about the future of Photomator. However, my spidey-sense says this is a case where no news might be good news. At the bottom of Apple’s new product page for Pixelmator Pro is a brief Q&A, which includes these two items:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>Where can I get Photomator?</em></p>\n\n<p>Photomator remains available as a separate purchase from the\nApp Store.</p>\n\n<p><em>How does Pixelmator Pro compare to Pixelmator Classic for iPad?</em></p>\n\n<p>Pixelmator Pro for iPad is available as part of an Apple Creator\nStudio subscription, alongside the Mac version and other pro apps\nlike Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. It brings all the features that\nPixelmator Pro users love on Mac to iPad, including nondestructive\nediting, AI features, tools for freely transforming layers, and\nmore — all optimized for touch.</p>\n\n<p>Pixelmator Classic for iOS, released in 2014 as a companion app to\nthe now-discontinued Pixelmator Classic for Mac, provides basic\nimage editing features such as cropping, color adjustments, and\neffects. It remains a functional app but is no longer being\nupdated.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>These are very different answers, if you speak Cupertino-ese. Functional but no longer being updated means you should not hold your breath waiting for an updated version of Pixelmator that runs on an iPhone.</p>\n\n<p>When Apple end-of-lifes an app — <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/13/clips-eol\">like they recently did with Clips</a> — they’re clear about it. But when Apple has plans for something but isn’t ready to announce those plans, they’re obtuse about it. If Photomator did not have a future as part of Creator Studio, I think Apple would have used this moment to stop selling the existing version. They’d say that it too remains functional but is no longer being updated. But that’s not what they said.</p>\n\n<p>Apple’s Aperture — a photo library manager and editor for professionals — <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/10/19Apple-Introduces-Aperture/\">debuted in October 2005</a>. Adobe released the first public beta of what became Lightroom <a href=\"https://www.lightroomqueen.com/10-years-lightroom/\">in January 2006</a>. Lightroom today remains an actively-developed popular app. But <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/27/apple-to-cease-development-of-aperture-and-transition-users-to-photos-for-os-x/\">Apple ceased development of Aperture</a> in 2014. Times change. In 2014 Apple clearly did not anticipate that a decade later they’d want to take on Adobe’s Creative Suite. Here in 2026, Apple has just launched the first version of that rival to Adobe’s suite. Perhaps the biggest omission<sup id=\"fnr4-2026-01-17\"><a href=\"#fn4-2026-01-17\">4</a></sup> in this first release of Apple Creator Studio is the lack of a Lightroom rival, which is exactly what Photomator is — <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@thebasicappleguy/post/DTdstEiEUlk\">and Aperture was</a>. My guess is that Apple and the acquired Pixelmator team are hard at work on a new Creator Studio version of Photomator, including a version for iPad, and it just isn’t finished yet. I’m more unsure whether they’ll keep the Photomator name (which I think is too easily conflated with the Pixelmator name) than whether they’re working on an ambitious update to the app to include in Creator Studio.</p>\n\n<p>I have no little birdie insider information about that, just my own hunch. I just think that if Photomator didn’t have a future, Apple’s statement about it would say so, and they’d stop selling the current version. And the lack of a professional photo library app is a glaring omission in Creator Studio. Apple Photos is an outstanding app, and iCloud Photo Library has in my experience delivered fast dependable syncing across devices for several years now. But an app like Photos, that is necessarily anchored to the needs of <em>very</em> casual users, can’t possibly scale in complexity to meet the needs of professional photographers. And Photos is not fully satisfying for prosumer users like me.</p>\n\n<h2>Family Sharing and Student Pricing</h2>\n\n<p>The standard subscription for Creator Studio costs $13/month or $130/year, and subscriptions are eligible for sharing with up to five other people in a family sharing group. Apple is also offering Creator Studio education pricing for students and educators for $3/month or $30/year. That’s a nice discount. But, I confirmed with Apple, the education subscription is <em>not</em> eligible for family sharing.</p>\n\n<p>I think Apple’s pricing for Creator Studio is very fair. It’s a decent value for $130/year, a great value with the education discount, and it’s nice that Apple is still offering one-time purchasing, per app, for those who object to software subscriptions (or those who simply know they only want to use one or two of these apps). But the fact that Creator Studio is only available as a separate subscription puts the lie to the “One” in the <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/apple-one/\">Apple One</a> subscription bundle. Apple One is a good value, and Creator Studio is a good value, but Apple One is no longer one bundle that includes all of Apple’s subscription offerings. It’s more like Apple Most now.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-01-17\">\n<p>This is also, I think, why John Ternus is <a href=\"https://polymarket.com/event/next-ceo-of-apple?tid=1764957040437\">so heavily rumored</a> to be named Tim Cook’s successor as CEO, and everyone feels cautiously optimistic about that. In the entire 50-year history of the company, Apple has never been on a longer sustained streak of excellent hardware than they are today. No one feels the same way about Apple’s software, services, or marketing. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-01-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2026-01-17\">\n<p>If Hackett weren’t so lazy, he’d document the classic Mac system software era too. <a href=\"#fnr2-2026-01-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2026-01-17\">\n<p>Now that I think about it, if Apple’s representative had answered my question by saying something like, “<em>Yes, we’re definitely thinking about other types of media that we could add to the Content Hub in the future, and that’s why we gave it that name</em>,” I would have plotzed. <a href=\"#fnr3-2026-01-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn4-2026-01-17\">\n<p>Another is that Adobe Creative Cloud includes access to <a href=\"https://fonts.adobe.com/\">Adobe’s entire library of fonts</a>, the biggest type library in the world. But like I wrote above, Apple Creator Studio’s “Content Hub” is an open-ended name. I’d love to see Apple work out licensing deals with a broad assortment of typography houses. <a href=\"#fnr4-2026-01-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42573",
"title": "Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage",
"description": null,
"url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/15/verizon-20-dollars-credit/",
"published": "2026-01-16T22:41:57.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-16T22:41:58.000Z",
"content": "<p>Verizon, <a href=\"https://x.com/VerizonNews/status/2011820123154182420\">in an announcement on Twitter/X</a> regarding their <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/verizon-out\">daylong outage</a> this week:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence you expect\nand that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to\nthose affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be\neasily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. You will\nreceive a text message when the credit is available. On average,\nthis covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be\ncontacted directly about their credits.</p>\n\n<p>This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit\nreally can. But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing\nthat this matters to us.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I got the text message last night (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/verizon-20-bucks.png\">screenshot</a>), and redeemed it this morning. It wasn’t too hard to redeem, partly because I already had the My Verizon app installed and had my account credentials saved.</p>\n\n<p>But you know what would <em>actually</em> be easy, and would <em>actually</em> acknowledge our time and show that this really matters to Verizon? If they just took $20 off every customer’s next bill. Automatic. Just take $20 off next month. If a good restaurant screws up an item you ordered, they apologize and take the item off your bill (and maybe give you a free dessert or something). They don’t give you a code to redeem.</p>\n\n<p>It would also better show that they care if the text message spelled the app “My Verizon”, <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/my-verizon/id416023011\">which is the app’s actual name</a>.</p>\n\n<p>As for how many days of service $20 covers, we pay $329/month for a “5G Do More” family plan for me, my wife, and son. Three phones, three Apple Watches, and two iPads. (I’m the one without a cellular iPad plan, because I so seldom use an iPad.) That’s about $11/day. Verizon only sent us one $20 credit, not three, so that covers roughly two days of service — which is, indeed, multiple days.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Daylong Outage’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
},
{
"id": "tag:daringfireball.net,2026:/linked//6.42571",
"title": "ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads",
"description": null,
"url": "https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-go/",
"published": "2026-01-16T19:59:53.000Z",
"updated": "2026-01-16T20:00:15.000Z",
"content": "<p>OpenAI:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>With this launch, ChatGPT now offers three subscription tiers globally:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>ChatGPT Go at $8 USD/month</li>\n<li>ChatGPT Plus at $20 USD/month</li>\n<li>ChatGPT Pro at $200 USD/month</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And perhaps the bigger news:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We plan to begin testing ads in the free tier and ChatGPT Go in\nthe US soon. Ads support our commitment to making AI accessible to\neveryone by helping us keep ChatGPT available at free and\naffordable price points.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Their pricing page has a comparison chart showing the differences in their four consumer tiers (free, Go, Plus, Pro). <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/01/chatgpt-pricing-2026-01-16.png\">Screenshot</a>, for posterity. The big difference that will keep me on the $20/month Plus plan for now is that the Go plan doesn’t have access to the Thinking model.</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘ChatGPT Adds New $8/Month ‘Go’ Tier, Will Soon Introduce Ads’\" href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/chatgpt-go\"> ★ </a>\n</div>",
"image": null,
"media": [],
"authors": [
{
"name": "John Gruber",
"email": null,
"url": "http://daringfireball.net/"
}
],
"categories": []
}
]
}