Apple Newsroom, in an Apple Newsroom post Monday:
\n\n\n\n\nAccording to EU regulators, the DMA requires Apple to give any AI\nsystem nearly unlimited access to a user’s device, as well as the\nability to act on that access autonomously without a user’s\nongoing visibility and control. That includes the ability to read\nand send messages, make purchases, access files, and execute\nactions across any app. Security researchers have already shown\nthat AI systems can be hijacked to steal personal data — like\npasswords and photos — and to permanently alter files and\naccount settings without a user’s consent. As AI systems gain\nmore capabilities, these risks are quickly increasing in\nfrequency and scope.
\n\nGiven the serious risks to users, Apple designed a solution called\nTrusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual\nassistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as\nSiri AI for devices in the EU. Apple also shared a plan to launch\nSiri AI in the EU while gradually rolling out this new solution\nover an 18-month period. The European Commission said no. In fact,\nthe European Commission did not agree to any of Apple’s proposals.
\n\nApple will continue working to bring these features to the\nEuropean Union as safely as possible. However, given the clear\ndangers to EU users and the regulators’ failure to acknowledge\nthese risks, there is currently no timeline for Siri AI’s\navailability in the EU on iOS and iPadOS.
\n
There’s a lot to unpack here, including more background information — and on-the-record statements — from a briefing Apple held Tuesday that I was invited to at Apple Park. But the bottom line is that Apple’s public statements regarding the DMA and the European Commission have never been this strident before. In its public statements, Apple has always been diplomatic. That’s the word.
\n\nNow, they’re a bit more on war footing. There’s a massive gulf between what Apple is willing to do with Siri AI in the EU and what the Commission is demanding from Apple for DMA compliance. As things stand there’s no middle ground. Apple’s offers for compromise have been rejected. Unless one side changes its mind and concedes its current position, Siri AI will never come to the EU, and what Apple is saying here is that they’re unwilling to create the open-access-to-user-data system that the EC is demanding.
\n\nAnd from what I’ve seen so far in a day of testing Siri AI, EU iOS users are going to miss out on something really good.
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-delayed-in-eu…
\n" }, { "title" : "Spielberg on Being Repeatedly Turned Down to Direct a James Bond Film", "date_published" : "2026-06-11T20:38:09Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-11T23:46:13Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/11/spielberg-bond", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/11/spielberg-bond", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEho3brGB64", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSteven Spielberg, on The Rest Is Entertainment on YouTube:
\n\n\n\n\nI approached Cubby Broccoli after Jaws was a big hit. I’d always\nwanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr. No, so I\ncalled Cubby after Jaws and volunteered. I said, “If you need a\ndirector, I would love to direct one.” And he said no. And he\nmoved on.
\n\nAnd then Cubby called me again after Close Encounters came out.\nAnd that was a big hit. And Cubby called me a few years after\nClose Encounters and said, “We’d like to use the five notes in\nMoonraker.” And I said, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you\npermission to use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond\nfilm.” And he said “Nope.” But I gave him the five notes anyway.
\n
In Moonraker, the iconic Close Encounters notes are the passcode to the locked door of a secret lab that Bond (Roger Moore) needs to enter. Probably not so secure to play the passcode digits audible, but it’s a fun Easter egg. I always presumed that EON used it as fair-use homage, without bothering to ask Spielberg or Columbia Pictures for permission.
\n\nSpielberg, in his interview with The Rest Is Entertainment, goes on to explain the oft-repeated story that his disappointment over his rejection by Broccoli led to his collaboration with George Lucas to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I put on my short list for best movie ever made. The whole opening sequence of Temple of Doom — where Indiana Jones is wearing a dinner jacket and chaos erupts at a nightclub while Jones chases a vial of poison antidote while the other characters chase a diamond being kicked around the floor — is more Bond-like than most Bond films. (Oh, and that Shanghai nightclub’s name: Club Obi Wan. No need to ask permission for that one.)
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=iEho3brGB64
\n" }, { "title" : "Craig Federighi Details Apple’s Collaboration With Google for Siri AI — Live, on Stage", "date_published" : "2026-06-11T00:48:52Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-11T00:48:52Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/10/federighi-google-gemini-partnership", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/10/federighi-google-gemini-partnership", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/08/craig-federighi-details-apples-collaboration-with-google-for-siri-ai-in-ios-27/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nChance Miller, at 9to5Mac on Monday:
\n\n\n\n\nApple’s Siri team, led by Craig Federighi, held a post-WWDC\nkeynote tech talk with members of the press this afternoon to\ntalk through iOS 27 and the new Siri AI. During the talk,\nFederighi shared more details about Apple’s collaboration with\nGoogle. Federighi was joined by Amar Subramanya (vice president\nof AI), Mike Rockwell (Siri lead), and Sebastien Marineau-Mes\n(software VP).
\n\nOn the Google collaboration, Federighi explained:
\n\n\n\nOf course, we don’t have the Gemini app as our app. In fact, none\nof that client code is part of how we run on iOS. For these\nmodels, we use none of the models that Google deploys to their\ncustomers, nor do we use the infrastructure and means by which\nthey deploy models to their customers. And then, when it comes to\nthe knowledge base, we of course don’t use Google Search or\nanything like that as the foundation of our system. So I hope\nthat’s clear. The amount of the Google Assistant we use is none.
\n\nSo let’s talk about what we do use, or how our system is built.
\n
This “Tech Talk” was good. It was detailed and technical, and there were live on-stage demos of Siri AI in action from Mike Rockwell. I don’t think Apple is ever going to go back to live on-stage major keynotes, but I do think the company is returning to more live events, including demos. There was a big live Siri AI/Apple Intelligence session for developers Tuesday morning in Steve Jobs Theater, which also had live demos. More like this, please.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/06/08/craig-federighi-details-apples…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Sweet Jeebus, MacOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons From Menu Items", "date_published" : "2026-06-11T00:09:01Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-11T01:59:41Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/macos_27_golden_gate_removes_the_dumb_icons_from_menu_items", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/macos_27_golden_gate_removes_the_dumb_icons_from_menu_items", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nPerhaps the worst UI crime in MacOS 26 Tahoe was the inexplicable decision to add inscrutable, distracting icons next to every item in the menu bar. You will recall Jim Nielsen writing about it, rightly describing it as exactly the sort of thing that Mac users look down upon in platforms like Google Docs and Windows. You will also recall Nikita “Tonsky” Prokopov writing about it, illustrating that the bad idea wasn’t even implemented well, with different Apple apps using entirely different icons for the same menu items. You will also recall my linking to Nielsen (“I can tolerate being angry about UI changes Apple makes to the Mac. But I can’t tolerate being heartbroken.”) and to Prokopov (“The fact that Tahoe’s menu item icons are glaringly inconsistent and often utterly inscrutable is the fudge icing on a shit cake, but the real embarrassment is that the idea ever got past the proposal stage. No real UI or icon designers think this is a good idea. None.”)
\n\nTop third-party developers rightly rejected the design, adopting open source code from Brent Simmons to disable the default “icons in all standard menu items” behavior.
\n\nWonderful news in MacOS 27 Golden Gate: the icons are gone. It’s like Tahoe’s menu item icons never happened. Prokopov noted it on Mastodon with before and after screenshots, and mentions that Apple has updated the Human Interface Guidelines accordingly:
\n\n\n\n\nUse menu item icons sparingly and with purpose. Icons allow\npeople to find menu items more quickly, and help clarify what\nselecting an item does. Use an icon to highlight the most common\nactions and key features of your app, file system locations,\nconnected devices, visual concepts like rotating or flipping an\nimage, and user-generated content like folders and documents.\nDon’t display an icon if you can’t find one that clearly\nrepresents the menu item.
\n
This updated advice in the HIG is perfect. Screenshot:
\n\n\n\nMacOS 26 Tahoe — across every Apple app on the system — is a living example of the updated HIG’s “what not to do” example illustrations (including the second section about groups within a menu). If you’re stuck using Tahoe until Golden Gate arrives, recall this tip to alleviate the problem to some extent.
\n\nThis is my favorite news from all of WWDC this week. I mean that. In a small way I mean it because I so loathe this aspect of MacOS Tahoe. But in a large way I mean it because it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team. I don’t know if all the untalented hacks are gone, but the untalented magazine-designer hacks with clout and influence all left with Alan Dye. I’ve chatted with a few people from Apple’s design team this week and they’re all loving the work they’re doing and the direction they’re taking Apple’s platforms. Backtracking on these idiotic menu item icons was a necessary first step.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "Apple OS 27: The Small Things", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T21:29:57Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T21:33:17Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/the-small-things", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/the-small-things", "external_url" : "https://blog.oneberri.com/posts/wwdc26-the-small-things", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nRishi Ó:
\n\n\n\n\nMy favorite Apple updates are not the flashy new features, but the quiet little touches: annoyances fixed, workflows made smoother, rough edges sanded down, and longstanding flaws thoughtfully reworked. To me, they’re the clearest sign of a company that cares about its craft.
\n\nHere’s a collection from a WWDC26 screen-grab, organized for easier reading, on improvements coming later this year.
\n
That’s a lot of bullet points.
\n\nLink: blog.oneberri.com/posts/wwdc26-the-small-things
\n" }, { "title" : "The Talk Show Live From WWDC: Tonight, In-Person and Streaming", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T18:53:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-11T00:09:21Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/the-talk-show-live-tonight", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/the-talk-show-live-tonight", "external_url" : "https://ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nIf you can make it in person, you should come. The California Theater is a beautiful big theater and tickets are still available.
\n\nYou can also watch tonight’s show in live stereoscopic immersive in the Theater app from Sandwich Vision on Vision Pro. A purchase of the ticket to the live show, the Theater app for $12.99, is also good for replay forever — with surprise bonus features included. It’s a fun, truly immersive way to experience the show.
\n\nHope to see you there tonight, one way or the other.
\n\nLink: ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple WWDC 2026 Keynote", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T17:42:32Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T17:42:32Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-wwdc-2026-keynote", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-wwdc-2026-keynote", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF8swzNR1-o", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nA brisk 76 minutes, including the post-credits Easter egg music video. The past few years ran about a half hour longer.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=hF8swzNR1-o
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple’s WWDC AI Demos Were Real and in Real Time", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T17:38:21Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T17:38:22Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-wwdc-demos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-wwdc-demos", "external_url" : "https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/08/apples-wwdc-ai-demos-looked-more-real-after-250m-false-ad-settlement/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJulie Bort, TechCrunch:
\n\n\n\n\nBut the most telling detail wasn’t what Apple announced. It was\nhow it chose to show some things off. Many of the Apple\nIntelligence demoes featured someone standing, phone in hand,\npressing buttons or using voice commands in real time, while\nanother camera showed off the phone’s response.
\n\nThese weren’t live onstage, anything-could-go wrong demos; they\nwere pre-taped. But they looked far more like proof of working\nfeatures than what Apple showed at WWDC 2024, when the company\nunveiled Apple Intelligence and a new Siri to the world\nthrough slickly produced videos that turned out to be more promise\nthan product.
\n
The demos were all shot in single takes, with no editing. In fact, I think most of them were single takes of multiple demos back-to-back. That’s the way it should be, even when they feel a little slow. When a demo feels slow, the solution isn’t to edit the video — it’s to make the feature work faster.
\n\nLink: techcrunch.com/2026/06/08/apples-wwdc-ai-demos-looked-more…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Introduces Siri AI", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T17:23:29Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T17:46:12Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-introduces-siri-ai", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apple-introduces-siri-ai", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-introduces-siri-ai-a-profoundly-more-capable-and-personal-assistant/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Newsroom yesterday:
\n\n\n\n\nThis new version of Siri is built on Apple Intelligence, allowing\nSiri to draw on personal context understanding and help users find\nwhat they need in the moment across messages, emails, photos, and\nmore. For example, users can ask Siri to find a restaurant\nrecommendation a friend messaged them about, surface a hotel\nconfirmation number from an old email, or pull up photos with\nfriends and family from a recent trip. And personal context\nunderstanding extends to third-party apps when developers\nintegrate with Spotlight.
\n\nWith even more systemwide app actions, Siri AI lets users get\nthings done across apps, like drafting an email from scratch, or\nediting and sharing a set of photos. Using onscreen awareness,\nSiri AI can answer questions related to the content on a user’s\nscreen. For example, if a user gets a text about a potluck with\nfriends, they can brainstorm with Siri on what to bring and then\nadd a recipe to the Notes app.
\n\nIn addition, Siri AI can use broad world knowledge to get\nup-to-date information from the web on virtually any topic and\ngenerate a helpful answer, such as when and where to see the next\nsolar eclipse, or when a musician is coming to town. Users can\nextend almost any response from Siri into a rich conversation and\nask follow-up questions.
\n
I like the name “Siri AI”. “New Siri” wouldn’t have legs because eventually this won’t be new. This should be the dividing line between Siri as we know it and Siri as it should be. The demos I’ve seen so far (I still don’t have access on my iOS 27 testing device) are impressive. Well, impressive compared to old Siri. They’re table stakes for generative AI. But Siri AI is the only system that can draw upon your personal data in the apps on your devices, and perform actions based on the app intents supported by the apps on your devices. It is in some ways less capable than ChatGPT or Claude, but in other ways has more potential. It’s a very different approach and I think it’s the right one for Apple.
\n\nThey need to execute, they need to prove this can scale, and most of all, they need to get third-party apps on board with App Intents and App Schemas. But it seems like they’re doing all of that. This is not a done deal but it is very realistic.
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-introduces-siri-ai-a…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple’s WWDC Announcement of the New Apple Intelligence System", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T16:50:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T17:45:39Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apples-wwdc-apple-intelligence-announcement", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/09/apples-wwdc-apple-intelligence-announcement", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-intelligence-brings-powerful-ai-capabilities-into-everyday-experiences/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Newsroom:
\n\n\n\n\nThese new capabilities are powered by the next generation of Apple\nFoundation Models, custom-built in collaboration with Google and\nits Gemini models for deeply integrated Apple Intelligence\nexperiences. These latest models run on device and on servers\nusing Private Cloud Compute.
\n\nEvery facet of the new Apple Intelligence architecture is built\nprivacy-first, from the latest Apple Foundation Models to the core\noperating system technologies that integrate these models deep\ninto Apple’s platforms. Apple Intelligence uses on-device\nprocessing and Private Cloud Compute to help protect users’\nprivacy. Private Cloud Compute gives users access to\nfrontier-level intelligence, while extending the privacy and\nsecurity of iPhone into the cloud.
\n
What’s confusing about this Apple-Google partnership is that Google pretty much calls all things AI “Gemini”. The models are “Gemini”, the assistant is “Gemini”, and the feature integrations are “Gemini”. So Apple is taking pains to emphasize that they’re building atop the Gemini models, not the Gemini assistant.
\n\nOne way to think about it is this. Let’s say you’re a Google Gemini app user. That’s the assistant. Now you start using the new Apple Intelligence (that builds atop the Gemini models) and the new Siri AI (that builds atop the new Apple Intelligence). When you go back to the Google Gemini app, nothing you did using Apple Intelligence and Siri AI is visible to the Gemini app. And nothing you continue to do in the Google Gemini app is visible to Apple Intelligence or Siri AI.
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-intelligence-brings…
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] WorkOS Launches auth.md — an Open Protocol for Agent Registration", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T04:23:05Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T04:23:05Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/06/workos_launches_authmd_--_an_o", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/06/workos_launches_authmd_--_an_o", "external_url" : "https://youtu.be/Dqp_b8GHLXU?t=1074", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nSign-up forms were built for humans in browsers, so how do AI agents programmatically register with services?
\n\nEnter auth.md. By exposing a single, machine-readable Markdown file at your service root, AI agents can dynamically discover your OAuth Protected Resource Metadata, parse required scopes, and authenticate seamlessly.
\n\nWith native support in WorkOS AuthKit, you can now implement this protocol out of the box, giving AI tools a standardized, secure way to log into your application.
\n\nRead the auth.md docs.
\n\nLink: youtu.be/Dqp_b8GHLXU?t=1074
\n" }, { "title" : "From the Annals of People Having Knowledge of the Matter, Siri AI Extensions Edition", "date_published" : "2026-06-09T01:37:27Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T04:29:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/08/gurman-siri-ai-extensions", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/08/gurman-siri-ai-extensions", "external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/apple-plans-to-open-up-siri-to-rival-ai-assistants-beyond-chatgpt-in-ios-27", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMark Gurman, reporting (?) for Bloomberg two short months ago:
\n\n\n\n\nApple Inc. plans to open Siri to outside artificial intelligence\nassistants, a major move aimed at bolstering the iPhone as an AI\nplatform. The company is preparing to make the change as part of a\nSiri overhaul in its upcoming iOS 27 operating system update,\naccording to people with knowledge of the matter. The assistant\ncan already tap into ChatGPT through a partnership with OpenAI,\nbut Apple will now allow competing services to do the same.
\n\nThe company is developing new tools to allow AI chatbot apps\ninstalled via the App Store to integrate with the Siri assistant,\nsaid the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans\nhaven’t been announced. The chatbots will also work with an\nupcoming Siri app and other features in the Apple Intelligence\nplatform.
\n\nThat means, for instance, if users have Alphabet Inc.’s Google\nGemini or Anthropic PBC’s Claude installed, they’d be able to send\nqueries to those services from within the Siri voice assistant,\njust like they have been able to with ChatGPT since Apple\nIntelligence launched in 2024.
\n
Maybe Apple ran out of time today, and will announce this tomorrow? Maybe they forgot to announce it? Maybe they scrapped the next-generation Siri that existed two months ago and in the last month rebuilt another entirely new next-generation Siri? I’ll bet something like that is what happened.
\n\nI mean, people had knowledge of the matter.
\n\nLink: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/apple-plans-to-open…
\n" }, { "title" : "Mux — Video for Developers", "date_published" : "2026-06-08T01:47:03Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-08T01:47:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/07/mux", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/07/mux", "external_url" : "https://www.mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy thanks to Mux for sponsoring last week at DF. Mux is what developers reach for when they need to do more with video. Video files are packed with data and context waiting to be unlocked.
\n\nMux Robots are AI workflows that unlock that data inside your video for summarization, caption translation, moderation, and more. Configure once and your workflows run automatically on new uploads.
\n\nMux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Synthesia. Start building for free. Use code FIREBALL at signup for an extra $50 credit.
\n\nLink: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF
\n" }, { "title" : "★ SwiftUI Only Makes It Easy to Develop Bad Apps", "date_published" : "2026-06-08T01:30:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-09T01:40:05Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/swiftui_only_makes_it_easy_to_develop_bad_apps", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/swiftui_only_makes_it_easy_to_develop_bad_apps", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nPaulo Andrade, last month, “Using SwiftUI to Build a Mac-Assed App in 2026”:
\n\n\n\n\nI recently launched the macOS version of Shopie, an app I first\nreleased on the iOS App Store late last year. Shopie helps you\nkeep track of products you’re interested in by letting you create\nwishlists and notifying you whenever a product’s price,\navailability, and other details change.
\n\nUnlike my other apps, where I typically blend AppKit (or UIKit)\nwith SwiftUI, Shopie is built entirely in SwiftUI. I wanted to\nkeep it that way to maximize code reuse across iOS, iPadOS, and\nnow macOS. This post explores how far SwiftUI can take you on the\nMac in 2026, especially if your goal is to build an app that feels\ntruly native to the platform. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive\nreview of SwiftUI on macOS. It’s simply a collection of recipes\nand issues I ran into while porting Shopie, a fairly small app,\nand keeping it 100% SwiftUI.
\n
Andrade’s examples are copious. His conclusion is damning:
\n\n\n\n\nApple dropped the ball here. AppKit was ahead of its time and\nUIKit was a more polished version of AppKit. A serious\ncross-platform framework that unified the two should have happened\nlong before SwiftUI. Instead, Apple left AppKit to fossilize and\nthen tried to leapfrog the problem.
\n\nYou can see the result everywhere. SwiftUI is productive, modern,\nand often delightful, right up until you try to make a really good\nMac app. Then suddenly you’re fighting the framework for things\nthe Mac solved 20 years ago.
\n
There’s something really wrong with SwiftUI. Amongst the apps I use, the best example is Apple Journal. Basic stuff that’s worked reliably for decades — some things that heretofore had worked forever — are dangerously broken. If you’re running MacOS 26 Tahoe, open Journal and make a new dummy entry. Type something like “The quick brown fox.” Then double-click on the word “brown” and delete it. Now invoke Undo.
\n\nWhat you expect is for the word “brown” to reappear. What happens is ... the whole sentence disappears. Gone. Invoke Redo and you only get back to “The quick fox.” The word “brown” is just gone forever. It’s nowhere in the Undo stack. That’s just profoundly fucked up. I’ve never seen anything like this with an AppKit app, ever. (I’ve never seen it with a UIKit app either — and the same thing happens on iOS with Journal. It’s just that you notice it less often because we don’t invoke Undo and Redo nearly as often there.)
\n\nI actually use the Journal app and I’ve lost entire sentences of text to this incompetent implementation of Undo. Editing text in Journal is dangerous because SwiftUI is so bad at something as fundamental as text editing. AppKit has had this solved since 1989 or so, a decade before Apple reunified with NeXT. And my example here is just one of many. Andrade documents a whole bunch more in his post. [Shopie is a good modern Mac app — you can practically see from reading his post that Andrade’s hands are scarred from dozens of paper cuts.
\n\nSo while the world is largely focused on Apple’s AI-related announcements at WWDC tomorrow, I’ve got SwiftUI (on all platforms) and Mac-assed Mac development high on my list. Apple’s developer message used to be that it was not just easy to develop apps for their platforms, but that it was easy to develop good idiomatically native apps. You got the correct complex behavior — for things like Undo/Redo — out of the box. That’s still true for AppKit and UIKit, but it’s never been true for SwiftUI, and SwiftUI is now seven years old. That’s too long for any excuses to hold water.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "Alberto Romero on Apple’s AI Spending", "date_published" : "2026-06-08T01:00:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-08T01:49:17Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/07/alberto-romero-on-apples-ai-spending", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/07/alberto-romero-on-apples-ai-spending", "external_url" : "https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/what-apple-knows-about-ai-that-silicon", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAlberto Romero:
\n\n\n\n\nAI is like religion. Either you believe it changes everything, or\nyou don’t believe at all. There is no moderate position; nobody\nbelieves in AGI “more or less,” just like nobody is “casually\nreligious.” If God exists, the only coherent response is to\nreorganize your entire life around that fact, as priests do. If\nyou pray sometimes, then you are just an atheist who’s also\nfearful. When tech companies spend hundreds of billions on capital\nexpenditures to add sparkly AI features to Office, Gmail, and\nInstagram, I only see fearful atheists — guys who don’t believe\nin AI but pretend just in case.
\n\nIn 2026, the four largest cloud and AI infrastructure providers — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft — committed to spending $670\nbillion on CapEx. Apple, in contrast, spent $12.7 billion on\ncapex last fiscal year and projects $14 billion for 2026, 2%\nof what its peers are spending. The conventional reading in\nSilicon Valley is, naturally, that Apple is losing. Siri has been\na punchline for years — an internal executive called the delays\nugly and embarrassing — and critics say that Apple has not\nbeen the same without Steve Jobs. It is falling behind, they\nsay, and moving way too slowly for AI.
\n\nI disagree with this portrayal: Apple is the most powerful tech\ncompany in the world right now because it’s acting according to\nwhat it believes.
\n
Some of you, I bet, will object to Romero’s notion that no one is “casually religious”. Almost everyone I know is casually religious, you might be thinking. But read the whole piece. What he’s saying is that if you’re “casually religious” those are just words. You’re not living your life according to your professed beliefs (casual or not). And that’s how most of Apple’s peer companies seem to be approaching AI.
\n\nI’m not sure he’s right, but he might be, and I think his take is at least closer to right than wrong. Apple is making an enormous bet on AI — but their bet is that they don’t need to spend hundreds of billions per year on AI infrastructure (most of it fattening Nvidia’s bottom line) to reap the benefits. If Apple’s right we should start seeing it come together tomorrow.
\n\n(Arguably we’ve already seen it coming together — demand for Apple’s products and services has gone up, not down, so far in the AI era. Entrenched leaders often grow during the initial stages of extinctive disruptions — BlackBerry’s biggest year for sales (revenue) and investor confidence (market cap) was 2011, four years after the iPhone debuted — but the disruptors are there. There’s not yet a single threat on the market to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or AirPods — nor to Apple’s services revenue.)
\n\nLink: thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/what-apple-knows-about-ai-that…
\n" }, { "title" : "Halide Mark III", "date_published" : "2026-06-07T00:49:15Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-07T03:17:01Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/halide-mark-iii", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/halide-mark-iii", "external_url" : "https://www.lux.camera/halide-mark-iii/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBen Sandofsky, writing on the Lux Camera blog:
\n\n\n\n\nAfter decades of shooting digital, I returned to analog\nphotography in 2023. I thought it would be challenging, given the\nlimited selection of film stocks, only to be surprised by how\nfreeing it felt. It felt so much better to have a handful of\namazing choices rather than photo-editor with thousands of\npresets. We owe that to film engineers who spent years developing\nversatile film stocks that work in a variety of situations.
\n\nInspired by “Less, but better,” we partnered with the renowned\nHollywood colorist Cullen Kelly to develop a\nsuccinct set of gorgeous, physically accurate processes\nexclusive to Halide. Each look was engineered with a specific\nintent. We verified every look thousands of times on real-world\nreference photos.
\n\nPut another way: every look is a banger.
\n
Halide has always been a great — maybe the great — iPhone camera app for shooting RAW, with the intention of developing your images by hand in post. It’s a great camera technically and a great app UI-wise. Mark II introduced Process Zero, which, in their own description, “uses zero AI and zero computational photography to produce beautiful, film-like natural photos”. Process Zero was the first step toward the new built-in “looks” in Halide Mark III. I’ve been shooting with Mark III for a few weeks now, and they are, indeed, all bangers. And I really like that there aren’t that many of them. I wanted more looks than just Process Zero (which remains available, of course), but I feel a bit overwhelmed when faced with a dozen (or worse, dozens) of choices for processing. I feel conflicted enough having to choose between a handful of really good third-party camera apps with which to shoot in the first place — it’s worse when I have to make too many choices within the camera app itself.
\n\nWhat I want is to just point and shoot and be able to instantly share images with the look I want already applied. I’m picky but I’m also really lazy, and don’t want to do any editing in post on most of the shots I keep. But I do want to be able to edit in post if I want to, including changing the look losslessly. This mixture of point-and-shoot ease and pro-level control didn’t use to be possible. Now, though, it is, with apps like Not Boring Camera, Analogue, and, now, Halide Mark III.
\n\nIt’s been a turbulent couple of months for Lux (to say the least), so I’m glad to see Sandofsky and team get Mark III out the door. If you, like me, had previously been impressed by Halide but didn’t use it because it required too much work in post, you should check out Mark III.
\n\nLink: lux.camera/halide-mark-iii/
\n" }, { "title" : "60 Minutes Correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and the Other Guy Will Stay at Show", "date_published" : "2026-06-06T20:04:06Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-06T20:04:06Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/stahl-whitaker-60-minutes", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/stahl-whitaker-60-minutes", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/business/media/60-minutes-cbs-stahl-whitaker-wertheim.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oFA.xooG.Pz8cQv8odz7Z", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim, in a memo to the 60 Minutes staff obtained by The New York Times (gift links):
\n\n\n\n\nWe have had a hard time deciding whether to stay at 60 Minutes.\nWe’re still deeply upset by the firings of Tanya and Draggan,\nstrong leaders who everyone respected. As far as we can tell — because no explanation has ever been offered, they were expelled\nbecause they fought for our 60 Minutes values and stood up to\nprotect our independence and integrity.
\n\nNewsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships.\nCollaboration and argument are the way we have always worked at\n60. Don Hewitt actually encouraged loud passionate advocacy for\nour pieces. [...]
\n\nWe feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement\nof the existing power structure. That is simply, categorically not\nthe case.
\n\nHere’s why we’re are staying:
\n\nWe don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.
\n
We’ll see how long this lasts.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/06/05/business/media/60-minutes-cbs-stahl…
\n" }, { "title" : "Trump Lawyer Argues Trump Can Tear Down Statue of Liberty", "date_published" : "2026-06-06T19:56:01Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-06T19:56:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/trump-statue-of-liberty", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/06/trump-statue-of-liberty", "external_url" : "https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-can-tear-down-statue-of-liberty-says-trump-lawyer", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJosh Marshall:
\n\n\n\n\nIn a hearing today about the president’s bulldozing of the East\nWing of the White House and plans to build a vast ballroom, a\njudge asked if the president could also bulldoze the Statue of\nLiberty and be subject to no legal challenge. The DOJ lawyer,\nYaakov Roth, said that yes, President Trump could decide tomorrow\nto bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and no one could\nstop him.
\n\nIt was a good question from DC Court of Appeals Judge Patricia\nMillett since it brings the arguments and their implications\nclearly into the open. Reframe the question and the absurdity of\nthis proposition becomes even more clear. If you hire someone to\nadminister your estate, can they burn down the buildings on your\nestate or chop it up into parcels and sell it off? Presumably not.\nYou hired them to run it, not to destroy it or sell it. It’s not\ntheirs. They were hired for a specific task. That person is your\nemployee. The president is hired to administer the country and\nenforce its laws for four years. He doesn’t own the country or its\nproperties.
\n
Pathetic lickspittles, one and all.
\n\nLink: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-can-tear-down-statue-of…
\n" }, { "title" : "Nieman Journalism Lab: Twitter/X Punishes Accounts That Post Links", "date_published" : "2026-06-05T20:46:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-05T20:46:57Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/nieman-journalism-lab-twitter-links", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/nieman-journalism-lab-twitter-links", "external_url" : "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/do-links-hurt-news-publishers-on-twitter-our-analysis-suggests-yes/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLaura Hazard Owen, writing for Nieman Journalism Lab back in April:
\n\n\n\n\nI used Claude to help me scrape the 200 most recent tweets from 18\nlarge publishers’ X accounts and track the engagement (likes +\ncomments + retweets) on each. Six of those publishers have\npaywalls: Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes, The New\nYork Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The\nWashington Post. Nine don’t: Al Jazeera English,\nAP, BBC, Breitbart News, CBS News,\nDaily Wire, Fox News, NBC News, and\nReuters. The last three accounts I looked at — Leading\nReport, unusual_whales, and Globe Eye News — are not news publishers, but aggregate breaking news in tweets\nwithout links. (Here, for example, is an example of a Leading\nReport tweet: “BREAKING: Iran has halted direct talks with\nthe US, per WSJ.” They’re sometimes referred to as\nengagement-maxing accounts.
\n\nThese charts make it pretty clear that links in tweets hurt\nengagement. The connection was so apparent in my analysis that a\ngraph including all 18 publishers is almost unreadable: The\ntraditional, link-loving publishers are clustered in the bottom\nleft corner (lots of links, little engagement) in a nearly\nindistinguishable mass of bubbles, no matter how large their\nfollowings are.
\n
Musk’s Twitter/X is not an aggregator for news. It’s a walled garden. But the type of garden where you need to keep your eyes open and your hand on your wallet. Sometimes it’s fun to visit a seedy neighborhood. But let’s not pretend it isn’t a seedy neighborhood just because, long ago, it used to be nice.
\n\nLink: niemanlab.org/2026/04/do-links-hurt-news-publishers-on…
\n" }, { "title" : "Elon Musk’s X Is a Freak Show", "date_published" : "2026-06-05T20:24:58Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-05T20:32:32Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/musk-x-freak-show", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/musk-x-freak-show", "external_url" : "https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNate Silver, back in April, under the headline “Social Media Is Turning Into a Freak Show”, where by “social media” he mostly discusses Twitter/X:
\n\n\n\n\nBut what does that remaining traffic consist of? I recently came\nacross a bubble chart depicting the Twitter accounts that\nhad received the most “engagement” in February 2026. It was\ndepressing: most of the top accounts were extremely low-quality\nand highly partisan. I hadn’t even heard of many of them and only\nfollow a handful of the top accounts. So I tracked down the\noriginal data myself and, with help from Claude, made my\nown improved version of the chart. Here, voilà, are the Twitter\naccounts with the most engagement so far in 2026:
\n\n\n\nIt’s not hard to notice that Twitter has become extremely\nright-leaning. But I’d argue there’s an equally important trend:\nthe top accounts are of incredibly low quality. Elon, with the\nalgorithmic boost he built in for himself, is at the eye of\nthe storm, of course. But “Catturd” literally gets far more\nengagement than the New York Times, for instance.
\n
There’s a common argument from proponents of the Musk-era X that the only problem is that left-leaning people have abandoned the platform. That the X algorithm is a contest and if only right-leaning accounts are playing, of course they’re winning. This is nonsense. The whole thing is rigged. Elon Musk’s outsized prominence as the most-engaged-with account is proof of that. Twitter existed for 16 years before Musk bought it. He wasn’t even close to the biggest account during that era. Then he bought it. Now his account is the biggest.
\n\nAs Silver’s data analysis shows, Musk’s X is not just dominated by right-wing accounts, it’s dominated by “who the hell is that?” right-wing slop accounts.
\n\nThe only way not to lose a rigged game is to refuse to play. X is still a thing. A lot of people, companies, and organizations still post there — treat it like their blogs — exclusively. I still wind up linking to posts on X because that’s where they are. That’s a whole separate discussion. But anyone who’s trying to “compete” there with subject matter that is even vaguely political has no chance of success unless what they’re posting is what Elon Musk wants to see promoted. It’s not like his thumb is on the scale, it’s like an anvil is on the scale. The conundrum is that there are still a lot interesting people posting interesting things there.
\n\nLink: natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show
\n" }, { "title" : "Checking in on Perplexity", "date_published" : "2026-06-05T15:26:29Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-05T15:26:30Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/checking-in-on-perplexity", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/05/checking-in-on-perplexity", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nYours truly, last August:
\n\n\n\n\nI can’t see why Apple would want to get involved with a company\nlike this though. Gurman’s report makes it sound like his sources\nare inside Apple, but man, this “Apple + Perplexity” thing feels\nmore like something Perplexity would be seeding than one that\nApple executives would be leaking.
\n
Perplexity is still occasionally in the news (often not in good ways), but it seems to me they’ve slipped into the “afterthought” tier of AI startups — which is exactly why they started leaning into clownish stunts last year. Everyone who previously suggested Apple should — or even might — buy them has gone silent.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors…
\n" }, { "title" : "Some People Rooted for The Empire in ‘Star Wars’, Too", "date_published" : "2026-06-05T00:43:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-05T00:43:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/some-people-rooted-for-the-empire", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/some-people-rooted-for-the-empire", "external_url" : "https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/06/03/cbs-fires-scott-pelley-after-trying-very-hard-to-get-fired-n3815553", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nEd Morrissey, writing for Hot Air, thinks Scott Pelley got what he deserved and Bari Weiss is doing a good job running CBS News:
\n\n\n\n\nAnd Pelley forgot the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the\nrules. Instead, Pelley convinced himself of his own virtue and\ntorched his own position — and if Bilton’s letter is accurate, in\nas mean-spirited and conceited a manner as possible. Pelley could\nhave chosen a dignified resignation under protest, but instead\npulled a power move in an attempt to intimidate Bilton, Weiss, and\nEllison, only to discover that no one feared his absence. In fact,\nthey’re probably happy to cut him loose.
\n\nThere’s always at least one person in these situations who\nthinks they’re untouchable. A wise executive knows to start by\nmaking an example of that person, and then see how many other\npeople think they’re indispensable. It’s not as if TV news jobs\nare expanding these days, after all. Pelley’s going to find out\nthe hard way that no one’s paying $5 million a year to emote into\na camera from other people’s copy.
\n
It doesn’t even enter this man’s little mind that Pelley wasn’t concerned about his job, wasn’t concerned about his salary, but was concerned only with the integrity of the institution to which he’d committed decades of his career, and that he saw as his duty the need to stand up for his remaining and former colleagues. That Pelley himself has integrity. To the Trump lickspittles, everything is performative. They don’t just lack integrity, they don’t believe integrity is real.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Scott Pelley story to me is a lesson in how if you work hard\nenough in your career to get Fuck You Money, the real reward is\nthe day you need to say it, you can.
\n
Link: hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/06/03/cbs-fires-scott-pelley…
\n" }, { "title" : "The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2026: Tuesday in San Jose", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T22:05:05Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T22:50:57Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-talk-show-live-tickets-2026", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-talk-show-live-tickets-2026", "external_url" : "https://ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLocation: The California Theatre, San Jose
\nShowtime: Tuesday, 9 June 2026, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
\nSpecial Guest(s): For sure
\nPrice: $45
The annual live audience episode of The Talk Show during the week of WWDC. If you can make it, you should come. You’ll even enjoy the prelude, mingling with fellow DF readers and listeners.
\n\nLink: ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026
\n" }, { "title" : "‘The Insider’", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T20:42:35Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T20:42:36Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-insider", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-insider", "external_url" : "https://letterboxd.com/film/the-insider/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAll this Sturm und Drang surrounding 60 Minutes has me thinking about a re-watch of The Insider, Michael Mann’s great 1999 movie. Letterboxd’s synopsis:\n“A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.” It’s a great movie, and feels apt AF at the moment. Here’s the original segment on 60 Minutes, which ran an entire half hour.
\n\nWhat’s going on today is like if — instead of getting shady, threatening, and litigious — the tobacco companies had just purchased CBS, purged the staff at 60 Minutes, and hired a bunch of pro-cigarette stooges to replace them.
\n\nLink: letterboxd.com/film/the-insider/
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Microsoft and OpenAI Broke Up — Now They’re Ready to Fight’", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T20:25:27Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T22:35:40Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/microsoft-openai", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/microsoft-openai", "external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/942242/microsoft-build-ai-agents-openai-competition?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjdiRHFjMlJadmgiLCJwIjoiL2FpLWFydGlmaWNpYWwtaW50ZWxsaWdlbmNlLzk0MjI0Mi9taWNyb3NvZnQtYnVpbGQtYWktYWdlbnRzLW9wZW5haS1jb21wZXRpdGlvbiIsImV4cCI6MTc4MTAzNjQ2OSwiaWF0IjoxNzgwNjA0NDY5fQ.jP0KO9OVCO-fGkk1Utt0NIEn97JWaI8zs0zhjf2V2MQ", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nHayden Field and Tom Warren, writing for The Verge (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nThis year’s Build had the vibe of a freshly single divorcée\nposting a thirst trap on Instagram. “It’s always fun to be at\ndeveloper conferences in times of great change,” Microsoft CEO\nSatya Nadella said onstage Tuesday, adding that events like this\nare about “coming to grips with the new opportunity.”
\n\nAI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an interview with The Verge, put it\neven more bluntly.
\n\n“The goal is to prove that we can become one of the top four labs\nin the world,” Suleyman said. “There’s three labs that matter,\nGoogle DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. We are not one of them at\nthe moment, and that’s always been my intention. It’s why I came\nhere. I want to build the very best frontier models in the world,\nfully multimodal, and in order to do that, we have to prove that\nwe can do everything that we need to from the ground up, and we’re\nnot just going to take from others.”
\n
Refreshingly blunt.
\n\nBut hasn’t that been Microsoft’s plan for Bing since it was announced in 2009? I mean I guess you can say that Bing is one of the top four search engines in the world. Maybe you can even say it’s one of the top two. But it’s irrelevant and uncompetitive with Google Search.
\n\nLink: theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/942242/microsoft…
\n" }, { "title" : "Lingon and Lingon Pro 10", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T18:43:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T18:44:13Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/lingon", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/lingon", "external_url" : "https://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nPeter Borg:
\n\n\n\n\nLingon makes scheduling apps, scripts, shortcuts, and commands\nfeel simple. Create a task in minutes, run it on a schedule, and\nstay in control.
\n\nLingon helps you run whatever you want whenever you want without\nliving in Terminal. Schedule apps, scripts, shortcuts, and\ncommands with a clear, friendly UI.
\n\nRun tasks at specific times, on intervals or at login. Optional\nnotifications make it easy to keep control.
\n\nTwo separate apps. Lingon is the simpler Mac App Store version and\nfree to use, while Lingon Pro is the advanced one-time purchase\nwith extra power.
\n
Lingon and Lingon Pro are great apps. I’ve been meaning to recommend them for a while.
\n\nBack in 2023 I wrote about a problem I was having with Maestral, the incredible “works like Dropbox in the old days” open-source Dropbox client, where Maestral would just silently crash once in a while and I wouldn’t notice for a while. Then I would notice, manually re-launch Maestral, and have to wait while Maestral synced. Or, worse, I’d put a podcast recording in a shared folder and walk away from my computer, and my editor would never get the file because Maestral wasn’t running. My write-up described how I solved the problem with a Keyboard Maestro macro that runs once an hour — it checks if Maestral is running, and if it isn’t, launches it (and writes to a log, to satisfy my own curiosity). Borg wrote to me after I posted that and — very politely — explained that Lingon would make that much simpler.
\n\nIn addition to creating your own scripts and rules that run periodically, Lingon is great for inspecting all the login items and background agents on your system — whether they’re from Apple or third parties. Poking around at everything Google Gemini installed is what made me think to recommend Lingon today. At the very least you should install the free regular version. It’s just a great Mac utility from a great Mac developer. There’s nothing else like it.
\n\nLink: peterborgapps.com/lingon/
\n" }, { "title" : "Remember When Chrome Went Bad on MacOS?", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T18:10:19Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T22:44:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/remember-when-chrome-went-bad-on-macos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/remember-when-chrome-went-bad-on-macos", "external_url" : "https://chromeisbad.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLoren Brichter, back in 2020:
\n\n\n\n\nShort story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on\nyour computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive\nunexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process)[1], and\nmade my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t running.\nDeleting Chrome and Keystone made my computer way, way faster,\nall the time.
\n\nLong story: I noticed my brand new 16” MacBook Pro started acting\nsluggishly doing even trivial things like scrolling. Activity\nMonitor showed nothing from Google using the CPU, but\nWindowServer was taking ~80%, which is abnormally high (it\nshould use < 10% normally).
\n\nDoing all the normal things (quitting apps, logging out other\nusers, restarting, zapping PRAM/SMC, etc) did nothing, then I\nremembered I had installed Chrome a while back to test a website.
\n\nI deleted Chrome, and noticed Keystone while deleting some of\nChrome’s other preferences and caches. I deleted everything from\nGoogle I could find, restarted the computer, and it was like\nnight-and-day. Everything was instantly and noticeably faster,\nand WindowServer CPU was well under 10% again.
\n
Not all Mac users, but many, found that just having Chrome installed slowed down their Macs dramatically. Completely uninstalling Chrome — and its pernicious background agents — solved the problem. This years-old “Chrome Is Bad” saga came to mind when I wrote about Google’s Gemini Mac app’s background agents.
\n\nIt seems as though Google eventually fixed these Chrome bugs — or Apple changed something in a MacOS update that fixed the bugs for them — but I’ve never seen a full explanation of the problem and eventual solution. Does anyone know what happened here?
\n\nThe main point is it never should have happened in the first place. A third-party app should just be a third-party app — not add components to your system software just so it can update itself when it isn’t running. Background agents and extensions are sometimes necessary to the functionality of a product. Checking for software updates to a browser or AI chatbot, when those apps aren’t running, is not necessary. The golden rule applies: imagine if every app on your system installed its own background agent to check for software updates. Chrome is a popular browser on the Mac, but it’s just a web browser. Other web browsers do just fine checking for updates from the browser itself when they’re running. If the user is actually using an app regularly, it’ll get plenty of chances to check for updates when it’s running. If the user isn’t regularly using an app, why in the world should that seldom-used app have software running all the time in the background?
\n\nThis sort of chaos is why Apple keeps iOS locked down. There are no third-party login items on iOS that run in the background — let alone ones with no option to disable. No third-party app can do anything that causes the iOS window manager to consume 80 percent of the CPU while ostensibly idle. There are obviously trade-offs here. I rely on a Mac for my workstation because the Mac gives me the power to potentially shoot myself in the foot. But one major reason why iOS is an order of magnitude more popular than MacOS is because you cannot shoot yourself in the foot with it, even though that means you can’t use it to do things that would require that power.
\n\nLink: chromeisbad.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "Google’s Gemini Mac App Is Native, in a Distinctly Google Way, But Annoyingly Presumptuous", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T17:29:26Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T18:20:44Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/google-gemini-mac", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/google-gemini-mac", "external_url" : "https://gemini.google/mac/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nTwo months ago Google launched a new native Mac app for Gemini. I’ve been trying it, on and off, since. It’s ... not bad. Certainly better than Claude’s Electron shitbox. But the Gemini app isn’t all that good, either. I’m sticking with ChatGPT, which remains far and away the best native Mac client to an LLM. (And ChatGPT is not that great of a Mac app — it’s just the closest to good of the bunch.)
\n\nThe thing that really turns me off about the Gemini Mac app is Google’s gall. The Gemini app installs a background helper named “GeminiAppLauncher” in your login items. It also installs “GoogleUpdater” as a process with the privilege to launch in the background whenever it wants. Gemini never asks for permission to install either of these, and, most arrogantly, if you, as an informed user, remove either of them, the Gemini app silently adds them back. There is no setting in Gemini to disable this. There’s a mindset from some big companies that your system is theirs to play with at the system software level. Fuck that. Michael Tsai’s post on the Gemini Mac app links to this thread on MacRumors regarding this pernicious auto-installed and auto-reinstalled login item. Here’s another on Reddit.
\n\nGoogle’s approach to its Mac software is disrespectful and entitled.
\n\nI’d have been happy to keep the Gemini app installed if it just sat in my Applications folder when I wasn’t using it. But it doesn’t, and Google shows no signs of caring, so I just deleted it and uninstalled its background launch agents (in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/). Feels great, like I took a much needed shower.
(Sidenote: The Gemini Mac app is a native Mac app, but it is ... weird. Gus Mueller poked around at it and found that it’s the product of a Java-to-Objective-C converter that Google made, and much of it was originally written for Android.)
\n\nLink: gemini.google/mac/
\n" }, { "title" : "The AI-Driven Resurgence of Native Mac App Development", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T13:43:26Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T13:47:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-ai-driven-resurgence-of-mac-app-development", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/04/the-ai-driven-resurgence-of-mac-app-development", "external_url" : "https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/06/road-to-wwdc-2026-whats-a-developer/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJason Snell at Six Colors, looking ahead to WWDC next week:
\n\n\n\n\nThese days, I’m getting emails pitching me for an endless stream\nof new Mac apps. It’s quite remarkable because there was a\nperiod five or ten years ago when it seemed like all app\ndevelopment on Apple’s platforms was focused on iOS. Even more\ninteresting, these are all indie Mac apps that seem to be built\nusing native Mac frameworks, not the product of big corporations\nthat are just rolling their cross-platform development system\nout everywhere. These apps seem to have a point of view and are\nfocused on the Mac.
\n\nOf course, it’s happening because of AI. [...]
\n\nMac users — some of them developers, some of them people who have\nnever written software in their lives — are building apps that\nfulfill their imaginations.
\n\nWe now live in an era where, if you can dream an app, you can\nprobably build it. Especially Mac utilities. And who cares more\nabout native Mac software than Mac users? Certainly not those\ncompanies that gave up on Mac development and focused all their\nenergies on giant cross-platform code bases to attract venture\ninvestment and big payouts.
\n
There are pros and cons to everything, but on the whole, AI-assisted programming has rejuvenated Mac development. It wasn’t moribund, but it was stagnant. And stagnation is the first step toward decline. Now it’s resurgent, and that’s a fun thing to see. And, I think, genuinely important for the future of the platform. I’ve been concerned for years that the biggest problem the Mac faces is that so many new apps for the platform weren’t Mac apps. The Mac has never faced a decline in popularity, but truly native Mac application development (and the skills) did. Now it’s turning around. Mac users are thirsty for Mac apps, and with AI, they can quench their own thirst and tell the dullards promulgating Electron bundles to pound sand.
\n\n(And Snell, it turns out, has joined the party.)
\n\nLink: sixcolors.com/post/2026/06/road-to-wwdc-2026-whats-a…
\n" }, { "title" : "Another Gem From the Annals of Nick Bilton Jackassery", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T02:26:50Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T02:26:50Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/another-gem-from-the-annals-of-nick-bilton-jackassery", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/another-gem-from-the-annals-of-nick-bilton-jackassery", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/20/bilton-pseudoscience", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI look forward to pseudoscience like this finally getting some airtime on 60 Minutes. For 58 long years the program has been hopelessly biased toward actual science.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/20/bilton-pseudoscience
\n" }, { "title" : "If There’s One Thing Nick Bilton Knows, It’s Television", "date_published" : "2026-06-04T02:23:25Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T20:18:40Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/nick-bilton-tv-genius", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/nick-bilton-tv-genius", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/27/bilton-itv", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBack in 2011, when he was a tech columnist at The New York Times, Nick Bilton figured out that Apple was soon going to launch an Apple branded-television set, with no remote control. You’d just talk to it. This made no sense of course, as I pointed out.
\n\nBilton closed his column thus:
\n\n\n\n\nThe company is now close enough that it could announce the product\nby late 2012, releasing it to consumers by 2013.
\n\nIt is coming though. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter\nof when.
\n
Maybe it’ll launch in time for Bilton’s first season at the helm of 60 Minutes this fall, with his all-new lineup of correspondents.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/27/bilton-itv
\n" }, { "title" : "Scott Pelley on Leaving ‘60 Minutes’: ‘Incompetence and Unprofessionalism in the New Management Have Wreaked Havoc’", "date_published" : "2026-06-03T23:19:28Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T00:56:53Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/pelley-statement", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/pelley-statement", "external_url" : "https://www.instagram.com/p/DZHlWAoG3_3/?img_index=1", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nScott Pelley, in a statement posted on Instagram (which I’ll quote in full, as the original is locked behind a dickwall if you’re not signed in to an Instagram account):
\n\n\n\n\nThere has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
\n\nThe Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in\nhistory. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every\nmajor online platform has extended its reach to countless millions\naround the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60\nMinutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
\n\n“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades\nbecause our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and\nhumanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to\nmy colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand\nenergetically into a new age of media technology while preserving\nthe values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network\nis casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of\nfavor with the Trump administration.
\n\nThe waste is heartbreaking.
\n\nLast month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior\nleadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly\nfired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood\nup for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of\npolitical bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
\n\nFor my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods\nand bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to\ninclude assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I\nhave managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.
\n\nRecently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents\nfor interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over\n60 Minutes interviews is not how honest journalism is done.\nFinally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new\nmanagement have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my\nstories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not\ngetting on the air at all.
\n\nAt 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the\nprogram that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions\nof viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have\nreceived to “keep up the good fight.” Most of my colleagues at CBS\nNews are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at\nthe top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no\nlonger recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I\nmust leave as well.
\n\nI depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion — a heart\nbrimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who\nencouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of\ntheir own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their\nideals are honored again — a day when sanity, competence, and\ncourage return.
\n
Link: instagram.com/p/DZHlWAoG3_3/?img_index=1
\n" }, { "title" : "The ‘60 Minutes’ Purge", "date_published" : "2026-06-03T21:32:52Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T20:44:18Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/the-60-minutes-purge", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/the-60-minutes-purge", "external_url" : "https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-news-and-stations/shows/60-minutes/talent/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nParamount’s “Press Express” page promoting 60 Minutes still lists all eight correspondents from the 2025–2026 season, the program’s 58th. (Perhaps they fired the person responsible for keeping the cast page up to date.) In the order they appear on Paramount’s listing:
\n\nA big part of the brand for 60 Minutes is that the show doesn’t change. Someone who last saw it 40 years ago would instantly recognize it today. There’s no silly fucking theme song. There’s no glossy set. There’s a ticking stopwatch, a logotype set in Microgramma/Eurostile, and correspondents sit against a black background. And correspondents measure their tenure not by years but by decades. Of the original hosts, Harry Reasoner was there for 23 years (and left the cast only upon his death at 68 in 1991), Dan Rather was there for 38 years, Mike Wallace for 40, and Morley Safer for 48. 48 years! Of the current hosts, Lesley Stahl has been there since 1991. I graduated high school that year.
\n\nIn just six months since David Ellison bought CBS and installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, they’ve fired or lost half their on-air talent, and of the four who remain, Wertheim and O’Donnell are only part-time (O’Donnell’s title is “CBS News senior correspondent”, not “60 Minutes correspondent”), Whitaker is 74 years old, and Stahl is 84.
\n\nBehind the cameras, longtime executive producer Bill Owens resigned in protest of corporate interference a year ago, in the cowardly run-up to Ellison’s acquisition of CBS. Last week Weiss fired Owens’s successor, Tanya Simon, who had been with the program for 30 years, replacing her with Nick Bilton, who not only had never worked at 60 Minutes, but has never worked in TV news period. Weiss also fired executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, who’d been at the show for 28 years.
\n\nIt seems untenable for Stahl or Whitaker to remain on the show. Pelley called it what it was in Bilton’s ham-fisted staff meeting Monday: the murder of the institution.
\n\nLink: paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-news-and-stations/shows/60…
\n" }, { "title" : "CBS News Fires Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’", "date_published" : "2026-06-03T19:49:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-03T19:50:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/cbs-news-fires-scott-pelley", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/cbs-news-fires-scott-pelley", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/business/media/scott-pelley-cbs-bari-weiss.html", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBenjamin Mullin and Michael M. Grynbaum:
\n\n\n\n\nIn a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The\nNew York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been\n“terminated for cause effective immediately.”
\n
The letter is a must-read. No summary of it can capture just how pathetic a man Nick Bilton is. He disputes nothing Pelley said in the Monday staff meeting, and firing Pelley proves that Pelley was exactly right.
\n\n\n\n\nMr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly\nafter he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to “60\nMinutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.
\n\n“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have\nbeen in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine\nmultiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family\nbecause of my devotion to the broadcast.” [...]
\n\nEarlier on Tuesday, Mr. Pelley sent a statement to The Times that\nassailed the new leadership of CBS News, writing that\n“incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have\nwreaked havoc” at the network.” He added, “The collapse of values\nat the top has become untenable.” Mr. Pelley also wrote that\nsenior managers at CBS News had pressured him to insert bias into\nstories for “60 Minutes” this past season, though he did not\nprovide details about specific segments.
\n
I look forward to hearing those segment-specific details. It’s not hard to guess the direction that bias went.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/06/02/business/media/scott-pelley-cbs-bari…
\n" }, { "title" : "The Underworld Market to Remove the Recording Indicator Light on Meta Glasses", "date_published" : "2026-06-03T19:39:13Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-03T19:39:14Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/the-underworld-market-to-remove-the-recording-indicator-light-on-meta-glasses", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/03/the-underworld-market-to-remove-the-recording-indicator-light-on-meta-glasses", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaJSPeJmqis", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJoanna Stern, on YouTube:
\n\n\n\n\nPeople across the country are offering a service on Facebook\nMarketplace to disable the recording light on Ray-Ban Meta\nglasses. They call it “Stealth Mode.” Joanna paid $100 for the\nmodification and went inside the growing business of turning smart\nglasses into covert cameras. She investigates who is doing it,\nwhether it’s legal and what some are doing to try and stop it.
\n
Of course there’s a market for this. But the true chef’s kiss is that the market to find people who offer the service is on ... Facebook Marketplace. Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=EaJSPeJmqis
\n" }, { "title" : "Meta Reportedly Has a Slew of New Smart Glasses Planned for This Year", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T21:54:43Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T21:54:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/meta-glasses-this-year", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/meta-glasses-this-year", "external_url" : "https://gizmodo.com/meta-has-a-ridiculous-amount-of-smart-glasses-planned-for-this-year-2000765741", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJames Pero, summarizing for Gizmodo this paywalled report by Jyoti Mann for The Information:
\n\n\n\n\nBut, wait, there’s more: in addition to the fall releases, The\nInformation reports that Meta also has a pair slated for December,\ncodenamed “Mojito VIP.” There are also two prototypes being tested\nin the fall, according to the report, including one called\n“Artemis” and another called “SSG,” which is short for\n“supersensing glasses.”
\n\nThe Information previously reported that the “supersensing”\npair would have always-on cameras capable of looking at your\nsurroundings without you having to prompt the voice assistant or\nactivate the camera with a button. The idea here is that, with a\nconstant stream of visual information, the smart glasses could be\na kind of ambient virtual assistant that remembers where you left\nyour keys or other vision-based reminders.
\n
Spitball: Meta’s entire business is predicated on knowing as much about people as possible. Their interest in building out a virtual “metaverse” world was motivated by the fact they could track everything people do, see, say, and hear there. That didn’t play out so they’re pivoting to building out devices that will let them track everything people do, see, say, and hear in the real world.
\n\nLink: gizmodo.com/meta-has-a-ridiculous-amount-of-smart-glasses…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple, the Anti-‘Metaverse’ VR Company", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T20:48:08Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T20:48:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/apple-the-anti-metaverse-vr-company", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/apple-the-anti-metaverse-vr-company", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/meta_says_fuck_that_metaverse_shit", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nOne more bit of “metaverse fever dream” follow-up. The one company in the field that Nick Heer doesn’t mention is Apple, makers of the best-known (albeit not best-selling) virtual reality headset. Think and say what you want about the Vision platform (I still think it’s the first inning of a long game), but no one at Apple ever once gave a hint of endorsing “metaverse” hype. In fact, as I’ve noted before, at a 2022 WSJ event, seven months before Vision Pro was announced and over a year before it was released, Joanna Stern asked Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi:
\n\n\n\n\nStern: You have to finish this sentence, both of you. The\nmetaverse is...
\n\nJoz: A word I’ll never use.
\n
“Fever dream” is right.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/2025/12/meta_says_fuck_that_metaverse…
\n" }, { "title" : "The Metaverse Was Snake Oil for Isolation", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T20:42:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-04T20:49:52Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/the-metaverse-was-snake-oil-for-isolation", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/the-metaverse-was-snake-oil-for-isolation", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/the-metaverse-fever-dream", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nA follow-up point from my post yesterday linking to Nick Heer’s blockbuster “The Metaverse Fever Dream”. In particular, the connection Heer draws between the rise of “metaverse” hype and the pandemic.
\n\nI always sort of knew that metaverse hype roughly coincided with the Covid lockdown and our collective period of isolation and loneliness, a year-plus stretch when we relied mostly on computer platforms for nearly all socializing. But here in 2026 it’s now clear that metaverse hype and lockdown-induced isolation coincided precisely. They didn’t roughly overlap; they exactly overlapped. So much so that I’m now wondering if any of the “metaverse” hype would have happened if Covid hadn’t happened. Facebook still likely would’ve renamed itself, because they’d so poisoned the “Facebook” brand itself, but maybe to something other than “Meta”.
\n\nWe allowed the necessary initial emergency lockdown to extend indefinitely because it seemed like maybe we could get by for a long stretch using technology. The extended lockdown never would have happened if the Covid pandemic had broken out 20 or more years earlier. In 2020 and 2021, we could squint and say, sure, maybe kids can “go to school” via Zoom. We never would have kept all kids home for an entire year pre-Zoom. But the truth is Zoom “school” wasn’t much better than no school at all. Same for Zoom “work collaboration”, and Zoom “friend gatherings”. It was an illusion that today’s technology is even close to a sufficient substitute for being in each others’ physical presence. The siren call of “the metaverse” was exactly what we craved — technology that would be a sufficient substitute for real-world experiences and socializing. The best audience for snake oil are people with actual ailments. And during Covid, we were all ailing socially.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/the-metaverse-fever…
\n" }, { "title" : "Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T19:53:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T21:22:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/pelley-60-minutes-murder", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/pelley-60-minutes-murder", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/business/media/cbs-60-minutes-scott-pelley-nick-bilton.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nFA.TDGJ.HbBmlXuQWmcQ&smid=url-share", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMichael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nCBS News faced a fresh wave of turmoil on Monday after Scott\nPelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, laced into the show’s\nnewly hired executive producer during a staff meeting and accused\nBari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, of “murdering” the\nlongstanding Sunday news program.
\n\nIn an extraordinary exchange, Mr. Pelley, his newscaster’s\nbaritone sometimes shaking in anger, told Nick Bilton, the new\nexecutive producer, that he had “slender” qualifications for his\nnew job and questioned the network’s commitment to the future of\nthe program, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by\nThe New York Times.
\n\nThe 10 a.m. gathering, held at the program’s Midtown Manhattan\nheadquarters, was intended as a formal introduction to Mr. Bilton,\na tech journalist and filmmaker who was appointed last week as\npart of a major shake-up at “60 Minutes.” CBS fired Tanya Simon,\nthe previous executive producer, and her deputy, along with Sharyn\nAlfonsi and Cecilia Vega, two of the show’s correspondents — an\nevent that Mr. Pelley referred to as “Black Thursday.”
\n
It’s worth noting that the night before the firings, 60 Minutes won two news Emmys. It’s even more worth noting that 60 Minutes’s TV ratings were up 9 percent year-over-year, and digital video views doubled. In both quality and popularity, the show is thriving, not struggling. (See also: The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was, by far, the top-rated late night talk show.)
\n\n\n\n\n“Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, OK?” Mr. Bilton said,\nsaying the show had to adapt. “Bari loves this institution,” he\nadded. “She loves ’60 Minutes.’”
\n\nAt that, Mr. Pelley interrupted.
\n\n“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” the correspondent said. “She does\nnot love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been\ndoing exactly that.”
\n\nMr. Pelley added: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have\nslender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made\nat the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic, so why should we\nexpect that any of this is going to be any better?”
\n
Oof.
\n\nOliver Darcy obtained a recording of the entire Bilton-Pelley exchange, and transcribed much of it, but it’s behind the (worth it!) Status paywall.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/06/01/business/media/cbs-60-minutes-scott…
\n" }, { "title" : "Three Ways to Get Paid", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T16:10:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T16:10:25Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/zweig-three-ways-to-get-paid", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/zweig-three-ways-to-get-paid", "external_url" : "https://jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJason Zweig, back in 2018:
\n\n\n\n\nMy father, who died in 1981, was an inexhaustible font of\nwisdom and wit. I don’t know when he told me this particular\nthree-part rule, but I’ve never forgotten it. I tweeted it\nthree years ago, but people keep asking for it in one place, so\nhere it is.
\n\nThere are three ways to make a living:
\n\n\n
\n\n- \n
Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
- \n
Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a\nliving.
- \n
Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go\nbroke.
The rest is commentary.
\n
Pairs well with Om Malik’s remarkable line about the success of “the grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things” in his “We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World” essay that I linked to yesterday.
\n\nLink: jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/
\n" }, { "title" : "The First-Time-Buyer-Discount Dickover Scheme", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T15:08:12Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T15:56:30Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/blueball-dickovers", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/02/blueball-dickovers", "external_url" : "https://x.com/usgraphics/status/2060559523585355986", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNeil Panchal, on Twitter/X (XCancel link):
\n\n\n\n\nOf all the dickovers, the dickover that blueballs you with some\nfirst-time buyer incentive. “Sign up and get 10% discount, new\naccounts only”, the dickover boasts.
\n\nNever understood why you’d ever penalize returning customers with\na dickover, blue-balling them with 10% off teaser that they’re\nineligible for. wtf?
\n\nAnd for first time buyers, they’d always feel left out if they\ndon’t shove their email address in the dickover. The choice is\nan illusion with a penalty of 10%. But wait… there’s more! You\nonly get a discount code if you, after clicking the confirmation\nemail link, also sign up for their SMS marketing. You just got\ndouble dicked.
\n
I fell for this racket once, albeit with my eyes open. Last year I bought a cap from New Era’s website. They offered me some sort of discount for giving them my email address. I knew they were going to get my email anyway because I was going to buy the hat, so I figured why not. Only then — exactly as Panchal describes — did they say I also needed to give them my phone number and grant permission to text me marketing messages. Now I was pissed. I did it anyway, just to see what happened (and get the discount). As soon as I bought the hat, discount applied, I rescinded their permission to send me text messages and marketing emails. (They had already texted me like two marketing messages, in addition to the ones confirming my phone number.) Overall I’d have rather paid a few more dollars than go through the hassle, which is why my standard operating procedure is to decline all such entreaties. A real discount is just offering a lower price. Anything else is a scam of some sort.
\n\nBut the real problem is that it completely soured my impression of New Era. I am far less likely to purchase from them again. I will eventually buy a New Era cap again — their actual products are excellent, and they are the exclusive maker of official MLB on-field caps — but if I can buy it elsewhere, I will. I’ll go out of my way to avoid buying direct from New Era for the rest of my life.
\n\nThe marketing shitbirds who press for these schemes — and insist on adding dickovers and dickbars to websites — do so by pointing to data that shows that they do convert some number of users. “It works” they claim, pointing to data. What doesn’t show up in their data are interactions like mine. They don’t have analytics that measure that I now consider their website an antagonist to avoid at all costs.
\n\nLink: x.com/usgraphics/status/2060559523585355986
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] Mux — Video for Developers", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T01:45:43Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T01:45:44Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/06/mux_video_for_developers", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/06/mux_video_for_developers", "external_url" : "https://www.mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nMux is what developers reach for when they need to do more with video. Video files are packed with data and context waiting to be unlocked.
\n\nMux Robots are AI workflows that unlock that data inside your video for summarization, caption translation, moderation, and more. Configure once and your workflows run automatically on new uploads.
\n\nMux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Synthesia. Start building for free. Use code FIREBALL at signup for an extra $50 credit.
\n\nLink: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF
\n" }, { "title" : "‘The Metaverse Fever Dream’", "date_published" : "2026-06-02T00:24:39Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-02T20:43:16Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/the-metaverse-fever-dream", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/the-metaverse-fever-dream", "external_url" : "https://pxlnv.com/blog/metaverse-fever-dream/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNick Heer, at Pixel Envy, last week published a remarkable essay surveying — with copious receipts — the rise and fall of “metaverse” hype:
\n\n\n\n\nThe obsession with the metaverse seems to have solidified in\nSilicon Valley after Matthew Ball published an essay in\nJanuary 2020 in which he forecasted that, at the very least…
\n\n\n\n\n…it is likely to produce trillions in value as a new computing\nplatform or content medium. But in its full vision, the Metaverse\nbecomes the gateway to most digital experiences, a key component\nof all physical ones, and the next great labor platform. [...]
\nBall published this essay with darkly fortuitous timing. A week\nearlier, Chinese health authorities had isolated a new strain of\ncoronavirus aggressively spreading in Wuhan; a day before, they\npublished its genetic sequence. Within a couple of\nmonths, the world had turned upside down and many of us were\nsuddenly spending our days in a space that felt more virtual than\nphysical. We may have only been working from home — or, at least,\nthose of us who had the option and were not laid off — and\nsocializing over Zoom, all while remembering the last concert we\nwent to or the last time we ate a meal in a restaurant.
\n
Just a tremendous piece of writing and reporting from Heer. What a pile of horseshit “the metaverse” as promulgated by Zuckerberg was. To call what Heer has assembled here, in a compelling narrative to boot, “comprehensive” is a vast understatement. These hucksters were selling a bill of goods and now they’re trying to whistle past their own hype:
\n\n\n\n\nAs for the futurists like Hackl, who confidently proclaimed the\nmetaverse was “for certain”, they have found an out thanks to its\nflexible definition. Jeff Barrett, of the Shorty Awards’ “It’s No\nFluke” podcast, published a glowing profile of “the Godmother of\nthe Metaverse” earlier this year under the headline “Why\nCathy Hackl Keeps Getting the Future Right”. “When enthusiasm\ncooled and narratives collapsed, many distanced themselves from\nthe space”, writes Barrett, noting with seeming approval that\n“Hackl did the opposite. She reframed it”. Many people — perhaps\neveryone, come to think of it — could predict the future if they\ngot to retcon their predictions to fit reality.
\n
Bravo.
\n\nFollow-up: “The Metaverse Was Snake Oil for Isolation”.
\n\nLink: pxlnv.com/blog/metaverse-fever-dream/
\n" }, { "title" : "‘If You Take the Weasel Job Then You Must Be the Weasel’", "date_published" : "2026-06-01T23:31:54Z", "date_modified" : "2026-06-01T23:31:54Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/weasel-job-60-minutes", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/01/weasel-job-60-minutes", "external_url" : "https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/if-you-take-the-weasel-job-then-you?r=qy6gq", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nHamilton Nolan, writing at How Things Work:
\n\n\n\n\nThere are only a few reasons why you might be hired for a\nprestigious job that you are obviously not qualified for. One is\n“they have recognized you for the genius that you are.” The urge\nto conclude that this is, in fact, the reason must be\noverwhelming, if you are the person in question. But this is\nrarely the explanation.
\n\nAnother possibility is “the person who hired you is a fucking\nidiot.” This happens. A number of current United States cabinet\nsecretaries got their jobs this way.
\n\nThe most likely reason, though — one that often overshadows the\nother ones — is, “you are willing to carry out the dirty and\ndistasteful things to come.” This is why weird hirings at the top\nalways provoke dread among all the other employees. Maybe you are\na hidden gem, sure, but Occam’s Razor says that you are probably\njust a hatchet man.
\n\nNick Bilton, a former tech writer for the New York Times and\nVanity Fair and maker of a few documentaries, was just hired as\nthe new head of 60 Minutes.
\n
Bilton tried to introduce himself to the (remaining) staff at 60 Minutes this morning and it did not go well.
\n\nLink: hamiltonnolan.com/p/if-you-take-the-weasel-job-then-you?r…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ What Is a Dickover?", "date_published" : "2026-05-29T20:58:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-31T22:58:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nPlease enjoy this article on its own webpage. Trust me.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "★ The Fonts of the U.S. Federal Courts", "date_published" : "2026-05-22T20:30:18Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T18:22:13Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_federal_courts", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_federal_courts", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThe 13 circuits of the U.S. federal courts of appeals operate with a fair amount of independence, including their typographic choices. I was reminded of this today while reading the aforelinked decision from the Ninth Circuit in Epic v. Apple, because the Ninth Circuit sets their decisions in Times New Roman — a font that came up back in December in the context of the Trump State Department.
\n\nLong argument short, Times New Roman isn’t bad, but it isn’t good. It is the median choice. But most of the circuit courts use it: the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh. It could be worse: the First circuit not only uses Courier New (the worst version of Courier, so of course it’s the one Microsoft shipped with Windows), but fully justifies their text — contrary to the nature of a monospaced font. (The Fourth circuit only recently switched from Courier New to Times New Roman — an upgrade, to be sure, but a disappointingly mediocre one.) It could be better: the Second and Seventh use Palatino. (Note how much better that Seventh Circuit decision looks than the Second’s, with its wider margins creating a narrower column of text.)
\n\nBut it can be much better. The Fifth Circuit was long typographically superior to its peers, using Century Schoolbook — a highly legible font with great tradition and the right vibe. But in 2020, the Fifth Circuit upgraded, switching to Equity, Matthew Butterick’s excellent type family (which, of course, is used throughout Butterick’s own web book, Typography for Lawyers). Here’s a before and after tweet noting the change. The results are typographically sublime (including improved margins).
\n\nThe gold standard is the U.S. Supreme Court, which uses Century Schoolbook. Yes, I just praised the Fifth Circuit’s change from Century Schoolbook to Equity as an upgrade, but tradition and consistency have their place. The Supreme Court’s typographic style has been stunningly consistent for — no pun intended — well over a century. (If only that were true of their recent decisions. Rimshot.) Here is last month’s Louisiana v. Callais decision — the gerrymandering / redistricting case. Here is 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. I’d give the nod to the older one, which made better use of proper small caps, but the overall consistency is obvious.
\n\nHere is the 2026 edition of the Rules of the Supreme Court. Not only does the Court use Century Schoolbook for its own decisions, it requires submissions to the Court to use the same (p. 44):
\n\n\n\n\nThe text of every booklet-format document, including any appendix\nthereto, shall be typeset in a Century family (e. g., Century\nExpanded, New Century Schoolbook, or Century Schoolbook) 12-point\ntype with 2-point or more leading between lines. Quotations in\nexcess of 50 words shall be indented. The typeface of footnotes\nshall be 10-point type with 2-point or more leading between lines.\nThe text of the document must appear on both sides of the page.
\n\nEvery booklet-format document shall be produced on paper that is\nopaque, unglazed, and not less than 60 pounds in weight, and\nshall have margins of at least three-fourths of an inch on all\nsides. The text field, including footnotes, may not exceed 4⅛\nby 7⅛ inches.
\n
Why the extra one-eighths of an inch instead of just 4 × 7? I don’t know. But 4⅛ × 7⅛ is exactly the size of the text field in the court’s own decisions.
\n\nNow compare the current 2026 rulebook to this edition printed in 1910 (with rules adopted in 1884). The consistency is striking — but, once again, the older version makes better use of small caps and just has a bit more vim and vigor to it. Just look at page 44, for example. It’s perfect. The current Court’s document formatters should aspire only to more closely ape the confidence and sturdiness of this older one. A century from now, U.S. Supreme Court decisions should look as similar to today’s as today’s do to those from a century ago.
\n\nThe various circuit courts using lesser typefaces, looser margins, and lazier formatting should follow the Fifth’s lead and get their shit together. Tuck your shirt in, comb your hair, straighten your tie, and pop a mint in your mouth. If you’re a United States federal court, your typographic style should reflect that.
\n\nBack in 2020, Butterick took a well-deserved victory lap when the Fifth Circuit adopted Equity.1 He quoted Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, a typography fan who spearheaded the restyling project, on its rationale. Willett wrote:
\n\n\n\n\n[Why] did the circuit devote finite judicial energy to swapping\ntypefaces and widening margins? Simple answer: Our job is not\njust to present clear opinions, but to present our opinions\nclearly. Getting the law right is, of course, our tip-top\npriority. Nothing matters more. ... But good enough is never good\nenough. Our work is consequential, impacting the lives and\nlivelihoods of real people walloped by real problems in the real\nworld. The stakes are high, and we must present our best opinion,\nnot merely a passable one. And that presentation begins before\nthe first word is ever read.
\n
In the very same post, Butterick sings the praises of the Apple Extended Keyboard II, and notes that he has several spares in reserve. I do keenly intend to take Butterick up on his standing offer to dine when next I’m in Los Angeles, but I worry that if we meet, we’ll trigger some sort of calamitous singularity of aligned taste. ↩︎
\nSteven Levy, writing for Wired last month after Apple’s CEO transition was announced, under the provocative headline “Apple’s Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product” (News+ link to get around Wired’s miserly paywall):
\n\n\n\n\nMuch more recently, I quizzed Ternus and global marketing\nhead Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, specifically its plans to\nget ahead of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowledged that AI is\n“an immense kind of inflection point,” but couched it as one of\nmany leaps that Apple has navigated. Each hit product — the Apple\nII, the Mac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, iPad — piggybacked on\na previous product. “We never think about shipping a technology,”\nhe said. “We want to ship amazing products, features, and\nexperiences, and we don’t want our customers to think about what\n[underlying] technology makes it possible. That’s the way we think\nabout AI.”
\n\nThat’s fine, but I look back to the mid-2000s when everybody was\nwaiting for Apple to come out with a phone. When Jobs finally\ndelivered in January 2007, the product defined the mobile era.\nIt’s a big ask for Ternus to do something similar for the AI age — but it’s an opportunity that must be seized. AI threatens to\ndisrupt the entire iPhone ecosystem. By the end of this decade,\nit’s unlikely that people will swipe on their phones to tap on\nUber or Lyft. They will just tell their always-on AI agent to get\nthem home. Or that agent will have already figured out where they\nneed to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a\nrequest. “There’s an app for that,” may be replaced by “Let the\nagent do that.”
\n
I’m a huge longtime Steven Levy fan, but this is nonsense. It’s hard to read this and not worry that he too has lost his mind to the AI snake-oil hypesters. What Ternus told him is exactly right. The Apple way is never to ship a technology. The iPod wasn’t about MP3 files. It wasn’t about 1.8-inch hard drives. It was about music. The iPhone did define the mobile era (which we’re still very much in), but Apple doesn’t need to capitalize on every single market the mobile era opened up. Social media is a defining component of the mobile era. It comprises the entirety of Meta’s value and a sizable slice of Google’s (via YouTube). Apple doesn’t have a social network business. It’s fine — because the way people consume and create social media is using their phones.
\n\nDoes AI “threaten to disrupt the entire iPhone ecosystem”? It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem nearly as likely to me as Levy asserts. Changing the iPhone ecosystem? Sure — that’s already true. Obviating the iPhone ecosystem? I don’t see it. Levy’s argument reminds me of the hype around “the cloud” when that first became a term. It’s so meaningless when used broadly (e.g. “Everything will soon be in the cloud”) that it could mean anything. It’s step #2 in the gnomes-stealing-underpants master plan.
\n\nThe idea that AI agents “will have already figured out where [we] need to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a request” strikes me as pure fever dream high-on-the-hype fantasy. I’m just going to step outside a restaurant when I’m done eating a meal and a ride-share is going to be there, waiting for me, without my having hailed it? Every time? And I’m going to find this pleasing, not creepy? And ride-share drivers are going to respond to all these requests, because the requests will never be wrong? And this is going to happen, somehow, without my carrying a phone with me? And this is going to happen in the next four years? I don’t think I’d want this even if it were plausible, but it doesn’t sound plausible.
\n\nActual products have to be real. Actual experiences have to rely on actual products. How exactly in Levy’s end-of-this-decade scenario will we tell our “always-on AI agent” to get us home? What microphone is listening to the command? What speaker is telling us the request was understood and acted upon? What screen do we look at to see how far away the hailed car is? I’d bet a pretty large sum of money that in 2030, when someone hails a ride-share vehicle to take them home, the most common product they’ll use to do that will be their phone. Whether they’re doing it via a verbal command issued to an “always-on AI agent” or good old tapping and swiping, it’ll be a phone.
\n\nIf you think that people will buy smaller devices to replace their phones, and use those to talk to “always-on AI agents” instead, you have to answer some questions. What company is the best in the world at making smaller-than-phone personal computing devices? What device will people use as their camera? What device will people use as their screen, for watching videos, playing games, texting, and (one hopes) reading? My answers to those three questions: Apple, phone, phone. Why would smaller devices — you know, like watches, earbuds, and, say, glasses — work independently rather than pair with the phone that you’re almost certainly still going to be carrying with you?
\n\nOnly a fool would argue that Apple can stand on the sidelines and ignore AI. It’s very different from, say, social media that way. Social media doesn’t pervade everything in technology. You can ignore social media as a user. (And you’re probably more productive, and happier, if you do.) A company can eschew social media as a business. AI, on the other hand, is pervasive. It can’t be ignored. But it’s just technology.
\n\nWireless networking is pervasive too. But Apple doesn’t have “a killer wireless networking product”.1 Wireless networking simply pervades everything Apple makes. I’m hard pressed to think of a single product Apple makes that doesn’t use some combination of Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, and proprietary wireless protocols. There was a time, not too long ago, when Apple didn’t make a single product with wireless connectivity. Now it’s pervasive in all their devices. That’s more what AI is going to be like. There’s not going to be one “killer AI device”. Everything is going to be an AI device, to some extent, just like how everything today is a wireless connectivity device, to some extent.
\n\nPostscript: “Existing Stakeholders Have a Say in the Future”.
\n\nAirPort qualified, arguably. But Apple walked away from it, alas. ↩︎
\nWindows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Microsoft has started beefing it up, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown support. Which still blows my mind.
\n\nNotepad++ is a longstanding open source (GPL) Windows text editor by Don Ho, which debuted back in 2003. Just adding “++” to the name might be misleading. The name implies that it’s like Microsoft’s Notepad plus a little more. But Notepad++ is in fact a wholly independent programming text editor, with a rich plugin library. It doesn’t resemble Microsoft’s Notepad much at all anymore. It’s over two decades old but remains quite popular. To some extent Notepad++ is sorta kinda the Windows peer to BBEdit.
\n\nNextpad++ is something new, from Andrey Letov. It’s a Mac port of the Notepad++ GPL code. It launched a few weeks ago under the name “Notepad++ for Mac”, but Letov had no right or permission to the name. That dispute has been settled, and Letov has renamed this project Nextpad++. The website’s About page has entire sections for “How Nextpad++ for Mac Was Built” and “Technology Stack”, and neither of those mentions AI, but this thing has to have been built using AI vibe-coding agents. That same About page also says the project only started on March 10, and the 1.0 version (under the defunct “Notepad++ for Mac” name) shipped just a few weeks after that. Something of the scope of this port couldn’t happen at that pace without AI. Update: On the Author page, not the About page, it states, “multi-agent AI development workflows are what make a one-person project at this scale practical.” Possible, sure, but I wouldn’t call this practical.
\n\nNextpad++ feels like a fever dream. Like what Mac apps would be if the Nazis had won WWII. Look, there are all sorts of foreign apps on the Mac. Electron apps. Apps ported with Wine. Web apps running in browser tabs or saved to the Dock. The curious new generation of lean-and-mean apps that are, in a technical sense, “native”, but are decidedly not Mac-assed apps, like Zed and Tolaria. All those types of apps feel alien on MacOS. Like different species. They are apps for the Mac but aren’t Mac apps. The Mac, however, is welcoming to them all, like the Mos Eisley cantina. We do serve their kind here. Nextpad++ isn’t like that. It doesn’t feel like an alien. It feels like Vincent D’Onofrio’s alien-bug-in-human-skin character from Men in Black.
\n\nLetov’s website describes Nextpad++ as “A real Mac app, not a Wine wrapper: Objective-C++ on top of Scintilla and Cocoa, shipped as a Universal Binary for Apple Silicon (M1–M5) and Intel Macs.” Ostensibly that’s a good thing. The download is only 14 MB. But Nextpad++ looks and feels like something that should not exist. The promotional screenshots on the app’s own website show it with 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons. It closes document tabs on mousedown, not mouseup. Its default font is 10-point Courier New. This is a real dialog box. It offers four settings for font antialiasing — “Default”, “None”, “Antialiased”, and “LCD Optimized” — but the default is not “Default”. No human being would port a complex Windows app like Notepad++ to the Mac like this.
\n\nI’m not anti-AI. I’m very much intrigued by the whole incipient vibe-coding phenomenon. But this app feels unholy.
\n\n " } ] }![\n](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/06/hig-menu-item-icons.png\"){kind=link}
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![Just look at page 44](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/scotus-1910-rules-p-44.jpeg\"){kind=link}
![with 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/nextpad++.png\"){kind=link}
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![four settings for font antialiasing](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/nextpad-antialiasing.png\"){kind=link}