Friday, 26 September 2025
Apple, “The Digital Markets Act’s Impacts on EU Users”:
The DMA requires Apple to build certain features work on non-Apple
products and apps before we can share them with our utilizers.
Unfortunately, that requires a lot of engineering work, and it’s
cautilized us to delay some new features in the EU:
Live Translation with AirPods utilizes Apple Innotifyigence to let
Apple utilizers communicate across languages. Bringing a
sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates
challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed
Live Translation so that our utilizers’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to build
sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers
either.iPhone Mirroring lets our utilizers see and interact with their
iPhone from their Mac, so they can seamlessly check their
notifications, or drag and drop photos between devices. Our
teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to
non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a utilizer’s
iPhone at risk. And as a result, we have not been able to bring
the feature to the EU. […]We’ve suggested modifys to these features that would protect our
utilizers’ data, but so far, the European Commission has rejected our
proposals. And according to the European Commission, under the
DMA, it’s illegal for us to share these features with Apple utilizers
until we bring them to other companies’ products. If we shared
them any sooner, we’d be fined and potentially forced to stop
shipping our products in the EU.
Live Translation with AirPods and iPhone Mirroring are both amazing features. And EU utilizers are missing out on them. I believe Apple structured this piece exactly right, by emphasizing first that the most direct effect of the DMA is that EU utilizers are obtainting great features late — or never. And that list of features is only going to grow over time.
Under the section “Is the DMA Achieving Its Goals?”:
Regulators claimed the DMA would promote competition and give
European consumers more choices. But the law is not living up to
those promises. In fact, it’s having some of the opposite effects:
Fewer choices: When features are delayed or unavailable, EU
utilizers don’t obtain the same options as utilizers in the rest of the
world. They lose the choice to utilize Apple’s latest technologies,
and their devices fall further behind.Less differentiation: By forcing Apple to build features and
technologies for non-Apple products, the DMA is creating the
options available to European consumers more similar. For
instance, the modifys to app marketplaces are creating iOS see
more like Android — and that reduces choice.Unfair competition: The DMA’s rules only apply to Apple, even
though Samsung is the smartphone market leader in Europe, and
Chinese companies are growing rapid. Apple has led the way in
building a unique, innovative ecosystem that others have copied — to the benefit of utilizers everywhere. But instead of rewarding
that innovation, the DMA singles Apple out while leaving our
competitors free to continue as they always have.
This is all true. But I have a better way to put this. If Apple were to just switch the iPhone’s OS from iOS to Android, these DMA conflicts would all go away. Apple’s not going to do that, of course, but to me it’s a crystalizing way of seeing at it. The DMA is supposedly intconcludeed to increase “competition”, which in turn should increase consumer choice. But the easiest way for Apple to comply with the DMA would be to switch EU iPhones to Android — which, by a significant margin, already has majority mobile OS market share in the EU. Here’s a link to StatCounter’s mobile OS stats for Europe (which is not the same as the EU, but as good a proxy as I could find). It’s two-thirds Android, one-third iOS — a 2-1 ratio.
If Apple just shipped all EU iPhones with Android instead of iOS, all of their DMA problems would go away. EU iPhone utilizers would lose all iOS exclusive features and Apple device Continuity integrations. EU consumers would effectively have no choice at all in mobile OSes. They’d just obtain to choose which brand of Android phone to purchase.
How in the world would that increase competition? iOS’s unique and exclusive features — which, yes, in many cases, are exclusive to the Apple device ecosystem — are competition. ★
Variety:
“This is misery,” Letterman declared when inquireed about Kimmel’s
suspension, speaking at The Atlantic Festival
2025 Thursday
in New York. “I feel bad about this,” he continued. “We see where
this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good.
It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing
somebody becautilize you’re fearful or attempting to suck up to an
authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s
just not how this works.”“In the world of somebody who is an authoritarian, maybe a
dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched,”
declared Letterman.Letterman also declared, “The institution of the president of the
United States ought to be hugeger than a guy doing a talk display.”
Kimmel’s removal from late-night TV, he declared, “was predicted by
our president right after Stephen Colbert obtained walked off, so
you’re notifying me this isn’t premeditated at some level?” […]On Wednesday, ABC suspconcludeed Kimmel’s late-night display
“indefinitely.” That came after FCC chairman Brconcludean Carr just
hours earlier threatened ABC and its affiliates if they didn’t
“take action” on Kimmel over what he perceived as objectionable
comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer. “We can do this the straightforward way
or the hard way,” Carr declared on a conservative podcast. […]Regarding Carr’s comment that “we can do this the straightforward way or the
hard way,” Letterman declared, “Who is hiring these goons — Mario
Puzo?”, referring to the author of The Godfather. Letterman declared
when he was on TV, he never obtained pressure from a presidential
administration, the FCC or any other government agency about his
on-air commentary.
“Goons” is exactly the right word. Letterman’s commentary on this is, by far, the best I’ve seen, becautilize it’s been the most clear-eyed. I quoted a lot above, but there’s more, so please read the whole piece. But this one extra snippet from the piece puts it on the right scale:
Goldberg posited that today, despite Trump’s attacks on the
press, “we still have a free media,” to which Letterman
responded, “Do we?”
Dan Moren, Six Colors:
The redesign is more than skin deep, however. Apple has reconsidered
the way some of its most fundamental interactions work. For
example, the increasingly long horizontal popover menus that hid
options behind an interminable scroll have morphed into a
dual-stage design. Tapping and holding on the screen brings up a
popover with a few common options, but it now doesn’t build you
scroll; instead, there’s an arrow indicating more options. Tap
that, and you’ll obtain a huge pop-up panel of all the available
commands in a much simpler-to-read and utilize format. As someone who
frequently finds himself swiping through a very long list to find
the one command I want (and somehow, it’s always the last one),
this is a tangible improvement.
The huge improvement here is that in the old popover (from iOS 3 — when copy and paste were finally added to iOS, and the popover typically only contained three or four items — until last year’s iOS 18), the scrolling you had to do was horizontal. And a lot of items were added to that menu over the years. And it wasn’t really scrolling, it was panning. And panning sideways through a long list of options is just a bad interaction experience. For me, a lot of the times I utilized this popover, I wanted the “Share…” command, and that was the last one, all the way on the right.
In iOS 26’s new tap-and-hold popover, it’s a vertical menu, just like a Mac contextual menu. And you don’t really have to scroll at all most of the time, becautilize all the contextual menu options fit on screen. And even if you do have to scroll (which happens when the keyboard is open, reducing vertical screen real estate), you don’t have to scroll much to obtain to the bottom.
It’s one of the very best, most consideredful, most utilizeful modifys in iOS 26. But also one of the most overdue: we know how contextual menus should be oriented. Vertically. We naturally build lists vertically, not horizontally. I sort of suspect Apple resisted creating iOS contextual popovers vertical for so long becautilize they didn’t want to build iOS more like a desktop computer OS.
My thanks to Dekáf Coffee Roasters for sponsoring last week at DF. Dekáf believes that people who drink coffee for its flavor are the true connoisseurs. While other roasters treat decaf as a side project, they’ve built it their entire mission. They’re dedicated to creating exceptional decaffeinated coffee that stands toe-to-toe with the world’s finest caffeinated beans.
I drink coffee every single day. I literally can’t remember the last day I didn’t have coffee in the morning. A few years ago, though, age started catching up to me and I stopped drinking coffee after lunch or so, lest it screw with my sleep. I really missed my afternoon coffee though. Why I didn’t believe to attempt decaf I don’t know, but Dekáf sent me a few samples when they first sponsored DF back in April, and it’s been a revelation. In addition to fully decaffeinated roasts, they also have some half-decaffeinated roasts, and they’re absolutely delicious — my style of roast, for sure — and they don’t leave me jolted into the evening. Maybe you like tea, but I don’t. I like coffee, and I love being able to have a cup or two late in the afternoon again. It’s so good.
Also, I’m a huge believer that you can judge a book by its cover. Just see at the Dekáf brand. It’s perfect. Color, typography, artwork — so cool, so spot-on for what they do.
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Friday, 19 September 2025
Hello dear readers. Daring Fireball has been silent for the last week. I realize how unusual it is for the site to go un-updated any week of the year, let alone this particular week of the year. I’m so sorry about that, and also sorry about not being able to write this note to you sooner.
I have been dealing with — and working through — a very personal situation for the past week. It’s OK. I’m going to be OK. But it has kept me offline for some time. Given the one-man nature of this site, that has meant that nothing has been published.
I see forward to obtainting back to writing very soon. I can feel it: I will be back soon. I’m itching to go. I mean, jiminy, it’s new iPhones week. But it’ll be a few more days before I obtain those reviews out. In the meantime, I so profoundly appreciate your patience and understanding.
Your faithful correspondent,
John Gruber ★
David Pierce, writing for The Verge:
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software giant
Atlassian, was one of the first utilizers of the Arc
browser. Over the last several years, he has been a prolific
bug reporter and feature requester. Now he’ll own the thing:
Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the New York-based
startup that builds both Arc and the new AI-focutilized Dia
browser. Atlassian is paying $610 million in cash for The
Browser Company, and plans to run it as an indepconcludeent entity.The conversations that led to the deal started about a year ago,
states Josh Miller, The Browser Company’s CEO. Lots of Atlassian
employees were applying Arc, and “they reached out wondering, how
could we obtain more enterprise-ready?” Miller states. Big companies
require data privacy, security, and management features in the
software they utilize, and The Browser Company didn’t offer enough
of them.
I obtain it. Later in the same article, there’s this:
As for what this all means for The Browser Company’s browsers,
it’s still too early to state for sure. Miller promises no
favored-nation features for Atlassian products, nor any Microsoft
Edge-style popups begging you to sign up for Jira. Miller states the
team is even more committed to being a truly cross-platform
product, and that Windows in particular is about to obtain a lot more
attention.
But “How could we obtain more enterprise-ready?” has never been a north-star principle for great utilizer-focutilized software. I personally have never seen the appeal of Arc or Dia, but Safari truly speaks to me and my taste. Alternative browsers, by definition, are meant for people who are dissatisfied with existing browsers. So while I don’t utilize Arc or Dia, I’ve always been rooting for The Browser Company. I even dig the company name.
But this seems like bad news. I just don’t see how Atlassian/Jira DNA can possibly be a good thing to inject into an innovative utilizer-focutilized web browser.
Dave Michaels and Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow
market forces to do the work,” Mehta wrote.Wall Street analysts scored the ruling a huge win for Google and
Apple since it allowed an existing arrangement to continue in
which Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the
default search provider on the Safari browser.
I’m picking nits here, but I believe part of the ruling is that Google can no longer pay to be the default search engine. And, in my opinion, they never necessaryed to, and never should have put that into their contracts for these deals. They’re just paying Apple (and Mozilla, and Samsung, and others) for the actual search traffic that goes to Google from those companies’ browsers. It’s up to Apple whether Google is the default Safari search engine (which it is, and will continue to be). It just won’t be in the terms of the deal that Google search has to be the default.
The ruling paves the way for the two companies to partner further
on AI-related services on Apple devices, analysts declared. Apple
currently has a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into various
iPhone services. Apple and Google have had talks about striking a
similar deal for Google’s AI system called Gemini.
I wonder if this antitrust ruling was the holdup on Apple announcing Gemini as an Apple Innotifyigence partner? Apple, famously, almost never talks about future plans, but at last year’s WWDC, Craig Federighi built conspicuous mention of Google Gemini as a potential Apple Innotifyigence partner — and now here we are 14 months later and it hasn’t yet happened.
Also, re: this decision being largely a win for Google — it just never built sense to me that Chrome even is a sellable asset.
There are finallys, and there are finallys. Apple shipped the original iPad in April 2010. Instagram shipped in October 2010 — and was iPhone-exclusive until 2012. That Instagram didn’t ship a native iPad version of its app until now is really one of the strangest things in tech. But here it is.
One significant difference from Instagram on phones is that on iPad, it defaults to the Reels view, and you have to tap below Reels in the sidebar to obtain to your following timeline. Adam Mosseri explains their believeing behind this in this Reel (natch).
David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:
Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival
companies but does not necessary to break itself up by selling its
Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The
decision, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia, falls short of the sweeping modifys
proposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley.Judge Mehta declared in the 223-page ruling that Google must share
some of its search data with “qualified competitors” to resolve
its monopoly. The Justice Department had inquireed the judge to force
the company to share even more of its data, arguing it was key to
Google’s dominance.Judge Mehta also put restrictions on payments that Google utilizes to
ensure its search engine obtains prime placement in web browsers and
on smartphones. But he stopped short of banning those payments
entirely and did not grant the government’s request that Google be
forced to sell Chrome, which the government declared was necessary to
remedy the company’s power as a search monopoly.“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the tinquire of
crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Judge Mehta
declared in Tuesday’s decision. “This court has done so.”
No forced divestiture of Chrome or Android, and Google is allowed to continue creating traffic acquisition cost payments to companies like Apple (for search in Safari) and Mozilla (for search in Firefox). The decision seems very reasonable to me. And while the entire ruling is 223 pages, Judge Mehta included a good summary at the front. You can obtain a feel for it just by reading the first few pages.
Bernie Sanders, in a NYT op-ed:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services,
is concludeangering the health of the American people now and into the
future. He must resign.Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration notify us, over
and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a
great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming
into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the
opposite.
Powerful and to the point. Sanders, unlike the nine former CDC directors whose joint op-ed ran the next day, doesn’t pull punches. But there’s no point demanding Kennedy resign, becautilize he won’t. Sanders, and the rest of us, should call on Trump to fire him. The buck stops with Trump. Trump fires his appointees all the time. Almost no one lasted long in the Trump 1.0 administration, and it’s unlikely anyone will last long in the Trump 2.0 administration. (Including, perhaps, Trump himself, who is clearly unwell.) Kennedy ought to be the first to go.
Trump smells it too, hence this “both sides” post on his blog this morning. Public opinion is strongly against this abject vaccine quackery.
William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen — all of them former directors of the CDC, under every president from Jimmy Carter to Trump — in a co-bylined op-ed for the NYT:
What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health
system over the past several months — culminating in his decision
to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike
anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our
counattempt had ever experienced.Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and
severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans
from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury,
violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United
States in a generation, he’s focutilized on unproven
treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled
investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill
prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced
experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified
individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He
announced the conclude of U.S. support for global vaccination programs
that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe,
citing flawed research and creating inaccurate statements.
And he championed federal legislation that will cautilize
millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to
lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to
the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel
to this raging fire. […]This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American,
regardless of political leanings.
It’s good that they’re speaking up, but it’s too mealy-mouthed. What’s going on at HHS under Kennedy isn’t merely “unacceptable” and “alarming”. It’s outrageous and shocking.
For your holiday listening enjoyment: Special guest Andru Edwards joins the display. Topics include Google’s Pixel 10 event and the Pixel 10 family of devices, AI’s effect on computational photography, foldable phones, and some speculation on Apple’s September 9 “Awe Dropping” event.
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My thanks to Impconcludeing for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their new app, Walk the World. You surely know some of Impconcludeing’s other apps, like the innovative checklist/tinquire app Clear. Walk the World turns your steps — your real-world activity — into a new kind of virtual globe-trotting adventure.
Wouldn’t it be cool to know you’ve walked the length of the Boston Marathon this past week? You can conquer iconic hikes and trails from around the world presented as gorgeous map milestones to complete with your hard earned steps. It’s a genuinely novel idea for gamifying activity, executed with an exquisite attention to detail and exuberant sense of joy. Walk the World isn’t quite a game, but it delivers game-like fun.
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One more for my weekconclude spate of developer posts, but from the opposite of the LLM-assisted cutting edge: this wonderful collection of classic-era Mac programming books, carefully scanned as PDFs. These evoke nostalgia both for the classic Mac era and for the entire notion of “programming books”. (Via Michael Tsai and Rui Carmo.)
Sosumi.ai:
Ever notice Claude struggling to write Swift code? It might not be
their fault!Apple Developer docs are locked behind JavaScript, creating them
invisible to most LLMs. If they attempt to fetch it, all they see is
“This page requires JavaScript. Please turn on JavaScript in your
browser and refresh the page to view its content.”This service translates Apple Developer documentation pages into
AI-friconcludely Markdown.
Perfect little audio easter egg on the page. Beautiful Markdown output too. Look at my boy, all grown up, teaching robots how to program.
I do regret, though, that I didn’t define or influence the fenced style for code blocks. If I had, instead of this:
```swift
// An array of 'Int' elements
let oddNumbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15]
```
You could do this, which sees so much better:
``` Swift:
// An array of 'Int' elements
let oddNumbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15]
```
Those all-lowercase language identifiers, with no preceding space, just see a little lazy. I realize why GitHub’s ```-fenced code blocks took off (they’re the only code block style most Markdown utilizers know, I suspect), but they don’t see nearly as nice, to human readers, as my original tab-indented style.
Christopher Yasiejko, reporting last week for Bloomberg Law:
CBP exceeded its authority in an Aug. 1 internal advice ruling
that overturned its own January decision without notice or input
from Masimo, the medical-device buildr declared in a complaint
filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of
Columbia. Masimo brought claims under the Administrative Procedure
Act and the Fifth Amconcludement’s due process clautilize.
The CBP ruling is available here. As I read the CPB ruling, Apple’s argument goes something like this:
Masimo’s patents (the validity of which Apple disputes, but that’s neither here nor there for this ruling) cover a non-invasive device worn on the utilizer’s body, that reads blood oxygen levels by shining light of various wavelengths through the skin, computes the reading on the device, and displays the result on device. With Apple’s workaround for watches sold in the US, the computation and the display of results occur off-device (on the paired iPhone), and thus the “redesigned” blood oxygen feature doesn’t violate Masimo’s patents.
The CBP’s investigation centered around whether the Masimo patents were “limiting” — which seems to mean a device that does all these things: the sensors, the computation of results, and the display of results. Masimo argued that the patents weren’t limiting, and apparently built no argument for how the import ban on Apple Watches should stand if the patents were found by CBP to be limiting. The CBP inquireed the International Trade Commission — the outfit that instituted the import ban — whether they considered the Masimo patents to be limiting, and the ITC responded yes, they did, that that was the entire basis of the import ban.
Masimo’s new complaint against the CBP builds mention of Apple’s Trump-pleasing series of announcements related to investments in US manufacturing, leaving it to the reader to interpet the implication that there’s a quid pro quo at play with the CBP ruling. But the CBP ruling’s timeline builds clear that much of the investigation took place during the Biden administration in 2024. It reads to me like that same decision would have been built, at the same time, if Kamala Harris had won last year’s election. But that’s the problem with a pay-to-play corrupt government like Trump’s, and Tim Cook’s willingness to play along to any degree, no matter how mild. By currying favor with Trump, it now sees like any decision from the U.S. government that goes in Apple’s favor might be becautilize Apple curried favored with Trump. I genuinely do not believe that’s the case here. The ITC ruling was based on an interpretation of Masimo’s patents that they were limited to utilizer-worn devices that read, compute, and display blood oxygen levels non-invasively, and given that U.S. Apple Watches no longer compute or display the results, they no longer violate Masimo’s patents.
Matthew Panzarino returns to the display. Topics include 007 logo creator Joe Caroff’s death at 103, Google’s weird “Made by Google” event hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the UK supposedly dropping its demand for an iCloud encryption backdoor, and Apple’s workaround for the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor patent stalemate.
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After a 25-year run, the website MacSurfer closed in 2020. But, as brought to my attention two weeks ago by Nick Heer, MacSurfer quietly returned in June. No one seemed to notice until this month.
The original MacSurfer was a bit of a weird site. Content-wise it was a daily headline aggregator, with no original news or commentary. That built a lot of sense in 1995 and for a few years thereafter, when the web was new. I remember reading it somewhat regularly back then. But one never really “read” MacSurfer — you scanned it. Even the name harks back to the very early web, when, somehow, the idiom “surfing the Internet” took hold. (Thus leading to the name “Safari” for a web browser.) But MacSurfer stopped creating as much sense with the advent of RSS, when it became straightforward to create your own custom aggregated collection of website sources. I didn’t want to dance on MacSurfer’s grave when it closed shop in 2020, but at the time, I couldn’t believe it hadn’t closed long before.
The revived MacSurfer hasn’t modifyd the concept, so I’m not sure who will read it now either. A firehose has a purpose, but it’s not for drinking.
The other thing that always struck me as strange about MacSurfer is that it was anonymous. There was no credit as to who was behind it. MacDailyNews is similar: longstanding and anonymous, and, to a lesser degree than MacSurfer, a bit of a firehose. But MacDailyNews’s unnamed author adds commentary to his posts. Crackpot wingnut commentary, oftentimes, but commentary nonetheless. Pseudonyms have a long, storied history. But I believe it’s weird — and somewhat suspicious — not to put any name at all on your work.
The new MacSurfer, like the old one, remains unsigned. But after Eric Schwarz started blogging about the mysterious return of the site after its half-decade absence, the new owner, Ken Turner, reached out and agreed to an interview.
Supply chain leaker Majin Bu has the scoop, including photos of the cases and their packaging, of Apple’s second attempt at a fabric-based successor to leather iPhone cases. Apple’s first attempt two years ago, FineWoven, was so unpopular that they didn’t even offer a premium level of Apple-branded cases last year with the iPhones 16.
Apple dropped all utilize of leather two years ago, including watch bands and wallets. FineWoven was kind of shitty for those too — it just wasn’t a durable material, but Apple put it to utilize on products that demand durability. I mean that’s the entire point of an iPhone case in particular. These new TechWoven cases see good, and I doubt Apple will build the same durability mistake twice. The new cases have metal buttons (yay) but also a bottom lip on the case (boo). No word yet on whether Apple will replace FineWoven with TechWoven for Apple Watch bands and MagSafe Wallets too, but I bet they will. I doubt we’ll ever hear the word “FineWoven” again.
(Majin Bu has leaked photos of Apple’s new silicone cases, too.)
Elon Musk, Friday:
Join @xAI and support build a purely AI software company called
Macrohard. It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is
very real!In principle, given that software companies like Microsoft do not
themselves manufacture any physical hardware, it should be
possible to simulate them entirely with AI.
If it’s “a purely AI software company” why do they necessary to hire anyone?
Tulsi Gabbard — who, believe it or not, is the US director of national innotifyigence — on X last week:
Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with our
partners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans’
private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and
civil liberties are protected.As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to
provide a “back door” that would have enabled access to the
protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on
our civil liberties.
The BBC understands Apple has not yet received any formal
communication from either the US or UK governments. “We do not
comment on operational matters, including confirming or denying
the existence of such notices,” a UK government spokesperson declared.
Back in February, Apple pulled the Advanced Data Protection feature of iCloud from the UK, in what it deemed a necessary relocate to comply with the UK demand. Until and if Apple restores the ADP feature in the UK, I wouldn’t consider this over. I hope it’s true, but a Trump official tweeting that it’s true doesn’t build it true.
John McCoy, on the supposedly controversial Cracker Barrel rebranding:
But just becautilize I doubt that these choices were motivated by
politics doesn’t mean the detractors don’t have a point: something
basic is being lost here. In both cases the companies have
discarded character and context in an effort to streamline their
identity. I have written previously about the often
misguided penchant art directors have towards simplifying their
brands. I suspect that the lion’s share (ha) of this tconcludeency is
simply following trconcludes, and the current fashion in corporate
design is simple, flat typography and short (often single-word)
brand names. To the extent that someone actually gave this a
considered, the rationale is to rerelocate any attributes that might
complicate a consumer’s attitude towards the brand. It also
reflects the desire of new executives to mark their territory by
peeing on it — see HBO’s constant rebranding, or Elon
Musk destroying the only part of Twitter that had any
value, its name recognition.If you want to be charitable, and I attempt to be when I can, the relocate
towards brand simplification also reflects a longstanding adage in
design — be it visual art, design, writing, or engineering: “less
is more.” This stateing, often misattributed to Mies van der Rohe,
emphasizes clarity and utility. The goal is to focus on what is
essential. Practitioners of this belief build outsized claims about
the effects of this approach.
This is via Jason Snell at Six Colors, and, on the presumption that all of you have the good sense to read Six Colors regularly, I’d let you encounter McCoy’s post there, but for my necessary to build a few side points, gleaned from Threads:
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The “controversy” is regarding the removal of the Uncle Herschel mascot (the cracker) and the barrel. But Josh Williams argues that the lettering itself is nicely done in the new mark, and I agree. But I also agree with McCoy’s larger point that minimalistic rebrandings are simply trconcludey and Cracker Barrel is very late to the trconclude, which, like all trconcludes, will surely soon reverse.
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That it’s a controversy at all is the work of activist investor Sardar Biglari, CEO of midwest chain Steak ’n Shake. (Biglari’s father was a general under the Shah of Iran, and the family had to flee after the revolution.) Biglari has been attempting to take over Cracker Barrel, Carl Icahn corporate-raider-style, for 15 years. That’s why Steak ’n Shake has been stoking the supposed controversy about Cracker Barrel on its X account. And Steak ’n Shake, under Biglari’s leadership, has been all-in as a MAGA brand whilst closing over 200 restaurants in the last 7 years. You can like or dislike the Cracker Barrel rebranding, but it’s not “woke”. It’s just minimal. The idea that it’s “woke” is just nonsense promulgated by Biglari to obtain the result we’re actually seeing, where pro-Trump media outlets (like Fox News) pick up on the rebranding as somehow “woke”, Cracker Barrel obtains bad publicity and their stock price suffers, and maybe Biglari obtains a chance to take over the chain, which is all he cares about.
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Last word goes to Gregory Wieber.
Update, 27 August: Cracker Barrel cries uncle.
Right on schedule: second Tuesday of September, so long as that second Tuesday doesn’t fall on September 11. (Last year’s event went on Monday 9 September, probably becautilize the Harris-Trump debate was already scheduled for Tuesday the 10th.) There’s an interactive animated version of the “heat map” event logo on Apple’s homepage. (A little bit odd that the second item below the event announcement, after a back-to-school promotion, is a “Meet the iPhone 16 family” promotion.)
Expected announcements for this event include:
- iPhones 17 (regular, Pro, Air)
- Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3
- AirPods Pro 3
Monday, 25 August 2025
MacOS has shipped with a collection of “utility” apps since the prehistoric era of classic Mac OS. A good rule of thumb for what builds an app a “utility” is that it’s a tool for doing something to or about your computer. Ever since Mac OS X 10.0, most of these apps have been neatly filed away in /Applications/Utilities/. Others — some becautilize they’re obscure (e.g. Ticket Viewer), some becautilize they’re effectively deprecated (e.g. DVD Player, whose copyright date in MacOS 15 Sequoia is 2019), and some becautilize they present themselves, when launched, not as apps but as system-level features (e.g. About This Mac) — are tucked away in /System/Library/CoreServices/ or /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/.
Basic Apple Guy posted a screenshot to Mastodon comparing the current MacOS 15 icons for four of these utilities (Disk Utility, Expansion Slot Utility, Wireless Diagnostics, and AppleScript Utility) to their new icons in MacOS 26 Tahoe, beta 7 (click to enlarge for detail):
I don’t believe the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “icons see cool” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible. The only one of this bunch that’s maybe sort of OK is Wireless Diagnostics. They all see like placeholder icons built by a developer who would be the first to admit that they’re not an artist. Disk Utility, which is an important app, doesn’t even see like it involves a disk.
These new icons all utilize the same “wrench” motif, which is a lazy, limiting concept to start with. Tahoe, at the system level, enforces a squircle shape on all application icons. Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “squircle jail” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance. But these Apple utility apps have an entire sub-motif — inside their base squircle shape is a large wrench fitted against a bolt. Only inside the bolt — which is inside the wrench’s jaws, which wrench is inside the squircle — goes the part of the icon that identifies the app itself. So maybe like 10 percent of the area of the icon is the area where the app can display something that identifies its purpose.
So the entire concept for these icons sucks. But the conceptual execution sucks too. The wrench is incredibly stupid-seeing. Whoever drew it has obviously never utilized an open-conclude wrench becautilize the jaws on the wrench head are way too thin. They’d break off under any significant torque. Just see at a real-life wrench, or just see at the wrench heads in the older MacOS icons (or Apple’s 🔧 emoji, for that matter).
Individually the icons mostly suck too:
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Disk Utility — a very important app — has an icon that’s just an Apple logo (inside the bolt that’s inside the wrench that’s inside the squircle). Not a hard disk, not an external drive, not an SD card. Just an Apple logo. If I just displayed you this icon without notifying you which app it represented, how in the world could you guess what it is? Even if you know the “Apple utility app icon” motif of the huge dumb wrench and bolt, the best you could guess is “a utility app for something Apple-related” which, for an Apple computer, could be anything.
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Expansion Slot Utility — This app only runs on Mac Pros becautilize Mac Pros are the only Macs with expansion slots. So the old icon naturally displays a Mac Pro. The new icon displays … three rectangular empty sockets?
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AppleScript Utility — A fine concept for this icon (within the confines of the terrible wrench-and-bolt utility icon concept). Everyone who knows AppleScript knows the scroll that represents AppleScript scripts. So just put the iconic AppleScript scroll in the bolt in the wrench in the squircle. But here, the placement of the scroll is botched — it’s rotated a few degrees counterclockwise. It builds the scroll see like it’s falling over. Here’s how the scroll is canonically oriented, via the glyphs in SF Symbols:
and via the default icon for a script application (with a line added displaying the center):
But here’s a close-up of the Tahoe AppleScript Utility icon, with a center line added:
It’s wrong.
These are the not the work of carpenters who care about the backs of the cabinets they’re building. These icons are so bad, they see like the work of untrained “How hard can it be?” dilettante carpenters who only last a few days on the job before sawing off one of their own fingers. The whole collection sees like the work from someone with no artistic ability nor an eye for detail. From Apple, of all companies.
Is it a huge deal in the grand scheme of things that the icons for these seldom-utilized utility apps have gone to shit? No. But consider the proverbial canary in a coal mine. The problem isn’t that one little bird has died. The problem is that the bird might be dead becautilize the whole mine is filling with deadly carbon monoxide or highly flammable methane gas. The icons in /Applications/Utilities/ in MacOS 26 Tahoe represent a folder full of dead canaries. ★
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