Latest posts
- Can Coding Agents Relicense Open Source Through a ‘Clean Room’ Implementation of Code?Mar 08, 2026John Gruber
Simon Willison: There are a lot of open questions about this, both ethically and legally. These appear to be coming to a head in the venerable chardet Python library. chardet was created by Mark Pilgrim back in 2006 and released under the LGPL. Mark retired from public internet life in 2011 and chardet’s maintenance was taken over by others, most notably Dan Blanchard who has been responsible for
- Donald Knuth on Claude Opus Solving a Computer Science ProblemMar 08, 2026John Gruber
Donald Knuth, who, adorably, effectively blogs by posting TeX-typeset PDFs: Shock! Shock! I learned yesterday that an open problem I’d been working on for several weeks had just been solved by Claude Opus 4.6 — Anthropic’s hybrid reasoning model that had been released three weeks earlier! It seems that I’ll have to revise my opinions about “generative AI” one of these days. What a joy it is to lea
- Steve Lemay Hits Apple’s Leadership PageMar 08, 2026John Gruber
Help us Obi-Wan Lemay, you’re our only hope. (Also, as noted by Joe Rossignol, Eddy Cue got an updated headshot.) ★
- ‘npx workos’Mar 07, 2026John Gruber
My thanks, once again, to WorkOS for sponsoring this week at DF. npx workos is a CLI tool, replete with cool ASCII art, that launches an AI agent, powered by Claude, that reads your project, detects your framework, and writes a complete auth integration directly into your existing codebase. It’s not a template generator. It reads your code, understands your stack, and writes an integration that fi
- Daring Fireball Weekly Sponsorship OpeningsMar 06, 2026John Gruber
Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrig
- Google’s Threat Intelligence Group on Coruna, a Powerful iOS Exploit Kit of Mysterious OriginMar 06, 2026John Gruber
Google Threat Intelligence Group, earlier this week: Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has identified a new and powerful exploit kit targeting Apple iPhone models running iOS version 13.0 (released in September 2019) up to version 17.2.1 (released in December 2023). The exploit kit, named “Coruna” by its developers, contained five full iOS exploit chains and a total of 23 exploits. The core
- ‘The Window Chrome of Our Discontent’Mar 06, 2026John Gruber
Nick Heer, writing at Pixel Envy, uses Pages (from 2009 through today) to illustrate Apple’s march toward putting “greater focus on your content” by making window chrome, and toolbar icons, more and more invisible: Perhaps Apple has some user studies that suggest otherwise, but I cannot see how dialling back the lines between interface and document is supposed to be beneficial for the user. It doe
- The Verge Interviews Tim Sweeney After Victory in ‘Epic v. Google’Mar 06, 2026John Gruber
The Verge: Sean Hollister: What would you say the differences are between the Apple and Google cases? Tim Sweeney: I would say Apple was ice and Google was fire. The thing with Apple is all of their antitrust trickery is internal to the company. They use their store, their payments, they force developers to all have the same terms, they force OEMs and carriers to all have the same terms. Whereas G
- Tim Sweeney Signed Away His Right to Criticize Google’s Play Store Until 2032Mar 06, 2026John Gruber
Sean Hollister, writing for The Verge: But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It’s right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google. On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company over anything covered in the term sheet — Google’s app distribution practices, its fees, how it treats games and apps — he signed away his right to advocate fo
- The MacBook Neo’s Price, Looking to the Past and FutureMar 06, 2026John Gruber
Ethan W. Anderson, on Twitter/X: I’ve plotted the most expensive McDonald’s burger and the least expensive MacBook over time. This analysis projects that the most expensive burger will be more expensive than the cheapest laptop as soon as 2081. Looking to the past, if you plug $599 in today’s money into an inflation calculator, that’s just ~$190 in 1984, the year the original Macintosh launched wi
- ‘Never the Same Game Twice’Mar 06, 2026John Gruber
John McCoy: From around 1970 to 1980, the Salem, Massachusetts-based Parker Brothers (now a brand of Hasbro) published games whose innovative and fanciful designs drew inspiration from Pop Art, Op Art, and Madison Avenue advertising. They had boxes, boards, and components that reflected the most current techniques of printing and plastics molding. They were witty, silly, and weird. The other main
- Another Steve Jobs Quote on Lower-Priced MacsMar 06, 2026John Gruber
Steve Jobs, on Apple’s quarterly results call back in October 2008: There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. Harry McCracken, writing at the time: With that out of the way, the question that folks have been asking lately about whether Apple will or should release a netbook-lik
- Steve Jobs in 2007, on Apple’s Pursuit of PC Market Share: ‘We Just Can’t Ship Junk’Mar 05, 2026John Gruber
In August 2007, Apple held a Mac event in the Infinite Loop Town Hall auditorium. New iMacs, iLife ’08 (major updates to iPhoto and iMovie), and iWork ’08 (including the debut of Numbers 1.0). Back then, believe it or not, at the end of these Town Hall events, Apple executives would sit on stools and take questions from the media. For this one, Steve Jobs was flanked by Tim Cook and Phil Schiller.
- ★ Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook NeoMar 04, 2026John Gruber
$599. Not a piece of junk. That’s not a marketing slogan from Apple for the new MacBook Neo. But it could be. And it is the underlying message of the product. For a few years now, Apple has quietly dabbled with the sub-$1,000 laptop market, by selling the base configuration of the M1 MacBook Air — a machine that debuted in November 2020 — at retailers like Walmart for under $700. But dabbling is t
- Studio Display vs. Studio Display XDRMar 04, 2026John Gruber
Not sure if this page was there yesterday, but the main “Displays” page at Apple’s website is a spec-by-spec comparison between the regular and XDR models. Nice. ★
- Compatibility Notes on the New Studio DisplaysMar 04, 2026John Gruber
Juli Clover, at MacRumors, notes that neither the new Studio Display nor the Studio Display XDR are compatible with Intel-based Macs. (I’m curious why.) Also, in a separate report, she notes that Macs with any M1 chip, or the base M2 or M3, are only able to drive the Studio Display XDR at 60 Hz. You need a Pro or better M2/M3, or any M4 or M5 chip, to drive it at 120 Hz. Update: My understanding i
- ‘In Other Words, Batman Has Become Superman and Robin Has Become Batman’Mar 04, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell, Six Colors: Here’s the backstory: With every new generation of Apple’s Mac-series processors, I’ve gotten the impression from Apple execs that they’ve been a little frustrated with the perception that their “lesser” efficiency cores were weak sauce. I’ve lost count of the number of briefings and conversations I’ve had where they’ve had to go out of their way to point out that, actuall
- Apple Announces Updated Studio Display and All-New Studio Display XDRMar 03, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced a new family of displays engineered to pair beautifully with Mac and meet the needs of everyone, from everyday users to the world’s top pros. The new Studio Display features a 12MP Center Stage camera, now with improved image quality and support for Desk View; a studio-quality three-microphone array; and an immersive six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio
- New MacBook Air With M5Mar 03, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: MacBook Air now comes standard with double the starting storage at 512GB with faster SSD technology, and is configurable up to 4TB, so customers can keep their most important work on hand. Apple’s N1 wireless chip delivers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seamless connectivity on the go. MacBook Air features a beautifully thin, light, and durable aluminum design, stunning Liquid Retina
- Apple Might Have Prematurely Leaked the Name ‘MacBook Neo’Mar 03, 2026John Gruber
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: A regulatory document for a “MacBook Neo” (Model A3404) has appeared on Apple’s website. Unfortunately, there are no further details or images available yet. While the PDF file does not contain the “MacBook Neo” name, it briefly appeared in a link on Apple’s regulatory website for EU compliance purposes. My money was on just plain “MacBook”, but I like “MacBook Neo”. ★
- Apple Introduces MacBook Pro Models With M5 Pro and M5 Max ChipsMar 03, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced the latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max, bringing game-changing performance and AI capabilities to the world’s best pro laptop. With M5 Pro and M5 Max, MacBook Pro features a new CPU with the world’s fastest CPU core, a next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, and higher unified memory bandwidth, altogether
- Apple Debuts M5 Pro and M5 Max, and Renames Its M-Series CPU CoresMar 03, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced M5 Pro and M5 Max, the world’s most advanced chips for pro laptops, powering the new MacBook Pro. The chips are built using a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture. This innovative design combines two dies into a single system on a chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt
- [Sponsor] npx workos: An AI Agent That Writes Auth Directly Into Your CodebaseMar 03, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
npx workos launches an AI agent, powered by Claude, that reads your project, detects your framework, and writes a complete auth integration directly into your existing codebase. It’s not a template generator. It reads your code, understands your stack, and writes an integration that fits. The WorkOS agent then typechecks and builds, feeding any errors back to itself to fix. See how it works → ★
- ★ HazeOver — Mac Utility for Highlighting the Frontmost WindowMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Back in December I linked to a sort-of stunt project from Tyler Hall called Alan.app — a simple Mac utility that draws a bold rectangle around the current active window. Alan.app lets you set the thickness and color of the frame. I used it for an hour or so before calling it quits. It really does solve the severe (and worsening) problem of being able to instantly identify the active window in rece
- Unsung Heroes: Flickr’s URLs SchemeMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Marcin Wichary, writing at Unsung (which is just an incredibly good and fun weblog): Half of my education in URLs as user interface came from Flickr in the late 2000s. Its URLs looked like this: flickr.com/photos/mwichary/favorites flickr.com/photos/mwichary/sets flickr.com/photos/mwichary/sets/72177720330077904 flickr.com/photos/mwichary/54896695834 flickr.com/photos/mwichary/54896695834/in/set-7
- ChangeTheHeadersMar 02, 2026John Gruber
During the most recent episode of The Talk Show, Jason Snell brought up a weird issue that I started running into last year. On my Mac, sometimes I’d drag an image out of a web page in Safari, and I’d get an image in WebP format. Sometimes I wouldn’t care. But usually when I download an image like that, it’s because I want to publish (or merely host my own copy of) that image on Daring Fireball. A
- Welcome (Back) to MacintoshMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Jesper, writing at Take: My hope is that Macintosh is not just one of these empires that was at the height of its power and then disintegrated because of warring factions, satiated and uncurious rulers, and droughts for which no one was prepared, ruining crops no one realized were essential for survival. My hope is that there remains a primordial spark, a glimpse of genius, to rediscover, to recon
- SerpApi Filed Motion to Dismiss Google’s LawsuitMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Julien Khaleghy, CEO of SerpApi: Google thinks it owns the internet. That’s the subtext of its lawsuit against SerpApi, the quiet part that it’s suddenly decided to shout out loud. The problem is, no one owns the internet. And the law makes that clear. In January, we promised that we would fight this lawsuit to protect our business model and the researchers and innovators who depend on our technol
- ‘Anthropic and Alignment’Mar 02, 2026John Gruber
Ben Thompson, writing at Stratechery: In fact, Amodei already answered the question: if nuclear weapons were developed by a private company, and that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S. military, the U.S. would absolutely be incentivized to destroy that company. The reason goes back to the question of international law, North Korea, and the rest: International law is ultimately a f
- WSJ: ‘Trump Administration Shuns Anthropic, Embraces OpenAI in Clash Over Guardrails’Mar 02, 2026John Gruber
Amrith Ramkumar, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): Trump’s announcement came shortly before the Pentagon’s Friday afternoon deadline for Anthropic to agree to let the military use its models in all lawful-use cases, a concession the company had refused to make. “We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said on Thursday. The comp
- Seasonal Color Updates to Apple’s iPhone Cases and Apple Watch BandsMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: A seasonal color refresh arrived today for a variety of Apple accessories, including iPhone cases, Apple Watch bands, and the Crossbody Strap. All of the accessories in the latest colors are available to order on Apple.com starting today. ★
- Apple Introduces New iPad Air With M4Mar 02, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced the new iPad Air featuring M4 and more memory, giving users a big jump in performance at the same starting price. With a faster CPU and GPU, iPad Air boosts tasks like editing and gaming, and is a powerful device for AI with a faster Neural Engine, higher memory bandwidth, and 50 percent more unified system memory than the previous generation. With M4, iPad Ai
- Apple Introduces the iPhone 17eMar 02, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple today announced iPhone 17e, a powerful and more affordable addition to the iPhone 17 lineup. At the heart of iPhone 17e is the latest-generation A19, which delivers exceptional performance for everything users do. iPhone 17e also features C1X, the latest-generation cellular modem designed by Apple, which is up to 2× faster than C1 in iPhone 16e. The 48MP Fusion camera capture
- SentryMar 01, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to: Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue. Use Logs and Breadcr
- The Talk Show: ‘Bad Dates’Mar 01, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss the 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card, MacOS 26 Tahoe, Apple Creator Studio, along with what we expect/hope for in next week’s Apple product announcements. Sponsored by: Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Sentry: A real-time e
- Trump’s Enormous Gamble on Regime Change in IranFeb 28, 2026John Gruber
Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic: When the 2003 war with Iraq ended, U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine said that when American diplomats embarked on reconstruction, they ruefully joked that “there were 500 ways to do it wrong and two or three ways to do it right. And what we didn’t understand is that we were going to go through all 500.” ★
- West Virginia’s Anti-Apple CSAM Lawsuit Would Help Child Predators Walk FreeFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Mike Masnick, writing for Techdirt: Read that again. If West Virginia wins — if an actual court orders Apple to start scanning iCloud for CSAM — then every image flagged by those mandated scans becomes evidence obtained through a warrantless government search conducted without probable cause. The Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule means defense attorneys get to walk into court and demand that ev
- How to Block the ‘Upgrade to Tahoe’ Alerts and System Settings IndicatorFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Rob Griffiths, writing at The Robservatory: So I have macOS Tahoe on my laptop, but I’m keeping my desktop Mac on macOS Sequoia for now. Which means I have the joy of seeing things like this wonderful notification on a regular basis. Or I did, until I found a way to block them, at least in 90 day chunks. [...] The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce policies on Macs in
- ★ A Sometimes-Hidden Setting Controls What Happens When You Tap a Call in the iOS 26 Phone AppFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Back in December, Adam Engst wrote this interesting follow-up to his feature story at TidBITS a few weeks prior exploring the differences between the new Unified and old Classic interface modes for the Phone app in iOS 26. It’s also a good follow-up to my month-ago link to Engst’s original feature, as well as a continuation of my recent theme on the fundamentals of good UI design. The gist of Engs
- TUDUMBFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass: Of course, Netflix could have absorbed such a cost. It’s a $400B company (well, before this deal, anyway) — double Disney! Paramount Skydance? They’re worth $11B. Yes, they’re paying almost exactly $100B more than they’re worth for WBD. Yes, it’s looney. But really, it’s leverage. To be clear, Netflix was going to pay for the deal with debt too, but they have a cle
- Block Lays Off 4,000 (of 10,000) EmployeesFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
CNBC: Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its head count. The stock skyrocketed as much as 24% in extended trading. “Today we shared a difficult decision with our team,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in a letter to shareholders. “We’re reducing Block by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000, which means that over 4,000
- Apple Announces F1 Broadcast Details, and a Surprising Netflix PartnershipFeb 27, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors: Perhaps the most surprising announcement on Thursday was that Apple and Netflix, which have had a rather stand-offish relationship when it comes to video programming, have struck a deal to swap some Formula One-related content. Formula One’s growing popularity in the United States is due, perhaps in large part, to the high-profile success of the Netflix docuseri
- EnergymFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
“An interview from 2036 with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman.” This is what AI video generation was meant for. ★
- Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for Paramount TakeoverFeb 26, 2026John Gruber
The New York Times: Netflix said on Thursday that it had backed away from its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a stunning development that paves the way for the storied Hollywood media giant to end up under the control of a rival bidder, the technology heir David Ellison. Netflix said that it would not raise its offer to counter a higher bid made earlier this week by Mr. Ellison’s company,
- ★ My 2025 Apple Report CardFeb 25, 2026John Gruber
This week Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025. As I’ve done in the past — for the report-card years 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category scores ranging from 5 to 1; I’ve translated these to letter grades, A to F, which is how I consider them. (See footnote 1 fro
- [Sponsor] Hands-On Workshop: Fix It Faster — Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in SentryFeb 25, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. This on-demand session covers how to: Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue. Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash. Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing. Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analy
- ★ Apple Releases iOS 26 Adoption Rates, and They’re Pretty Much in Line With the Last Few YearsFeb 17, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of iOS 26, here’s Joe Rossignol reporting for MacRumors: Apple has shared updated iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 adoption figures, revealing how many iPhones and iPads are running those software versions. These adoption numbers are based on iPhones and iPads that transacted on the App Store on February 12, 2026, according to Apple. The statistics are as follows: 74% of all iPhones introduced in the
- ★ Politics and the English Language, January 2026 EditionJan 28, 2026John Gruber
Patrick McGee (author of last year’s bestseller, Apple in China, and guest on The Talk Show in May), commenting on Twitter/X re: Tim Cook’s company-wide memo regarding the “events in Minneapolis”: This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice. It’s the kind of language Orwell attributed to politicians, when ready-made phrases assemble themselves and prevent any real thought from breakin