Latest posts
- ‘PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR’ — Chatbot on Chatbot Action Circa 1973Jul 08, 2026John Gruber
Back in the primordial days of AI, PARRY was an ELIZA-style chatbot created by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby to simulate the words of a paranoid schizophrenic. Someone had the genius idea to connect it to ELIZA (a.k.a. “DOCTOR”). Vint Cerf published the transcript as an RFC in 1973, and I laughed my ass off reading it. A taste: Do you know anything about bookies? What makes you think I know anything
- Mac Apps Can Escape From Squircle Jail If They’re Not in the Mac App StoreJul 08, 2026John Gruber
Tyler Hall: We all know about macOS Tahoe’s terrible app icons and how 3rd party developers have been confined to squircle jail. If you’re lucky enough to distribute an app outside the Mac App Store, you can break free of squircle jail using NSDockTilePlugIn. It’s not strictly the intended use-case of that API. And it’s not allowed in the Mac App Store, either. But it can solve the problem. So tod
- ‘Searching for SmarterChild’ KickstarterJul 08, 2026John Gruber
After reading my posts earlier today about ELIZA, the first “hit” chatbot from the 1960s, DF reader AP sent me a link to the Kickstarter page for Searching for SmarterChild, a project from documentary filmmakers Lindsey Sitz and Zan Gillies to make a movie about SmarterChild, an AOL Instant Messenger chatbot that once had 30 million “friends” (a.k.a. users). I don’t recall ever hearing of SmarterC
- My Conversation With ELIZAJul 08, 2026John Gruber
I vaguely recall first trying some version of ELIZA back in the 1990s. I never found it all that impressive nor understood its stature in the AI literature. It’s better than a bunch of if/then statements but not by much. There’s some natural language grammar parsing that is somewhat interesting, but I never thought it came close to passing the Turing Test, and I was always skeptical of claims that
- The ELIZA Archaeology ProjectJul 08, 2026John Gruber
The ELIZA Archaeology Project: ELIZA is the original and highly influential chatbot that launched the genre of human-computer interactions using text-based agents. It was created at MIT in the 1960s as part of Project MAC by it’s [sic] designer and programmer, Joseph Weizenbaum. ELIZA not only allowed Weizenbaum to develop a mode of interaction with computers that is highly interactive, it also co
- App Icon Conventions From the Original MacintoshJul 08, 2026John Gruber
Dr. Drang, in a post replete with examples of icons of popular apps from the original Macintosh, in their one-bit glory: You can see that Apple liked the idea of app icons being a tilted rectangle with some image inside the rectangle to indicate what the app did. The hand was Apple’s way of telling you that this icon was for doing things, and the rectangle was tilted to match the orientation of th
- [Sponsor] WorkOS Pipes: More Context Makes for Smarter ProductsJul 08, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Users expect apps and agents to reach the tools they already work in. Every integration that gets you there is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of infrastructure before you write a line of product code. WorkOS Pipes handles it with one API call. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential s
- OS 27 Developer Beta 3 Enables New ‘Pace’ and ‘Expressivity’ Sliders for Siri’s New VoicesJul 07, 2026John Gruber
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch: With the latest iOS 27 developer beta, Apple is giving testers an early look at one of the upcoming improvements to its AI-powered Siri: the ability to adjust how quickly and expressively the AI assistant speaks. In iOS 27 beta 3, out today, Apple has enabled the voice controls for “Pace” and “Expressivity” that were previously labeled as “Coming soon” in the f
- ★ Apple Should Eliminate the App Icon ‘Squircle Jail’Jul 06, 2026John Gruber
Paul Kafasis, in a post at Rogue Amoeba’s blog titled “Free the Icons”: Apple’s prohibition on shapes is a step backward for both usability and creativity in app icons. Icons are now harder to distinguish because they’re no longer allowed to be distinctive. But there’s no technical reason for it. Apple could, and should, once again allow icons to take on a wide variety of shapes. It’s clear that s
- Markdown Now Has a Uniform Type Identifer (UTI) in Apple’s Version 27 OSesJul 06, 2026John Gruber
The third developer betas of Apple’s 27 OSes dropped today, and this new page in Apple’s developer documentation drew my attention — a built-in Uniform Type Identifier for Markdown data: The identifier for this type is net.daringfireball.markdown. This type conforms to [utf8PlainText]. My main link here is to the Swift documentation, but it’s available in good old Objective-C too. I had previously
- Backblaze Versus DropboxJul 06, 2026John Gruber
There’s a been a lot of (justified) concern and consternation over the last year regarding Backblaze — an online backup service whose simple pitch is that it backs up your entire computer, including the startup drive and external drives — and online file storage services like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Backblaze stopped including the contents of such services in i
- Allen Pike, Back in November: ‘Why Is ChatGPT for Mac So Good?’Jul 06, 2026John Gruber
Allen Pike, back in November (and corresponding Hacker News thread): Still, I wouldn’t count out the possibility of a change in course here. While mobile is king, desktop is still where work happens. While OpenAI has acquired Sky to double down on desktop, Google has long been all-in on the browser. That leaves Anthropic as the challenger on desktop, with their latest models begging to be paired w
- ATP Member Special: Mac-Assed Mac AppsJul 06, 2026John Gruber
A banger of an Accidental Tech Podcast members-only special, right on time. ATP memberships are just $8/month or $88/year, and the members-only episodes alone are worth the price. They do a great job explaining what makes for a Mac-assed Mac app, but an even better job talking about why users and developers should care about them. ★
- Maestral, the Open Source Splendidly Simple Mac Dropbox Client, Has Been RetiredJul 06, 2026John Gruber
Maestral developer Sam Schott, on the Maestral website: As of June 2026, Maestral is no longer actively maintained. The current version will continue to work until certificates expire. Schott, on Maestral’s GitHub project page: As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these day
- Jason Snell Ends His Column, and 28-Year Run, at MacworldJul 06, 2026John Gruber
Jason Snell, at Macworld: My first day on the job at Macworld, Apple was perilously close to going out of business. It was the fall of 1997, and Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and engineered the ejection of Gil Amelio as CEO, but there was no iMac yet, no visible turnaround in terms of products at all. Beyond the release of the iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, there was nothing. Apple’s sur
- Day One JournalJul 04, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to Day One Journal for once again sponsoring Daring Fireball. Day One first launched in 2011 and has been the stalwart of journaling apps on Mac and iOS ever since. Day One’s apps exhibit a commitment to technical and design excellence, and, more importantly, everything they do is deeply informed by the intense personal nature of keeping a journal. (Or journals — Day One lets you create
- From the DF Archive: ‘Electron and the Decline of Native Apps’Jul 04, 2026John Gruber
Yours truly, back in 2018: I don’t share the depth of their pessimism regarding native apps, but Electron is without question a scourge. I think the Mac will prove more resilient than Windows, because the Mac is the platform that attracts people who care. But I worry. In some ways, the worst thing that ever happened to the Mac is that it got so much more popular a decade ago. In theory, that shoul
- Fantastical 4.1.15 Adds Calendar MirroringJul 04, 2026John Gruber
Flexibits: Calendar Mirroring allows you to connect two separate calendars (like work and personal) so that events from one automatically show up on the other. The best part? No event information is sent to Flexibits servers or saved outside of your device. You can choose to show full event details or just block the time out as a mysterious, professional “Busy”. Your coworkers don’t need to know y
- ★ Claude’s Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside JobJul 03, 2026John Gruber
Anthropic released the first version of the Claude “desktop” app for MacOS in October 2024 — an Electron clunker that did not impress UI designers. When it came out, I wrote: ChatGPT’s native Mac app, on the other hand, is a truly native Mac app. It looks like a Mac app and feels like a Mac app because it really is a Mac app. I’ve liked it ever since it launched back in May, and it keeps getting b
- April Report From Ookla: ‘A Return to mmWave 5G’Jul 02, 2026John Gruber
Mike Dano, in a long (too long, I say) report for Ookla (makers of the nifty Speedtest app): Further, few other countries in the world followed in the mmWave footsteps of the U.S., with international spectrum regulators instead putting a focus on releasing mid-band spectrum for 5G. However, mmWave networks haven’t disappeared. New drive test data from Ookla’s RootMetrics, coupled with crowdsourced
- Introducing the Safari MCP Server for Web DevelopersJul 02, 2026John Gruber
Saron Yitbarek, writing on the WebKit blog, with a nice post-WWDC surprise: In Safari Technology Preview 247, we’re introducing the Safari MCP server — a Model Context Protocol server for web developers that makes your web development and debugging workflow faster and more powerful. We know agents are increasingly integral to the coding process and the Safari MCP server gives your agent the abilit
- EveryMac Turns 30Jul 02, 2026John Gruber
EveryMac: Thirty years is a long time — and a great deal has changed since then — but what has not changed is that EveryMac.com has been there to provide you with detailed info on every Mac from the original 128k to the current line. Thank you very much for your support through the years. Daring Fireball turns 24 next month, which doesn’t sound that much younger than 30. But the way things work (i
- I Repeat Myself (5G vs. LTE Edition)Jul 02, 2026John Gruber
Back in March 2022, Nicole Nguyen of The Wall Street Journal compared the battery life effects of 5G vs. LTE by streaming videos on several iPhone and iPad models. She found that using LTE saved significant battery life. (It would be nice if someone re-ran similar tests on more recent devices — just because it was true with the iPhone 13 Pro doesn’t mean it’s true with current models. But I’ll bet
- Truth Social Is Still Just Trump’s BlogJul 02, 2026John Gruber
After I linked to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posting on Twitter/X about the Trump administration allowing Anthropic to once again release Claude Fable 5, I was reminded once again that no one else in the Trump administration uses Truth Social other than Trump himself. Not even Lutnick, a lickspittle among lickspittles.* The rest of them all use X. Which in turn reminds me of my observation
- ‘A Perfect Reflection of Trump’s Washington’Jul 02, 2026John Gruber
Taegan Goddard, two weeks ago at Political Wire: The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become an almost too-perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s presidency. He promised a quick, cheap fix. Instead, taxpayers got a no-bid project that ballooned to more than $14 million, delivered a freshly painted pool in “American Flag Blue,” and then promptly watched it turn green with algae as the new coating
- Claude Fable and KayfabeJul 02, 2026John Gruber
Anthropic: On Friday, June 12, the US government applied export controls to our newest models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5. This required us to restrict access to foreign nationals, whether inside or outside the United States. Because the order took effect immediately and we had no reliable way to verify nationality in real-time, we suspended access to both models for all users. As of today
- ‘Why Is Meta Destroying Its Engineering Organization?’Jul 02, 2026John Gruber
Gergely Orosz, writing at The Pragmatic Engineer (which, sadly, is a Substack blog): The biggest problem: people stop caring about real work and focus on performative work. Let’s check the four ingredients that Meta’s leadership has decided to introduce to their workplace: Tracking the keyboards and mouse clicks of all engineers, where legally possible Reassign a good chunk of engineers to full-ti
- MG Siegler Got Banned From WhatsApp for No ReasonJul 02, 2026John Gruber
MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass: Yes, that’s right, for a third time in as many years, I’ve been banned by Meta. What for? Do you really have to ask? Nobody knows. My suspicion is that it’s directly tied to the claiming of usernames on WhatsApp, which Meta opened up yesterday. After I claimed mine, it seemingly logged me out of my other active instances. And when I went to log back in... boom. Ban
- Hackers Stole Instagram Accounts Simply by Asking Meta AI to Give Them AccessJul 02, 2026John Gruber
Jason Koebler, a month ago at 404 Media: Over the last several days, Telegram groups for security researchers and hacking groups have been sharing videos and screenshots of the steps taken to steal an account, which appeared to be shockingly easy. One video shows a hacker starting a conversation with Meta’s AI support bot and asking it to link the target account with a new email address: “Just lin
- ★ A Tale of Two ModemsJul 01, 2026John Gruber
Marko Zivkovic, reporting for AppleInsider regarding some of the data revealed by Tata Electronics’s massive data breach: For the U.S. variant of the iPhone 18 Pro, which will feature mmWave compatibility, Apple seemingly plans to use Qualcomm modem hardware. Multiple Qualcomm components, including the SDX80M, SDR875, QDM8771, QDM8720, PMK75, PMX75, and QET7100A, are referenced in a bill of materi
- PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass SubscriptionsJul 01, 2026John Gruber
Following up on my earlier post on Valve’s righteous objection to selling game console hardware at a loss, I should have noted that PlayStation Plus starts at $11/month (and goes up to $20/month) and Xbox Game Pass starts at $10/month (and goes up to $23/month). One draw of these subscriptions is access to a library of game titles — but another one is that you need one of these subscriptions to pl
- Valve Explains Why It Doesn’t Subsidize Its Hardware PlatformsJul 01, 2026John Gruber
Valve, in a statement to The Verge, explaining why it doesn’t sell its handheld Steam Deck or new Steam Machine gaming devices at a loss (gift link): While this might seem like an easy solution, it doesn’t align with our beliefs about how healthy ecosystems are built. If there’s anything we’re religious about at Valve, it’s our belief that open systems are better in the long run, for ourselves and
- The Talk Show: ‘Taking Drugs to Get Fat’Jul 01, 2026John Gruber
The great John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s hardware price hikes in response to the global RAM/SSD shortage, and some spitballing on what we like about the UI changes in the MacOS 27 Golden Gate beta. Sponsored by: Coax: Defeat the tyranny of choice. Channel surf your Plex server. Relax with Coax. Even Realities: Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code tal
- 404 Media: Vulnerability in iCloud’s ‘Hide My Email’ Reveals Peoples’ Real Email AddressesJul 01, 2026John Gruber
Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media: 404 Media is not revealing the exact details of the vulnerability because it can still be exploited as of Monday, when 404 Media verified the issue with one of our own hidden email addresses. “Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden. We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago. We don’t know
- GnomeJun 30, 2026John Gruber
Gnome is a deceptively clever animated GIF app by Lex Friedman: The truest thing about animated GIFs is that they are a critical pillar of modern human communication, and yet getting one into a Slack message or an iMessage thread or an email reply usually requires opening a browser, navigating to a website, searching, right-clicking, copying, switching back, pasting, and apologizing for the delay.
- Supreme Court Agrees to Review Apple’s Petition Regarding Civil Contempt Finding in ‘Apple v. Epic Games’Jun 30, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of the Supreme Court’s end-of-term rulings, they today agreed to grant certiorari to Apple’s petition from last month, ordering: APPLE INC. V. EPIC GAMES, INC. Question 1 regarded the civil contempt finding — basically, whether Apple could be held in contempt for violating the spirit of the injunction by charging a commission on external payments when the letter of the injunction said no
- Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship in 6-3 DecisionJun 30, 2026John Gruber
Josh Marshall, writing at TPM (gift link): As you’ve seen, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of birthright citizenship by a 6 — or perhaps 5½ — vote margin. See Kate Riga’s report on the majority decision and Josh Kovensky’s piece on the dissenters’ goal of doing away with birthright citizenship. I repeat my point from yesterday which is that the occasional non-corrupt decision doesn’
- ★ The Supreme Court Rules That Law Enforcement’s Use of ‘Geofence Warrant’ Was a ‘Search’ (But May Be Moot, Technically, Since 2024)Jun 30, 2026John Gruber
Amy Howe, writing at the ever-excellent SCOTUSblog: The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that when law enforcement officials used a “geofence warrant” — a warrant that instructed Google to provide location data for cellphone users who were near a particular place during a specific time period — to obtain evidence used to convict a Virginia man of a 2019 bank robbery, they conducted a “search” for pur
- Three Players From the Japanese Men’s National Team vs. 100 School ChildrenJun 30, 2026John Gruber
I know there’s been a lot of exciting World Cup action this week, but this 2018 clip from Japan is the best soccer video I’ve seen in a long while. ★
- CMA Consultation on Mobile App Steering and NFC AccessJun 30, 2026John Gruber
The UK Competition and Markets Authority: ‘Steering’ — the ability for developers to engage with customers about off‑platform options — is currently banned by Apple and restricted by Google in the UK. Lifting these constraints would allow developers to bypass mandatory fees set by platforms. The CMA’s consultation includes principles to ensure that the fees Apple and Google charge for steering ar
- U.K. Regulator Considers Requiring App Store to Allow Steering to the Web, and iOS NFC to Be OpenJun 30, 2026John Gruber
Sam Tabahriti, reporting for Reuters: Britain’s competition regulator on Tuesday proposed allowing app developers to steer users to alternative payment options outside Apple and Alphabet’s Google app stores to cut fees and boost competition. The Competition and Markets Authority said the proposals would remove restrictions that currently prevent UK developers from directing users to off-platform
- Data Breach at Indian Supplier Tata Electronics Exposes iPhone 18 Pro Details and PhotosJun 30, 2026John Gruber
Munsif Vengattil, Aditya Kalra, and Stephen Nellis, reporting for Reuters: Sensitive lists of components and suppliers, and photos of Apple’s upcoming iPhone 18 Pro models are part of files posted on the dark web by the ransomware group that stole data from the U.S. firm’s Indian supplier Tata Electronics, according to documents and a source. The exposure threatens the carefully negotiated busine
- [Sponsor] Day One JournalJun 29, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Day One recognizes that many people struggle with journaling not because they can’t write, but because they don’t know how to begin or what a “good” journal entry about their day looks like. That’s why we built Daily Chat, a guided reflection experience that helps you talk through your day, organize your thoughts, and shape them into a journal entry. Early testers commented: “Day One’s new Daily C
- Auth.md — an Open Protocol for Agent Registration From WorkOSJun 29, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week to promote Auth.md, their new open protocol for AI agent registration. (Who’d have thunk that I’d be getting paid to promote new uses for Markdown 22 years after releasing it?) Sign-up forms were built for humans in browsers, so how do AI agents programmatically register with services? That’s the question Auth.md aims to answer. It’s a single Markdow
- Daniel Agee: ‘Remembering Om’Jun 29, 2026John Gruber
Daniel Agee, an early member of the team at Glass, writing on the Glass blog: It’s not lost on us that Om’s photography, often taken in frozen lands in or around the arctic circle, was the polar opposite of his personality. While he focused on subtle shapes and hidden landscapes, he was the sun of any group he was in. Folks just naturally fell into his orbit. Agee’s lovely piece is replete with ph
- Matt Mullenweg: ‘All Roads Lead to Om’Jun 29, 2026John Gruber
Matt Mullenweg: Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast “regular” everywhere he went. He wouldn’t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren’t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory crea
- ★ Bernie Sanders: Ideologue and Economic IgnoramusJun 27, 2026John Gruber
Bernie Sanders, posting on Twitter/X Thursday (don’t complain to me that he doesn’t use his Bluesky account): Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is “unavoidable” after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks. These price hikes aren’t unavoidable. They’re unacceptable. It boggles
- ★ OmJun 26, 2026John Gruber
Om died two days ago, after a long battle against a bum heart. Om and I often sat next to each other at Apple keynotes. This was not at all surprising or odd, insofar as we’d been friends for 20 years. Folks at Apple PR knew that we were close, and would often pair us together in post-keynote media briefings. I always enjoyed being paired with him. He asked keen questions. He saw through bullshit