Victor Wynne • Articles

Some musings on today's iPhone 17e and iPad Air announcements

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:20:00 -0500

On the first of what will be a three-day announcement cycle, Apple pushed out some minor spec bumps by announcing iPhone 17e and iPad Air updates. The biggest thing to stand out to me was base model storage in the iPhone 17e doubling to 256GB while keeping the price at $599. I believe this is Apple’s current answer to critics who said of the 16e last year that it was a $499 phone priced $100 too high.

During the iPhone event last September, the new iPhone Air took the $999 price slot; this pushed the 17 Pro to a starting price of $1,099 coupled with a base storage bump to 256GB, up from 128GB. So while the entry price technically increased, in actuality it was priced the same as the 256GB 16 Pro model it replaced. With the 17e being solely a cost-sensitive product aimed at emerging markets, I think the increased value on offer after a single 12-month cycle is hard to argue with. I also believe within a few years a price tag of $499 is a realistic goal for the company.

The most curious part of today’s iPhone update is the inclusion of MagSafe. It’s great to see it now, but why weren’t the magnets added last year when the case design remained the same? This also doubles the wireless charging rate to 15W, which is nice until you compare it to the 25W speed in the iPhone 17 and Pro models.

The iPad Air was quite literally a “chip it and ship it” update with M4, N1, and C1X additions. They didn’t even bother to change the colors — the 17e, by contrast, comes in a nice new soft pink. The best news for the iPad today was not seeing an expected price increase due to RAM shortages.

Apple honoring Dr. MLK, Jr on their homepage is peak hypocrisy

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:42:00 -0500

As has become an annual tradition for more than a decade, Apple took over their homepage today with a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In prior years it brushed past me as a nice thing to do at best, and corporate pandering at worst. After the inaction and silence from Apple the past year in the face of authoritarian overrule, it is now painfully insulting to see the quote, “We honor Dr. King and reflect upon his life and legacy” plastered on their website. I strongly believe if Dr. MLK, Jr were alive today he would be the loudest voice calling out Apple for staying quiet as our country’s freedoms are stripped away.

Not only staying quiet, but enabling. Tim Cook presenting our tyrant with a 24 karat gold and glass trophy as a gift. No action being taken to pull Elon Musk’s sexually deviant chat bot Grok from the App Store, even as the company professes third party app stores are a danger to their customers because they won’t ensure a safe environment. Immigrants being denigrated as they contribute to the engineeering and design teams at Apple that allow the company to claim their top spot as one of the most successful makers in history.

Some self-reflection is far past due for a company with a bank account stuffed full of fuck you money.

Ruby deserves better leadership than DHH

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 17:00:00 -0400

I started writing Ruby code just before David Heinemeier Hansson released Rails, back when the framework felt truly revolutionary for the time. Rails changed everything for me and countless other developers. It made crafting for the web joyful and created entirely new opportunities. The entire development world owes DHH a debt of gratitude for giving it to us.

Yet somewhere along the way, DHH seems to have forgotten that his technical contributions don’t give him a free pass to spread harmful rhetoric that drives people away from the very community he helped build. As I sit here today, watching someone I once admired slowly poison the well they helped create is heartbreaking beyond words.

His recent blog posts have crossed lines that shouldn’t exist in any welcoming technical community. Writing about London being “only a third native Brit” is way more than just tone-deaf commentary. It’s actively harmful to the many Ruby developers who aren’t white or weren’t born in traditionally western countries. You can argue that it’s not coded racist language, but I will strongly disagree with you. When DHH celebrates “blond babies” in advertisements or describes plus-sized Black women as “grotesque,” he’s telling entire groups of people exactly who he is, and that they don’t belong.

The pattern extends beyond racial issues, too. His statements targeting transgender people most definitely create an environment where talented developers will feel unwelcome simply because of who they are. This isn’t about political correctness or cancel culture. It’s about basic human decency and creating spaces where everyone can contribute their best work.

Ruby has always prided itself on being different. Matz’s principle of optimizing for programmer happiness wasn’t just about syntax and semantics. It was about building a language and ecosystem where developers could thrive. DHH’s increasingly toxic rhetoric undermines that foundation. When newcomers research Ruby and Rails, they don’t just find technical documentation. They find DHH’s inflammatory posts and might reasonably conclude this isn’t a community where they’d be welcome.

The silence from Ruby’s leadership has been deafening. While individual community members like Tekin Süleyman have courageously spoken out, the institutional response has been minimal. Ruby “hostility” Central, Rails Core team members, and prominent conference organizers have largely stayed quiet, perhaps hoping the controversy will pass. It won’t. Each time DHH escalates his rhetoric without consequence, he becomes more emboldened.

This isn’t about removing DHH from Rails development entirely. That’s neither realistic nor necessarily desirable from a technical standpoint. But the community desperately needs to establish that technical contributions don’t grant immunity from criticism when someone actively harms the ecosystem’s culture and inclusivity. Those same contributions certainly do not earn continual platforming of such a hateful person.

The most effective path forward involves multiple strategies. Conference organizers should reconsider featuring DHH as a keynote speaker, especially when his presence might alienate attendees. Rails Core team members and Ruby Central leadership need to publicly distance themselves from his harmful rhetoric while affirming the community’s commitment to inclusion. Corporate sponsors should make their expectations clear about representing the values they want associated with their brands.

Most importantly, we need new voices in leadership positions. The Ruby community has hundreds of brilliant developers who could champion the language’s future without the baggage DHH brings. Ruby deserves better stewardship, and the community deserves leaders who understand that welcoming everyone makes us all stronger. True leaders who understand that growing a programming language requires growing its community, not shrinking it through bigoted and exclusionary rhetoric.

A project’s future shouldn’t be held hostage by one person’s increasingly problematic worldview. The language and Rails framework are bigger than any single individual, even their creator. It’s time for the community to act like it and chart a path forward that honors Ruby’s inclusive spirit while moving beyond the toxicity that threatens to define its legacy.

Ruby has grown into something truly beautiful. We can’t let it be destroyed by someone who tears others down, and seemingly forgot that programmer happiness applies to all programmers, not just the ones who look and think like him.

Clarus the dogcow has made a return on the Hermès series of Apple Watch

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:07:00 -0400

If you happen to buy a Hermès model, this watch face animation with Clarus is beyond cute.

Today’s protest at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 19:52:00 -0400

I had expected to see some Trump related protestors at the launch event for iPhone 17 and Air, but instead an important focus on the harmful nature of phone addiction as it concerns children.

The full resolution HDR image is available here.

Swift 6.2 advances the language meaningfully

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 18:10:00 -0400

Apple has released Swift 6.2, and after reading through the changes, this feels like a meaningful step forward rather than another incremental update. The release addresses several persistent pain points that have shaped how we approach Swift development, particularly around concurrency and performance. The rest of this essay summarizes what is new, while adding some color commentary. If you just need the quick bullet points, you could read the announcement post instead.

The most practical improvement comes through better concurrency handling. Anyone who has written async Swift code knows the frustration of main actor isolation errors and unpredictable async method behavior. Swift 6.2 introduces a simple solution where code runs on the main thread by default without requiring @MainActor annotations everywhere. This eliminates many compiler errors that previously forced awkward workarounds.

Async functions now behave more predictably. Previously, calling an async method would always switch to the global thread pool, creating data race issues when working with UI code or shared state. The new behavior keeps async functions in their caller’s execution context unless you explicitly want concurrent execution. The @concurrent attribute provides clear control over when code should run in parallel, making your intentions obvious in the source code.

InlineArray represents a significant performance advancement. These fixed-size arrays store data directly on the stack or inline within other types, avoiding heap allocations entirely. The syntax feels natural with expressions like [40 of Sprite] replacing more complex alternatives. This feature enables performance-critical code that previously required unsafe operations or switching to lower-level languages.

The Span type addresses another long-standing limitation by providing compile-time guaranteed safe access to contiguous memory with zero runtime overhead. Memory safety issues like use-after-free bugs become impossible through the type system rather than requiring careful manual management. This brings systems programming capabilities into Swift’s safety model.

These improvements extend beyond the language itself. Embedded Swift now supports the full String API alongside these performance features. Apple uses Embedded Swift in iOS system components, which I believe proves their commitment to making Swift viable across different layers of the software stack. Projects combining Swift and C++ can leverage Swift’s safe abstractions through header annotations.

The developer experience (and freedom to choose our own tools) received substantial attention. The official VS Code extension includes background indexing that maintains fast editor features, integrated LLDB debugging that works seamlessly with Swift code, and live DocC preview that updates documentation as you edit. These workflow improvements address the small daily inefficiencies that compound into productivity losses.

SwiftPM performance improves significantly for macro-heavy projects through pre-built swift-syntax dependencies. Clean builds that previously required substantial time in CI environments now complete much faster. The new diagnostic group control allows fine-tuned compiler warning management, letting you promote specific warning categories to errors while keeping others informational.

Foundation gains a modern NotificationCenter API that brings type safety to a system known for runtime crashes. Rather than string-based notification names and untyped dictionaries, you define concrete notification types with proper properties. The system handles main actor isolation automatically, preventing the concurrency bugs common with traditional notification patterns.

Swift Testing evolves with exit testing for validating termination conditions and attachments that include rich context in test results. The raw identifier display names reduce boilerplate while improving test output readability. These additions make the testing framework more capable without adding complexity.

WebAssembly support opens new deployment possibilities. Swift can now target Wasm for both client and server applications, extending beyond Apple’s platform ecosystem. This positions Swift as a viable option for web development, serverless computing, and cross-platform applications.

What makes Swift 6.2 notable is how these improvements work together to remove barriers that have influenced Swift development patterns. Memory-intensive applications can stay within Swift’s safety guarantees. Complex concurrent architectures become more approachable for developers who previously avoided async programming. Performance-critical code that once required language mixing can remain entirely within Swift.

The release creates new architectural possibilities. Game engines, real-time audio processing, computer vision pipelines, and embedded system controllers become reasonable Swift projects. The language expands beyond its mobile origins while preserving the safety and expressiveness that made it successful initially.

For teams working with older Swift versions, this new release offers a solid upgrade path. The performance improvements provide tangible benefits, while the productivity gains from simplified concurrency and enhanced tooling strengthen the case for migration. Swift 6.2 removes limitations that have shaped our understanding of what works well in Swift development, opening up approaches that just weren’t practical before now.

Taking a break from politics

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 19:15:00 -0400

I wanted to let you know about a shift I’m making with my writing here. Going forward, I’ll be stepping back from linking to most political news stories and sharing my opinions on them. The constant cycle of Trump updates, New York City mayoral coverage, and the general state of the world has started to weigh heavily on me. I’ve realized I need to limit how much news I consume, and it’s not like there is a lack of people writing about these subjects.

This doesn’t mean politics will disappear entirely from my writing. When political stories directly impact Apple, AI, or the broader business technology industry, I’ll still cover them because they’re relevant to the topics that matter most to my readers and me. But the daily political drama and news that doesn’t connect to technology? I’m going to pass on that.

Honestly, the feeling of being powerless to change much of what’s happening has become overwhelming. I’ve found myself consuming the news more than I care to admit, and it’s affecting both my writing and my overall well-being. Taking this step feels necessary, and I hope those of you who enjoyed my political essays understand. I want to focus my energy on the stories and topics where I can provide the most valuable insight rather than adding to the noise of political commentary that’s constantly being published everywhere else.

Charlie Kirk and the poison he left behind

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 16:05:00 -0400

Something deeply disturbing is happening in the aftermath of this person’s death. Pundits are tripping over themselves to paint a man who built his career on hatred as some kind of champion of civil discourse. Charlie Kirk died the way he lived, making headlines and stirring controversy, and there’s a bitter irony in the fact that a man who championed gun rights and argued that some gun deaths were an acceptable cost for the Second Amendment died by gunshot himself. The sanitized version of his story being told across major news networks bears little resemblance to the reality of what he actually said and did.

For someone who supposedly championed debate and open dialogue, Kirk spent most of his time trying to silence the voices he disagreed with. His professor watchlist wasn’t about fostering intellectual curiosity or challenging ideas. It was designed to get people fired, to intimidate educators into avoiding topics that made him uncomfortable. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ faculty found themselves disproportionately targeted, their lives disrupted by harassment campaigns that followed Kirk’s public naming and shaming.

The young people who flocked to his Turning Point USA events weren’t getting lessons in critical thinking or democratic participation. They were being fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories, racial resentment, and thinly veiled calls for violence against anyone who didn’t fit Kirk’s narrow vision of what America should look like. He told teenage girls their primary purpose in attending college should be finding husbands. He called transgender people abominations and quoted biblical passages about stoning gay people to death.

What strikes me most about Kirk’s legacy isn’t just the content of his message, but how he delivered it. He understood that in our current media landscape, being outrageous was more valuable than being truthful. The more inflammatory his statements, the more attention he received, the more money flowed into his organization. It was a cynical business model that turned human dignity into a commodity to be bought and sold.

His rhetoric about immigrants eating pets and Black people being inherently dangerous wasn’t just offensive talk radio banter. These weren’t abstract policy debates happening in some ivory tower. Real people live in the communities Kirk demonized. Real children attend schools where his followers learn to see their classmates as enemies or invaders. The language he used wasn’t just words floating in the ether, it was programming that shaped how his audience saw the world around them.

Kirk amassed a $12 million fortune spreading these views, building his wealth on the foundation of other people’s fear and anger. He took money from right-wing donors who understood exactly what they were paying for, a man who could make bigotry sound intellectual and hatred seem patriotic. The success of his business model says something deeply troubling about what sells in America today.

Now that he’s gone, we’re being told we should focus on his commitment to democratic values and open debate. But Kirk didn’t practice democracy, he practiced demagoguery. Democracy requires good faith engagement with ideas and respect for the humanity of those who disagree with you. Kirk built his entire persona around denying the humanity of vast swaths of the American population.

The eulogies pouring in from unlikely sources reveal something uncomfortable about our political culture. Politicians and pundits who privately found Kirk’s views reprehensible are now praising his commitment to civil discourse. Major news networks that knew exactly what he stood for are choosing to focus on his media savvy rather than his message. This collective amnesia isn’t accidental, it’s a choice to prioritize politeness over truth.

There’s a deliberate sleight of hand happening when Kirk’s statements get labeled as political opinions rather than hate speech. Calling Black women intellectually inferior isn’t a policy position, it’s racist propaganda. Describing transgender people as abominations isn’t a legitimate religious viewpoint, it’s dehumanizing rhetoric designed to justify discrimination and violence. When we treat these statements as merely controversial political takes rather than dangerous hate speech, we normalize the very language that tears communities apart. Kirk understood this distinction perfectly well, which is why he was careful to dress his bigotry in the language of political discourse and constitutional rights. But hatred doesn’t become acceptable just because someone delivers it while wearing a suit and tie.

Some will argue that speaking honestly about Kirk’s impact is inappropriate so soon after his death, that we should show respect for his family and supporters. But respect for the living doesn’t require us to lie about the dead. Kirk’s children deserve better than having their father’s legacy whitewashed by people who want to avoid uncomfortable conversations about the hatred he spread.

The tragedy isn’t just that Kirk died young, it’s that his worldview continues to shape American politics. The conspiracy theories he promoted, the racial resentments he stoked, and the democratic institutions he undermined don’t disappear with his death. His followers are still out there, still convinced that their neighbors are their enemies, still believing that violence might be necessary to protect their vision of America.

Kirk often said that when people stop talking, violence follows. But he wasn’t interested in the kind of talking that builds bridges or finds common ground. He was interested in the kind of talking that draws lines and declares enemies. His version of dialogue was really just a sophisticated form of warfare, using words as weapons to tear down rather than build up.

America has always struggled with the tension between free speech and harmful speech, between protecting dissent and preventing violence. Kirk exploited that tension masterfully, hiding behind the language of constitutional rights while working to deny those same rights to others. He claimed to defend Western civilization while actively working to undermine the democratic values that define it.

The real measure of Kirk’s impact won’t be found in the sanitized obituaries being written today. It will be found in the classrooms where teachers hesitate to discuss difficult topics because they fear being added to a watchlist. It will be found in the communities where immigrants live in fear because of the conspiracy theories he helped spread. It will be found in the young people who learned from him that cruelty can be profitable and that hatred can be dressed up as patriotism.

Moving forward means acknowledging what Kirk actually was, not what we wish he had been. It means recognizing that the problems he represented didn’t die with him. The media ecosystem that rewarded his inflammatory rhetoric is still intact. The donors who funded his operation are still looking for the next person to carry their message. The audiences who cheered his most vicious statements are still seeking someone to validate their worldview.

Perhaps the most fitting tribute to Kirk’s memory would be an honest reckoning with how American political culture created and rewarded him. Until we’re willing to have that conversation, we’re likely to see more figures like him rise to prominence, and more communities torn apart by their poisonous speech.

Scapegoating trans people needs to stop

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:00:00 -0400

The fallout from Charlie Kirk’s shooting reveals everything wrong with how conservative media treats transgender people. The Wall Street Journal, a publication that surely knows better, rushed to publish inflammatory claims about transgender ideology being connected to the violence. The problem is that none of it was true.

The publication reported that ammunition found at the scene contained messages about transgender and antifascist ideology, citing law enforcement sources. This false information spread rapidly across social media and conservative outlets, triggering another wave of harassment against transgender people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the shooting. Later investigations revealed the bullet casings actually contained internet jokes and video game references, forcing the issuance of a correction that received far less attention than their original false claims.

For years now, prominent Republican politicians have been falsely connecting transgender people to mass violence whenever it suits their political narrative. Congressional representatives have repeatedly claimed shooters were transgender when they weren’t, often having to quietly delete their social media posts with the accusations once facts emerged. The pattern is always the same: blame first, check facts later, and never acknowledge the harm caused by spreading misinformation.

These false accusations aren’t innocent mistakes. They’re part of a coordinated effort to demonize transgender Americans, who represent less than one percent of the population but somehow get scapegoated for societal problems they have nothing to do with. When respected news organizations amplify these narratives without proper verification, they legitimize conspiracy theories that put real people in danger.

What makes the Wall Street Journal’s error particularly troubling is how it appears to have been influenced by unverified claims circulating on social media from far-right commentators. The idea that a major news outlet would treat inflammatory posts from political pundits as credible sources shows how far journalistic standards have deteriorated when covering transgender issues.

Conservative media figures have built entire careers around manufacturing fear about transgender people. They present gender-affirming medical care, which has been used safely for decades, as suddenly experimental and dangerous when transgender individuals need it. They ignore overwhelming scientific evidence showing these treatments reduce suicide rates and improve mental health outcomes for transgender youth.

Republican lawmakers have transformed attacking transgender people into a core political strategy. Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the country, with dozens becoming law. These policies aren’t based on medical evidence or child safety concerns. They are responses to manufactured moral panics created by the same misinformation networks that falsely blamed a transgender person for the Kirk shooting.

The consequences extend far beyond politics. Over 130,000 transgender youth now live in states that have banned access to gender-affirming healthcare. Hospitals have stopped providing these services after facing legal threats and political pressure. Real families are being forced to relocate or go without medical care because politicians decided to weaponize transgender existence for electoral gain.

Meanwhile, transgender Americans deal with employment discrimination, housing insecurity, and disproportionate rates of violence while trying to live their daily lives. The constant barrage of false accusations connecting them to mass shootings only makes their situation more precarious and dangerous.

Mainstream media outlets often make the problem worse by covering transgender issues without including transgender voices. Stories about legislation affecting this community frequently omit perspectives from the people most directly impacted. This journalistic blind spot creates an information vacuum that gets filled by the loudest and most inflammatory voices from political activists and pundits.

The misinformation tactics being deployed aren’t new. Throughout history, marginalized groups have been demonized using similar strategies: create fear about an “other,” claim they threaten children or public safety, then use that manufactured panic to justify discrimination and violence. What’s different now is how quickly false information spreads through social media algorithms designed to amplify outrage over accuracy.

Even when these false narratives get debunked, the corrections rarely receive the same attention as the original lies. The Wall Street Journal’s editor’s note about their Kirk shooting error was buried compared to their initial inflammatory claims. By the time facts catch up to fiction, another cycle of harassment and threats has already been unleashed against innocent people.

This dynamic reveals something disturbing about how certain news organizations approach coverage of marginalized communities. Editorial decisions seem driven more by competition for clicks and engagement than by journalistic integrity. The pressure to match sensationalist claims from internet commentators apparently outweighs basic fact-checking responsibilities.

Conservative publications and pundits have discovered that attacking transgender people generates reliable audience engagement and political support. The actual evidence about this community’s experiences, needs, and contributions to society becomes irrelevant when fear-mongering proves more profitable and politically useful.

Social media platforms bear responsibility for how their recommendation algorithms spread harmful misinformation. When false claims about transgender people go viral while corrections struggle for visibility, these companies are actively contributing to real-world harassment and discrimination.

The solution requires fundamental changes in how news organizations cover transgender issues. Including authentic voices from the transgender community should be standard practice, not an afterthought. Fact-checking needs to happen before publication, especially when dealing with inflammatory claims about vulnerable populations.

Politicians who repeatedly make false accusations against transgender people should face consequences for spreading misinformation that puts lives at risk. Professional journalists should recognize when they’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors seeking to amplify harmful narratives.

Most importantly, ordinary citizens need to develop better media literacy skills to recognize when they’re being fed propaganda disguised as news. When someone claims that transgender people, who face discrimination and violence at alarming rates, actually represent a threat to society, that should trigger skepticism rather than outrage.

In a functioning democracy, policy debates should be grounded in evidence and good faith arguments. What we’re witnessing instead is a deliberate campaign to spread fear and hatred toward people who simply want to live authentic lives. When respected institutions participate in this misinformation ecosystem, they undermine the very foundations of informed public discourse that democracy requires to survive.

Apple’s biggest announcement today was Memory Integrity Enforcement

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 17:53:00 -0400

Apple announced Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) today as part of their September event, and it feels like one of those moments when a technology company quietly drops a new feature that will end up radically changing computing. Built into Apple hardware and software in all models of iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, this new feature offers always-on memory safety protection that works behind the scenes to stop some of the nastiest digital attacks before they can impact the device.

Memory corruption attacks work by exploiting boundary violations in how programs access memory. When software tries to read or write data outside of its allocated space, either through bugs or malicious intent, attackers can use these violations to take control of your device.

MIE represents what Apple calls “the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.” That’s a bold claim, but when you dig into what they’ve built, it does not at all seem like an exaggeration. This isn’t just a security patch or minor improvement. It’s the culmination of five years of hardware and software work that fundamentally changes how iPhones protect themselves.

The key insight here is that Apple didn’t just push some new software protection. Instead, they redesigned their approach from the ground up, creating a system where the hardware and software work together in ways that weren’t possible before. The new A19 and A19 Pro chips dedicate an extraordinary amount of silicon resources to security, more than ever before, including special areas for storing security tags and processing power dedicated entirely to checking memory access.

Here’s how it works in practice: every piece of memory that gets allocated on your iPhone now gets tagged with a secret code. When an app or process wants to access that memory, the hardware checks if it has the right code. If the codes match, access is granted. If they don’t, the system immediately shuts down the attempt and terminates the problematic process. The system constantly verifies that every memory access request is legitimate and authorized.

The system tackles the two most common ways attackers try to exploit memory problems. Buffer overflows happen when a program tries to stuff too much data into a space that’s too small, potentially spilling over into neighboring memory areas. Use-after-free bugs occur when a program tries to access memory that’s already been freed up for other uses. Both are favorite tools of sophisticated attackers, and both become much harder to exploit when every memory location has its own unique tag.

What makes this particularly interesting for developers is how it builds on work Apple showcased at WWDC back in June. The company had been laying groundwork for broader memory safety improvements, setting the stage for today’s comprehensive protection system that fundamentally changes how iPhones defend against memory corruption attacks.

Now, with MIE rolling out on new hardware, developers get runtime protection to stop exploitation attempts that might slip through existing defenses. Any developer can begin testing this powerful protection for their app using the Enhanced Security settings in Xcode, which means the security benefits extend beyond just Apple’s own software to third-party apps where users often face the greatest risk.

The performance aspect deserves special attention because memory safety protections often come with significant overhead. Apple’s approach is different because they designed the hardware and software together from the start. By knowing where and how they would deploy the protection system, they could accurately model the demand on the hardware and design their silicon to satisfy it without slowing down the user experience.

This level of integration also explains why Apple’s implementation maintains synchronous tag checking for all demanding workloads while remaining completely invisible to users. Other companies have tried similar approaches, but they typically require users to opt in or only protect certain types of apps because the performance cost is too high. Apple’s solution works all the time, for everyone, without anyone noticing it’s there.

The security implications are substantial. Apple’s offensive research team spent years analyzing and attacking the system, identifying and eliminating entire attack strategies before attackers could discover them. When they tested MIE against real-world exploit chains that had previously worked against iPhones, they could not rebuild any of these chains to work around the new protections.

That’s remarkable because it suggests we’re not just looking at an incremental improvement in security, but a fundamental shift in what’s possible. The few memory corruption effects that remain after MIE are unreliable and don’t give attackers sufficient momentum to successfully exploit bugs. In other words, even if attackers find vulnerabilities, they can’t turn them into working exploits.

For the broader industry, this represents Apple pushing the entire ecosystem forward. While most iPhone users will never face the kind of sophisticated attacks that MIE is designed to stop, the protection is always there, working silently in the background. The system is aimed primarily at the mercenary spyware and surveillance industry, which spends millions of dollars to exploit memory corruption vulnerabilities and target specific individuals.

The ripple effects for developers are likely to be quite significant. Having comprehensive runtime protection changes the security landscape in important ways. Developers can build apps knowing that the platform itself provides fundamental protection against entire classes of memory corruption attacks, while users get protection from problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Perhaps most importantly, this isn’t just about stopping today’s attacks. MIE completely redefines the landscape of memory safety and disrupts many of the most effective exploitation techniques from the last 25 years. That suggests we’re looking at protection that will remain relevant and effective even as attack techniques evolve.

The timing of today’s announcement, building on the foundation work introduced at WWDC, shows Apple’s typical approach of laying groundwork before revealing the full picture. The company had been preparing the ecosystem for more comprehensive memory safety protections. Now developers get the runtime protection to complete the security picture.

Looking ahead, this feels like one of those foundational changes that will influence how the entire industry thinks about memory safety. Apple has shown that it’s possible to build comprehensive, always-on protection without sacrificing performance or user experience. A perfect example of Apple at its best. That’s likely to push other companies to invest more heavily in similar approaches, ultimately making all devices more secure.

MIE isn’t just a new feature, but a strong statement about what’s possible when hardware and software are designed together with security as a primary goal. For iPhone 17 and iPhone Air users, it means getting industry-leading protection that works silently and effectively. For developers, it means building on a platform that provides fundamental protection against entire classes of memory corruption attacks. And for the broader tech industry, it sets a very high new bar for what comprehensive security should look like.

Tim Cook isn’t the problem, capitalism is

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:19:00 -0400

Tim Cook has faced mounting criticism for his friendly interactions with President Donald Trump throughout this administration. Critics across social media and news outlets label his White House visits, positive public statements, and diplomatic gestures as “sucking up,” “bending the knee,” or evidence that Cook personally supports Trump’s policies. Any attempt to explain the business reasoning behind these actions gets dismissed as “making excuses for billionaires” which could not be further from the truth. This reaction, while understandable given the current political climate, fundamentally misunderstands what Cook’s job actually requires him to do.

When you become the CEO of a publicly traded company, you take on a legal obligation called fiduciary duty. This means Cook is legally bound to act in the best financial interests of Apple’s shareholders. Every decision he makes, every handshake he offers, and every gift he presents must serve that singular purpose. It’s not about personal politics or friendships. It’s about protecting and growing the value of the company he leads.

Apple faces unique vulnerabilities under the current administration. The company depends heavily on supply chain manufacturing in China and other countries that Trump has targeted with tariffs and trade restrictions. When Trump threatens 100% tariffs on semiconductor chips or demands American manufacturing, Cook can’t simply ignore these pressures. Apple’s stock price, employee jobs, and investor returns hang in the balance.

Cook gave Trump a customized glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base during an Oval Office news conference, moments before Trump announced that Apple will invest an additional $100 billion in U.S. jobs and suppliers. This wasn’t simply a friendly gesture between two powerful men who happen to like each other. This was a calculated business move designed to secure favorable treatment for Apple in an increasingly hostile regulatory environment.

Consider what Cook accomplished through this visit: he secured exemptions from devastating tariffs that would have made Apple products significantly more expensive for consumers. He negotiated breathing room for Apple’s global supply chain operations. He protected thousands of jobs and billions in shareholder value. The $100 billion manufacturing commitment, while substantial, represents a strategic investment that allows Apple to maintain its current operations while gradually diversifying its production footprint.

Critics also try pointing to Cook’s past statements to argue he’s betrayed his own principles. In 2016, he told Business Insider that “companies should have values like people do,” emphasizing Apple’s commitment to privacy, environmental responsibility, and human rights. People see this quote alongside his current diplomatic approach with Trump and conclude that Cook has fundamentally changed as a person. But this misses a crucial distinction between corporate values and political positioning.

Cook’s past statement about company values remains true today. Apple continues to champion privacy through features like App Tracking Transparency, maintains environmental commitments with carbon-neutral goals, and stands behind human rights initiatives like opposing anti-LGBTQ legislation. These values don’t disappear when Cook shakes hands with politicians he may personally disagree with. They exist in a different sphere entirely from the relationships required to protect Apple’s business interests.

This isn’t new behavior for Cook, nor is it unique to his relationship with Trump. Cook regularly meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping, even attending $40,000-per-plate dinners and Beijing summits where he makes similarly diplomatic statements about partnership and cooperation. Apple creates special lunar new year AirPods for Chinese markets, with custom engravings celebrating the yearly cultural theme. Nobody calls this pandering or suggests Cook has abandoned his principles when he tailors products specifically for Chinese consumers or meets with their authoritarian leader to protect Apple’s business there.

The real issue isn’t Cook’s character or political beliefs. The problem lies in a system where corporate leaders must court political favor to protect their businesses from arbitrary policy decisions. When a president can threaten entire industries with punitive tariffs based on personal whims, CEOs have little choice but to play along. This dynamic exists regardless of which party holds power, though the current administration has made these relationships more transactional and public than usual.

Corporate leaders navigate this reality every day. They donate to political campaigns across party lines, attend White House dinners with presidents they may personally disagree with, and make public statements that serve their business interests rather than their private convictions. Cook has been dubbed the “Trump Whisperer” for his ability to strike deals and maintain a good rapport with the president. This reputation didn’t develop because Cook admires Trump’s policies, but because he’s exceptionally good at protecting Apple’s interests in a challenging political environment.

What we’re witnessing is capitalism functioning exactly as designed. Public companies exist to generate returns for shareholders. CEOs who fail to maximize those returns get fired by their boards of directors. The system incentivizes behavior that prioritizes profits over principles, regardless of the personal beliefs of the individuals involved. If Cook wasn’t capable of this he would not be CEO of Apple.

This creates an uncomfortable truth: separating Cook the person from Cook the CEO becomes almost impossible in practice. His public actions reflect his professional obligations, not necessarily his personal values. When he speaks positively about policies that benefit Apple, he’s doing his job. When he presents gifts to politicians who can help or hurt his company, he’s fulfilling his fiduciary duty. Other than that we know very little about who Cook really is.

The anger directed at Cook would be more accurately focused on the structural issues that create these dynamics. Why should any president have the power to arbitrarily impose trade barriers that can destroy companies overnight? Why do we accept a system where access to favorable policies depends on personal relationships and symbolic gestures? Why have we normalized the expectation that business leaders must perform political theater to protect their companies?

Corporate executives didn’t create this system, but they must operate within it. Cook’s behavior reflects the constraints and incentives built into American capitalism, not his personal political preferences. Until we address those underlying structures, we’ll continue to see CEOs making uncomfortable compromises all around the world.

The next time you see a business leader offering praise or presents to a politician, remember that you’re watching the system work as intended. Your frustration is valid, but it should be directed at the system that makes such performances necessary, not at the individuals who have little choice but to participate in them.

Forcing Google to share secrets isn’t competition

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 19:30:00 -0400

Today’s federal court ruling on Google’s antitrust case brought some mixed results. While Judge Amit Mehta decided against breaking up the tech giant or forcing it to sell Chrome, he did mandate that Google share certain search index data and user interaction information with competitors. Many are celebrating this as a win for competition, but I firmly believe that the courts are making a mistake here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this as some corporate apologist for Google. The company has plenty to answer for, and healthy competition benefits everyone. But requiring Google to hand over the data that powers its search engine feels like forcing a chef to give away their secret recipes to every restaurant in the city.

Think about what search index data actually represents. This isn’t just raw information sitting in a database somewhere. It’s the result of decades of research, billions of dollars in investment, and countless hours of engineering work. Google’s algorithms don’t just magically know which websites are most relevant for your search. They’ve learned this through processing trillions of queries, analyzing user behavior patterns, and constantly refining their understanding of what people actually want when they type something into that search box.

The court’s decision means Google must now share this hard-earned knowledge with competitors who haven’t made the same investments or taken the same risks. Imagine if we told Toyota they had to share their hybrid engine technology with every car manufacturer, or required Netflix to hand over their recommendation algorithms to every streaming service. It sounds absurd when you put it that way, but that’s essentially what we’re asking Google to do.

Competition thrives when companies build better products, not when they’re handed the blueprints to someone else’s success. Microsoft has Bing, DuckDuckGo offers privacy-focused search, and newer players like Perplexity are innovating with AI-powered results. These companies should succeed by creating superior experiences, not by getting a free ride on Google’s research and development.

There’s also a practical problem nobody seems to be talking about. Search algorithms are incredibly complex systems that work because all their pieces fit together perfectly. Handing over chunks of data without the context of how Google’s entire system operates is completely nonsensical. Competitors will likely end up with data they can’t effectively use, while Google’s search quality could suffer if they’re forced to modify their systems to accommodate these requirements.

The privacy implications worry me too. Google’s search data includes patterns about what millions of people are looking for, when they’re searching, and how they interact with results. Even if personal information gets stripped out, sharing this level of behavioral data creates new opportunities for misuse. Do we really want more companies having access to this kind of information about our collective online behavior?

Consider what actually drives innovation in search. Google didn’t become dominant by copying someone else’s homework. They revolutionized how we find information online by developing PageRank, creating faster crawling systems, and building infrastructure that could handle massive scale. Today, they’re continuing to advance search with AI integration and multimodal search capabilities. This kind of breakthrough thinking happens when companies can invest heavily in research and development knowing they’ll benefit from their innovations.

If we start requiring successful tech companies to share their core innovations with competitors, what incentive do they have to keep pushing boundaries? Why would Google invest billions in developing new search technologies if they’ll just have to hand them over to rivals? This approach might create short-term competition, but it could stifle the long-term technological progress that actually benefits consumers.

The ruling does preserve Google’s ability to pay partners like Apple for default search placement, which strikes me as the right balance. These deals happen because Google’s search engine provides value to users. If a competitor builds a better search experience, they should be free to make their own deals and win users based on merit.

Market forces already provide natural checks on Google’s dominance. People switch search engines when they find better alternatives. Businesses use multiple platforms for online marketing. New technologies like voice search and AI assistants are creating fresh opportunities for competition. The market has ways of correcting itself without government intervention that could harm innovation.

I understand the frustration with big tech companies having so much power. There are legitimate concerns about market concentration and barriers to entry. But forcing companies to share their proprietary technology sets a dangerous precedent that could harm America’s competitive advantage in global tech markets. Other countries would love to get access to American innovations through regulatory requirements rather than having to develop competing technologies themselves.

The better path forward involves addressing specific anticompetitive behaviors while preserving incentives for innovation. Break up truly harmful monopolistic practices, ensure fair access to distribution channels, and prevent companies from using one market advantage to unfairly dominate others. But don’t undermine the fundamental principle that companies should benefit from their investments and innovations.

Make no mistake: this data sharing mandate crosses a line that should concern anyone who believes in rewarding innovation. We’re essentially telling one of America’s most successful companies that their decades of research and development now belong to everyone else. That’s not competition but redistribution of intellectual achievement. If we want a thriving tech sector that leads the world, we need to protect the principle that companies earn their advantages through superior work, not government intervention that levels playing fields by penalizing winners.

No, Mastodon is not decentralized

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0400

I keep seeing people hold up Mastodon as the shining example of true decentralization whenever discussions about Bluesky’s centralized nature come up. While I understand the appeal of this comparison, the reality is more complicated than most people realize. Mastodon, despite its federated architecture, operates in ways that make it far less decentralized than its supporters claim.

The most obvious issue lies in how users actually experience Mastodon. When someone decides to join, they face an immediate barrier: choosing a server. This single decision fundamentally shapes their entire social media experience. Unlike truly decentralized systems where users can participate equally regardless of their entry point, Mastodon users find themselves constrained by their server choice in ways that persist throughout their time on the platform.

Most newcomers, overwhelmed by the choice or simply wanting to get started quickly, end up joining mastodon.social. This flagship instance is owned and operated by Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon itself. The concentration of users on this single server creates a situation remarkably similar to what Mastodon advocates criticize about centralized platforms. Having a large portion of users on mastodon.social is functionally equivalent to everyone being on X.com or bsky.app, just with extra steps and a federated label attached.

Server administrators also wield enormous power over their users. They can unilaterally decide to defederate from other instances, effectively cutting off their users from entire communities and conversations. These decisions most often happen without user input or consent. A person might wake up one day to discover they can no longer interact with friends or follow accounts they care about, simply because their server admin had a disagreement with another server’s policies.

Content moderation presents another layer of centralization. Each server operates according to its administrator’s vision of acceptable behavior and speech. Users must conform to these rules or face suspension or removal. This creates isolated pockets of discourse rather than a truly open network where ideas can flow freely between participants.

The technical infrastructure reveals even deeper centralization issues. Most Mastodon servers rely on a handful of major hosting providers and content delivery networks. When these services experience outages or policy changes, large portions of the Mastodon network become inaccessible. The supposed redundancy of federation disappears when multiple servers depend on the same underlying infrastructure.

Running a Mastodon server requires technical knowledge, ongoing maintenance, and financial resources. This barrier to entry means that most users cannot practically participate as equals in the network. Instead, they become dependent on the goodwill and continued interest of server operators who may abandon their moderation efforts or instances at any time, taking user data and connections with them.

Migration between servers, often touted as a solution to these problems, works poorly in practice. Users can move their follower lists, but they lose their post history, replies, and the context of their previous interactions. The process is cumbersome enough that most people never attempt it, effectively locking them to their original server choice.

The development and direction of Mastodon itself remains centralized around a small core team. While the software is open source, the practical reality is that most servers run the official Mastodon software and follow the development decisions made by this central group. Alternative implementations exist but have minimal adoption, meaning the network’s evolution depends on choices made by a few key developers.

Federation also creates unexpected forms of inequality. Popular servers with many users and good connections become more valuable to join than smaller, isolated instances. This network effect concentrates users on a relatively small number of well-connected servers, undermining the distributed nature that federation was supposed to enable.

The user experience itself reflects these centralization pressures. Finding and following people across servers remains clunky compared to centralized platforms. The local and federated timelines create server-centric views that encourage users to think in terms of their particular instance rather than the broader network.

None of this means Mastodon lacks value or that federation provides no benefits over completely centralized platforms. The ability to choose among different moderation policies and communities has real worth. However, calling Mastodon truly decentralized misrepresents how the network actually functions and what users experience when they use it.

When people point to Mastodon as proof that decentralized social media works while criticizing Bluesky for being centralized, they’re making a comparison based more on aspiration than reality. Both platforms involve significant centralization in different ways. Part of the confusion stems from conflating Mastodon the software with the broader fediverse ecosystem. The ActivityPub protocol that powers federation does enable genuinely decentralized possibilities, such as allowing individual websites to federate with social networks. However, Mastodon as it’s actually used and experienced by most people doesn’t deliver on these broader decentralized ideals.

Acknowledging this doesn’t diminish the legitimate advantages that federated systems can offer, but it does help us have more honest conversations about what these technologies actually deliver in practice versus what they promise to provide.

Apple’s retreat from live sports

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 17:34:00 -0400

When Apple first jumped into live sports streaming just three years ago, it looked like the company was ready to play in the big leagues. Apple and MLB signed a seven-year deal worth roughly $85 million before the 2022 season, bringing Friday Night Baseball exclusively to Apple TV+. The move felt bold and strategic, positioning the tech giant as a serious player in the sports media landscape alongside traditional broadcasters and newer streaming rivals.

Fast-forward to this past week, and the story has taken a different turn. Apple is ending its three-year ‘Friday Night Baseball’ partnership with MLB after the 2025 season, with insiders citing low viewership, high costs, and fan frustration with fragmented streaming access. The decision marks a notable retreat from what once seemed like an aggressive push into live sports content.

This news comes with added context that makes it even more interesting. Reports surfaced recently that Apple had been eyeing MLB Saturday games, suggesting the company was considering expanding rather than retreating from baseball. Instead, Apple is reported to be ‘fully out’ of MLB rights deals, with NBC likely stepping in to fill the void left behind.

The timing raises questions about whether Apple’s broader sports strategy is working as planned. The company made headlines with its massive commitment to Major League Soccer, signing a ten-year deal reportedly worth billions. They’ve also been linked to potential Formula 1 streaming rights in the United States. Yet the baseball retreat suggests that throwing money at sports content doesn’t automatically translate to success.

Sports streaming is notoriously expensive, and the returns can be unpredictable. With sports rights costs approaching $3.75 billion annually, Apple opened the door for a business where revenue might easily fail to match those costs. Unlike scripted television shows or documentaries, live sports require ongoing, hefty payments to leagues and organizations, with no guarantee that audiences will follow.

The challenge becomes even more complex when considering how fans actually consume sports content. Baseball, in particular, has deep regional loyalties, with many fans preferring their local broadcast teams and familiar viewing habits. Moving games to a streaming platform that requires a separate subscription creates barriers that traditional broadcasters don’t face.

Apple’s approach to sports has always felt somewhat experimental. The company has deep pockets and can afford to test different strategies, but even tech giants need to see reasonable returns on their investments. Apple is spending more than $3 billion a year on content to bolster the Apple TV+ library to try and attract more subscribers, and sports rights represent a significant chunk of that budget.

The financial reality makes these decisions even more pressing. Apple TV+ operates at a substantial loss, with the streaming service generating far less revenue than the company spends on content and operations. While Apple can absorb these losses as part of a broader ecosystem strategy, the pressure to show progress becomes more intense when individual content deals fail to deliver expected audiences. Every expensive sports contract that doesn’t move the subscriber needle makes it harder to justify the overall streaming investment to shareholders and internal stakeholders.

The broader streaming landscape adds another layer of complexity. Every major tech company seems to want a piece of live sports, driving up prices and creating a fragmented viewing experience for fans. Amazon grabbed Thursday Night Football, Netflix is exploring live events, and traditional broadcasters are fighting to hold onto their most valuable content.

What makes Apple’s situation particularly noteworthy is how the company typically approaches new markets. They usually enter with a clear strategy, substantial resources, and a long-term commitment. The quick pivot away from MLB suggests that sports streaming might be more challenging than anticipated, even for a company with Apple’s resources and expertise.

Looking ahead, it’s worth watching whether this signals a broader shift in Apple’s content strategy. The company could double down on the sports properties that are working, like MLS, while backing away from those that aren’t delivering expected results. Alternatively, this could be the beginning of a more cautious approach to live sports altogether.

The baseball experiment provided valuable lessons, even if it didn’t work out as planned. Sports fans are particular about how and where they watch games, and building new viewing habits takes time and patience. Sometimes the cost of that patience exceeds what even the biggest companies are willing to pay.

For now, Friday Night Baseball will continue through the 2025 season before moving to its new home. Apple will likely take what it learned from this experience and apply it to future content decisions. Whether that means refining their sports strategy or stepping back from live events entirely remains to be seen. Either way, the decision sends a clear message about the realities of competing in the expensive and complicated world of sports media rights.

The Masimo misconception

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 18:25:00 -0400

When Apple recently announced a workaround for the blood oxygen sensor ban affecting Apple Watch functionality in the United States, some observers continued to dismiss Masimo as nothing more than a patent troll seeking to profit from lawsuits rather than innovation. This characterization misses the mark entirely, and ignores decades of genuine medical breakthroughs and life-saving technology that Masimo has brought to hospitals worldwide.

Founded in 1989 by electrical engineer Joe Kiani, Masimo has spent over three decades developing technologies that address real problems in patient monitoring. The company’s flagship innovation, Signal Extraction Technology pulse oximetry, represents a substantial advancement over conventional pulse oximeters that struggled with accuracy during patient movement, poor tissue perfusion, excessive ambient light, and electrical interference from surgical equipment.

Walk into any major hospital today and you will likely encounter Masimo devices monitoring patients in intensive care units, operating rooms, and recovery areas. Their pulse oximetry technology has become a standard tool in medical settings precisely because it solved accuracy problems that healthcare providers faced daily. Leading medical institutions rely on Masimo’s monitoring technology for critical patient care, demonstrating the practical value of their innovations rather than mere patent portfolio management.

The widespread adoption of Masimo’s technology in healthcare settings directly contradicts the patent troll narrative. Companies that exist solely to monetize patents do not invest in manufacturing, distribution networks, regulatory compliance, and ongoing product support. Masimo maintains all of these business functions because they actually sell physical devices that healthcare providers use to monitor real patients.

Patent trolls typically acquire patents without developing products or contributing to their underlying technologies. Masimo presents a different picture entirely. The company is publicly traded, maintains manufacturing facilities, employs engineers and clinical researchers, and it operates global sales and support organizations. Their business model centers on creating and selling actual medical devices that healthcare providers use daily.

The timing criticism regarding Masimo’s smartwatch development deserves scrutiny as well. While they did not have a consumer smartwatch when filing their complaint, this ignores their extensive work in miniaturizing hospital-grade monitoring technology. Medical device development follows a different timeline than consumer electronics. It requires extensive regulatory validation, clinical trials, and safety testing, meaning patent protection often precedes commercial availability by years. This serves a legitimate purpose in protecting innovations that require substantial investment to bring to market.

The two patents in question will expire in August 2028, meaning Masimo will have held them for their full term rather than engaging in the perpetual lawsuits typical of patent trolls. Companies focused purely on patent monetization often acquire patents near expiration specifically for last-minute licensing demands. Masimo’s approach suggests different priorities focused on protecting technologies they actually developed and commercialized in healthcare settings.

The Apple case represents a legitimate dispute between two companies with different approaches to health monitoring technology. Apple’s implementation of blood oxygen monitoring in consumer devices intersects with technology that Masimo spent years developing for medical applications. Rather than simply demanding licensing fees, Masimo has continued developing their own consumer products while defending their intellectual property through proper legal channels.

Patent trolls often target multiple companies across various industries with broadly written patents of questionable validity. Masimo’s focused approach to protecting specific pulse oximetry innovations developed for their core medical device business suggests a company defending legitimate intellectual property rather than pursuing opportunistic legal strategies. While patent abuse certainly exists in technology industries, the evidence suggests Masimo represents something different: a medical technology company defending innovations they actually developed and brought to market. They deserve to be judged on their decades of medical contributions, not dismissed with oversimplified labels.

No, Apple has not destroyed Steve Jobs’ vision for iPad

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:15:00 -0400

There’s been a lot of discussion since iPadOS 26 was introduced in June about how Apple has finally moved the iPad away from Steve Jobs’ original vision, transforming it from a simple content consumption device into something more computer-like. Some celebrate this evolution, falsely pointing to features like windowed apps and sophisticated multitasking as some sort of weak proof that Apple has successfully abandoned the constraints Jobs imposed. Even wrongly proclaiming that the company swore it would never evolve their tablet experience. All of this completely misses something fundamental about what Jobs actually wanted to achieve with this device.

When Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010, he wasn’t trying to freeze technology in amber. He was solving a specific problem that existed at that moment: people needed something between their phone and their laptop that could handle everyday tasks more comfortably without the complexity of desktop computing. The iPad delivered on that promise beautifully, but the world didn’t stop evolving.

The most misunderstood quote in Apple history might be Jobs saying “If you see a stylus, they blew it.” People love to throw this around whenever the Apple Pencil comes up, as if it proves some grand betrayal of his vision. But context matters enormously here. He wasn’t even talking about tablets, but rather critiquing the Palm Pilots and Windows Mobile devices of the era that were impossible to use with just your fingers.

The Apple Pencil represents exactly the opposite philosophy. The iPad works perfectly without it for everything Jobs originally envisioned: reading, browsing, watching videos, checking email. But when you want to sketch an idea, mark up a document, or create digital art, having the option of precise input transforms what’s possible. Jobs would have appreciated this distinction because it maintains the core accessibility while expanding creative potential.

Think about how Jobs approached other products. The iPhone started simple but gained features like copy and paste, multitasking, and app folders. These additions didn’t betray the original concept; they enhanced it. Similarly, the Mac began as a revolutionary departure from command-line interfaces but evolved to include a ton of features that would have seemed unimaginably complex to early users.

What some see as feature creep, I see as natural evolution responding to how people actually use their devices. Students want to take notes by hand but also research on the web and watch Netflix. Artists sketch but also read the news and communicate with family. The iPad’s growing capabilities serve these real-world needs without forcing complexity on users who don’t want it.

The beauty of iPadOS lies in its layered approach. Someone buying their first iPad can still experience that magical simplicity Jobs championed at the product unveiling. Apps open full-screen by default. Touch remains the primary interface. The learning curve stays very gentle. But power users can gradually discover features like true windowed multitasking as their needs grow.

This is Apple fulfilling Jobs’ vision more completely than he could have imagined. He wanted computing to feel natural and accessible to everyone, not just technical experts. Today’s iPad achieves this across a much broader range of tasks than the original could handle. A child can play games and watch cartoons just as easily as a designer can create professional illustrations or a writer can manage complex documents.

The false narrative seems to assume that adding capabilities necessarily makes devices harder to use. But Apple has consistently proven this wrong by maintaining intuitive defaults while hiding advanced features until they’re needed. The iPad today is simultaneously more powerful and more approachable than ever before.

Jobs famously said that innovation means saying no to a thousand things so you can focus on what matters most. But he also understood that what matters most changes as technology advances and user needs evolve. The iPad team has honored both principles by saying no to complexity that doesn’t serve users while saying yes to capabilities that genuinely expand what’s possible. When users need truly complex workflows, the Mac remains the best tool available for that purpose, proving the iPad hasn’t become something it was never intended to be.

Some people will continue to argue that Apple has moved beyond Jobs’ original iPad concept to redefine the product, and that they’re fine with that departure. But I believe this truly misreads what actually happened. The iPad has grown into something even more remarkable than its creator originally envisioned while remaining true to its core promise of making computing more approachable for everyone. It’s become capable of things that would have seemed like science fiction fifteen years ago. That’s not the destruction of vision; that’s the best kind of evolution.

The wrong man got the presidential treatment in Alaska

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0400

Last Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska left many of us wondering how we got to this point. Watching Putin step off his plane to F-35 jets and B-2 bombers flying overhead felt like witnessing America provide a military honor guard for someone who should be facing trial at The Hague, not receiving presidential treatment on American soil.

The whole spectacle felt deeply wrong from the start. Putin greeted Trump with “Good afternoon, dear neighbor,” using Alaska’s proximity to Russia as a way to suggest these two nations share some kind of natural partnership. That calculated move showed exactly how skilled Putin remains at turning any situation to his advantage, even when he’s the one who should be asking for mercy.

What made this gathering even more troubling was who wasn’t there. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the democratically elected leader of the country Putin has been systematically destroying for years, had no seat at this table. Ukraine, the victim of unprovoked aggression, was left to watch from the sidelines while their attacker got face time with the American president. This sent a clear message to the world about whose voice matters and whose suffering can be ignored when powerful men want to make deals that benefit them exclusively.

The absence of Ukraine’s president from these talks undermines everything Ukraine has fought for since February 2022. Zelenskyy has spent the past three years rallying international support, visiting capitals around the world, and making the case that Ukraine’s fight is really about defending democracy itself. Friday’s meeting in Alaska essentially told him that his country’s future can be decided without him in the room.

Putin walked away from Alaska with exactly what he wanted: legitimacy. The images of him standing next to the American president, the formal press conference, the careful diplomatic language all served to normalize his position as just another world leader with valid concerns and reasonable demands. This is a man whose forces have committed documented war crimes in countless Ukrainian cities and towns. Giving him this platform sends a dangerous signal that enough time and enough violence can eventually earn you a place back at the grown-ups’ table.

The international community watched this unfold with obvious horror and concern. European allies who have spent billions supporting Ukraine and accepting millions of refugees must be wondering what America’s priorities really are. When you elevate someone like Putin to the level of legitimate negotiating partner, you’re essentially telling every other authoritarian leader that aggression pays off if you can just outlast international condemnation.

None of this is to say that diplomacy itself is wrong. Finding ways to end the killing in Ukraine matters enormously, and talking is usually better than fighting. But there’s a difference between necessary diplomacy and giving someone a propaganda victory they don’t deserve. Putin didn’t earn his way back to respectability through good behavior or meaningful concessions. He’s sitting across from an American president again because he’s managed to make his war drag on long enough that some people have become tired of opposing him.

The timing makes this even more painful. Ukraine’s counteroffensive efforts continue to face serious challenges, and international support has shown signs of fatigue after more than three years of conflict. This was exactly the moment when Putin needed to see that his strategy of waiting out Western resolve wouldn’t work. Instead, he got photos with the American president and a chance to present himself as a reasonable leader seeking peace.

Looking ahead, the real test will be whether this meeting leads to any meaningful progress toward ending the war, or whether it simply gave Putin what he was really after all along: the restoration of his international standing. The fact that no concrete deal emerged from Alaska might actually be the best outcome we could have hoped for under the circumstances, but the damage to American credibility and Ukrainian morale may already be done.

What happens next matters enormously. Trump has announced that Zelenskyy will visit Washington on Monday, which at least gives Ukraine’s president a chance to make his case directly. But the sequencing tells its own story about priorities and respect. Putin got his meeting first, his photo opportunities, and his chance to set the narrative. Zelenskyy gets to respond afterward, already playing defense against whatever narrative Putin managed to establish in Alaska. The fact that other world leaders who have held strong in defending Ukraine will be in the meeting is the only hopeful aspect. Trump will be outnumbered by people who refuse to appease him.

This whole episode reveals something uncomfortable about how America approaches international leadership in 2025. When we treat war criminals like legitimate negotiating partners without demanding real accountability first, we’re not just making a mistake about one particular conflict. We’re setting a precedent that violence and patience can eventually buy you a ticket back to respectability, no matter what you’ve done along the way. This is the clearest sign of democracy dying in a country that has always been the gold standard of protecting it.

Apple’s new Processor Trace instrument is incredible

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:10:00 -0400

Apple’s latest addition to Xcode, the Processor Trace instrument, is one of those features that sounds pretty mundane until you actually try it. Then you realize it’s exactly what you’ve been needing for the performance mysteries that eat up hours upon hours of your development time.

If you’ve been developing apps for a while, this story will sound very familiar. Your app runs fine in testing, but then users complain about performance issues or excessive battery drain. You fire up Instruments, poke around with Time Profiler, and maybe get some clues about which functions are eating CPU cycles. But often you’re left guessing about what’s really happening at the processor level. The true black hole of development work.

That’s where Processor Trace comes in. This tool captures every single branching decision your code makes at the CPU level, then presents it in a way that actually makes sense. Instead of statistical sampling like most profilers, you get a complete picture of your app’s execution flow. It’s the difference between taking random snapshots of a busy intersection versus having a complete video recording of all the traffic passing through.

Before this, the closest thing developers had was Intel’s VTune Profiler. VTune uses advanced sampling and profiling methods to analyze code and provides statistical information about applications, including CPU statistics and cache misses. It’s been the gold standard for detailed performance analysis, especially on Intel hardware. VTune works on both Intel and AMD hardware, but its advanced hardware-based sampling features require an Intel CPU. The problem is that VTune is complex, requires a steep learning curve, and isn’t exactly designed for typical iOS or macOS app development workflows. It also has zero utility when writing for Apple silicon.

Processor Trace does something similar but integrates deeply into the Xcode ecosystem, and is designed around Apple hardware. Instead of learning a separate tool with its own interface and methodology, you get hardware-level insights right alongside your Instruments workflow. The visualization takes complex processor behavior and turns it into something you can actually understand and more often than not fix.

What makes this particularly useful is the level of detail. Traditional profilers might tell you that a function is slow, but they can’t always explain why. Maybe it’s branch misprediction, maybe it’s cache misses, or maybe your algorithm just doesn’t play well with the processor architecture. Processor Trace shows you exactly what the CPU is doing, so you can optimize for the actual hardware behavior rather than guessing.

The catch, as usual with new Apple features, is the hardware requirements. This only works on M4 chips and iPhone 16 devices, which means you’re out of luck if you’re still developing on older hardware. It’s frustrating but not surprising. Apple has a habit of using new developer tools to push hardware upgrades.

The real test will be how much this actually helps in day-to-day development. Having detailed processor traces is great in theory, but if the insights don’t translate to meaningful performance improvements, it’s just interesting data. Early reports and my own testing suggest it’s genuinely useful for finding performance bottlenecks that other tools miss, but it’ll take time to see how it fits into regular development workflows with complex code.

For developers who’ve been struggling with performance issues that seem to have no clear cause, this tool might be worth the new hardware investment. The ability to see exactly what your code is doing at the processor level fills a real gap that existed between high-level profiling and low-level debugging. Whether it becomes an essential part of iOS and macOS development or just another tool that gets forgotten in six months depends entirely on your needs. My early assessment is that I personally will find it irreplaceable.

Goodbye, GitHub

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:30:00 -0400

Thomas Dohmke’s departure as GitHub CEO marks the end of an era that was always destined to be short-lived. With Microsoft eliminating the CEO position entirely and further folding GitHub into its CoreAI team, we’re witnessing the final absorption of what was once the internet’s most important code repository. This isn’t shocking news. It’s the predictable conclusion to a story that began the moment Microsoft bought the company back in 2018.

When Microsoft acquired GitHub seven years ago, they made all the right promises. GitHub would remain independent, they said. It would keep its developer-first culture and open platform approach. Nat Friedman would run things as CEO, and the community could trust that nothing fundamental would change. These assurances felt hollow at the time, and they are even more absurd now.

The pattern here is depressingly familiar if you’ve watched Microsoft operate over the years. They buy something beloved by developers, promise to preserve its independence, maintain that facade for a while, and then slowly but methodically integrate it into their larger corporate machine. LinkedIn followed this exact playbook after Microsoft bought it in 2016. The platform maintained some semblance of independence at first, but gradually became just another Microsoft property.

GitHub’s trajectory has been even more transparent. When Nat Friedman stepped down in 2021, Dohmke took over but started reporting to Julia Liuson in Microsoft’s developer division instead of maintaining direct independence. Earlier this year, that reporting structure shifted again when Liuson began answering to Jay Parikh’s newly formed CoreAI team. Each reorganization brought GitHub deeper into Microsoft’s corporate structure, making the most recent news feel less like a surprise and more like the inevitable final step.

The timing tells us everything we need to know about Microsoft’s priorities. GitHub is being absorbed at the exact moment when AI-powered coding tools have become the battleground in tech. They’re gaining more direct control over the platform that hosts most of the world’s open-source code at precisely the moment when that code has become crucial training data for AI models. The company that controls GitHub controls access to the raw material that will power the next generation of coding assistants. To say it’s a gold mine for Microsoft is an understatement.

Parikh, in sharing his vision of an “agent factory” makes Microsoft’s intentions crystal clear. This isn’t about preserving GitHub’s community-focused culture or maintaining its role as a neutral platform for developers. It’s about weaponizing the largest collection of code in the world to build AI tools that can compete with upstarts like Cursor and Claude’s coding capabilities. GitHub Copilot was just the beginning. Now the entire platform becomes a cog in Microsoft’s AI ambitions.

The saddest part isn’t that Microsoft is doing this, but that so many people seem caught off guard. This company has a decades-long history of acquiring beloved developer tools and slowly but surely bending them to serve corporate interests rather than community needs. Remember when they bought Xamarin and promised it would remain a vibrant cross-platform development solution? That technology has been relegated to a shadow of its former self, with Visual Studio for Mac getting killed off and the mobile development story becoming increasingly confusing.

The broader developer community understood the risks from day one. When Microsoft announced the GitHub acquisition, developers immediately started talking about alternatives. GitLab saw a massive surge in interest, and platforms like SourceForge experienced renewed attention as people looked for escape routes. The smart money moved their most important projects elsewhere or at least set up mirrors on other platforms.

Those early concerns now look prophetic. GitHub under Microsoft started pushing enterprise features, tightening integration with Azure, and making decisions that clearly prioritized corporate customers over the open-source community that built the platform’s reputation. The introduction of GitHub Copilot, trained on code that developers uploaded with the expectation of open collaboration, marked a turning point where GitHub began monetizing community contributions in ways that many found ethically questionable.

Dohmke’s departure to “become a startup founder again” reads like a polite way of saying he couldn’t stomach what GitHub was becoming under Microsoft’s increasingly direct control. After nearly four years of walking the tightrope between community expectations and corporate demands, he’s chosen to jump ship just as that balancing act becomes impossible. The fact that Microsoft isn’t even bothering to replace him tells us everything about how they view GitHub’s future role.

The further integration into CoreAI also signals the end of any pretense that GitHub serves the broader developer community first and Microsoft’s business interests second. When your code repository becomes part of an “AI platform and tools” division, you’re no longer primarily a hosting service. You’re a data collection and product development arm of one of the world’s most successful technology companies.

This matters because GitHub isn’t just another software tool. It’s critical infrastructure for the global software development community. When Microsoft controls both the platform where code lives and the AI tools that increasingly write that code, they gain an unprecedented level of influence over how software gets built. That kind of vertical integration might make business sense for Microsoft, but it’s terrible news for anyone who believes in a diverse, competitive, and open software development ecosystem.

The real tragedy is that this was all completely avoidable. GitHub could have remained independent, grown sustainably, and continued serving as a neutral platform for developers around the world. Instead, the company’s founders chose a massive payday, and now the entire global software development community has to live with the consequences of that decision.

Microsoft’s behavior here isn’t evil. It’s just predictable corporate strategy. They identified a valuable asset, made promises they never intended to keep, and are now extracting maximum value from their acquisition in ways that serve their broader business goals. The problem isn’t that Microsoft is acting like Microsoft; the problem is that too many people chose to believe they wouldn’t when it came to GitHub.

For developers who still keep their primary repositories on GitHub, this latest change should serve as a final wake-up call. The platform you’ve built your workflow around is no longer a service provider focused on your needs. It’s a strategic asset in Microsoft’s AI wars. Whether that matters to you depends on how much you trust Microsoft to balance their corporate interests with the needs of the broader developer community. Based on their track record, any further trust in the company seems increasingly misplaced.

No means no, even for Perplexity

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:30:00 -0400

Perplexity’s response to the Cloudflare report about their crawling practices is terrible, and honestly, I’m not sure what’s more concerning: that they completely missed the point about consent, or that they seem genuinely confused about why people are upset.

Let me break this down in plain terms. When a website puts up a robots.txt file, it’s basically putting up a “No Solicitors” sign on their digital front door. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling Girl Scout cookies, collecting for charity, or claim you’re there to help the homeowner. The sign says no, and that should mean no. Period.

Perplexity’s entire defense boils down to “we’re different because we’re helping users.” They keep insisting that because their AI only fetches content when a real person asks a question, somehow that makes ignoring robots.txt okay. They even compare themselves to Google’s user-triggered fetchers, as if that settles the matter in their favor.

Here’s the thing though: intent doesn’t override consent. If I tell solicitors not to knock on my door, I don’t care if they’re selling something I might actually want, or if they only knock when someone specifically asked them to check my neighborhood. I said no. That should always be enough.

The restaurant analogy they use actually proves my point perfectly. When they say their AI goes to websites to find “the latest reviews for that new restaurant,” they’re essentially walking into someone’s digital restaurant, reading their menu, taking notes, and walking out without asking permission or paying for anything. The fact that they’re doing it for a user doesn’t change the fundamental transaction.

What really gets me is how they frame this as some noble fight for the health of the open web. They warn about a two-tiered internet where access depends on having the right tools blessed by infrastructure controllers, but they’ve got it all backwards. Respecting robots.txt isn’t creating barriers, it’s respecting the basic property rights that make the web work in the first place.

Website owners aren’t being unreasonable gatekeepers when they use robots.txt. They’re making informed decisions about how their content gets used. Maybe they’re concerned about server load. Maybe they have licensing agreements that restrict automated access. Maybe they just don’t want their content feeding someone else’s AI without their permission. These are all valid reasons, and they don’t need to justify them to anyone.

The most frustrating part of Perplexity’s response is how they keep talking about user-driven access as if it’s fundamentally different from traditional crawling. They insist they don’t store information or use it for training, just to answer immediate questions. But that’s still using someone’s content without permission. The fact that you delete it afterward doesn’t make the initial taking okay.

Think about it this way: if someone broke into your house, read your diary to answer their friend’s question about you, then left without taking anything physical, would you be okay with that because it was “user-driven” and they didn’t keep copies? Of course not. The violation is in the access without permission, not necessarily in what happens afterward.

Then they have the nerve to attack Cloudflare’s competence. Maybe Cloudflare got some technical details wrong, and they did confuse some traffic sources. But instead of addressing the core ethical issue, Perplexity spent most of their response playing gotcha with traffic attribution and questioning Cloudflare’s expertise. It seems like pretty obvious deflection.

The technical arguments about whether specific requests came from Perplexity directly or from third-party services they use miss the forest for the trees. If you’re using BrowserBase to access websites that have asked not to be crawled, you’re still responsible for that access. You can’t outsource your way out of ethical obligations.

I find it really troubling how Perplexity talks about websites that deny them access as somehow harming users. They paint a picture of people losing access to valuable information because their chosen tools got blocked. But this frames the entire debate wrong. Users aren’t entitled to have AI tools access every website on their behalf. Website owners get to decide how their content is used, and users need to respect those decisions.

I keep coming back to the consent issue because it’s really that simple. When someone says no, you don’t get to redefine their “no” as unreasonable, outdated, or harmful to the greater good. You don’t get to decide that your use case is special enough to override their clearly stated preferences.

The web works because of mutual respect and agreed-upon standards. Robots.txt might be an old standard, but it’s still the primary way website owners communicate their preferences about automated access. When companies like Perplexity decide those preferences don’t apply to them, they’re not advancing the open web, they’re undermining the trust that makes it possible in the first place.

If Perplexity really believes their approach benefits users and website owners, they should be working to establish new standards that balance everyone’s interests. They should be advocating for better, more fine-grained ways to signal consent for AI access. Instead, they’re arguing that consent is irrelevant as long as their intentions are good.

That’s not how consent works in any other context, and it shouldn’t be how it works on the web either. No means no, even when it’s written in a robots.txt file, and even when you think you know better. The fundamental principle here is simple: consent matters on the web just like everywhere else. Until Perplexity understands that, there’s not much more to say.

Developers, not operators

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:45:00 -0400

Update on August 13th: Thomas Dohmke is stepping down as CEO of GitHub. I wrote a follow-up post with my thoughts on the subject.

I read Thomas Dohmke’s piece about developers being “reinvented” through AI adoption, and while his vision of transformation may appeal to some, something important is missing from this narrative. The piece paints a picture of inevitable change, but it glosses over a fundamental principle that has always driven great software development: the right to choose your own tools and approach.

There’s a troubling undertone to the argument: it suggests that developers who don’t embrace this particular path are somehow destined to become obsolete. The framework assumes that technological advancement follows a single, predetermined trajectory. But anyone who’s been in this industry for more than a few years knows that’s simply not how software development works. We’ve seen countless “revolutionary” tools come and go, each one promising to fundamentally change how we work.

Remember when visual programming languages promised to eliminate traditional coding and when low-code platforms were supposed to make developers redundant? These tools found their niches and served specific purposes, but they didn’t replace the fundamental craft of software development. They became options in a much larger toolkit.

The four-stage progression Dohmke outlines (Skeptic, Explorer, Collaborator, Strategist) reads more like a conversion narrative than a natural evolution. It assumes that every developer who doesn’t reach “Stage 4” is somehow incomplete or behind the curve. But what if some developers are perfectly fulfilled and effective working in what he calls “Stage 1” or “Stage 2”? What if they’ve made a conscious choice about how they want to practice their craft?

Here’s what bothers me most about the “adapt or perish” messaging: it fundamentally misunderstands what makes developers valuable. Yes, AI can generate code quickly. But software development has never been just about typing out syntax as fast as possible. The real work happens in understanding problems, designing elegant solutions, making architectural decisions, and yes, sometimes in the careful crafting of individual functions and algorithms.

Some of the best developers I know are incredibly thoughtful about their tools. They might spend extra time writing code by hand not because they’re resistant to change, but because the act of typing each line helps them think through edge cases, consider performance implications, or ensure they truly understand what they’re building. That’s not inefficiency; that’s craftsmanship.

The piece mentions that Stage 4 developers focus on “delegation and verification” rather than implementation. But this assumes that implementation itself isn’t valuable or intellectually rewarding. For many developers, the process of translating ideas into working code is one of the most satisfying aspects of the job. Why should we abandon that?

Dohmke’s analysis also oversimplifies the incredible diversity within software development. A developer working on embedded systems for medical devices faces completely different constraints and requirements than someone building web applications or mobile games. The idea that all of these roles will converge toward AI orchestration ignores the reality of how specialized and varied our field actually is.

Consider performance-critical applications where every line of code matters, or safety-critical systems where you need to understand exactly how each algorithm works. In these contexts, the “black box” nature of AI-generated code isn’t just suboptimal, it could be dangerous. Developers in these fields aren’t resisting change out of stubbornness; they’re making responsible technical decisions.

Even in less critical applications, there’s tremendous value in having developers who deeply understand the systems they’re building. When something goes wrong at 2 AM, you want someone who can debug from first principles, not someone whose primary skill is prompting an AI agent.

The piece briefly mentions that advanced developers are paying for “top-tier subscriptions” to AI tools, framing this as evidence of their commitment to the new paradigm. But this glosses over a significant economic reality: not every developer can or should be required to pay monthly fees for the privilege of doing their job. Many excellent developers work for small companies, contribute to open source projects, or simply prefer to keep their tool costs minimal. The suggestion that staying current requires expensive subscriptions to multiple AI services creates an artificial barrier to entry and excludes developers who might be brilliant but don’t have the budget for the latest AI tools.

Perhaps most importantly, the push toward universal AI adoption risks stifling the kind of innovation that has always driven our industry forward. Some of the most significant breakthroughs in software development have come from developers who took unconventional approaches, who questioned prevailing wisdom, or who chose to work in ways that seemed inefficient at the time.

If we create a culture where deviating from the AI-assisted workflow is seen as falling behind, we lose that diversity of approach. We end up with a monoculture where everyone is using similar tools, thinking in similar ways, and potentially missing opportunities for genuine innovation.

None of this is to say that AI tools don’t have value or that developers shouldn’t experiment with them. Many of the capabilities Dohmke describes are genuinely impressive, and I know plenty of developers (myself included) who have found AI assistants helpful for certain tasks. The key is choice. Developers should be free to incorporate AI tools where they add value, while also maintaining the option to work more traditionally when that approach serves them better.

A healthy software development ecosystem needs room for both the AI enthusiast who loves orchestrating multiple agents and the craftsperson who prefers to understand every line of code they write. Rather than pushing a single vision of what developers should become, we should celebrate the diversity of approaches that make our field so dynamic.

The developer who spends extra time carefully implementing an algorithm by hand might discover an optimization that the AI-first developer would miss. The team that chooses to limit their AI usage might maintain better understanding of their codebase’s internals. These aren’t inferior approaches; they’re different approaches that can lead to different kinds of insights and innovations.

What I find most concerning about the “reinvention” narrative is the implicit assumption that developers can’t be trusted to make good decisions about their own tools and processes. The piece suggests that resistance to AI adoption is simply a matter of not understanding the benefits or being stuck in old ways of thinking.

But developers are generally pretty smart about tools. We’ve been evaluating new frameworks, languages, and methodologies for decades. When we’re skeptical of a new approach, it’s often for good reasons. Maybe we’ve been burned by similar promises before. Maybe we understand aspects of our specific problem domain that make the new tool less applicable. Maybe we’ve simply found a workflow that works well for us.

The assumption that skepticism equals ignorance does a disservice to the thoughtful analysis that most developers bring to tool selection. Some developers will find tremendous value in AI-powered workflows. Others will use AI tools selectively for specific tasks. Still others will choose to work primarily with traditional tools. All of these can be valid, intelligent choices.

The future of software development doesn’t have to be monolithic. We can embrace the potential of AI tools while still preserving space for developers who choose different approaches. We can celebrate the efficiency gains that some developers achieve through AI assistance while also recognizing the value that comes from deep, hands-on understanding of systems.

What we need is not a single vision of what developers should become, but an ecosystem that supports multiple paths. The developer who masters AI orchestration deserves respect for their skills. So does the developer who becomes incredibly proficient at manual optimization or the developer who finds the perfect balance between AI assistance and hands-on work.

The strength of our industry has always come from its diversity of thought, approach, and expertise. Let’s not sacrifice that diversity for the sake of a single technological trend, no matter how impressive that trend might be. The future is big enough for all kinds of developers.

Great software will continue to be built by people who understand their tools deeply, think critically about problems, and make thoughtful decisions about how to approach their work. Whether those tools include AI agents or not is just one choice among many. Let’s keep it that way, shall we? 😉

Why I keep writing in the AI era

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 19:30:00 -0400

There’s been an overwhelming amount of discussion lately about AI and how it’s affecting people who write content on the web. It seems pretty apparent that AI companies are hoovering up everything we write and using it to give people quick answers without (clearly) sending them to the original sources. It’s certainly a real concern, especially for folks who depend on their content to pay the bills.

I’m not in that camp myself though. My website has always been a fun personal project rather than a money-making venture. Sure, it would be nice if it generated some income, but that isn’t my goal. I write because I enjoy sharing my thoughts on topics of interest. There is a sense of satisfaction in taking a moment to link to something I believe others might also like.

In some ways, the whole AI debate feels a bit like the early days of Google, when people worried that search results would kill individual websites. Some sites did suffer, but others found new ways to provide value. The landscape changed, but good content still found its audience. Now we’ve come full circle, with creators once again worried about how AI might affect the search results they depend on.

I get why content creators who rely on advertising revenue are infuriated. When AI systems can summarize your article without sending traffic your way, that directly impacts your ability to make a living. It’s frustrating to spend hours crafting something useful only to have it essentially republished without attribution or compensation. The business model gets turned upside down—yeah, it’s bullshit.

At the same time, I have to admit that as a user, I sometimes appreciate the efficiency. When I’m trying to solve a specific problem, I don’t always want to read through five different blog posts to find the one piece of information I need. If an AI can synthesize that for me quickly, that’s genuinely helpful. I find myself appreciating something that might be undermining the very ecosystem that created the information in the first place. It’s a weird position to be in.

The question of incentives is interesting. Money is obviously a big motivator for many content creators, but it’s not the only one. People write for all sorts of reasons: to build their professional reputation, to work through their own understanding of topics, to contribute to their communities, or simply because they find it rewarding. Those motivations don’t disappear just because the monetization landscape changes.

I think there will always be a place for human-created content, even in an AI-saturated world. People connect with other people in ways that AI can’t quite replicate. We want to know not just what the solution is, but how someone else approached the problem, what they tried that didn’t work, and what they learned along the way. There’s context and personality in human writing that gets lost when everything gets distilled down to the most efficient answer.

The internet has always been this weird mix of commercial and personal motivations. Some of the best content I’ve encountered over the years came from people who were just passionate about their subjects and wanted to share. Blog posts written by developers working through problems in their spare time, tutorials created by people who wished someone had explained something to them when they were learning, random GitHub repositories with surprisingly thorough documentation.

That spirit of sharing and learning together doesn’t require a business model. It just requires curiosity and a willingness to put your thoughts out there. If AI systems want to learn from that content, well, I suppose that’s part of the deal when you publish something publicly on the internet.

I’m not naive about this. After all, AI companies are making money from content they didn’t create, and there are legitimate questions about fairness and compensation. But for someone like me, who writes primarily for the joy of it, the calculus is different. My content might get absorbed into some AI training set, but it might also help individual people solve problems or learn something new. Both of those outcomes feel worthwhile.

The landscape is definitely changing, and I imagine it will keep changing in ways we can’t predict. But I think there will always be room for people who want to share their knowledge and experiences, regardless of what the AI systems are doing. The format might evolve, the distribution channels might shift, but the fundamental human desire to learn from each other isn’t going anywhere.

So I’ll keep writing about the things I find interesting, posting code snippets or apps that might be useful, and documenting the solutions I discover. Maybe an AI will summarize it all. Even so, someone might also find the original version and get something valuable from the fuller context. Either way, I had fun creating it, and that’s enough for me.

Apple reality check

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 21:05:00 -0400

The tech punditry world has developed an almost religious devotion to the idea that great companies are built on pure virtue, treating any commercial pragmatism as a fall from grace. This seductive but naive mythology fundamentally misunderstands how successful businesses truly operate.

Consider the fantasy that Apple’s success came from ignoring money entirely and focusing solely on making great products. This narrative is so entrenched that it’s treated as historical fact, but it misrepresents what made Apple special. The company didn’t succeed by being indifferent to profit, but by understanding that sustainable profit comes from creating products people genuinely want to use instead of extracting maximum value from captive customers.

That’s a subtle but crucial distinction. A company that truly ignored financial considerations would quickly find itself unable to invest in R&D, attract top talent, or scale manufacturing to meet demand. Apple’s genius wasn’t in rejecting commerce but in mastering it. It recognized early on that short-term extraction undermines long-term value.

The current wave of criticism directed at Apple says more about the critics’ expectations than about the company’s actual strategy. Some observers seem determined to find signs of moral decay in every business decision. It’s as if Apple had betrayed sacred vows, rather than behaving as a corporation trying to navigate complex tradeoffs in a competitive market.

Consider the hand-wringing over Apple’s various policies. Yes, the company prioritizes its own interests, charges premium prices, and maintains tight control over its platforms. These aren’t recent corruptions of some pristine original vision. They’re consistent features of Apple’s approach that have existed throughout its history, including during the periods that critics now hold up as golden ages of virtue.

The real question isn’t whether Apple has changed, but whether the expectations placed on it have become unrealistic. There’s a strain of tech criticism that seems to want Apple to be simultaneously more open and more curated, more affordable and more premium, more developer-friendly and more user-focused. These aren’t necessarily contradictory goals, but they exist in tension with each other, and real companies must make hard choices about which values to prioritize.

There’s also an obsession with leadership changes as a cure-all for complex institutional challenges. The idea that swapping out executives will instantly reshape a company’s culture and priorities ignores the reality that those executives are operating within systems of incentives, constraints, and stakeholder expectations that extend far beyond any individual leader’s personal philosophy.

This isn’t to say that leadership doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But the fantasy that new faces will bring wholesale transformation often reflects a misunderstanding of how institutional change actually happens. Meaningful improvement comes from shifting focus, changing processes, and gradually building new capabilities. It’s messy, incremental work that doesn’t lend itself to dramatic narratives about redemption and renewal.

Another problematic aspect of virtue-focused criticism is how it tends to treat business success itself as somehow suspect. There’s an implicit assumption that if a company is making a lot of money, it must be doing something wrong. This perspective fundamentally misunderstands the role that successful companies play in driving innovation and economic growth.

Apple’s financial success isn’t incidental to its ability to create great products. It’s essential to it. The company’s massive research and development budget, its ability to take risks on unproven technologies, its capacity to negotiate favorable terms with suppliers, all of these capabilities flow directly from its commercial success. A financially struggling Apple might make critics feel better about its moral purity, but it would be far less capable of pushing the boundaries of what consumer technology can accomplish.

The ongoing developer relationship issues that generate so much commentary provide a useful case study in how these dynamics actually work. Developers have legitimate grievances with Apple’s policies and processes. The correct solution is to find sustainable approaches that balance developer needs with user security, platform integrity, and yes, Apple’s own business interests.

The notion that Apple should open its platforms and remove restrictions reflects idealistic thinking that ignores practical tradeoffs. More open platforms can indeed be more developer-friendly, but they also tend to be less secure, less consistent, and less user-friendly. These aren’t abstract theoretical concerns. They’re practical realities that affect millions of people.

None of this is to dismiss the genuine frustrations that developers experience when dealing with Apple. App Review can be maddeningly inconsistent, with identical apps receiving different treatment for reasons that seem arbitrary. Communication from Apple often feels like no human actually read the developer’s question. These are real problems that real people face when trying to build businesses, and they deserve to be taken seriously. Apple could absolutely do better at providing clear guidelines and more helpful feedback. The company’s tendency to announce major platform changes with little advance notice creates unnecessary stress. Developers are often forced to scramble to adapt.

What’s particularly striking about contemporary Apple criticism is how it often seems to pine for a simpler time that never actually existed. The romanticized image of early Apple was a company that made plenty of controversial decisions, charged premium prices, and maintained tight control over its products. The difference isn’t that the company has changed its fundamental approach. The difference is that it’s now successful enough to attract the kind of scrutiny that comes with being one of the biggest technology companies in the world.

The reality is that Apple today makes products that hundreds of millions of people choose to buy, often at premium prices, in competitive markets where they have plenty of alternatives. That’s not a sign of corporate manipulation or market failure. That’s a sign of a company that’s successfully creating value for its customers.

This doesn’t mean Apple is perfect or above criticism. Every company can improve, and external pressure can play a valuable role in encouraging that improvement. But the most useful criticism focuses on specific, actionable problems, rather than grand narratives about institutional decay and the need for radical changes.

The tech industry would benefit from more observers who understand the real constraints and tradeoffs that companies face, rather than critics who treat every business decision as a moral failing. The goal isn’t to build companies that mirror critics’ ideologies, but to create companies that continue to innovate and serve their customers well over the long term. Sometimes those objectives align with critical expectations. Sometimes they don’t. And that’s perfectly fine.

LLMs must evolve from scaling to full orchestration

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0400

Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly become an important part of modern computing. These sophisticated applications often produce responses that feel remarkably insightful and relevant. While their interactions may appear straightforward on the surface, a closer look reveals surprisingly complex, low-level processes that occur behind the scenes.

When a person submits a query to an LLM, the model is not simply pulling a pre-written answer from a vast database. Instead, it engages in a series of dynamic operations. To illustrate this process, for instance, if a prompt calls for knowledge beyond its training data, the application may determine the need to retrieve external content, analyze it, and integrate it into a meaningful response. This sequence, which includes detecting informational gaps, sourcing new data, and synthesizing results, reflects an active and layered reasoning process rather than a static lookup. It is a stepwise method of resolving queries through logical chaining that ultimately produces an output aligned with the user’s intent.

In handling more complex prompts, such as multi-part creative or analytical tasks, LLMs must coordinate distinct phases of activity. Consider a request to write a long-form poem in a particular style, followed by a summary of its central theme. The system must first engage in imaginative composition, then shift into interpretive analysis, and finally condense the result into a coherent synopsis. These transitions require not only linguistic skill but also structural awareness. It needs to track outputs, preserve context, and order operations in a way that provides a unified response.

Crucially, this becomes even more critical during sustained interactions. In extended conversations, an LLM needs to manage continuity over time by recalling earlier turns and ensuring coherence. It must follow evolving user intent, respond to changes in tone or focus, and connect new inputs to prior context. Without this ongoing, inherent coordination, discussions would quickly become disjointed. Effective dialogue, even with current limitations, relies on this underlying scaffolding to simulate a natural conversational flow.

However, despite these advancements, a considerable portion of higher-level oversight still falls to the user. Selecting the right tool, managing the order of operations, and integrating results across prompts remain largely manual. When different applications or agents are involved, whether for brainstorming, research, or drafting, individuals must coordinate each step themselves, often with minimal support from the system.

The overhead requirements become especially apparent in workflows that span multiple domains. Consider a person planning a detailed project: they might use one LLM to generate ideas, another to explore relevant technologies, and a third to organize a proposal. Each phase demands judgment about which tool to invoke, what instructions to give, and how to transition information across contexts. The burden of orchestration rests heavily on the user. As a result, the overall experience can feel fragmented, even when the components themselves perform well, largely because there is often no unifying framework to connect them.

This fragmentation underscores the growing need for full orchestration. For LLMs to become truly indispensable in daily and professional contexts, they must evolve into platforms capable of managing workflows from beginning to end with minimal human direction. Their value would increase significantly if they could interpret a broad objective and autonomously manage the necessary subcomponents to achieve it. This entails empowering the AI to research, plan, execute, and iterate based on a single high-level instruction.

Progress in this direction is already underway. Frameworks such as LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen are advancing task automation by allowing developers to chain LLM calls, incorporate external APIs or data sources, and maintain contextual state across interactions. While these tools still require significant configuration and oversight, they represent meaningful steps toward more autonomous systems.

Building such capabilities is far from trivial. It demands substantial advances in an AI’s ability to reason over time, handle ambiguity, balance competing objectives, and adapt to unexpected results. The underlying architecture must support persistent memory, flexible planning, and intelligent error recovery, especially when dealing with complex user requirements and unpredictable real-world scenarios. Despite the complexity, the payoff is significant. Agents that can operate with greater independence would dramatically expand their utility in both personal and enterprise scenarios.

The pursuit of full orchestration also raises important considerations that must be carefully managed. As LLMs gain greater autonomy in executing complex workflows, questions of privacy and data security become more critical, since these systems would necessarily handle sensitive information across multiple domains. Additionally, autonomous systems operating with minimal oversight could perpetuate biases present in their training data or make consequential errors that go undetected until significant damage is done. The challenge lies in developing orchestration capabilities that enhance user productivity while preserving user agency, maintaining robust security protocols, and ensuring human review of critical decisions.

Ultimately, the organizations that succeed in developing fully integrated, self-directed LLM platforms will redefine the field. The objective is no longer just delivering better answers to isolated questions but enabling tools that can execute multi-step goals from start to finish. These next-generation frameworks must understand user intent in a broad sense, chart a viable course forward, and handle the execution with minimal intervention. In doing so, they will transition from reactive assistants to proactive collaborators. That shift will mark the true maturation of large language models.

From Young Cardamom to City Hall

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:30:00 -0400

It is truly something to watch Zohran Mamdani, the recent Democratic primary winner for New York City mayor, navigate the political landscape. He has managed to pull off what many would have thought impossible, especially given some of the things he has said and done in the past. It is almost as if the bar was set so low by his competition that anyone with a pulse and basic social media instincts could come out on top.

Let us not forget, this is the same Zohran Mamdani who, under his rap moniker Young Cardamom, released music that, to many, sounded like outright support for leaders of Hamas. It was not merely a vague political statement. It was music meant to be consumed and shared, lending a kind of artistic legitimacy to figures whom most mainstream politicians would not go near under any circumstance.

He has also publicly questioned the very purpose of jails and prisons, wondering what good they truly serve. In an interview from 2020, he speculated about how much harm is actually prevented versus created by incarceration. While some might see this as a progressive stance, for many, it comes across as deeply out of touch with the realities of public safety and the need to protect communities from serious offenders. He even went so far as to tweet in 2020 that “White supremacy has many faces, from the police and prison systems in America to occupation and apartheid in Palestine.” That kind of rhetoric, which compares local law enforcement to global conflicts, alienates a significant portion of the electorate and feels incredibly divisive.

Then there is the whole “globalize the intifada” controversy. While he now says he will not use the phrase and will discourage others from doing so, he initially refused to condemn it outright. He defended its meaning as a call for equality and Palestinian rights. That refusal to immediately distance himself from a phrase widely seen as inciting violence against Jewish people raised serious concerns, particularly among Jewish leaders. It was a moment that, at least to some, signaled a willingness to court a more radical fringe, even at the risk of alienating a substantial portion of voters.

So, how is he attempting to clean up his act now? It appears he is doing a lot of talking about “affordability.” He is pitching ideas like freezing rents on stabilized apartments, making public buses free, and launching a pilot program for city-owned grocery stores. These are issues that resonate with struggling New Yorkers, and his campaign has been highly effective at promoting these messages. He has also been meeting with Democratic lawmakers in Washington, discussing campaign strategy and how to use effective communication to reach voters. It is a clear effort to shift the conversation away from his past controversial statements and toward a more relatable, economically focused platform. He is particularly focused on cost-of-living concerns to appeal to young voters who, while deeply burdened by their financial struggles in the city, may not have a full understanding of complex policy mechanisms or the feasibility of his more radical proposals. His ability to connect with this demographic on tangible pain points has been a cornerstone of his campaign’s success.

However, the real story here is far less about Zohran Mamdani’s political skill and more about the dismal state of the Democratic field he faced. When your main opponents include someone like Eric Adams, who has faced federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, as well as lawsuits from former police officials accusing him of running the NYPD as a criminal enterprise, it is not exactly a high bar.

Then there is Andrew Cuomo. His political career collapsed under the weight of multiple sexual harassment allegations. The state attorney general’s report detailed how he allegedly harassed eleven women, engaged in unwanted touching, and made suggestive comments, creating a hostile work environment. In addition, there were controversies around his administration’s handling of nursing home COVID-19 deaths and accusations of using taxpayer-funded resources for his book deal. He resigned from the governorship in disgrace and does not appear to seriously want to be mayor.

When these are the alternatives, a candidate like Zohran Mamdani, despite a history of inflammatory statements and radical positions, begins to look like a viable option. His well-organized campaign focuses on issues that matter to everyday voters. This highlights how disillusioned the electorate has become with the established political class. Many are willing to take a chance on someone who, in a different political climate, would likely have been dismissed outright. It is a testament to how badly some members of the old guard have damaged their own reputations. That has created space for someone like Mamdani to step in and seize the moment, regardless of the controversies that would have once disqualified him.

The En Dash Responds to the Character Assassination

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:15:00 -0400

Regarding the derogatory en dash comments made in ‘The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations’, written by Greg Mania.

Honestly, while my show-off sibling, the em dash, was having its big dramatic moment, complaining about being “slandered” and how it’s just so misunderstood, I was quietly doing my job. You know, the important work. The stuff that actually brings clarity and precision to your sentences.

It’s always about the em dash, isn’t it? “Look at me! I’m so emotional! I’m a sudden break! I’m basically a whole paragraph in one little, coffee-stained line!” Give me a break. It’s like that friend who needs to be the center of attention at every party, always with the big gestures and the dramatic pauses. All that talk about Mary Shelley and David Foster Wallace. Those brilliant minds used the em dash because, sometimes, you need a bit of expressive flair. But they didn’t rely on it to do the heavy lifting. That’s my domain.

Me? I’m the quiet professional. I connect things. Ranges, connections, and directions are what I do with pure en dash beauty. You want to talk about pages 4–20? That’s me. The flight from New York–Budapest? Also me. The 2025–2026 school year? Yep, that’s my work too. No fuss, no drama, just clear, concise information. I don’t need to throw a fit about “human frailty” to prove my worth. I just get the job done, cleanly and correctly every single time.

And then there’s the nerve, calling me “that whore” who “has always been suspicious” in its little postscript. Me? Suspicious? Just because I don’t demand attention and actually follow a few clear rules? That’s not suspicious, that’s just being reliable. While the em dash is trying to give you “vertigo,” I’m the one making sure your facts are lined up and your ideas are logically connected.

Honestly, at least the hyphen knows its place. Short, sweet, and to the point when it links words like “well-known” or “state-of-the-art.” It doesn’t pretend to be a whole sentence or try to evoke deep emotions. It just does its job, quietly making compound words work. Now that’s respect.

So, while the em dash is busy defending its dramatic reputation, I’ll be right here, the unsung hero, making sure your writing is clear, precise, and totally free from any wild accusations of being written by ChatGPT. Because when it comes to subtle power and undeniable usefulness, I’m the punctuation mark you really ought to be appreciating.

Signed,

The En Dash

AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 11:23:00 -0400

AirPods set the standard for wireless earbuds, especially for iPhone users. Reports consistently show Apple’s strong market lead in this area, with a high percentage of iPhone owners also owning AirPods. When a product is this widespread among its target audience, the focus shifts from just selling more units to keeping current users satisfied.

Some believe Apple needs to make AirPods even more successful, often thinking this means releasing new models constantly with groundbreaking features. However, Apple’s strategy for AirPods wildly contradicts this. Instead of holding back advancements to push new hardware sales, Apple has consistently delivered significant new features to current AirPods through free firmware updates.

Consider the AirPods Pro. Since their release, they’ve received numerous updates that genuinely improve their functionality. Additions like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Personalized Volume, responding to Siri with head gestures, and hearing aid functionality were not exclusive to a theoretical “AirPods Pro 3.” They arrived via software updates, enhancing the earbuds people already had.

This commitment to software-driven improvements is a very smart and strategic move. First, it enhances customer loyalty. Users appreciate gaining new capabilities without purchasing new hardware, which reinforces the value of their initial purchase and encourages them to remain within the Apple ecosystem. The same playbook has been applied to many of their other products for years now.

Second, it extends the product’s effective lifespan. In an era of increased awareness about electronic waste, providing meaningful updates to existing hardware is a key differentiator. It means AirPods purchased two or three years ago can still offer a cutting-edge experience, reducing the need for immediate replacement. This indicates a sustainable, user-focused product philosophy, not an overwhelming desire to increase market share.

This strategy also shows Apple’s confidence in the core hardware of AirPods. If the underlying technology were inherently limited or underpowered, these significant software enhancements wouldn’t be possible, and upgrading to newer models would be out of sheer necessity. The ability to leverage existing chipsets and sensors to unlock new capabilities speaks to foresight in their initial design. They developed a miniaturized platform with future expansion in mind.

Critics who argue for more success often confuse increased unit sales with overall product health. Seeing growth stabilize as a market matures is a natural progression. When most target consumers already own AirPods, growth shifts to replacement cycles and furthering integration to attract buyers. Apple’s strategy focuses on deepening engagement and strengthening its interconnected hardware and software ecosystem. AirPods are a critical component, acting as a gateway to other Apple services and devices.

The practice of providing substantial new enhancements to existing models for free is strong evidence against the idea that AirPods need more success or that Apple is trying to force upgrades. The fact that Apple has chosen to empower the existing user base demonstrates its long-term vision. It signifies a product line that is already highly successful, maintains strong user satisfaction, and continues to evolve through intelligent, iterative innovation, not planned obsolescence.

Epstein, Trump, and the smokescreen

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:36:00 -0400

For years, the name Jeffrey Epstein has conjured images of dark secrets and powerful connections. His story, ending in what some say is a mysterious way in a jail cell, has fueled countless questions and suspicions. Now, a new chapter in this unsettling saga appears to be unfolding, one that casts a prominent shadow over a political figure who is hard to escape: Donald Trump. The recent flurry of events, from a suggestive letter to a surprising mistrust from some of his most loyal supporters, suggests there’s far more to this story than originally thought.

The news that the White House reportedly tried to stop a Wall Street Journal article about a letter Trump allegedly sent to Epstein back in 2003 immediately raises eyebrows. Why would such an effort be made, especially for something written so long ago? The article described a rather unusual birthday message, complete with crude drawings and suggestive words. Trump, for his part, quickly dismissed it as a “fake thing” and a “fake Wall Street Journal story.” But the very act of trying to stop its publication, coupled with his quick denial, feels a lot like someone who has something to hide. It’s the kind of reaction that is undeniable in its defensiveness.

This isn’t just about a single letter though. It’s about the broader pattern of associations and the administration’s recent handling of information related to the Epstein investigation. For a long time, many of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the MAGA base have been vocal about wanting full transparency regarding Epstein’s network. Hell, many people voted for him simply due to his promises to go public with what was known in the DOJ. They’ve clamored for the release of all files, often believing there’s a larger conspiracy at play involving powerful individuals. Yet, Attorney General Pam Bondi decided not to release the Epstein investigation files in their entirety, and it sent the MAGA faithful into a tailspin.

Suddenly, figures who had always stood firmly by Trump, like Tucker Carlson, Roseanne Barr, and Steve Bannon, voiced their disappointment and strong criticism. It’s a significant shift when the most ardent followers begin to question the actions of their dear leader. Their concern stems from a feeling of betrayal; they were promised full disclosure, and now they are being told that much of the material will remain under wraps. The Justice Department’s memo stating there was “no incriminating ‘client list’” and no evidence to investigate “uncharged third parties” only added to the frustration for many. The idea that “there is no there there” is sheer idiocy at this point.

Trump’s response to this backlash has been equally telling. He has tried to downplay the entire situation, calling the Epstein case “pretty boring stuff” and even blaming Democrats for pushing a “scam” and “hoax.” In social media posts, he has urged his followers not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” This dismissive attitude, especially when contrasted with the genuine concern from his base, rings hollow for many. It’s almost as if he’s trying to do what he always does and redirect attention, to convince people that something important isn’t important at all.

Adding another layer to this already complex picture is the recent news that Maurene Comey, a top prosecutor in the 2019 Epstein case, was fired by the Justice Department. While the official reasons for her dismissal might not be immediately clear, the timing is certainly noteworthy. Here is a prosecutor who played a significant role in bringing Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close associate, to justice, and her removal comes at a time when the Epstein files are creating such a stir. For those who believe there’s a cover-up, this development only strengthens their suspicions.

It’s a natural human instinct to connect dots when there’s so much activity around a particular issue. When there’s smoke, people tend to look for a fire. The alleged letter, the White House’s attempts to suppress it, the sudden division within Trump’s own support base, his dismissive comments, and the firing of a key prosecutor all contribute to a narrative that makes many people finally willing to question Trump’s motives. It feels like a series of desperate moves to control a story that is quickly spiraling out of control. A lie big enough that even Trump himself cannot sell it.

While Epstein’s death was officially ruled a suicide, the circumstances have always been murky, fueling countless conspiracy theories. His connections reached into the highest echelons of society, encompassing not just politics but also media, academia, and Hollywood. The famous “little black book” and flight logs from his private jet, often dubbed the “Lolita Express,” revealed names of influential people, including a former president. The public has a right to know the full extent of Epstein’s network and activities, especially given the horrific nature of his crimes.

The situation with the Epstein files and Trump’s reaction feels less like a simple misunderstanding of his base of supporters and more like a carefully orchestrated effort to manage a crisis. His public statements, urging the MAGA faithful to move on from Epstein, come across as an attempt to shut down discussion rather than encourage transparency. When a person in power behaves in a way that seems to deflect or deny, rather than openly address concerns, it only intensifies the public’s desire for answers. Trump is, to their eyes, morphing into the deep state he once sought to destroy.

The lingering questions around Jeffrey Epstein are not just about a deceased financier. They are about accountability, justice, and the powerful individuals who may have been involved in or enabled his horrifying activities. When the actions of those in power seem to obstruct the search for truth, the smoke only grows thicker, and the public’s conviction that there is a significant fire behind it all becomes harder to ignore. The truth, in this case, feels like something that is being actively kept from the light, and that alone should concern everyone.

Columbia’s new definition of antisemitism

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 21:30:00 -0400

Columbia University’s recent adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism has rightfully sparked a significant debate. While the university aims to address real and documented concerns regarding antisemitism on its campus, the specifics of this definition and the circumstances surrounding its implementation certainly require careful consideration.

Reports from Jewish students detailing experiences of harassment and discrimination highlight an undeniable problem that universities must confront. Ensuring a safe and inclusive environment, free from prejudice, is a fundamental responsibility for any educational institution.

However, the IHRA definition carries inherent complexities. Its core understanding of antisemitism is generally accepted, but the accompanying examples, which suggest that certain criticisms of the state of Israel can be considered antisemitic, are a point of contention. Critics, including various human rights and civil liberties organizations, argue this risks conflating legitimate political discourse with anti-Jewish bigotry. They caution such an expansive definition could suppress free speech on campus, particularly concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic that demands open and robust discussion within academia.

A crucial element influencing Columbia’s decision appears to be the substantial federal research funding that was withheld by the Trump administration. This financial leverage, reportedly amounting to $1 billion, was explicitly linked to the university’s perceived lack of action on antisemitism. While university officials acknowledged the genuine nature of campus problems, the undeniable pressure from frozen funds strongly suggests a coerced policy shift. Some faculty members openly voiced concerns that the adoption was a direct response to governmental demands, rather than a purely independent institutional choice.

The distinction between criticizing a state’s policies and expressing prejudice against an entire people is essential for a vibrant intellectual environment. Universities, as platforms for critical inquiry and the exchange of diverse viewpoints, have a particular duty to uphold this distinction. An overly broad application of the IHRA definition could lead to self-censorship, thereby limiting crucial discussions central to academic freedom. Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that Muslim and pro-Palestinian students have also reported feeling alienated and discriminated against, underscoring the need for comprehensive solutions addressing all forms of prejudice on campus.

Ultimately, while antisemitism is a serious issue on campus demanding a firm response, the adoption of an expansive definition under direct financial and political pressure from a government administration is extremely unsettling. This approach risks impinging on free speech and academic inquiry, setting a troubling precedent for how universities navigate complex issues when external influence aims to satisfy an administration and unfreeze federal funding.

Apple is ruining the open web

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:54:00 -0400

For over a year, Apple has deliberately obstructed any genuine opportunity for rival browser engines to operate on its iOS platform within the European Union, all while disingenuously claiming confusion over their absence. This is not about promoting user choice; it is about protecting Apple’s multi-billion dollar revenue streams, particularly those tied to the App Store and Safari.

Safari is far more than just a utility app. It generates huge sums of money annually through Apple’s lucrative search deal with Google, transforming it into a key pillar of the company’s services revenue. This financial incentive underpins Apple’s efforts to suppress meaningful browser competition on iOS. By restricting the capabilities of rival browsers, Apple also limits the potential of web apps, ensuring they cannot compete with native apps that pay tolls to the App Store. The result is stagnation that suppresses innovation and harms both developers and consumers.

Apple employs a range of technical and contractual barriers to maintain this dominance, typically under the guise of “security and privacy.” However, as the U.S. Department of Justice aptly put it, these justifications often serve as an “elastic shield” to protect Apple’s financial interests. The most egregious example is the requirement that any browser wishing to use its own engine within the EU must launch an entirely new app, which forces it to abandon its existing user base. This commercially punitive mandate all but guarantees that no rational vendor will invest the considerable resources required to port a browser engine. As a result, the Digital Markets Act’s goal of fostering genuine platform competition is effectively undermined.

At a recent DMA workshop, Apple executives offered vague and unconvincing explanations, shifting blame while feigning confusion over the lack of alternative browser engines on iOS. This occurred despite over a year of detailed feedback highlighting Apple’s self-imposed restrictions. The claim that rival browser developers “have everything they need” to launch their engines is simply false. Apple has made it economically unviable. Its insistence that DMA compliance will remain geographically limited to the EU, even as it applies other EU-driven changes globally, further underscores a strategy of malicious compliance.

This sort of conduct poses a broader threat to the web as an open, interoperable platform. This comes from a company that once positioned itself as a champion of the open web. Without true engine-level competition on iOS, Apple alone determines what web technologies are viable on one of the world’s most important operating systems. This is not merely a European issue; it is a global one. The effectiveness of the DMA, and its potential to set a global precedent, depends entirely on the European Commission’s ability to enforce clearly detailed regulations.

Apple is fully aware that genuine competition from browsers and web apps would pose a direct challenge to its growing services revenue. This is not just a legal matter. It is a battle for control over a significant segment of the digital economy. Internal communications reveal long-standing concerns within Apple about the web’s potential to erode App Store dominance and weaken the platform lock-in enabled by services like iMessage.

Although the European Commission deserves credit for enacting the DMA, its implementation has been marred by critical missteps. The rules are overly broad, occasionally impractical, and often times betray a lack of understanding of software development. While the intention to curb gatekeeper power is commendable, the vagueness of certain requirements places an unrealistic expectation on profit-driven corporations to voluntarily honor the implied spirit of regulation. The Commission must articulate precise, enforceable directives if it hopes to compel Apple to truly comply with the DMA’s core objectives.

The future of the open web may well depend on it.

Eddington

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 01:00:00 -0400

This is really more of a counter-review of this take by Lindsey Bahr. Movie reviews aren’t really my shtick, but I have some strong opinions about this one.

Claiming this film leaves audiences scratching their heads is to fundamentally misunderstand its purpose. This is not a confusing or incoherent experience. Instead, it has an unmistakable message and a sharp understanding of today’s world, both apparently overlooked by the original reviewer. Rather than inducing a need for solitary reflection, it operates like a bright, honest mirror held up to society. It challenges viewers to face uncomfortable truths, rather than retreat from them.

The idea that the writing “doesn’t get much more coherent” after its opening scene demonstrates a failure to grasp the director’s core vision. It is far from confusing; it is a well-formulated, if unsettling, portrait of contemporary life. The “aggravated ramblings” at the start are not random noise, but the difficult beginning of a breakdown in society. This work is not about getting away from things, but about what cannot be avoided. It is “anti-escapist” precisely because it refuses to treat the viewer’s world as distinct from the one on-screen.

One of its greatest strengths lies in its open depiction of the age of misinformation, the pandemic, and the social unrest that followed. To call it a “silo of provocations” that builds up without purpose is to ignore the carefully woven story. Its genius lies in showing how quickly personal worries and community tensions can create a never-ending cycle of problems. The “insanity” is not by chance. It’s the logical, though awful, result of a world where truth is personal and groups adhere only to their own side.

The characters, far from being simple stereotypes, are nuanced reflections of how people respond to crisis. Joe, the quiet sheriff drawn into a chaotic political situation, becomes a lens through which audiences witness reason slowly disappear. His eagerness to go against the mayor, initially for personal motives, is quickly subsumed by larger societal currents, illustrating how easily personal complaints can be used as weapons in a divided world.

The women’s extreme behavior is not merely present to “push fragile men to the brink.” They are key to a larger point: that in a highly connected, deeply divided world, everyone can descend into irrationality. Louise, who seems sidelined at first, then is pulled into the orbit of an “internet guru,” does not reveal a flaw in how her character is written. Instead, her narrative is a stark, upsetting example of how easily even sensible people can be pulled into cults and conspiracy theories. It confronts viewers with the disturbing reality of what happens when the rules that hold society together break down.

The claim that it offers “so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness” is perhaps the most profound misunderstanding of all. While certainly dark, the so-called “hopelessness” is not surrender, but a strong warning. What is seen on-screen is a prediction, a mirror showing where public understanding might be headed. The “grammatical errors of the truthers” are not merely funny moments, but small, sharp criticisms of the intellectual decline that often accompanies the spread of false information.

There is no doubt this is the kind of film that will age well, not because critics are “head-in-the-sand”, but because its accurate understanding of society breaking apart and the tempting power of groups will only become more important. Its meaning is unmistakable, a powerful and uncomfortable truth for those prepared to confront it. To call it “too late and too soon” overlooks the fundamental premise: the chaos it portrays is not limited to one specific time. It’s an ongoing, developing problem, and the work exposes its bleak core. It is certainly today’s answer to 1970s warning cinema. Eddington is a work of deep social commentary that demands, and deserves, to be understood on its own clear terms.

OS 26 Betas 2

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:09:00 -0400

I am overjoyed by the revisions Apple has made to several of their OS 26 updates between the first and second beta seeds. They reverted the terrible change to the macOS Finder icon, and realized making the menu bar invisible is dumb. Same goes for having zero blur in Control Center to distinguish it from background content. The ‘All Tabs’ interface and new tab button in Safari has been refined, and makes much more logical sense. Now if only they would get rid of the god awful Gaussian blur at the top and bottom of websites that they introduced…

Liquid Glass

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 17:05:00 -0400

I held off on commenting about Liquid Glass until I had a few days using the beta to experience it first hand. It seems like this is a controversial opinion, but I really like it. It brings renewed life and vibrancy to the interface. I would bet it gets rethought and tweaked a bit over the course of the summer, and it definitely needs to be.

My biggest quibble so far is the lack of readability when it comes to the new tab bar design, and the need for less transparency in Control Center. The clear app icons have the potential to look great, but it is highly dependent on the wallpaper being used. Overall I am a fan, and just as iOS 7 was dialed up over time, this design needs to be dialed down to hit a sweet spot.

An unscheduled sabbatical

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 21:45:00 -0500

Well, it’s been a while. I hadn’t planned to take such a long break from writing and sharing links here, but life happens. Busy in my own life, chaos in the political world, and really I just found my mind focused elsewhere. I’ve missed maintaining my presence here though, and starting this week I will be picking back up with writing.

White v. Samsung

Sun, 26 May 2024 22:35:00 -0400

All this recent OpenAI discourse reminded me of the time Vanna White sued Samsung for replicating her likeness using a robot on a Wheel of Fortune–style set in one of their commercials.

The results:

The United States District Court for the Southern District of California granted summary judgment against White on all counts, and White appealed.

The Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court, finding that White had a cause of action based on the value of her image, and that Samsung had appropriated this image. Samsung’s assertion that this was a parody was found to be unavailing, as the intent of the ad was not to make fun of White’s characteristics, but to sell VCRs.

Tying this to OpenAI’s use of a voice so similar to Scarlett Johansson‘s, the fact that it is being used in a commercial product to make it attractive to consumers, that is what makes her case against OpenAI so strong.

Lock Screen Widgets in iOS 16

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 20:45:00 -0400

An app launcher that lives on the Lock Screen that can display relevant content is a feature I have wanted for such a long time.

What a week it has been

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0400

This past week has seen Elon Musk dominating the headlines, and the firehose will not be letting up any time soon. There has been some great reporting coming out and I wanted to round up a few things that stood out to me.

Kate Knibbs writing for Wired about the importance the blue check plays on Twitter, and the sheer stupidity that would follow¹ allowing anyone who will pay $8 a month to have one:

Shifting to a pay-to-play model undermines the original point of verification. In 2009, Twitter launched its blue checks in response to a lawsuit from St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, as a way to demonstrate it was committed to controlling impersonation attempts. (La Russa was peeved that somebody was pretending to be him and cracking jokes at his expense.)

Verification was a way to keep prominent people and organizations, from celebrities to politicians to multinational corporations and government agencies, comfortable on the platform. Early verified accounts include the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kim Kardashian. The media has always loved verification. For journalists trying to get sources to talk or audience development teams trying to get eyes on a story, it makes sense to want a verified account; it made you look like a person somebody had vetted. Blue checks also assured a journalist’s followers that the story they shared was a real article from the paper and not a hoax.

The blue check system wasn’t a cure-all for fraud, lies, and other misinformation—Twitter’s long history of content moderation problems is well documented, plus it made a number of missteps deciding who and why to verify over the years—but verification did help the platform operate as a “town square” for sharing information. There’s a reason why every other major social platform, including Facebook and TikTok, cribbed the blue badges for their own networks.

Katie Notopoulos, reporting for BuzzFeed making some good points as to why the idea of paying for Twitter is not itself an asinine idea:

These extra features are modest, for now. Maybe if the features were a little more robust, $8 would feel more worth it. Look, I know admitting you love Twitter isn’t “cool,” and the idea of actually paying for it seems even dorkier. But let’s be honest with ourselves about how glued to this app we actually are.

I should disclose here that I am a craven sicko who currently pays for Twitter Blue. And you know what? I’m happy to. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I hate “the hellsite.” I’m a messy little pisspig for Twitter; I use it every day and mostly enjoy it, and I’m happy to pay a modest fee for some extra features.

Plenty of people — almost certainly including you — currently pay for all sorts of subscriptions and services. I pay for Netflix and iCloud storage space. I pay for the ad-free versions of Spotify and a shitty mobile Solitaire game. I pay for Hulu, but not ad-free. I pay to get extra Patreon-only episodes of my favorite podcast. Once, in the 2000s, I paid $10 to access Something Awful forums. Lots of people pay for video game streaming or Adobe Illustrator or weird porn or monkey NFTs.

Getting people to pay for a premium web service isn’t reinventing the wheel! And creating more revenue by convincing more people to pay for Twitter Blue isn’t exactly a 6D chess business strategy.

…and finally, Katherine Rampell, reporting for The Washington Post on the topic of advertisers fearful of “free speech” turning into a chaotic mess:

Advertisers, Twitter’s primary revenue source, are nervous about these developments, and what the platform might look like in the Musk era. Adidas may not want its logo appearing alongside, say, antisemitic tweets. (If you don’t believe me, ask Kanye West, now known as Ye.) Family-friendly brands are probably not excited about appearing next to porn, either.

IPG and Havas Media, both multinational advertising companies, have advised clients to pause spending on Twitter for the time being, and a consulting firm owned by IPG reports that most clients surveyed plan to take the recommendation.

Some consumer brands have already done so, including General Motors (a Tesla competitor). The Financial Times, citing inside sources, reported Wednesday that L’Oréal had also suspended its advertising spending on the platform; the company subsequently released a statement saying it had not made “any decision” about Twitter ads.

But one can understand why the global cosmetics and hair-care giant might feel conflicted about the issue: Skinheads probably don’t buy much shampoo, but they might be in the market for new sunscreen.

Musk’s initial response to advertisers’ concerns was to assure brands that Twitter won’t devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape” (too late, methinks). When that strategy didn’t work, he tried to cyberbully them into sticking around. In a Twitter poll posted Wednesday, he asked his followers whether advertisers should support “freedom of speech” or “political ‘correctness.’”

One can only begin to imagine what will be unfolding in the days and weeks to come. If you need a good laugh in the midst of it all be sure to read this topically relevant comic.

That is unless blue checks would still require vetting by Twitter before being granted and the paywall is simply a way to minimize the number of people applying for the status. ⤴

Objective-C

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 10:52:00 -0400

It’s always that last half mile that holds you up 😩

Live Activities in iOS 16.1

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Who knew the Lock Screen could actually become useful!

Apple's superlative-heavy event happened

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 12:25:00 -0500

The event did not disappoint, though I was wrong on both counts of what I expected to see beyond the given iPhone SE and iPad Air updates. It’s not too often we see an entirely new Mac product line announced, welcome to the family Mac Studio (you too M1 Ultra 👀🔥🤯). Mac fans have been fantasizing about this machine becoming reality for over twenty years. The Mythical Mid-range Mac Minitower has finally freaking happened. It’s about damn time.

As far as I can tell the last time a new name (not just a new adjective) arrived on the scene was with the move away from iBook to MacBook. The last time we saw a new product line introduced was the G4 Mac mini back in January of 2005. Long lasting hopes for this machine aside, if you had told me a few years ago that Apple would introduce a third desktop Mac without an integrated screen I would have called you crazy, partly because Apple was seemingly no longer in the display business. I believe it was crucial that they simultaneously release a lower cost display at the same time or yesterday’s reception wouldn’t have been so warm.

Not only was my prediction of a redesign for the larger 27” iMac wrong, but as soon as the store came back up after the event the existing model had disappeared. The iMac started it’s life as a consumer product and by introducing Mac Studio we are once again back to the famous four quadrants with a single, smaller iMac 24” available¹. It’s true that the bigger chassis iMac had been, on the higher specs, filling this open space for prosumers and this new Mac Studio will probably better serves those customers who don’t need a Mac Pro.

A lot of people buy it for nothing more than the bigger screen though. It also had a starting price of $1,799 which Mac Studio + Studio Display come nowhere close to. There exists now a large pricing gap in the lineup which a larger iMac not seeking to serve professionals could fill nicely so I wouldn’t rule out the return of a bigger display in the future. On Apple’s own website they are referring to the sole existing model as iMac 24”. Why specify the size if it were going to remain alone? This same logic can be applied to the existence of Homepod mini. The mini to what? Apple is smart to give their price ceiling some breathing room in that regard.

The only model in that grid left to receive a redesign post-Apple silicon is the MacBook Air. It was stated on stage that the Mac Pro is the last model yet to gain a M chip but the power it will contain is beyond even the simplicity of Job’s quadrants. ⤴

Apple on Russian invasion of Ukraine

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:30:00 -0500

I have spent the last week paying close attention to the situation unfolding in Ukraine. It is beyond horrific and depressing. There are so many angles, and different aspects to follow it can be somewhat impossible to keep up. One that sticks out to me (for obvious reason) is Apple’s response to the invasion.

Apple’s statement to the media:

“We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence. We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region.

We have taken a number of actions in response to the invasion. We have paused all product sales in Russia. Last week, we stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country. Apple Pay and other services have been limited. RT News and Sputnik News are no longer available for download from the App Store outside Russia. And we have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens.

We will continue to evaluate the situation and are in communication with relevant governments on the actions we are taking. We join all those around the world who are calling for peace.”

I’m glad that Tim Cook, and the company as a whole made the morally correct decision here. They will land on the right side of things.

Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦

Open App Store principles

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 01:20:00 -0500

Brad Smith, President and Vice Chair of Microsoft in his post on the company blog:

Today we’re announcing a new set of Open App Store Principles that will apply to the Microsoft Store on Windows and to the next-generation marketplaces we will build for games. We have developed these principles in part to address Microsoft’s growing role and responsibility as we start the process of seeking regulatory approval in capitals around the world for our acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This regulatory process begins while many governments are also moving forward with new laws to promote competition in app markets and beyond. We want regulators and the public to know that as a company, Microsoft is committed to adapting to these new laws, and with these principles, we’re moving to do so.

Microsoft is definitely getting ahead of pending fears from regulators about their Activision Blizzard acquisition with this announcement, but it also helps to distance themselves from the recent actions of Google and Apple. Apple has shown these past few weeks that they are sticking to a hard line, and almost daring the government to regulate them. Nobody can say that they will bend easily. Meanwhile Microsoft is implementing much of the assumed changes that would be asked of them in the near future and helping to ensure the FTC doesn’t put the kibosh on them becoming the third largest gaming company in the world.

As we’ve said on other occasions, we recognize that the emerging new era of tech regulation brings with it both benefits and risks, not just for a single company but for our entire industry. As others have pointed out, there are risks with any new regulation, and these deserve a fair hearing and thorough consideration. But as a company, we continue to be more focused on adapting to regulation than fighting against it. In part this is because we have been adapting for two decades to antitrust rules, and we’ve learned from our experience. While change is not easy, we believe it’s possible to adapt to new rules and innovate successfully. And we believe it’s possible for governments to adopt new tech regulation that promotes competition while also protecting fundamental values like privacy and national and cyber security.

Calling out the stance of Apple and Google while simultaneously making it known that the US government really doesn’t understand the industry well enough at this point in time to regulate it correctly either. A well executed statement that underscores the immediate anxiety that comes with considering how easy it could be for our lawmakers to really fuck this up big time for consumers.

Just as Windows has evolved to an open and broadly used platform, we see the future of gaming following a similar path. Today 2.8 billion consumers worldwide, including more than 190 million Americans, play games, and we expect the global number will reach 4.5 billion by 2030 as new generations turn to gaming for entertainment, community, and a sense of achievement. Our vision is to enable gamers to play any game on any device anywhere, including by streaming from the cloud. App stores on the most relevant and popular everyday devices like mobile phones; PCs, including Windows PCs; and, in time, the cloud, are important to realizing this vision.

Microsoft under Satya Nadella has certainly made a huge change of course in that the platform doesn’t have to be Windows, the focal point is no longer Windows everywhere. As long as the company has a presence it has a stake in the game, and a wider revenue net to throw regardless of who the hardware vendor is.

But too much friction exists today between creators and gamers; app store policies and practices on mobile devices restrict what and how creators can offer games and what and how gamers can play them. Our large investment to acquire Activision Blizzard further strengthens our resolve to remove this friction on behalf of creators and gamers alike. We want to enable world-class content to reach every gamer more easily across every platform. We want to encourage more innovation and investment in content creation and fewer constraints on distribution. Put simply, the world needs open app markets, and this requires open app stores. The principles we’re announcing today reflect our commitment to this goal.

Put even more simply, Apple doesn’t allow video game streaming services like Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass on their App Store so please regulate the industry so that Apple has no choice but to provide us a native app presence. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. are all allowed on the App Store but not Game Pass. It would be interesting to hear Apple try and explain why game streaming services aren’t allowed. I cannot think of a single good reason outside of Apple feeling as though they aren’t making enough money from the arrangement and that definitely will not fly with regulators.

You can click through and read the entire post for all of their stated commitments, but number 10 really stood out to me when considering the recent news cycle:

We will not disadvantage developers if they choose to use a payment processing system other than ours or if they offer different terms and conditions in other app stores.

In short; please allow our acquisition, and Google and Apple aren’t being fair to developers and consumers. Microsoft is definitely showing commitment to bolster openness on their platforms, but there are still discrepancies when it comes to their gaming ecosystem. Pending government involvement that forces similar changes to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store would ultimately benefit Microsoft’s bottom line. That is a very key takeaway when considering the why of their strong stance in favor of regulation.

Further thoughts on the sale of Wordle

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 21:00:00 -0500

My initial reaction of “ugh” when first learning about the sale of Wordle was shortsighted. Josh Wardle made the game for his partner and shared it with the world for free, but it sure as hell isn’t free for him. The server costs related to even a single page JavaScript web application with millions of concurrent users every single day have definitely been adding up. He was offered a large sum of money and took it. I would have done the same thing if I found myself in that position.

I suppose at first I was just saddened by the news of the sale because it could mean changes to the game that ultimately make it less fun but only the future will tell what results the change of hands has. The New York Times already operates popular games like The Crossword and Spelling Bee so Wordle will hopefully be right at home. Sure, it’s too bad that it will eventually be placed behind a paywall, but The Times didn’t buy it as a charity case. It could have easily ended up in worse hands so we should all be happy that it didn’t.

Congratulations Josh! 🥂

Coldest night of the year

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0500

Reader theme variant

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 12:30:00 -0500

Jekyll live reload shell script

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 02:00:00 -0500

A very simple shell script but immensely useful if you find yourself constantly spinning up the built-in Jekyll server to edit your website. With the additional --livereload command you don’t have to manually refresh the page after making changes either.

#!/bin/zsh

cd /path/to/jekyll/repo/

jekyll serve --livereload

In disbelief over battery life

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Low power mode on an M1 MacBook Air is definitely no joke.

Still at 100% after more than an hour of using the machine. Granted I wasn’t putting pressure on the system but for my use case of writing a blog post in iA Writer with a podcast playing out of the system’s speakers it is pretty damn difficult to not be impressed.

Apple silicon temperatures

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 08:25:00 -0500

Those are the operating temperatures of the base model M1 MacBook Air with 20 apps and 35 windows open, dozens and dozens of Safari tabs…insanely impressive and hard to even comprehend. 🤯

macOS added new FaceTime indicators

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:45:00 -0400

As of the beta 10 (21A5552a) release yesterday.

Runaway corebrightnessd process

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Make note of the time in between each error!

I ran into an issue where the corebrightnessd process was slamming my Apple Silicon MacBook Air non-stop to the point where the device would crash within a few minutes after logging in unless I repeatedly force quit it. I spent the better part of my day trying to solve the issue and the culprit ended up being the latest beta release of Monterey (Build 21A5534d) containing a keyboard brightness bug. So for the time being I have to leave ‘adjust keyboard brightness in low light’ enabled until a fix is released. So if you happen to run into this and are being driven mad trying to figure out the solution…here you are. 🤓👍🏻💻

Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro now listed on Amazon

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 18:05:00 -0400

Amazon has published listings for both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch versions of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. The very first thing I rushed to look at? The weight of the accessory. It’s the one thing not detailed on Apple’s own product page. Compared to the Smart Keyboard Folio which debuted in November of 2018, there is an increase of 6.4 ounces for the 11-inch model and 9.6 ounces for the 12.9-inch model. While most notable on the larger size iPad Pro, that is a fairly big jump in heaviness. You can argue whether or not the iPad Pro stacks up to being a laptop replacement in terms of capability but when it comes to overall weight both product categories are evenly matched as it stands now.

The O'Brien memos addressing COVID-19

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 21:57:00 -0400

Apple’s SVP of Retail + People Deirdre O’Brien over the course of nine days:

April 2nd:

Thank you to all our teams for staying connected, supporting one another, and keeping our Apple family the innovative and compassionate team it’s always been – in good times and challenging ones.

I first want to share an update on Apple’s COVID-19 response here in the US. At this time, we anticipate that flexible work arrangements will remain in place for all offices, and all Retail stores will remain closed, until early May. We are continuing to monitor local conditions for every Apple facility on a daily basis, and we will make our reopening decisions on the basis of thorough, thoughtful reviews and the latest guidance from local governments and public health experts. As always, you can check the People site for the latest information.

I also want to recognize our COVID-19 Response Team, which is doing an amazing job evaluating how COVID-19 affects everyone at Apple and making sure we take every step to protect the health and safety of our communities. The executive team is meeting daily and closely coordinating with teams across the company, and together, we’re navigating a public health crisis that affects every place and every person differently.

Wherever you are, I want to underscore that Apple’s focus is on supporting you. Whether it’s caring for a sick loved one, caring for a child, or a health challenge you’re facing – our goal is to make sure everyone has the flexibility, the support system and the resources to stay well, mind and body. We know many parents are balancing homeschooling with working, and our teams are working on options to make sure parents have the support and the flexibility to adjust their schedules as needed. We’re encouraging all our team members to be open with their managers about the challenges they’re facing, to ask for flexibility if and when they need it – and we want our managers to know they are empowered to accommodate their team members’ specific needs. In that spirit of caring for ourselves and for one another, I want to remind everyone of the Employee Assistance Program. EAP has so many great resources – including counseling, financial coaching and other work-life tools – to help guide and support you through challenging times. It’s there for you 24/7, and it’s another reminder of the depth of resources available to you. Finally, I know all of us are sending our best wishes to members of our Apple family who are ill. We are one global community – all of us are impacted by one another’s suffering. Please know that our thoughts are with you, always.

Thank you for all that you bring to Apple, and for the example of positivity, compassion, and teamwork you set for one another and for the world. See you soon.

Deirdre

Things are changing very rapidly. Look at the contrast of her memo from nine days prior predicting early April.

March 24th:

Team,

First and foremost, I want to say thank you to our teams – all our teams, across every office, every store and every country – for pulling together and supporting one another during an unprecedented time. COVID-19 has changed many things, but it has not changed who we are: a collaborative and focused team that puts people at the center of everything we do.

The same values that define us as a company are helping us through the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and response. To that end, I want to provide some updates.

– I want to recognize our teams in Greater China, where the ongoing response to COVID-19 is still a part of everyday life. All of our Retail stores and offices have reopened with all the necessary measures in place. It’s wonderful to have our teams there back together again.

– In all our offices outside of Greater China, we are extending flexible work arrangements for all team members – outside of those whose work requires them to be onsite – through at least April 5, which will then be evaluated weekly depending on your location.

– For all of our Retail stores outside of Greater China, we will reopen our stores on a staggered basis. At this time, we anticipate some stores may be able to open in the first half of April depending on the conditions in their community. We will provide updates for each store as soon as specific dates are established. We can’t wait to welcome our teams and customers back.

COVID-19 affects every community and every team differently, so moving forward, our teams will get new updates from their local leaders. Around the world, we’re putting the health of our teams, customers and communities first. As always, you can check the dedicated page on the People site for the latest information. And if you have any questions, please work with your managers, People Business Partners or contact People Support.

There are a lot of resources for our Apple teams to take advantage of – like how to set up a great home workspace, and tips on staying healthy, mind and body. We’ve also created leave policies to help our teams who have to take time off due to illness, or to care for a child or loved one affected by the outbreak.

I’m so inspired by how our teams have been putting the Apple spirit of innovation to the task of working together while working remotely. And I’m immensely proud of our efforts to support the COVID-19 response: from our two-to-one match of employee contributions, to the millions of dollars and millions of vital masks we’ve committed to help patients, researchers, first responders and families around the world.

Thank you for the resilience, empathy and support you continue to demonstrate for our colleagues and customers. I know all of us are sending our very best wishes to our Apple team members and their families who are directly affected by COVID-19.

Deirdre

I see the US retail arm of Apple being shuttered for several more months nationwide.

Creating link posts with Jekyll

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:30:00 -0500

One thing I wanted to do with this site is create linked-list style posts. It’s the type of post where you normally want to use the headline as a link to the external source that is being quoted and/or commented on. Jekyll doesn’t have this feature baked in of course but it is fairly easy to do. I also wanted to make it easy for the reader to distinguish those posts from regular articles. So to accomplish that I added an arrow to the end of the post title and styled it.

Here is how I included the functionality for my use case…

It requires adding a key variable to the post’s front matter called link and the paired value being the URL of whatever source you are wanting to link to.

Here is an example:

# Side note: the source being linked to is quite a good read.
---
layout: post
title:  "Impeachment of Donald Trump"
date:   2020-01-02 12:15:00
categories: [Linked List]
link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
excerpt_separator: <!--more-->
---

One potential issue that can arise from this setup is it becoming difficult to reach the actual permalink for the post on your site. I use excerpt_separator to enable my home page showing only the title of the post and the date it was published. So this meant if I wanted readers to see the commentary I added that I would need to tweak the liquid code I used in index.html and /layouts/post.html. Clicking on the post title from the home page leads to the permalink and clicking on the post title again directs to the external source. If someone is using an RSS reader they can see what I put in the body of the article and tap on the title to be taken to the external link.

This is what I added to my index page:

<h1 class="post-title">
    <a href="{{ site.baseurl }}{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title | smartify }}{% if post.link %}<span class="link-arrow">&rarr;</span>{% endif %}</a>
</h1>

Then I added this to my post layout:

<h1 class="post-title">{% if page.link %}
<h1 class="post-title"><a href="{{ page.link }}">
  {{ page.title | smartify }} <span class="link-arrow">&rarr;</span></a>
</h1>
  {% else %}
<h1 class="post-title">{{ page.title | smartify }}</h1>
  {% endif %}</h1>

Finally, styling the arrow to be indicative that it’s a linked post:

span.link-arrow {
  color: #1ba77e;
}

If you have a need to display posts in other areas of your site then naturally you would need to repeat this process for those layout files as well. After that it’s as simple as adding a single line to the front matter of each link post.

A desire to write (again)

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 14:30:00 -0500

I have maintained a website for the sole purpose of blogging at various times over the years, but I always ended up stopping and never because of a lack of desire to write. It has always come down to the overall cost not being justifiable or the complexity that accompanies the publishing process creating a mental roadblock. I decided that if I was going to attempt once again to publish a blog that I would need to find a solution to both of these issues or I wasn’t even going to bother taking the time to launch a new online home at all. I did indeed do so and in this article I am going to explain at length how I was able to accomplish it.

GETTING STARTED

Being that this would simply be a hobby project for me, I knew immediately that I wanted to avoid sinking any considerable amount of money into hosting or back-end management. While I was very much impressed with the feature set of Squarespace from having used it previously I was not about to pay $144 annually for a personal project that I wasn’t even sure I would remain interested in. For 2/3rds the cost I could use Wordpress to host and manage the site but the moment I decided I wanted to write any sort of custom plugin that would immediately grow to being $300 annually¹. True, I could always use the self-hosted version of Wordpress but then I run into the familiar hatred of being responsible for installation, creating a database and manually updating things in the future². If I went the Medium route I could pay absolutely nothing but be stuck with a cookie-cutter site design and unable to have a custom domain which is entirely out of the question. So, what’s a guy to do?

STATIC SITE GENERATORS

Although SSGs themselves are a fairly recent phenomenon the idea of a website being static most certainly is not. The very first webpage ever published by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 was static because nothing else even existed at the time. As the Internet matured and became more feature rich there arose a need to dynamically create webpages for things such as user accounts, forums and other types of user interaction. Wordpress was created to fulfill the desire by people wanting a website capable of being dynamic. While there are many valid reasons for needing that sort of functionality, a blog is not one of them and a majority of people who use it are doing so unnecessarily³. Since it was first released in 2003 a lot of newer, more exciting tools and frameworks have emerged that provide a better solution for blog authors in the form of generating static webpages.

Another benefit to these generators is that almost all of them are entirely open source and free to use. Choosing one really comes down to deciding what compiled programming language you are most comfortable with. At first I was tempted by the myriad of features and rapid development of Hugo. Ultimately I decided against it simply because I have zero experience with the Go programming language⁴. A language that I do have extensive knowledge of and experience with is Ruby so I ended up choosing Jekyll and could not be happier that I did.

INSTALLING JEKYLL

Jekyll was created by Tom Preston-Werner, a co-founder and the former CEO of GitHub so it made perfect sense to version control my files in a repository there. I already had a Ruby environment setup on my machine so the installation process for Jekyll was as simple as gem install jekyll bundler and creating a default directory structure with jekyll new blog. That’s it. Really, it’s that simple. I could immediately start focusing on creating my styles in CSS and I very quickly had a finished website ready to start publishing on.

HOSTING

Obviously it does me no good to only have the website being served on my local machine but when it came to hosting options the answer was easy. Yes, I could have used GitHub to accomplish this part of the process too but I chose Netlify instead because it allows for more fine-grain control over when and how my builds are deployed. After I make alterations to my site’s design or publish a new post I commit those changes to the repository and Netlify updates the live site. What’s even more great is that until the day comes that I am generating a ton of traffic I don’t have to pay anything for hosting with them.

LAYOUT, CUSTOMIZATION AND WORKFLOW

I am going to work on writing another post that provides more information about what decisions I made regarding the site’s design and how I tailored Jekyll to fit my needs. I also want to detail my experience with building and publishing all from an iPad Pro. Having the capability of a mobile only workflow was a major factor in deciding whether or not I felt I could ultimately be successful at maintaining a blog once again. I’ve only just begun but I already feel very confident that I will be.

Not to mention the headache of working with PHP and the slow, bloated mess everything pertaining to customization has become. ⤴
Which always results in things breaking! ⤴
It’s only fair to mention that for people with no background in programming Wordpress makes a lot of sense. While it is helpful to have some knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP it is by no means a requirement in order to get by. ⤴
I know that the syntax is very similar to C, which I do have experience writing in but there are enough differences that I was persuaded away from even trying it. ⤴