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Daring Fireball commenting ‘How Apple Became Apple: The Definitive Oral History of the Company’s Earliest Days’
Apple is at its best when it’s infused with a bit of the spirit of the two Steves whose first joint venture were blue boxes that let you make long distance phone calls for free. The first public phone call Steve Jobs ever made on an iPhone was a prank call to the Starbucks next to Moscone West. I feel like that renegade spirit has been repressed in the Tim Cook era.
Indeed. Ternus could change that; that’s my expectation.
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I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come up with Siri+ or to take a cut on third party AI offerings that support iOS 27 new AI-related features. I would probably plug my Claude AI subscription into this provided Anthropic support is enacted.
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I officially lost my Apple Pencil Pro. This 200 CAN$ doesn’t support Find My??? WTF. This is the second time I’m losing an Apple Pencil. The first time was the original one.
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Successful products — Manuel Moreale
A product being popular is an indication of a lot of people using it. Doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is good. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s successful.
Exhibit A: all Microsoft 365 products, which contain so many paper cuts.
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Vibe coding SwiftUI apps is a lot of fun — Simon Willison
A full SwiftUI app can fit in a single text file, which means Claude can be used to build complete macOS applications through conversational prompts alone.
How much of that tech Apple will ever adopt inside the company, or let developers take advantage of in Xcode, is yet to be known.
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Developers targeting Apple platforms, particularly the Mac, are expressing frustration over TestFlight approvals that take over a week. They attribute the delays to Apple being overwhelmed by the influx of vibe-coded app submissions. Is this explanation accurate?
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Added new “OPML Sync…” button on Account for Inkwell users. This lets you set an external OPML file (for example from FeedLand or another feed platform) that Inkwell will automatically import feeds from.
Oh, cool! I updated my RSS reader to generate such a consumable file, making it the single source of truth.
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Steve Jobs Talks iBook, AirPort, and More in Newly Surfaced 1999 Video — MacRumors
The talk outlines Apple’s product strategy at the time, centered on its four-quadrant lineup of consumer and professional desktops and portables. With the iBook, Jobs said the matrix was complete alongside the iMac, Power Mac G3, and PowerBook G3, and noted that several of these products were already on their second or third iterations.
Incremental updates isn’t something new at Apple. Gurman lamenting about recent updates being incremental shouldn’t know better.
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I finally put together a video demonstration of my RSS Reader and Bookmark Manager. It’s a much longer video than originally anticipated, that is why it is being posted on my YouTube channel instead of Micro.blog. You’ll get to see both apps in action. I’m rather proud of thse apps, they are now essential for me.
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Untitled — Manton Reece
NetNewsWire via AppleScript via MCP… I wonder what the future of scriptability is. We’ve got AppleScript, Shortcuts, App Intents, and MCP. But meanwhile you have agents which are fine just firing up command-line tools.
One day, I would argue that most apps will come with their MCP endpoint.
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MacBook Neo review: I wish this had an M1 inside:
The MacBook Neo is a cool little computer that I like, despite the fact that, on paper, it’s a pretty irrational purchase for most people (including myself). When I take a step back from the current hype cycle, I think this product is a tale of two halves: one outstanding, and the other pretty rough.
Here is an honest review of the MacBook Neo, a review that stands out compared to everything I’ve read and heard about it. I’m not sure that I agree with all of it, like the sound quality, but I think it’s important to amplify this type of review.
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“We’re the last people in this business who give a shit about making great computers.”:
I think that this newly discovered footage of Steve Jobs congratulating Apple employees at an outdoor all-hands meeting at the Infinite Loop campus following MacWorld New York in 1999 is some of the most important that exists of him.
I just found out about this clip of Steve Jobs, recorded back in 1999. It was a fascinating thing to watch in the context of the just-released MacBook Neo, while this clip covers the iBooks launch era. I think today’s Apple is staying true to the original vision of the iBook.
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Started working on my next YouTube video. I consider myself not very good at this. It takes way too much of my time to create a single one, but I sometimes want to share things I otherwise couldn’t in written blog posts. One of the things I should do for each video is write a script. I don’t. I never did. I’m a “go with the flow” type of guy when I record. I don’t feel at ease when reading something in front of the camera (and I don’t have the right desk setup for that).
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Many MacBook Neo reviewers are impressed by its ability to open 10 or 15 apps at once without the Neo feeling sluggish. Well, having some basic knowledge of operating system theory would help understand why. Launching 10 apps simultaneously will certainly stress the Neo, but once they are in memory, of course, the Neo isn’t affected; those apps become quite dormant, using very few CPU cycles and less memory (thanks to macOS memory management). Of course, if an app is exporting a video in the background, it could impact the Neo’s overall responsiveness. Big difference.
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It’s rather impressive how slowly things are turning for the worse in the Middle East. It won’t end well. And it will last much longer than originally claimed. I hope this will be all the nails required for his coffin.
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It seems I cannot finish this bookmark manager as I always find something to tweak, add or improve. I hope to record the video tomorrow! 👨🏻💻
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An unexpected side-effect of the MacBook Neo release on my purchase plans is that going with an M5-MacBook Air, I would rather select a 13-inch format instead of the 15-inch, saving some money that I would rather put on more RAM, instead (24 GB or even 32 GB instead of 16 GB). I think 13-inch is the perfect size for a travel companion. I get the portability of the Neo but the power of the M5 chip. But, I’m not there yet. Still rather happy with my M2 15-inch MacBook Air.
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Mark Gurman (@markgurman@mastodon.social)
Google is ramping up development of a dedicated Gemini AI app for Apple Inc.’s Mac computer lineup, looking to step up competition with OpenAI and Anthropic
Suddenly, building a Mac app is sexy again. Who knew. There is an ad concept, right there, Apple!
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Gruber’s reaction to Hacker News Discussion on Shubham Bose’s ‘The 49MB Web Page’:
One of the most controversial opinions I’ve long espoused, and believe today more than ever, is that it was a terrible mistake for web browsers to support JavaScript. Not that they should have picked a different language, but that they supported scripting at all. That decision turned web pages — which were originally intended as documents — into embedded computer programs.
It’s hard to imagine the web without JavaScript, only as a collection of static, linked documents served by essentially passive file servers.
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A Little Rant about LinkedIn
Rant of the day: Why is Microsoft not caring about making the LinkedIn app a better app, a better mobile experience? Aren’t they using designers? UX specialists? Even AI? Aren’t they taking care of their brand and image? I mean, using this app on the iPad is such a displeasure.
If someone from Microsoft and / or LinkedIn responsible for this app: have tried it once for real on the iPad? Are you ok with this? Really? If you aren’t, and obviously cannot do anything about it, why are you still working there?
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