Apple CEO Tim Cook Responds to Retirement Rumors — MacRumors
“I can’t imagine life without Apple.”
But can we imagine Apple without Tim Cook? Probably yes for many.
It fits the broader pattern of what Meta is becoming. AI slop in your feed, fake engagement bots, insecure messaging. The direction of travel is obvious. None of these things are surprises or mistakes. They are deliberate decisions made by a company that has decided the path forward is to extract as much attention and data as possible, and anything that gets in the way of that, including basic privacy protections, gets quietly deprecated because apparently not enough of you were using it.
And Meta is about to deprecate 20% of its workforce because of… too much spending on AI infrastructure that doesn’t move the revenue needle. What a wonderful American corporation.
A few notes about the MacBook Neo:
I’m not thrilled by the lack of backlighting in the keyboard. Maybe it’ll appear in the pricier model in a future iteration. The keys are white/tinted, so maybe the printing is contrasty enough to make the key symbols visible even in poor light. I was willing to put this in the ‘okay’ category, but I can’t help feeling this was an unnecessary corner for Apple to cut.
My wife also has some negative comments about the keyboard. Not only it doesn’t include backlighting, since the keycaps aren’t pure white, the contrast is lower which negatively affect the readability in low light conditions.
Reuters: Meta Is Planning to Wreck the Lives of 20% of Its Staff Because It Is Spending So Much on Data Centres — Pixel Envy
Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
Wow, that’s a lot of people! Is Alan Dye in the bunch? 👀
Just as streaming services helped lower the cost of music, AI is reducing the price of software even more than the subscription model does. The downside is that AI is driving hardware prices up, and it’s uncertain whether we will ever see the return of the always-cheaper hardware trend.
Mark Gurman in No Major Changes to Liquid Glass Expected Across iOS 27 and macOS 27 said:
Apple’s new software design chief, Steve Lemay, was “a driving force” behind Liquid Glass and was “deeply involved in its development.”
I’m not sure we are still so excited for Lemay replacing Alan Dye now. 😳
Since my bookmark manager is almost complete, I plan to record a demo to share here. I like its integration with my other web apps, such as the Micro.blog front-end for posting linkposts and the feature that exports selected links and quotes to a markdown file, which will be included in an upcoming ephemeral scrapbook edition.
Don’t get distracted by the mountains of steaming shit that hacks are using these tools to spew. There are amazing things being built by these tools that never would have, or in some cases could have, been built before.
So far, with the help of Claude Code, I have built: a Micro.blog front end, a Scribbles page front end, a perfect RSS feed reader, a personal dashboard, and a bookmark manager. I’me super happy to have tools that really fit my workflows, my working style and my blogger journey. Without Claude Code, I would need to resort to existing but not-as-satisfying tools. Next, I want to build my own Micro.blog visual theme plugin. Plus, this morning, while Things 3 was open on my MacBook, I realized that I could build my very own personal task manager. The only limit is my imagination.
At the Apple Store for testing the Neo. Two things: I prefer its trackpad over my MacBook Air’s. The speaker grill can easily be bended with a nail. Much faster than I thought. Nice feel in the hands. Great size. Impressed. Bought one for my wife.
It will be interesting to see in the next 2 or 3 quarters the effect of the MacBook Neo on the Mac sales (harder to tell as low priced Mac won’t make a big difference in revenue numbers) and the IPad sales. If both move in opposite directions then we could potentially conclude on the Neo effect.