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James Hibberd, The Hollywood Reporter: BMW owners are taking to social media to express outrage that the automaker suddenly started pushing ads for Spider-Man: Brand New Day onto their dashboards. The ads began appearing last week on newer-model vehicles and some drivers who forked up to $160,000 for a luxury car or SUV aren’t very happy about being spammed when they start their cars. The promotion is scheduled to run through Aug. 10, according to the automaker’s press release, and represents a

Back in March I sung the praises of Jeff Johnson’s StopTheScript and StopTheMadness Safari extensions. I want to re-link to StopTheScript in particular. I wrote last week about ad-blocking content blockers , and I’ve gotten a slew of wonderful feedback from readers about that. (My thanks to everyone who whitelisted DF with their ad-blocker of choice, too.) One of the recurring issues that readers raised are sites that present “It looks like you’re running an ad-blocker...” dickovers . It’s class

Tanya Gazdik, reporting for MediaPost back in December 2023: Despite the ever-expanding screens in its vehicles, including an available 31-inch backseat theatre screen, BMW has no plans to sell advertising on any of them. Radio commercials are intrusive enough, says Stephan Durach, the brand’s senior vice president, connected company development. “At the end of the day, I think your car is your last private space,” Durach told a small group of media members last week during a roundtable discussi

Regarding my earlier complaint about it being a slog to open Safari’s preferences in the Settings app on iOS, a few readers pointed me to this tweet last year from Quinn Nelson, showing how to build (or download from iCloud ) a simple Shortcuts shortcut that you can add to Control Center to open the current app’s preferences in Settings. Works great. Update: Stephen Robles : I made a few riffs off that one as well: Jump to current app notification settings Current app storage Open current app in

This comic from Brendan Leonard is a fine companion to yesterday’s items ( here and here ) on pausing to consider if our use of AI is helping us focus our time on what we love to do, or, instead, robbing us of the things that make us human. The bit about making a sandwich hit close enough to home for me to make me laugh aloud. ★

This is more like it. No mealymouthing or wishy-washiness here. This is a strident defense. I’ll quote just one line for now: Apple offers nothing because it has nothing because there is nothing. Its Complaint cannot and does not state a misappropriation claim against Defendant Tan. I’ll post more thoughts later, but if you’re following this lawsuit, you should read OpenAI’s motion yourself. It’s cogently written, not mired in legalese. Legalese is generally a sign of shitty lawyers. The law is

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg (gift link): OpenAI expects users to rely on the smart speaker throughout the day. It will work similarly to the company’s ChatGPT voice mode on smartphone apps, but with more advanced models for humanlike interactivity. The device is designed to learn more about a user over time, letting it tailor conversations and act more like a real person. The circle-shaped device will include parts that move on their own, according to the people. That will help show whe

Meghan Bobrowsky and Erin Mulvaney, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): A New Mexico judge ordered Meta Platforms to pay more than $900 million and limit the time young people in the state can spend on its apps, significantly increasing the cost of the landmark child safety verdict against the Facebook and Instagram parent. The judge said Thursday that Meta must create a new $567 million abatement fund in addition to paying $375 million in civil penalties that a jury previously or

I find most poetry obtuse, dancing around a point rather than making one sharply. Not this one. ★

Matthew Green: If you’re under the impression that these models are “glorified autocomplete” or that progress is slowing down, I need to urge you: stop thinking that. The models are very intelligent and capable, they are getting better at a fast clip. I can cite measurable and impressive progress over just the past five months on specific types of problem I’ve asked them to look at. If there’s a ceiling out there, I don’t yet see evidence of it. The people who think models are dumb are mostly us

New York Times Magazine story editor Willy Staley tried Sean O’Mara’s “Living Diet” (nothing but steak and fermented foods like sauerkraut) for a week: To O’Mara, the diet is not just a temporary means of losing weight but a way to eat for good. He has been doing it for 10 years, and credits it with turning his life around. At one point in our conversation he pulled up the Bristol Stool Chart, which ranges from Type 1 (“separate, hard pellets”) to Type 7 (“watery, no solid pieces”). O’Mara is co

Sam Altman, on Twitter/X : cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc. Katie Notopoulos, at Business Insider : Talking to your kids about their upcoming soccer game or birthday is one of the enjoyable, pleasurable experiences of parenting. Those nice moments of positi

David Pogue, at Pogue’s Posts: Amazon’s “50+ things to try” list mentions that Alexa can “find a home maintenance professional.” So I tried it. ME: I need a septic-system repair. ALEXA: That service isn’t currently supported. I can help with plumbing services instead. ME: Okay, fine. Plumbing services. ALEXA: What’s your plumbing issue? ME: I have untreated sewage pouring out of my kitchen faucet. ALEXA: Is this urgent? Uh … what do YOU think, dumbass? But OK: ME: Yes. ALEXA: When do you need it

I look forward to this level of class and brand prestige coming to Apple Maps. ★

Paul Thurrott: We didn’t need more evidence that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 compute platform is superior to anything in the x86 world. But here it is, regardless: The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is yet another nearly-perfect laptop running Windows 11 on Arm, an ideal combination of hardware and software that delivers a superior overall experience. Thurrott has high praise for the performance, battery life, and silence (it has a fan, but Thurrott says he never heard it engage). Intel and the x86 platform

There’s an old adage that you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. My take on OpenAI’s response yesterday was expressing incredulity that OpenAI was bringing, like, a box of chocolates to the gunfight. Apple is trying to kill io, and OpenAI’s public response is basically “ We love you guys, can’t we just be friends? ” This thread on Hacker News though points out that their response doesn’t even explain what they’re responding to. There’s no context. They just assume the reader is up to date

A blog post is an unusual way to respond to a high-stakes lawsuit, but OpenAI is an unusual company. A few snippets from their post, and some commentary.

TBPN seems like a show I wouldn’t enjoy guesting on, but I actually enjoy it quite a bit. ★

Reuters: Apple on Monday asked a U.S. judge for a preliminary injunction barring two former employees ​and OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, using or disclosing alleged confidential information as it moves ahead with its trade secrets case. [...] The iPhone maker also filed a concurrent motion on Monday seeking expedited discovery, including production of documents relating to the defendants’ alleged access ​of Apple’s proprietary and trade secret information. It asked the judge to order the two

Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch: In its first acquisition since going public last month, Bending Spoons on Tuesday said that it has agreed to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised over $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billio

New app from Brett Terpstra: TerminalWidget lets you send output from commands, scripts, APIs, and Shortcuts directly to widgets across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with rich formatting, progress bars, sparklines, and image support. It is available as a universal app on the App Store for $19.99. I don’t know what I’m going to use this for, but I know I want to use it. ★

REST serves the developers building against your API. MCP serves the agents now trying to use it. Most teams treat these as competing standards and have to pick one. They’re not rivals, they’re layers: most MCP servers just call REST internally to do the real work. The best ones don’t convert every endpoint into a tool, they design around what the agent’s trying to accomplish. Shipping that server also means shipping OAuth 2.1 with scoped tokens. WorkOS AuthKit already speaks that spec , so you

Juli Clover, MacRumors: Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus is rehiring Laura Legros, a former vice president of hardware engineering who retired from Apple in 2022, reports Bloomberg . Legros previously managed product delivery, development schedules, and coordination across engineering teams. Under Ternus, she will work across different parts of the company, and report directly to him. According to Bloomberg, Legros was one of Ternus’ most trusted deputies before she retired. She has presented at p

Aaron “ Homeboy ” Tilley, reporting for The Information (paywalled without gift links, alas, but MacRumors has a summary ): When new employees join Apple, the company often issues them an iPhone and Mac and pays for an iCloud account with a large amount of online storage capacity. Crucially, during the onboarding process, Apple encourages new hires to use their preexisting personal Apple IDs with this iCloud account, through which their co-workers can share internal Apple documents and other fil

Om published this on Monday June 7 — the day of the WWDC keynote. He sent me a note about it, that is too personal to share in full. He described it as his “last shot” — “In case I don’t make it”. He didn’t make it . I didn’t read it right away because I was busy with WWDC. Then, after he died, I didn’t read it because I couldn’t bring myself to. I did, finally, today. It’s so good. Truly insightful. A taste: Augustus had the Senate and the priests. Dario had the Oval Office and the Vatican. The

For many years now, part of the co-marketing agreements between Apple and the Big Three is Apple agreeing to require a postpaid account with a Big Three carrier for all “special” iPhone financing deals, including the old iPhone Upgrade Program and the new Apple Upgrade leasing.

Ulysses S. Grant, in 1875: Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intel

Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR: Trump Media & Technology Group is now shopping to traders and investors a premium version of Truth Social delivering early access to the feeds of high-profile users, including the president. Starting Saturday, for a fee of up to $100,000 a month, trading firms can access “Truth API” to get a glimpse of the president’s often market-moving announcements about economic policy and global affairs before the rest of the world. Trump’s media company says customers have a

My thanks to Agent Fone for sponsoring last week at DF. Agent Fone is a crazily ambitious new smartphone that doesn’t merely ship with a built-in AI assistant. Instead, the entire concept is that it enables you to create custom software, right on the phone itself. Ideas for new apps that you’ve had in your notes for years. Weird little app ideas that only you would want. Describe your idea, answer a few questions, and Agent Fone builds an app, or widget, and it’s on your home screen. They’re loo

Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, was interviewed by Diana Hu on stage at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2026 last week. Starting around 20:30 in the video , he briefly discussed directing Claude to perform difficult tasks: Cherny: I think the skill nowadays is less about prompt engineering and more about figuring out how do you give Claude a hard task that seems a little bit too hard. Then how do you make it possible for Claude to verify its work along the way? The verification is

Michael Lopp, at Rands in Repose: I have felt since it was announced that the Apple iPhone Upgrade Program has not just been a deal, but a steal. The specifics: You apply for a loan for a full-price iPhone at 0%. If approved, your payments are split over 24 months. Pay for 24 months, and the phone is yours. That was just the deal; the steal was that it was low effort every single year to get a new phone. I’d re-up for a new phone, and Apple would forgive the remaining payments of the loan becaus

Jason Snell: On Thursday, Apple announced record third-quarter earnings , with total revenue of $109.4B, up 16 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone revenue was up 22%, Mac revenue was up 10.4%, Services revenue was up 12%, and Wearables revenue was up 6%. iPad revenue was down 6%. Six Colors also has their usual transcript of the analyst call , Tim Cook’s 90th and final one. Over at MacRumors, Juli Clover wrote a retrospective on Tim Cook’s 15-year run as CEO : When Cook took over as CEO, A

Louie Mantia returns to the show to talk about the state of UI and icon design on Apple’s platforms, and some speculation on Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI. Sponsored by: Notion : The collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents work side by side, with a Developer Platform teams can build on. Even Realities : Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code talkshow to save 10% off the R1 Ring and/or Even Clip. Squarespace : Save 10% off your first purchase of a webs

Shop like a billionaire.

Mark Zuckerberg, in an op-ed Tuesday for The Wall Street Journal (gift link; and irony isn’t lost that “everyone” needs a paid WSJ subscription to read this): We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history. In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express our ideas, learn new concepts, and improve our lives, health, relationships and careers. Perhaps we’ll be able

Samuel Axon, Ars Technica: Apple has released iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS 26.6. Apart from potential security hotfixes, these are likely the last updates before the arrival of iOS 27, macOS 27, and so on. All of today’s releases include minor bug fixes, and there are numerous security updates: more than 150 for macOS 26.6 . Apple also rolled out macOS 14.8.8 and macOS 15.7.8 for older devices, also focused on security fixes. In terms of new features, you won’t find many in these releas

Paul Kafasis, on the Rogue Amoeba blog back in April: Though Sparkle serves us very well, it has one notable downside. Update announcements are most likely to appear at the least convenient time: right after you’ve launched the app. You want to start recording with Audio Hijack, for instance, but the app is telling you about a new version. We’ve long wished to avoid these disruptions. With that in mind, we’re making changes to how update notifications appear throughout our apps. In the future, w