Apple
18 Years Ago Today, iPhone Premiered and Everything Changed
On this day, 18 years ago, the iPhone went on sale for the very first time at Apple and AT&T Stores across the United States. I was going to write a long piece reminiscing about that special day, but I remembered that I already did that a few years ago when I was at 9to5mac for the 14th anniversary. I highly recommend returning to that piece to relive launch day and though you may have issues with images showing up, the text is still great too if I do say so myself.
Meta Goes on an AI Hiring Spree, What's Apple's Plan?
Apple should be the one on a hiring spree. Over the past few weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have kicked the hiring and acquisitions machine into high gear. The man knows he can’t miss out on the next platform shift and it shows. It wasn’t the metaverse and it wasn’t goggles, but it’s almost certainly some form of personalized super intelligence.
F1 Marks Apple's Acceleration into a New Era of Entertainment
Appleās had a very good run with its string of successful streaming shows on TV+ over the past six years and has frequently been called “the new HBO." But the company has struggled to land a true hit with its feature films that it bestowed theatrical releases on. Sure, theyāve won Oscars for CODA and movies like Killers of the Flower Moon were well-received. But none of them have been able to capture the scale of a massive cultural moment. I have good news, I think F1 is finally that film.
The Curious Case of Apple and Perplexity: Do They Need Each Other?
Apparently itās the season of acquisitions and hirings. Thankfully, this time Apple is also in on the action. According to Mark Gurman, Apple executives are in the early stages of mulling an acquisition of Perplexity. My initial reaction was āthat wouldnāt work.ā But Iāve taken some time to think through what it could look like if it were to come to fruition. Let me share where my headās at.
āThe Talk Show Liveā Returns to FormāAnd It Was Great
While there was a lot of consternation heading into WWDC over Apple skipping John Gruberās live taping of The Talk Show, it might have all been for the best. Instead of sitting down with Craig and Joz, who were both unlikely to say much more than they did during the day, we got to hear a really fun conversation between John and two of my favorite people on the internet: Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern.
Apple Snuck an Endorsement for Ivory and Mastodon into WWDC
One of my favorite moments from WWDC 2025 was when Apple designer Billy Sorrentino introduced the changes to visual intelligence. The new screenshot features in iOS 26 are already among my favorites, but what really caught my eye was the surprising amount of screen time given to Tapbotsā Ivory.
WWDC 2025: Through Liquid GlassāNo Longer Behind, Just Off to the Side
I was unusually concerned heading into this yearās WWDC, fully prepared to be disappointed. I feared that Apple would continue to be on weak footing after the Apple Intelligence failures of the past year. To my surprise, I feel very differently post-keynote. I worried that they wouldnāt acknowledge what happened last year, but Craig addressed it right out of the gate. While the acknowledgement itself is appreciated, we still have to wait quite a long time for the new Siri to rear its faceā¦ or voice, I guess? Fortunately, Apple did deliver a combination of new AI features that are sprinkled throughout their new operating systems. I am largely relieved, albeit still slightly on edge for reasons weāll get into later. Over the course of the keynote, I began to relax as they subtly and intentionally introduced an array of practical AI use cases one by one. I am actually quite excited about some of these, but none of them compare to the triumph that is Appleās new universal design language: liquid glass.
Appleās Silence at "The Talk Show" Will Speak Volumes
If you follow Apple at all, youāve likely heard the news: Appleās skipping John Gruberās The Talk Show Live at WWDC this year. For a decade, itās been tradition for Apple executives to join John on stage at the annual conference to recap the the keynote and dive deeper into the announcements. It is one of my favorite parts of that week, something I look forward to every year.
A Tale of Two IOs: What it Looks Like When Apple Doesn't Lead
We are at more than just an inflection point; weāre at a moment where the global technological order may be about to fundamentally change. Don’t think about this just as an āiPhone momentā but as an āApple acquires NeXTā event. A NeXTus event if you will. When Apple acquired NeXT, it kicked off a series of technological shifts that were completely unforeseen. It led to products like iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch and technologies like Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, AirPort, Apple Silicon, among countless others. That acquisition fundamentally altered the course of human history and changed the technological landscape. I believe that the events of last week may have done the same.
Raycast for iPhone is the Launch Center Successor I've Always Wanted
Before it was sort of abandoned I was a heavy user of Launch Center Pro. Apple enthusiasts and power users alike will almost certainly remember the powerful shortcut tool from Contrast that let you build out an extensive grid of quick ways to get things done. The app is technically still available on the App Store, but it has not been updated in years. I stopped using it once it appeared to fall by the wayside and after Apple began truly supercharging its own solution in Shortcuts. Launch Center Pro was very much a manually configurable tool, but had it kept up with the times I would imagine it would look something like the new Raycast for iOS. Funny enough, Raycast for iOS almost resembles the original version of Launch Center from 2011. We have sort of come full circle.
With Google's Defeat, the Time for Apple's Search Engine Has Arrived
Unless youāve been living under a rock, you know that Google was formally ruled an advertising monopoly this week. It could potentially be a catastrophic blow to the company that completely upends the web as we know it. A significant component of this case has been Googleās deal with Apple to be the default search engine in Safari. Google pays the Cupertino company nearly $20B a year to maintain dominance on Apple platforms. That is for good reason of course, Appleās users are some of the most valuable particularly when it comes to ad targeting. But it is also a flagrant way to squash any chance a competitor could have at growing to be a sustainable web search or ad business. Now that the verdict is in officially, I think it is time for Apple to do what has been long rumored. That is, to build their own search engine that powers Safari, Siri, and Spotlight.
Jony Ive, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Sam Altman Walk into a BarāWill They Walk Out with the Gadget of the Future?
The worst kept secret in Silicon Valley right now is that Jony Ive is helping Sam Altman build new gadgets. On the surface that may not seem like that much of a big deal. After all, Jony left Apple six years ago. But his career is inextricably linked to and was fundamentally shaped by Steve Jobs and Apple. I do not say that to diminish him in any way, it is simply the truth that he would not be āSir Jony Iveā without the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the Apple Watch. For years he has seemingly tried to separate himself from his historical identity by working on a variety of different projects removed from technology, but he will forever be associated with those products whether he likes it or not. When he spends time on a technology, it carries a lot of weight. He learned from the best. As an example, his signature has been all over Airbnbās app and brandingāthe company has been a major client of his firm LoveFrom. It is just one of the things that makes his teaming up with Sam Altman all that much more intriguing.
At first the rumors were relatively vague. The two of them were thinking about building some kind of AI-powered gadget together, whatever it may be. It has since become clear that the two intend to build a personal AI device, likely one that rethinks the role of the smartphone or even begins to replace some core functions. It is not all that surprising that they have fallen back on what could be a handheld device given the flat reaction to dedicated AI gadgets over the past two years, perhaps with the exception of the Meta Ray Bans. I personally think that lots of tech aficionados have sort of written Jony off in his post-Apple years. That has made it easier for him to explore whatever the project ultimately becomes. But it is unmistakable that the man who designed the iPhone, built his entire fortune on it, and shares the credit of creating it with his late best friend, believes that building competitive hardware is worth his time in 2025. That tells me that he not only believes in both Sam Altman and the power of AI, but also that he does not believe Apple is currently well-positioned to do something similar. The saga of Apple Intelligence blunders thus far may just help back that up. So Sam Altman and Jony Ive are working together to create the device of the future, what could that mean?
Many of the rumors seem to equate this product with some of those failed AI gadgets I mentioned. Some pundits think it could be screen-less or have an unusual twist that makes it less of an iPhone competitor and more of a new product category. I think they are all overthinking it. Whatever these two prolific giants of industry are working on is not the Humane AI Pin or the Rabbit R1. It cannot be a vanity project. OpenAI has been spitting out incredible new products at a ridiculously fast pace over the past several months and I do not see Sam Altman wasting anyoneās time. The fact that he wants to pull the project into OpenAI says as much. That suggests it might end up being close to a new kind of phoneāperhaps familiar in shape, but powered by something so fundamentally different. When I hear āpersonal AI deviceā I hear āwe want to replace your phone.ā The way to do that, especially if you are a designer, is to make something relatively familiar.
Despite what many AI skeptics have believed, it seems to be bearing out that the chatbot is the interface of the future. At least the near future. A grid of app icons on a home screen could quickly be usurped by a text thread with a digital being that lives in your phone and can use your services for you. We are already heading in that direction. Just this week, Anthropic added connectors for Gmail and Google Calendar making Claude infinitely more personal and useful. OpenAI continues to expand its integrations with apps like Xcode and Notion, making it easier than ever to simply code an entirely new app or write an entire story on a fly with a short prompt. Gemini can access nearly every major Google service already. Microsoft Copilot can see what is on your screen and talk with you about it. Apple was hoping to be able to accomplish these things through a combination of an improved Siri, on-device models, and app intents. But I am not particularly optimistic it is going to all work as well as it needs to. App intents are built on Shortcuts which is already a fragile house of cards. I think they need to start over from scratch, but they are already so far behind that it is unclear if they can risk it. Especially as competitors take giant leaps seemingly on an almost weekly basis, heck, OpenAI just dropped two brand new models today in o3 and o4-mini.
A phone or phone-shaped device with hardware and software designed by Jony Ive and his team at LoveFrom (many of which are former Apple designers, including Evans Hankey) combined with the intelligence of OpenAI could be the first truly formidable opponent the iPhone has had to go up against since Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy series. ChatGPT is an incredibly popular product with hundreds of millions of users. And not because they have to use it, but because they want to use it. It has very strong brand recognition and has become an essential part of peoplesā daily lives. It certainly has for me and many in my orbit. And it is especially the case with younger users, the trend setters who will determine which company owns the future. My generation decided that iMessage and the iPhone were the best. The next might choose otherwise. While it is still incredibly early to say for sure what the device ultimately will be, I imagine a new generation of smartphone, for lack of a better word, that eschews apps for connectors. A device that starts with a text box and an always-listening voice mode that uses your apps and services for you, that does not take you out of context or distract you periodically through the day. The OpenAI device could actually be the antidote to much of the societal damage the current generation of smartphones has done. While I would never use a current Android phone as my daily driver, I would absolutely consider using a Jony Ive-designed OpenAI device in lieu of my iPhone. Especially if it made me more present and productive.
Apple should be worried. They are more vulnerable than they have been in decades and it shows. If Jony Ive, a Steve Jobs acolyte and one of the most prolific designers of our age sees an opening to dethrone Apple and right societal wrongs, he seems likely to take it. And this is not like Jon Rubenstein going to Palm to build the PrÄ, this is different. There is no Steve to single-handedly steer the ship into the future or to crush competitors with breakneck speed. There was also no new technology nearly as important as a tool like ChatGPT to differentiate other devices. Things get even more interesting when you consider that Emerson Collective is one of the projectās backers. Emerson Collective is none other than Laurene Powell Jobsā firm. That means Apple could be going up against a new kind of product from the hottest tech company since Google, with the backing of the iPhoneās principal designer, Steve Jobsā incredibly savvy wife, and the figurehead for the AI revolution. If Apple is incapable of getting their house in order with Intelligence, then a personal OpenAI gadget that begins to take the place of the phone, could truly begin to put deeper and deeper cracks in Appleās glass house. If this new device succeeds, whenever we may see it, it will not just challenge Appleās grip on personal hardwareāit could redefine what that hardware is and how we use it.
Craig Saves the Day, Gives Engineers the Green Light to Use Off-the-Shelf LLMs
According to The Information, Apple is now letting engineers build products using third-party LLMs. This is a huge change that could seriously alter the course of Apple Intelligence. I have been a proponent of Apple shifting its focus from building somewhat mediocre closed first-party models to using powerful open-source third-party ones. The company is already so far behind its competitors, that I would rather they focus on making really good products rather than really good models. They may be able to do both simultaneously, but I suspect that Apple could ship spectacularly good products using off the shelf models sooner as other teams build first-party models for the future in secret.
Now that Gemini can see your screen on Android and Copilot can see your screen on Windows, these competing assistants are now truly on another level. They are really assistants in the truest sense of the word now that they can visually understand your context while you are using your devices. They make Android and Windows devices more compelling alternatives too. I am hopeful that Apple will be able to catch up much faster by doing what they do best, which is productizing advanced technology. The only difference is that this time, at least for now, they will be productizing someone else’s tech.
I imagine they will be largely looking at Mistral, Gemma, and Phi. Llama would be an obvious contender too if the company’s relationship with Meta was not so contentious. DeepSeek would be another option, though the optics of using it outside of China would likely not be ideal. We will just have to wait and see!
From a small garage in Los Altos to billions of pockets, wrists, ears, faces, desks, and living rooms. Happy 49th birthday Apple. Next year is the big one.
A Sneak Peek At My First App
It is not quite ready yet, but I wanted to share a first-look at the app that I have been working on over the past several weeks. I still need to squash a few bugs and complete some business-related tasks, but I expect to submit it to the App Store in the near future after a small TestFlight group helps me make sure it is rock solid.
As you can tell, it is a task manager. Well sort of. I would describe it as a notes app moonlighting as a todo list app. It works the way my brain does. I have tried countless task managers over the years but none of them have ever quite felt right. There are plenty of great options, but I suspect that if your brain is as scattered and filled to the brim with thoughts as mine is, that this app will work really well for you. I am still keeping some things quiet, like the name and some of its features. But I wanted to share this sneak peek at the main view to get a pulse check from you, my friends, family, and followers. As you can see it is highly customizable with a variety of themes and unique tagging options. You can even format your notes with some basic markdown and store links. It syncs your notes/tasks between devices using iCloud and also works natively on macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. This is what I believe to be, a great SwiftUI app through and through.
Feel free to tweet, toot, thread, and skeet your thoughts at me. I would love to hear them. I hope that once I get the business stuff ironed out and the app up on the App Store, you will give my first-ever app a try.
Fill the Severance-sized Hole in Your Heart with The Studio
The ridiculously good new Seth Rogen series, The Studio, just hit Apple TV+. A few weeks ago I got to watch the first two episodes premiere at SXSW and I walked away from the theater beyond excited for the rest of the series. Both of those episodes are now available to stream and they are as riveting as they are hilarious. The second episode, which guest stars Greta Lee, is particularly special. If you have ever acted or directed or known actors or directors, you will especially enjoy it.
Gemini, Siri, and Default Assistants on iOS
I do not want to harp on the Siri situation, but I do have one suggestion that I think Apple should listen to. Because I suspect it is going to take quite some time for the company to get the new Siri out the door properly, they should do what was previously unthinkable. That is, open up iOS to third-party assistants. I do not say this lightly. I am one of those folks who does not want iOS to be torn open like Android, but I am willing to sign on when it makes good common sense. Right now it does.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, Perplexity, and Grok are all incredibly popular on iOS. They are in use by millions and millions of people. But some of them are not as powerful on iOS as they are on Android. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can all be used as the default personal assistant on Android devices. If you do not like the one that came on your device, you can replace it. Apple has been adding more default app choices on iOS as of late and now is the time to add another one. Gemini in particular has become increasingly powerful due to its deep integration with Google apps. If you use them, you can get way more out of Gemini than the alternatives. I desperately want to use Gemini as my default personal assistant on my iPhone, so much so that I have the voice mode assigned to my action button. Because of Gemini’s integration with Google Keep, Google Tasks, and Google Calendar I can use the Gemini assistant to create reminders, generate lists, take notes, and create and manange events. Even better than that, Gemini can dive into my inbox and find things for me better than any standard search tool. Those are all productivity features, but Gemini also has deep entertainment functionality thanks to YouTube. If you want to find a specific video, Gemini can get the job done. You can even use it with Google Maps. The app is simply a fantastic assistant that is able to replace many of the things I already do with Siri, while also being an LLM-powered ultra smart knowledge engine.
I have not even mentioned the amazing Gemini Live yet, despite not integrating with your Google apps yet, it does let you have fluid conversations about world knowledge and things happening on the web. The app is dead simple, yet more powerful than Siri in almost every metric. While it currently cannot do some things like set a timer, it can do far more important things Siri can only dream of being capable of. If you use Google apps, I highly recommend assigning Gemini to your action button or to the back tap gesture on your iPhone. You will be blown away by how much more powerful it is once you begin taking advantage of the app integrations. Heck, if you use Google Home devices it even controls those as well.
I do not use Gemini as my primary LLM generally, I prefer to use ChatGPT and Claude most of the time for research, coding, and writing. But Gemini has proved to be the best assistant out of them all. So while we wait for Siri to get good, give us the ability to use custom assistants at the system level. It does not have to be available to everyone, heck create a special intent that Google and these companies need to apply for if you want. Have requirements for privacy and design too if need be. But these apps with proper system level overlays would be a massive improvement over the existing version of Siri. I do not want to have to launch the app every single time and the basic ChatGPT integration in Siri is far from the best solution.
Google clearly knows that they have a massive with Gemini right now and you can look no further than their decision to heavily advertise on Apple-centric podcasts. In recent weeks they’ve sponsored The Talk Show, Upgrade, Connected, and ATP. One of the best ways to go after Siri is to capture Apple fans and observers.
I know Apple would be averse to this, namely because of the potential for losing a massive amount of Siri users in the meantime while they get their act together. But it would do two things: it would mitigate some of the damage with customer relations while they wait for the new Siri and it sets a new bar for the Siri team to have to exceed. There would not be any room for failure and they need to be under that kind of pressure.
Very Good News: Mike Rockwell, No Fan of Siri, is Here to Save It
Mark Gurman has just reported that Apple is reshuffling the Siri team’s leadership in light of the recent Apple Intelligence controversy. They are putting Mike Rockwell, the man behind Vision Pro, in charge of the effort and taking AI chief John Gianndrea off the project.
While you can lament the well-documented array of Vision Pro shortcomings, the software: visionOS is an impeccable achievement. It was one of the most polished 1.0s the company has ever shipped despite missing some features. It has a gorgeous design and is chock full of functionality, plus it was largely stable out of the gate. Putting the guy who led the development of the most advanced piece of technology Apple has ever made in charge of Siri is the right move. I trust that he will productize whatever technology comes from the LLM group really well and ensure that they do not get over their skis again. Maybe he will even scrap what they have and fast track an entirely new solution. Ultimately, this is good news and it means a fresh perspective. More on why I am excited about the much-needed course correction below.
This news immediately brought to mind a report from early 2023 via The Information that detailed how the Vision Pro team wanted to develop its own voice control software, instead of using the existing version of Siri. 9to5Mac highlighted a particularly important and now very relevant series of lines from the story:
Inside Apple, Siri remains widely derided for its lack of functionality and improvements since Giannandrea took over, say multiple former Siri employees. For example, the team building Appleās mixed-reality headset, including its leader Mike Rockwell, has expressed disappointment in the demonstrations the Siri team created to showcase how the voice assistant could control the headset, according to two people familiar with the matter. At one point, Rockwellās team considered building alternative methods for controlling the device using voice commands, the people said (the headset team ultimately ditched that idea).
The frustration with Siri has finally boiled over and I am extremely optimistic now. If anyone at Apple can turn around Siri, it is someone who recognized the problem long ago but was not given the opportunity to fix it. Until now.
It's Time for WWDC 2025 to Return to Traditions Broken by COVID
This is a weird time. Everybody knows it, even if they do not want to acknowledge it. Apple’s trust with its customers is on the line and today’s news from Mark Gurman about internal conversations proves that they know they are in a complicated position. The company is staying quiet outside of the statement that it gave to folks like John Gruber and the next major Apple event is a little over two months away. They have cleared the deck of early 2025 hardware releases and I imagine we will not hear much from them for a bit outside of, you guessed it, a WWDC announcement.
As usually is the case, I imagine that we will start to get details in about two weeks or so. Every single WWDC keynote since 2020 has been prerecorded and the company has since dropped its weeklong in-person conference, opting for an entirely online approach with a select few welcomed to view the keynote video on the first day. I have been a proponent of Apple returning to its iconic live keynotes for a long time, but fuel has just been added to that fire. Tim, Craig, and Joz need to talk to us like people right there with them, not in some sort of extended ad. They cannot show us another concept video, because if they do unveil something that looks too good to be true (even if it is real) there will be immediate skepticism. We need live demos and we need Craig to be doing them to show the company has confidence in the offerings.
Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac laid out a comprehensive argument for it with both the pros and cons. But I firmly believe the pros far outweigh any sort of value the company has gotten the past few years from transitioning to the current format. They need to look human, which means dropping the high production value and returning to form. It also could not hurt for them to spend more time in-person with more developers. They used to invite far more people and in-person sessions were tremendously valuable to developers. Plus, if all of the software platforms truly are getting redesigned from the ground up, this is the year to capture the same kind of live reaction like iOS 7 garnered back in 2013.
If they want other events to remain prerecorded, that is fine. But this WWDC is just too important. The stakes for the next few are likely only going to continue to get higher.
Sky Blue Really is Blue
The new sky blue MacBook Air really is blue. I know that there has been much debate about just how blue it really is. But now that I own one and have seen it in quite a few different lighting conditions, I can say for certain that this is more blue than silver to my eyes. I fully understand that there are some moments when it may look silver, but in most conditions I am looking at a delightfully light blue keyboard deck. Admiring it from afar while it is closed on my desk, it is clearly blue. I think folks are trying to grapple with the fact that we have all wanted more saturated colors by complaining about the new shade. Despite what you might have heard, it is distinctly new and fresh. At this point, I will take what Apple gives me especially when it isn’t silver or space gray. After all, it has been 24 years since a Mac notebook was available in blue.