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Simon Willison: OpenAI just released a new macOS app for their Codex coding agent. I’ve had a few days of preview access — it’s a solid app that provides a nice UI over the capabilities of the Codex CLI agent and adds some interesting new features, most notably first-class support for Skills, and Automations for running scheduled tasks. Interesting, for sure. But super-duper interesting? I don’t know.  ★ 

Apple Newsroom: Xcode 26.3 introduces support for agentic coding, a new way in Xcode for developers to build apps using coding agents such as Anthropic’s Claude Agent and OpenAI’s Codex. With agentic coding, Xcode can work with greater autonomy toward a developer’s goals — from breaking down tasks to making decisions based on the project architecture and using built-in tools. I don’t know if this is super-duper interesting news, but I think it’s super-duper interesting that Apple saw the need to...

Apple Newsroom, yesterday: “Today, Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago and well above our expectations,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment, and Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago. We are also excited to announce that our installed base now has more t...

Maybe Trump is right and we should go to war against Denmark.  ★ 

Mike Swanson: What if your car worked like so many apps? You’re driving somewhere important…maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks: “How are you enjoying your drive so far?” Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic. A minute later it does it again. “Did you know I have a new feature? Tap here to learn more.” It blocks your speedometer with an overlay ...

When I wrote last week about the false narrative that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates compared to previous years, I neglected one source: Apple itself. Apple’s Developer site publishes a page with iOS and iPadOS usage for devices that “transacted on the App Store” . The hitch is that they only seem to update those numbers twice a year — once right around now, and once again right before WWDC. As of today, those numbers are still from 4 June 2025. Last year, going from the Internet ...

Jeremy Fuster, reporting for TheWrap: But save for some theaters in Republican-heavy states, the film is unlikely to leave much of an impact at a slumping box office, with theatrical sources telling TheWrap that “Melania” is projected for an opening of around $3 million this weekend. That would put it below the last right-wing documentary, the Daily Wire-produced Matt Walsh film “Am I Racist?,” which opened to $4.5 million from 1,517 locations in September 2024, finishing with a $12.3 million to...

Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes, reporting for The New York Times: Amazon paid Ms. Trump’s production company $40 million for the rights to “Melania,” about $26 million more than the next closest bidder, Disney. The fee includes a related docuseries that is scheduled to air later this year. The budget for “Melania” is unknown, but documentaries that follow a subject for a limited amount of time usually cost less than $5 million to produce. The $35 million for marketing is 10 times what some ot...

Ged Maheux, The Iconfactory: This week we announced a new Kickstarter that’s aimed at expanding the game offerings of Ollie’s Arcade, the fun, ad-free retro gaming app we introduced back in 2023. Ollie’s Arcade has always been a great way to escape doomscrolling, even if just for a little while, and now we have an opportunity to bring these retro games to even more people on iOS. The Kickstarter aims to raise enough money to make all of the in-app purchase games in the app completely free for ev...

Adam Engst, back in November, at TidBITS: Did you know that, regardless of view, you can now swipe left on any call to reveal a blue clock icon that lets you create a reminder to call back in 1 hour, tonight, tomorrow, or at any custom time (below left, slightly doctored)? Reminders appear at the top of the Calls list and in your default Reminders list. You can also touch and hold a call associated with a contact to connect with them in other ways (below right), or touch and hold a call from an ...

New Mac app by Mikey Clarke, and it’s just what it says on the tin: a “lovingly crafted Bluesky app designed and built just for the Mac”. I’ve been beta testing Aeronaut for months, and it’s the only interface to Bluesky I actually like. It’s a real Mac app — written mostly in AppKit, supporting all the right UI idioms and platform integrations. It’s not just the best Bluesky client I’ve seen, for any platform, but maybe the best new Mac app I’ve seen in years, period. Certainly the one whose ve...

Bruce Springsteen: I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Best line from the lyrics: Their claim was self-defense, Just don’t believe your eyes. It’s our blood and bones and these whistles and phones Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies. Whistles , phones, and...

Patrick McGee (author of last year’s bestseller, Apple in China , and guest on The Talk Show in May ), commenting on Twitter/X re: Tim Cook’s company-wide memo regarding the “events in Minneapolis”: This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice. It’s the kind of language Orwell attributed to politicians, when ready-made phrases assemble themselves and prevent any real thought from breaking through. I have previously linked to George Orwell’s seminal 1946 essay, “ Politics and the Engl...

Tim Cook, in a company-wide memo (first published by Mark Gurman ): Team, I’m heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis, and my prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families, with the communities, and with everyone that’s been affected. This is a time for deescalation. I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from, and when we embrace our shared humanity. This is something A...

Andy Stone, VP of communications at Meta, responding, in a series of tweets on Twitter/X, to Jeff Horwitz’s report at Reuters yesterday, linked here last night, which claimed that “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh, @Reuters , @JeffHorwitz ! The documents you cite in the story itself contradict this headline. The headline says “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors” But the story cites a docu...

Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public Monday. The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions deli...

Adam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link): The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in s...

Om Malik: Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change ...

MG Siegler: Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of the documentary Melania at the White House. Yes, that Melania . That in and of itself would have probably been fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a s...

Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine: Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press secretary for the word that escaped him. “Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said. “Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”...