Tech, mostly Apple, from Lex Friedman.
38 pieces tagged “Apple”
I want to love the new Siri in iOS 27. Apple calls it Siri AI, and it’s supposed to be smarter, more powerful, and faster. Sometimes, I’m impressed by the things it can do. When I linked to David Pogue’s piece about all the ways he was using Siri AI, I was…
The AltStore and Delta developer knows Apple hasn’t always been his biggest fan. But Apple is increasingly acting like a partner.
Riley Testut built his own app store because Apple wouldn’t let him play Pokémon on his iPhone. That’s an oversimplification, but barely. But the early App Store rejection Riley dealt with became his origin story, and it doesn’t get more indie than this: A…
The iPhone 18 Pro Max AT&T issue a recent example
We know Apple likes to keep secrets. The company aims for big, splashy, exciting, and (perhaps most importantly) newsworthy reveals, and secrecy is a big piece of that. (That’s why I remain surprised that Apple’s never been able to plug the leaks that Mark…
Jeff Johnson: There are countless small, practical, mostly uncontroversial ways in which Apple could improve the App Store for developers, yet the App Store has changed relatively little in the 18 years since it was hastily cloned from the iTunes Music Store.…
As is, it’s bad for developers and users alike.
The App Store review process remains broken. This complaint is nothing new; developers have railed against the pains of App Store review for as long as there’s been an App Store. The fact that some humans (and, I’d expect, some automated tools) vet every…
The fourth part of the form, where the jury determines the damages it believes Taction is owed from Apple, advises that Apple owes $5,721,961,750. Apple says it will appeal. I think I probably would, too.
The next MacBook Neo, AI agents on your Mac, and the lights going out.
I read a few great things today, and I’m sharing them here with you. Imagining the next MacBook Neo Jason Snell at Six Colors games out what Apple might put inside the next MacBook Neo: In short, the A19 Pro would be an incremental update to the Neo, keeping…
100% cotton paper. 100% crazy.
In 2011, Apple released the Cards app. The app — which required iOS 5 — let you design custom letterpress cards, with your messages and photos printed upon them — which Apple would ship to your recipient on your behalf. I recently learned the origin story of…
John Gruber: I seldom suggest you spend 47 minutes watching a video, but this one is worth your time. (And, given that it clearly fell off the back of a truck, you might want to put a copy on your own truck sooner rather than later.) A lot of times with a…
Jason Snell: Still, what a computer! Even the performance of the base M6 model is more than enough for most computing tasks that regular people will ever need. If you invested in an external display a few years ago, most likely that display is still going…
New iPhone Day should be exciting. I kind of dread it.
I got a new iPhone 18 Pro today. My early review: It’s good. But I am genuinely shocked at how little Apple has improved the new iPhone setup experience in recent years. I did the thing where you get Apple’s take on a QR code, point one phone’s camera at the…
Lex on Tech members can submit questions that I answer right here on the site. Reader George asks: I was hoping the new CEO of Apple (being a product guy) might revive the AirPort product line. The Airport Utility is now on the chopping block. I recall (?)…
Developers, developers, developers… are annoyed, annoyed, annoyed. And their users will be, too.
UPDATE: MY WHINING WORKED. Previously: Apple isn’t setting the iPhone Duo for maximum success from day one. Oh, it’s an impressive feat of hardware engineering. While I don’t want one as my main carry iPhone, I’d love to play with one. But I’m a-okay with the…
Jason Snell links to David Pogue with all kinds of things the new Siri can do now that iOS and macOS 27 have arrived. You can say things like, “What did my wife say I was supposed to do with the plants?” Or, “What was the show that Casey said I should watch?”…
12 years ago today, Apple published a web page with one job: to make a U2 album go away. I didn’t want that album. I had zero love for it. I didn’t want to live with it, only without it. The memory of this music misfire leaves me numb. And that’s all the…
Stephen Hackett: For a decade, Apple’s changes to its stores have made them more confusing and chaotic. This is a step in the right direction. I used to love heading to the Apple Store. For many many years, though, I’ve dreaded going to those zoos. Any…
Stephen Hackett points to this Mastodon post from David Smith. Smith’s stats show that 0.3 percent of Widgetsmith users are using the iPhone Air. Anecdotally, I’ve never seen one in the wild outside the Apple Store. Hackett: “The graph is pretty pretty pretty…
Watch a quick Apple Event recap to learn about iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5. I’m not sure if the language used in this recap video slays. But no cap, it’s a good 95-second recap of everything Apple…
Jason Snell: I can’t wait to try out the iPhone Duo. As someone who spends a lot of time using an iPad, I’m seriously intrigued if it might fit in my life as a primary device. But for most people, it will be not just too expensive, but too weird. That’s fine.…
The new starting prices for the three models now look like this: iPhone 16: $799 (+$100) iPhone 17e: $699 (+$100) iPhone 17: $899 (+$100) iPhone Air: $1099 (+$100) Via MacRumors. Fun!
Apple announced the cool things that they were expected to announce. You’ll read detailed analysis about it, but you probably watched the event Wednesday, and if not, you can go watch it now. The iPhone Duo certainly looks cool and makes some clever design…
Mark Gurman at Bloomberg: Ternus will now need to persuade consumers — beyond the most devoted Apple customers — to shell out more money for a device that introduces new complexity and some trade-offs. The phone has to be opened to take full advantage of it…
Lex on Tech members can submit questions that I answer right here on the site. Reader Geraint asks: Is it still possible (and defensible) to be an enthusiastic Apple hobbyist? Yes. My friend Dan Moren’s written a bit on this topic, both at Six Colors and…
Wow. This is so incredibly spot on I can’t even stand it. Via Casey Liss.
They slow down developers, which harms customers. It’s time for a change.
Apps distributed via the App Store require Apple’s approval. That’s the way it’s been since the App Store launched. In the US, the App Store’s the only way developers can really distribute apps. You may not agree with Apple’s approach (the EU doesn’t and…
Marc Palmer’s framing app goes native on the Mac, adds privacy redactions and Magic Import, and stops charging for the basics.
As a person with a growing number of apps in the App Store, and now one with a tech site, I take a lot of screenshots. Like many of you, I know Apple’s keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots by heart, and I use them frequently. Shareshot upgrades…
I very much appreciate Myke Hurley’s positive take on Ternus’s updated official bio. I wanted to note three narratives that I spotted in this profile that I think tell the story of the kind of CEO he wants to be, and how Apple wants to communicate this to us.…
In what I’d consider his first public act as CEO of Apple, John Ternus joined and posted on X, earning an immediate congratulatory reply from transphobic antisemite Elon Musk. Cool, cool, cool.
TechCrunch: The 30-year-old company remarked that it received “hundreds of thousands” of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app’s usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels. MapQuest has two things going…
A shuffling of faces on Apple’s leadership page. Expected and not surprising, but still carrying its own weight when you see it plainly like this.
This is really cool. I see some more familiar faces coming up, too.
We need to talk about subscriptions. Many of your favorite apps now offer them. Some of Apple’s apps now offer them. Most of my own damn apps offer them. We hate subscriptions. Okay, maybe you don’t, but most of us do. I know I often get annoyed at…
If we’re being honest — and why shouldn’t we? — Tim’s letter to Apple staff on his last day as CEO doesn’t really say much of anything. The truth is, whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you. You have brought out the best in…
Indie developer Greg Pierce pointed out on Mastodon that Apple’s Assistive Access features aren’t necessarily just for the people they were designed for. And he’s right. Assistive Access has some features you might want on your iPhone right now, even if you…
I assume you give this post five stars.
Apple offers iOS app developers a mechanism to ask users to rate and review their apps — within the apps themselves. It’s called StoreKit’s requestReview API. The developer essentially asks iOS to show the rating/review prompt at a given moment, and the…
When you browse the web, websites set cookies. Annoyingly, thanks to GDPR, they often also show you little overlays that tell you they’re using cookies, or ask you about which cookies you’re willing to accept. And to be clear, browser cookies are the least…
He didn’t ask for my advice. I’m sharing it.
Apple announced its next event, a September 9 infomercial they’re calling Surprise and Shine. Will they surprise us? I don’t know. It’s a phone that folds. I’m excited about it, sure. But whether we’ll be surprised about it is an open question. I will be…
