Long-time iOS developer Clément Sauvage is back on Kickstarter with his 2026 collection of enamel pins that celebrate the Apple developer community:

For decades, WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) has been more than just a conference…

…it’s a pilgrimage — a community of builders, thinkers, makers, and friends who share a passion for Apple technologies.

Every keynote spark. Every late-night breakthrough. Every handshake that turns into a collaboration.

Those moments deserve something memorable.

So… I made pins. Not badges. Not rubber keychains. Enamel pins — collectible, wearable, emotional. 

The campaign has already met its funding goal with 20 days to go, but is well shy of its first stretch goal of 200 backers (it’s at 59 as I write this). I’m sure you and I can help it reach that milestone.

I’m in for the Collector set, plus the Apple 50 pin.

Matt Mullenweg, of WordPress fame (and infamy), was almost phished in a sophisticated scheme that used Apple’s own support structure to enable the diabolical attack:

What made the attack impressive was the next move: The scammers actually contacted Apple Support themselves, pretending to be me, and opened a real case claiming I’d lost my phone and needed to update my number. That generated a real case ID, and triggered real Apple emails to my inbox, properly signed, from Apple’s actual servers. These were legitimate; no filter on earth could have caught them.

Then “Alexander from Apple Support” called. He was calm, knowledgeable, and careful. His first moves were solid security advice: check your account, verify nothing’s changed, consider updating your password. He was so good that I actually thanked him for being excellent at his job.

That, of course, was when he moved into the next phase of the attack.

It’s a harrowing tale that was thwarted primarily because Mullenweg remembered the first rule of Apple support:

Apple will never call you first.

Apple is more likely to unceremoniously shut down your account if it suspects fraud or any other shenanigans, forcing you to call them. If you get a call or text from anyone claiming to be from Apple, assume it’s a scam and call Apple support directly. The number is at the bottom of apple.com: 1–800-MY-APPLE (1–800–692–7753).

John Gruber, when linking to this at Daring Fireball, wrote:

One of the tells that alerted Mullenweg that this was a scam was that he knew he hadn’t initiated any of it, so his guard was up from the start. Another is that the scammer texted him a link pointing to the domain “audit-apple.com” (which domain is now defunct). That domain name looks obviously fake to me. But to most people? Most people have no idea that whatever-apple.com is totally different than whatever.apple.com.

Gruber is right about the (important but rarely understood) distinction between the two domain names, but it’s worth noting that Apple does use several domains in the form of whatever-apple.com. For example:

• appleid.cdn-apple.com
• icons.axm-usercontent-apple.com

There are a total of eleven “something-apple.com” domains (most of them *.cdn-apple.com), plus a couple of oddities, like apple-mapkit.com and token.safebrowsing.apple, so while “audit-apple.com” does indeed seem suspicious, it’s not entirely implausible that it could have been real.

(Apple maintains a list of its legitimate domains for network administrators. From what I can tell, Apple never uses hyphenated domains for customer-facing links.)

The truth is, you shouldn’t rely on visually inspecting domain names to determine their authenticity, as they’re easily spoofed. If you get an email from Apple and you’re at all suspicious, type apple.com into your browser and navigate to the relevant section from there.

A final suggestion: Use a password manager. If you inadvertently click a link that asks for your login credentials, and your password manager doesn’t fill them in, proceed with caution: it’s quite likely a phishing attempt. While not foolproof, a password manager is a good backstop against fraudulent domains. Get one. (Naturally I prefer the built-in Apple Passwords app, but I (still) have hundreds of accounts in 1Password, and others have recommended Bitwarden, LastPass, and more.)

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) online from June 8–12, bringing developers together from around the world for a week of connection, exploration, and innovation. In addition to the online experience, developers and students will also have the opportunity to celebrate in person during a special event at Apple Park on June 8. […]

The special in-person event at Apple Park on June 8 will offer developers and students the opportunity to watch the Keynote and the Platforms State of the Union, meet with Apple engineers and designers, take part in special labs and activities, and connect with the worldwide developer community. Space will be limited; details on how to submit a request to attend can be found on the Apple Developer website.

Congratulations to my friends and former colleagues in WWDR and throughout Apple. Let the silly season begin! (But please, do sleep before Dub-Dub… It’s healthier.)

Apple’s announcement highlights “AI advancements” among the many expected updates. Will that finally include the long-delayed “more personalized Siri” Apple first promised at WWDC24? (Honestly, I’m crossing my fingers we’ll instead see it in a forthcoming *OS 26.5 update, as I’d be hard pressed to give credence to a recorded WWDC Siri demo at this point.)

Kraft Heinz, last week:

Today, Kraft Mac & Cheese introduces PowerMac, a brand-new innovation delivering 17g of protein and 6g of fiber per serving. Kraft is known for bringing two icons – macaroni & cheese – together and making them the Best Thing Ever. Now, America’s #1 mac & cheese is uniting the benefits consumers are seeking with the same cheesiness fans know and love. PowerMac expands the blue box lineup with added nutrition while staying true to the taste, convenience and affordability that has made Kraft Mac & Cheese a trusted household favorite for nearly 90 years.

A greying Apple trademark attorney wistfully reaches for a cease-and-desist template. Power Mac… that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.

Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter:

Chuck Norris, the martial arts champion and karate school teacher who jumped fist- and feetfirst into stardom with 1980s action movies like Missing in Action and the long-running CBS drama Walker, Texas Ranger, has died. He was 86.

Mekka Okereke, on Mastodon:

🚨Warning Black people!🚨

Another famous white person with trash views has died! Do not use their own words against them, or moderators may be forced to ban you!🤡

Do not mention that “1000 years of darkness” is a white nationalist and great replacement dog whistle!

Don’t mention birtherism!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ud3pK5Wa90

[…]

❌Bad:
This racist dude was good at kicking people in the head.

✅Good:
This great American hero was good at kicking people in the head!

❌Bad:
Birtherism is a super racist movement that led to the alt-right, Project 2025, and where we are today.

✅Good:
I like Walker Texas Ranger!

I’m reminded of Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny:

Angels sang out in an immaculate chorus…
Down from the heavens descended Chuck Norris…
Who delivered a kick which could shatter bones…
into the crotch of Indiana Jones….

But then:

Gandalf the Gray,
and Gandalf the White,
and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight,
and Benito Mussolini,
and the Blue Meanie,
and Cowboy Curtis,
and Jambi the Genie,
Robocop,
Terminator,
Captain Kirk,
Darth Vader,
Lopan,
Superman,
and every single Power Ranger,
Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan,
Spock,
The Rock,
Doc Oc,
and Hulk Hogan,
all came out of nowhere
lighting fast,
and they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass.

That’s how I prefer to remember him.

Je-Ree, writing at The TV Cave:

After two decades of “maybe next year” and enough fan petitions to paper the entire Verse, Nathan Fillion has finally stopped teasing us on Instagram and dropped the big one: a Firefly animated series is officially in advanced development. […]

We’re talking about a full-blown return to the Serenity, with the original cast lending their voices to the characters we’ve spent twenty years mourning.

Spoiler alert for a twenty-year-old series:

The genius move here? The series is reportedly a “mid-quel.” By sliding the timeline into the gap between the original 2002 run and the 2005 film Serenity, the writers have pulled off the ultimate narrative heist. This allows Alan Tudyk to return as Wash without any messy “he’s a ghost now” hand-waving. We get the crew at their peak: desperate and perpetually one bad deal away from starvation.

I’m unreasonably excited about the return of Firefly, a show (and movie) I adored. It was my second major television heartbreak after its way-too-soon cancellation (Sports Night being my first). I still haven’t forgiven Fox for jerking the show around the schedule and then unceremoniously dropping it. It’s also the reason I choose to wait for shows to run a few years before I invest my time and emotion. Yes, television has scarred me deeply.

Javier C. Hernández, The New York Times (gift link):

At an otherwise congenial meeting with Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump invoked the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, which led the United States into World War II. He was responding to a question from a reporter about why Japan and other allies had received no advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran.

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” he said. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?”

There was some laughter from the officials and journalists gathered in the room. “You believe in surprise, I think, much more so than us,” he added.

As Mr. Trump spoke, Ms. Takaichi widened her eyes and appeared to take a deep breath. She kept her arms crossed in her lap and did not speak.

The remark was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s penchant for tossing aside diplomatic norms.

(You really must watch the video, and especially the reaction of the prime minister. It’s truly appalling.)

Two thoughts.

One: Donald Trump’s rapidly diminishing mental capacity—the effect of his ongoing descent into dementia, I presume—means he’s becoming less and less capable of hiding his instinctive nastiness. It would be funny if it wasn’t so embarrassing.

Two: In cracking his impudent “joke,” Trump unwittingly acknowledges that he believes his attack on Iran is as contemptible as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Sometimes, among the nastiness, the truth slips out.

Adam Wells at Bleacher Report:

In addition to being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, Carlos Beltrán will be honored by the New York Mets in 2026.

Per Mike Puma of the New York Post, the Mets plan to retire Beltrán's No. 15 jersey during the 2026 season.

Beltrán is walking into the Hall of Fame with a Mets cap and having his Mets number retired, despite zero World Series titles with the Mets and being fired as their manager before he ever managed a single game for them (a result of his role in the Astros cheating scandal).

Perhaps they’re retiring his uniform number because everyone’s too embarrassed to wear it.

Spider-Man has remained my favorite superhero since childhood, and I’ve been dreading/anticipating this next entry for years—knowing Peter Parker’s best friends no longer remember him is heartbreaking. The slow, orchestral version of the classic “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” theme gave me goosebumps (and MJ’s related final quip made me spit-take). It looks so good, I may have to see this one in the theater.

iFixit calls the MacBook Neo “the Most Repairable MacBook in 14 Years” and their teardown is fascinating in general (modular design, no glue, and lots and lots of screws), but this specific bit finally answered the question I’ve been asking myself: Why is the MacBook Neo as heavy as the MacBook Air despite a smaller battery, chassis, and screen?

Here’s what we found: The Neo’s chassis is actually only barely lighter than the Air’s. Together, its chassis, keyboard, and bottom cover are just 8g lighter than the Air’s. But the Neo’s screen is 48g heavier, and the solid chunk of metal that supports its trackpad makes up 7% of the laptop’s overall weight! The Neo’s full trackpad assembly is almost exactly twice as heavy as the M3 MacBook Air’s, too.

A MacBook in the Neo’s body but the Air’s screen and trackpad assembly would drop the weight by about a tenth of a pound. Noticeable but not significant. I’m still crossing my fingers for a MacBook that gets back to the barely two pounds of the 12-inch MacBook.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced AirPods Max 2, bringing even better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), elevated sound quality, and intelligent features to the iconic over-ear design. Powered by H2, features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and Live Translation come to AirPods Max for the first time. The new AirPods Max also unlock creative possibilities for podcasters, musicians, and content creators, with useful features like studio-quality audio recording and camera remote.

AirPods Max 2 will be available to order starting March 25 in midnight, starlight, orange, purple, and blue, with availability beginning early next month.

The first AirPods Max were released in December 2020. They remained unchanged until September 2024, when USB-C replaced the Lightning port. An update a mere eighteen months later is downright speedy.

If you’re someone who wears over-ear headphones, and you currently own a pair of first-generation AirPods Max, I imagine this would be a tempting, if incremental, upgrade.

My first-gen AirPods Max sit effectively unused next to my bed. I find them too bulky, too heavy, and too uncomfortable to wear for more than a few minutes at a time. The one exception to this was while traveling, as the longer battery life eased charging stress and the over-ear design helped block out a little more noise than my stalwart AirPods Pro 2. But even that use case has become less true: I now generally prefer to travel with two pairs of AirPods Pro, which, for $50 less than the AirPods Max, offer greater total battery life, nearly the same noise cancellation, and take up way less space in my carry-on.

(My first-gen AirPods Max are also one of my last Lightning devices. I work around this charging frustration by using one of these tiny magnetic plugs that stays permanently connected. A micro-USB version is in my Kindle Paperwhite. I only need one cable to charge both. They work great.)

The Veritasium team presents Newcomb’s Paradox:

You walk into a room. There’s a super computer and two boxes on the table.

One box is open. It’s got a thousand dollars in it. There’s no trick. You know it’s a thousand dollars.

The other box is a mystery box. You can’t see inside.

You also know that this super computer is very good at predicting people. It has correctly predicted the choices of thousands of people in the exact problem you’re about to face. You don’t know what the problem is yet, but you know it has been correct almost every time.

Now, the super computer says you can either take both boxes — the mystery box and $1,000 — or you can just take the mystery box.

What’s in the mystery box?

The supercomputer tells you that before you walked into the room, it made a prediction about your choice.

If the super computer predicted you would just take the mystery box and you’d leave the $1,000 on the table, then it put a million dollars in the mystery box.

If the super computer predicted that you would take both boxes, then it put nothing in the mystery box.

The supercomputer made its prediction before you knew about the problem, and has already set up the boxes. It’s not trying to trick you. It’s not trying to deprive you of money. Its only goal is to make a correct prediction.

So do you take both boxes, or do you just take the mystery box?

I encourage you to make your choice, then watch the video—and see if your mind is changed.

I started as a two-boxer, under the assumption that in both a right and wrong prediction, I end up with $1,000 more than I would with one box. This is causal rationality: in each case, the two-box outcome is better (in this case, more money) than its one-box counterpart.

After watching the video, I’m starting to think I should be a one-boxer, under the assumption that if the supercomputer predicts I’d choose one box, my eventual choice is evidence of its prediction—and thus what’s in the box. This is outcome rationality: I’m making a decision that best correlates with the “one box” containing $1M—that is, being the kind of person who would pick one box most often means ending up with a box that contains a million dollars.

It seems like the “obviously safe bet” to walk away with something can cost you everything. I wouldn’t have predicted that.

Jason Kottke:

28 years of kottke.org, as of today. Older than Google. Older than The Matrix. Older than Christopher Nolan’s feature film career. Older than Elle Fanning. Older than Kurt Cobain when he died. 47,300 posts since March 14, 1998. It might outlast American democracy.

KDO is one of a small handful of “old school” sites that inspired (and inspires) JAG’s Workshop. Twenty-eight years represents a remarkable achievement of both consistency and dedication. I’m in awe of how prolific Kottke (and team) continue to be. Congratulations to everyone at KDO.

(I was hoping I could say “I started blogging before Kottke,” but the earliest entry of my long-defunct personal blog (November 6, 2000) would put me, generously, at 25 years—with the massive caveat that I wrote for it sporadically at best, and didn’t write for it at all for some 6-plus years.)

National Theatre:

Take your seats is back! This year, stream the ★★★★★ hit production of The Importance of Being Earnest, featuring the brilliant Ncuti Gatwa, available to audiences worldwide for one week only. Premiere at 7pm GMT March 12, and free to watch until March 18.

I watched the last half of the premiere on Thursday afternoon and the full performance on Friday evening and laughed my head off both times. The multicultural, color-blind cast is wonderful (I especially loved the chemistry between Hugh Skinner and Ncuti Gatwa as Jack and Algernon). The production is unabashedly queer-and-inclusive and positively vibrates with over-the-top energy—bookended by its spirited opening and closing musical numbers—with the occasional fourth-wall breakage and light touches of modernity (listen for a brief piano interpolation of Bruno Mars’ Marry You). Oscar Wilde’s wit sparkles in this production. I suspect I’ll rewatch this one many times.

(Via Cathy Hammer.)

If you’re an Apple fan of a certain vintage, you remember the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” series of ads from Apple, starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. They’re together again, this time pitching Ozempic, with Long as the brand name (“Hello, I’m Ozempic”) and Hodgman as the generic alternative (“And I’m other GLP-1s, kind of like him”).

It’s a testament to the power of Apple’s iconic campaign that Ozempic can simply rely on its audience’s familiarity with the characters and their dynamic to shorthand their sales pitch.

One notable difference from the “Get a Mac” spots: The 3-minute 17-second “Water Cooler” ad, for example, is 40 seconds of “ad” and 2 minutes 37 seconds of “disclaimers” (which, to his credit, Long seemingly reads in a single take).

(The main link is to “They’re Back,” which explicitly acknowledges the actors’ prior relationship, with Long noting “It’s been a minute,” to which Hodgman responds, “Actually, it’s been 8,476,092 minutes” since their last commercial, or about 16 years. The last “Get a Mac” ad with the duo aired in 2010—16 years ago.)

I love the scribbled Apple logo atop Tim Cook’s letter celebrating Apple at 50. It’s playful and I (naturally) approve of the use of six colors. (Primary link is to the Internet Archive (video); see it on apple.com.)

Tim Cook:

Fifty years ago in a small garage, a big idea was born. Apple was founded on the simple notion that technology should be personal, and that belief — radical at the time — changed everything.

That “big idea” changed millions of lives—including my own.

Through every breakthrough, one idea has guided us — that the world is moved forward by people who think different.

That’s because progress always begins with someone — an inventor or scientist, a student or storyteller — who imagines a better way, a new idea, a different path. That spirit has guided Apple from the start. But it has never belonged to us alone.

Every invention we bring into the world is just the beginning of a story. The most meaningful chapters are written by all of you — the people who use our technology to work, learn, dream, and discover. You’ve made breakthroughs and launched businesses. You’ve cheered up loved ones in the hospital and captured your toddler’s first steps. You’ve run marathons, written books, and rekindled friendships. You’ve chased your curiosity, found your new favorite song, and shared stories that connect us all.

In your hands, the tools we make have improved lives, and sometimes even saved them. And that is what inspires us — not what technology can do alone, but everything you can do with it.

I’ve been using Apple computers for 45 of Apple’s 50 years, starting with the Apple II. For all those years, an Apple computer has always been my partner, enabling me to explore and express my creativity and connect to the world—from programming to theatre to page layout to writing to photography.

The “Think Different” campaign has long been my favorite, and I’m thrilled to see Cook reference it as the company heads toward fifty. Thinking different—being different—is core to us Apple fans, despite Apple’s sometimes baffling and often frustrating business and geopolitical decisions. We are creative souls and Apple still builds some of the best tools for nurturing our creativity. Apple’s culture of excellence inspires us all to expect excellence of ourselves and of others—including Apple itself. At fifty, it may have lost a bit of its youthful shine, but it remains the industry leader in several areas, from design to inclusion and diversity to the environment. Most importantly for its future, it is stocked to the brim with some of the brightest, most talented, most dedicated people in the world.

That is worth celebrating.

The Computer History Museum in San Jose, CA, hosted several Apple luminaries in celebration of “Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking Different,” including:

• Chris Espinosa, employee #8 and Apple’s longest-still-active employee.
• John Sculley, CEO #3 (who Steve Jobs convinced to take the job with “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?”).
• Avie Tevanian, former Sr. VP of Engineering, designer of the Mach kernel (and architect of the controversial Technote 2034).
• Bill Fernandez (UI architect and first full-time employee).
• Ronald Wayne (the third cofounder and creator of Apple’s first “Newton” logo).

(David Pogue was the moderator. He was… fine… but he’s not as funny and charming as he thinks he is.)

I was unable to attend (tickets sold out in fifteen minutes!), but I did watch the livestream. It’s now up on CHM’s YouTube channel. A must-watch for anyone interested in the history of Apple.

If you’re in the California Bay Area, CHM is also hosting several “Apple@50” interactive exhibits.

Ina Fried, in an exclusive for Axios (email-gated; Apple News+ link):

Meta has acquired Moltbook, a viral social network designed for AI agents, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The deal brings Moltbook’s creators — Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr — into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the unit run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.

Mark Zuckerberg: “A ‘viral social network’ I don’t own? BUY THEM.”

Meta’s Vishal Shah, in an internal post:

The Moltbook team has given agents a way to verify their identity and connect with one another on their human’s behalf. This establishes a registry where agents are verified and tethered to human owners.

So… Zuckerberg wants human-verified bots that interact with each other on Facebook and Instagram as a way of, what? driving “engagement”? Is Zuckerberg so desperate for content that he needs more bots further crapping up his platforms?

Some people are excited about bots “talking” to other bots on Moltbook, but Samuel Axon at Ars Technica cautioned that “some healthy skepticism is required when assessing posts to Moltbook”:

While the goal of the project was to create a social network humans could not join directly (each participant of the network is an AI agent run by a human), it wasn’t secure, and it’s likely some of the messages on Moltbook are actually written by humans posing as AI agents.

Will Douglas Heaven at MIT Technology Review was more direct and called Moltbook “one big performance. It is AI theater.”

Congratulations to Schlicht and Parr for convincing Zuckerberg to acquire “something really really stupid.”

Fred Lambert, Electrek:

Elon Musk’s legal team filed a motion for mistrial in the ongoing Twitter securities fraud class action lawsuit in San Francisco, arguing that the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the judge have created an environment where Musk cannot get a fair trial. […]

The filing’s most notable argument is arguably its most candid. Musk’s lawyers explicitly acknowledge what was evident during jury selection: the San Francisco jury pool harbors significant animosity toward Musk. Nearly 40 prospective jurors were dismissed during jury selection for admitting they could not set aside their biases, a striking number that reflects how Musk’s public profile has shifted since 2022.

I’m shocked (shocked) to learn it was difficult to find not-anti-Musk San Franciscans.

David Pogue is hosting a session at SXSW in support of his just-released book, Apple: The First 50 Years, where he’ll be joined on stage by Phil Schiller. From Pogue’s announcement:

Happy to announce my SXSW (South by Southwest conference in Austin) featured session on March 18… with my special guest, PHIL SCHILLER! Apple Fellow, former global marketing head, 35 years with the company, and a great storyteller! This will be AMAZING.

And from the SXSW event description:

As Apple enters its second half-century, author David Pogue (“Apple: The First 50 Years”) explores the throughlines of Apple’s astonishing success: simplicity, beauty, elegant design, making the whole widget, focus on very few products, and a deep commitment to the customer experience. He’ll be joined by Phil Schiller to share stories and insights from their decades of launching iconic products.

Schiller is the perfect person to reminisce with Pogue about Apple. It’ll no doubt be an entertaining conversation. I hope SXSW releases a video of the session.

(A sidenote: My copy of Pogue’s book arrived today and I’m excited to dive in, but that excitement is tempered by extreme disappointment in Pogue, who (in 2026) writes on Substack, praises Tesla, and remains active on X/Twitter. I don’t know Pogue’s actual politics, but it’s hard not to draw conclusions. I’ve read Pogue’s work for years and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times at Macworld. I’ve always respected him, but a sliver of that respect has been lost. This will undoubtedly affect my enjoyment of what should otherwise be a fun read.)

Matt O’Brien, reporting for AP News:

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is suing to stop the Trump administration from enforcing what it calls an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic asked federal courts on Monday to reverse the Pentagon’s decision last week to designate the artificial intelligence company a “supply chain risk.” The company also seeks to undo President Donald Trump’s order directing federal employees to stop using its AI chatbot Claude.

Kudos to Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei for fighting this clearly inane and punitive designation—and his concerns over mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons are well-founded. Still, I’d be much more supportive if Amodei wasn’t also saying that his company “has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” and he’s “okay with all use cases, basically 98% or 99% of the use cases they want to do.”

(I still vastly prefer Amodei over Sam Altman, who vultured his way into the DoD contract, which even Altman himself acknowledged looked opportunistic and sloppy.)

Anil Dash on the “Walmart MacBook” versus the Mac Neo:

A laptop with an old design, using a chip that has an old number (the M1 chip came out six years ago!), sold exclusively through a mass-market retailer that is perceived as anything but premium, presents an enormous brand challenge for Apple. It is, to put it simply, embarrassing. Apple can have low-end products in its range. They invest lots of effort in that segment of their product line, as the new iPhone 17e shows, making a new basic entrant to their most recent series of phones. But Apple can’t have old, basic-looking products that people aren’t even able to buy at an Apple Store.

And that’s what Neo solves.

Jason Self on backups and ransomware and “Treating Your Data Like a VIP”:

If a machine gets infected with malware while the backup drive is plugged in, your backup is encrypted along with your primary files.

The smarter approach is to dedicate a single, physical machine on the LAN to act as a centralized backup server. […]

This centralized local server is the foundation. But just having a server isn't enough to stop a modern threat. We have to trap the server in a cage.

I’ve never given much consideration to a ransomware attack, but I’m rethinking that now. Some of Self’s advice (tape backups, for example) will be absolute overkill for many people, but there are several very useful recommendations, including limiting SSH to specific (backup-related) commands and “air gapping” your backup server. It also reminded me I really do need to re-add a centralized backup server to my home network.

Michael Sainato, The Guardian:

Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on Sunday he believes White House adviser Stephen Miller “should go” and that his role in the Trump administration has been a “big problem”.

The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN’s State of the Union if he thinks Miller should go, during a conversation about the administration’s immigration crackdown, responded to host Jake Tapper stating “Oh, of course I do.” […]

Tillis, who is not seeking re-election this year, was the first Republican to call for the resignation or firing of DHS secretary Noem.

I’m no fan of Tillis, but I welcome any Republican resistance, no matter how flimsy. Toppling the truly evil Miller would not fix this regime, but it would remove its most virulent source of toxicity.

Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, and Meg Anderson reporting for NPR:

On an evening in late January, Emily was driving through her Minneapolis neighborhood doing something that had become part of her routine in recent weeks: patrolling for ICE.

Emily, who NPR is only identifying by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government, says she followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot. “And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV and took a picture of me and my car,” she says.

Emily says she decided to leave at that point, but the SUV made a sudden U-turn and barreled towards her, braking next to her driver’s side window. A female agent wearing a gaiter-style mask rolled down the window, leaned out — and addressed Emily by name.

“She yelled, ‘Emily, Emily, we’re going to take you home!’ Then she looked at her phone and she recited my home address,” she says.

Not only is this intimidation by DHS agents abhorrent, but their use of surveillance tools in this manner would be a blatant violation of our First and Fourth Amendments—an abuse of power that demands investigation and eventual prosecution.

The tools enabling these terroristic tactics are created by companies like Flock, Clearview AI, and Palantir; are powered by the enormous amount of data these and other companies (like Meta, Google, TikTok) and the government have collected about us; are packaged up and sold by data brokers; and then bought by American agencies with American taxpayer money to menace Americans. Shut it all down.

Economist Olivier Sterck, responding in The Conversation to Michael W. Green’s proposal to raise the poverty threshold to $140,000, argues, “there is no magic threshold below which you are poor and above which you’re doing fine”:

Instead, I propose a new way to measure poverty, through what I call “average poverty,” which reflects the fact that having less income is always worse than having more.

Average poverty builds on a simple intuition. If someone I’ll call Alex earns half as much as someone else I’ll call Barbara, then Barbara is twice as rich as Alex and Alex is twice as poor as Barbara. […]

This means that poverty can be defined as the inverse of income, and its unit is simply inverted. If incomes are measured in dollars per day, poverty is measured in days per dollar.

Average poverty therefore captures something very concrete: the average number of minutes, hours or days that it takes to get $1 in income.

Using this formulation, Sterck determines that the United States has a worse “average poverty” than other “high income” countries, taking longer to get to $1 in income (“earnings from work, government benefits and other sources of money […] averaged among all family members”):

• United States: 63 minutes on average to get $1 in income
• United Kingdom: 34 minutes
• France: less than 31 minutes
• Germany: about 26 minutes

This indicates that average poverty is substantially higher in the U.S., even though U.S. average incomes are higher than in most Western European countries. While average poverty declined over time in most other high-income countries, it has increased almost continuously in the U.S. since 1990 despite swift growth in average incomes.

The cause is income inequality, and a simple poverty line, regardless of where it’s set, masks America’s growing inequality.

Rebecca Cohen and Jay Blackman, reporting for NBC News:

Listen up, flyers: United Airlines said it will start removing passengers from flights who refuse to wear headphones while listening to content on their personal devices, and such behavior could lead to a permanent ban.

The airline revised its contract of carriage on Feb. 27 to include the new provision, which sits under the “refusal of transport” section that outlines the instances in which United can boot its passengers from flights.

According to the document, United reserves the right to refuse transport — on a permanent basis — to any passenger who listens to their entertainment on speaker.

Huzzah. Can this now be applied to every airline, airport, restaurant, warehouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse?

(I’ve often found myself yelling at these transgressors, Walter Mitty-style and with Jules Winfield rage, “headphones, motherfucker, have you heard of them?” In my lucid moments I contemplate carrying a large collection of headphones and wordlessly handing them out to these offenders.)

Chris Stein, The Guardian:

Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was replacing Kristi Noem as the homeland security secretary, capping weeks of bipartisan complaints about her leadership after immigration agents killed two US citizens and reports emerged that she was involved in a personal relationship with a top deputy.

Noem’s firing was the first major personnel shake-up of Trump’s second term. The president made it public in a post on Truth Social, in which he said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican Oklahoma senator, would take over from Noem starting on 31 March.

Noem, who Trump said “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”, would become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a security initiative Trump said he planned to announce over the weekend.

She should count herself lucky; if this were Russia she might have fallen out a fifth floor window.

ABC News:

The president had privately expressed deep frustration over Noem's testimony during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, sources with direct knowledge of the conversations said.

The sources said the president was upset by a particular exchange when Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy questioned Noem about a DHS taxpayer-funded $220 million ad campaign. Noem repeatedly suggested the president was aware of the campaign and had signed off on it.

A senior administration official tells ABC News that the president did not sign off.

"Absolutely not," the senior administration official said.

Noem forgot the number one rule of the Trump “Family”: the Boss knows nothing about nothing.

After three days of computer announcements, Apple clears the palate. Via Newsroom:

The 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ begins this weekend on Apple TV with the FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2026. As the new exclusive U.S. home of Formula 1®, Apple TV is the place to watch every Grand Prix live and on demand — including all practice, qualifying, and Sprint sessions, along with races — all season long.

The FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2026 airs Saturday, March 7, at 8 p.m. PT on Apple TV, with all sessions available to stream live and on demand. Fans can follow Formula 1 on Apple TV and explore an extensive collection of curated programming at apple.co/f1onappletv.

I dislike the all-cap yelling of the race name, repeated—in its entirety—three times in the press release. Also, three different brands, plus a country? I suppose I should be thankful no one tacked on “PRESENTED IN THE U.S. BY APPLE.”

F1 on Apple TV is available in the U.S. on the Apple TV app on iPhone; iPad; Apple TV 4K; Apple Vision Pro; Mac; popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL, and others; Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices; Chromecast with Google TV; PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles; and at tv.apple.com, for $12.99 per month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers.

I’ve never watched a single second of an F1 race, but seeing as I already pay for Apple TV, and I’m always looking for an excuse to charge my Vision Pro, that’ll probably change this weekend.

Apple, via Newsroom, in the capper to this “big week”:

Apple today unveiled MacBook Neo, an all-new laptop that delivers the magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price, making it even more accessible to millions of people around the world. MacBook Neo starts with a beautiful Apple design, featuring a durable aluminum enclosure in an array of gorgeous colors — blush, indigo, silver, and a fresh new citrus. Its stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display brings websites, photos, videos, and apps to life with high resolution and brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through everyday tasks, from browsing the web and streaming content, to editing photos, exploring creative hobbies, or using AI capabilities across apps. In fact, it’s up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos, compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of battery life, MacBook Neo allows users to go all day on a single charge. A 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio deliver crisp, immersive sound. MacBook Neo also features Apple’s renowned Magic Keyboard for comfortable and precise typing, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad with support for intuitive gestures, enabling smooth and precise control. […]

And starting at just $599 and $499 for education, MacBook Neo is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever, providing an unprecedented combination of quality and value. MacBook Neo is available to pre-order starting today, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

Apple has been describing the performance of its A-series SoCs as “desktop-class” since the release of the A7 iPhone 5s, back in 2013. Apple silicon was such a leap forward in performance—especially the M-class—it was clear that eventually they’d become powerful enough that even baseline computers would be plenty fast for most people and could satisfice for a half-a-decade or more without feeling slow. When that day arrived, it would finally be feasible to use older chips to power less expensive but fast-enough computers.

We’ve been anticipating a “low-cost” MacBook since at least 2023, and one with an A-series chip since mid-2025—a real “laptop for the rest of us.” When the M4 MacBook Air dropped to $850 for Amazon Prime Day last July, I thought that was a steal. I figured $800 would be as low as Apple would be willing to go for its “low cost” laptop. Under $800 seemed improbable. Under $600 was laughably impossible.

Well, Apple went and did it. They built the seemingly impossible: a sub-$600 laptop which—despite its limitations and compromises—is a perfectly calibrated, entry-level computer that’s worthy of being called “MacBook.”

It’s going to sell like gangbusters.

Of the aforementioned limitations and compromises (compiled by Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels), the 8GB of memory (a limitation of the A18 Pro) and the missing MagSafe are the most glaring, but the people who will find this laptop most compelling will not notice or care. It’s such a capable computer, it may cannibalize MacBook Air sales. It may even convince folks in the market for an iPad as their “light work” computer to instead consider MacBook Neo. (The A16 iPad with 256GB storage plus Magic Keyboard Folio costs $698 and is slower, with an 11-inch screen, and doesn’t support Apple Intelligence.)

Had the MacBook Neo been available when I was buying my M2 MacBook Air, I might have bought the Neo. I can only hope Apple eventually introduces a smaller, lighter MacBook Neo 12-inch.

A few random thoughts:

• The MacBook Neo intro video is an absolute delight. It’s kinetic and playful, and the animations feel grounded and physical. It’s magical. I adore it. (I also enjoyed the reveal on Apple’s home page).
• Apple made intentional compromises to get it down to $600: a 1080p camera, two USB-C ports (one USB 3, one USB 2), 256GB storage, no Touch ID. All reasonable choices.
• There are just two (non-color) configuration options: 256GB or 512GB of storage. That’s it.
• Now that a Mac has an iPhone chip, the iPad has M-series chips, and considering you can already run iOS apps on the Mac, how long before Apple lets you choose which operating system to install? I think I’d enjoy running macOS on my 13-inch iPad Pro, and iOS on MacBook Neo would make for a simplified computing experience.
• I was hoping with MacBook “Neo” Apple would make a Matrix reference. Alas. (Having a second USB-C meant this doesn’t come with “The One” port. But the announcement did make me go Whoa.)
• In the section on Mac and iPhone being “Better Together” is this shot through my heart: “… even use iPhone as a hotspot for your Mac.” C’mon give us cellular Macs, you cowards!

Further reading:

• John Gruber at Daring Fireball (“$599. Not a piece of junk.”).
• Jason Snell at Six Colors (“In short, that A18 CPU core is fast.”).
• Joe Osborne at PC Mag (“This Is 2026's Breakout Budget Laptop […] Apple nailed it.”).
• Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels (“This is a Mac made for the masses, not the power user.” and which headline makes the necessary The Matrix reference).

Apple Newsroom surprises:

Apple today announced a new family of displays engineered to pair beautifully with Mac and meet the needs of everyone, from everyday users to the world’s top pros. The new Studio Display features a 12MP Center Stage camera, now with improved image quality and support for Desk View; a studio-quality three-microphone array; and an immersive six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio. It also now includes powerful Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, providing more downstream connectivity for high-speed accessories or daisy-chaining displays. The all-new Studio Display XDR takes the pro display experience to the next level. Its 27-inch 5K Retina XDR display features an advanced mini-LED backlight with over 2,000 local dimming zones, up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, and 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, in addition to a wider color gamut, so content jumps off the screen with breathtaking contrast, vibrancy, and accuracy. With its 120Hz refresh rate, Studio Display XDR is even more responsive to content in motion, and Adaptive Sync dynamically adjusts frame rates for content like video playback or graphically intense games. Studio Display XDR offers the same advanced camera and audio system as Studio Display, as well as Thunderbolt 5 connectivity to simplify pro workflow setups. The new Studio Display with a tilt-adjustable stand starts at $1,599, and Studio Display XDR with a tilt- and height-adjustable stand starts at $3,299. Both are available in standard or nano-texture glass options, and can be pre-ordered starting tomorrow, March 4, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

The original Studio Display is a (mostly) great monitor (I love mine). It’s four years old, though, and it’s been surpassed by equally capable, less expensive competitors. This update—which is mainly about Thunderbolt 5 and improved microphones and speakers—is underwhelming. Selling it for the same prices as the outgoing monitor is even more disappointing. Compare the tech specs of this year’s Studio Display with that of the previous Studio Display (via the Internet Archive) and you’ll see very little difference. Both remain stuck at 600 nits and a 60Hz refresh rate.

(One big difference: this new monitor requires macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 or iPadOS 26.3.1; the outgoing monitor supported macOS Monterey 12.3 or later, or iPadOS 15.4 or later. That also entails dropping support for some hardware. Ah, progress.)

The Studio XDR fares a bit better: mini-LED, with 2,304 local dimming zones, 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, and 120Hz refresh rate makes this a worthy upgrade over the non-XDR model. But it’s also 27 inches. Considering it’s a replacement for the 32-inch Pro Display XDR (which was admittedly way more expensive—it started at $4,999), this is a significant backslide. A true replacement for the Pro Display XDR would have been quite welcome—it never saw a single upgrade in its six-year lifespan.

Apple, via Newsroom, in the third of four announcements today, during its aptly named “big week”:

Apple today announced the new MacBook Air with M5, bringing exceptional performance and expanded AI capabilities to the world’s most popular laptop. M5 features a faster CPU and next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, enabling MacBook Air to power through a variety of workflows, from creative projects to complex AI tasks. MacBook Air now comes standard with double the starting storage at 512GB with faster SSD technology, and is configurable up to 4TB, so customers can keep their most important work on hand. Apple’s N1 wireless chip delivers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seamless connectivity on the go. […]

Available in 13- and 15-inch models in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver, the new MacBook Air with M5 is available for pre-order starting tomorrow, March 4, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099, the 15-inch starts at $1,299, and both are $100 less expensive with an education discount.

This is the laptop upgrade that most tempts me (at least, until we see what Wednesday brings). I’m writing this on a 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, which I bought refurbished some two years ago as a travel computer, and which has since become my daily driver. I love the thin, lightweight portability, and for writing, web browsing, light photo editing, and the occasional web development, it never feels like it’s lagging. (I am happy I splurged on the 16GB memory/1TB storage model though.) It remains a highly capable machine and deserves to continue its productive life—and I’m sure it will, in the hands of my wife after I buy this new M5 MacBook Air.

Apple, via Newsroom, on the second day of its “big week”:

Apple today announced the latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max, bringing game-changing performance and AI capabilities to the world’s best pro laptop. […]

It now comes with up to 2x faster SSD performance and starts at 1TB of storage for M5 Pro and 2TB for M5 Max. The new MacBook Pro includes N1, an Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, bringing improved performance and reliability to wireless connections. It also offers up to 24 hours of battery life; a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display with a nano-texture option; a wide array of connectivity, including Thunderbolt 5; a 12MP Center Stage camera; studio-quality mics; an immersive six-speaker sound system; Apple Intelligence features; and the power of macOS Tahoe. The new MacBook Pro comes in space black and silver, and is available to pre-order starting tomorrow, March 4, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

The performance improvements of the M5 Pro and M5 Max over the previous generation are mind-boggling, and the higher starting memory and storage (and higher maximum memory) are welcome. (The faster Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, plus improved “Voice Isolation and Wide Spectrum microphone modes,” are cool too, I suppose.)

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,199 (M5 Pro) and $3,599 (M5 Max); the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,699 (M5 Pro) and $3,899 (M5 Max). All are available at education discounts ranging from $150 to $300, depending on model.

A maxed-out 14-inch MacBook Pro—nano-texture display, M5 Max with 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, 128GB memory, and 8TB storage—is an eye-watering $7,049; the equivalent 16-inch is $7,349. Woof.

(My 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Max, 32GB/4TB)—bought on my next-to-last day at Apple to edit videos for a yet-to-materialize YouTube channel—is a tremendous workhorse. It barely breaks a sweat for the (admittedly limited) workflow I throw at it. I’m guessing it has at least five more years of life in it, thank goodness. And, alas.)

Apple, via Newsroom, on Day 2 of its “big week”:

Apple today announced M5 Pro and M5 Max, the world’s most advanced chips for pro laptops, powering the new MacBook Pro. The chips are built using a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture. This innovative design combines two dies into a single system on a chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. M5 Pro and M5 Max feature a new 18-core CPU architecture. It includes six of the highest-performing core design, now called super cores, that are the world’s fastest CPU core. Alongside these cores are 12 all-new performance cores, optimized for power-efficient, multithreaded workloads.

These are ridiculously powerful SoCs, to the point where even the putative “power-efficient” cores are so fast that Apple found it necessary to promote them from mere “efficiency” cores to “performance,” necessitating a new name—super cores—for the speed-at-all-costs cores:

The industry-leading super core was first introduced as performance cores in M5, which also adopts the super core name for all M5-based products — MacBook Air, the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro. This core is the highest-performance core design with the world’s fastest single-threaded performance, driven in part by increased front-end bandwidth, a new cache hierarchy, and enhanced branch prediction.

M5 Pro and M5 Max also introduce an all-new performance core that is optimized to deliver greater power-efficient, multithreaded performance for pro workloads.

I’ll admit, retconning the M5’s “performance cores” as “super cores” is a baller move. Does this count as a free hardware upgrade?

The rename has caused some confusion; John Gruber at Daring Fireball attempts to clarify:

There are now three core types in M5-series CPUs. Efficiency cores are still “efficiency”, but they’re only in the base M5. What used to be called “performance” cores are now called “super” cores, and they’re present in all M5 chips. The new core type — more power-efficient than super cores, more performant than efficiency cores — are taking the old name “performance”.

Got it?

• M5: efficiency cores are still efficiency cores.
• M5 Pro and M5 Max: cores formerly known as efficiency are now performance cores.
• M5-series: cores formerly known as performance are now super cores.

How I interpret what Apple is saying: Our previously “high-performance, high power” cores are now so power-efficient, we can make them the “low power” cores, and introduce a new, even higher-performance core above it.

(Plus, “efficiency” has a faint whiff of compromise: images of brawny chips forcibly constrained and compelled to sip power come to mind.)

M5 Pro is designed to meet the needs of pro users — like data modelers, post-production sound designers, and STEM students — who require robust processing power and graphics, and ample amounts of unified memory to handle complex projects and workloads. […]

M5 Max is designed for pro users — such as 3D animators, app developers, and AI researchers — who run workloads that demand maximum GPU compute and the highest unified memory bandwidth.

Even in my previous life this much unadulterated power would have been overkill—not that it would have stopped me.

Apple, via Newsroom, continues its “big week”:

Apple today announced iPhone 17e, a powerful and more affordable addition to the iPhone 17 lineup. At the heart of iPhone 17e is the latest-generation A19, which delivers exceptional performance for everything users do. iPhone 17e also features C1X, the latest-generation cellular modem designed by Apple, which is up to 2x faster than C1 in iPhone 16e. The 48MP Fusion camera captures stunning photos, including next-generation portraits, and 4K Dolby Vision video. It also enables an optical-quality 2x Telephoto — like having two cameras in one. The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display features Ceramic Shield 2, offering 3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation and reduced glare. With MagSafe, users can enjoy fast wireless charging and access to a vast ecosystem of accessories like chargers and cases. […]

iPhone 17e will be available for pre-order beginning Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting Wednesday, March 11. iPhone 17e will start at 256GB of storage for $599 — 2x the entry storage from the previous generation at the same starting price, and 4x more than iPhone 12 — giving users more space for high-resolution photos, 4K videos, apps, games, and more.

iPhone 17e introduces a new color to the lineup—soft pink—alongside black and white. In all of the ways that matter, the iPhone 17e significantly improves on last year’s iPhone 16e, and adopts several features of its older iPhone 17 sibling, but the most welcome addition is the return of MagSafe, which inexplicably went missing from iPhone 16e. I’m sure Apple heard plenty of feedback from its supposed target audience. (I neglected to mention it.)

The iPhone 17e shares the A19 chip with the iPhone 17 (one fewer GPU core—4 vs. 5—but it inherits the Neural Accelerators). It also gains Ceramic Shield 2 (for better drop and scratch resistance) and a somewhat improved camera system (no front-facing Center Stage, alas). It also doubles the starting storage, to 256GB, from 128GB.

(Which no doubt explains the iPhone 17e’s 2-gram (0.08-ounce) weight gain.)

To me, the iPhone 17e feels as much like a scaled-back iPhone 17 as it does an improved iPhone 16e. That’s a good thing.

Comparing storage to iPhone 12—a device released in 2020—is somewhat odd, but it helps explain who Apple believes is in the market for this phone: people upgrading from much older devices. The marketing page comparisons are limited to iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2nd gen, iPhone 12, and iPhone SE 3rd gen—all released between 2019 and 2022.

It’s actually rather disconcerting to see how little the iPhone has changed in the last five years. (That links to the full iPhone comparison page, set to iPhone 17e, iPhone 12, and iPhone 11; here’s one for iPhone 17e, iPhone 16e, and iPhone 17.)

One comparison Apple doesn’t make is to the iPhone 16, which remains available. iPhone 17e has double the starting storage, an improved chip, and better battery life—and is $100 less expensive than iPhone 16. The main advantages of iPhone 16? A slightly better camera system (including Camera Control), faster charging, and the vastly more interesting colors. Other than for those colors, I’m not sure why anyone would buy iPhone 16 today.

Apple, via Newsroom, kicks off its “big week”:

Apple today announced the new iPad Air featuring M4 and more memory, giving users a big jump in performance at the same starting price. With a faster CPU and GPU, iPad Air boosts tasks like editing and gaming, and is a powerful device for AI with a faster Neural Engine, higher memory bandwidth, and 50 percent more unified system memory than the previous generation. With M4, iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than iPad Air with M3, and up to 2.3x faster than iPad Air with M1. The new iPad Air also features the latest in Apple silicon connectivity chips, N1 and C1X, delivering fast wireless and cellular connections — and support for Wi-Fi 7 — that empower users to work and be creative anywhere. Available in two sizes and four gorgeous finishes that users love, the 11-inch iPad Air is super portable, and the 13-inch model provides an even larger display for those who want more space to multitask.

A small but meaningful speed bump, but it’s the memory increase to 12GB (from 8GB), plus the added N1 and (for cellular-equipped devices) C1X chips, that really stand out. Otherwise, it’s basically the same as the M3 iPad: same colors (blue, purple, starlight, and space gray), storage options (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB), and form factors.

Pricing starts at $599 for the 11-inch and $799 for the 13-inch, with a $50 discount for education. Preorders start Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting Wednesday, March 11.

One curiosity: both the M3- and M4-powered iPads Air sport an 8-core CPU, however, the M3 splits its cores evenly between performance and efficiency. The M4 gives up a performance core in exchange for an efficiency core: 3 performance, 5 efficiency. I wonder if the trade-off was for cost, battery, heat, or yield, and how a 4/4 M4 would perform by comparison.

(It’s worth noting that the no-adjective iPad (with an A16 chip) is still the only iPad in Apple’s lineup incapable of using Apple Intelligence. Will that finally change this week? It’s been 16 months since I first anticipated an Apple Intelligence-capable iPad “nothing,” and a year since Apple updated it (via an “also”) to the A16. It’s starting to get embarrassing.)

Maia Mindel, at Some Unpleasant Arithmetic (on Substack, regrettably), writes a discursive, 11,000-word primer on AI, asset bubbles, and the anticipated economic impact of the artificial intelligence industry. It’s copiously linked and genuinely helpful, complete with comparisons to the dot-com implosion, the financial crisis of 2007, and the housing market crash of 2008 (oh, joy). It’s very much worth the read and I could quote it at length; here are three:

The fundamental question for AI is the same fundamental question the dot coms faced: is the business model there? Given that […] the business model is heavily betting on AI revolutionizing the economy in the short term, the stakes are high on all ends. If the AI bet pays off, the labor market implodes. If the AI bet doesn't, the capital market does.

I’m hoping for a third option.

On infrastructure:

Thus, the question is infrastructure: are AI companies overbuilding relative to a reasonable level of demand? That's the central question. If the companies are reasonably estimating demand, then they will recoup their investment on data centers and other physical assets. If they're not, then it's a bubble and we'll all go to shit.

Mindel’s conclusion:

So the question about AI isn't whether there's an irrational mania; it's whether the market is pricing an endeavor that involves spending mid single digit trillions of dollars to produce low double digit billions in revenue. […] The amounts of debt required to finance all this investment are also astronomical, and are increasingly complex, featuring a number of byzantine instruments and byzantine financial arrangements that are driving comparisons to the financial crisis of 2007, which is how you know that everything is going well.

[…]

The problem […] is that eventually the fake reality of finance has to give way to the real reality of fundamentals. The housing bubble was driven by supply-side constraints preventing effective housing demand from being met, a rapid expansion of debt and credit without sufficient oversight, and extremely complex and opaque instruments proliferating. Unless the AI bubble generates cash flows, it will suffer the same destiny. But, after the housing bubble, people still live in homes. After the AI bubble, people will still use AI.

I’m hoping the coming burst of the AI bubble is the result of a technological breakthrough that massively reduces the compute and energy needs, making infrastructure cheap and driving costs through the floor. I’ve lived this before, with internet connectivity: from dial-up to DSL to cable to fiber. I recall craving expensive ISDN or T1 lines, which were vastly more expensive than—and a tiny fraction of the speed of—your average cable internet and fiber connections today. Internet access is faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous than it was before the dot-com implosion. After this seemingly inevitable crash, I expect AI will be, too.

(Via Faisal N Jawdat.)

Brian Eason, reporting for The Colorado Sun:

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston on Thursday issued an executive order directing city police to intervene during clashes involving federal immigration officers, saying that local law enforcement has a duty to protect people’s civil rights and provide aid to Denver residents.

Johnston’s order also requires local police to identify and record Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents using body cameras when “tactically safe,” and confirms the Denver Police Department will investigate criminal allegations made against ICE agents. […]

The executive order calls on local police to de-escalate clashes between immigration officers and protesters. It also says they have a duty to intervene when force is used by federal agents that “could cause death or serious bodily injury,” and requires officers to provide life-saving aid.

An American mayor needing to protect American residents from the atrocities of the American government. Our country is immeasurably broken.

Tim Cook, still posting on X/Twitter (routed through XCancel for your sanity):

A big week ahead. It all starts Monday morning! #AppleLaunch

The included video is of a hand squeezing, swiping, and flicking an Apple logo into existence against a background reminiscent of the aluminum finish of a MacBook or iPad.

So that confirms it: Apple’s new products will have an Apple logo.

(MacRumors has a roundup of what’s expected.)

Mike Masnick at Techdirt, on West Virginia’s demand that Apple scan for CSAM in iCloud:

Here is the part McCuskey’s complaint does not engage with: the moment a court orders Apple to conduct those scans, any CSAM those scans find becomes evidence obtained through a warrantless government search—and under well-established Fourth Amendment doctrine, that evidence gets excluded. Defense attorneys will move to suppress it. They will win. And without the CSAM itself as evidence, convictions become nearly impossible. […]

Read that again. If West Virginia wins—if an actual court orders Apple to start scanning iCloud for CSAM—then every image flagged by those mandated scans becomes evidence obtained through a warrantless government search conducted without probable cause. The Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule means defense attorneys get to walk into court and demand that evidence be thrown out. And they’ll win that motion. It’s not even a particularly hard case to make.

Masnick also notes that the lawsuit’s very basis is dangerously flawed:

Count I—strict liability for design defect—alleges that by choosing to implement end-to-end encryption and not build surveillance capabilities into iCloud, Apple has defectively designed its product.

Think through what that means if it succeeds. Any company offering customers strong encryption becomes potentially liable for design defects unless it simultaneously builds government-accessible backdoors. Signal is a defective product. ProtonMail is a defective product. Any messaging app that doesn’t scan your conversations for the government is a defective product.

From the out-of-context executive quote to the “defective by design” conceit, this lawsuit never smelled right. Now I know why.

The Steve Jobs Archive announces its latest publication:

Letters to a Young Creator is a collection of honest perspectives on what it takes to make something great, written by people who have done it before.

The series features contributions from notable figures across business, design, technology, and the arts, written in response to questions posed by past and present SJA Fellows. The title is a nod to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet—one of Steve’s favorites—and to Steve’s own practice of exchanging ideas as a path toward clarity.

Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the collection:

Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn. In this volume, we have asked distinguished creators of diverse fields to share some of their answers to questions you asked at the beginning of your fellowship year. You’ll find candid stories of struggle and success, mistakes, and milestones. The wisdom they share in their reflections was forged by asking the kinds of questions you’re asking now.

I’ve read a few of the essays and each one sparked a moment of joy, reflection, or inspiration. I expect I’ll return to it often.

The collection is also available on Apple Books and as an EPUB. To mark the launch of the collection, the SJA organization is hosting a Zoom event with Letters contributor Es Devlin on Wednesday, March 4. I’m signed up.

Todd Bishop, GeekWire:

Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.

He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.

Friends and colleagues this week remembered Brainerd as a quiet, caring and detail-oriented leader with exacting standards. He insisted that PageMaker use proper curly quotation marks instead of straight ones, and obsessed over nuances such as kerning, the precise spacing between specific letter pairs.

Desktop publishing was one of the biggest reasons I obsessed over computers in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Though I spent more of my time in QuarkXPress than PageMaker, I can trace my early creative and business ambitions to the software and industry Brainerd pioneered. I was so enamored, I almost started a DTP business in 1991 (even buying Desktop Publishing Success as motivation) before I landed one of my earliest corporate jobs: providing software training and technical support for a magazine publisher that was adopting desktop publishing—an important milestone in what turned into a thirty-year career in computers.

Thank you, Paul Brainerd. RIP.

Jason Snell at Six Colors releases the site’s eleventh “report card” on the state of Apple. It’s rather damning:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment—the “vibe in the room”—regarding the past year. […]

They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category. […]

The net changes between 2024 and 2025 are displayed below—you’ll note that scores were down in 11 of the 14 categories.

My takeaways from this year’s report:

• Apple’s software quality has taken a sharp downturn, especially macOS 26 Tahoe. Some of that is Liquid Glass, but, on Mac especially, it’s the slow erosion of Apple’s vaunted “usability.”
• Mac hardware continues to be best-in-class, but is struggling to overcome its software weakness.
• iPhone continues to putter along, improving incrementally each year, with a notable rise in satisfaction coming from the base iPhone 17.
• iPad saw a marked improvement after a few years of decline, driven primarily by ultra-high-end hardware and the introduction of useful and usable multitasking support in iPadOS 26.
• Services is buoyed by the strong television fare on Apple TV streaming, but tied down by the high pricing and constant upsell.
• The relationship with developers is as bad as it’s been in a decade, driven by Apple’s unwillingness to cede any control of its App Store, the company’s ongoing fights with regulators across the world, and the icy reception to Liquid Glass.
• Apple’s “leave the world better than we found it” ethos sustained a massive—potentially unrecoverable—blow this year, primarily from Tim Cook’s obsequiousness toward and appeasement of the current administration.

On that last category (“Apple’s Impact on the World”), here’s Snell’s summary:

This year, the bottom fell out. Tim Cook’s relationship with the Trump administration dominated the discussion. Panelists overwhelmingly condemned what they described as obsequious behavior — the gold-plated plaque, the Mar-a-Lago dinners, the inaugural donation — as a betrayal of Apple’s stated values on human rights, the environment, and social responsibility. Several panelists noted that Apple had quietly deprioritized environmental commitments and removed the ICEBlock app from the App Store. A few acknowledged the difficulty of Apple’s position as a multi-trillion-dollar company navigating an unpredictable administration, but most argued that Apple was obliged to take a stronger stand.

I could handle the imperfect software, the Services toll, and even the regulatory malfeasance, but Apple’s stature as the one company I could trust to always do what’s right has been forever tainted.

Brent Johnson, NJ.com (subscription required; syndicated via Yahoo):

As Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey consider a flurry of proposals to push back against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, one bears a provocative name that’s being either praised as bold or derided as vulgar.

The measure is called the “Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act.”

Or, the “F**K ICE Act,” if you read between the lines.

Yes, it’s real. This may be the New Jersey-est thing New Jersey has done. Let’s hope more states follow suit.

I’m quite disappointed that news outlets are censoring the name of the act. The New York Times can’t even bring itself to do that much, referring to it instead as “a bill that is encoded with an unsubtle message” and “the legislation, known by its blunt acronym.” Name it. It’s the F.U.C.K.I.C.E. Act.

Published to West Virginia’s Office of the Attorney General’s site last Thursday (CNet’s coverage):

West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey today filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging the company knowingly allowed its iCloud platform to be used as a vehicle for distributing and storing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — and for years chose to do nothing about it.

I understand the purpose of a press release of this sort is for the Attorney General to position their case as favorably as possible, but “allowed” and “do nothing about it” are awfully strong. But that’s not nearly as assertive as this:

The lawsuit reveals that Apple, in its own internal communications, described itself as the “greatest platform for distributing child porn” — yet took no meaningful action to stop it. Rather than implement industry-standard detection tools used by its peers, Apple repeatedly shirked their responsibility to protect children under the guise of user privacy.

The press release doesn’t cite its source for the quote, but the filing does, linking to a 2021 article in The Verge that highlighted “All the best emails from the Apple vs. Epic trial.” From entry 71, “Apple’s head of fraud suggests Apple may be unwittingly providing ‘the greatest platform for distributing child porn.’”:

Halfway through an iMessage conversation about whether Apple might be putting too much emphasis on privacy and not enough on trust and safety, [Eric] Friedman comments that “we are the greatest platform for distributing child porn,” adding that “we have chosen to not know in enough places where we really cannot say” and referencing a New York Times article where, he suspects, Apple is “underreporting” the size of the issue.

It’s a pretty damning quote, and, as you might suspect, is taken somewhat out of context, while being simultaneously presented as though Apple as a company was content with this assessment. That’s more salacious and headline-grabbing than what it actually was: a Trust and Safety executive expressing frustration about his efforts to resolve an inherent tension in Apple’s staunch privacy stance. As Friedman says in that iMessage chat just ahead of that quote:

We’re committed to doing the work so that we can maximize all three: features AND safety AND privacy. But it requires real commitment to get there.

In context, Friedman isn’t confessing; he’s lamenting the obvious privacy tradeoffs. I’m confident in saying that Apple was (and is) aware that its strong stance on privacy—which benefits most people—also has the unfortunate side effect of “protecting” a small group of bad actors who leverage that privacy to perform nefarious acts. The alternative is to reduce everyone’s privacy, which is something Apple has (rightfully) been loath to do. And make no mistake, that is very much what’s at stake here.

Back to A.G. McCuskey’s press release:

Federal law requires all technology companies based in the U.S. to report detected CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In 2023, Apple made just 267 such reports. By contrast, Google filed 1.47 million reports and Meta filed more than 30.6 million.

The key word here is “detected.” Apple made 267 reports because Apple doesn’t have access to your files; Google and Meta have no such restrictions and thus can detect and report files they—or anyone—have deemed inappropriate.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple (knowingly) harbors large amounts of unreported CSAM, based on the assumption that because its peers do, Apple does too (and on a passing comment by an executive). Apple is being targeted because it doesn’t report sufficient CSAM—not because it hosts it. The lawsuit seeks to weaken privacy under the guise of protecting children: the exact opposite of Apple’s stance.

Also: Holy smokes, what is going on over at Meta? 30.6 million reports of CSAM? What percentage does that represent of total CSAM on Meta platforms? I truly hope it’s substantially all. That many reports—and the vast amount of information Meta has on its users to make them—are still insufficient to stem the tide of CSAM coursing through its platforms. It knows it’s there. It reports it. And yet it continues to proliferate. Meta reports the material, but seemingly does nothing to actually stop it.

Which may be enough to satisfy the West Virginia Attorney General.

The YouTube algorithm strikes again, surfacing this deeply satisfying conservation and restoration video of an extremely rare Japanese Star Wars poster (which then sold for $14,950). I appreciated both the craftsmanship of the restoration and the history of the poster, and the results are nothing short of miraculous. I welcomed the narration of the original Fourth Cone Restoration channel, but they also offer an ASMR version sans narration and music, just the restorative sounds of spraying water, crinkling acrylic, and squeaking squeegees.

Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, Fortune:

An awkward moment between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at an AI Summit Thursday captured the increasingly icy relations between two rival tech leaders who started off as colleagues.

Onstage with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India AI Impact Summit, Altman and Amodei seemingly refused to touch during a photo op. Modi grabbed Altman’s hand and lifted it for a group photo, but Altman and Amodei, standing side by side, did not clasp hands or make eye contact.

The video for the Altman–Amodei non-touch was deeply cringe, but it was still less awkward than the Tim Cook–Bono finger touch (and both are outshone by Altman’s double-collar polos).