Vann R. Newkirk II, writing for The Atlantic on the occasion of today’s Juneteenth holiday (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

The purpose of Juneteenth was always a celebration of emancipation, of the Black community’s emergence out of our gloomy past. But it was also an implicit warning that what had been done could be done again. Now millions of schoolchildren will enjoy a holiday commemorating parts of our history that the federal government believes might be illegal to teach them about.

I once advocated for Juneteenth as a national holiday, on the grounds that the celebration would prompt more people to become familiar with the rich history of emancipation and Black folks’ agency in that. But, as it turns out, transforming Juneteenth into “Juneteenth National Independence Day” against the backdrop of the past few years of retrenchment simply creates another instance of hypocrisy. What we were promised was a reckoning, whatever that meant. What we got was a day off.

I've felt this conflict for several years now. Call it the flip side to joyous celebrations.

Taryn Finley, writing for Refinery29, on last Sunday’s Juneteenth celebration in Fort Greene Park:

Despite the gloomy weather, thousands of attendees gathered to enjoy the sixth annual event […]

Attended by creatives, engineers, doctors, nurses, businesspeople, children, babies, and everybody in between, their Juneteenth event has become a homecoming and annual sanctuary—a place where people can reconnect and feel at ease. Whether folks choose to be by the DJ booth dancing, on the grass playing games or chilling along the perimeter of the park, just enjoying the day, it’s become a space for Black people to just be.

Texas Highways celebrates Juneteenth with “A Visual History” of historic photos, including “The official handwritten record of General Order No. 3” which starts:

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, “all slaves are free”.

Timothy Welbeck, in The Conversation, asks “What’s the right way to mark Juneteenth?” and provides a helpful recitation on the origins and meaning of the day, from the issuance of General Order No. 3, to its recognition as a national holiday, to the backlash of today.

By now you’ve no doubt heard of the Trump family’s most recent grift opportunity—sorry, business venture: a cellular brand called “Trump Mobile,” with a tacky, $500, gold-colored phone dubbed the “T1 Phone” (allegedly “Made in the USA”) and a mobile plan called “The 47 Plan” (which, at $47.45 per month, is roughly double that of other similar plans).

I’m not sure which is the bigger grift: a company owned by the current president selling this service and phone, or claiming the phone will be “Made in USA” (the press release says “designed and built in the United States”).

It’s complete bunko.

The Wall Street Journal bluntly states that “Trump’s Smartphone Can’t Be Made in America for $499 by August” (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

A spokesman for the Trump Organization said in an email that “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”

[…]

“There’s absolutely no way you could make the screen, get that memory, camera, battery, everything” in the U.S., said Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School. 

Dai estimated it would take “at least five years” for the U.S. to establish the infrastructure necessary to make “Made in USA” smartphones a real possibility.

Allison Johnson, The Verge:

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization doubled down on this claim to The Wall Street Journal, saying “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”

But unless the organization has somehow hidden an entire domestic mobile device supply chain right under our noses, this is virtually impossible.[…]

More likely the T1 will be a white label device with most or all of its production handled by a Chinese ODM, or original design manufacturer.

I’ll wager someone will get a hundred devices’ worth of Chinese cellphone parts and screw them together in their garage, and that will satisfy the “Made in America” claim.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media tried to pre-order the phone with a $100 down payment:

The website failed, went to an error page, and then charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70. I received a confirmation email saying I’ll receive a confirmation when my order has been shipped, but I haven’t provided a shipping address or paid the full $499 price tag. It is the worst experience I’ve ever faced buying a consumer electronic product and I have no idea whether or how I’ll receive the phone.

Todd Spangler, Variety:

Trump Mobile and its carrier partners are subject to regulatory oversight by the Federal Communications Commission, which is headed by Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr.

No conflict of interest here, I’m sure.

Clare Duffy and Samantha Waldenberg reporting for CNN:

“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

This would be the third extension signed by Trump to stave off the shutdown or sale of TikTok—something he doesn’t have actual authority to do, by the way. What’s the point of making a big stink and passing a law over “national security” if it’ll just be ignored? As Mike Masnick notes at TechDirt, this third snooze button proves it was always bullshit.

Erik Hayden at The Hollywood Reporter lays out the facts in this week’s big lawsuit:

In the next chapter of Big Entertainment vs. Big Tech, Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Midjourney over tools that allow users to create images and videos that can manipulate famous characters at the click of a prompt.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Universal City Studios Productions and DreamWorks Animation, describes the David Holz-run generative AI firm Midjourney as a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

The legal salvo marks the first major foray from Hollywood against tech giants that are hoping to reorient consumer habits with personalized entertainment and information by vacuuming up data on the internet and spitting it out in the form of chatbot copy or images.

Anyone looking at the images in the complaint can see that Disney, Universal, and the rest have a strong copyright infringement case here.

No doubt Midjourney will argue A) their ingestion of copyright images is “fair use” and 2) they’re just a tool to create art (it’s the users causing it to regurgitate infringing images!)

Jennifer Zhan at Vulture has a helpful explainer for the lawsuit; in it she notes:

The studios want this case to be decided by a jury trial.

A jury may very well have no choice but to declare infringement on the facts, but I’ll bet good money most people have no problem with what Midjourney is doing.

I’m not saying they’re right, only that America’s jury pools are filled with people sporting a peeing Calvin on their minivan windows and downloading Kung Fu Panda 4 from BitTorrent—they don’t care about copyright, they just want to have fun making pictures of Mickey Mouse as Darth Vader.^[1]

I don’t envy those jurors. They’ll be asked to decide between massive corporations defending their billion dollar portfolios, and an AI company building its business by sucking up those portfolios without permission, and then spitting them back out, just… altered slightly.

A second Hollywood Reporter piece, by Steven Zeitchik, examines the possible outcomes of the lawsuit:

There are several ways the lawsuit unfolds. The most obvious is the way of most lawsuits — with a settlement. In this scenario, Midjourney (and no doubt other AI model operators) pay the studios for their infringement and strike a deal to keep on licensing. (They’re never going to yank studio fare from their models – by the executives’ own words the models would collapse without Big Content.) So AI models keep getting trained on, and spitting our facsimiles of, Hollywood material.

Similarly, studios could simply lose. That nets them less money, but it ends in the same place: OpenAI, Google Gemini and the others crank out Hollywood-trained content at will.

Then there’s the other way: With a studio legal victory. The AI models are deemed prohibited from training on this content — this “fair use,” a judge says, ain’t that. In such a scenario we are ensured that for the indefinite future what gets generated in the way of Hollywood images comes from Hollywood and Hollywood alone.

What does this lead to? Well, it leads to studios continuing to do what they have always done — being the main incubators for and generators of so much of the film, television and other entertainment we consume.

And what does the first option lead to? Well, it hardly takes an imaginative leap to see where we end up if anyone can go to an AI model and plug in prompts to generate stuff that looks a lot like the movies and television we know. It means the end of studios doing it for us.

I know that can seem like a bold statement, but it really isn’t.

Zeitchik posits that if the Hollywood studios lose, they’ll “morph into something else: IP rights managers.” I proposed a similar outcome for Reddit’s own AI lawsuit.

I don’t expect Midjourney will walk away from this unscathed; they’ll pay a crap-ton of money—whether it’s for infringement or licensing doesn’t matter. But the studios are pinning their hopes on jurors who just want to crank out Mickey Mouse memes.

Speaking of Joanna Stern, she goes hard in her interview with Federighi and Joz for the Wall Street Journal, asking questions that clearly made both Apple execs uncomfortable. At one point, Federighi looks like he’s about to panic, but his media training kicks back in and he manages a smile.

I only wish the interview had gone longer. Stern is the best tech journalist in the biz.

Three takeaways:

• Hammering hard on the point that “Apple Intelligence” as a whole wasn’t delayed last year, only a “small” part of it. They really wanted us to understand just how much of Apple Intelligence they already shipped.
• Disabusing us all of the notion (or trying to anyway) that any of last year’s demos were in any way “faked” or mere “concept videos”. They insisted the software was real (though perhaps not spectacular).
• A “v1” of the “more personal Siri” was a technical dead-end, and the shift to “v2” was one cause of the delay—and will (supposedly!) be more fruitful.

I’m only 30 minutes in to John Gruber’s conversation with Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel, and Stern is killing it. She and Patel were terrific choices to join Gruber in lieu of senior Apple execs. I hope this becomes a new tradition, but I’ll miss seeing Craig, Phil, and Joz (slightly) loosened up.

Zach Schonfeld at Stereogum, with the best piece I’ve read this week on Sly Stone and Brian Wilson:

Here’s a thought exercise: Try to imagine what your record collection would look like if Sly Stone had never lived.

OK, now try the same exercise, but with Brian Wilson.

On Stone:

It is frankly impossible to imagine the last 55 years of popular music without Sly And The Family Stone’s hazy alien-funk grooves, radical production techniques, racially integrated band, and remarkable songcraft, both the optimistic pre-1970 we-gotta-live-together anthems and the strung-out post-1970 narcotic grooves.

On Wilson:

He was just a guy who believed that pop music could bring you closer to God, that a pop song could be labored over as artfully and meticulously as Beethoven labored over his Fifth Symphony, and who arguably lost his mind in pursuit of these ideals. He also, crucially, wrote some of the most astoundingly beautiful melodies of the 20th century — songs like “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Good Vibrations” and “Surf’s Up,” songs that people play for their newborns to introduce them to the concept of music.

On their shared DNA:

Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were two genuine visionaries who gave us so much, suffered so much, and both retreated from the outside world for long stretches of time, burrowing inside themselves, as their music became raw material for entire genres and subgenres and sub-sub-genres. […]

I don’t mean to belabor the point: Brian Wilson and Sly Stone were two vastly different artists with vastly different bodies of work. They were not the same. But they were both shy, wounded souls, both icons who emerged from mid-century California, both haunted by a kind of darkness their listeners did not always understand, and I can’t stop thinking about how they both embodied the burdens of pop success relatively early on and wound up withdrawing from the world.

Schonfeld’s piece is a portrait of two very different men whose music defined—and possibly defeated—them. A truly beautiful bit of writing and remembrance.

Kirk Hamilton’s Strong Songs is one of my favorite podcasts. He pulls apart well-known songs to figure out how they work—what makes them great. Back in 2020, he did an in-depth exploration of “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys—a gorgeously produced, tightly arranged gem, and one of my favorite songs.

With the loss of Brian Wilson, this seems like a good time to revisit that episode. It gave me a much greater appreciation for Wilson’s composing genius.

Hillel Italie of AP News, on Brian Wilson:

[…] peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Katy Perry and Carole King. The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad “God Only Knows” as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears.

“God Only Knows” is a stunningly luscious, deeply melancholy song, and I can recall the distinctive green album cover of Pet Sounds that contained it. (Yes, your Trinidad-born, Brooklyn-raised author loved The Beach Boys. I’m eclectic like that.)

I wasn’t aware of Wilson’s struggles with mental illness and drug use; I knew him only as a terrific singer and remarkably talented composer.

Ben Sisario’s New York Times obit includes this:

At the Beach Boys’ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1988, he described his ambitions: “I wanted to write joyful music that would make other people feel good.”

He succeeded.

I’d long planned to watch (and link to) SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), QuestLove’s exploration of Sly & The Family Stone. It’s time. The documentary:

[…] examines the life and legacy of Sly & The Family Stone, the groundbreaking band led by the charismatic and enigmatic Sly Stone. This film captures the rise, reign and subsequent fadeout of one of pop music’s most influential artists, but also shines a light on how Black artists in America navigate the unseen burden that comes with their success. Drawing from his own personal experience and relationships, Questlove tells an empathetic human story about the cost of genius, reframing the way we all engage with pop culture.

Variety called it “a dazzling and definitive funk-pop documentary.” It’s now on my weekend watch list.

Rob Sheffield, writing for Rolling Stone, on Sly Stone:

Nobody ever sounded like this man. Sly could write inspirational songs of unity, anthems like “I Want to Take You Higher” that would turn a live crowd into a euphoric tribe, or uplifting hits like “Stand!” or “Everybody Is a Star” that can catch you in a lonely moment and make you feel like the rest of your life is a chance to live up to the song’s challenge.

And:

“The concept behind Sly and the Stone,” he told Rolling Stone in 1970, “I wanted to be able for everyone to get a chance to sweat. By that I mean … if there was anything to be happy about, then everybody’d be happy about it. If there was a lot of money to be made, for anyone to make a lot of money. If there were a lot of songs to sing, then everybody got to sing. That’s the way it is now. Then, if we have something to suffer or a cross to bear — we bear it together.”

Sly and the Family Stone was a staple in our homes. Almost any track would spark adults and children alike to leap from our seats and shimmy around the living room: “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music”…. I was too young to understand the meaning behind the music, of course—they were just all high energy bops.

(So embedded in my brain is his music, that the phrase “it’s a family affair…” is only ever voiced in the style of the chorus.)

I was also quite unaware of his drug use and reclusiveness—he was just the funky frontman for the songs of my youth.

Joe Coscarelli’s New York Times obituary ends:

Asked in the final pages of his autobiography if there was one thing that people could take from his life, Mr. Stone replied, “Music, just music.”

Thank you for the music, Sly.

This Wall Street Journal, report (Apple News+) by Suzanne Vranica, Dana Mattioli, and Jessica Toonkel directly accuses Elon Musk and X/Twitter’s CEO Linda Yaccarino of engaging in an “advertise or be sued” scheme:

Late last year, Verizon Communications got an unusual message from a media company that wanted its business: Spend your ad dollars with us or we’ll see you in court.

The threat came from X, the social-media platform that has been struggling to resuscitate its ad business after many corporate advertisers fled over concerns about loosened content-moderation standards following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase in late 2022.

It worked. Verizon, which hadn’t advertised on X since 2022, pledged to spend at least $10 million this year on the platform, a person familiar with the matter said.

Fashion company Ralph Lauren also agreed to resume buying ads on X after receiving a lawsuit threat, people familiar with the matter said. All told, at least six companies that had either received lawsuit threats or were motivated in part by pressure tactics have struck ad deals with X, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The agreements include both firm ad-spending commitments and nonbinding targets.

The legal threats are part of an extraordinary pressure campaign that Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino launched to boost revenue by cajoling advertisers—including Amazon, Unilever, Pinterest and Lego—to spend money on their platform.

Normal people might call that “extortion.” That word is nowhere to be found here—but how can we not draw that conclusion?

In a functioning democracy, such baldfaced attempts at a shakedown would be laughed at by everyone, from the CEOs to the judges, and some Attorney General would be gleefully making their bones prosecuting Musk, Yaccarino, and anyone else at X/Twitter involved in this advertise-or-be-sued scheme.

We are clearly not in a functioning democracy.

This use of lawsuits to coerce money or obedience is straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook. It’s effective only because of the massive financial and political clout they wield. Without either, they’re little more than weak, petulant whiners.

I mean, weaker, more petulant whiners.

The lawsuits the WSJ references aren’t new, nor are the accusations; in February, after Apple resumed advertising on X/Twitter, I wrote (under the still-too-soft headline After a Year-Long Pause, Apple Resumes Advertising on the Anti-Democracy, Nazi-Supporting X/Twitter):

This latest act of acquiescence is clearly meant to curry favor with Trump and co-President Musk^[1] out of fear of retaliation—especially from Musk, who’s actively suing companies who stopped advertising on X/Twitter^[2]. No doubt Cook and Co. are hoping to avoid that, making the resumption of ads a bribe to Musk—or, if you’d like to be more generous to Apple, a payoff coerced through blackmail and extortion.

Worth remembering: in 2023, Musk told advertisers to “go fuck yourself” at The New York Times Dealbook Summit:

Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself, is that clear?

It was. They stopped. So he decided he’d do the “blackmailing with money.”

Bill Atkinson, a wellspring of innovation who invented technologies and user interfaces that were foundational to the software we still use today, died Thursday of pancreatic cancer, his family announced over the weekend. He was 74.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, but with feeling: Fuck. Cancer.

There are dozens of wonderful remembrances of this remarkable man, including from Tim Cook and a lovely one from Joy of Tech; many are captured on MJ Tsai’s blog.

Bill Atkinson was one of the legendary names Apple fans whispered in awe.

I met Bill when he attended a DTS lab to work on his app, PhotoCard. I admit I was a bit starstruck, as were many others in that room, I’d imagine. It’s likely the DTS team learned more from him that visit than he did from us. He had with him a copy of his book, Within the Stone, a beautiful hardcover “filled with full-page close-up color photos of the colors and designs found inside polished rocks and minerals.” The book is now, sadly, out of print. Before he left the lab, he signed it: Best wishes to Apple DTS. Bill Atkinson.

Thanks for everything, Bill.

Though I enjoyed the stage production of Wicked: The Musical when it came to San Francisco a decade or so ago, and listened to the soundtrack dozens of times over the years, I’ve always felt the show sagged in the second act, so I was deeply skeptical when I heard the film adaptation would be split in two, one movie per act.

My trepidation subsided somewhat after finally watching Wicked: Part I several weeks ago. Jon M. Chu created a delightful first act, with simply stunning design and cinematography, while Ariana Grande and (especially) Cynthia Erivo were revelations. But still—a full film focused on the weaker half sounded like a terrible idea.

The trailer for part two, Wicked: For Good, suggests my fears may be unfounded. It looks fantastic—everything that made part one an instant classic, plus extra runtime to give the creeping totalitarianism, nature of “evil,” and united-against-an-enemy propaganda themes some room to breathe.

November seems so far away.

On Monday, Austin Karp at Sports Business Journal reported a tantalizing morsel of baseball news:

Apple TV is emerging as potentially the leading streamer to land some of the MLB media rights currently resting with ESPN […]

A source tells SBJ the offer from Apple would likely be more than what NBC would be eyeing, particularly if that package was focused on simply Sunday night rights.

After MLB whiffed the opening day streams and the news that it was jointly ending its partnership with ESPN, I snarkily suggested that MLB might welcome a call from Apple.

This report gives me hope that Apple may have made that call, and I, for one, would be here for the results—especially if it means bringing full-game, “immersive” baseball to Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s Friday Night Baseball offers a high-quality production (the announcers bug me, though), and the few minutes of baseball I’ve watched in this immersive environment makes me yearn for more in this format.

Karp reports that “no decisions have been made yet” but I’m crossing my fingers Apple and MLB can tie this one up.

Andrew J. Hawkins, writing for The Verge:

Last month, Uber started testing new accounts for senior citizens, with a larger typeface, fewer buttons, and easier-to-follow instructions. Now, the company is ready to roll out its new senior accounts to the wider world. […]

Customers who want the enhanced experience — larger font, reduced complexity, and clearer navigation — but aren’t linked to a family account can also turn on the app’s Simple Mode in the Account section.

I enabled “Simple Mode” to see what it was like. I expected giant buttons with pictures, like Apple’s At Ease or Simple Finder from back in the earlies. 

Nope.

Take a look at these two images:

The first image is Uber’s “Normal” mode:

• Two tabs (Ride, Eat)
• A Where to? field, with an embedded “Later” button
• Eight “Suggestions” of things you might want to do ( Ride, Reserve, Courier, Rental Cars, Group Ride, Store Pickup, Seniors, Food)
• An “Eat like a local” section

Compare with the second image, Uber’s “Simple” mode:

• An unadorned Get a ride field
• Three “Shortcuts” (recently used locations)
• Three “Services” (Get a ride, Reserve a ride for later, Get package delivered)

This is so much better! It’s cleaner, less cluttered.

Senior/Simple mode shouldn’t be an option you turn on; it’s what the default Uber experience should be. It deshitifies the app. If Uber wants the extended options, offer a “Complicated” mode for the small percent of people who want to be overwhelmed with choice.

If you prefer this more usable interface, go to Account > Settings > Accessibility > Simple Mode, and then enable the “Turn on a simplified version of the app” option. Et voilà! Reduced clutter.

By labeling this useful-for-everyone mode as “Senior” or “Simple,” and then hiding it behind an Accessibility option, Uber knowingly buries it while placing a stigma on it. The company doesn’t want you using this mode, because it’s purely functional: primarily ride-hailing, plus package delivery.

Uber’s normal mode, on the other hand, isn’t focused on functionality: it’s a marketing screen. It exists to put Uber Eats and Courier and Rental Cars in your face. It’s designed to entice you into clicking on and using these additional services. More services, more revenue.

Senior mode offers other functionality:

Seniors can also designate a family member or caregiver who can book rides, change settings, and contact drivers if need be. And they can opt into sharing their location so the aforementioned caregivers and family members can track their movements.

Once again, these are not just helpful for seniors, they’re genuinely useful additions that can benefit everyone. I should be able to book rides on behalf of any family member (or friend), regardless of their age. Likewise, my friend with an autistic adult daughter would love to manage Uber rides on her behalf.

Marketing these features as for “Seniors” instead of making it the default is short-sighted, ageist, and ableist. Uber should make them available to everyone without placing such constraining labels on them.

Apple Worldwide Developer Relations:

Every year, the Apple Design Awards recognize innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement in app and game design. But they’ve also become something more: A moment to step back and celebrate the work of Apple developers across the community.

Six categories, each with an App and Game winner and several finalists.

Gone is the Spatial Computing category introduced last year—which is not to say there are no Apple Vision Pro apps. Seven of the 33 winners and finalists have a Vision Pro version; five are Vision Pro only; one—Taobao, basically China’s Amazon.com—won its category (Apps - Interaction).

On the flip side, while 12 apps have a Mac version, only four are Mac-only. One did take home the top prize for Social Impact - Games, though (Neva). Gotta showcase those Mac-only games, right?

I’m always pleased when apps I use land on the ADA list. This year, that’s Balatro, an addiction I only recently tamed, and iA Writer, which I use to write the words you’re now reading.

(Balatro also wins the unofficial platform ubiquity contest: it’s the only one supporting iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro—missing only an Apple Watch app.)

I’ve briefly used CellWalk and Mela, and have passing familiarity with Thank Goodness You’re Here!, Watch Duty (because of the LA fires), and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (I played a bit on my Playstation 5, but didn’t know there was a Mac version). The rest are all new to me. I’m especially excited to play Gears & Goo—I love a good tower defense game, and I need more reasons to use my Vision Pro.

As I read through the list, I flashed back to the in-person Apple Design Awards ceremonies of yesteryear, and realized how much I miss them. John Geleynse and Shaan Pruden from WWDR would host (often in formal attire, as befits an awards show), and each app (and its creators) would be spotlighted for a couple of minutes during a (usually live) demo. The energy in the room was always electric: Apple developers are a supportive community, and they cheered each winner as if it were their own app up on stage.

The pandemic took so much away from us.

Sebastiaan de With—co-founder and designer at Lux, which makes beautiful camera apps—lets his imagination run wild ahead of WWDC’s expected unveiling of a long-rumored Apple UI redesign:

What would I do if I were Apple’s design team? What changes would I like to see, and what do I think is likely? Considering where technology is going, how do I think interface design should change to accommodate? Let’s take a look at what’s (or what could be) next.

de With first catalogs the iOS design “epochs” before revealing his “take on the New Age,” calling his design language “Living Glass”:

I’d like to imagine what could come next. Both by rendering some UI design of my own, and by thinking out what the philosophy of the New Age could be. […]

Philosophically, if I was Apple, I’d describe this as finally having an interface that matches the beautiful material properties of its devices. All the surfaces of your devices have glass screens. This brings an interface of a matching material, giving the user a feeling of the glass itself coming alive.

The designs de With showcases are beautiful, compelling, and completely plausible—very much inline with Apple’s recent designs for new apps (see, for example, the Invites app).

Something to look forward to on Monday.

Nine years ago tonight, Muhammad Ali died.

I remember being devastated, not because I was a huge fan of boxing, but because Ali was so sweet to watch. He was the only boxer who seemed like he was having fun in the ring—he was certainly enjoying himself outside of it.

When the news broke, I flashed immediately to his unexpected appearance at the Olympics. I wrote:

I have only a few enduring sports images in my head. One of them is of Ali, surprising the world by lighting the Olympic flame during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

His shaking left arm, as he grasps his unlit torch in his right. His clear determination to make this moment happen. The moment he raises both arms over his head, his torch now lit, as he basks, briefly but knowingly, in the crowds’ adoration, before carefully, carefully lowering his torch to light the cauldron.

The world knew what this moment meant, and it roared its approval as Ali appeared.

I still haven’t forgotten that moment (though my recollection then was slightly faulty).

After Ali’s appearance, George Vecsey wrote in his Sports of the Times column:

Muhammad Ali floats above the Summer Games, no longer an elusive butterfly but a great glowing icon as large as a spaceship. He casts his light on every athlete, every spectator, every volunteer, all the people who walk these humid streets with just a little more zip in their step, now that they have seen Ali. The whole world gasped in shock early yesterday when Ali suddenly materialized on that platform at the far end of Olympic Stadium, the perfect choice to light the cauldron.

Who would have thought of Ali? Who would have predicted he could stand in front of the world, his body slowed by Parkinson’s syndrome, and hold a flaming torch and transfer searing fire to a contraption that would raise the fire to the cauldron?

Putting the old rascal-prophet on the official pedestal raised the tempo of these 17 days. Let the Games begin, indeed.

I went back and read several of Ali’s obituaries. Sports Illustrated offered a wonderful photo essay of the 100 Greatest Photos of Muhammad Ali.

(The first photo—the one you undoubtedly think of when you think “photograph of Ali,” of him standing over Sonny Liston, yelling, arm cocked—turned sixty a few days ago.)

From Robert Lipsyte at The New York Times:

Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.

But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a patter of inventive doggerel.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.

Still the people’s champ.

AP News:

In a lengthy note posted to her official website on Friday, Swift announced: “All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me.”

The pop star said she purchased her catalog of recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.

Billboard:

According to sources, Shamrock sold Swift’s catalog back to her for an amount relatively close to what they paid for it — which sources tell Billboard was around $360 million.

Congratulations to Swift. As Prince said, “If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.”

I went to Swift’s site to read the message, and it was a photo of a handwritten letter with tiny text, effectively unreadable to me.

And that’s how I learned I’m not Taylor’s target audience.

The team behind her site is aware of the concept of “accessibility”; they have an Accessibility link at the bottom (which is effectively meaningless legal pablum, really). The image includes an alt tag, but it says only “Handwritten letter from Taylor”—not exactly helpful. The image also includes an aria-describedby tag containing the full text of the letter—but it’s available only to screen readers. Those of us capable of reading the screen without a screen reader, but who struggle to read tiny text, are left to fumble our way through.

Tiny on-screen content is one reason I’ve enabled three features on my Mac: 

1. In Apple menu > System Settings > Accessibility > Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom
2. In Apple menu > System Settings > Accessibility > Hover text
3. In Safari > Settings > Advanced > Never use font sizes smaller than 10

As configured on my Mac, I can press the Control ⌃ key and swipe up and down on my mouse or trackpad to zoom in and out of the screen; or hover over text or UI elements and press the Control ⌃ key and get a zoomed-in overlay. It makes it a lot easier to read on-screen content that’s clearly meant for much younger eyes.

Denise Petski at Deadline:

The season 14 revival picks up several years after we last saw the Hill family – Hank and Peggy Hill are now retired and return to a changed Arlen after years of working in Saudi Arabia; and Bobby is 21 and living his best life while navigating adulthood as a chef in Dallas.

A ten-episode run, coming August 4. King of the Hill ran for 13 seasons starting in 1997—over 250 episodes. I only watched the first three or four seasons, but I remember enjoying it immensely at the start. I still remember the theme song and all the voices—and of course Hank’s “propane and propane accessories.” No idea why I stopped. It is from Mike Judge, and I did find Beavis and Butthead cringe, and I’ve never watched Silicon Valley because it seemed too close to my lived experience, and it did take me until 2022 to watch (and love!) Office Space…. 

Maybe I’ll give it a rewatch.

(Also, today I realized Kathy Najimy is 68. In my head, she’s still her late-30s Veronica’s Closet self.)

A third installment officially makes A Knives Out Mystery a series. I loved Knives Out; I’ve watched it three or four times, and it accomplishes something most mystery movie rewatches don’t: it remains fun to watch. (I have yet to see Glass Onion, but I hear it’s just as good.) Writer and director Rian Johnson assembles another stacked cast alongside Daniel Craig: Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church. Coming to Netflix “XII.XII.MMXXV” (December 12, 2025, for those who don’t speak Roman numeral!). My only question: When does Netflix stop selling these as A Knives Out Mystery and start marketing them as A Benoit Blanc Mystery? The character has earned the upgrade.

Tibi Puiu writing for ZME Science:

In the winter of 2021–2022, at an intersection in West Orange, New Jersey, [Vladimir Dinets] repeatedly saw a juvenile Cooper’s hawk wait for a specific sound — the pedestrian crossing signal that chirped when someone pressed the walk button. That sound meant the light would stay red for 90 seconds instead of 30, enough time for cars to pile up along the curb. Once the cars stretched far enough to reach a bushy tree near the intersection, the hawk would appear.

Perched low and hidden behind the car queue, the raptor would bide its time. Then it flew — low, swift, and nearly invisible beneath the canopy of vehicles — before crossing the street and plunging into a yard frequented by sparrows, doves, and starlings. They gathered each morning to feed on crumbs left behind by a family that dined outdoors the night before. The hawk struck with shocking accuracy.

Animal adaption to human encroachment. I love that an academic paper came of this.

You know the one. Terrific interview with the photographer, Neil Leifer, who captured this iconic image of Ali looming over Liston, and is surprisingly blasé about his accomplishment.

Software Applications Incorporated, introducing their new Mac app earlier this week:

Sky floats over what you’re doing so AI is always at your fingertips. Whether you’re chatting, writing, planning, or coding, Sky understands what’s on your screen and can take action using your apps.

The company is founded by Ari Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, and Kim Beverett, three Apple vets. Weinstein and Kramer were the team behind Workflow, which Apple acquired and turned into Shortcuts. App Intents—an integral part of the since-delayed “more personal Siri” Apple Intelligence feature—came from the work the Shortcuts team did.

Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a comprehensive preview of Sky:

What sets Sky apart from anything I’ve tried or seen on macOS to date is that it uses LLMs to understand which windows are open on your Mac, what’s inside them, and what actions you can perform based on those apps’ contents. It’s a lofty goal and, at a high level, it’s predicated upon two core concepts. First, Sky comes with a collection of built-in “tools” for Calendar, Messages, Notes, web browsing, Finder, email, and screenshots, which allow anyone to get started and ask questions that perform actions with those apps. If you want to turn a webpage shown in Safari into an event in your calendar, or perhaps a document in Apple Notes, you can just ask in natural language out of the box.

The whole piece is great, providing both explanations and context for the features of the app. Viticci is a longtime fan of both Workflow and Shortcuts, and it’s fitting he gets the honor of writing the first major story.

Sky looks right at home on macOS. In fact, everything Sky is doing seems completely aligned with what macOS and Siri should be doing—it’s functionality that should be built right into the system. In several ways, it mirrors what Apple announced at WWDC would be possible with that “more personalized Siri,” including reading what’s on the screen to provide “context-aware” behavior.

That it’s not part of macOS makes me wonder why Weinstein and team couldn’t build it while at Apple. Weinstein was certainly on the right team (Shortcuts and Intents) to do it, and obviously had the vision and technical chops to pull it off.

The short window between Weinstein’s departure from Apple and the first interview where he shared the plans for his new company—about five months—is at least suggestive he’d floated the idea inside Apple… and received a cool reception.

Regardless, I’m guessing some executive inside Apple is kicking themself now—and possibly plotting how to acquire Weinstein and team, for the second time.

(They may have competition: The app relies on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman is an investor in Weinstein’s company.)

I’ve signed up for early access. While generative AI has many, many (many!) issues, it also offers tremendous potential.

I first met Ari when he was a WWDC student award winner; I’m pretty sure he was still a teenager in high school. We chatted for a bit in the labs, and I remember coming away very impressed. We caught up a few times over the years at the conference, and when he showed me Workflow, I was blown away. I was very excited for him and his Workflow team when Apple acquired them—and excited for Apple. I remember thinking he would go far inside the company. He was smart, focused, and ambitious. His team and mine worked together a lot over the years, and I remained impressed by his drive and leadership.

It saddened me when I heard he left Apple. When he launched Software Applications (a fantastic domain and terrific site!), I very nearly reached out to him with an offer to invest in whatever he was doing—before seeing he’d already raised $6.5 million from Sam Altman and others.

Which is to say, I have sky-high hopes for Sky.

Jaelani Turner-Williams, writing for Afropunk on 15 years of Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid:

On her debut album, R&B and pop disruptor Janelle Monáe predicted an Orwellian future 15 years before it manifested. The nonbinary artist–who uses she/her and they/them pronouns–foresaw that oppressive forces would overcome marginalized beings amid rapid technological advancement. That antithetical stress would prevent an awakening among Androids, barring them from coming into consciousness. But through a metaphorical storyline of restricted freedom, love prevailed between sentient character Sir Anthony Greendown and righteous android Cindi Mayweather, to form a connection strong enough to resist the Other. More than the album’s deus ex machina concept, The ArchAndroid expanded the possibilities of Black music.

It was 2018’s Dirty Computer^[1] that turned me on to Monáe’s music—I knew her as an actor from Hidden Figures (2016)—and while I was familiar with Tightrope^[2] and a couple of other tracks from The ArchAndroid, I came to that album late. This piece inspired me to listen to the album for the first time in years. It is a truly remarkable musical journey, a stunning debut that’s as enthralling today as it was fifteen years ago.

(Via @inthehands → ‪@theradr.bsky.social‬.)

(Affiliate links can make me fithy rich if you click and buy something. Thanks!)

Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times:

Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist whose book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape” helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence, died on Saturday in the Bronx. She was 90.

It’s a weird sensation when a long-ago part of your life surfaces unexpectedly. I met Susan in the mid-’90s on EchoNYC (where she was known as sueb), and I was fortunate to be part of one of her regular nickel poker games that she held at her West Village apartment. For the longest time I had no idea she was a famous feminist author and activist. To me, she was just my very smart, poker-playing friend. Those evenings of poker remain some of my favorite memories.

During one poker game, I was browsing her book collection and pulled out Maus, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about his father’s experience as a Holocaust survivor. She offered to loan it to me, but only if I promised to read it, warning it wasn’t a light comic book. I agreed. She was right.

I still have that book.

RIP sueb.