2026-07-11 05:14:37
Back in May, OpenAI was rattling its saber about thinking about talking to lawyers about possibly considering a lawsuit against Apple for not treating it right when it came to ChatGPT integration.
What a misdirection! Instead, Apple has sued OpenAI—and it’s alleging that the hardware program it’s been building with Jony Ive and company is being fueled by the theft of trade secrets.
Here’s the statement Apple supplied to various news outlets on Friday:
At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously. Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.
There’s a lot more in the court filing. As summarized by Chance Miller at 9to5 Mac:
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that [former Apple designer Tang] Tan used insider knowledge of Apple’s confidential projects to grill job candidates in interviews. Additionally, Tan directed job candidates still working at Apple to bring actual Apple hardware components and samples for “show and tell” sessions.
Furthermore, Apple says a candidate began “screenshotting and downloading files relating to a highly confidential Apple project” hours before interviewing with Tan, who then “solicited more information about that same Apple project” once the interview started. This became an “established pattern,” Apple says.
The list of bad behavior by former Apple employees goes on, including distributing internal Apple documents to new hires, evading security procedures, downloading confidential files from Apple after they had departed, coaching new hires about what confidential documents to study before leaving Apple, and lying to Apple partners to get them to disclose confidential information.
It’s… a lot to process. All that bubbling-under-the-surface tension between Apple and OpenAI is now out in the open! I’m fascinated to see where this story goes.
2026-07-10 03:13:19
If you’ve ever wondered why your data transfers to external drives aren’t going as fast as you’d like, or a certain peripheral just isn’t working, you could probably use WhatCable, a helpful little app from developer Darryl Morley.
WhatCable looks at your Mac’s USB ports and anything plugged into them, and lets you know about speeds and power supply for your currently connected USB and Thunderbolt cables, as well as what their maximums are. While there are other places on your Mac that you can find this information, such as System Information, WhatCable presents it all in a well organized, easy to read manner. It even details all the devices connected to your USB hubs.
For example, after looking at it, I realized that my backup drive was only connected via a USB2 cable. Fine in general for overnight backups, but when it reminded to me when I was troubleshooting some backup issues that maybe I should switch to a high speed cable that supports USB-3.1
You can choose to run WhatCable in your menu bar, or as a standalone app; there’s also a “Show technical details” option that gives you even more information that could be helpful for troubleshooting. There are options for font size, translucency, and menu bar icon, in case you’re so inclined.
For its base functionality, WhatCable is free and available either via Morley’s site, or via homebrew. For a £9.99 one-time purchase, you can unlock WhatCable Pro, which works on up to two Macs, lets you assign names to cables so you can remember which one it is when you plug it in later, provides more in-depth diagnostics, offers live power metering to see how much juice is being delivered right now, and even more.
[via Michael Tsai]
2026-07-09 10:40:32
Jeremy White of Wired has a great tip that also serves as a reminder that amazing things can be found in accessibility settings:
Surely there must be a way to set up an iPhone as the perfect dumb phone for children—one with access to only the apps you deem appropriate, no internet browser, but with all-important tracking and navigation abilities—without having to pay another company to make it work? Well, there is. It’s been hiding in the iOS Accessibility menu the whole time. And, inexplicably, it’s a feature Apple barely talks about.
It’s called Assistive Access. Introduced with iOS 17, Apple designed it for those with cognitive disabilities. If you’ve never encountered or stumbled across it, it’s a distinctive iOS experience: fewer options, more focused features, easier to navigate. The aesthetic is ideal for kids: large, friendly tiles for the apps replace the smaller icons of the “normal” Apple interface.
It’s kind of beautiful. And absolutely the sort of thing you might want to give to a younger kid.
[Via Andy Ihnatko, who also detailed his own use of accessibility features to make streamlined workflow automations.]
2026-07-09 03:48:23
Physical vs. digital media and how we organize it, our system for the digital “deal with it later” pile, what we do with old hardware, and iPhone ergonomics.
2026-07-08 22:00:00
This week Lex has audio issues, Dan wants to unload some old hardware and Moltz is tired of fireworks.
2026-07-07 05:32:57
Apple seeks RAM in all the wrong places, Jason has two tangents about FileMaker, and we deal with a large load of somewhat puzzling rumors and legal cases.
