2026-01-09 22:47:26
Ben Cohen, writing last week for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
One rainy day 40 years ago, Moylan was headed to a meeting across Ford’s campus and hopped in a company car. When he saw the fuel tank was nearly empty, he stopped at a gas pump. What happened next is something that’s happened to all of us: He realized that he’d parked on the wrong side.
Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t infuriated. He was inspired. By the time he pulled his car around, he was already thinking about how to solve this everyday inconvenience that drives people absolutely crazy. And because the gas pump wasn’t covered by an overhead awning, he was also soaking wet. But when he got back to the office, Moylan didn’t even bother taking off his drenched coat when he started typing the first draft of a memo.
“I would like to propose a small addition,” he wrote, “in all passenger car and truck lines.” The proposal he had in mind was a symbol on the dashboard that would tell drivers which side of the car the gas tank was on. [...]
As soon as they read his memo, they began prototyping his little indicator that would be known as the Moylan Arrow. Within months, it was on the dashboard of Ford’s upcoming models. Within years, it was ripped off by the competition. Before long, it was a fixture of just about every car in the world.
What a fantastic story. I’m old enough that I remember learning to drive on cars that didn’t have the Moylan Arrow. Then I remember spotting one sometime in the 1990s, and wondering if I’d just never noticed them before. But no: this seemingly incredibly obvious design element had only recently been invented. The Journal has a copy of Moylan’s original memo, and it’s a delight to read. Clear, concise, persuasive.
“Society loves the founder who builds new companies, like Henry Ford,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told me. “I would argue that Jim Moylan is an equally compelling kind of disrupter: an engineer in a large company who insisted on making our daily lives better.”
These days, there are two types of drivers: the ones aware of the Moylan Arrow and the ones who get to find out.
Rest in peace, Jim Moylan.
2026-01-09 12:14:38
Kalley Huang and Tripp Mickle, writing for The New York Times (gift link):
Threading the needle between adding new bells and whistles to Apple’s products while watching the bottom line has defined the careful, low-profile style of Mr. Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001. He is now considered by some company insiders to be the front-runner to replace Tim Cook, Apple’s longtime chief executive, if Mr. Cook decides to step aside.
Apple last year began accelerating its planning for Mr. Cook’s succession, according to three people close to the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity about Apple’s confidential deliberations. Mr. Cook, 65, has told senior leaders that he is tired and would like to reduce his workload, the people said. Should he step down, Mr. Cook is likely to become the chairman of Apple’s board, according to three people close to the company.
Cook may well be preparing to retire as CEO. He is 65! But it doesn’t ring true to me that he’s telling “senior leaders” that he’s tired. First, I’ve heard otherwise from actual senior leaders at the company. Second, any senior leader he’d tell that to, if true, wouldn’t share it.
It seems to me that aside from the utterly normal and plainly obvious speculation that, at age 65, he might be on the cusp of retiring as CEO, there’s something going on where a narrative is being spread that Cook is in poor health. Mark Gurman included two paragraphs about a tremor in Cook’s hands in his colossal fuck-up at Bloomberg a month ago, falsely reporting that Johnny Srouji was unhappy and on the cusp of leaving Apple for a competitor.
Despite his low profile, Mr. Ternus appears to have shot to the front of the pack to be Apple’s next C.E.O., according to four people close to the company.
The Times report describes Ternus as “low-profile” three times. This makes no sense. Ternus is one of Apple’s highest-profile executives. I would guess that over the last five years he’s appeared in more keynotes, for more time, than anyone but Cook and Craig Federighi.
But Mr. Cook is also preparing several other internal candidates to be his potential successor, two of the people said. They could include Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software; Eddy Cue, its head of services; Greg Joswiak, its head of worldwide marketing; and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and human resources.
I don’t think there’s any chance that Cook’s successor will be someone who isn’t a frequent presence in Apple keynotes. I can’t recall O’Brien ever appearing in a keynote, and Cue hasn’t appeared in one for several years. Also, Cue is 61 and Joz is 62. Neither is that much younger than Cook.
Two interesting tidbits re: Ternus:
Within about three years, he became a manager, said Steve Siefert, Mr. Ternus’s first boss at Apple. During that time, their team moved office floors, switching from a closed office plan to mostly open seating with a few offices. When he was promoted, Mr. Ternus had the option to move into one of those offices but declined.
Mr. Ternus was “a man of the people,” Mr. Siefert said, adding that the decision to sit with his team likely helped Mr. Ternus manage and motivate his staff. When Mr. Siefert retired in 2011, freeing up his office, Mr. Ternus once again said he wanted to remain in the open space.
And:
“If you want to make an iPhone every year, Ternus is your guy,” said Cameron Rogers, who worked on product and software engineering management at Apple from 2005 to 2022. [...]
“He’s a nice guy,” Mr. Rogers said. “He’s someone you want to hang out with. Everyone loves him because he’s great. Has he made any hard decisions? No. Are there hard problems he’s solved in hardware? No.”
This guy Cameron Rogers sounds like a real asshole.
What complaints does anyone have about Apple hardware over the last five years? Off the top of my head I can’t think of any that are serious. Ternus has overseen what I’d argue is the best sustained stretch of Apple hardware, across more product lines than ever, in the company’s 50-year history. But he didn’t make any hard decisions or solve any hard problems. Sure. Hardware is easy.
2026-01-09 09:11:33
The ACLU:
Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right — and that includes police and other government officials carrying out their duties.
However, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places and harassing, detaining, and arresting those who fail to comply.
Here’s their advice on what to say and do if you are stopped or detained for taking photographs or video.
Also, as good a time as ever for one of my periodic reminders to remember how to hard-lock your iPhone to temporarily disable Face ID: press and hold the side button and either one of the volume buttons at the same time for a few seconds.
2026-01-09 09:10:33
Apple Newsroom:
Today, Apple and Chase announced that Chase will become the new issuer of Apple Card, with an expected transition in approximately 24 months.
Apple Card users can continue to enjoy the award-winning experience of Apple Card, which includes up to 3 percent unlimited Daily Cash back on every purchase, easy-to-navigate spending tools, Apple Card Family, access to a high-yield Savings account, and more. Mastercard will remain the payment network for Apple Card, and Apple Card users can continue to access Mastercard’s global acceptance and benefits. [...]
During this transition, Apple Card users can continue to use their card as they normally do. More information, including FAQs, is available at learn.applecard.apple/transition. Additional details will be shared with users as the transition date approaches.
The only mention of the current issuer, Goldman Sachs, is in the small gray fine print footnotes.
2026-01-09 07:02:35
Caroline Haskins, writing for Wired (News+ link, in case Wired’s paywall blocks you):
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is being used to flood X with thousands of sexualized images of adults and apparent minors wearing minimal clothing. Some of this content appears to not only violate X’s own policies, which prohibit sharing illegal content such as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but may also violate the guidelines of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store.
Apple and Google both explicitly ban apps containing CSAM, which is illegal to host and distribute in many countries. The tech giants also forbid apps that contain pornographic material or facilitate harassment. The Apple App Store says it doesn’t allow “overtly sexual or pornographic material,” as well as “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content,” especially if the app is “likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.” The Google Play store bans apps that “contain or promote content associated with sexually predatory behavior, or distribute non-consensual sexual content,” and well as programs that “contain or facilitate threats, harassment, or bullying.”
Over the past two years, Apple and Google removed a number of “nudify” and AI image-generation apps after investigations by the BBC and 404 Media found they were being advertised or used to effectively turn ordinary photos into explicit images of women without their consent.
But at the time of publication, both the X app and the standalone Grok app remain available in both app stores. Apple, Google, and X did not respond to requests for comment.
I just browsed through the last five minutes of replies generated by Grok on Twitter/X, and saw both seeming CSAM (all young Asian women) and just outright hardcore pornographic video (that, for what it’s worth, seemed to feature adults, whether real or generated).
It was a barely concealed secret before Musk bought Twitter that Twitter had an active dark underbelly of pornographic content. But you had to know where to look for it. It really wasn’t something you might just stumble upon. Now you get hardcore porno just by looking at the profile page for Grok. And any user can send any photo they want to @grok and tell it to change or remove the subject’s clothing and change their pose. Lord only knows what people are generating privately using the standalone Grok app.
If a new social network app launched featuring this content, it surely would be removed from the App Store and Play Store. X is seemingly untouchable for political reasons.
Update: Recall that Apple pulled the Tumblr app from the App Store in 2018 for similar content.
2026-01-09 06:20:47
Maybe “next year” meant “next next year”?
(They’re still accepting $100 deposits for pre-orders.)
