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 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 fives 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.)
2026-01-09 04:01:13
The New York Times has frame-by-frame analysis, from three angles, of the murder of 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis yesterday. She was shot to death by a still-unnamed mask-wearing ICE agent Jonathan Ross, with what was obviously no justification. The shooting is, justifiably, national news. I’m sure you’ve read about it. But this Times analysis coolly and calmly shows just how outrageous it was, and how preposterous the claims from President Trump and Secretary of Hats Kristi Noem are ostensibly attempting to defend it — both as an act of self-defense by the cowardly ICE agent and, even more absurdly, as an act of “domestic terrorism” by Good, who was attempting to do nothing more than drive away from the scene.
George Orwell, in 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Let’s stop pussyfooting around what happened here. This ICE agent murdered Renee Good, in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses and multiple cameras. Trust the evidence of your eyes and ears.
But I want to add another note. The main footage here comes from bystander Caitlin Callenson. Here’s her full 4m:25s footage, uncensored, hosted — with credit, and I hope, permission — on the YouTube account of Minnesota Reformer. Be warned that it shows Good being shot to death (albeit sans gore), and contains many loud profanities. This is very good and clear footage. It is difficult viewing but you should watch it. Callenson was very close to Good’s vehicle. I’d say about 30 feet or so. You can see why she thought to start filming before the murderous agent drew his gun and fired. The scene was already chaotic. But then, after the murderous agent fired three shots — just 30 or 40 feet in front of Callenson — Callenson had the courage and conviction to stay with the scene and keep filming. Not to run away, but instead to follow the scene. To keep filming. To continue documenting with as best clarity as she could, what was unfolding.
I’d like to think I’d have done the same. I’m not sure at all that I would have. I definitely might have been using my iPhone to shoot video of the incident up until the shots were fired. But when that happened, my mind would immediately have turned to “These agents are scared and angry and out of control, and that one just went psycho and fired his gun unprovoked. That guy is just as likely to shoot more people as he was the woman he just shot. His angry, scared, obviously undertrained colleagues might join in. And the most likely people they’ll shoot next are people pointing cameras at them.” I do not know what I would have done in that moment. I hope I never find out. But I know with certainty what I would immediately think, which is that if I choose to continue shooting video of the incident, there is a very good chance one of them will shoot or brutalize me next. It would make more sense to shoot someone filming the scene than it did to shoot Renee Good in the first place. Good’s killing was utterly senseless. Shooting a witness with a running camera and then destroying their phone to eliminate the evidence (and a witness) would make some sense. Sick sense, but sense.
But in that moment of pandemonium and obvious danger to herself, Callenson didn’t merely continue filming. She didn’t merely stand her ground. She proceeded into the scene to get closer to Good’s vehicle after it crashed into a parked car, Mr. Brown-style. She pointed her camera directly at the only-partially-masked face of the murderous agent as he walked away from Good’s crashed vehicle, then got into an unmarked Chevy Tahoe and just fled from the scene like the obvious coward he is. I presume the murderous agent will soon be identified, and Callenson’s clear steady-handed footage may be the reason why. [Update: While I was finishing this post, the Minnesota Star Tribune identified and named him — Jonathan Ross — and indeed, it was Callenson’s footage that made his identification possible.] And, to top it off, all the while — starting before the shooting — Callenson was screaming “Shame!” in the faces of these agents, and calling them out on their abhorrent indefensible actions. To each of their directives to her, she responds, with the definition of righteous anger, “You shot someone in the fucking face!” (Emily Heller, Renee Good’s neighbor, showed similar courage, telling an ICE agent who refused to allow a citizen physician to check on Good (who laid dying or dead inside her car), as she filmed the scene, “How can I relax, you just killed my fucking neighbor! You shot her in the fucking face! You killed my fucking neighbor! How do you show up to work every day?”)
Callenson’s courage in the face of obvious danger is just remarkable. My god. She rose to the moment in a crucible of chaos, insanity, and murderous violence. We all need to think about what she did, to really imagine ourselves in the same moment — the danger she stood up to, and the principles she stood up for — if we hope to do the same if a similar moment comes to us.
And, to top it off, she had the presence of mind to shoot her historic footage in widescreen.
