2026-03-27 04:20:49
Speaking of power adapters, this information guide from Rands in Repose is both useful and enlightening.
2026-03-27 03:35:00
I mentioned the other day that I was mildly irked by a change in iOS 26.4 that moved the list of available updates in the App Store app one additional screen further into its hierarchy. Good news (via Nate Barham on Mastodon): you can long-press on the App Store app on your Home Screen and jump right to the Updates screen from the contextual menu. Nice!
Alternatively, you can create a Shortcuts shortcut that jumps you to the Updates screen. Just one action: open the URL itms-apps://apps.apple.com/updates. Save it as an “app” on your Home Screen or an action in Control Center. Me, I’m just going to use the tap-and-hold contextual menu item on the App Store app.
2026-03-27 03:26:38
Todd Spangler, reporting for Variety:
Disney has now ended its partnership with OpenAI, which included plans for the media conglomerate to take a $1 billion stake in the artificial-intelligence company led by CEO Sam Altman.
A Disney rep said in a statement to Variety: “As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
Allow me to translate from PR-speak into plain English:
We love children, and children will always be the primary audience for Disney’s theme parks, movies, and other entertainment. But we don’t do business with children.
Most PR statements would be more effective in plain English.
2026-03-27 03:08:25
Chrome engineer Eric Seckler, on Google’s Chromium Blog, under the bold headline “Android Sets New Record for Mobile Web Performance”:
Today, we are proud to celebrate a major milestone: Android is now the fastest mobile platform for web browsing.
Through deep vertical integration across hardware, the Android OS, and the Chrome engine, the latest flagship Android devices are setting new performance records, outperforming all other mobile competitors in the key web performance benchmarks Speedometer and LoadLine and providing a level of responsiveness previously unseen on mobile.
Three unnamed Android “flagship phones” scored higher than an unnamed “competing mobile phone platform” (presumably an iPhone 17 Pro) in two benchmarks, Speedometer 3.1 and LoadLine. Speedometer is a longstanding open source benchmark whose development is governed by representatives from WebKit (Apple), Blink (Google), and Gecko (Mozilla). LoadLine is a benchmark from Google and Android OEMs. Speedometer is a benchmark anyone can run just by visiting the benchmark’s website. Running LoadLine, especially on an iOS device, is an enormous hassle that involves two USB-C-to-Ethernet adapters, enabling Remote Automation and the Web Inspector in Safari, installing custom certificates on the iOS device, and installing custom software on an attached Mac.
You will be shocked to learn that the three unnamed Android phones outscored the “competing mobile phone” by significantly larger margins on LoadLine than Speedometer.
Claiming that these results make Android “the fastest mobile platform for web browsing” is ridiculous. It boggles the mind how many publications parroted Google’s braggadocio — MacRumors, 9to5Google, Android Authority, PhoneArena — without even mentioning that the results can’t possibly be verified because none of the devices (and none of the software versions) are named. This guy at Notebookcheck even had the audacity to put in his headline that Google “shows the receipts” for its claims. What kind of receipt doesn’t say what you bought? I would love to wager real money with the authors of any of those stories on what the Speedometer 3.1 results show for 100 random real-world Android users vs. 100 random real-world iPhone users. Or how about the average scores from the three best-selling models on each platform from the last year.
Name the devices or shut up.
2026-03-27 02:10:22
Well, at least we know who taught her to talk like that.
2026-03-27 01:33:38
Jessica E. Lessin, Amir Efrati, and Erin Woo, reporting for the paywalled-without-gift-links The Information:
While we have reported that Apple can tweak, or fine-tune, a version of Google’s Gemini AI so that it responds to queries the way Apple wants, the agreement gives Apple a lot more freedom with Google’s tech.
In fact, Apple has complete access to the Gemini model in its own data center facilities. Apple can use that access to produce smaller models that power specific tasks or are small enough to run directly on Apple devices so they can run the tasks faster, said a person who has direct knowledge of the arrangement.
The process of producing such models is called distillation, which essentially transfers knowledge from one large language model, which acts like a teacher, to another model that acts as a student.
That Apple negotiated this level of access is interesting, but not surprising. The biggest tell that this deal runs much deeper than simple white-labelling is that Apple will — or at least has the right to — run these Gemini-based models in Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute datacenters.
