2026-03-29 07:47:39
Stephen Hackett, at 512 Pixels:
I’ve thought a lot about the bad timing Jones mentions. Had Apple stuck to the original timeline, and killed off the 2013 Mac Pro in favor of an iMac “specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market,” back in 2017, Apple could have avoided putting out the best Intel Mac ever, less than a year before the transition to Apple silicon.
Did Apple know in 2017 that 2020 was the year the M1 would make it out of the lab? Probably not, but it doesn’t make the timing any less painful.
Apple might not have had 2020 set in stone for the Apple Silicon transition, but in 2017, they definitely knew that Apple Silicon was the future. I think they knew that years before 2017, and in broad strokes, that’s why 2015–2020 was such a bad period for Mac hardware. They didn’t ship a retina MacBook Air until 2018. The 12-inch MacBook was beautiful but expensive and seriously underpowered. And nothing suffered more than the Mac Pro in that stretch. I think Apple knew that the future was on their own silicon, but in the meantime, they just couldn’t get it up for the last five years of the Intel era.
2026-03-29 07:25:47
While I’m bitching about Netflix’s craptacular new video player on Apple TV, let me quote from a piece I wrote two years ago (also complaining about Netflix’s tvOS app):
Turns out there are two better ways:
If you use the Control Center Apple TV remote control on your iPhone, there’s a dedicated “CC” button.
In tvOS, go to Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut, and set it to “Closed Captions”. Now you can just triple-click the Menu/Back button on the remote to toggle captions. (On older Apple TV remotes, the button is labelled “Menu”; on the new remote, it’s labelled with a “<”.)
But here’s the hitch: Netflix’s tvOS app doesn’t support either of these ways to toggle captions. Netflix only supports the on-screen caption toggle in their custom video player. I get why Netflix and other streaming apps want to use their own custom video players, but it ought to be mandated by App Store review that they support accessibility features like this one.
What Apple should have done right from the start with the tvOS-based Apple TV a decade ago is require all apps to use the system video player. No custom video players. It’s too late for that, alas. But the tvOS App Store review process ought to insist on compliance with these accessibility and platform compliance features.
You want to use your own custom video player? Fine. But apps with custom video players must support the “CC” button in the iOS Control Center remote control, must support the triple-click accessibility shortcut, must support the platform conventions for fast-forwarding and rewinding using the Apple TV remote control, etc. If your video player doesn’t comply, your app update doesn’t get approved.
Apple should use the App Store approval process for the benefit of users. Isn’t that supposed to be the point?
2026-03-29 05:57:01
This feature from Harry McCracken is just spectacularly good. (And it’s a gift link that’ll get you past Fast Company’s paywall.) 50 years is a long time and there are some key players in Apple’s origin story who are gone — but because everyone was so young at the time, it’s amazing how many of them are still alive. And, of course, in Chris Espinosa’s case, still working at Apple:
I was sitting there in the Byte Shop in Palo Alto on an Apple-1 writing BASIC programs, and this guy with a scraggly beard and no shoes came in and looked at me and conducted what I later understood to be the standard interview, which was “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Chris.” And he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m writing BASIC programs on this Apple-1 for the owner.” And he said, “Are you any good?” I showed him my BASIC programs on the Apple-1.
He told me, “I’ve seen you around Homebrew. Woz is working on this second-generation computer, and instead of loading BASIC from cassette tape, we want to put it in ROM. And so it has to be perfect. I want you to come and test Woz’s BASIC, and I’ll give you 4K of RAM for that when you build your own computer.” That sounded like a good deal. Steve Jobs’s idea back then of recruiting was to grab a random-ass 14-year-old off the streets.
Apple is at its best when it’s infused with a bit of the spirit of the two Steves whose first joint venture were blue boxes that let you make long distance phone calls for free. The first public phone call Steve Jobs ever made on an iPhone was a prank call to the Starbucks next to Moscone West. I feel like that renegade spirit has been repressed in the Tim Cook era.
2026-03-28 23:52:08
Amanda Kondolojy, writing for Pocket-lint:
Though the Netflix app is largely the same on most platforms, over the weekend several Apple TV users on the unofficial Apple TV Reddit noticed some small changes to the tvOS version of the app that are making the app harder to use in subtle but very frustrating ways.
According to user iamonreddit, the most recent Netflix app update has made it slightly more difficult to use the fast-forward and rewind functions. Instead of clicking the back or forward button on the remote wheel to advance or return ten seconds, this button press now pauses the screen and brings up a frame selector. In order to actually go forward or go back, users then have to click the same button again. So essentially, what once required a single button press, now needs two.
These changes aren’t small, aren’t subtle, and don’t make fast-forwarding and rewinding merely “slightly” more difficult. (And what once required a single button press now requires three, not two.) The video playback interface in a streaming app is the most essential thing a streaming app does, and now Netflix’s tvOS player looks terrible and works wrong. The original report Kondolojy cites, from Reddit user “iamonreddit” (yes, you are), describes it as it is:
Did Netflix mess up the app? There are two extra clicks for a simple 10s rewind or fast forward. Instead of it going back 10s in one click, now it pauses and brings up the frame selector, and then you have to click again. Did they not do any research or usability testing before releasing this?
It’s also not smooth at all, it keeps spinning for a while and I have 1gig fiber optic internet. What a big downgrade!
They have some of the top paid employees in the world and this is what they come up with. Unless this was the result of some restrictions introduced by Apple.
Looks like they messed it up big time. Netflix used to set benchmarks for others. And here we are now. I’ve never had a single problem with their app so for, for over a decade of use.
Netflix’s gratuitously ugly new custom video player commits various crimes against accessibility. Two years ago I wrote about tvOS’s system accessibility shortcut that lets you assign triple-clicking the Back (“\<”) button to toggle captions, and the fact that Netflix didn’t support it. This cursed new player, you will be unsurprised to learn, doesn’t support it either. It also does not support the wonderful standard platform convention of temporarily turning on caption when you rewind 10 or 20 seconds, for a “What did they just say?” moment.
Update: Switching to their own custom video player also broke Netflix’s integration with the iPhone. Until last week, playing video in the Netflix app on Apple TV would put a live activity widget on your iPhone lock screen with the name of the current program, scrub location, and player controls. Now that’s gone.
This regression dropping the same week that Netflix announced price hikes makes me so angry that I’m giving even more thought to downgrading my family’s Netflix account from the $27/month Premium plan to the $20/month Standard plan. Sending Netflix only $240 per year instead of $324 will show them.
2026-03-28 23:21:55
Alan Rappeport, reporting for The New York Times:
President Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. The decision to have Mr. Trump’s John Hancock on America’s paper currency represented an unprecedented change, one that the department said was being made in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary.
Mr. Trump is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to have his signature on the greenback. His name will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As a result, the U.S. treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century, will not appear on the currency.
Raquel Coronell Uribe, reporting for NBC News:
Trump’s signature will go on the bills in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, the Treasury said. Historically, paper currency carries the signatures of the treasury secretary and the treasurer.
“The President’s mark on history as the architect of America’s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”
It’s certainly news that the sitting president — a man whom psychologists have publicly described as showing clear “symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder — malignant narcissism” — is putting his signature on U.S. currency. But why parrot the administration’s obviously false line that this gross, embarrassing change in longstanding tradition has anything whatsoever to do with “honoring” the United States’s 250th anniversary?
It makes no more sense that putting Trump’s signature on greenbacks “honors the nation” or its history than it would to claim that doing so will cure the common cold, reverse male pattern baldness, or keep us safe from Bigfoot. Call it what it is: sycophantic ego fellatio for a deeply unpopular narcissist who is losing his already tenuous grip on reality.
2026-03-28 23:02:42
The New York Post (I’m not sure if I should tell you to take this with a grain of salt, because it’s the Post and their journalistic standards are low, or, to assign this extra credibility because it’s the Post, a right-wing Murdoch rag that Trump lackeys actually talk to):
President Trump is prioritizing taking control of the Strait of Hormuz as he grows frustrated with the lack of help from allies to force open the crucial waterway. And once Trump ends Iran’s reign of terror over the shipping route, he’s considering rechristening it the “Strait of America” or even naming it after himself, sources told The Post. [...]
Trump told a Saudi investor forum Friday evening in Miami that he might decide to call the Strait after himself, rather than America.
“They have to open up the Strait of Trump — I mean Hormuz,” Trump said. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The Fake News will say, ‘He accidentally said.’ No, there’s no accidents with me, not too many.”
I suspect there are going to be accidents soon, as he descends further into dementia and needs adult diapers.
