2025-12-06 07:25:09
Dithering is my and Ben Thompson’s twice-a-week podcast — 15 minutes per episode, not a minute less, not a minute more. It’s a $7/month or $70/year subscription, and included in the Stratechery Plus bundle (a bargain). This year our CMS (Passport — check it out) gained a feature that lets us make some episodes free for everyone to listen to on the website. Today’s episode, regarding Alan Dye leaving Apple for Meta, seems like a good one to do that with. (And, once again, this month’s album art serendipitously captures my mood.)
Give it a listen. Subscribe if you enjoy it.
2025-12-06 07:08:12
Aaron Tilley and Wayne Ma, in a piece headlined “Why Silicon Valley is Buzzing About Apple CEO Succession” at the paywalled-up-the-wazoo The Information:
Prediction site Polymarket places Ternus’ odds of getting the job at nearly 55%, ahead of other current Apple executives such as software head Craig Federighi, Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan and marketing head Greg Joswiak. But some people close to Apple don’t believe Ternus is ready to take on such a high-profile role, and that could make a succession announcement unlikely anytime soon, said people familiar with the company.
Nothing in the rest of the article backs up that “some people close to Apple don’t believe Ternus is ready” claim, other than this, several paragraphs later:
And while his fans believe Ternus has the temperament to be CEO, many of them say he isn’t a charismatic leader in the mold of a Jobs. He has also had little involvement in the geopolitical and government affairs issues that dominate most of Cook’s time these days. On a recent trip to China, for example, Apple’s new COO, Sabih Khan, accompanied Cook to some of his meetings.
No one else in the history of the industry, let alone the company, has the charisma of Steve Jobs. And while I think Polymarket has the shortlist of candidates right, I also think they have them listed in the right order. Sabih Khan probably should be considered an outside-chance maybe, but the fact that he accompanied Cook to China doesn’t me make think, for a second, that it’s in preparation to name him CEO. If Kahn were being groomed to become CEO, he’d have started appearing in keynotes already. It’s silly to slag Ternus for not having the charisma of Steve Jobs, when Ternus has been a strong presence in keynotes since 2018, and in the same paragraph suggest Khan as a better option, when Khan has never once appeared in a keynote or public appearance representing Apple.
Some former Apple executives hope a dark-horse candidate emerges. For example, Tony Fadell, a former Apple hardware executive who coinvented [sic] the iPod, has told associates recently that he would be open to replacing Cook as CEO, according to people who have heard his remarks. (Other people close to Apple consider Fadell an unlikely candidate, in part because he was a polarizing figure when he worked at the company. Fadell left Apple in 2010.)
The parenthetical undersells the unlikelihood of Fadell returning to Apple, ever, in any role, let alone the borderline insanity of suggesting he’d come back as Cook’s successor.
It has become one of the strangest succession spectacles in tech. Typically, the kind of buzz that is swirling around Cook occurs when companies are performing badly or a CEO has dropped hints that they’re getting ready to hang up their spurs. Neither applies in Cook’s case, though.
There’s nothing strange about it. Apple has a unique company culture, but so too do its peers, like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. And just like at those companies, it’s therefore a certainty that Cook’s replacement will come from within the company’s current ranks. Polymarket doesn’t even list anyone other than Ternus, Federighi, Joswiak, and Khan.
As for hints, there is not much need for any hint beyond the fact that Cook is now 65 years old and has been in the job since 2011. But the high-profile multi-source leak to the Financial Times is a pretty obvious fucking additional hint.
2025-12-06 06:37:35
This interview was both interesting and a lot of fun. Worth a listen or re-listen.
2025-12-06 06:18:12
Apple Newsroom, yesterday:
Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice president in January, reporting to CEO Tim Cook and serving on Apple’s executive team.
In addition, Lisa Jackson, vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams will report to Apple chief operating officer Sabih Khan. [...]
Newstead was most recently chief legal officer at Meta and previously served as the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where she led the legal team responsible for advising the Secretary of State on legal issues affecting the conduct of U.S. foreign relations.
Monday’s announcement that AI head John Giannandrea is retiring and the hierarchy for AI related projects being further reshuffled under software head Craig Federighi was significant, but not surprising, given how things went this year for Apple with AI.
Wednesday’s announcement that VP of design and Liquid Glass frontman Alan Dye is leaving Apple for Meta was a shock, both inside and outside the company. As I wrote this week, I think it’s great news for Apple, but not by plan.
This news yesterday is just typical planned retirements. The timing is slightly unfortunate though. In the eyes of observers unfamiliar with the company, they might be misconstrued as signs of executive upheaval, occurring on the heels of the minor and major dramas of Giannandrea’s and Dye’s departures. The Jackson / Adams / Newstead transitions announced yesterday are nothing of the sort.
Jackson had a very nice run at Apple and carved out a rather unique position within the company. Apple’s environmental efforts expanded tremendously under her leadership. I’ve never met anyone with a bad word to say about her, and in my own interactions, found her downright delightful.
As for Adams, the responsibilities of Apple’s general counsel are generally far afield from my interests. The only two times I’ve mentioned her at DF were when she got the job in 2017, and a passing reference when the FBI sent a letter to Apple, addressed to Adams, in 2020 regarding the locked phone of a mass shooter in Pensacola, Florida. That’s a sign of a good run for a general counsel — it’s a job where no news is good news.
Lastly, I wouldn’t read anything into Newstead coming to Apple by way of Meta. But it is a bit funny that it was announced the day after Dye left Apple for Meta. She seems to have an excellent wide-ranging background to spearhead Apple’s government affairs. Her stint in the State Department was during the first (now seemingly sane) Trump administration, but she clerked for liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
2025-12-06 05:46:12
Apple, today: “Announcing the 2025 App Store Awards”:
This year’s winners represent the best-in-class apps and games we returned to again and again. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
I did not enjoy all of them as much as Apple did.
iPhone app of the year Tiimo bills itself as an “AI Planner & To-do” app that is designed with accommodations for people with ADHD and other neurodivergences. Subscription plans cost $12/month ($144/year) or $54/year ($4.50/month). It does not offer a native Mac app, and at the end of onboarding/account setup, it suggests their web app for use on desktop computers. When I went to the web app, after signing in with the “Sign in With Apple” account I created on the iPhone app, Tiimo prompted me to sign up for an annual subscription for $42/year ($3.50/month), or monthly for $10 ($120/year). The in-app subscriptions offer a 30-day free trial; the less expensive pay-on-the-web subscriptions only offer a 7-day free trial. The web app doesn’t let you do anything without a paid account (or at least starting a trial); the iOS app offers quite a bit of basic functionality free of charge.
From Apple’s own description for why it gave Tiimo the award:
Built to support people who are neurodivergent (and anyone distracted by the hum of modern life), Tiimo brought clarity to our busy schedules using color-coded, emoji-accented blocks. The calming visual approach made even the most hectic days feel manageable.
It starts by syncing everything in Calendar and Reminders, pulling in doctor’s appointments, team meetings, and crucial prompts to walk the dog or stand up and stretch. Instead of dumping it all into a jumbled list, the app gives each item meaning by automatically assigning it a color and an emoji. (Tiimo gave us the option to change the weightlifter emoji it added to our workout reminders, but its pick was spot on.)
While on the move with coffee in one hand and keys in the other, we sometimes talked to Tiimo with the Al chatbot feature to add new tasks or shift appointments. When we felt overwhelmed by our to-do list, Tiimo kept us laser-focused by bubbling up just high-priority tasks, while its built-in Focus timer (accessible from any to-do with a tap) saved us from the pitfalls of multitasking.
But Tiimo really stood out when we faced a big personal project, like getting our Halloween decorations up before Thanksgiving. With the help of Al, the app suggested all the smaller tasks that would get us there: gathering the decorations from the garage, planning the layout, securing the cobwebs, and doing a safety check.
Aside from the web app, Tiimo is iOS exclusive, with apps only for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. No Android version. It seems to do a good job with native platform integration (Calendar integration is free; Reminders integration requires a subscription). Animations in the app feel slow to me, which makes the app itself feel slow. And, personally, I find Tiimo’s emphasis on decorating everything with emoji distracting and childish, not clarifying.
The app seems OK, but not award-worthy to me. But, admittedly, I’m not in the target audience for Tiimo’s ADHD/neurodivergent focus. I don’t need reminders to have coffee in the morning, start work, have dinner, or to watch TV at night, which are all things Tiimo prefilled on my Today schedule after I went through onboarding. As I write this sentence, I’ve been using Tiimo for five minutes, and it’s already prompted me twice to rate it on the App Store. Nope, wait, I just got a third prompt. That’s thirsty, and a little gross. (And, although I’m not an ADHD expert, three prompts to rate and review the app in the first 10 minutes of use strikes me as contrary to the needs of the easily distracted.)
Mac app of the year Essayist bills itself as “The Word Processor designed for Academic Writing” (capitalization verbatim). Subscriptions cost $80/year ($6.67/month) or $10/month ($120/year). Its raison d’être is managing citations and references, and automatically formatting the entire document, including citations, according to a variety of standards (MLA, Chicago, etc.). Quoting from Apple’s own description of Essayist:
Essayist gives you an easy way to organize a dizzying array of primary sources. Ebooks, podcasts, presentations, and even direct messages and emails can be cataloged with academic rigor. Using macOS Foundation Models, Essayist extracts all the key info needed to use it as a source.
For example, paste a YouTube URL into an entry and Essayist automatically fills in the name of the video, its publication date, and the date you accessed it. Drag in an article as a PDF to have Essayist fill in the title, author, and more — and store the PDF for easy access. You can also search for the books and journal articles you’re citing right in the app.
Essayist is a document-based (as opposed to library-based) app, and its custom file format is a package with the adorable file extension “.essay”. The default font for documents is Times New Roman, and the only other option is, of all fonts, Arial — and you need an active subscription to switch the font to Arial. (Paying money for the privilege to use Arial... Jiminy fucking christ. I might need a drink.) I appreciate the simplicity of severely limiting font choices to focus the user’s attention on the writing, but offering Times New Roman and Arial as the only options means you’re left with the choice between “the default font’s default font” and “font crime”. The Essayist app itself has no Settings; instead, it offers only per-document settings.
The app carries a few whiffs of non-Mac-likeness (e.g. the aforementioned lack of Settings, and some lame-looking custom alerts). The document settings window refers to a new document, even after it has been saved with a name, as “Untitled” until you close and reopen the document. Reopened documents do not remember their window size and position. But poking around with otool, it appears to be written using AppKit, not Catalyst. I suspected the app might be Catalyst because there are companion iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, which seem to offer identical feature sets as the Mac app. Essayist uses a clever system where, unless you have a subscription, documents can only be edited on the device on which they were created, but you can open them read-only on other devices. That feels like a good way to encourage paying while giving you a generous way to evaluate Essayist free of charge. There is no Android, Windows, or web app version — it’s exclusive to Mac and iOS.
I’ve never needed to worry about adhering to a specific format for academic papers, and that’s the one and only reason I can see to use Essayist. In all other aspects, it seems a serviceable but very basic, almost primitive, word processor. There’s no support for embedding images or figures of any kind in a document, for example. [Correction: Essayist does support figures, but I missed the UI for how to insert them.]
iPad app of the year Detail bills itself, simply and to the point, as an “AI Video Editor”. The default subscription is $70/year ($5.83/month) with a 3-day free trial; the other option is to pay $12/month ($144/year) with no free trial. After a quick test drive, Detail seems like an excellent video editing app, optimized for creating formats common on social media, like reel-style vertical videos where you, the creator, appear as a cutout in the corner, in front of the video or images that you’re talking about. The iPhone version seems equally good. The iPad version of Detail will install and run on MacOS, but it’s one of those “Designed for iPad / Not verified for macOS” direct conversions. But they do offer a standalone Mac app, Detail Studio, which is a real Mac app, written using AppKit, which requires a separate subscription to unlock pro features ($150/year or $22/month). Detail only offers apps for iOS and MacOS — no Windows, Android, or web.
From Apple’s own acclaim for Detail:
When we used Detail to record a conversation of two people sitting side by side, the app automatically created a cut that looked like it was captured with two cameras. It zoomed in on one speaker, then cut away to the other person’s reaction. The app also made it easy to unleash our inner influencer. We typed a few key points, and the app’s AI wrote a playful script that it loaded into its teleprompter so we could read straight to the camera.
Most importantly, Detail helped us memorialize significant life moments all while staying present. At a birthday party, we propped an iPad on a table and used Detail to record with the front and back cameras simultaneously. The result was a split-screen video with everyone singing “Happy Birthday” on the left and the guest of honor blowing out the candles on the right. (No designated cameraperson needed.)
Detail has a bunch of seemingly genuinely useful AI-based features. But putting all AI features aside, it feels like a thoughtful, richly featured manual video editor. I suspect that’s why the AI features might work well — they’re an ease-of-use / automation layer atop a professional-quality non-AI foundation. Basically, Detail seems like what Apple’s own Clips — recently end-of-life’d — should have been. It turns your iPad (or iPhone) into a self-contained video studio. Cool.
Of these three apps — Tiimo on iPhone, Essayist on Mac, and Detail on iPad — Detail appeals to me the most, and strikes me as the most deserving of this award. If I were to start making videos for modern social media, I’d strongly evaluate Detail as my primary tool.
Apple still has no standalone category for AI apps, but all three of these apps emphasize AI features, and Apple itself calls out those AI features in its praise for them. It’s an obvious recurring theme shared by all three, along with their shared monetization strategies of being free to download with in-app subscriptions to unlock all features, and the fact that all three winners are exclusive to iOS and Mac (and, in Tiimo’s case, the web).
2025-12-06 00:47:44
Meg James, reporting for The Los Angeles Times (News+ link):
The two companies announced the blockbuster deal early Friday morning. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters as Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone.
Fred Flintstone?
“Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement. “By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies — from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends — with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better.”
Not sure Squid Game belongs in the same comparison as Citizen Kane, but the Warners library is incredibly deep. Stanley Kubrick’s post-2001: A Space Odyssey films were all for Warner Bros.
Netflix’s cash and stock transaction is valued at about $27.75 per Warner Bros. Discovery share. Netflix also agreed to take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the deal’s value to $82.7 billion. [...] Warner’s cable channels, including CNN, TNT and HGTV, are not included in the deal. They will form a new publicly traded company, Discovery Global, in mid-2026.
I don’t know if this deal makes sense for Netflix, but Netflix has earned my trust. Netflix is a product-first company. They care about the quality of their content, their software, their service, and their brand. If you care about the Warner/HBO legacy, an acquisition by Netflix is a much, much better outcome than if David Ellison had bought it to merge with Paramount.
The LA Times article goes on to cite concerns from the movie theater industry, based on Netflix’s historic antipathy toward theatrical releases for its films. Netflix is promising to keep Warner Bros.’s film studio a separate operation, maintaining the studio’s current support for theatrical releases. I hope they do. I grew up loving going to the movies. I still enjoy it, but the truth is I go far less often as the years go on. Movie theaters shouldn’t be a protected class of business just because there’s so much affection and nostalgia for them. If they continue sliding into irrelevance, so be it. That’s how disruption, progress, and competition work.
