2026-08-17 20:01:22
There is a phrase that's come up more in the tech punditry recently: nanny state. This comes up when discussing any sort of regulation on technology. "Oh, you want social media platforms to be regulated at all? Guess you want to live in a nanny state. Meanwhile I, a big brain boy myself, think individuals can make good decisions and don't need some governing body telling them what they can and can't do."
At the same time, a lot of people who think this way also love the nanny state and will fight tooth and nail to protect it. Prominent tech pundits will call people "morons" if they think that people should be trusted to install apps outside of the App Store. They love the nanny state when it's corporations doing it, and they hate it when a government does it. Except when it's AI…then it's good when the government does it, bad when corporations do it…it's a lot to keep track of.
Look, I understand there are risks when you let people install software from outside an app store's walled garden. I would actually be okay with Apple requiring App Store distribution as long as they stopped requiring their own payment method and would only block apps for safety and security reasons, not business or content reasons. But these anti-nanny state warriors are tricky to pin down. They want absolute control over how adults use their computers in some cases but not others.
I don't know. How about we tell them that the EU mandates that Apple approve all apps on iPhones? Then suddenly they'll think it's the worst idea in the world.
2026-08-16 06:00:00
Ming-Chi Kuo: A recent media report claims that tight DRAM suppl...
My industry checks suggest that Apple has indeed scaled back its hardware shipment plans this year due to memory shortages.
Ten years ago, if you wanted to buy the new iPhone and get it on release day, you had to have Apple.com open in three different browsers. You needed to have the Apple Store app open on your phone, and you needed to be frantically refreshing these every couple seconds at the stroke of midnight Pacific time to have any hope of ordering one quick enough. Mercifully, in recent years, Apple has improved their availability significantly, to the point that even though new phones sell significantly more than they did ten years ago, they are readily available on launch day, even if it takes you a few minutes, hours, or in some cases, even days to get your order in.
Well, strap in because I am a bit worried that 2026 iPhone pre-orders will feel a lot more like 2016 iPhone pre-orders.
2026-08-16 03:30:00
Max Kan: Gemini is Cooked but GCP is Cooking
For all intents and purposes, we believe DeepMind is no longer a frontier lab.
I think this is being a bit overdramatic. It is true that there's been a good amount of executive shakeup and that the company has failed to release any semblance of a frontier model in all of 2026. That's an eon in this industry right now, but Google could come out with something extremely impressive any day now and change the narrative. How often has the narrative shifted over the past couple years of who was winning, who was losing, who was dead?
I'm not arguing that all of the cynicism around Google's delivery of Gemini models this year is wrong. Just that until they throw in the towel like Apple did earlier this year, ironically, by going all in on Gemini, I wouldn't count anyone out. It was barely a month ago, people were talking about how XAI was just going to sell its server capacity going forward, and now they've released Grok 4.6, which appears to be pretty darn good (obviously, Fuck Elon Musk).
2026-08-16 03:08:09
Samsung's new foldable is an early look at what Apple will be announcing next month.
2026-08-11 20:00:47
Quick Reviews 3 is out now and is an update about giving the people what they've wanted.
This was going to be in v2, but I never really got it working (hangover from my bad data model choices in the v1 app), so I'm really happy to have it here now. Using the magic of iCloud, your reviews will appear across all your devices, complete with all the color and styling choices you make along the way.
I've been sharing this one on my ongoing movie thread on Mastodon for almost a month, and I really like it myself. I've been using a variant of the original design for years now, and this is the first new idea I've had that actually gets me everything I want.
The review flow is something I think will just keep evolving over time, but I think it's better than ever in v3. I've adopted a new write, style, share model where each section should be very easy to use.
Premium subs get better auto-complete than ever, with live results as you type (movies, shows, and games), and the rest of the flow is a bit easier to use. You can also get to any step in the flow from the review list with a new custom menu.
People have been asking me for the ability to review apps for ages, and I'm happy to say that in v3, you finally can! They also get a nice, custom layout that lets app icons sit naturally in the frame.
Premium users also get auto-complete here as well.
Quick Reviews is out now and is a free update for existing users. If you'd like better search, Letterboxd sync, and the 2026 "wrapped" feature, consider the reasonably priced premium sub.
2026-08-09 03:00:00
Chapterize 2.1 is out today, and I know 2.0 just came out, but there are a couple things here I really wanted to get out.
iCloud sync is the headliner, in my opinion, and it's changed how I use my own app. I tend to load episodes into the app on my Mac, and before iCloud Sync, that's where I'd have to do the work. However, now I have the freedom to import the file on my Mac and then listen to the episode on my iPhone as I do a workout and add chapters where they need to go.
From there, when I get back to my Mac later, the chapters are already there, and all of this works in every direction with every feature in the app.
This one's kind of huge for me. Podcaster who records at exactly the right level and edits to exactly the right audio level. But not everybody does that, including myself.
And the Mac version of Chapterize now has a one-click enhance audio button that performs two actions. First, it normalizes the audio to the expected volume for podcasts, and it reduces noise. It's not doing anything crazy with AI here. It's just using traditional tooling to get this done. If your podcast already sounds perfect, you don't need this. But if you struggle a bit, this might be a one-click fix similar to previous tools like The Levelator.
The new shows tab in version 2.0 lets you follow your shows, and get information about them. Now you can also listen to them. This is absolutely not a full podcast app in the vein of Overcast or Apple Podcasts, but if you need to listen back to part of a previous episode, this will get the job done.
Once I had iCloud Sync working, it made me work a bit more from the iPhone, and this made me realize how tough the experience was there. One of the things I've tried to do with this app is have a consistent experience across all platforms, and I think the ideal layout for working on the desktop (including iPad) is not the same as the iPhone.
As such, I've given the editing view on the iPhone a bespoke layout that works a lot better. No features are removed, but they're all more well considered for the iPhone's relatively tiny screen.
If you make a podcast and you're not using Chapterize yet, this is a great time to start. It's free to try on Mac, iPad, and iPhone.