SchwarzTech

Marcin Wichary: I’ve been emulating the Apple Lisa recently, and I was struck by how many of its UI strings were slightly or wholly different than what we’re used to. It makes sense. Lisa came out in 1983 as Mac’s predecessor and really the first GUI that is directly linked to what we’re using today. Even though it borrowed things from work done at Xerox, tons of conventions were not established yet. So, I thought it would be fun to actually take a closer look. There are so many things that…

Todd Spangler for Variety: Fox announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire Roku for $160.00/share in a combination of cash and Fox Class A common stock, giving Roku an enterprise value of about $22 billion. The companies expect the deal to close in the first half of calendar year 2027. […] The companies said they are “committed to continuing to operate Roku as an open, partner-friendly platform” and to the continued “ubiquitous” distribution of Fox content. Fox Corp. said that Anthony Wood,…

Microsoft Vice Chair & President Brad Smith addressing videos of graduating students booing at pro-AI commencement speakers: This context shapes our reaction to recent commencement ceremonies. Graduating students who grimace or even boo at references to AI are telling us what we need to hear, that it’s time once again to raise the bar. That has been a frequent refrain from students for decades. The key is always to channel uncertainty into purposeful steps that build a better future. Across the…

Matt Birchler: Loupe is a simple new app for iOS that shows how many things native apps can see about you and your device, lots of which is available without requesting elevated permissions. It’s a fun app, but what I love about it is how it shows the range of things that native apps have access to that web apps don’t. I gave Loupe a try and found it interesting, but unsurprising from the kinds of things I’ve already assumed. I do think tools like this are important to educate oneself about the…

Rich Nye for WTHR Indianapolis: Mayor Scott Furgeson was caught on camera making disparaging remarks about the homes that display the [no data center] signs. The signs can be found all over Shelbyville [Indiana]. The people that live in the homes say the negatives far outweigh the positive in the planned data center. The 429-acre site is already annexed and zoned for industrial use. Residents are now fighting a legal battle to try to stop the Prologis data center, which Furgeson has pushed…

The third episode of Magical & Revolutionary is now available. I’m joined by Adam Engst, known for TidBITS, Take Control Books, and much more. The show will be taking a brief hiatus through the end of June as I’ll be focusing on WWDC coverage as well as some travel, but we’ll return with some new guests soon enough!

Tim Hardwick for MacRumors: Microsoft will prevent Office 2019 for Mac owners from editing their documents from July 13, a restriction the company is attributing to the productivity suite’s expiring digital certificate. The Office 2019 apps affected include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Once the certificate used to confirm the suite’s license expires, these apps will drop into what Microsoft is calling “reduced functionality mode.” In other words, users will still be able to…

Emma Loffhagen for The Guardian (via Nick Heer): [Sarah] Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu. Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head. I read Careless People about a year ago and it…

JA Westenberg: For 20 years we built the internet around abundance: more products, more creators, more opinions, more newsletters, more podcasts, more apps, more tools, more marketplaces, more feeds. The founding promise was access: anything, from anyone, anywhere, instantly. No gatekeepers, no scarcity, no permission. The shelf went infinite. For a while that felt like freedom. And then it turned into drudgery… I’ve been a Costco member for a couple of years now and it always fascinates me how…

Andrew Orr for AppleInsider: Apple placed iPhone 17 Pro units throughout Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, for the LA Galaxy and Houston Dynamo FC Major League Soccer match on May 24. The phones handled match coverage, tunnel footage, in-goal cameras, player introductions, and crowd shots. […] In-goal footage, tunnel shots, player walkouts, and low-angle views near the pitch received positive reactions on social media and in live match threads. Apple and MLS promoted these…

Another banger from Terry Godier that gives me just a bit of comfort: The layer where every human activity became a venture-backed destination, every destination became a feed, every feed became ad inventory, and every ad market became a machine for producing more things to interrupt you with. Underneath that layer is another internet: older, slower, less polished, harder to monetize, and much harder to kill. It is not utopia. It is full of spam, abandoned servers, broken clients, hostile…

Mike Montiero: A while back I was a member of a Discord server that was part of an event I went to. And like a lot of temporary communities, people ended up hanging around on the server long after the event had ended. Chatting with new friends they’d just made and showing off what they were working on. Personally, I enjoy showing people things I’m working on. Whether it be a zine, or a painting, or a book I’ve got coming out. Other people were showing off stuff they’d made as well. Which I also…

Mike Rockwell: Apple Shortcuts is such a mess that I’ve actually implemented my own backup system for my shortcuts. That way, if anything goes wrong — and it has several times in the past — I have a weekly backup that I can restore from. I never thought of this and it’s a great idea—Shortcuts get exported to a simple .zip file.

Aamir Siddiqui for Android Authority: Helium Mobile caught everyone’s attention with its Zero Plan, a phone plan that offered 3GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes of phone calls for absolutely nothing — no hidden fees or monthly plans. Late last month, the MVNO ended the plan for new subscribers, noting that current subscribers are not affected — but ended up impacting them last week too. If you haven’t already considered your options, you should do so soon, especially given what the…

Michael Tan-Sikorski: Many industry experts and companies claim AI profitability by 2030 is possible, so I wanted to see how close we really are. This site tracks cumulative spend versus revenue across most major AI companies in one place, allowing you to see exactly how much money is flowing into the industry and how far it is from breaking even. I’ll be updating these numbers monthly as new reports and financials drop. Perhaps one day, the big “NO” will become a “YES,” and the question will…

David Pogue: Too bad, then, that whenever you take a selfie, you have to use the front-facing camera and just accept the lower quality. Right? […] Now, on the watch, open the Camera Remote app: a super useful little app that remote-controls the iPhone camera. Most people use it for group shots or selfies in situations when they’ve propped up the phone out of arm’s reach. But here, you’re going to use the watch as nothing more than a screen on the back of your phone. That’s right: You can use…

The second episode of Magical & Revolutionary is now available. I’m joined by Dan Moren, who is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, formerly of Macworld, 1/3 of The Rebound, 1/4 of Clockwise, author, a two-time Jeopardy! champ, and much more.

JA Westenberg: What I want from the people who run companies is much smaller than passion: I want the habit of using the product on weekends. If you run a publisher you should be reading novels (other people’s, ideally) by choice on a Sunday with no work email open; if you run a games studio your Steam library should not be empty; if you run a burger chain you should be eating one on your day off, ideally at the competition; and if you run a software company you should be sitting down with your…

D. Griffin Jones on the reports that Apple may have “given up” on the Vision Pro: After two years to see how things have shaken out, maybe the more apt comparison is to the Apple Newton. The Newton was the early, expensive tech demo that wanted to be the iPhone a decade too soon. Much in the same way the Vision Pro really wants to be AR glasses. No one at the time could see what killer feature the Newton was missing, because it hadn’t been invented yet — ubiquitous Wi-Fi and 3G cellular.…

Rands (Michael Lopp) has put together a great guide of mess that USB-C has created. This is probably a good one to bookmark for future reference: The Lie: Every USB-C cable and port looks identical, so they must all do the same thing. Except a USB-C port running USB 2 and a USB-C port running Thunderbolt 5 differ by 250×. The Truth: USB-C is a connector shape — the small oval that plugs in either way. (USB-A is the rectangle you have to flip three times.) The protocol running through it (USB 2,…

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2026 second quarter ended March 28, 2026. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $111.2 billion, up 17 percent year over year. Diluted earnings per share was $2.01, up 22 percent year over year. For comparison, Q1 2026 (last quarter) and Q2 2025 (this quarter last year). Apple has not provided guidance since 2020. The press release continues: “Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and…

As I’m often on the lookout for inexpensive things to add to my Apple collection, I recently scooped up an instruction manual for my Macintosh SE. It also contained a much newer packet of information for some early-1990s model of PowerBook and what caught my eye was a trifold brochure for an Apple credit card, issued by Citibank. Apple had offered closed-loop cards for financing since the 1980s, but this appears to be the first one that could help turn your general spending into a computer. The…

Juli Clover for MacRumors: Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren’t interested. […] The Vision Pro has been unpopular since it first launched, and Apple only sold around 600,000 units in total. Insider sources told MacRumors that Apple has…

I’m excited to announce the first episode of Magical & Revolutionary is now available. I’m joined by Stephen Hackett, who is behind 512 Pixels, a co-founder of Relay, the managing director of Cross Forward Consulting, and has accumulated quite a bit of old Apple gear! We also discuss the absurdity of covering a large company, Stephen’s reporting on xAI in Memphis, and much more. You can subscribe directly below or visit the landing page for more information: RSS Apple Podcasts Overcast Landing…

Riccardo Mori: But now is the time to have a more articulate conversation. Now, most people will look at Cook’s tenure as CEO of Apple and will talk about the incredible financial success it brought to the company. Cook took an already healthy Apple in 2011 and made it exponentially thrive in the following fifteen years. This is as dismissible as an elephant in a room. I never doubted Cook would be a good ‘maintainer’. It’s like letting a much-decorated admiral take control of your ship — of…

This comes from a letter by Tim Cook posted on Apple’s site: Today we announced that I’m taking the next step in my journey at Apple. Over the coming months I will be transitioning into a new role, leaving the CEO job behind in September and becoming Apple’s executive chairman. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users…

Jaron Schneider for PetaPixel: Adobe’s business model, led by now-outgoing CEO Shantanu Narayen, kept following the money. Individual users are good, but big business contracts are better. Why settle for $50 a month from a photographer in Indiana when it could get a multi-million dollar contract from a corporation in Los Angeles? Adobe started to shift its focus to enticing those corporate customers to the detriment of its connection to the customers that gave it success to begin with. In order…

Henry van Dyck for Veritasium demonstrated a way that one could steal funds from a locked iPhone. Cybersecurity researchers from the University of Surrey and the University of Birmingham developed the attack which involves spoofing some information being presented from the NFC payment terminal and another phone presenting the iPhone’s payment card on a legitimate […]

Juli Clover for MacRumors: Right now, Apple Watches that can’t be restored using an iPhone need to be mailed to an Apple Repair Center for service. There is no in-store repair option, so customers have to wait for the Apple Watch to be shipped to the repair depot, get repaired, and be shipped back. Starting […]

Photon: Every Mac has a hidden expiration date. After exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47 seconds of continuous uptime, a 32-bit unsigned integer overflow in Apple’s XNU kernel freezes the internal TCP timestamp clock. Once frozen, TIME_WAIT connections never expire, ephemeral ports slowly exhaust, and eventually no new TCP connections can be […]