Nikita Prokopov: But recently (a decade, more or less), this relationship has subtly changed. Newer programs (which are called apps now, yes, I know) started to want things from you.[…]This got so bad that when a program doesn’t ask you to create an account, it feels refreshing.[…]Everybody is checking for updates all the time. Some […]

Anthony Ha (MacRumors, Hacker News): Apple is getting serious about succession planning, according to a new report in The Financial Times.The company’s board and senior executives are reportedly preparing for the possibility that Tim Cook could step down as CEO as soon as early next year.[…]Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus is […]

Juli Clover: Following signs of new Side Button functionality in the iOS 26.2 beta 3 update, Apple developer documentation has confirmed that assigning a third-party voice assistant to the Side Button will be a feature available to iPhone users in Japan. […] Apple makes it clear that the option to activate a third-party personal assistant […]

Special guest Dan Frommer returns to the show. Topics include the indie media business, the iPhone Pocket, the iPhone Air (including rumors about the second generation model), AI “personalities”, and five years of Apple Silicon Macs. Also, six years of Dan’s site, The New Consumer.

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Jonathan V. Last, writing for The Bulwark:

The president of the United States gave a speech yesterday before a group of McDonald’s corporate workers and franchise owners. I’m going to quote a few sections of his remarks at great length, because if you have not listened to Trump speaking recently, the decline in his cognitive abilities is a bit shocking.

The point of this exercise is not to clown on Trump, but to give everyone a baseline understanding of where he is, with the mentals, as we try to understand how he will respond to increasing pressures in the coming months.

The video of his remarks is here and I’ll include timestamps for each section, in case you want to see what he looks and sounds like.

Bottom line: This is a man in noticeable mental decline.

The whole world is inured to listening to Trump speak like this — it sounds normal even to those of us who see that Trump is spiraling into dementia. Ah, that’s just Trump being Trump. But it’s not normal. Reading the transcript is jarring. Also jarring: listening to Juliet Jeske’s performative reading of a particularly nonsensical portion of Trump’s McDonald’s speech. It’s just gibberish.