Posts in Linked

David Pogue Tells the Origin Story of the iPhone in Wired’s Excerpt of His Upcoming History of Apple→

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

David Pogue’s Apple: The First 50 Years is set to be published in a week, but today, Wired has an excerpt about the origins of the iPhone. It’s a fascinating story that I’m sure most readers know, but Pogue’s excerpt contains a wealth of details and quotes from those who were there that does an excellent job of putting the events in context.

One of my favorite parts covers the prototyping of multi-touch years before the iPhone was released:

In late 2003, Apple commissioned FingerWorks to build a bigger version of their multi-touch pad: 12 x 9.5 inches, a better approximation of a computer screen’s size. Kerr’s team set up a test rig in the design studio of Infinite Loop 2. They mounted an LCD projector on a tripod, shining directly down onto the trackpad. They taped a sheet of white paper over it so that the projector’s image—generated by a nearby Power Mac—would be bright and clear. Then the fun began: developing ways to interact with the on-screen elements. You could slide a finger to move an icon in the projected image. You could spread two fingers apart to enlarge a map or a photo. Using both hands, you could tap, move, and stretch objects. It was magical.

If Wired’s excerpt today is any indication of the rest of the 600-page book, it should be a great read.

David Pogue’s Apple: The First 50 Years is set to be released on March 10, but it can be preordered now in the Apple Books app, from Amazon, and from other retailers.

Permalink

The Steve Jobs Archive’s Letters to a Young Creator→

Source: Steve Jobs Archive.

Source: Steve Jobs Archive.

The Steve Jobs Archive has published a collection of Letters to a Young Creator featuring reflections from luminaries in a wide range of fields answering questions posed by SJA Fellows.

Contributors include Tadao Ando, Paola Antonelli, Mario Bellini, Larry Brilliant, Anders Byriel, Ed Catmull, Jon M. Chu, Lee Clow, Tim Cook, Brunello Cucinelli, Es Devlin, Pete Docter, Mickey Drexler, Lord Norman Foster, Davis Guggenheim, Jenny Holzer, Bob Iger, Jimmy Iovine, Jony Ive, Rashid Johnson, Alan Kay, David Kelley, Marc Newson, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ben Okri, Dieter Rams, Alice Rawsthorn, Arthur Rock, Ruth Rogers, Samuel Ross, Cindy Sherman, Mona Simpson, and Anna Deavere Smith, as well as an introduction by Laurene Powell Jobs.

Released on the anniversary of what would have been Steve Jobs’ 71st birthday, Powell Jobs explains:

To live a life of creativity and curiosity, one must constantly ask questions. Steve thrived by seeking out people who could offer new knowledge and fresh perspectives, and he surrounded himself with diverse voices—musicians, artists, scientists, designers, engineers, writers, and humanitarians. He would often pose a thought and then pause to listen, understanding that learning and growth can only come from having the courage to challenge our limits and broaden our horizons.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the collection, but I can tell that this is my sort of catnip. Powell Jobs captures the essence of the collection well:

This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn.

Letters to a Young Creator is available online, from Apple Books, and as a downloadable EPUB file.

Permalink

Apple Announces a March 4th Press Event→

Source: MacRumors.

Source: MacRumors.

Apple has invited members of the press to what it’s calling a “special Apple Experience” that will take place on March 4th at 9:00 am Eastern U.S. time in New York, London, and Shanghai, according to MacRumors. There’s no word yet on whether the event will be livestreamed.

With several products rumored to be getting updates in 2026, it’s hard to guess what’s planned, although in the past, Apple has launched or refreshed products like the iPhone 16e, iPads, and the MacBook Air around this time of year. It’s also notable that Apple is planning the event for multiple locations around the world. That certainly makes it more accessible than a single event in Cupertino, which is good to see.

Permalink

OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger Joins OpenAI→

Peter Steinberger, the developer behind OpenClaw that was launched and took off barely a month ago and has already had three names, is joining OpenAI. In addition, OpenClaw is moving to a foundation where it will remain an open-source project.

As Steinberger explains on his website:

It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and given the freedom to flourish. Ultimately, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach. The more I talked with the people there, the clearer it became that we both share the same vision.

The community around OpenClaw is something magical and OpenAI has made strong commitments to enable me to dedicate my time to it and already sponsors the project. To get this into a proper structure I’m working on making it a foundation. It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers and people that want a way to own their data, with the goal of supporting even more models and companies.

The AI world has been talking about agents for more than a year, but it wasn’t until Steinberger’s project came along that we got software that put the idea of agents to practical use. OpenClaw may have only been just a few months old, but it captured the imaginations of users, including Federico, who has an uncanny knack for spotting the next big thing very early.

It will be interesting to see where OpenAI’s apps go next. I’ve been impressed with Codex, and with the Sky team and Steinberger on the company’s roster, I have high hopes for what they’ll do next.

Permalink

Tim Cook Attended an Exclusive Weekend Screening of the Upcoming ‘Melania’ Documentary→

The Hollywood Reporter broke the story over the weekend that an early screening of an Amazon-backed documentary about Melania Trump was held at the White House. According to reporter McKinley Franklin’s sources, the event was attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook as well as other CEOs and VIPs:

The event, which has not been promoted or advertised, is taking place in the White House on Saturday. Guests include director Brett Ratner; Queen Rania of Jordan; Zoom CEO Eric Yuan; Apple CEO Tim Cook; New York Stock Exchange CEO Lynn Martin; AMD CEO Lisa Su; Mike Tyson; socialite and Fiat heiress Azzi Agnelli; self-help guru Tony Robbins; and photographer Ellen von Unwerth, who shot the movie poster for the film.

Earlier that day, a Minneapolis man was shot and killed by federal agents. I’d like to think that in the face of such a tragedy the screening would have been called off or that attendees, including Cook, would have been no-shows, but according to Rolling Stone editor Marlow Stern, Cook and others did attend.

Permalink

How to Enable Smoother 120Hz Scrolling in Safari→

I came across this incredible tip by Matt Birchler a few weeks ago and forgot to link it on MacStories:

Today I learned something amazing: Safari supports higher than 60Hz refresh. It’s the only mainstream web browser that doesn’t, and I have never understood why, but apparently as of the end of 2025 in Safari version 26.3 (and maybe earlier) you can enable it. Here’s how to do it.

I won’t paste the steps here, so you’ll have to click through and visit Matt’s website (I keep recommending his work, and he’s doing some really interesting work with “micro apps” lately). I can’t believe this feature is disabled by default on iOS and iPadOS; I turned it on several days ago, and it made browsing with Safari significantly nicer.

Also new to me: I discovered this outstandingly weird website that lets you test your browser’s refresh and frame rates. Just trust me and click through that as well – what a great way to show people who “don’t see” refresh rates what they actually feel like in practice.

Permalink

LLMs Have Made Simple Software Trivial→

I enjoyed this thought-provoking piece by (award-winning developer) Matt Birchler, writing for Birchtree on how he’s been making so-called “micro apps” with AI coding agents:

I was out for a run today and I had an idea for an app. I busted out my own app, Quick Notes, and dictated what I wanted this app to do in detail. When I got home, I created a new project in Xcode, I committed it to GitHub, and then I gave Claude Code on the web those dictated notes and asked it to build that app.

About two minutes later, it was done…and it had a build error.

And:

As a simple example, it’s possible the app that I thought of could already be achieved in some piece of software someone’s released on the App Store. Truth be told, I didn’t even look, I just knew exactly what I wanted, and I made it happen. This is a quite niche thing to do in 2026, but what if Apple builds something that replicates this workflow and ships it on the iPhone in a couple of years? What if instead of going to the App Store, they tell you to just ask Siri to make you the app that you need?

John and I are going to discuss this on the next episode of AppStories about the second part of the experiments we did over our holiday break. As I’ll mention in the episode, I ended up building 12 web apps for things I have to do every day, such as appending text to Notion just how I like it or controlling my TV and Hue sync box. I didn’t even think to search the App Store to see if new utilities existed: I “built” (or, rather, steered the building of) my own progressive web apps, and I’m using them every day. As Matt argues, this is a very niche thing to do right now, which requires a terminal, lots of scaffolding around each project, and deeper technical knowledge than the average person who would just prompt “make me a beautiful todo app.” But the direction seems clear, and the timeline is accelerating.

I also can’t help but remember this old rumor from 2023 about Apple exploring the idea of letting users rely on Siri to create apps on the fly for the then-unreleased Vision Pro. If only the guy in charge of the Vision Pro went anywhere and Apple got their hands on a pretty good model for vibe-coding, right?

Permalink

macOS Tahoe’s Messy Menus→

Nikita Prokopov writing on tonsky.me about macOS Tahoe’s menu icons:

In my opinion, Apple took on an impossible task: to add an icon to every menu item. There are just not enough good metaphors to do something like that.

But even if there were, the premise itself is questionable: if everything has an icon, it doesn’t mean users will find what they are looking for faster.

And even if the premise was solid, I still wish I could say: they did the best they could, given the goal. But that’s not true either: they did a poor job consistently applying the metaphors and designing the icons themselves.

It’s a brutal assessment of the sprinkling of iconography throughout Tahoe’s menu system that had me nodding along in agreement as I read it.

There’s no denying the inconsistencies in icon choices, their lack of legibility, and the overall clutter added to menus. Yet at the same time, I can’t say I’ve been terribly bothered by them either. That’s probably because I use keyboard shortcuts and launchers so much, rarely relying on the Mac’s menu system. At the same time, though, part of me wonders whether those tiny icons are at least partially what drove me to buy a bigger monitor recently. I don’t think so, but maybe?

In any event, if you care about design, Prokopov’s detailed and well-illustrated analysis of Tahoe’s menu icons is well worth your time.

Permalink