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By John Moltz

This Week in Apple: The phial of Ivegladriel

John Moltz and his conspiracy board. Art by Shafer Brown.

This time the leaks are coming from outside Apple! Got a yacht? Jony Ive has the product for you. And Apple’s software has enough problems without the UK government messing it up.

Loose lips

Here’s a headline that Apple is sure to love.

“Here’s Every New Apple Product That Leaked Yesterday”

Thanks to a joint effort between Russian YouTube channels and… [checks notes]… the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (seriously, FCC?), several upcoming Apple products were all but confirmed this week. Despite Apple’s request for confidentiality, FCC documents pertaining to the wireless capabilities of a new MacBook Pro and Vision Pro were accidentally released to the public.

Oops. I guess Tim Cook is not up on his payments.

Meanwhile, Russian YouTubers uploaded purported unboxing videos for an M5-based iPad Pro.

While none of these leaks are particularly shocking, this is all definitely going to please Tim Cook like a pair of burlap undies.…

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.


We dive into the aftermath of the Jimmy Kimmel affair and the strange balance between TV networks and local affiliates. [Downstream+ subscribers also get: Streaming price hikes, Prime Video’s future, and David Letterman’s streaming strategy.]



By Dan Moren

Apple’s ICEblock capitulation is business as usual

So, I guess I’m going to need to keep writing this piece.

Say what you will about Apple’s decision this week to remove from the App Store the ICEBlock app that provided a way for people to crowd source the appearance of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their neighborhood. Is it good? Is it bad?1 One thing it isn’t is surprising.

We’ve been here before, so many times, since the beginning of this current administration. And I expect we’ll be returning to it for at least as long as the current administration is in power, maybe more. So let me repeat the maxim we should all be living by: do not expect a moral stand from a corporation.

ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron (who, it should be noted, has taken criticism from security experts over some of his claims about the app), made a strong statement about the removal, saying “Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move.”2

Look, we had this discussion when Tim Cook ponied up $1 million to the inauguration fund and showed up. We had this discussion when Apple changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico in Apple Maps. We had it when he gave the president the silly trophy and promised more investment in American manufacturing. We had it a couple weeks ago when he went to the state dinner in the UK.

This is not to say that they never take moral stands. Every company is, after all, comprised of people, and every group of people has its breaking point. Take the repeated criticism from Microsoft employees of the company’s stance on providing services to the Israeli military. That did finally elicit some change from the company. Even Apple has taken a stand in the past against government overreach, perhaps most notably perhaps during the San Bernardino incident in 2016 where the company refused to help the FBI create a backdoor to access the iPhone of a suspected shooter.

This one, frankly, was a loser for Apple to fight. Not least of all because there was a recent shooting that allegedly targeted agents of that federal agency. True or not, it’s easy for the administration to point to that incident and argue that an app could be used to facilitate violence.3 But, come on, this is the App Store: Apple regularly rejects and removes apps for capricious reasons about design and branding. Something this contentious? It simply doesn’t want the heat.

Some might argue that Apple is insulated from danger by its size. But in some ways, that scale makes it more vulnerable. It makes it a bigger target for entities like the government, who can deliver even more damage to its bottom line than pretty much any bloc of committed consumers. Apple does not want to go to war with the government. Especially this government.

And, let’s not forget, that when we’re talking as many customers as Apple has, it is inevitable that some percentage of them—some not insignificant percentage—is actually going to agree with a decision like this.

Pressure is what moves the needle, and I’m sorry, but expounding on social media or podcasts or even, frankly, articles on websites about how wrong these decisions are doesn’t cut it. We’ve seen what does work: pressure from employees, to a certain extent, but more than anything, money. Specifically, money lost. When ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel, it reported saw a massive number of cancellations of Disney+ (even if those exact numbers are in doubt, it seems clear that it was a lot). You want to make a difference? You’re going to have to put your money where your mouth is, uncomfortable as it may be.

But even then, even if the company does “the right thing,” it won’t be a decision taken from a moral standpoint. It will be practical. Mercenary. Because that is what is demanded by this technological/capitalist terror we’ve devised for ourselves.4 That’s the rules of the game. Them’s the breaks. When Apple made the decision to stand firm in the San Bernardino case, it did so not because it was the right thing to do, but because its business reputation relies on its claims of privacy and security.

As several commentators have pointed out, Apple removed a similar app called HKmap.live during the Hong Kong democracy protests in 2019 under pressure from the Chinese government. Should we worry that the U.S. government is now being uttered in the same breath as the Chinese government?

I mean, yes.

None of this is to defend Tim Cook or Apple.5 It’s merely to point out they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do by the rules of the game they are playing. Corporations in our capitalist system are not incentivized to act morally. We cheer the company when it takes action that we find laudable because its interests intersecting with our own, but those moments are not born of virtue, they’re just…serendipity.

John Gruber has, for many years, made a point of Apple’s priorities: “Apple first, users second, developers last.”. Most often that’s used to illustrate the company’s seeming disregard for developers, the very people who help bolster their business, but it’s important not to lose sight of the top of that list: Apple first.

Frankly, there’s a reason Apple is spending far more time and energy decrying the Digital Markets Act in Europe than it is fighting authoritarian decisions in the U.S., and it’s not about the political alignment of the company’s leaders. It’s about money.

Look, I’m not saying “don’t be a fan of corporations”…I’m saying we probably should have never been a fan of corporations. We let them entangle our pocketbooks and our psyches to their own enrichment instead of a relationship that should have been kept strictly transactional.

Do not expect corporations to be your proxy in the fight against authoritarianism. They are, simply put, not designed for it. They are machines designed to return profit to shareholders and that means they fundamentally rely on a stability that you’re not going to get from making waves. You will always be disappointed.


  1. Yeah, it’s bad. I mean, even the Cato Institute—the Cato Institutepublished a commentary back in July saying “[ICEBlock developer’s] Joshua Aaron’s creativity and public minded spirit is admirable.” 
  2. He ain’t wrong. 
  3. Never mind the reality, of course, that those agents were targeted at an ICE facility that probably could be found on any map. Which of course means the next logical authoritarian step is for the administration to demand tech companies start removing government building locations from their mapping software. 😬 
  4. Proponents will tell you that capitalism means the best solution wins. But that’s not strictly true. The American implementation of capitalism has entirely eschewed the moral axis theorized by father of capitalism, Adam Smith for an entirely quantitative model. Meaning what wins is not the best solution, but the most cost-effective. Capitalistic success in America is a Bezos chart
  5. Meanwhile, other tech CEOs are out here spewing actual, overt racism

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]


By Dan Moren

visionOS Diary: Work it

Screenshot of a macOS desktop with a virtual display showing a calendar, weather, and email app. The background features a serene lake and mountains at sunset. The dock at the bottom displays various application icons.

It’s been a busy few weeks around here, what with Apple’s latest platform updates and new iPhones, but I finally have time to catch my breath and talk about the most important of topics: the Apple Vision Pro.

We’ve already established that the Vision Pro is a “whoa” device that can be a great place to watch a movie, chat with friends, or even just browse the web for a while.

But most of us probably don’t spend the majority of our days entertaining ourselves—more’s the pity. And hey, this is a product with “Pro” in its name, for all of Apple’s various definitions of what exactly that word means. If the Apple Vision Pro is going to have some staying power, if it’s going to fit into my daily life, then it needs to help me get things done.

So, I’ve tried using the Vision Pro for a variety of work tasks over the past few months. I’ve written in it. I’ve revised. I’ve even edited a podcast. I’ve put it through its paces. I’ve tried to get things done. And while it does offer some capabilities that you won’t find anywhere else, that emphasis on “tried” has all too often been well-earned.

Continue reading “visionOS Diary: Work it”…


Amazon’s new hardware rollouts, the health tech we use, our favorite third-party apps, and Google’s new home ecosystem.


By Jason Snell

visionOS 26 Review: Keep moving toward the future

A man with glasses looking up in a modern, glass-roofed corridor with plants and bright lighting.
The side of my head does look like that!

If visionOS and the Vision Pro are all about charting a course to the future of wearable devices in front of our eyes, Apple needs to keep pushing toward that future at every opportunity. Fortunately, visionOS keeps moving forward, with several substantial feature improvements that have rolled out in updates over the past year-plus.

The ultimate fate of Apple’s vision products remains unclear. I have to assume that the long-term goal is a pair of lightweight glasses that we can use to overlay software on top of our world. Everything between now and then is about developing the technology to make that possible. And with visionOS 26, Apple is doing what it needs to be doing: iterating, making everything better, and building out an entirely new operating system one block at a time.

Continue reading “visionOS 26 Review: Keep moving toward the future”…


By Jason Snell

Two iPhones, an iPad, and a podcast: Adventures with Final Cut Camera

A man with a beard and glasses wearing headphones sits at a desk with a microphone and a water bottle. A smartphone screen shows a video recording interface with settings like '30 FPS,' '4K,' and a red record button. '26 MM' is displayed.
Myke framed by Final Cut Camera on an iPhone.

A bit lost in the hubbub around the announcement of the M4 iPad Pro back in May 2024 was Apple’s announcement of Final Cut Pro 2.0 for iPad and the accompanying Final Cut Camera app.

I know it was a bit lost because I used both of those apps last week to record the YouTube version of the Upgrade podcast and when I mentioned it to a bunch of people, they all seemed… surprised? I guess this one didn’t land, or at least didn’t land beyond a smaller group of video-oriented people.

So, in the interest of reminding you: the Final Cut Pro for iPad/Final Cut Camera thing (note to Apple: you couldn’t give this system a clever brand name?) is pretty amazing. You can connect up to four iPhones to an iPad running Final Cut Pro and use the iPhones as remote cameras to record a live event, adjusting settings on the fly and ending up with a full-resolution multicam project ready to be edited.

Myke Hurley and I were in Memphis for the St. Jude Podcastathon and needed to record Upgrade in person before we checked out and headed to our respective homes. Setting up an audio recording in a hotel room is easy, but recording video adds a bit of complexity. Last year, I used a 360-degree camera to shoot our episode, but not only was the result ugly, it also took hours of file conversion and uploading to get something usable.

Then I thought about using iPhones on tripods1 with Final Cut Camera. Given that it was new iPhone season, we knew we’d have plenty of iPhones, and I made sure we had three iPhone-compatible tripods. I figured we’d connect three iPhones to my iPad Pro, which I’d keep next to me to make sure everything was working properly. The system uses Wi-Fi direct for transfers (i.e., the devices talk to one another directly), so you don’t need to have a fast Wi-Fi network… which is good, because our hotel didn’t.

After moving around a lot of hotel furniture to try and get proper angles for a shot of me, a shot of Myke, and a two-shot of us both, we connected the iPhones to my iPad. While two of them connected immediately, the third iPhone wouldn’t connect no matter what we tried. We rebooted things, we disconnected and reconnected from both sides… nothing worked.

In the end, we decided to just use the iPad itself as a third camera. We didn’t have a tripod that fit it, so I put my suitcase on top of Myke’s bed, perched the iPad Pro on top of that, started the recording, and hoped for the best.2

Screenshot of video editing software with four video clips of a man speaking into a microphone.
The result of the shoot was a three-camera multicam clip ready for editing. (Shown here in Final Cut Pro for Mac.)

It turned out pretty well, all things considered. (The video settings of the cameras were mismatched, which I’m kicking myself about now—that’s my fault. I forgot to change the iPad’s capture settings as I had for the two phones.) I stopped our recording when we ended the regular show, and by the time we were done with the members-only portion of the audio podcast, the full-quality video files had streamed from the iPhones to the iPad.

When that was done, Myke used AirDrop to send me the audio files from our microphones. When I got to the Memphis airport, I sat in my favorite spot, ordered a drink, and got to editing.

Having our individual audio files helped this process a lot: With a glance at the waveform, I could tell which one of us was talking at any given moment. That meant that I could judge, entirely from the waveforms, whether I should be using a single-camera view or if there was enough back-and-forth that I should be using the two-shot.

Final Cut’s Multicam Clip feature made switching easy. On the timeline, it appears as a single clip, but you can bring up a view displaying all the different angles and tap to switch between them. Taps are immediately reflected on the timeline as cuts, which you can, of course, undo or switch as needed.

The edit went so smoothly that the entire 107-minute-long podcast was edited before I was halfway to Dallas. (I had expected that I’d need to export the project and edit it on my MacBook Pro, but I didn’t.)

Connectivity glitches aside, the entire process worked remarkably well. The next time I’m recording video of an in-person event, I’ll be sure to bring an old iPhone or two and possibly invest in more iPhone tripods.


  1. I used one of these, which is cheap but does the trick. Your mileage may vary. 
  2. It worked, though the iPad’s framing wasn’t ideal so I had to crop it later. And if something had gone wrong during the shoot, I had no way to know. (Fortunately the shooting iPhones save their video clips locally, so if there had been a disaster, we would’ve had a fallback.) 

We talk bags, notebooks and upgrade complaints and get mad at streaming services.


By Dan Moren

The Back Page: Liquidity crisis

Dan writes the Back Page. Art by Shafer Brown.

After a long summer of discontent, Apple released its latest operating system updates earlier this month, and the result has been RAGE! PANIC! RIOTING IN THE STREETS!

Wait, sorry, just checked, apparently that’s… Portland? That can’t be right.

The frustration over Liquid Glass has now reportedly reached fever pitch, hitting the point where users cannot accomplish the simplest of daily tasks, due to their simmering levels of anger. “Have you noticed the text on this button is misaligned by two pixels?” said one user. “I can’t even bring myself to click it, I’m so annoyed.”

While it may be tempting to gloss over these incidents1, the broad impact can’t be overstated: users driven to distraction have caused, by some accounts, a 47 percent drop in the US’s GDP since the new operating systems’ release, and the number of people admitted to emergency rooms for trips, falls, and walking into traffic while swearing at their phone is at an all-time high.…

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.


Jason’s spent a week with the iPhone Air and Myke’s been using his iPhone 17 Pro, so it’s time to discuss deeper thoughts about this year’s models. Also: internal chatbot chat, Intel investments, and miniature Macs!


By Glenn Fleishman

Export keys securely from Passwords to third-party managers

Glenn Fleishman, art by Shafer Brown

I ranted about the joy of passkeys and some of their limitations a few weeks ago, and that prompted a question from Six Colors member Ampsonic1, a naturally occurring and renewable source of excellent queries:

Can you use 1Password to store a passkey for an Apple Account?

Unfortunately, you can’t yet! Apple uses a unique process to generate the passkey for an Apple Account—it’s generated on device, the only time I am aware of this ever happens for a passkey. This makes it uniquely the only passkey that requires an Apple device to generate or use.2 It doesn’t even show up in Passwords, because it’s a different kind of beast.

Answered.

But, oh, there is more to talk about.

I have been reluctant to recommend 1Password or any password manager to hold your passkeys unless you regularly use non-Apple devices or are absolutely all in on 1Password (or another ecosystem) to the near exclusion of Passwords and iCloud Keychain as your password manager and sync solution.

The reason had two components: utility and portability.

  • It’s very useful to have integrated support for passkey filling across all your Apple devices with zero extra effort. This is true with third-party password managers, but because I started using passkeys with built-in support, I was invested in it.
  • You couldn’t yet move passkeys across ecosystems, so unless a site or app supported creating multiple passkeys for your account, you were stuck, unless you went through a rigamarole to disable and re-enable the passkey.3
Side-by-side screenshots of a prompt in iOS 26 to add a passkey with options to select among password managers (left) and a completed passkey addition to 1Password (right)
You can choose which password manager to use to store a passkey. (I’ve got 1Password 7 and 8 active for… reasons.)

Suppose you could easily copy passkeys among password-management ecosystems, eliminating the second point? In that case, the first point matters much less. Fortunately, we are on the verge of this major change! Along with portability, introduced in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 Tahoe, comes a few other passkey (and password) improvements. Apple didn’t document any of these in its release notes for the operating systems because they all require third-party buy-in, which is already starting to happen.

Bringing passkeys in line with passwords and raising them higher

I think passkeys are the bee’s knees, so anything that makes them easier to adopt is a great move in my book, as it will make everyone’s lives easier and their identities more secure. At WWDC 2025, Apple’s Andrew Abosh presented changes that are now in production releases to smooth the passkey wheels further.

Three of these are at the website end and require websites to make changes in their authentication software to take advantage. First, sites can now offer a streamlined sign-up process that Apple devices will pick up on, making it easy to generate a passkey as to accept a password recommendation from Passwords (or third-party password managers). Second, a website can push updates to your registered account—like if you change your email address—to the password manager so that those details associated with your passkey remain in sync. Third, there’s now an automatic upgrade workflow that lets a website prompt you to shift from password to passkey.4

But the particular issue above, portability, was addressed at timestamp 19:11 in the session.5 This standard has been in the works for a few years, and the FIDO Alliance—the group that has been moving us towards a “password-free” future, seriously—released a spec last October, then celebrated Apple’s news in June of this year.

You can see this in action with the latest operating system updates (step-by-step instructions next). When you use export in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or Tahoe, you’re prompted for a destination app instead of relying on the old method, which was an unencrypted comma-separated value (CSV) file. The dialog notes, “Your items are securely transferred to the app you choose.”

So that’s that. But what about 1Password? Let’s walk through the export process.

Import and export a passkey in the most secure way

The only bad news about the above is that the major password-manager developers haven’t all updated their systems yet to support this FIDO standard as implemented by Apple:

  • 1Password has no information about a timeline for adoption. (I sent a query.)
  • Bitwarden is ready to go as of its new release on September 23, the day I started writing this column!
  • Dashlane also added support around the same time. Timing is everything.

I’ll walk you through exporting from the Passwords app in iOS 26:6

  1. Open Passwords.
  2. Tap the more … button and choose Export Data to Another App.
  3. Select entries and tap Continue.
  4. Acknowledge the truth of what Apple tells you about exporting passwords and tap Continue.
  5. Choose an applicable app, such as Bitwarden. Tap Continue.
  6. Apple alerts you that these password entries will be exported to the third-party password manager. Tap Continue in “App Name.”
  7. In that app, follow the steps to complete. In Bitwarden, you tap Continue to import the entries.
Screenshots side-by-side of exporting passwords or passkeys from Passwords in iOS: step 1 (left), choose entries; step 2 (right), confirm proceeding.
You first select password entries, which can include passkeys or passwords or both, then confirm your intention to proceed to export.
Screenshots side-by-side of exporting passwords or passkeys from Passwords in iOS: step 3 (left), select a destination; step 4 (right), confirm export to app.
You choose a destination among available apps, then confirm you want to export to that app.

I would have shown you Tahoe, instead, because it has better selection tools for choosing entries first; then you export them. However, there is a bug either in Tahoe or Bitwarden, as I cannot get the app to appear as a choice. Here are the steps, nonetheless, for when this works in the near future:

  1. Launch Passwords.
  2. Select entries with passkeys (or other passwords) to export.
  3. Choose Export Selected Item to App.
  4. Authenticate with Touch ID or your account password. (iOS and iPadOS don’t prompt you for this authentication.)
  5. Select a Destination app and click Continue. (This is where Tahoe fails me.)
  6. Confirm the export by clicking Continue in “App Name.”
  7. Complete the import in the other password manager.

This process copies the passkey without moving it. Passkeys don’t need to be refreshed, since only your devices possess and sync the private keys required for your part of the authentication. Unless your equipment was compromised, the passkey could last forever.

Update: Unfortunately, I initially answered the question at the head of this question incorrectly. I had a false memory of receiving a prompt to create a passkey for my Apple Account; that is not how it works. For now and possibly forever, Apple Account passkeys are locked to devices and cannot be exported. Thanks to an alert reader for pointing this out!

Update: Dashlane and Bitwarden now both support passkey export. Still no update from 1Password.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]


  1. Did you know members have a direct feed into my brain…er, question queue? See the bottom of this post. 
  2. Because this is a device-based key, it is stored in Secure Enclave, making portability impossible. Apple may never allow third parties to manage an Apple Account passkey. 
  3. On sites that allow multiple passkeys, it can be as easy as clicking another plus sign and choosing the correct password manager to store the second key. 
  4. These features are based on standards, although Apple is the first to adopt them as far as I can tell. Eventually, other browser makers, password managers, and operating systems should adopt them, and you will be able to have this experience on any device and in any ecosystem. 
  5. Apple developer Ricky Mondello also noted on August 18, probably in response to my column, that this feature was coming. 
  6. Apple has not yet included this information in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or Tahoe support pages. 

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest book, which you can pre-order, is Flong Time, No See. Recent books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made.]


By John Moltz

This Week in Apple: To laugh, perchance to scream

John Moltz and his conspiracy board. Art by Shafer Brown.

Apple has HAD ENOUGH of government overreach, Tim Cook makes a new friend, and the App Store remains undefeated.

Practicing my tight five

Apple would like you to know that it is VERY UPSET with certain policies of the government. It’s so upset in fact that it has taken the time to publish a 1,700-word complaint about overreach by an oppressive regime bent more on domination than helping citizens, something Apple feels very deeply about and is now standing up for.

About time. Yes, finally—after various reprehensible and failed attempts at appeasement—Apple is telling the Trump administration that its policies are-

[puts finger to ear]

I’m sorry, I’m being told this is about the EU’s Digital Markets Act. How very embarrassing.

For someone, anyway.

Could be me, could be a multi-billion dollar company.

Sadly for Apple, much like running to the press never helps, neither apparently does publishing blog posts (tell me about it).…

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.



By Jason Snell

Apple adds iPhones to Friday Night Baseball coverage

A smartphone mounted on a camera rig displays a live sports event. The screen shows a stadium with spectators and a field. The rig includes cables and a battery pack for power.
Imagine an orange phone at Dodger Stadium. (Apple TV+)

Surprise! Last Friday, Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast of the Giants and the Dodgers featured multiple shots taken on an iPhone 17 Pro. On the final Friday night of the season, the company will repeat the feat during tonight’s Tigers-Red Sox game (7 pm ET).

According to Apple, four iPhone 17 Pros will be positioned at Fenway Park — in the Green Monster, the home dugout, and roaming the stands. In contrast to the secrecy of last week, the Tigers-Red Sox game will feature a bug in the corner of the screen that shows off the shots that are coming from an iPhone.

Is it a self-promotional gimmick? Sure, but Apple is paying a lot of money for MLB rights. Also, it’s not as if the company hasn’t pushed its MLB telecasts in a bunch of different ways. The Friday Night Baseball broadcasts look great, and have featured loads of helmet and body cams, a cinematic depth-of-field camera, and even in-stadium drone shots. Apple has probably earned at least one night of iPhone Pro product integration.

Unfortunately, even though the iPhone is capable of shooting 4K video and beyond, the ones in Apple’s MLB broadcasts will be locked to 1080p at 60 frames per second, because stadium broadcast infrastructures just haven’t caught up with the 4K world. The iPhones will be running the Blackmagic Camera app, allowing iPads back in the production trailer to control exposure and white balance settings remotely. They’ll also be attached to the just-announced Blackmagic Camera Pro Dock, which integrates all the different connections needed to fit them into the production and make them just another broadcast camera.

Apple says that one advantage of using iPhones rather than traditional broadcast cameras is that they’re small enough to fit in places like the corners of dugouts and less intimidating for candid fan shots, since we’re all used to looking at smartphone cameras. (Maybe not on tripods attached to Blackmagic Camera Pro Docks, but it’s still a fairly small footprint.)

According to Apple, Major League Baseball even attached its little holographic “validation” stickers to the iPhones used in last Friday’s broadcast from Dodger Stadium, signifying that they were the first iPhones used to broadcast an MLB game. (Apple didn’t say, but I assume one of those phones will be sent to the Hall of Fame?)

This is the fourth year of Apple TV+’s Friday-night doubleheader. Some reports have suggested the partnership might be ending after this season, but the latest one I’ve seen suggests that Apple TV+ would be continuing on Friday nights. When all that gets resolved, we’ll see if this was a last hurrah or the start of something new.


Apple posts thoughts on the DMA

In an unsigned post on Apple Newsroom, Apple has poured out its heart about the EU’s Digital Markets Act:

It’s been more than a year since the Digital Markets Act was implemented. Over that time, it’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU. It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together. And as new technologies come out, our European users’ Apple products will only fall further behind.

Tell us how you really feel, Apple.

There’s a lot to unpack in this post, and it runs the gamut from concerns that seem reasonably well-founded—Apple potentially have to comply with third party companies requesting the full content of a user’s notifications—to claims that are more than a little ridiculous: “For instance, the changes to app marketplaces are making iOS look more like Android — and that reduces choice.”1

Yes, you heard it here: Apple says that the iPhone are essentially identical to Android.

Look, the DMA is a far-reaching piece of legislation that’s intended to increase competition by knocking down the kind of barriers that keep these enormous tech companies insulated from competition. It’s also a byzantine and tortuous set of regulations created by people who don’t necessarily understand the way technology works and the implications of their actions. Both are true!

Threading the needle of “things Apple really should be doing to improve interoperability and competition” and “things that might have unforeseen consequences that actually fly in the face of the EU’s intentions” is a tricky proposition, and the mechanisms in place to challenge the rulings are, admittedly, restrictive.

What neither the EU nor Apple really want to admit here is that dealing with companies at this size is a matter of partnership and compromise. Government entities might be the only ones capable of wielding a stick big enough to make Apple sit up and actually make changes—and it is actively making those changes in the EU, which is not only to Apple’s credit but also proves that regulation can work—but ultimately getting the most out of something like the DMA requires both sides to operate in good faith, which seems to be lacking here.


  1. “For the first time, pornography apps are available on iPhone”. Ah, yes, remember the good old days when it was impossible for people to get porn on their iPhones? 🙄 

By Jason Snell

Nic’s Fix brings back original HomePods (like mine)

A disassembled smart speaker on a blue workbench with tools and components scattered around.
My HomePod, open to the world.

One of my original HomePods died last year of a sudden illness. It was survived by its fellow stereo pair. So a friend gave me her own lonely surviving HomePod, and the mismatched couple let the music play on for a little while. But then my other original HomePod died—also suddenly, same symptoms—leaving my friend’s HomePod tragically alone and my back bedroom studio silent.

That’s when another friend recommended Nic’s Fix, a one-man operation in the Seattle area that’s devoted to repairing HomePods. I sent my recently deceased HomePod to Nic, who seems to have mastered the disassembly and reassembly of HomePods—it’s tricky stuff!—and has cataloged the entire litany of reasons they die.

Nic fixed my HomePod live on YouTube, and it’s back in working order, reunited with its stereo pair. He says no HomePod repair exceeds $90, so it seemed like a pretty good deal rather than going out and finding a new pair of smart speakers. Especially since I know that I can fix the other one if it dies, too.

Some other cool things about Nic’s service: He provides a one-year warranty, he’ll clean or even re-color your HomePod’s mesh while he’s at it, and he repairs and replaces obviously worn or tired parts when he spots them. Among others who have used his services are Dan Moren (whose HomePod was a victim of Death Farts), John Siracusa (like mine, no power), and Steve and Allison Sheridan (no power). Allison also interviewed Nic on her podcast.

What can I say? If you have an original HomePod and don’t want to say goodbye, I recommend Nic’s service.



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