Tim Cook has faced mounting criticism for his friendly interactions with President Donald Trump throughout this administration. Critics across social media and news outlets label his White House visits, positive public statements, and diplomatic gestures as “sucking up,” “bending the knee,” or evidence that Cook personally supports Trump’s policies. Any attempt to explain the business reasoning behind these actions gets dismissed as “making excuses for billionaires” which could ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Basic Apple Guy: With macOS 26, Apple has announced a dramatically new look to their UI: Liquid Glass. Solid material icon elements give way to softer, shinier, glassier icons. The rounded rectangle became slightly more rounded, and Apple eliminated the ability for icon elements to extend beyond the icon rectangle (as seen in the current icons for GarageBand, Photo Booth, Dictionary, etc.). With this release being one of the most dramatic visual overhauls of macOS’s design, I wanted to begi...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Today’s federal court ruling on Google’s antitrust case brought some mixed results. While Judge Amit Mehta decided against breaking up the tech giant or forcing it to sell Chrome, he did mandate that Google share certain search index data and user interaction information with competitors. Many are celebrating this as a win for competition, but I firmly believe that the courts are making a mistake here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this as some corporate apologist for Google. Th...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
After years on hiatus the headline news website has been relaunched in beta by a new owner and long term fan.| victorwynne.com
It seems that Dolby Vision 2 is basically Dolby’s attempt to fix the real-world problems that have been bugging people about HDR for years. The biggest change is something called “Content Intelligence” which sounds fancy but really just means the TV will actually be smart about what you’re watching and where you’re watching it. If you’ve ever been annoyed that dark scenes in movies are basically unwatchable unless you turn off every light in the room, their new “Precision Black...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Sam Biddle, writing for The Intercept: To bolster its “Advanced Technology Augmentations to Military Information Support Operations” — also known as MISO — SOCOM is looking for a contractor that can “Provide a capability leveraging agentic Al or multi‐LLM agent systems with specialized roles to increase the scale of influence operations.” So-called “agentic” systems use machine-learning models purported to operate with minimal human instruction or oversight. These systems ca...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Ibrahim Diallo, with a wonderfully thoughtful essay titled ‘What I Crave from Blogs’: When I click on a blog post these days, I’m not usually looking for the definitive encyclopedia entry or the slickest marketing brochure. Honestly? I’m hoping for something far simpler, yet increasingly rare. The sound of another human being figuring something out. I value both tutorials and personal experiences, but it seems like the latter is disappearing. I want their experience. The messy, subjec...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Ilya Somin, writing for Reason: Today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against President Trump’s massive “Liberation Day” tariffs in VOS Selections v. Trump, a case filed by Liberty Justice Center and myself on behalf of five small US businesses (we have since been joined by prominent Supreme Court litigators Michael McConnell and Neal Katyal; Neal skillfully conducted the oral argument before the Federal Circuit). The ruling also covers the case filed by twelve sta...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
I keep seeing people hold up Mastodon as the shining example of true decentralization whenever discussions about Bluesky’s centralized nature come up. While I understand the appeal of this comparison, the reality is more complicated than most people realize. Mastodon, despite its federated architecture, operates in ways that make it far less decentralized than its supporters claim. The most obvious issue lies in how users actually experience Mastodon. When someone decides to join, they face...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
From today’s release notes: Claude in Xcode is now available in the Intelligence settings panel, allowing users to seamlessly add their existing paid Claude account to Xcode and start using Claude Sonnet 4. (155826755) When using ChatGPT in Xcode, users can now start a new conversation with either GPT-4.1 or GPT-5, with GPT-5 set as the default. (158342780) I’m not sure how useful developers will find the updated ChatGPT integration, but I believe Claude will be very popular among a speci...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Ernesto Van der Sar, writing for TorrentFreak: Speaking directly with TorrentFreak, iTorrent developer Daniil Vinogradov (XITRIX) says that Apple did not reach out to him regarding the revocation of his alternative EU distribution rights. Soon after the issues appeared, Vinogradov sent a support request to Apple seeking clarification, but that wasn’t helpful either. Instead, Apple responded with a generic message related to App Store issues. After another follow-up last week, Apple informed...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Alexia, writing for the self-authored Alexia’s Space: Another thing I’ve recently implemented is a Low-Contrast Mode toggle at the top of every page It was brought to my attention by 7700e6, which has pretty sensitive eyes so the high-contrast was causing quite a bit of eye strain, especially on higher levels of brightness I was only reminded of this later by freeplay, but usually this would be implemented using the prefers-contrast media query, but turns out I don’t know a single brows...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
When Apple first jumped into live sports streaming just three years ago, it looked like the company was ready to play in the big leagues. Apple and MLB signed a seven-year deal worth roughly $85 million before the 2022 season, bringing Friday Night Baseball exclusively to Apple TV+. The move felt bold and strategic, positioning the tech giant as a serious player in the sports media landscape alongside traditional broadcasters and newer streaming rivals. Fast-forward to this past week, and the...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Emma Roth, writing for The Verge: Elon Musk is suing Apple and OpenAI over claims that their deal to build ChatGPT into the iPhone is stifling competition in the AI industry. In a lawsuit filed on Monday, the Musk-owned X Corp. and xAI also accuse Apple’s Apple Store of “deprioritizing” rival chatbots and “super” apps, including Grok and X. Musk’s companies claim that iPhone users “have no reason” to download third-party AI apps because the company “force[s]” users to use ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
When Apple recently announced a workaround for the blood oxygen sensor ban affecting Apple Watch functionality in the United States, some observers continued to dismiss Masimo as nothing more than a patent troll seeking to profit from lawsuits rather than innovation. This characterization misses the mark entirely, and ignores decades of genuine medical breakthroughs and life-saving technology that Masimo has brought to hospitals worldwide. Founded in 1989 by electrical engineer Joe Kiani, Mas...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
We believe effective child safety policies should be carefully tailored to address real harms, without creating huge obstacles for smaller providers and resulting in negative consequences for free expression. That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal argume...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Dominic Preston, writing for The Verge: When Trump Mobile first unveiled the T1 Phone, we were confused by the mixed marketing, which included dubious renders of what at least appeared to be an original phone along with multiple appearances from what was quite clearly a gold-plated iPhone. Now we can add Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra into the mix. The Trump Mobile team shared an ad to X on Wednesday pushing preorders of the T1, but with an image we’d never seen before. You don’t have to lo...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Eric Boehm, writing for Reason: The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were expanded this week to cover hundreds of imports that plainly are not steel or aluminum. Among the items targeted by the new tariffs: dairy products like milk and cream, as well as gasoline and other fuels, fire extinguishers, baby strollers, furniture, engines, and motorcycles. In short, anything that contains steel or aluminum or that is (as with dairy products) transported or ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
There’s been a lot of discussion since iPadOS 26 was introduced in June about how Apple has finally moved the iPad away from Steve Jobs’ original vision, transforming it from a simple content consumption device into something more computer-like. Some celebrate this evolution, falsely pointing to features like windowed apps and sophisticated multitasking as some sort of weak proof that Apple has successfully abandoned the constraints Jobs imposed. Even wrongly proclaiming that the company ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Last Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska left many of us wondering how we got to this point. Watching Putin step off his plane to F-35 jets and B-2 bombers flying overhead felt like witnessing America provide a military honor guard for someone who should be facing trial at The Hague, not receiving presidential treatment on American soil. The whole spectacle felt deeply wrong from the start. Putin greeted Trump with “Good afternoon, dear ne...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Perplexity’s response to Cloudflare’s crawling report completely misses the point about digital consent. When websites say no through robots.txt, that should mean no.| victorwynne.com
We believe effective child safety policies should be carefully tailored to address real harms, without creating huge obstacles for smaller providers and resulting in negative consequences for free expression. That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal argume...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Dominic Preston, writing for The Verge: When Trump Mobile first unveiled the T1 Phone, we were confused by the mixed marketing, which included dubious renders of what at least appeared to be an original phone along with multiple appearances from what was quite clearly a gold-plated iPhone. Now we can add Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra into the mix. The Trump Mobile team shared an ad to X on Wednesday pushing preorders of the T1, but with an image we’d never seen before. You don’t have to lo...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Eric Boehm, writing for Reason: The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were expanded this week to cover hundreds of imports that plainly are not steel or aluminum. Among the items targeted by the new tariffs: dairy products like milk and cream, as well as gasoline and other fuels, fire extinguishers, baby strollers, furniture, engines, and motorcycles. In short, anything that contains steel or aluminum or that is (as with dairy products) transported or ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
There’s been a lot of discussion since iPadOS 26 was introduced in June about how Apple has finally moved the iPad away from Steve Jobs’ original vision, transforming it from a simple content consumption device into something more computer-like. Some celebrate this evolution, falsely pointing to features like windowed apps and sophisticated multitasking as some sort of weak proof that Apple has successfully abandoned the constraints Jobs imposed. Even wrongly proclaiming that the company ...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Last Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska left many of us wondering how we got to this point. Watching Putin step off his plane to F-35 jets and B-2 bombers flying overhead felt like witnessing America provide a military honor guard for someone who should be facing trial at The Hague, not receiving presidential treatment on American soil. The whole spectacle felt deeply wrong from the start. Putin greeted Trump with “Good afternoon, dear ne...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
I can easily recall sitting in my broadcast journalism class reading this website on an eMac running OS X Tiger. Really made me feel nostalgic seeing the name MacSurfer. Definitely making it part of my news consumption again now. Source: macsurfer.com| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Apple’s latest addition to Xcode, the Processor Trace instrument, is one of those features that sounds pretty mundane until you actually try it. Then you realize it’s exactly what you’ve been needing for the performance mysteries that eat up hours upon hours of your development time. If you’ve been developing apps for a while, this story will sound very familiar. Your app runs fine in testing, but then users complain about performance issues or excessive battery drain. You fire up Ins...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Thomas Dohmke’s departure as GitHub CEO marks the end of an era that was always destined to be short-lived. With Microsoft eliminating the CEO position entirely and further folding GitHub into its CoreAI team, we’re witnessing the final absorption of what was once the internet’s most important code repository. This isn’t shocking news. It’s the predictable conclusion to a story that began the moment Microsoft bought the company back in 2018. When Microsoft acquired GitHub seven year...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
A city traffic engineer credits the success to lower speed limits and smarter design.| victorwynne.com
I read Thomas Dohmke’s piece about developers being “reinvented” through AI adoption, and while his vision of transformation may appeal to some, something important is missing from this narrative. The piece paints a picture of inevitable change, but it glosses over a fundamental principle that has always driven great software development: the right to choose your own tools and approach. There’s a troubling undertone to the argument: it suggests that developers who don’t embrace this...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Nate Anderson, writing for Ars Technica: In a 300-plus page final report released today, the US Coast Guard analyzed the 2023 Titan sub implosion from every conceivable angle and came to a clear conclusion: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was a dangerous and deeply unpleasant boss. His company used “intimidation tactics” to sidestep regulatory scrutiny, it was a “toxic” workplace, and its safety culture was “critically flawed.” The Titan itself was “undocumented, unregistered, non-c...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
There’s been an overwhelming amount of discussion lately about AI and how it’s affecting people who write content on the web. It seems pretty apparent that AI companies are hoovering up everything we write and using it to give people quick answers without (clearly) sending them to the original sources. It’s certainly a real concern, especially for folks who depend on their content to pay the bills. I’m not in that camp myself though. My website has always been a fun personal project r...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Time released a 100 beat podcasts of all time list and I disagree with what is listed in almost every sense.| victorwynne.com
Hartley Charlton, writing for MacRumors: Steve Jobs served as Apple’s CEO across two distinct stretches: first as interim CEO from September 16, 1997 to January 5, 2000, a period lasting 841 days, and then as official CEO from January 5, 2000 until his resignation on August 24, 2011, a span of 4,249 days. Combined, Jobs led Apple as CEO for a total of 5,090 days. Tim Cook, on the other hand, became CEO immediately following Jobs’s resignation on August 24, 2011 and has continuously hel...| Victor Wynne • All Posts
Tech criticism has become overly moralistic, treating business pragmatism as virtue decline. Apple’s success comes from mastering commerce, not ignoring it.| victorwynne.com
Obviously for a multitude of reasons I am firmly in the ‘screw Musk and Tesla’ camp, but I have to admit that the Cybertruck burger boxes are freaking adorable.| victorwynne.com
Acting President Claire Shipman: Columbia University has reached an agreement with the United States Government to resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws. As part of the resolution, Columbia will pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government. In addition, the University has agreed to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $21 million. Importantly, the a...| Victor Wynne - All Posts
Today, as part of this year’s World Emoji Day celebrations, Emojipedia is pleased to announce the long-anticipated relaunch of the real-time emoji analysis site EmojiTracker.com.| victorwynne.com
Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly become an important part of modern computing. These sophisticated applications often produce responses that feel remarkably insightful and relevant. While their interactions may appear straightforward on the surface, a closer look reveals surprisingly complex, low-level processes that occur behind the scenes. When a person submits a query to an LLM, the model is not simply pulling a pre-written answer from a vast database. Instead, it engages in a ser...| Victor Wynne - All Posts
The assertions that Apple’s AirPods need more success are misguided. The fact that the company pushes out free software updates for existing models prove their strategic strength and commitment to user satisfaction over the long-term.| victorwynne.com
Apple is defying the EU’s Digital Markets Act by blocking rival browser engines on iOS, protecting Safari’s immense profits. The result is the company ruining the open web.| victorwynne.com
Exploring the recent Trump and Epstein controversies, from a suggestive letter to White House efforts to control information, raising further questions about a potential cover-up.| victorwynne.com