The Talk Show With John Gruber

445: ‘Apple at 50’, With John Siracusa

Who better to join the show to commemorate Apple’s 50th anniversary than John Siracusa? Sponsored by: Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: The Commodore VIC-20. Apple’s looks-good-to-this-day “Snow White” hardware design language from the 1980s, created in collaboration with Frog Design. The Apple IIc — in my opinion, the epitome of “Snow White”. Frog Designed turned 50 back in 2019, and The Verge has some amazing photos from their collection, including a jaw-dropping prototype for the Lisa. Star Blazers. Your truly, back in 2014, on the Finder’s “Special” menu. Yours truly guesting on The Verge’s Version History podcast, to talk about the original Macintosh. Hyperspace — Siracusa’s perfectly-named Mac utility for saving space via APFS magic. ATP (a pretty good podcast), and episode 683 in particular (a pretty good episode of that podcast, wherein Marco Arment tells the tale of the Mac Mini server farm he built for Overcast’s now-in-beta generated-transcripts feature). Infinite Mac — classic Mac (and NeXTStep) emulators that run in your web browser. “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass..” ResEdit 2.1 Reference — still hosted at Apple’s website. SNL’s “McIntosh Jr.” commercial, the best Apple parody ad ever made. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

444: ‘You’re Going to Have the Niggles’, With Christina Warren

Christina Warren returns to the show to discuss Apple big month of product announcements -- in particular, the iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo. And we pour one out for the Mac Pro. Sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: The iPhone 17e. Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo. My review: The MacBook Neo. Apple Discontinues the Mac Pro With No Plans to Bring It Back. Yankees-Giants opens MLB season, on Netflix. Nomad 65W Slim Power Adapter. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

443: ‘The Pogue Feature’, With David Pogue

Special guest David Pogue discusses his excellent and amazingly comprehensive new book, Apple: The First 50 Years. Sponsored by: Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: “[Apple: The First 50 Years]” official website. Hardcover: Amazon Bookshop.org E-book: Kindle Apple Books Photo of Sculley and the other white dude in suits on his executive team, circa 1993, from page 251. (My son Jonas quipped that they look like the executives from the company that made Robocop.) The “Apple at 50” event David hosted at the Computer History Museum earlier this month. The similar event David hosted two years ago, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

442: ‘Bad Dates’, With Jason Snell

Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss the 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card, MacOS 26 Tahoe, Apple Creator Studio, along with what we expect/hope for in next week’s Apple product announcements. Sponsored by: Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report Card. Kieran Healy, in a post at Six Colors published after we recorded the show: “Charting the Vibes in the 2025 Apple Report Card”. Kieran Healy’s homepage/weblog. My 2025 Apple Report Card. Upgrade: “The Shifting Sands of Liquid Glass” (wherein Jason and Myke discuss this year’s report card, and Jason makes rascally comments supporting MacOS 26 Tahoe. (And Myke isn’t much better.). Apple’s July 2025 announcement of the Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit. Derek Sivers, in 2005: “Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution”. ChangeTheHeaders — a Safari extension I convinced Jeff Johnson to build, which, among other things, allows me never to be served WebP images in lieu of PNG or JPEG. StopTheMadness — the older sibling, companion Safari Extension to ChangeTheHeaders that gives you explicit control over all sorts of web features, on a per-website basis. (I conflated the two during the show.) WebP. Mac Launchers: LaunchBar (my favorite, and until Tahoe, Jason’s too). Alfred. Raycast. Tuna. Quicksilver. Incomplete list of what’s wrong with MacOS 26 Tahoe: Terrible app icons. The terrible idea to include inscrutable, inconsistent icons next to just about every menu item in every app, as documented by Jim Nielsen and Nikita Prokopov, and linked to by yours truly here and here, respectively. Norbert Heger: “The Struggle of Resizing Windows on macOS Tahoe” — and a follow-up. Daring Fireball: “Why It’s Difficult to Resize Windows on MacOS 26 Dyehoe”. Daring Fireball: “Bad Dye Job”. Stephen Hackett’s MacOS Screenshot Library at 512 Pixels. Steve Krug’s classic book, “Don’t Make Me Think”. The Appearance Manager and the themes that never actually shipped for classic Mac OS. Comparing Alan Dye’s horseshitty introduction of Liquid Glass at WWDC 2025 to Steve Jobs’s introduction of Aqua back in 2000. Manu Cornet’s 2011 classic: “Organizational Charts In Major Tech”. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

441: ‘Serious Opinionators’, With Adam Engst

Adam Engst returns to the show to talk, in detail, about certain of the UI changes in iOS 26 and Apple's version 26 OSes overall. In particular, the new Unified view in the Phone app, and the Filter pop-up menu in both the Phone and Messages apps. Also: a shoutout to Balloon Help. Sponsored by: Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Adam’s two pieces on the Classic and Unified views in the iOS 26 Phone app: “Hidden Setting Controls What Happens When You Tap a Call in the Phone App”. “Comparing the Classic and Unified Views in iOS 26’s Phone App”. My link post, with some commentary. Reader support for TidBITS in 2026. Brent Simmons, linking to code, on how to eliminate all the menu item icons in a Mac app built for MacOS 26 Tahoe. Paul Kafasis’s One Foot Tsunami. Nikita Prokopov: “It’s Hard to Justify Tahoe (Menu Bar) Icons”. Yours truly, linking to Prokopov: “A shitty idea that works against usability, inconsistently implemented, all in the name of adding some ugly visual bling to the UI.” Jim Nielsen on Tahoe’s menu-item icons: “Icons in Menus Everywhere — Send Help”. Yours truly, linking to Nielsen: “Well, who’s laughing now?” Norbert Heger: “The Struggle of Resizing Windows on macOS Tahoe” — and a follow-up. Daring Fireball: “Why It’s Difficult to Resize Windows on MacOS 26 Dyehoe”. Daring Fireball: “Bad Dye Job”. Episode sponsor Sentry’s two-minute video showing how to use Seer, their AI debugging agent. TipKit Apple Developer documentation. Balloon Help in System 7. David Pogue’s soon-to-be-released book: “Apple: The First 50 Years”. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.