The Talk Show With John Gruber

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.

440: ‘Flush a Radar’, With Brent Simmons

Brent Simmons returns to the show. Topics include NetNewsWire 7, MacOS 26 Tahoe, and I guess, some other stuff. 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: NetNewsWire 7. How to omit menu item icons on Tahoe. Rogue Amoeba, on omitting those icons. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

439: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’, With Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe. 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. 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: Classic Mac OS Control Strip. Manu Cornet’s oft-cited cartoon caricaturizing the org charts of major tech companies circa 2011. Black Ink. MarsEdit. Rogue Amoeba: “Removing Tahoe’s Unwanted Menu Icons”. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

438: ‘2025 Year in Review’, With Rene Ritchie

A look back at Apple’s 2025, with special guest Rene Ritchie. Sponsored by: Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: The classic Mac OS Appearance Manager and its support for (rather garish) themes: ATPM, August 2000: “GUI Junkie: Schemin’ and Themin’” by Christopher Turner. Includes screenshots. Wikipedia: Appearance Manager. Luria Petrucci celebrates 20 years on YouTube. Steve Jobs on product people vs. sales/marketing people, back in the early 1990s. John Browett’s brief tenure running retail at Apple back in 2012. His sacking was effectively a footnote in the announcement that Apple had parted with Scott Forstall. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.