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The Deep-Expertise Edition Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramanya will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, and will lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation.

Subramanya was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant, and Apple says that he has "deep expertise" in both AI and ML research that will be important to "Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features."

User Experience

Why Is ChatGPT For Mac So Good?, by Allen Pike

At the end of the day, the ChatGPT app for Mac is good because they care. They have a product-led growth model that justifies spending the resources, an organizational priority on user experience, and a team that can execute on that mission.

An App Named Alan, by Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

The bar for what constitutes acceptable user interface design seems to have fallen low enough that it is tripping everyone at the two major desktop operating system vendors.

Fraggle Rock

Apple TV Debuts Trailer For Holiday Special “The First Snow Of Fraggle Rock”, by Apple

Today, Apple TV debuted the trailer for the all-new holiday special “The First Snow of Fraggle Rock,” set to premiere globally on Friday, December 5. The special features a cameo appearance by musical artist and internet sensation Lele Pons that includes a duet of the classic, beloved “Fraggle Rock” song “Our Melody” with Gobo, along with two other holiday numbers.

Explaining The 'Fraggle Rock' '80s Callback In The New Christmas Special, by Erin Maxwell, Remind

Now Gobo is seen on the streets outside the workshop, surrounded by snow and Christmas cheer, and he is freaking out. It is a tip of the hat to fans who have waited for this moment for over 40 years, hoping to see more than just Traveling Matt in our world. Puppeteer, voice of Gobo, and executive producer Tartaglia described the special as a “love letter to the fans.”

Stuff

Getting An iPhone Back On The Wi-Fi Network, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

There are other things to try first, but when your iPhone is out-and-out misbehaving when it comes to Wi-Fi, Reset Network Settings is worth a go. It seems scary, but it has very few side effects and sometimes is all you need to do to get things back on an even keel.

Some Apple Watch Series 10 Owners Are Reportedly Getting Free Replacements Due To A Paint Flaw, by Alex Blake, TechRadar

The Apple Watch Series 10 is one of the best Apple Watches, but one particular model appears to have a small cosmetic problem. If you’ve got one in the Jet Black colorway, you might want to take it off and check its underside – that’s because some people are reporting that the coating is corroding and coming off. And the good news is that Apple appears to be taking the issue seriously.

Apple Launches Tap To Pay On iPhone In Singapore, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Tap to Pay will initially support Adyen, Fiuu, HitPay, Revolut, Stripe, and Zoho in Singapore. Apple says Grab will offer Tap to Pay on iPhone beginning early next year.

Develop

10 Years Of Writing A Blog Nobody Reads, by Joe Boudreau

Writing a blog, or anything really, is your contribution to public discourse. Sure, this blog only averages 10 page views a week (9 are bots and 1 is me) but I'm still throwing my ideas out there into the digital ether. If you're publishing something on the internet, you might as well stand tall behind your words and wait for someone to call bullshit.

Notes

Your iPhone Already Has iPhone Fold Software, But Apple Won’t Let You Use It, by Craig Grannell, Wired

Hackers poking around in iOS 26 recently uncovered something Apple definitely didn’t intend anyone to see: every modern iPhone is running the operating system Apple’s upcoming “iPhone Fold” will likely use. Which means these phones are—right now—already capable of running a full, fluid desktop experience.

[...]

For years, Apple has insisted that iOS and iPadOS are distinct, despite sharing code and habitually borrowing each other’s features. But a self-proclaimed “tech geek” on Reddit who got iPad features running on an iPhone claimed they’re not merely similar—they’re essentially the same: “Turns out iOS has all the iPadOS code (and vice versa; you can for instance enable Dynamic Island on iPad).”

34 Years Ago, Apple Created A Multimedia File Format For The Mac, And It’s Still All Around Us, by Jason Snell, Macworld

Thirty-four years later, QuickTime may seem like a quaint product of a long-lost era of Apple. But the truth is, it’s become an integral part of the computing world, so pervasive that it’s almost invisible. I’d like to forget most of what happened at Apple in the early 1990s, but QuickTime definitely deserves our appreciation.

Bottom of the Page

One of the main reason my preference for PC operating system started with Mac OS was QuickTime. Why? Because as a junior software developer in my first job, I worked on both Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Video for Windows, and I immediately knew who is better at stuff.

The first operating system that wowed me, however, was NeXT, which I've got to use when I was studying. Of course, it was not feasible for a poor student, nor a poor junior software developer, to ever save up money to buy a NeXT computer, so I never used NeXT after that.

But then, a few more years later, well, you know…

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Thanks for reading.