The Talk Show With John Gruber

By Daring Fireball / John GruberTechnology

The Talk Show With John Gruber episodes

June 26, 2025425: ‘Through the Wall Like Kool-Aid Man’, With Chance Miller
Chance Miller returns to the show to discuss the news and announcements from WWDC 2025.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
Daring Fireball: “One Week Out, Some Brief Thoughts and Observations on WWDC 2025”.
WatchOS 26 finally supports once-per-second ticking seconds hands on more watch faces on Series 10.
The ongoing dispute between Apple and Massimo over the blood oxygen sensors in recent Apple Watch models.
May 2024: “Apple Apologizes for Controversial iPad Pro Ad, Scraps Plans for TV Campaign”.
August 2024: “Apple Pulls Latest Ad After Criticism Over Depiction of Thailand”.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
1 hr 45 min
June 14, 2025424: ‘Live From WWDC 2025’, With Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel
Recorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose Tuesday evening, special guests Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel join me to discuss Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2025.
Video: This show is available to watch in 4K video on YouTube.
3D video with spatial audio: Exclusively in Sandwich Vision's Theater on Vision Pro, available on the App Store.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
WWDC 2025 Keynote.
Joanna’s full 24-minute interview with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak this week.
The Verge: 28-minute supercut of the WWDC 2025 keynote and their take on the 13 biggest announcements.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 7 min
May 29, 2025423: ‘Sewing Machine Repair Shop’, With Patrick McGee
Patrick McGee joins the show to discuss his must-read new book, Apple in China -- one of the best books about Apple anyone has ever written.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
“Apple in China”, Patrick’s spectacular new book.
Patrick on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.
Excerpt from the book in the Sunday Times of London.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
1 hr 33 min
May 26, 2025422: ‘A Monkey on a Rock’, With Stephen Hackett
Stephen Hackett, proprietor of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay (purveyor of many fine podcasts), joins the show. Topics include: IO (or if you will, io), the new joint venture of OpenAI and Jony Ive’s LoveFrom; the sheer fantasy of “Made in America” iPhones; and Fortnite’s return to the US App Store.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
Apple in China, Patrick’s spectacular new book.
Patrick on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.
Excerpt from the book in the Sunday Times of London.
Millions, Billions, Zillions, Brian Kernighan’s fun little book on practical day-to-day math.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 15 min
April 30, 2025421: ‘The Ratchet of Flippancy’, With Craig Mod
Craig Mod returns to the show to discuss his splendid new book, Things Become Other Things. Other topics include creating with AI tools (including programming), social media permanence vs. ephemerality, and more.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
“Things Become Other Things”, Craig’s new book from Random House (!):
Craig’s web page for the book — including tour dates.
Random House’s page for the book.
Purchase links:
Amazon
Bookshop.org
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Craig’s home page.
The Good Place — Craig’s write-up on designing and building (with Claude Code) his own custom Twitter-like ephemeral social network for members of his (fun, excellent) Special Projects website.
Ulysses — Craig’s writing app of choice.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
1 hr 54 min
April 20, 2025420: ‘The Best Hatched Plan’, With Glenn Fleishman
Special guest Glenn Fleishman returns to the show for episode 420 on 4/20, but everyone’s sober, I swear. Topics include Trump’s dumb tariffs and Glenn’s smart new edition of his book Six Centuries of Type & Printing.
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Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.
Links:
Pre-order “Six Centuries of Type & Printing: New Edition”.
My link to Glenn’s Kickstarter page.
“.BLUE proposes to create an Internet space in which businesses, organizations and individuals can create an Internet identity tied to the color and the concept of blue.”.
XKCD comic on open source dependencies.
Pathmark’s “No Frills” Brand.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 9 min
March 23, 2025419: ‘Podcasting Technology Cadence’, With MG Siegler
MG Siegler returns to the show to talk about the drama surrounding Siri and Apple Intelligence.
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Unofficial but surprisingly good transcripts.
Links:
Daring Fireball posts:
Apple Is Delaying the ‘More Personalized Siri’ Apple Intelligence Features
Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino
Gurman: Tim Cook Has Put Mike Rockwell in Charge of Siri, Reporting to Craig Federighi
A Postscript on the Singular Nature of Mark Gurman’s Reporting
Posts from MG at Spyglass, which you should subscribe to:
Apple Joins the Navy
Siri’s Quixotic Swim to Hawaii
The Siri Shuffle
MG’s March 2011 scoop at TechCrunch, “Legends of the Fall, Apple Style”, which correctly called the iPhone 4S moving from an annual June ship date to the fall (where it’s remained ever since), and the first suggestion that “Siri”, a startup Apple had acquired the year before, would be a big part of iOS 5.
AI labs that might, maybe, be acquisition targets for Apple:
Anthropic (Claude)
Perplexity
Mistral
Safe Superintelligence Inc. (easily the best / most confident website of the bunch)
Thinking Machines (their website wishes it were SSI’s)
Steve Jobs, taking Q&A at WWDC 1997: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try and sell it.”
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 29 min
March 08, 2025418: ‘Putting a Stink on the Letter X’, With Craig Hockenberry
Craig Hockenberry returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s new hardware this week — M3 iPad Airs, A16 regular iPads, M4 MacBook Airs, and the M4 Max and surprising M3 Ultra Mac Studios. And we go deep on The Iconfactory’s years-in-the-making new app, Tapestry — a universal timeline for the Internet.
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Unofficial but surprisingly good transcripts.
Links:
Daring Fireball posts of note:
“Apple Updates iPad Air (M2→M3) and Regular iPad (A14→A16), and Revamps Magic Keyboard for iPad Air”.
“Apple Announces, With Little Surprise, M4 MacBook Airs”.
“Apple Announces, With Much Surprise, Mac Studios With M4 Max and M3 Ultra (!) Chips”.
From January: “Openvibe, a Multi-Social-Network App for Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads (Supposedly), and Nostr”.
Tapestry: “Weaving your favorite blogs, social media, and more into a unified and chronological timeline.”
Craig, on the Iconfactory blog: “Enter Tapestry”.
Cheryl Cicha, also on the Iconfactory blog: “Tapestry: Past, Present, and Future”.
Tapestry Connectors — an open, easy (documented!) extensions API.
Fefes Blog — you’ll have to listen to the show to understand how this is a Tapestry-related link. But trust me, it’s a good story. It starts with this thread on Mastodon, which begins like a great novel: “It’s becoming clear that XML in RSS is the preferred tool of sociopaths.”
Molly White: “POSSE” (“Publish [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”).
Technology Connections on YouTube: “Algorithms Are Breaking How We Think”.
The Iconfactory:
Linea Sketch — “a lightweight digital sketchpad for your iPad”.
Wallaroo — fun new wallpapers every week, for iOS and Mac.
Tot — we didn’t mention this brilliant little notes app on the show, but I use it every day.
iPulse — a nerdy system monitor, with Iconfactory fit and finish. Runs in the background even on iOS.
Project Tapestry’s year-ago successful Kickstarter campaign.
Andre Torrez’s Tyke, the inspiration for Tot.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 43 min
February 24, 2025417: ‘Nothing Is Possible’, With Paul Kafasis
Special guest: Paul Kafasis. Special topics: Siri/Super Bowl nonsense, “Gulf of Mexico/America” nonsense, the iPhone 16e gets announced, and a veritable Bond villain buys the rights to the James Bond movie franchise.
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Unofficial but surprisingly good transcripts.
Links:
Super Bowl nonsense:
Every play featured in the 1977 CBS "NFL Today" opening credits would be a severe penalty for violence in today's NFL. Video on YouTube; story on Awful Announcing.
Apple in 2017, [encouraged people to ask Siri questions about the Super Bowl](
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/hey-siri-whos-going-to-win-the-super-bowl/
).
Paul's post at One Foot Tsunami: "Not So Super, Apple".
My post: "Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber".
"Gulf of Mexico" nonsense:
Daring Fireball: "Golfo del Gringo Loco".
Paul, thoughtfully: "Do Not Obey in Advance".
"Thoughts and Observations on Today’s iPhone 16e Announcement".
Rogue Amoeba: "The Developers Who Came in From the Cold".
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 1 min
December 24, 2024416: ‘A Professional Internet User’, With Vlad Prelovac
Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.
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Unofficial but surprisingly good transcripts.
Links:
Kagi.
Kagi Blog.
Kagi Search Stats.
Kagi Feedback, the Kagi Search issue tracker.
Orion — Kagi’s lightweight WebKit-based native browser for Mac and iOS.
Vladimir Prelovac’s homepage.
Apple’s 1987 “Knowledge Navigator” concept video, which supposedly took place in the “future” of 2011.
Wikipedia entry.
Daring Fireball, 2011: “The Type of Companies That Publish Future Concept Videos”.
Wikipedia: “Essential facilities doctrine”.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
2 hr 33 min