Under Cook’s leadership Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately $350 billion to $4 trillion, representing a more than 1,000% increase, and yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025.

From a business perspective, it's undeniable that Tim Cook has been massively successful. Apple was big when he took over, but it wasn't the behemoth it is today. At a very core level, he has been remarkably good at his job. Big Business Boy Birchler has got to respect that.

Cook has also stood by some beliefs that I think are genuinely laudable. Apple's commitment to user privacy leveled up when he was in charge, and his drive to sustainability and the environment is worthy of praise.

That said, while his tenure has been financially successful, I think a lot of people feel like Apple isn't quite the company they originally fell in love with, and I hope Ternus can make us feel more that way again. I recognize that's hard when you're not the scrappy underdog, you're one of the biggest companies in the world, but I do think it's important for Apple to keep that "we do whatever is right for the user" energy and less of that "we extract as much as we're legally allowed to from every user and developer" energy. Insert something here about the shareholders' "bloody ROI".

I started to realise recently, but was fully reconciled in my mind after using the MacBook Neo for a few days. The realisation is that, when it comes to my personal devices at least, I’m not a pro and I don’t need the best / top of the range of every product I get to get a lot of joy, and productivity out of them. This is a completely obvious statement to most people reading this I imagine, and it’s kind of blown my mind it took me so long to realise it.

Other than my spell check really not liking the "realise" spelling my British friend uses here, I love this article. Andy points out something I've been wresting around with for a while as well: our computers are better (way better?) than they need to be.

The MacBook Neo is a fuckin' irresistible (I saw two in first class on a recent flight!) and the iPhone Air isn't lighting up the sales charts, but even I can't help but enjoy using this single-camera, okay-battery phone sometimes. By all accounts, the 17 Pro iPhones are selling quite well too, and part of that is because they're technically very good, but I can't help but also think that the colors and the design really hit with a lot of people.

For better or worse, I think that I remain a "pro" user. I was at a few concerts and a wedding recently, and I did regret not having the best cameras at a few of those, and while I am traveling with my Neo and using it as my "couch computer", every time I use my MacBook Pro, I go, "hot damn, that's amazing."

I still love the Neo, though. It's got…something…

There was a time when they could produce games in a moderately sustainable fashion, it seems, and they didn't need to be multi-million sellers. And in fact, the big multi-million sellers could help support this wide range of content, which in turn strengthens the platform. I think this black and white thinking of "if it's not the biggest thing, then it's a failure," is extremely dangerous and slowly whittles away at the overall life and vibrancy around a platform until it fails. Like this min-maxing that we're seeing, it's not healthy and it's not sustainable.

I could not agree more.

The biggest mistake Apple made in iPadOS 26 was making all of these changes in the iPad’s default mode. I’m the go-to tech support for a large group of older family members and family friends, and the iPad has always been something I recommend. Ever since iPadOS 26 came out, almost all of those people have needed help to learn the new window management UX, with several of them feeling anxious that somehow their iPad is broken. All of these changes should’ve been made a part of Stage Manager, leaving the default behavior as it was. Instead, the product that’s supposed to “just work” and be simple to use feels nothing of the sort.

I think the windowing in iPadOS 26 is really good, and is the best version of it they've ever offered. However, 10 months into using it, I still feel like my iPad is a bit more complicated than it was before, and I do long a bit for the simpler split view I had before.

I love the decade where every major electronics manufacturer was selling mp3 players but no one was asking where the mp3s were coming from

I would love to know what percentage of the music on MP3 players back in the early 2000s was pirated, but the number has to be astronomical. According to this article, in 2005, 20% of people were downloading music via peer-to-peer networks like LimeWire and BitTorrent. It's impossible to find specifics, but the impression most people seem to have is that the vast majority of music on people's iPods and Rios and Zunes were pirated. iTunes certainly helped here, but you gotta think the damage was done.

Not to make everything a comparison to what we're living through now, but I do think that it's notable that one of the most nostalgic, good-vibes products of many of our youths was fundamentally built on stealing from artists. Maybe you didn't (and be honest, didn't you?), but MP3 players and music piracy were hand in hand.

Safari is only good for one thing, which is battery life.

And:

Commonly accepted facts.

Accepted by who? Lunatics?

I would say ask any browser enthusiast.

And:

I'm on an Apple Silicon laptop. Battery life is going to be legit no matter what or where I'm going.

No, no, it's not. That's not true.

Bro, I'm a super turbo power user. I can at least get like four hours of battery life minimum.

The difference between Chrome and Safari in regular browsing for several hours is shockingly high. It's huge.

Really?

It's dramatic. This laptop is terrifyingly long-lasting battery on Safari, is average at best with Chrome.

I happened to test exactly this in 2024, and I took great care to document my process and findings. Here's what I found:

In my 3-hour tests, Safari consumed 18.67% of my battery each time on average, and Chrome averaged 17.33% battery drain. That works out to about 9% less battery drain from Chrome than Safari. Yes, you read that right, I found Chrome was easier on my battery than Safari.

Yeah, I found that in controlled tests where I did the exact same things in both browsers for hours at a time (across multiple test runs), and found that they were very close to each other, with Chrome using slightly less battery. As Marques put it, it sounds like Chrome halves his Mac's battery life. As someone who uses Chrome for work and spends all day in it doing work in Atlassian apps and video calls, I can confidently say it easily makes it through an 8-9 hour work day on battery. This is true of my M5 Pro and it was also true of my M1.

I asked for any sort of data from the past decade people had to back up the idea that Chrome was horrible on battery and Safari was a saint, and I got nothing sent my way in 2024. If you have it now, I'd love to see it! Hit me up on Mastodon if you've got it!

Until I get any sort of compelling data, I'm going to continue thinking that people who think this are just like people who think that religiously force closing your iPhone apps improves your phone's speed and battery. It's a shared hallucination that feels like it's true, even though it's not. Considering many Safari users can't seem to believe that Chrome is a faster browser than Safari these days either, despite effectively every benchmark showing this, I suspect the feelings will continue.