posts

Maureen Farrell at The New York Times:

It’s not uncommon for large companies doing big deals to make demands of their bankers and lawyers.

But Elon Musk has made a particularly bold demand of his Wall Street advisers ahead of the initial public offering of his company SpaceX.

Mr. Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. to buy subscriptions to Grok, his artificial intelligence chatbot, which is part of SpaceX, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about confidential discussions.

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Commander Reid Wiseman’s view is one we haven’t seen of our world since 1972:

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This week on the podcast:

Stephen has received the best follow-up in podcast history, Myke realizes something about his feelings for the Mac Pro, and Federico is charging his iPhone more than he expected.

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Our buddy is back! Juli Clover:

Apple has continued posting short videos featuring its new Little Finder Guy mascot on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, taking advantage of the popularity of the anthropomorphized Mac Finder icon.

The short videos promote the MacBook Neo through a series of Mac tips, all of which include Little Finder Guy in cute poses. A video about journaling features the character with a book and a pen, while another about the Passwords app has Little Finder Guy with a magnifying glass.

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Today, NASA made history by launching the SLS rocket and Orion capsule for the first crewed mission to cislunar space since Apollo 17 returned to Earth in 1972.

Watching the launch was wild. As Jason Snell mentioned to me, it is amazing how much the SLS sounds like a space shuttle, thanks to its mountain of recycled and upgraded shuttle-era components.

That sound — in contrast to footage that looks very similar to the launches of the old Saturn V — really struck a chord in me.

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Anniversaries and birthdays serve as an opportunity to both reflect on where you’ve been and think about where you are going… whether you’re turning 16, planning your 20-year high school reunion, or celebrating 35 years of marriage.

In the tech world, a milestone anniversary is a chance to revisit a product’s launch or a particularly meaningful update, inviting us to remember how far things have come.

Just like in relationships, as the numbers get bigger, those reflections can get harder to make. Memories fade, and as the decades pass, there are fewer miles on the road ahead.

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Ernie Smith at Tedium:

Recently, I had the chance to talk with a guy whose life, which is past the nine-decade mark, has been defined by just two weeks of it. You have likely heard the capsule version of his story repeatedly. He’s the man who gave up on one of the largest golden tickets in history. He created the first logo for a company who has been shaped more than any other by its second logo. And as he leaned into other pursuits, the other two people who founded that company with him, each named Steve, became legends in the world of technology. I would like to inform you that Ronald G. Wayne is not just the guy who gave up his 10% stake in Apple after just two weeks. He is so much more than that, a polymath, a creative, a writer, a talented artist, and the guy who meticulously got Atari’s stockroom in order. Today’s Tedium talks about the other 90+ years of Ronald G. Wayne’s 91 years on this planet where he didn’t work for Apple.

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I’m gonna have to dust off my Vision Pro for this.

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Joanna Stern, writing at The Verge:

It was January 2008, and Steve Jobs had just pulled the MacBook Air out of a manila envelope onstage at Macworld.

Within minutes, Windows PC executives everywhere lost their minds. They grabbed the nearest office envelope, tried to shove in their plastic laptops, and tore straight through the paper. Engineers were summoned. Assistants were dispatched for larger envelopes.

Okay, I have no proof that happened. But we all know what did happen next: imitation. Years of it.

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Harry McCracken:

As Apple turns 50, its presence in our lives is so pervasive—2.5 billion of the company’s devices are in active use—that its unlikely origin story is more resonant than ever. To tell it, I turned to the people who lived it:

• Apple’s two living cofounders, Wozniak and Wayne
• Mike Markkula, the early retiree from Intel whose guidance and money turned the garage startup into a company
• Some of Apple’s earliest staffers, including Bill Fernandez, its first full-time employee, and Chris Espinosa, who’s still there today
• Regis McKenna, the Silicon Valley marketing guru who established Apple as a brand
• Liza Loop, the educator who became Apple’s first user
• Ron Rosenbaum, the Esquire writer whose article inspired Wozniak and Jobs’s first business venture
• Nolan Bushnell, whose Atari provided Jobs with most of his pre-Apple work experience
• Lee Felsenstein, moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, the user group that prompted Wozniak to build Apple’s first machine
• Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, the creators of VisiCalc, the spreadsheet that gave the Apple II its killer app
• And many others

This oral history is incredible.

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Jason Snell, for The Verge:

When you think of Apple, you probably think of the iPhone, or maybe the Mac, or perhaps you’ve got fond memories of the iPod. But Apple’s 50-year run of creating tech products that people fall in love with — sometimes a lot of people, sometimes just a hardy few — would never have happened if it weren’t for a product and platform that’s been gone for decades.

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Jeff Geerling’s newest video features using an old FireWire camera via a Raspberry Pi hat… a thing I never thought about being possible:

What a time to be alive.

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