The Talk Show With John Gruber

Latest Episodes:

435: ‘Lincoln Bio Services’, With Stephen Robles Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

Special guest Stephen Robles joins the show. Topics include indie media and YouTube, Shortcuts and automation, and the state of podcasting.

Sponsored by:

Uncommon Goods: Out of the ordinary gifts, great for the holidays. Save 15% off your next purchase after following that link.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Stephen goes indie:
- Stephen’s YouTube channel.
- Announcement: “I Don't Have a Job Anymore, Thanks to You”.
- Video: “These Shortcuts Are Magic”.
Primary Technology: Stephen's podcast, with cohost Jason Aten.
- Episode 74, May 2025, with yours truly as a guest.
Apple Podcasts and AI-generated chapters:
- Apple Podcasts for Creators: “Enhance Your Episodes With Chapters, Links, and More”.
- Daring Fireball: “Apple Podcasts Is Adding AI-Generated Chapters for Podcasts Without Chapters”.
- Primary Technology discussion.
- Beard.fm: “Apple’s Losing Its Podcast Legacy”.
Downie, a fantastic Mac app for downloading local copies of videos from the web (especially YouTube).
- Daring Fireball post on Downie 4, from early this year.
Transloader — Apps from Eternal Storms that allow you to initiate downloads on a Mac remotely from an iPhone, iPad, or another Mac.
F-Bomb paperweight at sponsor Uncommon Goods.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

434: ‘Knee-Jerk Contrarian’, With Dan Frommer Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

Special guest Dan Frommer returns to the show. Topics include the indie media business, the iPhone Pocket, the iPhone Air (including rumors about the second generation model), AI “personalities”, and five years of Apple Silicon Macs. Also, six years of Dan’s site, The New Consumer.

Sponsored by:

Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off.
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.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Dan’s site: The New Consumer.
- Fromedome.
iPhone Pocket:
iPhone Air:
Jason Snell at Six Colors, in 2022: “Find Photos Taken by Specific iPhone Lenses”.
Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, Two MLB Pitchers, Charged in Gambling Investigation.
Ricoh GR IIIx:
- A few example photos I’ve taken with mine.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

433: ‘Meat Bags’, With Brian Mueller Oct 31, 2025

Show notes

Special guest Brian Mueller, developer of Carrot Weather, joins the show to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his utterly ridiculous but totally serious weather app.

Sponsored by:

Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.
Uncommon Goods: Out of the ordinary gifts. Get 15% off your next purchase.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

432: ‘You and Frank Sinatra’, With Dan Moren Oct 26, 2025

Show notes

Dan Moren returns to the show. Topics include Atlas, ChatGPT's new web browser (or anti-web browser) for the Mac; Apple's loss in a "landmark" regulatory lawsuit in the UK regarding App Store commission rates; multiple reports of poor sales for the iPhone Air; and Apple's M5 product announcements: MacBook Pro, iPads Pro, and Vision Pro.

Sponsored by:

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.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Sleep++, David Smith’s iOS sleep app that ties into Apple Health data, and gives what I think is a much more accurate and interesting “sleep score” than does Apple Health itself in iOS 26.
ChatGPT Atlas: new Chromium browser for Mac:
- OpenAI’s announcement.
- Their promotion to get 7 days of higher ChatGPT usage if you make, and keep, Atlas as your default browser.
- Anil Dash: “ChatGPT’s Atlas: The Browser That’s Anti-Web”.
- Simon Willison’s initial thoughts.
- Michael Tsai’s roundup of links.
Reuters: “Apple Loses Landmark UK Lawsuit Over App Store Commissions”.
Multiple reports suggest the iPhone Air is not selling well.
- But it seems like Apple isn’t doing any advertising for the iPhone Air (or regular iPhone 17) at all — (yet?).
Dan’s Six Colors coverage of the M5 speed bump updates from Apple:
Dan’s review of the new Dual Knit Band for Vision Pro (which is now the only band included by default with the M5 models).
My piece on the M5 announcements.
Dan’s previous appearance on The Talk Show, from October last year, talking about — déjà vu — new Mac hardware.
“&udm=14” — AI-overview-free Google search, from Ernie Smith. Also: My DF post about it back in May.
Dan’s personal website, with links to his science fiction novels and short stories.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

431: ‘Iconic Pig Lipstick’, With John Moltz Sep 30, 2025

Show notes

John Moltz returns to the show to talk about the iPhone 17 lineup: the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 17, and the no-number iPhone Air. Not one word about baseball, but some Star Wars talk may or may not have snuck in.

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. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.
Factor: Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for one year.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Halide -- a great iPhone camera app with a "Technical Readout" feature that provides detailed specs regarding every camera on your phone.
Techmeme's roundup of iPhones 17 reviews that actually were published on the embargo date.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

430: ‘Ersatz PopSocket’, With Andru Edwards Aug 31, 2025

Show notes

Special guest Andru Edwards joins the show. Topics include Google’s Pixel 10 event and the Pixel 10 family of devices, AI’s effect on computational photography, foldable phones, and some speculation on Apple’s September 9 “Awe Dropping” event.

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. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.
Notion: The best AI tool for work, with your notes, docs, and projects in one space.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Where to find Andru:
Google’s Pixel 10 family comparison page (copying Apple’s longstanding “Compare” pages to a T).
Google’s Pixelsnap compatibility / support page.
“Awe Dropping” Apple event: Tuesday 9 Sept.
Me being snarky about foldable phone sales on Threads.
Adobe’s Project Indigo — a free expert camera app for iPhone, spearheaded by Marc Levoy, who was previously at Google on the Pixel camera team.
iPhone 4 bumper cases.
Majin Bu’s leaked reveal of Apple’s supposed Crossbody Strap for the iPhones 17.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

429: ‘Weird Turtle Fake Out’, With Matthew Panzarino Aug 25, 2025

Show notes

Matthew Panzarino returns to the show. Topics include 007 logo creator Joe Caroff’s death at 103, Google’s weird “Made by Google” event hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the UK supposedly dropping its demand for an iCloud encryption backdoor, and Apple’s workaround for the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor patent stalemate.

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. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.
Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

428: ‘Michigan-Starred Fine Dining’, With Louie Mantia Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

Special guest Louie Mantia joins the show to talk about Liquid Glass, the various OS 26 updates, and the worrisome state of Apple’s UI design overall. Also: sandwiches.

Sponsored by:

Quip: A supercharged clipboard manager and text expander for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Notion: The best AI tool for work, with your notes, docs, and projects in one space.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

Louie’s personal website, chock full of downloadable wallpapers, icons, and more.
Louie, on Alan Dye: “A Responsibility to the Industry”.
Louie on Mastodon.
Parakeet, Louie’s design partnership with Luka Grafera.
Steve Jobs introducing the new icon for iTunes that Louie made (the best iTunes icon ever).
Daring Fireball: “Sorry, MacOS Tahoe Beta 2 Still Does the Finder Icon Dirty” (with links, at the bottom, to Louie’s mockup of how Liquid Glass versions of the Finder icon should look).
My polls on light/dark mode preferences on your phone: Mastodon and Threads.
NeXTStep’s GUI and icons, including the realistic “folders” and super-detailed “home” with shrubbery and a tree in front of the house (and another collection just of NeXTStep’s icons).
Redweld — Makers of the iconic (no pun intended) expandable files that NeXT’s folder icons were based on.
The wonderfully skeuomorphic original interfaces for Apple’s iPhone Voice Memos and Podcasts apps.
Steve Jobs introducing Aqua at Macworld San Francisco in January 2000.
A July 1986 draft of the original Human Interface Guidelines (PDF) from Apple, including a brief section on “Perceived Stability” (followed by a section on “See-and-Point versus Remember-and-Type”).

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

427: ‘The Shift-2 Crowd’, With Jason Snell Jul 25, 2025

Show notes

Jason Snell returns to the show to talk about the early PC platform rivalries of the 1980s, iOS 26 leaks (and Apple suing YouTuber Jon Prosser), the various Apple OS 26 public betas and the state of Liquid Glass, and more. (Where by “more” I mean a little baseball and keyboard nerdery.)

Sponsored by:

Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.
Sentry: The real-time error monitoring and tracing platform that helps dev teams and tech companies build better, more reliable products. Use code talkshow for 3 months free and 150,000 errors.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

The MLB All-Star Game "swing-off".
NuPhy Kick75 mechanical Bluetooth keyboard.
The weird key layout of the Apple Keyboard (ADB).
Tinkerboy’s ADB-to-USB adapter. (Email Tinkerboy if you’re interested — he has a USB-C adapter too, not listed on the website.)
Jason’s keyboard and the switches inside.
John on Myke Hurley’s “The State of the Workflow”.
Apple sues Jon Prosser over Liquid Glass leaks.
Un-redacting the redacted names in the lawsuit.
Wikipedia on Think Secret and "Nick DePlume", its pseudonymous author. See also: Vintage DF coverage of Think Secret.
Ray Gun magazine and designer David Carson.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

426: ‘The Cutting Edge Latest Supermodel’, With David Smith Jun 30, 2025

Show notes

Special guest David Smith returns to the show for a developer's perspective look at WWDC 2025.

Sponsored by:

TRMNL: A hackable e-ink display. Save $15 with code GRUBER.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.

Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good.

Links:

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

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