Podcast
The Talk Show With John Gruber
Hosted by Daring Fireball / John Gruber · EN
The director’s commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
30episodes
Episodes
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451: ‘Taking Drugs to Get Fat’, With John Moltz
3w ago01:51:27Tap to summarizeThe great John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s hardware price hikes in response to the global RAM/SSD shortage, and some spitballing on what we like about the UI changes in the MacOS 27 Golden Gate beta. Sponsored by: Coax: Defeat the tyranny of choice. Channel surf your Plex server. Relax with Coax. Even Realities: Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code talkshow to save 10% off the R1 Ring and/or Even Clip. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: RAM Doubler and DiskDoubler, which came from two different developers. StuffIt and Compact Pro. “Apple in China” by Patrick McGee. Patrick McGee on The Talk Show last year. “Go Computer Now!”, Ben Zotto’s book on Sphere Computer Corporation. Movies: The Player Airplane! Monty Python and the Holy Grail "Apple Faced Bipartisan Opposition When It Last Lobbied to Buy Chinese RAM in 2022". Gnome, Lex Friedman's clever new animated GIF search/library utility for Mac and iOS. (Also: My link to Gnome at DF.) Biff! -- Moltz's fun superhero TV/movie podcast cohosted with Dan Moren and Guy English. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →450: ‘Perp Walk for Selfies’, With Jason Snell
4w ago02:44:45Tap to summarizeJason Snell returns to the show for a look back at WWDC 2026, and a look ahead to Designed in California, his and Myke Hurley’s upcoming 50-episode Apple history podcast. Sponsored by: Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free daily greens, with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Finalist — A daily planner for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built on proven paper-based planning methods. DF readers get six months free; see details at the link. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: “Designed in California” — Kickstarter campaign running through the end of June 2026 to fund Jason and Myke Hurley’s 50-episode Apple history podcast. If you don’t back this you’re not hooked up right. WebKit in Safari 27 changes and notes, from the WebKit blog. Helium — My favorite Chromium browser for the Mac. Fast, free, no bloat. Camino — An open source Mac-assed web browser based on the Mozilla engine from the 2000s. Last updated in 2012, but, blessedly, the website still works. When it was discontinued I described it as “like a glass of ice water on a hot day for Mac users who wanted a modern but Mac-like browser in the early years of Mac OS X.”. Photos of John Ternus and Tim Cook at Apple’s WWDC post-Keynote “Tech Talk”: Mine. Federico Viticci’s. Jason on BBEdit 16, the world’s greatest text editor. Jason, writing at Macworld, on the foundation of Apple’s OS 27 updates. Jason, writing at Macworld, on Mac OS X Snow Leopard back in 2009. (The update cost $29 — which we thought was cheap, because previous Mac OS X updates cost $129.) Boston College’s Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →449: ‘Live From WWDC 2026’, With Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel
Jun 1001:59:29Tap to summarizeRecorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose on Tuesday 9 June 2026, special guests Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel join John Gruber to discuss Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2026. Video: This show is available to watch on YouTube. 3D video with spatial audio: Exclusively in Sandwich Vision's Theater on Vision Pro, available on the App Store. Sponsored by: DetailsPro — Design with SwiftUI anytime, anywhere: on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Vision Pro. Get one year of DetailsPro Premium for $26 (normally $59.99) with this link. Flighty — The world’s best flight tracker and travel app. Now hiring one Senior Product Designer and one Senior Full-Stack iOS Engineer. Finalist — A daily planner for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built on proven paper-based planning methods. DF readers get six months free; details at the link. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Apple’s WWDC keynote and State of the Union videos. New Things — Joanna’s new thing. Joanna’s first take on Apple’s announcements. I Am Not a Robot — Joanna’s new bestselling book on consumer AI. Sandwich — the team behind the video version of this show. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →448: ‘Twins Named John’, With Stephen Hackett
Jun 101:50:54Tap to summarizeStephen Hackett returns to the show to help me make sense of a problem that is hard even to describe, let alone solve, regarding Apple One, family sharing, a separate Media & Purchasing account, and iCloud storage space. Also: what we’re expecting from WWDC 2026. Sponsored by: Notion: Try the powerful, all-in-one Notion AI today. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free daily greens, with code talkshow50off. Even Realities: Even G2, the everyday display smart glasses. Use promo code talkshow to save 10% off the R1 Ring and/or Even Clip. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Cross Forward — David Smith’s suite of iOS apps, where Stephen is now managing director. 512 Pixels. Connected — The weekly podcast Stephen co-hosts with Myke Hurley and Federico Viticci. Apple Support: Migrate purchases from one Apple Account to another Apple Account. What happens to your iCloud storage when you sign up for Apple One. Stephen’s post on the restrictions around Apple Account migration. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →447: ‘A Sociopathic Father’, With Adam Lisagor
May 1602:15:13Tap to summarizeAdam Lisagor returns to the show to talk about Hovercraft, his new virtual presentation camera app for Mac, and how he's developing it with AI coding tools. Also, delicious Japanese spite sandwich cookies. Sponsored by: Parcel: Track your packages in one place, with native apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Scribe: Instantly capture and optimize workflows so your teams and AI agents do their best work. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Hovercraft — A virtual presentation camera for Mac. Adam’s intro video, on Twitter/X. Version 1.1 is already out with some cool new features. Theater — Sandwich Vision’s theater experience app for VisionOS. Television — Sandwich’s, well, television experience app. Cursor — Adam’s preferred coding agent. Birdhouse, Adam and Cameron Hunt’s “Notepad for Twitter” from 2009. The Birdhouse launch video, which launched Sandwich Video. Daring Fireball: Birdhouse — A Notepad for Twitter. Noir — Delicious Japanese spite sandwich cookies. Allen Pike. Allen on The Talk Show, back in December 2024. Yojimbo. The graph I generated, using AppleScript and Numbers, of the new Yojimbo items I’ve created per year. Canon’s XL1 digital video camera from 1998. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →446: ‘Food and Beverage Director’, With MG Siegler
May 102:46:46Tap to summarizeMG Siegler returns to the show to discuss Apple’s announcement that Tim Cook is stepping aside (into the role of executive chairman) and John Ternus will become CEO. Sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Drafts: The Swiss Army knife for text on all your Apple devices. Act now to get your first year of Drafts Pro for 50% off. Finalist: A daily planner for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built on proven paper-based planning methods. Use this link to get six months free. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Apple Newsroom: “Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman; John Ternus to become Apple CEO”. “Johny Srouji named Apple’s Chief Hardware Officer”. MG, at Spyglass: “A Cook’s Tour”. “John Ternus’s Magic Show”. Yours truly: “Another Day Has Come”. “Time to Serve Some Delicious Claim Chowder Regarding the Cook-Ternus CEO Transition”. “The New York Times Printed the Wrong Crossword Grid Last Sunday, and I Find That Timing Serendipitous”. Steven Levy: “Apple’s Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product” (paywall-busting Apple News+ link). 2008: “Joe Nocera Gets a Call From Steve Jobs”. 2010, regarding Mark Papermaster, whom Steve Jobs fired just weeks after the iPhone 4 antennagate press conference: “Papermaster and That Damn Antenna.” “Look at how many blueberries your muffin has, and how many mine has. Yours is falling apart. I have nothing.” This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →445: ‘Apple at 50’, With John Siracusa
Apr 102:34:27Tap to summarizeWho better to join the show to commemorate Apple’s 50th anniversary than John Siracusa? Sponsored by: Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: The Commodore VIC-20. Apple’s looks-good-to-this-day “Snow White” hardware design language from the 1980s, created in collaboration with Frog Design. The Apple IIc — in my opinion, the epitome of “Snow White”. Frog Designed turned 50 back in 2019, and The Verge has some amazing photos from their collection, including a jaw-dropping prototype for the Lisa. Star Blazers. Yours truly, back in 2014, on the Finder’s “Special” menu. Yours truly guesting on The Verge’s Version History podcast, to talk about the original Macintosh. Hyperspace — Siracusa’s perfectly-named Mac utility for saving space via APFS magic. ATP (a pretty good podcast), and episode 683 in particular (a pretty good episode of that podcast, wherein Marco Arment tells the tale of the Mac Mini server farm he built for Overcast’s now-in-beta generated-transcripts feature). Infinite Mac — classic Mac (and NeXTStep) emulators that run in your web browser. “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.” ResEdit 2.1 Reference — still hosted at Apple’s website. SNL’s “McIntosh Jr.” commercial, the best Apple parody ad ever made. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →444: ‘You’re Going to Have the Niggles’, With Christina Warren
Mar 2901:37:11Tap to summarizeChristina Warren returns to the show to discuss Apple’s big month of product announcements — in particular, the iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo. And we pour one out for the Mac Pro. 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. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: The iPhone 17e. Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo. My review: The MacBook Neo. Apple Discontinues the Mac Pro With No Plans to Bring It Back. Yankees-Giants opens MLB season, on Netflix. Nomad 65W Slim Power Adapter. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →443: ‘The Pogue Feature’, With David Pogue
Mar 1801:25:41Tap to summarizeSpecial guest David Pogue discusses his excellent and amazingly comprehensive new book, Apple: The First 50 Years. Sponsored by: 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. Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: “Apple: The First 50 Years” official website. Hardcover: Amazon Bookshop.org E-book: Kindle Apple Books Photo of Sculley and the other white dude in suits on his executive team, circa 1993, from page 251. (My son Jonas quipped that they look like the executives from the company that made Robocop.) The “Apple at 50” event David hosted at the Computer History Museum earlier this month. The similar event David hosted two years ago, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh. Matt Neuberg, back in 1998 (!), reviewing Conflict Catcher for TidBITS, with mention of the user manual. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Transcribe →442: ‘Bad Dates’, With Jason Snell
Mar 102:16:57Tap to summarizeJason Snell returns to the show to discuss the 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card, MacOS 26 Tahoe, Apple Creator Studio, along with what we expect/hope for in next week’s Apple product announcements. Sponsored by: 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. Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits. Transcripts: Unofficial but surprisingly good. Links: Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report Card. Kieran Healy, in a post at Six Colors published after we recorded the show: “Charting the Vibes in the 2025 Apple Report Card”. Kieran Healy’s homepage/weblog. My 2025 Apple Report Card. Upgrade: “The Shifting Sands of Liquid Glass”, wherein Jason and Myke discuss this year’s report card, and Jason makes rascally comments supporting MacOS 26 Tahoe. (And Myke isn’t much better.) Apple’s July 2025 announcement of the Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit. Derek Sivers, in 2005: “Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution”. ChangeTheHeaders — a Safari extension I convinced Jeff Johnson to build, which, among other things, allows me never to be served WebP images in lieu of PNG or JPEG. StopTheMadness — the older sibling, companion Safari Extension to ChangeTheHeaders that gives you explicit control over all sorts of web features, on a per-website basis. (I conflated the two during the show.) WebP. Mac Launchers: LaunchBar (my favorite, and until Tahoe, Jason’s too). Alfred. Raycast. Tuna. Quicksilver. Incomplete list of what’s wrong with MacOS 26 Tahoe: Terrible app icons. The terrible idea to include inscrutable, inconsistent icons next to just about every menu item in every app, as documented by Jim Nielsen and Nikita Prokopov, and linked to by yours truly here and here, respectively. Norbert Heger: “The Struggle of Resizing Windows on macOS Tahoe” — and a follow-up. Daring Fireball: “Why It’s Difficult to Resize Windows on MacOS 26 Dyehoe”. Daring Fireball: “Bad Dye Job”. Stephen Hackett’s MacOS Screenshot Library at 512 Pixels. Steve Krug’s classic book, “Don’t Make Me Think”. The Appearance Manager and the themes that never actually shipped for classic Mac OS. Comparing Alan Dye’s horseshitty introduction of Liquid Glass at WWDC 2025 to Steve Jobs’s introduction of Aqua back in 2000. Manu Cornet’s 2011 classic: “Organizational Charts In Major Tech”. This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
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