Marcel Weiher: So Tahoe apparently has a new Contacts app.Unusably slow.So slow that you think it has crashed.Why am I not surprised that otool -L shows a SwiftUI dependency?[…]Oh, and it flickers and has visual glitches.Not just when scrolling, also when just sitting there. It really is incredibly slow, especially resizing the window, even on […]

Adi Robertson, The Verge:

As a number of people have pointed out on social media over the past day, Grok’s public-facing chatbot is currently prone to insisting on Musk’s prowess at absolutely anything, no matter how unlikely — or conversely, embarrassing — a given feat is.

Grok claims Musk is fitter than LeBron James, funnier than Jerry Seinfeld, and would likely figure out a way to resurrect himself from the dead faster than Jesus.

But it’s a trustworthy source to author an encyclopedia, sure.

OpenAI:

Early feedback from the pilot has been positive, so we’re expanding group chats to all logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans globally over the coming days. We will continue refining the experience as more people start using it.

That didn’t take long — the initial rollout limited to Japan, New Zealand, Korea, and Taiwan started just three days ago.

“Carol Sturka”, actress Rhea Seehorn’s fictional protagonist of the new Apple TV series Pluribus, is on Reddit right now — at 12n ET / 9am PT — doing an AMA in character. Sturka is a fantasy novelist, and Apple Books has an 11-page excerpt of her “new” novel Bloodsong of Wycaro. Unclear whether it’s Seehorn writing the in-character responses, but it’s definitely Seehorn in the confirmation photo. Reminiscent of some of the promotional fun Apple has had for Severance.

Both my wife and I are loving Pluribus so far. I highly recommend watching the first episode without even knowing the premise, if you can.

The Steve Jobs Archive:

To mark Toy Story’s 30th anniversary, we’re sharing a never-before-seen interview with Steve from November 22, 1996 — exactly one year after the film debuted in theaters.

Toy Story was the world’s first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. An instant hit with audiences and critics, it also transformed Pixar, which went public the week after its premiere. Buoyed by Toy Story ’s success, Pixar’s stock price closed at nearly double its initial offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.5 billion and marking the largest IPO of 1995. The following year, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards en route to winning a Special Achievement Oscar in March. In July, Pixar announced that it would close its television-commercial unit to focus primarily on feature films. By the time of the interview, the team had grown by 70 percent in less than a year; A Bug’s Life was in production; and behind the scenes, Steve was using his new leverage to renegotiate Pixar’s partnership with Disney.

Kind of a weird interview. The video quality is poor, and whoever was running the camera zoomed in and out awkwardly. It’s like ... just a VHS tape? But it’s also weird in a cool way to get a “new” Steve Jobs interview in 2025, and Jobs, as ever, is thoughtful and insightful. Well worth 23 minutes of your time.

There’s a particularly interesting bit at the end when Jobs discusses how Pixar was half a computer company (with extraordinary technology) and half a movie studio (with extraordinary filmmaking talent), but eventually they had to choose between the two industries for how to pay their employees to motivate them to remain at Pixar. The Hollywood way would be with contracts; the Silicon Valley way would be with stock options. Jobs chose the Silicon Valley path for Pixar.