Jason Snell:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment — the “vibe in the room” — regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)

This is the eleventh year that I’ve presented this survey to my hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category.

I still need to polish it up a bit, but per tradition, I’ll publish my own report card shortly. In the meantime, it’s always edifying to read Snell’s summary and the average grades. You’ll never guess which category Apple flunked for 2025. (Spoiler: World Impact.)

Regarding MacOS 26 Tahoe, here are the comments from two Johns:

“Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac. Every change is either wrongheaded, poorly executed, or both. The Mac remains usable only because of Tahoe’s lack of ambition: it mostly alters the appearance and metrics of interface elements rather than making fundamental changes to the structure of the Mac UI. Thank goodness for that. The bad ideas embodied in Tahoe reveal an Apple design team that has abandoned the most basic principles of human-computer interaction.” —John Siracusa

“Tahoe is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS. There are many reasons to prefer MacOS to any of its competition, but the one that has been the most consistent since System 1 in 1984 is the superiority of its user interface. There is nothing about Tahoe’s new UI that is better than its predecessor…. Fundamental principles of computer-human interaction — principles that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely ignored.” —John Gruber

Siracusa and I didn’t say a word to each other while writing those comments. (If we had, I’d have switched to “human-computer interaction” from “computer-human interaction”.)

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create thousands of jobs.

See also: Rolfe Winkler at The Wall Street Journal (gift link, News+ link): “Inside Apple’s Push to Build an All-American Chip”.

Todd Bishop, writing at GeekWire:

Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.

He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.

Friends and colleagues this week remembered Brainerd as a quiet, caring and detail-oriented leader with exacting standards. He insisted that PageMaker use proper curly quotation marks instead of straight ones, and obsessed over nuances such as kerning, the precise spacing between specific letter pairs.

PageMaker was years ahead of its time, and was essential to igniting the desktop publishing revolution.

Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors back on February 12:

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, seen by the Financial Times, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson cites recent press coverage of a report from conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), which claimed that Apple has promoted “leftist outlets” in its content choices.

The report in question by the MRC said that in January, Apple News “refrained from using any right-leaning outlets in the top 20 articles of its morning editions between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 2026.” The outlets named in the report include Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, Breitbart, and The Gateway Pundit.

The report went on to claim that Apple News was more favorable to outlets such as The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal – publications that are traditionally considered either center outlets or nonpartisan.

I’d say they’re more traditionally considered trustworthy news sources, rather than propaganda outlets. Anyway, when you give a bully your lunch money — or, say, a 24-karat gold trophy emblazoned with your company’s logo — they always come back for more.

Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive:

Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn. In this volume, we have asked distinguished creators of diverse fields to share some of their answers to questions you asked at the beginning of your fellowship year. You’ll find candid stories of struggle and success, mistakes, and milestones. The wisdom they share in their reflections was forged by asking the kinds of questions you’re asking now.

Carve out some time for this collection. It’s also available as an ebook from Apple Books or EPUB download from SJA’s publications page.