Jason Snell:

So here we are: Six Colors now has three Jeopardy! players as contributors.

Come on, Moltz, get your shit together.

When I re-read my 2006 piece “And Oranges” today before linking to it, I paused when I read this:

And while it is easy to find ways to complain that Apple is not open enough — under-documented and undocumented security updates and system revisions, under-documented and undocumented file formats — it would be hard to argue with the premise that Apple today is more open than it has ever been before. (Exhibit A: the Web Kit project.)

It’s not often I get to fix 20-year-old typos, and to my 2026 self, “Web Kit” looks like an obvious typo. But after a moment, I remembered: in 2006, that wasn’t a typo.

The correct order is Fn, Control, Option, Shift, Command — regardless if you’re using the words or the glyphs.

“Mr. Macintosh”, on Twitter/X last week:

Small change:

Looks like Apple updated the keyboard on the new M5 16‑inch MacBook Pro. The Backspace, Return, Shift, and Tab labels are gone, replaced with symbols instead.

All the new MacBook keyboards sport this same change, including the M5 Air and A18 Pro MacBook Neo. I’m not a fan. I like the words on those keys. But I’m willing to admit it might just be that I’ve been using Apple keyboards with words on those keys since I was like 10 years old. iOS 26 switched from the word “return” to the “⏎” glyph on the software keyboard (and removed the word “space” from the spacebar — which, in hindsight, seemed needless to label).

The Escape key is still labelled “esc”, and the modifier keys (Fn, Control, Option, and Command) still show the names underneath or next to the glyphs. I suspect this is because documentation — including Apple’s own — often uses names for these keys (Option-Shift-Command-K), not the glyphs (⌥⇧⌘K). It’s only in the last few years that Apple began including the glyphs for Control (⌃) and Option (⌥) — until recently, those keys were labelled only by name. They added the ⌃ and ⌥ glyphs between 2017 and 2018. And until that change in 2018, Apple added the label “alt” to the Option key — a visual turd so longstanding that it dates back even to my own beloved keyboard.

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac back on January 28:

Halide and Lux co-founder and designer Sebastiaan de With announced today that he is joining Apple’s human interface design team. This marks a return to Apple for de With, who previously worked as a freelancer for the company on projects including Find My, MobileMe, and iCloud.

The last time I mentioned de With here on Daring Fireball was back in June, on the cusp of WWDC, when I linked to his resplendently illustrated essay, “Physicality: The New Age of UI”, wherein he speculated on where Apple might be going. It’s very much worth your time to revisit de With’s essay now, knowing that he’s joined Apple’s design team. My own comments on his essay hold up well too — especially my concern that a look-and-feel centered on transparency doesn’t seem a good fit for MacOS, where windows stack atop each other.

When de With published his essay, it was as an idea for where Apple might go. Now that we’ve seen and been living with Liquid Glass, his essay works even better as a roadmap for the direction Liquid Glass should head.

Also worth pointing out that despite de With’s departure for Apple, Lux is going strong. Developer Ben Sandofsky recently released a preview of the upcoming Mark III version of Halide.