Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
Apple Pulls “Convince Your Parents to Get You a Mac” Ad
The iyO One
From iyO’s home page:
The iyo one is a revolutionary new kind of computer without a screen. it can run apps just like your smartphone. The key difference is you talk to it through a natural language interface.
Like I wrote yesterday, I’d never heard of iyO before. But from the description above, you can obviously see how they’d feel like the new OpenAI/LoveFrom io name stomps on their trademark. (One minor curiosity: iyO itself seems unsure how to capitalize the letters in its own name: a single cropped screenshot of their own home page shows “iyO”, “IyO”, and “iyo”.)
iyO “graduated” from X (which is entirely separate from Elon Musk’s X), Google’s “moonshot factory”, in 2021. The description there:
iyO is on a mission to bring natural language computing to billions of people. The team has created the world’s first audio computer that you can talk to like a friend. While at X, the team developed their initial prototypes. Now an independent company, iyO is creating screenless, natural language computing with mixed audio reality.
Despite having “graduated” four years ago, iyO is still only taking pre-orders for the iyO One, their ungainly-looking ear computer. ($100 seems too good to be true for what they’re promising. Update: Ah-ha, turns out $100 is just the pre-order deposit. They’re going to cost $1,000 to $1,200 if they ever actually ship, which I think is a big if — this thing has vaporware written all over it.)
Lastly, last April, iyO founder and CEO Jason Rugolo demonstrated prototypes in a 13-minute TED talk. Seems cool, but some of the features already exist with AirPods, and all of the feature could exist with AirPods. I don’t see the future of a dedicated audio computer — especially ones as ugly as these — when the entire feature set can be duplicated with smart earbuds paired to your phone.
OS 26 Betas Are Out
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Apple today provided developers with the second betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple seeded the first betas following the WWDC keynote.
MacOS, tvOS, WatchOS, and VisionOS too. All sorts of good stuff in these second betas — an option to have a real big boy menu bar in MacOS Tahoe, a much better-looking Control Center, and more.
Pixar’s Newest Movie, ‘Elio’, Is a Box-Office Dud
Brooks Barnes, writing for The New York Times:
Pixar knew that Elio, an original space adventure, would most likely struggle in its first weekend at the box office.
Animated movies based on original stories have become harder sells in theaters, even for the once-unstoppable Pixar. At a time when streaming services have proliferated and the broader economy is unsettled, families want assurance that spending the money for tickets will be worth it.
But the turnout for Elio was worse — much worse — than even Pixar had expected. The film, which cost at least $250 million to make and market, collected an estimated $21 million from Thursday evening through Sunday at theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. It was Pixar’s worst opening-weekend result ever. The previous bottom was Elemental, which arrived to $30 million in 2023.
I wasn’t aware this movie had come out, and still can’t tell you what it’s about. And I’ve been a Pixar fan since before they made movies. That seems like a problem.
I hadn’t heard of this movie until today either. Disney and Pixar have a marketing problem. One part of the problem is that Pixar has made some decidedly meh movies in recent years. “Pixar” used to stand for nothing less than excellence. Now it stands for “somewhere in the range of OK to great”. But another is that even when they make a good one — which Elio might be — they suck at getting word out.