Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Halide Cofounder Sebastiaan de With Joined Apple’s Design Team in January

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.

One of Grammarly’s ‘experts’ is suing the company over its identity-stealing AI feature

For months, Grammarly has been using the identities of real people (including us) for its "Expert Review" AI suggestions without getting their permission, and now it's facing a lawsuit from one of the journalists included, as previously reported by Wired. The class-action complaint filed by journalist Julia Angwin on Wednesday alleges that Superhuman violated the […]

Source: Microsoft is in advanced talks to lease hundreds of MWs of data center capacity in Abilene, TX, after Oracle abandoned its expansion plans at the site (The Information)

The Information:
Source: Microsoft is in advanced talks to lease hundreds of MWs of data center capacity in Abilene, TX, after Oracle abandoned its expansion plans at the site  —  Microsoft is in advanced talks to lease hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity at a closely watched artificial intelligence campus …

iPhone Fold rumor: iPad-like multitasking, but no iPad apps and no Face ID

Apple's rumored foldable iPhone will come with an iPad-style interface that will allow users to view apps side-by-side, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman also reports that the outer display will be around the size of a small iPhone. The inner display will reportedly come with a wider aspect ratio, similar to […]

Sources: PayPay priced its US IPO at $16 per share, below its targeted price range of between $17 and $20; the IPO raised $880M, valuing the company at $10.7B (Echo Wang/Reuters)

Echo Wang / Reuters:
Sources: PayPay priced its US IPO at $16 per share, below its targeted price range of between $17 and $20; the IPO raised $880M, valuing the company at $10.7B  —  SoftBank Group-backed PayPay priced its U.S. initial public offering at $16 per share on Wednesday, below its targeted price range …