The Talk Show With John Gruber

Special guest Rene Ritchie returns to the show. Topics includes Jony Ive’s promotion to Chief Design Officer and the implications for Apple; the differences in Apple’s internal design culture now that industrial and user interface design are under one roof; Google’s announcements at their I/O developer conference last week in San Francisco, including Google Photos; “machine learning”; Apple replacing the much-maligned discoveryd with good old mDNSResponder in the latest Yosemite developer beta; our thoughts on the space black Apple Watch with link bracelet; and more.

Special guest Dan Frommer returns to the show. Topics include David Letterman, iPhone docks, the space black steel Apple Watch, whatever happened to the Edition collection, San Francisco as the new system font for iOS and Mac OS X, and more.

Special guest David Sparks joins the show for the first time. Topics include “power users”, Markdown, Apple Watch, the new MacBook, iCloud Photo Syncing and the new Photos for Mac, WWDC, and wearing slippers as “work” shoes.

Special guest and longtime friend Adam Lisagor returns to the show. I don’t know anyone who’s more excited about Apple Watch than Adam, except, maybe, my son. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Apple just released a brand-new thing, and they don’t do that very often. This episode, we just had fun. Some keen observations about the future of the platform, too.

John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Gruber’s retina, Apple Watch backorders and the watch itself, news from Microsoft’s Build conference, how to introduce yourself to people you’ve publicly branded a “jackass”, and more.

Special guest Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal joins the show to talk about Apple Watch and the new MacBook (and her reviews thereof).

Special guest Ben Thompson returns, with the intention of not talking about Apple Watch — and so of course we spend two hours talking about Apple Watch. Other topics include the launch of Jay Z’s streaming music service Tidal, audience ceilings faced by different types of dedicated TV devices, and Meerkat-vs.-Periscope and the nascent revolution of ubiquitous live-streaming video. We make some NCAA men’s basketball Final Four picks, too.

Special guest Serenity Caldwell joins the show. Topics include last week’s “Spring Forward” Apple media event; the new Force Touch Trackpad for MacBooks, and the prospects for force touch in future iOS devices; and of course, Apple Watch.

Special guest Matthew Panzarino joins the show to talk about this week’s “Spring Forward” Apple media event, for the new MacBook and Apple Watch.

Special guest Paul Kafasis returns to the show. Topics include the new Pebble Time watch, the imminent arrival of Apple Watch, Paul’s clever new doorbell (and unfortunate refrigerator situation), a little bit of baseball, and why I can’t attend next week’s Apple event in San Francisco.

Special guest John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Apple Watch; rumors that Apple is working on a secret car project; our love of old Mac hardware; and a long discussion on Ian Parker’s extraordinary New Yorker profile of Jony Ive and his design team at Apple.

Merlin Mann returns to the show to talk about movies and shit.

MG Siegler returns to the show, reporting from London. Topics include last week’s blockbuster earnings report from Apple, the increasingly imminent Apple Watch, phone display sizes, the impact of China on sales, rethinking the intended purpose and success of the iPhone 5C, speculation on Apple’s 2015 product roadmap, and whether Bluetooth is the future for mass market earbuds and headphones.

Topics include Apple’s pseudo “sabbaticals” (employees who leave the company but then return after a year or two); Google’s cultural similarities to Microsoft; the ways that Apple (and iOS users) might miss Scott Forstall; accessibility as a high priority for Apple; Instagram’s success (and how they effectively ate Hipstamatic’s lunch); a debate on just how “simple” Twitter is; Box’s successful IPO, and Dropbox’s support for Yosemite’s official Finder integration for such services; MIT economist Jonathan Gruber pissing in my Google juice; Chromebooks; Amazon’s overall strategy, and the colossal failure of their Fire Phone; and, lastly, a good chunk on Microsoft’s Windows 10/HoloLens event last week.

Special guest Marco Arment returns to the show. Topics include microphones; Marco’s much-publicized article last week on Apple’s seemingly declining software quality; talking to the press and agreeing to interviews; Apple’s relatively tiny developer relations team (and how that pertains to the aforementioned segment on Apple’s perceived software quality); the purported new 12-inch MacBook Air and its dearth of peripheral ports; and more.

A brief chat about the Star Wars movies, with special guests John Siracusa and Guy English.

Special guest Jason Snell joins the show for a year-end extravaganza. Topics include Jason’s first three months writing (and podcasting) as an indie at his new Six Colors; a look back at his 20-year career at MacUser and soon thereafter Macworld; tricky edge cases when booking sponsorships, and the whole situation with separating advertising sales from editorial integrity when you’re running a one-person publication; the Sony/North Korea hacking and *The Interview*, and iTunes’s slightly belated release thereof; and we pour one out for good old Movable Type.

Special guest Rene Ritchie returns to the show for a special Apple 2014 year-in-review episode. Just a few of the many topics covered: Apple’s Beats acquisition; WWDC 2014 in hindsight; an aside speculating on the alternate universe where Google acquired WebOS instead of Android; the similarities between the “projected UI” nature of AirPlay, CarPlay, and WatchKit; UI fonts (Helvetica Neue in Yosemite, Apple Sans, and the Watch’s San Francisco (a.k.a. “DINvetica”)); Apple’s growing ability to design and bring to market its own hardware internals and components; recent controversies and confusing rejections at the App Store (and the need for a public-facing App Store ombudsman); and what we’re looking forward to in 2015.

Special guest Dan Frommer joins the show to talk about prop bets in Vegas, more *Star Wars*, some follow-up on James Bond, what Apple should do with its mountain of cash, speculation on why iPad sales growth has stagnated, and more. Also, some in-depth segments on Instagram and the concept of “institutional taste”.

Special guest Dave Wiskus joins the show to talk about the new teaser trailer for *Star Wars: The Force Awakens*, and just-announced title and cast for the 24th EON Productions Bond movie, *Spectre*. Other topics include the untapped potential of podcasting and YouTubing, cutting babies in half, turtle copulation, and kangaroo genitalia.