The Talk Show With John Gruber

Very special guest Merlin Mann returns to the show to talk about Comcast customer service, cable-cutting, Marlins Man (no relation) and his showboating-spectator predecessors, and the state of podcasting today. Also: daylight saving time and Roman numerals.

Special guest John Siracusa returns to the show to discuss last week’s Apple event (introducing the iPad Air 2), and OS X Yosemite (and his review thereof).

Special guest Guy English returns to the show to talk about iOS 8 quality concerns, and whether Apple’s annual software cycle is stretching the company too thin. Then things devolve into a bitter argument over the merits of file name extensions.

Special guest Ben Thompson joins the show for an Apple Watch discussion: what it’ll cost, what it’ll do, how it will be sold, and more. Other topics include “Bend-gate”, Apple’s growing prowess in mobile chip design, and Derek Jeter.

Special guest: Rene Ritchie. Topics: What else? The iPhones 6, iOS 8, and last week’s special event at the Flint Center in Cupertino.

Special guest Jason Snell joins the show on the cusp of Apple’s September 9 event, where the company will purportedly introduce two new iPhones and a breakthrough wearable device. Topics include the purpose and advantages of a 5.5-inch iPhone, why only the 5.5-inch iPhone will (I think) get an @3x retina display, speculation on the nature and purpose of an Apple wearable/watch, the intrigue surrounding the event’s venue, and more.

Speculation on the purportedly-imminent new 4.7- and 5.5-inch iPhones, and the rise of adaptive user interface layout and design on iOS. @3x, here we come.

Topics include Joanna’s recent review of over 20 laptops; the HTC One M8 for Windows Phone; why Windows Phone is still struggling to gain traction; the role of Microsoft Office in today’s world; and speculation on Apple’s upcoming iPhone event.

Topics include speculation — seriously, just speculation — on Apple’s purported upcoming wrist wearable thing, Apple’s fall event schedule, polarized sunglasses, market share in the post-PC era, and Beats’s integration into Apple (including a clever idea from Dan about the potential for a Beats Music channel on Apple TV).

Topics include Apple's quarterly results, how much Apple's cable and peripheral prices contribute to the popular conception that their products are "expensive", presbyopia and large-screen phones, and more.

Topics include the design and development of Marco’s new iOS podcast player, Overcast, custom UI fonts, the difficulty of low-level audio programming, and pricing strategy — with digressions on U.S. politics and other non-controversial subjects.

Topics include the design and development of Marco’s new iOS podcast player, Overcast, custom UI fonts, the difficulty of low-level audio programming, and pricing strategy — with digressions on U.S. politics and other non-controversial subjects.

Topics include Samsung getting pinched from Apple on the high end and Xiaomi (at least in China) on the low end, Android and the importance of software differentiation, wearable devices, and more.

Topics include the new look and feel in OS X Yosemite (10.10), Google’s new “Material Design” look and feel for Android, smartwatches (including the new ones Google showed at I/O last week), and Dave’s new behind-the-scenes role at The Talk Show.

Topics include the ongoing World Cup and the sport of soccer, Google Glass, mockups of devices in rumor reports, Amazon's Fire Phone, the New York Times's profile of Tim Cook last week, Apple's growth, and the agonizingly slow death of Blackberry. Lastly, Paul brings up a devilishly tricky question regarding whether Apple will support a particular new addition to the Emoji specification.

Special guest Guy English. Topics center on WWDC 2014, particularly how XPC — interapplication communication — is playing a fundamental but largely behind-the-scenes role in many of the new features for iOS and OS X. The new much-improved WebKit API (which brings third-party apps the faster Nitro JavaScript engine), third-party keyboards, Sharing menu extensions, and Notification Center widgets — all these things are built on XPC. Other topics include Apple TV, Swift, and the apparent happiness not just of third-party developers, but Apple employees, too.

Recorded in front of a live audience of 500 people on Tuesday, 2 June 2014 at Mezzanine in San Francisco. John Gruber is joined by the ATP trio — Marco Arment, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa — to discuss the news from WWDC: OS X 10.10 Yosemite, iOS 8, Swift, and more. Then, Scott Simpson joins the show to discuss theme songs and the future of higher education. No nudity or violence, but the second half of the show does have some explicit language.

Special guest Dan Frommer. Topics include Dan’s new gig as senior tech editor at Quartz, tablets as a form factor for full-featured PCs (and the now-aging design of the MacBook Air), WWDC rumors, the rumored iOS-style redesign of Mac OS X, previous Mac OS visual designs, and more — including ticket information for next week’s live WWDC show in San Francisco.

Special guest John Moltz joins the show for a discussion regarding Apple's still-only-rumored acquisition of Beats, WWDC rumors, the ringer switch on the iPhone, the ZTE Open C Firefox OS phone (spoiler: it's a turd), and the transition of The Talk Show from Mule Radio to its new home here at Daring Fireball.