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Why Todd McKinnon thinks it’s ‘naive’ not to prepare for the SaaSpocalypse

When you think of Apple, you probably think of the iPhone, or maybe the Mac, or perhaps you’ve got fond memories of the iPod. But Apple’s 50-year run of creating tech products that people fall in love with — sometimes a lot of people, sometimes just a hardy few — would never have happened if it weren’t for a product and platform that’s been gone for decades. Apple would never have made it if it weren’t for the Apple II, the company’s first hit product and the first one to generate the amount of devotion we’ve now come to expect from fans of Apple’s products. Their slogan was, and still is, “Apple II Forever!”

“I’m pleased to report to you that Apple’s back on track.” It was May of 1998, and Steve Jobs was about 10 months into his second stint leading the company he’d cofounded more than two decades earlier. (It was also a bit more than a decade after that company forced him out.) Jobs took the stage at the annual Macworld conference in a white shirt and dark jacket, and told the audience the Apple team had been working harder than ever to finish up a new computer, one designed with the internet in mind. It was called iMac. “We think iMac’s going to be a really big deal,” he told the audience. He was right. Jobs would later say the company had been 90 days from insolvency when he took it over, but its fortune appeared to turn around almost as soon as the iMac launched. And that was just the beginning. Starting with the iMac, Jobs and Apple went on one of the all-time hot streaks in business history, churning out hit products, cultural revolutions, and game-changing new ideas about the future. From that May day in 1998 to the January Macworld in 2007 when Jobs revealed the iPhone — a time you might call the iDecade — Apple was on a product tear the likes of which we’ve never seen before or since.

In the coming years, HBO wants its new Harry Potter series to become “the streaming event of the decade” as it adapts each of the franchise’s seven original books. The show could very well become a hit that captures the imaginations of a new generation of fans who weren’t there for the first wave of Pottermania that intensified with the releases of each book and Warner Bros.’ subsequent film adaptations. And if this Harry Potter is a success, it could give author J.K. Rowling a reason to consider writing more stories set in the magical world that turned her into a billionaire. But all of that hinges on whether people will actually watch HBO’s Harry Potter, which is being executive produced by Rowling. In some cases, a franchise’s creator being so closely involved with new versions of their work can be a good thing, but Rowling’s involvement in this show casts a shadow over it that HBO can do very little to counteract. Rowling has made it abundantly clear that she thinks attacking transgender people via the legal system is a worthwhile cause and a good use of her vast personal fortune. And as much as Harry Potter fans might be excited to see what HBO has cooked up, there’s no way to watch this show without supporting Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on a vulnerable minority.

You’ve probably heard the US government has banned foreign-made consumer Wi-Fi routers over national security fears. You might be wondering: what's going on? Just another day in America under Donald Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr. You’re probably fine for now, but if you want to know why there’s so much chaos, read on.

On Tuesday morning, everything was business as usual at OpenAI. By the end of the day, the company had announced that it would scrap its video-generation app, Sora, and reverse plans for video generation inside ChatGPT; it would wind down a $1 billion Disney deal; it would shuffle the role of a high-level executive; and it would raise an additional $10 billion from investors, adding up to more than $120 billion total for its latest funding round. OpenAI is now in a frenzy to turn a profit, or at least lose less money. Since its launch, Sora seems to have taken up a massive amount of compute without the financial return to justify it. Industry sources told The Verge that it’s been lagging behind competing video-generation models. But despite its short life, it’s leaving behind a legacy of eroded trust in judging what’s real.

I was ready to give up on the Galaxy Z TriFold. We had a strong case for getting a refund from the eBay seller — they’d claimed it was the version sold in Taiwan, but the phone that arrived at my door came with a Chinese serial number. That meant no Google services and lots of unfamiliar apps all requesting sensitive permissions. It was weird. Better off just sending this one back and trying again to acquire the US version, I thought. Then Samsung discontinued it. Suddenly, the TriFold on my desk wasn’t just a funny thing that happened on the way to getting a real TriFold. It was the only TriFold I was likely to get my hands on, probably ever. It was this one or nothing.

Members of a convoy that delivered humanitarian aid to Cuba were detained and interrogated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon returning to the United States on a charter flight from Havana. Of the 20 US citizens who were pulled for secondary inspection at Miami International Airport on Wednesday morning, 18 had their phones and other devices seized by CBP, with little information given on whether and when they’ll get them back. The group was part of a larger coalition of activists who traveled in waves to Cuba as part of the Nuestra América Convoy, named after an essay by nineteenth-century Cuban intellectual José Martí criticizing US dominance of the Americas. The convoy included 650 delegates from 33 countries, and delivered an estimated 20 tons of aid to the island nation. Some members of the convoy traveled to Cuba by sea on a 75-foot-long fishing boat that departed from Mexico loaded with rice, beans, canned food, baby formula, bicycles, and solar panels to distribute to Cuban organizations on the ground. Others chartered flights, many of which left from and returned to Miami. One delegation, led by the activist group CODEPINK, said it carried 6,300 pounds of medicine and other medical supplies valued at $433,000. The 20 people who were detained on Monday all traveled together as part of the CODEPINK delegation.