The Talk Show With John Gruber

Special guest Guy English returns to the show. Topics include Tim Cook’s five year anniversary as Apple CEO, Steven Levy’s behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s AI and machine learning efforts, Apple’s decision to change the pistol emoji from a realistic revolver to a toy squirt gun, and the demise of Vesper. Also: our favorite Looney Tunes characters.

Sponsored by:

• Casper: An obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Use code thetalkshow for $50 toward your mattress.
• Warby Parker: Boutique-quality, vintage-inspired glasses at a revolutionary price. Try up to five pairs at home for free.
• Fracture: Your pictures, printed directly on glass.

Links:

• WASD 6-Key Cherry MX Switch Tester.
• Tim Cook's excellent interview in The Washington Post.
• Jan Dawson: "Five Years of Tim Cook's Apple in Charts".
• Steven Levy: "An Exclusive Inside Look at How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Work at Apple".
• Levy's excellent books, The Perfect Thing (about the iPod) and In the Plex (about Google's inner workings).
• Andy Hertzfeld's book on the development of the original Macintosh, Revolution in the Valley, and the website with much of the same source material, Folklore.org.
• Yours truly: "Vesper, Adieu".
• Brent Simmons: "Last Vesper Update", "More Notes on Vesper", and "Why Vesper Didn’t Start as a Web App".
• Yours truly: "Apple and the Pistol Emoji".
• Chuck Jones’s rules for the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
• “The High and the Flighty” — classic Looney Tunes Foghorn Leghorn short.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.