Myke Hurley, marking the 12th anniversary of our company:

The versions of myself and Stephen who started this podcast network in 2014 feel incredibly different to me. We’ve learned a lot, changed a lot, adapted a lot, and sought new opportunities along the way.

I kind of feel like our personal journeys have mirrored Relay’s journey. There have been ebbs and flows in our business, as we have attempted to adapt and shift towards what we think the audience wants from us, what the business needs, and where we want to take things.

I would say the last few years have been intentionally peaceful. We have allowed the business to be in a place of stability. We have not sought out new shows in the numbers we had previously, and have instead been focused more on maintaining what we have.

I like how Myke put this: in many ways, the past few years feel more intentional than ever. It’s not that we were flying by the seat of our pants in the past; we rely on the growing wisdom we’ve gained over the years to have a better idea of what we want out of Relay.

It’s amazing to me that we’ve been doing this for 12 years. We’re lucky to work with the best people in the industry, making the type of content we want to listen to. Throw in the nearly $5 million the Relay community has raised for St. Jude, and we’re talking about our legacies. For being just 40 years old, that feels pretty dang special.

Like before, hovering over the “stoplight” controls with the cursor reveals the close, minimize, and junk drawer that has become the former maximize button.

Tahoe is on the left; Golden Gate Beta 6 is on the right:

(Trying to line up screenshots between a MacBook Neo and a MacBook Pro using a Pro Display XDR was …fun. Click the image to enlarge it.)

Apple has moved away from the solid colors it has used since Yosemite, applying Liquid Glass to one of the most fundamental parts of the macOS interface.

Over the last year, people have joked that Liquid Glass is a bad ripoff of the original Aqua. I haven’t really bought into that, but these window controls certainly echo the past. Here’s a screenshot from Mac OS X 10.1 Puma:

I like the whimsy in these new window controls, and from what I have already seen online, I’m not alone.

But I don’t immediately love everything Apple has done here.

The new controls strike me as too bright, particularly in dark mode:

Why does each traffic light have highlights at the top and bottom when the rest of the items in the toolbar don’t?

These highlights make the icons look slightly oval, and the reflections don’t really make sense if these are supposed to be little pieces of glass.

Previous background windows were far less distracting, as they should be. At the very least, background windows should drop the highlights.

It’s akin to the highlights Apple puts on the edges of Home Screen widgets and folders on iOS 26, but somehow makes even less sense here.¹

I would like to see the color turned up on the controls for the active window. The new ones are the least saturated stoplights macOS has ever had.

In a post on Mastodon, Jeff Nadeau shared an animation in which the selected control slightly animates:

I’m not sure how I feel about this one; a little movement here is unlike anything else in the macOS interface. I’m not sure that’s the right call.

The trick with whismy is using just the right amount of it, and I hope Apple works on this more before Golden Gate ships this fall.

Just for kicks, here’s how the stoplights have changed over time, looking at the Home folder:

Memphis, a city known nationwide for Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI’s data centers, may finally take legislative steps to pause data center development.

At its Aug. 18 committee meeting, the Memphis City Council is poised to discuss an ordinance that would declare, “a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, and issuance of zoning, land use, building, and other associated infrastructure permits for data center developments within the City of Memphis.”

It’s unclear at this point what this ordinance will entail exactly, but it has been filed as “a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, and issuance of zoning, land use, building, and other associated infrastructure permits for data center developments within the City of Memphis.” The current zoning code doesn’t address data centers.

The trio reunites to discuss Google’s new Pixel lineup, how we feel about Siri AI, and clipboard managers.

Apple has again added a collection of classic movies to Apple TV that subscribers can now stream at no extra cost.

The films are located in a new “Great Movies Available Now on ‌Apple TV‌” carousel inside the ‌Apple TV‌ app. So far, free titles are showing up for subscribers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with the exact selection differing by country. In the U.S., 19 movies are available.

I saw a bunch of these in theatres; there’s no way they can be classics, as Charlton’s headline claims.

…right?

I am playing the game, so I have no idea what these questions entail, so don’t send me any spoilers.

Stephen and Myke are joined by Jason Snell to talk about CarPlay on boats and the new version of Pastebot, before useful consumer advice is given about weather stations and network-attached storage.

Today, MasterCraft has announced it is adding CarPlay to some of its upcoming pontoon boats.

For those keeping score:

✅ Most new cars, at all sorts of price points
✅ Boats
❌ Rivian

Google Health initially included one-way Apple Health integration. The app could read and import health data recorded by an iPhone, Apple Watch, and other HealthKit-connected apps, but it couldn’t write Fitbit data back to Apple Health.

Today’s Google Health iOS app update adds the missing half of that connection.

Data concerning sleep, steps, workouts, and vitals captured by Google Health can now be sent to Apple Health. For someone who likes the Fitbit Air but really dislikes its app, this is good news.

Back in 2007, I designed what was intended to be SuperDuper v3.0. It was a rewrite that greatly expanded its capabilities while retaining its essence.

But, in those days, it just wasn’t possible for us to implement those grand plans. The new UI was much more complex, the logic more elaborate, and the systems we had then didn’t support the things needed to make it a reality without a lot of complex coding we didn’t have time for.

On top of that, macOS itself was a moving target (and still is!): adding and deprecating features; completely changing the file system; locking down the OS; supporting not just one change in CPU, but three.

With a tool so tied to how the system operated at a low level, it was a lot of work just keeping up with what Apple was doing.

So, I put the notebook with that design in it on a shelf.

For nearly 20 years.

Today, I’m happy to say that I’ve finally been able to carve out enough time to grab that “old” redesign, flesh it out further, modernize it, and make that dream a reality.

The new version of SuperDuper is a ground-up rewrite, a tip-to-tail reinvention of what SuperDuper looks like, how it works, what it can do, and where I can take it in the future.

It’s really great to see SuperDuper getting this sort of love.

• July 23, 2026: Apple and Ford announced MapKit for Automotive to power navigation in future EVs
• July 28, 2026: iPhone Upgrade Program replaced with broader Apple Upgrade Program
• July 30, 2026: Tim Cook hosted his last quarterly earnings call

This revision also includes a handful of Apple TV-related dates that were previously missing, such as the announcement of the “Take 2” software update in 2008.

I also just updated my Now page, where I keep a running log of things I have going on, at work and beyond.

The pushback in Southaven, Mississippi over the Stanton Road site has been growing. Just this weekend, there was a public event addressing the issue, hosted by the NAACP and State Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

Tonight, the company announced (in a statement that was also emailed to members of the press, including yours truly) that it will be removing its temporary turbines over the next year:

SpaceXAI is building the world’s largest integrated supercomputer at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. We build our facilities rapidly while upholding the highest standards of operational responsibility, environmental stewardship, and community partnership. SpaceXAI is committed to powering its supercomputers in ways that both reduce costs of energy for the American people and minimize the impact on surrounding communities. Today, we take the next step in that journey.

We have entered into an agreed order with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) establishing a fixed removal timeline for all 69 of the temporary, mobile turbines that currently power our facility in Southaven, Mississippi. We are rapidly removing these mobile turbines as we bring online permanent power from a 1.2 GW power plant we are constructing under our Clean Air Act permit. We will begin removing temporary turbines from the site as early as August 2026. All temporary turbines will be removed by July 2027. Today’s agreed order codifies our commitment to achieve this timeline.

This comes six months after the EPA ruled against xAI, stating that even turbines used in a “temporary” manner were subject to environmental regulation.

More importantly, this news comes one year after MDEQ said xAI could turn the turbines on a temporary basis for 12 months.

The update continues:

The 1.2 GW permanent power plant currently under construction will consist of 41 permanent turbines authorized under a Clean Air Act permit, granted to SpaceXAI in March 2026. The application for this permit, completed more than seven months of detailed regulatory review. SpaceXAI is also investing millions of dollars in sound walls, silencers, and next-generation turbines with advanced quieting technologies through partnerships with the surrounding community. We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community.

Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian has some background on the site:

The company started operating its first three turbines (about 39 megawatts of power capacity) on August 1, 2025. It added another 15 later that month, and then seven more between November and December 2025. The company then added a single turbine in January, four more over four days in March, and then the remainder came in April, May and June.

Of the 60 turbines the company released data for, about 15 ran more than 20 hours a day in June, according to data the company supplied to MDEQ. One, a 35-megawatt turbine made by GE Vernova, ran 24 hours a day.

The amount of time the turbines have run raises the question of whether the machines’ emissions are great enough to require an air emissions permit even with the one-year exemption.

I am all for having fewer turbines spinning in and around Memphis, and I hope the company is true to its word when it comes to decreasing the noise and air pollution caused by these machines.

I also hope that MDEQ and SpaceXAI will continue to update the public on this process and the changes that will come from it.

Future Fords are getting Apple Maps, future iPhones are getting leased, and future foldables may be less weird than expected.

Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.

In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”

The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes.

In its proposal to the district, xAI offered support for four different schools in areas of Whitehaven and Westwood near its data centers:

• John P. Freeman Optional School
• Fairley High School
• Mitchell High School
• Westwood High School

At each school, the company has proposed upgrades to the HVAC units that heat and cool the schools, plus improvements to plumbing, lighting and windows. XAI has also offered to paint at the schools.

This map shows the location of the schools in green, with xAI’s sites in red and its power plant in Southaven, MS in yellow.

(For a sense of scale, it’s about nine miles across.)

xAI said work could start as early as the morning after the school board voted to accept the gift. Of course, that is not how anything works in the real world, and it took the school board and company until September of last year to finalize a plan to account for the fact that these schools couldn’t be torn apart during the school year.

To the company’s credit, some work has been completed; however, it is far from what was originally promised, and now SpaceXAI seems to want to rework the deal. Testino writes:

So far, donations have improved two campuses rather than four, according to MSCS. Those projects — campus beautification efforts at John P. Freeman School and a major locker room renovation at Fairley High — have made a small dent in the large list of SpaceXAI’s offerings.

They also came with a $5 million donation cap that wasn’t part of the initial proposal.

That $5 million cap can not fund the initial list of projects, even if they had been started. Neither Mitchell High nor Westwood High have seen any of the promised improvements.

More importantly, the agreement expired June 30 and has not been renewed. SpaceXAI says it is still “committed to completing critical upgrades to schools in the Memphis region,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case at this point.

I am not surprised that the company would back away from previously made promises,¹ nor am I surprised that my local leaders would be naive enough not to see this coming.

This CNBC video provides a look at what happens when a massive AI data center is built in your neighborhood.

Health in ChatGPT is launching to U.S. users. You can choose to securely connect Apple Health and supported medical records so ChatGPT can help you understand your information in context, keep track of what has changed, and have more informed, personalized conversations. The experience builds on feedback from early testers and gives you control over what you connect and when ChatGPT can use it.

Every week, more than 300 million people turn to ChatGPT with health-related questions—from understanding a lab result and preparing for an appointment to making sense of what a doctor said and building a healthier routine. But the context behind those questions is often scattered across patient portals, medical records, apps, and wearables, making it difficult to see and act on the complete picture.

Teddy Rosenbluth for The New York Times:

A Florida pastor sued OpenAI on Wednesday, claiming that its chatbot, ChatGPT, had offered him “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that led to delayed care for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism last year.

The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT had assured Scott Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were “not something dangerous,” and had dissuaded him from seeking medical advice, instead telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”

The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of negligence and the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” pointing to moments when the chatbot offered Mr. Winters diagnoses and treatment plans and encouraged him to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care.

She continues:

Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, said that ChatGPT’s terms of service make clear that it is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. But he added that the company takes seriously the need to make answers to health questions as safe as possible, given that people use the chatbot for that reason.

“Treating chatbots as the whole story behind people’s medical decisions or outcomes oversimplifies a much bigger challenge, and risks getting in the way of people accessing powerful new tools that can aid them in their health journey,” he said. Mr. Pusateri added that newer models are better than the model Mr. Winters used at asking for missing context, communicating uncertainty and recognizing when professional care may be needed.

Andrew Liszewski at The Verge:

The smart band can track more than 80 different activities such as running or yoga that are selectable through the accompanying Garmin Connect app or using its single side button as a shortcut to your favorite. Through the app, you can monitor your training progress including the effectiveness of a workout and whether your body is ready for your next training session or would benefit more from a rest day.

In addition to workouts, the $199 band can track heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, sleep, and menstrual cycles via skin temperature. Notably, the Garmin Cirqa doesn’t require a subscription. Orders open on July 24.

(There are no good guys in this story.)

Myke has a new laptop, Federico has thoughts on Siri AI, and Stephen has been graded. Also: Apple vs. OpenAI and a big day for Mario fans with feet.

When the project was announced, details about power generation were sparse. Today, we know a bit more. Will Conkling and Christopher Scott at Google:

Today, alongside local leaders, community members, and our partners at Cypress Creek Energy, we broke ground on what will be the largest solar facility in the United States — Steel River Energy Center in Mississippi County, Arkansas. While this landmark facility will be the largest solar and storage project across Google’s global portfolio to date, this historic milestone belongs first and foremost to the community in Mississippi County. The Steel River Energy Center will reinvest local workforce talent and industrial innovation right back into the state’s economy, creating lasting clean energy and economic benefits.

By working closely with local leaders and residents, we are ensuring that our growth directly supports our neighbors and strengthens the grid that powers Arkansas’ industrial steel manufacturing,¹ data centers and households alike.

Ground was broken this week on the solar site, complete with blue shovels:

Steve Dent at Engadget has more:

Google has struck a deal to purchase a major solar project’s entire electrical output to offset its fossil fuel emissions, The Financial Times reports. The search giant will take 100 percent of the initial output from Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas once it comes online in 2029, amounting to 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and 2GW of battery storage — enough to power 315,000 homes. 

Google will pay a fixed cost for the electricity from the solar plant, but won’t use it directly. Instead, it will draw from the grid powered by a mix of coal, nuclear, renewables and natural gas, along with its own on-site power (typically gas turbines and engines).

Energy from the Steel River Energy Center solar project will form part of that grid mix. Once completed, the project will supply 2.45GW of solar power and 2.9GWh of battery energy storage. The first two phases (out of three) received $3.5 billion in financing and prioritized US-manufactured steel and solar panels.

The final mix of power generation isn’t known, but I am glad to see Google investing in such a large renewable energy source to help offset its footprint in the region. Hopefully, this means Google will be much less reliant on gas turbines for power than its neighbors, but time will tell.

This news comes on the same day that folks in 13 states and the District of Columbia are seeing their electricity rates increase due to data center usage, as Ivan Penn reports:

PJM, the nation’s largest electrical grid operator, on Tuesday released results of an electricity auction that would add $6.3 billion in costs to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years, an increase driven by the power demands of data centers.

[…]

In a statement, PJM said data centers were increasing electricity demand throughout the region.

“These auction results show that demand for electricity continues to grow faster than electricity supply,” David Mills, president and chief executive at PJM, said in an announcement of the auction results. “We are working with government and industry leaders on multiple fronts to restore that balance by bringing on new generation as fast as possible and managing the growth of new load on the grid.”

Elon Musk has acquired Jacksonville-based APR Energy, according to a Federal Trade Commission filing that surfaced the deal weeks after it closed with no public statement from either side.

The FTC’s early termination notice, transaction number 20261350 and dated May 14, lists Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the acquired party, with New APR Energy, LLC listed as the acquired entity.

It also shows the transaction was granted early termination, meaning no further antitrust review was required before the deal could close.

No terms were disclosed in the FTC notice itself, but the price tag came into focus through a separate filing.

That separate filing comes from Duos Technologies Group Inc, which recently disclosed a $50 million sales price for its 5% equity stake in APR Energy.

That puts the deal at roughly $1 billion. As far as I can tell, APR Energy has not confirmed its change in ownership.

That is a bunch of money, so what is APR Energy? Let’s turn to its website, which says:

You want reliable power today – we have the assets available to meet your needs, including one of the world’s largest mobile gas turbine fleets, comprehensive and customizable balance of plant equipment, and a team of experts ready to handle your build from end to end.

From emergency power for compromised utilities to bridging-to-permanent power for data centers, we’re ready to rapidly deploy the turnkey power solution you need, when you need it, and to your specifications.

Bridging is the phase in which SpaceXAI’s data centers are currently operating. The grid can’t supply the sites with all the power they need, so these turbines are installed to keep things running. In the case of SpaceXAI’s second site in Memphis, it’s hard to see how the grid could supply enough power any time soon, if ever.

As you can see in these photos, they are built on large trailers and are therefore considered mobile.

This is the same technology at the heart of many debates — and lawsuits — concerning SpaceXAI’s presence in Memphis, as Fred Lambert sums up at Electrek:

APR doesn’t run a traditional power plant. It deploys trailer-mounted gas turbines and reciprocating diesel and natural gas engines that can reach full power in under 10 minutes and be installed in days rather than the years it takes to permit and build a fixed plant. The fuel is natural gas and diesel. This is fossil-fuel combustion, packaged to move.

It’s the same technology Musk has already been running — controversially — to keep Grok online.

At various times over the last couple of years, SpaceXAI has been accused of running more gas turbines than allowed. The company points out that they are mobile and thus temporary, claiming they are exempt from a bunch of pesky environmental regulations.

That was shot down by the EPA back in January, but the company has continued to rely on a fleet of turbines to keep its data centers¹ running.

It is unclear whether any of APR’s hardware is in use by SpaceXAI. The company is not listed on the company’s projects page, and the turbine models called out in a 2025 report by Samuel Hardiman don’t seem to line up with the GE TM2500 and Mitsubishi FT8 turbines listed on APR’s website.²

Regardless of what companies are currently on the ground, this is a clear sign that Musk and SpaceXAI continue to view gas turbines as an acceptable means of powering AI data centers.

OpenAI’s much-anticipated push into consumer devices is slated to begin with a mobile, screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the AI era, according to people familiar with the matter.

The product — still under development — is meant to serve as a humanlike AI companion that lives in the home, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been announced. It will help control smart-home appliances, play media, answer questions, respond to messages and tap into the range of capabilities offered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, they said.

Mark Gurman, writing on social media:

Amid Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, the iPhone maker has nothing like it on the market.

A smart speaker. Why did it have to be smart speakers?

Federico is at the beach, Myke questions his iPhone’s future, and Stephen wears watches. Then: a whole stack of Q&A items.