It was last November that I signed up to preach on Isaiah 58:1-12 (“Bring an End to Oppression”) on February 8th, and it was depressing how much the universe gave me to work with over the course of the first few weeks of 2026. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to address the idea of the prophetic critique in Isaiah and invite those of us in the service to emulate that critique in our own day. What I had trouble figuring out—almost right up to the end—was what I wanted to use as examples.

Tim Cook wasn’t blameless before this, but now?

CEOs’ silence is indication of a moral vacuum.

So, Apple will kick Patreon off the app store for not forking over 30% of its revenue, but it won’t do anything about Grok? Sounds about right.

This is a very cathartic read.

Bel exemple du pouvoir des plateformes à déterminer « la réalité ».

This is horrifying.

Reading about Apple’s manufacturing practices and thinking about Fairphones again.

Fascinating read! I’m not as interested as the author in his largely geopolitical thesis, but the raw materials he uses to construct that thesis are depressingly fascinating. They could also make up the elements of an Ellulian thesis on the dangers of power, efficiency, and technical systems. It’s harder to use Apple products after reading the book—and it’s a stark reminder of how the world we live in is so different than the world I’d like us to.

For over 7 years now, I’ve been using the Day One app on iOS and macOS to keep my journal. Journaling has been important to me since I was a teenager, and being able to do it on a phone or a computer just makes it more likely that it’s going to happen. My dependence on Day One isn’t without issues: I’ve gotten warier of Automattic over the past couple of years, I’d like to one day extricate myself from the Apple ecosystem altogether, and I do think that there’s something I miss by typing rather than handwriting my journal entries. Nonetheless, it’s a good app, and I’m not likely to jump ship until I’ve finished digitizing all of my older journals and memorabilia so that I can have some PDF, Markdown, and JSON exports of all of my journals to convert into something more homebrew and platform-independent.

Good connection of the worrying story about removing anti-ICE apps to bigger problems in tech.

Apple refuses to easily sync music libraries between computers because they want me to pay for Apple Music. What it actually does is push me to spend more time listening to internet radio.

Ugh, this article makes it sound even worse.

I’ve only skimmed this, but I’m posting it as a reminder to myself that everything I said about Disney yesterday also applies to Apple, and that I need to find ways of extracting myself from their ecosystem, as hard as it may be.

I am very grumpy about this. Also, the point of emoji is that they exist within Unicode, yeah? So these aren’t really emoji in the way that those icons are useful—they’re just a fun trick that’s helping advance the climate crisis.

I’ve been feeling for a while like I need to move away from Apple eventually, but I’m so entangled in the ecosystem that I’m dragging my feet on it. Seeing the company drink the AI Kool-Aid is definitely accelerating my plans—and will even more so if there’s no easy way to turn these featutes off.

I’ve been waiting for Doctorow’s take on this, and it’s good. I’m an Apple user, but Doctorow’s criticisms all ring true to me.

I don’t like Spotify, but they’re not wrong here.

C’mon Apple.

Sideloading for Americans, too, please.

Good observations by Masnick here.

I’m an Apple user, but that never stops me from agreeing with Doctorow’s critiques.

Look, I’m glad my university is aware of and responding to the digital divide, but I’d appreciate a more critical treatment of what we’re doing. This sounds almost like ad copy for Apple, and it’s falling into a lot of tired edtech tropes about how technology must necessarily improve learning.

Lots to appreciate here.

This is very exciting! I’m far too locked into Apple’s ecosystem to seriously consider this right now (even this post is being composed thanks to Siri Shortcuts), but I hope this does well, because I’d love to own a Fairphone one day.