A Talk Show pair
February 25, 2025 at 4:37 PM by Dr. Drang
I listened to the most recent (and long-delayed) episode of The Talk Show today as I drove south from home to Champaign-Urbana to watch the Illini men’s basketball team try to reclaim their season against the Iowa Hawkeyes. The drive usually takes between 2 and 2½ hours, which is a perfect length for The Talk Show.
While discussing the new iPhone 16e, John Gruber and guest Paul Kafasis lamented the phone’s lack of MagSafe charging and speculated on why Apple left it out. I would say “money,” but that might be too generic of an answer. In any event, John and Paul agreed that they’d never buy an iPhone without MagSafe.
This struck me as odd. I’ve never been a particular fan of “wireless” charging. I don’t know why I’d want to spend more for a puck that recharges my phone in a less efficient way than plugging in. Especially since the puck is just as tethered to an electrical outlet as a standard USB-C cord. Now, when charging becomes truly wireless, and my phone can top itself off as a I walk around with it in my pocket, then I’ll be happy to pony up for that kind of charging station. But until then, I’m not wasting my money.
This feeling of superiority shrunk as I looked down to see my phone sitting on its back in the tray of my car’s center console. The tray that has a Qi charger under it and recharges my phone so conveniently as I drive around. I can make a decent argument that this isn’t really like a puck—it came with the car; I didn’t pay extra for it—but there’s no question that I am using wireless charging and it’s very nice. I should be more tolerant of MagSafe fans.
Later in the show, as they were discussing Rogue Amoeba’s recent escape from sandbox hell, John and Paul talked about how OS X/macOS has changed over the past couple of decades and what’s lost when an operating system’s emphasis shifts from ease of development (which has benefits for users as well as developers) to user safety.
This discussion came back to me as I walked around campus and found it difficult to get into some buildings—buildings that were almost always open to everyone who came along back when I was a student here. This isn’t new to me, and it isn’t true of most buildings, at least not during normal classroom hours. But you need credentials to get into some places during the day and most places in the evening. The shift in emphasis from campus openness to campus safety parallels what we see in the Mac. And as with the Mac, something has been lost with this shift. I’m not saying it isn’t the right choice. There’s no particular reason 64-year-old alumni should be able go wherever they like. But there’s definitely a different feel.