From a press release on Netflix’s “News” website:

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec. 5, 2025 – Today, Netflix, Inc. (the Company) and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.

The cash and stock transaction is valued at $27.75 per WBD share (subject to a collar as detailed below), with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (equity value of $72.0 billion). The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.

According to the aforementioned press release, Netflix will maintain Warner Bros.' current operations and this new “combination will offer more choice and greater value for consumers, create more opportunities for the creative community and generate shareholder value”.

Given the size and influence of both companies, and the fact that Netflix stated that Warner Bros. will be maintaining its current operations, it will be interesting to see how this affects both organizations, how they’re offered to and accessed by users, and the content that they both produce.

In a press release on Apple’s Newsroom website, the company announced some additional changes to the organization’s executive team:

Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice president in January, reporting to CEO Tim Cook and serving on Apple’s executive team. In addition, Lisa Jackson, vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams will report to Apple chief operating officer Sabih Khan.

These leadership changes follow the retirement announcement of John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, as well as the news that Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, is leaving the organization to join Meta as their Chief Design Officer.

Dan Moren, writing at SixColors.com, mentioned the recent reports / rumors related to Apple CEO Tim Cook and when he might consider retiring:

Over all this continues to hover uncertainty about Tim Cook’s future, with some recent reports suggesting that he might announce his retirement sometime next year, though it’s more than possible that he might simply transition into the company’s chairman role. If nothing else, a long era of stability amongst Apple’s leadership has seen a lot of changes recently, and it may not be over yet.

While all of the recent leadership changes may just be coincidence, Dan Moren’s point about Apple having a decent period of stability within the organization’s leadership team only to have several changes over the past week or so makes one wonder what might happen next.

Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, Alan Dye, is reported to be leaving the company to join Meta as their Chief Design Officer.

Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors.com:

Dye is joining Meta as chief design officer on December 31, and he will help Meta in its efforts to further break into consumer hardware. Dye will head up Meta’s new design studio, overseeing hardware design and software design with a focus on improving Meta devices like headsets and glasses with AI features.

According to the aforementioned MacRumors article (which is based on a Bloomberg article by Marc Gurman), Dye will be replaced by Stephen Lemay, who has been a member of Apple’s design team for over two decades.

The news of Dye’s departure comes just days after Apple announced the upcoming retirement of John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy. That said, it seems as though Dye’s departure is on different terms, with Jon Gruber of DaringFireball.net writing:

It sounds like Dye chose to jump ship, and wasn’t squeezed out (as it seems with former AI chief John Giannandrea earlier this week). Gurman/Bloomberg are spinning this like a coup for Meta (headline: “Apple Design Executive Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup”), but I think this is the best personnel news at Apple in decades. Dye’s decade-long stint running Apple’s software design team has been, on the whole, terrible — and rather than getting better, the problems have been getting worse.

Gruber further elaborates on the criticisms of Dye in a follow-up piece on DaringFireball.net entitled “Bad Dye Job”, which is worth a read if you’re intersted in the state of Apple’s design team.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this change will affect the future of design at Apple!

In a press release on their “Newsroom” webpage, Apple announced that John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is set to retire in the Spring of 2026:

Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. Apple also announced that renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align closer with similar organizations.

Taking Giannandrea’s place will be Amar Subramanya, who is currently CVP of AI at Microsoft and, prior to that, served in various roles at Google for 16 years, including VP of Engineering (where he worked on Google’s Gemini product).

Given that Siri and Apple’s AI efforts are seen as being behind other AI products like Gemini or ChatGPT, this move may not be surprising to some. However, it will be interesting to see how this change affects the state of Siri and AI at Apple going forward.

This past Tuesday, WhatsApp announced on their blog that they were launching a version of the popular messaging app for the Apple Watch.

Today we are announcing a big upgrade for your wrist — the all-new WhatsApp app for your Apple Watch*. This new experience will help you stay on top of your chats without needing to pull out your iPhone.

Prior to the release of an official app for the Apple Watch, WhatsApp users were able to view and reply to messages on their watches, but that was about the extent of what they could do.

However, the new WhatsApp app will enable users to receive call notifications, read full messages, record and send voice messages, react to messages, view chat histories, and have an improved media experience.

In order to install WhatsApp for the Apple Watch, users will have to have an Apple Watch Series 4 (or newer) running watchOS 10 or later.

John Voorhees, writing for MacStories.net:

If there’s a theme surrounding the 26.1 updates to Apple’s OSes, it’s that the company is listening to its users. Tinted Liquid Glass, the return of Slide Over, and the updates to the very niche Local Capture feature are all great examples of Apple’s engineering teams turning around meaningful updates to its OSes based on feedback from users. That’s great to see, and a trend that I hope continues long into the future.

While the 26.1 versions of Apple operating systems were released this past Monday, November 3rd, I recently came across John Voorhees' post on MacStories.net and think it summarizes the updates very nicely. The screenshots that are included are a nice touch, as well.

Regarding the 26.1 updates, the ones that stick out the most to me are the return of Slide Over in iPadOS 26.1 and the ability to choose between Clear and Tinted versions of Liquid Glass in both iOS and iPadOS 26.1.

While I personally don’t mind the default, Clear, version of Liquid Glass, I can see how having the option to apply a darker tint to it would be ideal for many users. Slide Over, on the other hand, is a feature that I am very happy to see returning with iPadOS 26.1, as it’s something that I use pretty frequently on my iPad Mini. In fact, I still haven’t upgraded to iPadOS 26, partly as I didn’t want to lose the ability to use Slide Over for multitasking.

Overall, though, it’s definitely nice to see that Apple is really taking user feedback to heart and implementing changes that users have requested.

Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac.com:

Apple has launched a dramatic new web interface for the App Store. You can now get the full App Store experience right in your browser, with dedicated pages for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision, Watch, and TV app libraries.

Previously, Apple’s “apps.apple.com” domain simply redirected you to a generic page about the App Store on Apple’s website. Now, it takes you to a full-fledged version of the App Store you can browse on your computer.

This new web-based interface for the App Store looks pretty good and feels very much like the real-deal App Store that you would have access to on a Mac with all of the usual details (ratings and reviews, screenshots, related apps, etc.) included on an app’s page.

Mark Gurman, of Bloomberg, on Twitter:

A notable change coming to AppleCare+ next week: Apple is dropping the 2-3 year pay in advance option at physical retail stores and on devices and will only offer monthly and annual subscriptions. You’ll still be able to get those multi-year plans on the online store.

If true, this is just one of the many services out there that will have gone to a subscription model. I do wonder, though, if users will be able to purchase an Apple product at a physical retail store and then make a one-time AppleCare+ purchase online, after-the-fact, like users can currently do.

As it stands today, if a user wanted to purchase AppleCare+ for an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max, the one-time purchase price would be $199 for two years of coverage. The monthly option for the same coverage would cost $9.99/month, which would renew until cancelled. Assuming the user kept paying for monthly coverage for at least two years, they would end up spending $239.76, which ends up being $40.76 more expensive than purchasing the one-time plan for two years of coverage.

Whether or not Apple will update their pricing remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out and what users think of the changes.

John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball.net:

Another fun promo for Severance season 2.

And a promo on Apple’s homepage featuring a computer made by another company. And a free in-universe book, The Lexington Letters, at Apple Books.

It’s great to see the fun ways that Apple has been advertising Severance Season 2 recently! In addition to this, Apple also created a live “Lumon Employees” display at Grand Central Station, complete with working employees!

Hello and welcome to my new blog, hosted on Micro.blog! My name is Jamie McGibbon and I am a technology enthusiast based in Massachusetts, USA.

I’ve been blogging in one form or another for a number of years, mainly about computers and technology on TechnicalCafe.com - a blog that I started in 2008 or 2009, back when I was still in high school. During that time, I also started a YouTube channel, where I posted tech-related videos, with a focus on computer programming and web development (with a few other videos thrown in for good measure).

That said, if you were to look at the above-mentioned blog and YouTube channel, you’d notice that I haven’t published much content over the last few years, with the exception of a few “recent” technology-related news posts on the TechnicalCafe blog.

That’s where this new blog comes in.

I have been following bloggers like Paul Thurrott, John Gruber, Jason Snell, and M.G. Siegler, among others, and enjoy the type of content that they create. In particular, I have been enjoying the link-style posts that Gruber and Snell publish on their blogs, which are often short-form posts that contain a link to an article or other source coupled with their personal thoughts on it.

I’m not sure if this blog will end up taking the “link blog” format, but I do like the idea of posting about recent happenings and providing some personal opinions about them, along with some occasional commentary posts, technology tutorials, or even the occasional update on what’s going on in my personal life.

While I have done the majority of my blogging on WordPress in the past, I have wanted to give Micro.blog a try for a while now and figured this would be as good a time as any to do just that. I admire what the Micro.blog team has created (shout out to Manton Reece for creating such a great platform) and look forward giving the service a try with this new blog.

With the backstory out of the way, here’s a bit about me:

• I live in Massachusetts with my wife and our two black cats - Sully and Taco.

• I earned my Private Pilot certificate in 2021 and enjoy flying small airplanes for fun!

• I enjoy playing video games, with Old School RuneScape and Call of Duty being two of my favorite titles.

In addition to this blog, I am also available on a variety of social media platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Instagram, among others. And, occasionally, I like to stream on Twitch, though please don’t watch if you’re expecting win after win in Call of Duty - you likely won’t find it when I’m playing, ha!

Thank you for taking the time to read this post! I really appreciate you checking out this new blog and look forward to creating more content in the future!