Apple WWDC leaks 📱, handheld XBox 🎮, MCP vs API 👨‍💻

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will focus on design and productivity enhancements for its long-established operating system franchises ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

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Contact the team today for year-round peace of mind. 📱 Big Tech & Startups Everything Apple Plans to Show at Its iOS 26-Focused WWDC 2025 Event (10 minute read) Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will focus on design and productivity enhancements for its long-established operating system franchises. The keynote address will begin at 10 AM PT today. It will introduce redesigned software interfaces for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch, along with minor tweaks to the Vision Pro headset. Apple also plans to introduce a sweeping change to its software brand, shifting version numbers to a year-based system. The AI changes that Apple plans to introduce will be minor and are unlikely to impress industry watchers. Microsoft and Asus announce two Xbox Ally handhelds with new Xbox full-screen experience (7 minute read) Microsoft and Asus have been working together over the past year to create two new ROG Xbox Ally handhelds. The white ROG Xbox Ally ships with AMD's Ryzen Z2 A processor and the ROG Ally X adds a better AMD processor and impulse triggers. The hardware specs make them very similar to Asus' existing Windows-powered handheld gaming PCs, but there are much-needed changes to the software side that make the experience a lot better. There are tweaks to the operating system, Xbox PC app, and Game Bar to make Windows more handheld-friendly. The reveal trailer for the devices is available in the article. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers 'overwhelmed' (2 minute read) Researchers have found a way to force HIV out of hiding inside human cells. HIV's ability to conceal itself within certain white blood cells has been one of the main challenges for scientists looking for a cure. Further research is required to determine whether revealing the virus is enough to allow the body's immune system to deal with it or whether other technologies or therapies will need to be used to eliminate it from the body. The method will require successful tests in animals followed by safety trials in humans before efficacy trials can even begin. BYD's Five-Minute Charging Puts China in the Lead for EVs (4 minute read) BYD's 1,000-kilowatt fast chargers make charging an EV as quick as a gasoline fill-up. They can supply nearly 250 miles of fresh range in five minutes. BYD designs its own cars, chargers, and batteries - this vertical integration puts the company in a unique position in terms of engineering control. This article discusses the technologies that enable the company's megawatt charging speeds. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science MCP vs API (6 minute read) Model Context Protocol (MCP) isn't just another API standard, it's a wire protocol that enforces consistency. It allows developers to test, sanitize inputs, and handle errors in actual code and not just hope that the model formats requests correctly. MCP agents query capabilities dynamically and adapt automatically while running as a local process. The protocol's standardization creates an opportunity to have consistent patterns across all servers. The practical path forward involves maintaining APIs for human developers while adding MCP for AI agent integration. Field Notes From Shipping Real Code With Claude (37 minute read) This is a field guide on AI-assisted development. It explores how to genuinely achieve a 10x productivity boost, the infrastructure used at Julep to ship production code daily using Claude, and why writing your own tests remains absolutely sacred. Good development practices are the difference between an AI that amplifies your capabilities and one that amplifies chaos. Research shows that teams that use rigorous practices deploy more frequently and are faster from commit to deployment - this effect is even more pronounced when you add capable AI assistants into the mix. 🎁 Miscellaneous The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs (14 minute read) Section 174 of the IRS Code of 1954 guaranteed that US companies could deduct 100% of the qualified research and development spending in the year they incurred the costs. This incentivized companies to develop their products in the US and fueled the rise of smartphones, cloud computing, and mobile apps. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during President Donald Trump's first term slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, but it also added a future provision that meant that companies must spread the research and development deduction in smaller chunks over five or even 15-year periods. The provision went into effect in 2022, making companies' biggest source of expenses now a painful tax bill, which fueled mass layoffs. Welcome to Campus. Here's Your ChatGPT (8 minute read) OpenAI is selling premium AI services to universities for faculty and student use and running marketing campaigns aimed at getting students to use ChatGPT. It plans to overhaul college education by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life. The company wants universities to give students AI assistants to help guide and tutor them. In its 'AI-native universities' plan, professors would provide customized AI study bots for each class, career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews, and students would be able to use chatbots to quiz them before tests. ⚡ Quick Links Craving more AI in your inbox? (Sponsor) TLDR AI is your daily fix of LLMs, GenAI, and deep learning goodness. Same TLDR format. Still free. Subscribe now. Meta reportedly in talks to invest billions of dollars in Scale AI (1 minute read) Scale AI provides data labeling services to companies to help them train their AI models. Specification Engineering (3 minute read) Declarative engineering is fine when software is 99% Python logic and 1% AI, but software would be poorly served by that paradigm if it was 99% AI and 1% Python. Odyc.js (Website) Odyc.js is a small JavaScript library for coding video games even without programming experience. SaaS Is Just Vendor Lock-In with Better Branding (3 minute read) Integrating third-party services comes at a cost, not just in dollars, but in time, friction, and mental overhead. Maintaining an Android app is a lot of work (7 minute read) Android development requires more effort to maintain compared to server-side development - developers planning to build an Android app as a hobby should keep the ongoing maintenance costs in mind. Reverse Engineering Cursor's LLM Client (17 minute read) This blog post demonstrates how to reverse-engineer Cursor's LLM client by setting up TensorZero as a self-hosted proxy service - this enables users to observe, analyze, and experiment with different LLM models while maintaining the full Cursor experience. magic namerefs (2 minute read) namerefs (introduced in bash 4.0) act as aliases for other variables and can also reference a specific element in an array, allowing for the creation of magic variables that evaluate any arbitrary expression. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/7c97ce4b/ Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. 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