From Dashboard Widgets to Breaking News: Mark Gurman's Path to Bloomberg
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Hello and welcome to App Stories. Today's episode is sponsored by Memberful, Drafts, and Tripsy. My name is John Voorhees, and with me, as always, is Federico Vittici, plus a special guest who we'll be introducing in just a moment. Hey, Federico. Hello, John. How are you?

So I'm doing really well. I'm doing really well. I'm really excited today because we've got Mark Gurman from Bloomberg with us. Mark is the managing editor and chief correspondent over there. Hey, Mark, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you guys for having me. Long time listener, long time reader of MacStory. So good to finally get on the pod. So thanks again for having me.

Federico, we want to talk to Mark today. I think a little bit about his backstory because I got to imagine, Mark, that I mean, you go back pretty far along with Federico in kind of the coverage of Apple. And I bet there are a lot of people who listen to the show who aren't really aware of kind of your early days and your origin story.

Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Federico and I started in the Apple news space around the same time. For me, it was the tail end of 2009, early 2010. And I worked, you know, for those listening to this, you're probably very familiar with 9 to 5 Macs.

If you're newer to reading Apple news, what you may not know is I worked at 9to5Mac between end of '09, early 2010 through, I believe, 2016. And so I was there for a while, grew up with the guys there, and it was a really fun time, not only in terms of covering the news, but what the news was at the time and the community. Federico, you started around the same time, right? Yeah, I started in April 2009. April 2009.

Yeah. And I mean, the App Store was like not even one year old at that point. Right. And like, for example, gosh, I feel so old talking about this stuff. But like jailbreak used to be like a big thing, like, you know, right around that time, the App Store was so new. And for example, I remember...

I think I remember coming across one of Mark's first articles on 9to5Mac. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you started as a developer of apps. I think that's where it all started for you. That's right. So I started as an app developer around early 2009, so around the same time that you were doing...

the launch of Mac stories. And for me, it was, it was really fun. I wanted to build software. I was already developing some Mac applications and Mac widgets for dashboard. Uh, if anyone remembers that from way back in the day, they had, uh, an application, I believe it was called dash code, right? Where you could develop dashboard widgets and that, uh, tied into Xcode. And so when the iPhone came out, uh,

I had the original model, and I thought it would be so cool to be able to develop my own applications. I was super interested in technology, interested in programming. I bought all sorts of iPhone SDK books and online courses and such and learned how to develop applications. I'm not saying any of my apps, you know,

hit the ball out of the park or anything like that. But it was at least fun to play with. And it was fun, really, the best part was getting to go to these developer conferences and meet people in the development community, like-minded folks like myself. And so this was just like another world I lived in as someone in the early years of high school. And then eventually, you know, I took my fandom of Apple and technology and, you know, moved into the new space, getting to share

share this stuff, right? See, the origin story for me is really my love of technology and my love of Apple and being so infatuated with it that I wanted to share my interests and teach people about this technology, how we could help people, teach them what these use cases are. And I just was a huge fan of the company and huge fan of tech and wanted to express that to people and share that with people and get other people into it.

Yeah, I think we all have that in common. I mean, I got my start as a developer, too. I wasn't a particularly good developer, but it led me very quickly into writing about technology because I, like you, I was very excited about it. And it's amazing to me how many people in this community kind of got their start around that same time, were inspired by the iPhone in particular, into, you know, whatever it was, becoming a developer, becoming a writer, whatever it would happen to be.

Yeah. And like what I think is interesting though here and that I want to kind of expand with you is do you think that it's the fact that you got started, you know, as a developer? Like first as a fan of Apple, of Apple products. Right. But then as a developer. And so knowing some of like the code and like the software, some of like the SDK, do you think that sort of informed your jump from I'm an Apple fan, I'm a developer to

I sort of know what I'm talking about. Let me dig into the code and see if I discover anything new. Was that like a critical point for you? You know, the way I would say it is, you know, some people who work in media and in journalism, they went to journalism school. Right. So they learned how to write, write, write really well, knew how to do journalism, knew what it takes to be a real top tier reporter. Right.

But I didn't. My education was really in the technology sector and learning how to program, learning how to develop, and getting a crash course on Apple and the way it works and the way these technologies work by having my head embedded in development and people in the developer community.

community and learning from them about technology and the like, right? And so I think that really gave me a leg up specifically on Apple. And over time, I learned the journalism side over it, right? So I took an untraditional path, right?

And I'm really grateful for it. In university, I studied information systems at U of M and learned a lot more about technology there as well and learned a lot about the technology world from like-minded people there too. And so I came in it from a tech background, but

I think the thing that gave me the most, you know, knowledge was just my obsession with Apple and my love of Apple and understanding how Apple worked and watching all their keynotes, becoming intimately familiar with the company, doing reading on the company for so many years, reading all the books about Apple, just being an Apple obsesso from the beginning. I think that is what really led me into this space more than anything. Yeah.

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Do you remember your first scoop? Like the first time you published something, you were like, oh, you know, this is fun. And maybe I'm onto something.

I would say the first big, big one that I remember was before the iPhone 4S was announced. I got a download on all the features of Siri and how Siri would work. It's different partnerships like Wolfram Alpha, how core it was, the iPhone 4S experience. And when I heard about this,

This was 2011, right about the time that Tim Cook became CEO. I was so excited because as a user, first and foremost, I couldn't wait to try this thing out, right? Using your voice to operate the device, using artificial intelligence to control phone calls and text messaging. Just when I heard about it from the first time, I said to myself, people are going to be so excited about this. I cannot wait to tell everyone about it. And I can't wait for everyone to finally see it when the 4S gets announced.

I believe that was early October that year. Yeah, yeah. I remember that article. I remember that. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So when you got started, Mark, with both development and then writing at 9to5Mac, you started in high school, right? And then continued on through college when you were at U of M? That's right. So I started as an app developer on the dashboard widgets and stuff. I believe it was at the tail end of middle school, so around eighth grade and the like. The iPhone came out when I was in eighth grade.

And then I got into iPhone app development, I believe, not I believe, for sure, in ninth grade. So at the very beginning of high school and started at 9 to 5 Mac, I believe right at the tail end of ninth grade or early 10th grade. So did this throughout high school, did this throughout college. And after graduating college about a month after graduation, I started at Bloomberg and

And for my first couple of years at Bloomberg, I lived in San Francisco. And so it was operating out of their headquarters there. Okay.

Yeah. So while you were in college, you said you were studying information systems. Did you ever have a feeling during your career at college at U of M that maybe you should switch to journalism? Or like when was it that you kind of realized that once you got out of school, you really wanted to be a writer and not maybe like somebody doing IT or something like that? Well, it's twofold, right? So on one hand, super interested in technology, right? But also was...

really into the media side of it, really into being able to write about it and share my viewpoints, share my opinions, and share excitement with people in the community about these upcoming technologies through writing, right? And through other means of media.

And so I don't think there was necessarily a pivot, right, from technology to writing or vice versa. I think the sector of technology that I'm working in just happens to be Apple and technology-related media, right? So I think both – I really just combine the both. So that's really what happened in my view. Yeah.

And do you think it was a pivot instead when you decided to have this big career change from 9to5Mac to Bloomberg? Because I can imagine that you had, I would say, a very successful relationship with 9to5Mac over the years, over the how many, six or seven years that you worked with them. But Bloomberg obviously was like a big change. And I remember that was almost nine years ago at this point. I remember when you announced it that if...

It sort of felt impossible in the community that, you know, the once young kid who started breaking rumors on an Apple blog was graduating to a major publication such as Bloomberg. And I kind of want to get into this with you. Like, what was your process? Like, that jump for you, like...

I think it was a natural progression. You know, I've said this before. I think 9 to 5 Mac, just by nature. So MacStories obviously is a smaller group. So you keep it tight in the family. So it's a little different. So this is not a slight to MacStories. But I feel like 9 to 5 Mac, at least in my experience, that's the only place I've worked at, is like the best –

He's the best tech in J school you can go to if you're someone who's interested in merging Apple and journalism together. You're going to learn the tricks of the trade. You know, Seth obviously is the founder there. I work very closely with him. The first couple of years that I was there, it was really me, him, and one or two other guys. And over time,

It's grown and Seth has given a lot of opportunities to people. And it's really, you know, you make you can make the most of it there. And they have got a great staff there and a lot of people are learning. And so, you know, if you're lucky enough to work there, you're going to learn how to break news. And so that was sort of like, you know, a high school for me. And Bloomberg is, you know.

graduate school, right? Just learning, learning even more here, doing things on a broader level. You know, there are a lot of similarities between, you know, the blog world and Bloomberg, and there's a lot of differences. So let me start with what's similar.

When you're an outsider, it's hard to realize this, but everyone working here are just, you know, they're regular people, right? We're all just, you know, regular people doing the best we can with the same excitement, I think, that people at blogs would have over what they cover, right? Like my excitement over covering Apple and my interest in the technology is the same today was during the nine to five days, right? The big differences at Bloomberg is

is that it's a corporation, right? You have amazing resources, amazing, uh, classes and education here, amazing colleagues who you all lean on each other to make better stories and collaborate, right? Sometimes I'm working with others on, on stories, whether it's a story that I'm leading or a story that they're leading. Um,

I'll collaborate on a lot of non-Apple stuff as well, right? You also have the rulebook, right? Lots of focus on ethics and doing the right thing and verification and...

very, very paramount on accuracy as well as timeliness, right? Which is the same thing that I did prior to Bloomberg, but now it's even more important. And so just getting to be in part of this big news organization with also still like-minded folks, but on a broader level with great management, great colleagues, great TV opportunities, podcast opportunities,

It's really allowed me to do what I did before, but take it to a whole new level. But at the same time, I will never forget what I helped build at 9ify Mac and the great legacy that they still are building there.

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Our thanks to Drafts for their support of the show. Do you feel more pressure now? Like when you're working on a big story and you know that, you know, you discovered something and you heard something, you know the details of something. Do you feel more responsibility? Like knowing that what you're going to publish is going to end up on Bloomberg?

Does that change how you feel about your role and your responsibility now compared to, say, 10 years ago? I think we all feel a lot of responsibility working at Bloomberg, this preeminent news organization, about being first, getting it right, being accurate and getting the news out there. Because we have a big audience and the news travels fast.

And so just by nature of that, I do feel like that is a big responsibility. But I would say that it's the same way I felt at 9to5Mac too, right? The same principles that I operate with here are the same principles I operated on at 9to5Mac. I guess the difference would be is in terms of individual articles, right?

I do find, and this is me personally, that I've set the bar higher for what an article may entail, right? And so there is a dynamic of what makes sense as a standalone article. And again, this is my personal take. It's not something that I'm instructed on. But what...

hits the bar for what should be a standalone article versus what should be an item in the weekly newsletter. And what Power On has allowed me to do is really leave less and less on the cutting room floor, right? There may be scenarios in which I feel something is not worthy of a standalone story just because of the breadth and power of Bloomberg and us really wanting to focus on the big news.

But I can always include it in the Sunday column or build the Sunday column around it, right? Like I'll give you an example. Like this past weekend, my column was about what the iPhone 17 – I've been calling it the 17 era, sort of the slim model, the thinner model, what the feature set is going to be. But the big nugget in there was that this phone was originally anticipated to lose the charging port. And it's a stepping stone to modernization.

future models, whether that's thinner devices, devices that are all wireless, foldables, new form factors, you name it, right? I didn't necessarily feel that writing an article that said Apple wanted to remove the port from this phone but ended up not doing it was necessarily worthy of a standalone article, but it made for a great column that people really, really enjoyed. This one in particular was really well-received.

Versus something like Apple's going to overhaul how their operating systems all look. That's a really big deal for the two plus billion people who use these devices. That, of course, made sense as a standalone article. The story on the meeting with the head of Siri, right, where he talked about how people are likely feeling angry, embarrassed, upset. Mm hmm.

big news. Obviously, we've been talking about the Siri situation for several months. That made sense as a standalone article. So at 9 to 5 Mac, right, at an Apple news blog where your entire website is focused only about Apple, you don't have a politics section, you don't cover Amazon, you don't cover Google, you don't cover world affairs, the economy and whatnot, you're going to put out content constantly. And that iPhone portless situation could have easily been a three-paragraph standalone story on a Wednesday afternoon.

Right, right. Yeah, it makes sense. I think that having a newsletter like that seems like a fantastic outlet, especially since you do get a lot of little tidbits that maybe, as you say, don't quite make it, you know, couldn't fill out to a full Bloomberg story. I want to ask you a little bit about how...

Things have changed in the kind of reporting you do over the years, because I remember back to like the old days before even you got your start with like ThinkSecret, which was a big rumor website in the Apple community that ultimately got shut down over litigation from Apple. And a few years after that is really...

around the time that you started. And we've seen over the years a lot of blogs that are in the Apple community that have focused on things that are coming out of Cupertino, coming presumably from employees. But we're also now seeing, I think, a rise of information coming out of

China and other Asian countries where these devices are made. You know, it's supply chain type of of leaks that are turning into news stories. Has that been your experience with with the way things have changed over your career?

Based on what I've seen over the years, and again, think secret. That was, like you said, before my time. So, I mean, I'm familiar with the story, but I wasn't intimately familiar at the time. I mean, the Apple supply chain has existed for all of these decades. It's only grown as Apple has gotten bigger. So I think that news coming out of the supply chain is something that has really always existed. So I'm not sure there's been a sea change there.

Okay. All right. Yeah. I think maybe it's that social media has amplified it in a way because you see a lot of people on Twitter and other outlets doing that, I suppose. Yeah. I think we are seeing sort of this new generation of leakers and especially on X or Twitter, as it used to be called, like this, this new wave of folks, frankly, most of them with

kind of questionable track records. But I think, I don't know if this is something you've noticed, like a lot of these new accounts on Twitter, a lot of people sort of making concept videos and sort of passing them as leaks. I was kind of wondering what

What relationship do you have regarding that? You know, it's a little bit of a scary thing, not for me, but for news consumers and people who love Apple, want to be informed on Apple products, that anyone can create an X account or a Threads account or a Blue Sky account these days and post whatever they want, right? And so I think credibility is earned over time.

And if you see accounts come out and they're constantly hitting the nail on the head, getting things accurate, I think they could be trusted. And if you see an account that is constantly only getting things wrong, I think consumers and newsreaders are smart enough to determine who's right and who's wrong. Right. You've seen many accounts crop up.

totally bogus information and then no one's ever heard about them again because their entire history has been a 0% track record. And so I think that consumers know what's correct. I mean, I think the concepts thing is so cool because

Concepts I remember back in the day, there were always concepts on different websites and different forums about what's the next iPhone going to look like, what's the next iPod going to look like. And I think if you look at those things not from a legitimate news reporting standpoint, but if you just take yourselves out of the media shoes here for a second and think about it, what it's like if you're a younger kid who loves Apple and is so excited about the next Apple product, those concept videos, those concept graphics,

I remember for me, at least back before I was doing this, you know, as a real job, those were super exciting to me. So I think there's a place for it just from a hype standpoint, just from an excitement standpoint. But I think people also have to realize that nine times out of 10, maybe 10 times out of 10, that's not going to match what ends up actually being the product that gets announced. Right. I kind of want to get into the more

tricky aspects of what you've been doing through the years. And the first question that came to mind when I was thinking about, like, I was preparing for this interview. Do you think that, do you feel like you have

Sort of like an adversarial relationship with Apple. And I think I know the answer. But from the outside, like looking at what you do, right? Looking at Mark Gurman through the years, more than a decade, breaking Apple news and rumors.

One must think, oh, you know, Apple must hate this guy. But you just came on the show saying, I started it all because I love Apple and because I love Apple products. And so I think there's this strange contrast maybe between your position and from the outside looking in,

You know, somebody may think, oh, Apple must truly hate that German is breaking these scoops. I was wondering, how do you reconcile that yourself? I think that you should try to get some of their executives on the show and ask them their viewpoints. But from my perspective, I certainly don't feel like I have an adversarial relationship with Apple. Right. I play the role of reporting on their news and being a part of that news cycle.

And they play the role of getting their products to market and announcing them the ways that they want to do that. And I think that there's a place for both. I do what I do. They do what they do. And I certainly think very highly of the company there. I think fairly highly of their PR department.

They obviously, as part of the reporting process, when you're, this is another difference between, you know, 9to5Mac and Bloomberg to the point earlier, right? I'm at a major news organization, right? And as part of that, you go to the company for comment on an article that you are going to publish and you inform them of what's coming and give them the opportunity to say something, right? Most times companies, including Apple, they don't comment on the news to come, right? Yeah.

But there are occasions where they will comment, right? And you have to make sure you give those companies the opportunity to say something so you're getting both sides of the story. And all of my interactions, I can tell you, I've been at Bloomberg for nine plus years at this point, as you mentioned.

All of my interactions with Apple have been professional and friendly, right? They're not going to comment on something. I'm going to put that they didn't comment on it. They're going to comment on something. They'll send me their comment and I'll put it in the story. So it's been, I think, a positive working relationship. Interesting. That's nice to hear. Yeah.

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Again, that URL is tripsea.app slash appstories for 25% off a lifetime purchase or 30% off one year. Our thanks to Tripsea for their support of the show. And the other part, like you mentioned just a few minutes ago, credibility. And I think that's obviously an important factor to consider here, especially when, you know, if you were to put, you know, Mark Gurman's history on a scale over the past...

In total, how many years? 15, 16 years that you've been doing this? 16 years about, yeah. I think 16, yeah. And I think it's pretty objective that through these 16 years, you may have done some stories wrong, some details wrong, but the vast majority of your reporting has been

I think, objectively speaking, true. Like things have come true, things have been accurate. And so, you know, credibility, I think it's obviously a ratio, you know, between a person's career, the things that get wrong and the things that get right. But I think it's fascinating that despite your track record, there are always, I don't want to say attacks, but like people putting your

credibility or your reputation in question and i see these ideas like sometimes that i think are

that I think are funny personally, just my personal perspective, but like these ideas, like, oh, German, you know, when he reports something and he writes an article and he moves the stock market, he gets a bonus. Like, and I'm guessing that's false. You guessed correct. You guessed correct. That is not true. Okay. But like, it must be,

When you're putting your name on an article, right? There must be a part of you that thinks, but what if I get this wrong? Like...

And that, I have to imagine that's a lot of pressure and that's challenging, right? Well, first of all, there's always going to be naysayers, right? There's always going to be people trying to downplay the accomplishments and track records of others, right? But my situation here is I'm always trying to do the best job possible, keep people in the technology and output communities as informed as possible, right?

build these relationships with the communities. Like I love being, I do this discord chat every once in a while where I'm in discord and talking to people live who are readers of power on and readers of my stuff on Twitter and Bloomberg and just interacting with these people is just so much fun and getting insights from others. Right. Sometimes I come in there and someone gives an opinion and I've,

listen to this and I can totally change the way I've been thinking about something just based on talking to other like minded people. Right. So I'm not my opinions are very much, you know, my opinions, but I'm always happy to hear another perspective. So so so that's that credibility is important. I've never claimed to be 100 percent perfect. What I plan is always to do the best job I can and get the most accurate information possible when I publish something and I put my name on it. Right.

I'm not going to publish it unless I'm 100% sure about it. You can always take that to the bank. Yeah. But what I think is interesting is your reporting does have

Maybe consequences is not the right word, but it has an effect, right? And I wanted to ask you, what do you think of like, for example, you're reporting that the next iPhone is going to be thinner and that Apple is making a slim phone.

And maybe there's another company, maybe Samsung, you know, maybe Xiaomi, someone is seeing that article and they're thinking, maybe we can sort of beat Apple to the punch here and we can actually make a slim phone months before. So then we can say, you know, come October, we can say, aha, look at Apple, they copied us. Is that...

Something that occurred to you over the years? Is that something that you noticed happening? Like these other companies, non-Apple companies, being sort of inspired by your rumors to try and beat Apple to market with some feature or some product? Yeah, let me say a couple things on this. One, the development timelines of new products are so long. They're often longer than we think. There are products inside Apple that get conceptualized.

years before the development process even starts. There are times when development starts on a product, it's shelved and it's brought off the shelf and they're working on it, right? The idea of an Apple Watch Ultra, right? This watch first launched in 2022. That was probably something they were talking about five years ago and probably didn't start development until sometime like 2020, right? You think about the slim phone. This is probably something they've been conceptualizing and thinking about for a number of years. So I'm

I wouldn't say that there's a correlation between a report or some such on an upcoming feature or product that gets a company to start work on that product, if that makes sense. A lot of times that thought process at that company probably started a long time before the report.

The other thing that you may find interesting is that all of these companies have their own market research departments. And so they all probably already have a good idea of what each other is doing. Apple does this. Samsung does this. Google does this. They all do it, right? So I think this goes well beyond just the media. Yeah, I would assume that at most what's really happening is it's a marketing shift for some of these companies. So I'm thinking in particular at the moment, you just did a story about Alexa Plus.

And that is very much being kind of, I guess, targeted in a way. You can see that Amazon is trying to position that

out front and center because of the troubles that Apple has had with Siri and the Apple intelligence. And I got to think that someone like Apple or Amazon is making their executives more available for that type of interview because they see an opening, because they see an opportunity with something that was already obviously in development for many years, but it's ready sooner than Siri. Now they can kind of like push it out in front and maybe get people to switch to an Alexa as opposed to a HomePod or something.

I would say there's cases like that, certainly maybe on the marketing and PR side of those companies. But on that Alexa example specifically, I think a lot of people have forgot about this. They actually announced the new Alexa at the end of 2023, right? So almost a year. Yeah, it's true. It's very delayed. A year and a half ago. So they had this year and a half delay and it was a failure, right? They failed.

They said it would come out in the coming months. Then they started testing it internally and they realized we have to go entirely back to the drawing board on this. And we're launching this a year and a half after we initially announced it, right? So I think in terms of the announcement timing just a few weeks ago of Alexa Plus, we're

I don't think that corresponded to the issues of Apple AI and Apple Intelligence in Siri. I think they really just rolled it out as soon as they felt it was ready because they already announced this nine months before Apple Intelligence was even a thing.

Yeah, I get that. Let me let me ask you about kind of your year in covering Apple. I mean, I know you obviously cover other companies, but there's an ebb and flow to Apple. You know, we all kind of know the rhythm of of Apple and its release schedule with the fall being kind of the biggest time.

Where do you kind of, what do you, how does your job change in those times that are a little quieter? Say, you know, wintertime for Apple tends to be a little quieter. It's been a little maybe busier this year than some years, but a lot of times, you know, February, March, April can be a little bit quiet in the world of Apple. Yeah, I mean, a few things. I mean, first of all, it has not been a quiet year for Apple, so this is a bit of a unique year, but, you know, you're right in general. So if we're walking into...

Mac season or iPad or phone and watch season, right? Like the priorities are stories on the upcoming devices, right?

When you are in a bit of a lull period, it gives me an opportunity to sort of take a step back and figure out what are the longer term things Apple is working on? What are the long form in-depth stories I can write about a product that already launched or something that is launching in the future, right? Like some of my favorite stories have been long form insights into what happened with the Apple car. How was the Vision Pro developed? Uh,

Many years ago, how was the HomePod developed? And give me that opportunity to take a step back a little bit and focus on some of the bigger picture stuff.

The other good thing, as you noted, is that I don't exclusively cover Apple. It's the majority of my reporting. But when there are lull periods for Apple, those are times where I can focus a little bit more on other interesting companies. I love Apple and my readers love Apple, but there are other companies out there too. And so it's important to take a look at what all these other corporations are doing as well. Google, Amazon, Samsung, some of the Chinese filmmakers and such. So

Try to do as much Apple as possible, but I'm lucky enough that I have the opportunities to fill some of those gaps with bigger picture things, as well as some of the other companies that are important in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a couple of questions left. And the first one is something that I would like to know from you. Do you have a favorite story reporting that you've done over the years?

And do you have something, anything that you wish you'd published, but for whatever reason you held off and you didn't? And maybe in hindsight, you're like, you know, I should have probably published that. Yeah, I've well, let me start with the the one I wished I'd published. So, you know, my broad answer is.

I wish I published anything I didn't break, right? Anything that someone else broke. I wish it was, you know, I wish I broke it. But obviously, there's so much Apple news, there's opportunities for everyone. And that's great. And that's what makes this an amazing media ecosystem and an amazing time. There was one story in particular that I was working on. And Federico, you'll appreciate this in particular.

This was around, let's see, this was at the very beginning of the pandemic when Apple launched the iPad Pro update. This was, I think, the A12X model, right? And at the same time, if you remember, they announced an updated version of iPadOS that supported trackpad and mouse. And they also rolled out the Magic Keyboard.

So I had heard several months before that that Apple was working on trackpad support for the iPad as well as this combined keyboard trackpad update to the smart cover. And I got pretty far down the line on that, but that's when you have to – there's always the smell test.

Right. Involved. And to me at the time, it just didn't pass the smell test. And so it's not something that I pursued all the way to the finish line. I wish I did. Right. But it doesn't matter now because the important thing is that that product's out and I use an iPad Pro with the keyboard and it's awesome. Right. And so that's neither here nor there. So that's on the stories I wish I published. Yeah.

In terms of my favorite story, I always like to say my favorite story is the next one. It's what I'm working on right now. It's the one I'm working on after that. The news flow moves so quickly that there's just not a lot of time to go back and reflect on the prior stories, at least not right now in this day and age with the speed apples we're working on. But if I were to pick a couple...

The story I wrote when I was first to publish that Apple canceled its self-driving car project, that was about a year ago. I thought that was a really big deal, obviously, in terms of how many people it impacted within the company, what it meant for the market, what it meant for society, the fact that Apple was no longer going to produce a car.

And I think my follow-ons on that sort of a bigger picture take on what led to that decision, how we got here, I think being able to share

show people who are interested in this topic, you know, what they were missing and why this happened. I think it was important to give them that full approach of what's everything that's going on. In terms of even more recent things, I think the work that we've done on Apple Intelligence and Siri has been really great. We're doing the best job we can to keep people informed on the situation. And the story I wrote several weeks ago that the new Siri features were destined to be delayed.

I think is what got the ball rolling on a lot of this stuff, this discussion lately on social media. And so that was another really exciting one. The iPhone series story I mentioned from 2011 before the 4S, you know, that's my first really big story that I could remember. So that was an exciting one as well.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good answer. Thank you. And the final thing I kind of wanted to know from you is, do you have any advice? So let's say that I'm a 20 year old. I'm looking at Mark Gurman. You know, I'm a fan of Apple, but also I'm like, I want to be I want to be the next Mark Gurman. I want to be the new Mark Gurman. Yeah.

Not to, you know, I'm not saying that I want you to give advice to potential competitors of yours out there. But at the same time, you know, you've been doing this for a long time now. What advice would you give to somebody who's looking out to start, you know, covering Apple News, maybe breaking Apple News? What would you do today in 2025? Just to go a little bit broader.

I think just to take myself out of it, I think no matter what you want to do, whether it's you want to write about Apple, whether it's you want to become a lawyer or car designer or you want to do medical work, what have you, I think you need to

Follow your passion. I think you need to be dead set and very clear minded about what you want to do. And I think you want to create a set of goals about how to get where you want to go and start knocking those goals out and really learn and talk to the right people to understand and learn from them. Find your mentors to really learn from them how to do the tricks of the trade.

And so I think that's really what it's about, having a vision and not veering from it. And even when you hit roadblocks, because undoubtedly in life you always will, always push, push, push to try to overcome those and learn from people around you and do as much reading as possible. But also take some time to sort of step back and breathe sometimes and really understand—

how grateful you need to be to even have the opportunity to be able to set out a vision for what you want to do and take those steps to pursue it. Not everyone in the world has the opportunity to come up with a passion, become obsessed with something and dream about something and do everything they can to pursue it. So if you start by...

So understanding how grateful you should be to be able to do that, right? I think that is a big step, right? You have to understand that not everyone has these opportunities to pursue what they want to pursue. So if you understand that, that's going to give you the encouragement, that's going to give you the courage and the happiness to really go full throttle and go after anything you want.

Yeah. Yeah. Very well said. Well, thank you, Mark, for taking the time for this interview on App Stories. In the post-show, this is where we're going to get geeky with Mark. We're going to quiz Mark about how Mark Gurman actually gets work done. All right. This is something that I always wanted to know. I want to know about the computer that you use. I want to know about the apps that you use. So we're going to talk about that. Perfect.

John, productivity with Mark Gurman. That's going to be the post-show. John, where can people find the show notes and everything? Oh, well, everybody, thanks for joining us today. And again, thanks, Mark. Of course, you can find Mark over at Bloomberg.com. You can find me and Federico over at MacStories.net.

You can find all of us on social media too. You know what the easiest way to do that is? Find your favorite social media app and just search for our names. You'll find Mark. You'll find Federico. You'll find me. The easiest one to find is Mark. Mark is very easy to find. Anyway, thanks again, everybody. And I will see you next week, Federico. Ciao, John.