By John Gruber

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How They Got Duo Support in NetNewsWire ★

From the NetNewsWire blog:

The latest version of NetNewsWire for iOS supports iPhone Duo, which is very much a novel iPhone with toolbars running up the side and all kinds of behavior.

How we did it: we didn’t do any work at all. We built the app using Xcode 27.1 and the default iOS SDK that comes with it, and that’s it.

Here’s the thing, though: we were already using standard controls — toolbars, navigation controllers, split views, etc. — and we were paying attention to size classes and such (as opposed to just looking at device type).

Develop your app the right way and, depending on the app, it might literally be no work at all to produce a great version for the Duo. Develop your app the wrong way and it might take months. NetNewsWire is one of my most-used apps. I keep it in my home screen dock, alongside Messages, Notes, and Safari. It would drive me nuts to use a Duo without a version of NetNewsWire that adapts to the Duo’s novel display sizes.

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Friday, 16 October 2026

Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, Says AI Researchers Have Started Smoking Because They’re Convinced AI (Claude, Probably) Is Going to Cure Cancer ★

From the transcript of Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS:

Shyam Sankar: You know, I take — I think there’s a profound truth to Pascal’s saying that every human has a god-shaped hole in their heart, and it’s important to understand that many of these folks in Silicon Valley who are building this technology have filled that hole with the machine God of AGI. And I mean, there’s so many interesting stories around this. Like, for example, so many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI. I believe so much — (CROSSTALK)

Margaret Brennan: What? That makes no sense. What do you think —

Shyam Sankar: I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I will — I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it, and I think it’s getting in the way of actually what is happening with AI.

Sankar doesn’t name anyone, alas, but if there’s any truth to this (and good god do I hope there is) it’s got to be Anthropic researchers specifically. They’re the religious kooks who believe they’re creating an AI god and hold the psychotic belief that Claude is already conscious. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, you crazy fucks.

Via Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, who notes that the nation’s finest news source was on this story 13 years ago.

iPhone Duo Pre-Orders Launched, and Three Hours Later It’s Sold Out Through the End of January ★

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

If you were hoping to surprise someone with an iPhone Duo for Christmas, you might be out of luck, as Apple’s online store in the U.S. is already showing an estimated shipping date of January 25 for all configurations following the start of pre-orders today.

It is possible that some Apple Stores will have the iPhone Duo available for walk-in customers on Friday, October 23 launch day, but it seems likely that inventory will be very tight.

I suspect it’s a combination of high demand and low supply but I doubt we’ll get any insight on that from Apple itself. It’s in their interest to let people think demand is simply very high, and not draw attention to their production limits.

I feel for the folks on the West Coast who woke up for a 5:00am start and still got stuck with December or even January ship dates. This is one of those times where it’s frustrating that, per Apple’s consistent schedule, pre-orders always start before reviews appear. People are left to guess whether they’re going to like it without any word from people who’ve used it.

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Thursday, 15 October 2026

Secret Documents Reveal Donors Behind $330 Million for Trump’s Ballroom — Apple and Nvidia Top the List at $25 Million Each ★

Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer, reporting for The Washington Post (News+ link; Archive.today link):

A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member.

Tech giants Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount, the list shows. The Adelson family, one of the GOP’s largest donor dynasties, committed that sum as well, as did billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of telecommunications company Dish Network.

Absent from the list is Trump himself, who has said that he is helping to pay for the project. “It’s being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine,” he said last year, days after demolition began on the old East Wing.

The White House publicly identified 37 people, companies and foundations as donors last October, without revealing the amount of their individual gifts.

The list obtained by The Post, an internal spreadsheet used to track contributions for the fundraising effort, contains the source, date and amount of all 67 donations above $10,000 recorded as of late last month. It shows a total of $333 million from private donors, aligning with the administration’s public statements. Additional records, also internal to the fundraising effort, provide more detail about the donations and indicate that at least $77 million came from donors who requested anonymity.

In addition to being a shameful display of abject corruption, it’s also a shameful act of support for horrendous architecture. This entire edifice ought to be destroyed — I won’t vote for any Democratic candidate in the 2028 primary who doesn’t pledge to knock all this Trump cack to the ground in January 2029. That’s table stakes.

Wednesday, 14 October 2026

The FBI Arrested a Saudi National OpenAI Employee for Planting a Recording Device in the Company’s Executive Conference Room ★

The Department of Justice, yesterday:

An employee of OpenAI has been arrested for and charged with using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was arrested on Oct. 9, and made his initial appearance in federal court today.

“This serious situation underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative — and why President Trump’s leadership in creating the Super Intelligence Force is so important,” said Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton. “I thank Director Patel and our FBI partners for their diligence and swift action. The intelligence community remains committed to safeguarding America’s cutting-edge intellectual property from foreign threats.”

“According to the complaint unsealed today, Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Protecting American SI innovation is essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities.

Four references to “super intelligence” in two paragraphs. Not weird at all.

Alfozan, unsurprisingly, was fired.

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Apple HomeView ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today introduced Apple HomeView, designed to be central to the home and personal to everyone in it. With a stunning 7-inch Liquid Retina display, HomeView brings entertainment, connection, and smart home management together in one place, from playing music and making FaceTime calls to home monitoring and hands-free automations with voice control — all designed with privacy and security at the core. HomeView recognizes users by their faces, adapting so they can access their personal content in Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders, and Find My. HomeView features Siri AI, an entirely new version of Siri that’s profoundly more capable and conversational, with broad world knowledge that powers richer music discovery and onscreen awareness. When paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, it can also draw on a user’s personal context, such as their Calendar, Messages, and relevant information across their apps, to provide more helpful, personalized responses.

Your first question might be how this facial recognition to identify users works, using a Center Stage camera alone, when other products (like, notably, the iPhone Duo) don’t let you unlock using the camera alone. HomeView does not have Face ID. I asked about this and Apple reps said that first, your home is (reasonably!) presumed to be a safe space. But in order for users to be recognized — by voice or face — they must have a “registered personal device” that supports Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, that device must be present on the home’s Wi-Fi network, and it must have been recently unlocked. Per footnote 2 on the Newsroom post:

Personal context requests require a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version with Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language.

So, alas, an Apple Watch does not count as a personal device. Effectively, your iPhone or iPad serves as a second factor to securely identify you. FaceID serves as a single factor for authentication, so something like iPhone Duo cannot do what HomeView is doing here.

Monday, 12 October 2026

Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, Died at 73 ★

Mary Alyce Stephens (née Neader), posting on Cringely’s Facebook account:

Hello, this is Mary Alyce, Bob’s wife. I am coming to you with immense sadness to let you know that Bob passed away. His obituary follows. His family is not requesting anything, however, if you would like to make a donation in his honor, please consider The American Heart Association or The American SIDS Institute. [...]

Writing as Robert X. Cringely, Mark became a distinctive voice in technology journalism. He had an unusual ability to understand not only technology but also the human beings behind it — the dreamers, inventors, entrepreneurs, eccentrics, and risk-takers who were changing the world. He could take a complicated subject and make it understandable, entertaining, funny, and deeply human. He was skeptical when skepticism was warranted, irreverent when others were overly serious, and never particularly interested in following conventional wisdom. That independence was not simply part of his writing. It was Mark.

He followed the beat of his own drummer throughout his life. He was brilliant, funny, opinionated, curious, generous, exasperating, and unforgettable — sometimes all within the same conversation. He loved a good story and knew how to tell one. He could make you laugh, make you think, make you argue with him, and occasionally drive you crazy. Life with Mark was rarely dull.

Mark’s life also included heartbreaking loss. He was preceded in death by his beloved sons, Chase and Cole Stephens, as well as his parents, Ray and Lois Stephens and father-in-law Jim Neader. I could also add brother-in-law Jimmy Neader and niece Ericka Neader, but they were a thorn in our side.

That last dig, at her own dead brother and niece, offers a hint at why Cringely loved her. He wasn’t one to pull punches either.

Her full obituary for Cringely/Stephens is visible without being logged into Facebook (I’ve still never created one), but Steven Sinofsky kindly posted it to his account on X. Pick your poison. Update: Here’s a version hosted by the funeral home.

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Sunday, 11 October 2026

Apple Only Started Suggesting iOS 26 Users Upgrade to 27 Three Days Ago ★

Joe Rossignol, on Thursday:

Starting today, iPhone users still running iOS 26 will see iOS 27.0.1 as the prominent software update in the Settings app under General → Software Update, with iOS 26.7.1 now relegated to a smaller “Also Available” section at the bottom.

Just the other day I posted about how most users only get OS updates when Apple pushes them through automatic updates. But even for users who update manually, until Thursday, the default suggested update for users on iOS 26.x was to remain on the latest version of iOS 26. To get iOS 27 you had to scroll down “below the fold” and most users don’t do that.

iOS 27 adoption amongst normals is very slow, but that’s only because Apple wants it slow. That’s not because iOS 27 is buggy — it speaks to its Snow-Leopard-like focus on bug fixes and performance updates that it’s actually remarkably stable. The obvious explanation is that Apple is slow-rolling 27 updates to gate access to Siri AI.

Saturday, 10 October 2026

Sunnny ★

My thanks to Sunnny for sponsoring this week at DF. How can B2B software be so friggin’ delicious? Find out when early access launches on Monday, October 19.

‘Proof-of-Human’ ★

Benjamin Mayo (on X, of course), commenting on Apple promoting behind-the-scenes footage showing that the embroidered “Welcome Home” logo for next week’s keynote/experience was stitched by hand:

There needs to be a name for this phenomenon where every published piece of art by a company is now accompanied by a proof-of-human video.

I agree, and I think Mayo coined the term right there. It’s always been fun to see footage of talented artists and craftspeople making things by hand. But in the age of AI it’s a differentiator — not just that you aren’t lazily generating your art via prompts, but that you understand that heart comes from the human hand.

Thursday, 8 October 2026

Let’s Check In on Trump’s Blog ★

An actual post from the sitting president of the United States:

The White House considers anyone that uses the term, “Artificial Intelligence,” as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, “Super Intelligence,” THE ENEMY! President DONALD J. TRUMP

This, from the self-professed “party of free speech”. Trump’s screws are so loose you can hear them rattling around.

Apple Is Slow-Rolling iOS 27 Adoption, So Far ★

David Smith, last week:

Been really interesting to watch the iOS 27 adoption curve over the first two weeks. Clearly on a different path than previous years. Still steadily growing, at a similar rate to the ‘steady growth’ phase of most years, but without the big surge at the start.

Given that this rate is largely controlled by Apple’s automatic update logic, I suspect it’s a deliberate choice. Likely because it lets them manage the Siri AI waiting list and avoid a big queue on day one.

Smith’s numbers are from analytics from users of Widgetsmith and Pedometer++. If you look at his chart for Widgetsmith, there’s really no explanation other than Apple pushing automatic updates to users more slowly than in any previous year, and I think it makes sense that this is to gate admissions to Siri AI. You can also see from his chart that Apple has been slowing down updates to initial .0 versions in recent years — the adoption rates were much faster for iOS 15 and 16 back in 2021 and 2022. Note too that every year Apple makes it more and more likely that users will opt into automatic software updates. The overwhelming majority of iOS users get OS updates when their devices update themselves.

And remember the whole thing with slower-than-previous-years adoption of iOS 26 last year — that was all attributable to the auto-update pace set by Apple.

(It’s purely personal anecdata, but I feel like Siri AI has gotten worse since iOS 27.0 was officially released. It feels a bit slower and I seem to get worse answers, sometimes. I asked it for a word today, using it as an interactive thesaurus, and it simply told me it couldn’t. It never did that over the summer. I started using iOS 27 full-time on my iPhone the day after the WWDC keynote and I got into the Siri AI beta the next week. While it might be some sort of placebo effect, I feel like Siri AI was better — slightly faster and more useful — in July and August than it is now. I could be wrong, or maybe just unlucky of late. But I’m also quite certain that scaling up the Private Cloud Compute side of Siri AI is a massive challenge for a platform with over a billion Siri AI-eligible users.)

Joz Announces ‘Welcome Home’ Keynote Coming Tuesday, 13 October ★

It’s almost like you can predict the timing of such things, if you pay attention to Apple’s consistent patterns.

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

Jaguar Type 01 ★

This is a cool car. It doesn’t look like anything else and it looks like it’s been pulled a few years from the future. I don’t know about this whole trend where cars don’t have rear windows though. I get it that you just use the camera but my old habits says I want to see out the back sometimes.

But the only reason I wouldn’t buy this thing is that turd of a new logo Jaguar went with. I could not abide driving around in something with this typographic calamity.

Gurman Strikes Again: ‘Apple’s Smart Home Push Includes Doorbell, Lock, Thermostat Codeveloped With LG’ ★

The incomparable Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s upcoming push into smart home devices will include a doorbell, thermostat and other accessories developed through an unusual partnership with LG Electronics Inc.

The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple’s new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded HomePod mini and fresh TV set-top box, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new Apple devices are set to be introduced on Oct. 13.

The products developed with South Korea’s LG will also include a smart deadbolt lock, indoor security camera, outdoor security camera and floodlight camera, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the undertaking is private.

Though the two companies worked together to develop the accessories, the products will carry the LG brand. The South Korean firm is handling manufacturing and product support.

Gurman has more than “people familiar with the matter” (or Matter, for that matter) — he cites FCC filings from LG that have product names and illustrations of some of the devices’ rear panels (with the connectors).

As Gurman himself notes, this is somewhat unusual for Apple, but it’s not altogether new territory either. In Venn diagram terms, the circle for “peripherals Apple very much wants on the market” is a superset of “peripherals Apple wants to make itself and put the Apple brand on”. For some of these products that Apple doesn’t want to make under its own brand, Apple makes them through Beats. But for others they partner with other companies. They’ve long partnered with Logitech for keyboards, keyboard iPad cases, and even the Logitech Crayon, the only third-party alternative to Apple’s own official iPad Pencils. Unlike Apple’s Pencils, the Crayon works without pairing to a specific iPad — surely a godsend in classrooms. There’s also the Logitech Muse — an air-pencil/magic-wand peripheral for Vision Pro. (Vision Pro is a $4000 mixed reality headset that weighs 2 pounds, which Apple released in early 2024.) Apple does this with Belkin too — that’s another trusted partner for Apple.

And, in addition to serving as a longtime display component supplier for Apple, back when Apple had temporarily and foolishly exited the market for Apple-branded external displays, they worked with LG to make the LG 5K Ultrafine display, which for a while was simultaneously the best external Mac display on the market yet also an unreliable flaky product. Even at its best it had an unstable sub-par stand.

The thing that makes this partnership awkward for Apple is that these products — doorbells, cameras, deadbolt locks — are products that require the utmost of trust. What products could possibly require more trust than a camera with footage of what’s going on in or at your home, or a lock that controls who can get in? I think that’s why Apple wants to get into this market with products that they can put their stamp of approval on. But LG, of all companies, was just exposed in a scandal for shipping “smart” TVs that literally listen to the ambient audio in the room — even in standby! — and invade your privacy by tracking what content appears on screen. (I own a 2019 LG TV but I haven’t allowed it Wi-Fi access since, literally, 2019.)

Tuesday, 6 October 2026

Unofficial Command-Line Tool Removes Apple Intelligence From MacOS 27 ★

Scharon Harding, Ars Technica:

Unlike with previous versions of macOS, macOS 27 Golden Gate doesn’t have a toggle for turning off Apple Intelligence. That makes disabling AI features that you may not want more difficult. It also means that the AI models necessary for running Apple Intelligence will take up space on your disk, even if you don’t use them or if you go through your settings to individually find and disable AI capabilities.

In response, a developer known as Om Lahore on GitHub last week created RemoveMacAI, a command-line tool that allows macOS 27 users to “turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27” in a way that is “fully reversible,” per the GitHub page. They said that Apple’s Intelligence models take up “about 12GB,” but the models can actually take up over 30GB, The Verge noted.

RemoveMacAI “turns off Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, the ChatGPT extension, and all the summaries, then it deletes the models and stops macOS from downloading them again. Dictation still works because it’s a separate setting,” the developer said in a Reddit post first spotted by MacRumors.

Sounds crazy but it’s not rming files in the /System/ folder — it uses techniques that work with System Integrity Protection remaining enabled. I mean, I wouldn’t do it on a production machine, but, I don’t want to disable Apple Intelligence.

I can see the reasons why some people are frustrated that MacOS 27 Golden Gate doesn’t have built-in support for disabling this and removing the local models, though. If your Mac only has 256 or even 512 GB of storage, a dozen GB (or more) is meaningful. And there are institutional groups that have rules against AI — these places aren’t allowing Golden Gate at all until and unless Apple Intelligence can be removed. And that means not buying new Mac hardware that only runs Golden Gate.

Monday, 5 October 2026

Steve Jobs, Walking Through a Mockup for Apple Park in 2010 ★

What an apt photo, today of all days. What a gift Make Something Wonderful is.

OpenAI Announces Their Text Watermarking Plans ★

OpenAI, today:

The EU AI Act requires generative AI providers to make generated text identifiable in a machine-readable way. Text watermarking and detection remain early technologies with significant limitations, and views about their benefits and responsible uses are still developing. Our phased approach reflects both the EU AI Act requirements as well as the technology’s limitations, with an emphasis on transparency about what a text watermark can and cannot tell people:

• Starting today, API customers globally will be able to opt in to text watermarking for select models. Text watermarking will remain off by default in the API.
• Over the coming weeks, we will add an invisible watermark to eligible ChatGPT and Codex text output in the European Union.
• We’re opening applications to access our text watermark detector. Access will initially be limited to approved researchers and expert organizations that can help us evaluate and improve the technology.

First, unlike Anthropic, OpenAI is only forcing this upon users in the EU, where it’s mandated by their ill-considered 2024 regulation. Second, also unlike Anthropic, OpenAI has made this available via an API so developers should be able to actually see if this adulterates text output with real-world usage.

Third, none of these companies have yet made their watermark detectors publicly accessible. I remain highly skeptical that they will work as advertised in the real world. I think this is all somewhat of a sham to claim compliance with the EU AI Act without actually providing anything that anyone can actually use in a practical way.

Our text watermarking technology, textGrain, adds an invisible statistical signal to the model’s word choices. Our detector looks for that signal to assess whether a passage contains an OpenAI watermark. More details about how textGrain works can be found in our technical report, which will be updated with additional details in the coming weeks. We also plan to make the technology available in open source so that others can build on it.

In our evaluations, textGrain matched or exceeded the performance of other approaches we tested, including SynthID for text. Even so, strong performance under ideal conditions does not guarantee reliable detection in everyday use.

SynthID-Text is the Google algorithm that Anthropic says they’re using too.

Maybe I’m all wet, but I think what they mean in that last sentence quoted above is that it only performs usefully in ideal conditions, with simplistic prompts, and will prove to be unusable in practical everyday use, especially if the user’s prompt contains instructions designed to circumvent it.

Ternus and Cook Tweet Brief Remembrances on the 15th Anniversary of Steve Jobs’s Death ★

John Ternus, posting on X:

The way Steve taught us to care about every detail, every experience, every person, still guides our work today. Forever grateful.

Tim Cook, also on X (with a photo I don’t recall seeing before):

There are people who leave a mark on the world, and then there are people who change it entirely. Steve changed the world and so many lives in the process. He certainly changed my life forever. His spirit lives on in everything he created and everyone he inspired.

Saturday, 3 October 2026

WorkOS ★

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring this last week, once again, at DF.

SSO is table stakes for enterprise deals, but building it into your app yourself means writing SAML controllers, parsing XML assertions, and handling IdP-specific quirks for each provider. Learn how SAML flows work, the tradeoffs between building or buying, and best practices for security, routing, and UX.

Or, skip the hassle and add SSO with WorkOS. Read their developer’s guide to learn more — everything from how SSO works to why WorkOS is the fastest way to add it.

Apple Confirms iPhone 18 Pro Max AT&T Cellular Issues, Affected Devices Require Hardware Replacement ★

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said:

We have identified an issue affecting a small number of iPhone 18 Pro Max users on the AT&T network that may cause a device to lose service and be unable to make calls. We released iOS 27.0.1 earlier this week and strongly encourage all iPhone 18 Pro Max users to update now, and are also issuing a carrier settings update today. These updates together are meant to help prevent this issue from occurring.

The carrier settings update for the iPhone 18 Pro Max will download automatically over the next 14 days. However, users can manually trigger the download by going to Settings, choosing General, then About.

Apple explains that the software updates will help prevent future issues for iPhone 18 Pro Max users on AT&T. The software updates will not restore service on devices that have already lost it.

Apple says that iPhone 18 Pro Max users who have already lost service will need a hardware replacement. Those users should contact Apple Support or AT&T, or visit an Apple Store or AT&T location.

As we reported this morning, iPhone 18 Pro Max users affected by this problem can’t connect to AT&T’s network for calls, texts, and data. Instead, those users see “SOS” in their iPhone’s status bar. The connectivity issues aren’t impacting every iPhone 18 Pro Max user on AT&T.

I’ve heard from a handful of DF readers about this, and the readers experiencing the problem have all found each other in various forums over the last two weeks. The following all seem to be true:

• It’s only a problem for AT&T customers. No such problems on Verizon or T-Mobile.

• It’s only the 18 Pro Max, not the regular 18 Pro. The salient fact here is that the only iPhone 18 Pro models that use Qualcomm cellular modems, rather than Apple’s own C2 modem, are 18 Pro Max devices in the U.S.. So the problem seems to be something related to the Qualcomm modem and AT&T’s network.

• It is not a problem for all 18 Pro Max devices on AT&T’s network. “A small number” is all Apple will say, but anecdotally it seems clear that it’s not most 18 Pro Max devices on AT&T. But it still seems like many. It’s not exceedingly rare.

Pretty unusual that once a device is affected and loses service, the device must be replaced. Yet, the 27.0.1 iOS update contains a fix (or fixes) that should help devices that haven’t yet lost service from losing service. I’d love to understand how a software update can prevent existing devices from being affected, but a software update cannot restore service to existing devices that have already been affected.

Something else I’m curious about is whether it’s related to AT&T customers, or AT&T’s network — are iPhone 18 Pro Maxes that are connected to MVNO carriers whose backend is provided by AT&T similarly affected? E.g. US Mobile customers on US Mobile’s “Dark Star” service? I’d love to hear from anyone who knows.

Thursday, 1 October 2026

Yankees Sweep Boston in Two Games, by Combined Score of 18-2 ★

In the 6th inning last night the Yankees were only ahead 2-0, and Red Sox first baseman and all-around jackass Willson Contreras hit a home run, closing it to 2-1. Contreras decided to walk around the bases. The baseball gods do not look kindly upon that sort of ostentatiously belligerent showboatery. (Especially when your team is still losing.) Contreras circled the bags after his dinger like a rooster letting you know he just banged a few hens — but at a slower pace.

In the next inning, Contreras wasn’t paying attention and his laziness allowed a Yankee to reach base after striking out on a wild pitch. That started the rally that resulted in the blowout final score.

Wednesday, 30 September 2026

Gurman Reports Apple Is Launching New ‘Smart Home’ Products on October 13 ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg (gift link):

Apple Inc. plans to make its long-delayed push into the smart-home market on Oct. 13, marking a critical product expansion for the company under new Chief Executive Officer John Ternus. At the center of the strategy is a smart-home hub code-named J490, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple also plans to announce the first update to the HomePod mini since that device’s 2020 debut and its first new TV set-top box since 2022. [...]

The home hub will take the form of a roughly 6-inch square display, with versions that can be mounted on a wall or placed on a countertop, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the products haven’t been announced. [...]

Because the device is intended to remain stationary, it has a single FaceTime camera on the front and no rear camera. The product has microphones and speakers in its connected base. The hub is about as thick as an iPhone, and its display is surrounded by a quarter-inch, black bezel reminiscent of older iPads. It has rounded corners and no sharp edges. The device lacks a battery, so it has to be plugged in at all times, and there are no volume or power buttons.

The product comes in Apple’s standard gray aluminum finish and includes a USB-C port for power. The screen sits above a metal, round base with multiple rings of perforated speaker holes and connects to it through a polished metal arm. Users can manually tilt the display forward or backward. And the base has a rubberized bottom to help it stay on a table.

If you think that sounds like the beloved but short-lived “sunflower” iMac G4 from 2002, that’s exactly what Gurman says it resembles. As is so often the case, Gurman seems to know many details about the device, but yet doesn’t know its name or price. Presumably the speakers are good enough to serve by themselves, but how good are they? Can they be paired with HomePods to create stereo pairs?

The hub’s defining feature will be its ability to serve multiple members of a household. It is designed to recognize who is speaking to it or approaching it, and then display personalized content and provide answers based on that person’s data and accounts. When a user walks up, for example, the device will show that person’s contacts, messages, calendar appointments, notes and preferred app layout. The interface can then change automatically when another recognized household member approaches. It will also have a mode for visitors that hides personal information.

The device identifies users by their voices or through a facial-recognition system, though the latter is less reliable than Face ID on the iPhone. Users can require secondary authentication through an iPhone if they don’t want to rely solely on voice or facial recognition. The iPhone also serves as a fallback when the hub cannot identify someone correctly.

Given that Apple Watch is used as an identifier to unlock your Mac (and, says Apple, iPhone Duo), it would make sense if that worked with this device too.

Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Is a Fucking Doozy ★

Echo Wang, reporting for Reuters yesterday:

Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than ​industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.

This is a strong clear lede, but even so it falls short of expressing the true magnitude of what Anthropic represents. To wit, not that “AI” as a field will prove more profoundly transformational than industrialization, electricity, and the Internet, but that Anthropic alone will. This is not an IPO that makes sense if you consider Anthropic one among peers, even a short list placing them alongside just (say) OpenAI, Google, and Meta. It only makes sense if you believe Anthropic is on the cusp of winning a race to create a godlike super intelligence, and that first godlike super intelligence will take over the world.

You know, something exactly akin to the “rapture” events that religious cultists believe are coming.

But the cost to get there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming years, according to the prospectus.

If you believe that they’re profitable now you’re as crazy as they are. They’ll seed stories to the press that they’re now profitable, using accounting methods they won’t define (and wouldn’t pass muster for a public company) but won’t make such claims in writing.

The prospectus details how the company has grown sharply in the last year — while also posting wider losses. Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis, excluding writedowns of various liabilities mostly tied to previous fundraising, according to the documents, reported here for the first time. [...]

Anthropic said nearly a quarter of its revenue came from two customers last year, and as part of its risk factors, warned that many of its largest clients were not locked into long-term contracts and could cut or stop spending.

I don’t think this is complicated. Their revenue is accelerating rapidly because they’re selling compute at a loss. They spent $13 billion to make $5 billion last year. Their revenue is growing rapidly, yes, but their costs are growing even faster. They’re already on the hook for half a trillion dollars on cloud computing expansion but their revenue is precariously reliant on a few big-spending whales who aren’t under contract, and commodity open source models are rapidly closing the gap. If Anthropic is losing a fortune now with $13 billion in costs how are they going to break even spending $100+ billion per year? Don’t worry, their godlike AI will figure that out?

Gary Marcus:

Anthropic’s proposed valuation is easily calculated, as -50 times 2025 losses.

The more they lose, the more they win!

Tuesday, 29 September 2026

Follow-Up on my Spitballed Predictions for Apple’s October ★

Regarding my post yesterday speculating on how Apple’s October — seemingly set to be a big one — might play out, a friend asked if any or all of the new stuff might be released through Apple Newsroom announcements only. Good question. Let’s run through the rumored new hardware products:

• Apple TV hardware: I’d love to say no, but the answer is yes. I could see this coming out as a simple announcement with new specs. I really want to see Apple double-down in this space, reinvigorate it. I think watching TV on Apple TV hardware is by far the best experience out there. Yet its market share is very low. Apple TV is to the living room today what the Mac was to desktop computing in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Everyone sees it as too expensive and they have no idea why they’d actually be happier if they had one. So I hope Apple makes it a big part of a keynote/event, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
• iPad Mini: Yes, could be just a press release.
• HomePod Mini: Yes, could be just a press release.
• HomePod-type thing with a screen (maybe they will just call it “HomePad”?): No way — if this is coming, it has to be unveiled with a keynote video and some sort of media event with hands-on demos. And if they’re going to have some sort of event/show for this, they might as well unveil the above things there too.
• MacBooks with OLED touchscreens: No way could this be released only with a press release.
• M6 iMacs: Could be just a press release, but if they’re going to have some sort of event/show for the touchscreen MacBooks, why not include these at the start of that?

Destroy Any Website ★

Desktop only, and you definitely want sound on. (Update: Now works great on mobile devices, too!)

With things like this I always start with Kottke.org. No idea why, because it’s quite possibly the last site on the entire web I’d want to see actually destroyed. (Well, second-to-last.)

Monday, 28 September 2026

Bastardica ★

“A foundry for bastard web fonts.” The default is a version of Times New Roman but every 7th glyph is replaced with one from Arial, but you can dial up whatever bastardization you want.

This is why I’m not at all worried about AI destroying the world. Look at the horrible things human beings have made.

‘When Did Google Get So F-Ing Weird?’ ★

Sancho Panza:

I recently had an experience while doing a simple Google search that was so profoundly weird that it stopped me in my tracks.

Kagi, the search engine I’ve been using for a few years now, gave me the exact sort of results to Panza’s query that he was looking for.

Joanna Stern Pokes the Pickle ★

If anyone could devise a funny way to measure battery life, it’s her.

‘Donald Decodes’ Interview Craig Federighi Regarding the iPhone Duo ★

Apple executives seemingly did very few interviews after the iPhone event three weeks ago. The best, perhaps by far, is this 11-minute video with Craig Federighi by “Donald Decodes”, a Chinese language creator. His YouTube account only has 1,100 followers (and only had 500 at the time of the video) and only one other video — presumably he’s got a big following in China. Very insightful questions about the Duo user interface — and Federighi gives very thoughtful answers. The question (and answer) about “back” swiping really gets to the heart of what makes iOS so much more cohesively designed than Android, spatially.

Why Stolen Device Protection Makes Passwords Safer ★

Glenn Fleishman:

Leaving Stolen Device Protection enabled does mean that you may have to wait an hour in some scenarios to manage aspects of your Apple Account, make changes to Face ID or Touch ID, change your device passcode, and a few other actions. But this minor inconvenience might assuage the kinds of concerns that Scott wrote in about, and make you more comfortable that your big basket of secret eggs won’t scramble.

I put off enabling Stolen Device Protection for a while after it came out, because I’m stubborn and trust myself to a degree that’s probably irrational. But when it became the default I enabled it, and haven’t once regretted it.

Jeremy Stern’s Profile of Mark Zuckerberg for Colossus ★

Jeremy Stern, in a massive and massively good profile of Mark Zuckerberg for Colossus:

Unsure of my own ability to evaluate such things, I leave Meta HQ and spend another few days in Palo Alto and San Francisco ahead of my interview with Zuckerberg, seeking out a number of MSL’s competitors and investors who agree to speak to me on background. Many of them take pleasure in what they describe as the organizational “mess” of MSL, in the people there allegedly being motivated more by money than by true belief, and in Zuckerberg as a maker of boredom-relief apps and targeted advertising, not of godlike intelligence or the singularity.

I’m inclined toward sympathy with much of what they say, though I am also irritated and want to shove them in a locker. While I am not the first to chafe at their combination of messianism, contempt for ordinary consumers, and denial that they, too, are rapacious capitalists, I am apparently the first to ask them to steelman the outcome in which Zuckerberg, in light of his long history, survives and expands. Which turns out to be simple:

AI is not, in fact, God. Instead, it does math and solves a limited set of problems humans face, and is otherwise simply useful and cool. Anthropic, and to a lesser extent OpenAI, have trouble ever accepting this fact. Zuckerberg does not. He has not spent a decade comparing his company to the Manhattan Project, and thus he is not above pushing the frontier of AI to help people book airline tickets, make dinner reservations, and edit photos. He will use it to drive down the cost of serving his users to zero, and to drive up his revenue by improving ads. He will use cash from the ad business — and his ownership of data centers, chips, and other infrastructure that Anthropic and OpenAI have to pay to rent — to undercut them on price. The potential install base for his AI is 3.6 billion people, who don’t care whether a given model is six months behind the frontier.

If AI commoditizes, then Anthropic and OpenAI go to zero, and value accrues instead at the complements Meta already dominates, like distribution, attention, personalization, and commerce. If it doesn’t commoditize, then at least he is not his competitors’ prisoner the way he’s been with Apple, and all he has to do is remain within six months of the frontier, which he’s already close to. Heads, he wins; tails, he wins.

Until last week I’d somehow never heard of Stern and never heard of Colossus (of which Stern is editor-in-chief). But on Thursday Ben Thompson published an interview with Stern at Stratechery — in the wake of this astonishingly well-written, insightful, and dare I say fair 15,000-word profile of Zuckerberg. It’s incomprehensible to me that heretofore I was unaware of Stern’s work or Colossus’s existence.

There is so much of the piece that I do not want to spoil, but I very much want to talk about. (Tummy drums!) I quoted the bit above simply because that third paragraph summarizes my own take on AI so well — along with my take on what is profoundly wrong with Anthropic in particular, and OpenAI to some degree.

Whatever your expectations are for a “long profile of Mark Zuckerberg”, Stern’s piece will surprise and delight you.

Muse, Instagram, and VLC Lookalike Rip-Offs in the Mac App Store ★

Jeff Johnson:

In other words, Muse AI is a blatant copy of Muse from Meta, the latter of which is currently the #1 iOS App Store download in the United States. I don’t know where Muse AI ranks in the iOS App Store, but I do know that it’s currently the #20 Mac App Store download in the US.

It wasn’t languishing in obscurity — it had risen to #20 in the Mac App Store. A lot of Mac users are very confused when they’re told that Mac apps are available but they’re not in the Mac App Store, so it’s a rife opportunity for scammers. In the same post Johnson also documents an app named “App for Instagram º” and another named “Video Player for VLC”, both of which use rip-off icons in addition to their rip-off names. “Muse AI” is now gone, but “App for Instagram °” and “Video Player for VLC” are both still there.

I do wonder what the guy who made Muse AI was thinking. How long did he think he was going to get away with this?

Duo-Man ★

Vidit Bhargava (developer of LookUp and Movie Buzz):

Duo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo. Open the Duo to pick and “insert” the cassette, Close the Duo to start listening.

Yes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a real Walkman!

More like this, please.

Sunday, 27 September 2026

Mux: Turn Your Video Into Context ★

My thanks to Mux for sponsoring last week at DF. Video isn’t just something to stream; it’s structured data you build with.

Mux Robots — hosted AI workflows — turns video into context. Generate chapters, find key moments, translate audio, and more, through one API call, with no model hosting to maintain. Each workflow is evaluated against real video, not generic benchmarks. Configure the workflows once, and every new upload runs automatically.

Mux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Perplexity. Start building for free. Use code FIREBALL for an extra $50 credit.

Katie Notopoulos on Alexandr Wang’s ‘Faux-Hallmark Pap’ ★

Katie Notopoulos, in a short tweet thread regarding Alexandr Wang’s “Why We’re Building Muse” essay:

This makes me feel insane! This is faux-hallmark pap and if you believe for 1 sec that he cares about helping people “spending more time with family” or “opening a bakery” you don’t need to wait for AI to kill us; you’re stupid enough to drown from looking up at the rain.

My take is much closer to Notopoulos’s than to Manton Reece’s. I think it’s fascinating that Wang’s essay doesn’t sound at all like the sterile neutered voice of a Meta executive. I think it’s his voice, and he really wrote it. I just think the sentiment he’s expressing is creepy.

Wang wrote that Muse “Clears the way and solves all the problems it can until the human part, the wanting and the dreaming, is all that’s left.” That’s dystopic, not utopic. It’s the actual creation and doing of things that makes life worthwhile — not just wanting and dreaming about it.

Wang’s premise only reaffirms my longstanding hunch that Zuckerberg sees Buy n Large as the good guys in Wall-E.

Saturday, 26 September 2026

Reelizer Returns ★

Back in 2011 I linked to Reelizer, a splendid archive of movie posters curated by Roger Erik Tinch. Reelizer went away for a few years, but Tinch has brought it back, seemingly better than ever. Huzzah.

Alexandr Wang: ‘Why I’m Building Muse’ ★

Alexandr Wang, blogging on X:

Now imagine every person on earth with a second mind beyond their own. A general manager whose whole job is to find out what you want and make sure it happens. Someone that hears the half-sentence, “I feel like there’s something more I could be doing,” and helps fill in the blanks. This might not be a genie in a bottle, but it can be someone that says, “This is the thing you’ve been dreaming of your whole life. Let’s go get it. Here’s how.” And then builds a plan. Sends the email. Makes the phone call. Finds the funding. Keeps you on schedule. Clears the way and solves all the problems it can until the human part, the wanting and the dreaming, is all that’s left.

Via Manton Reece, who writes:

This is a mission statement. It’s ambitious and clear. Compared to Meta’s usual “connecting people” pitch — which we just translate to “scale to everyone and serve ads” — this new statement from Alexandr feels almost shockingly personal and new.

Apple’s Other Recent ‘Duo’ ★

I keep mentioning Apple’s 1992 groundbreaking PowerBook Duo series as a precedent for the iPhone Duo’s name. But of course in 2020, Apple released the MagSafe Duo Charger, a wonderful Lightning peripheral for charging an iPhone and Apple Watch at the same time. It even folded.

A brief note on the PowerBook Duo, while I’m at it. I got an email this month from Dave Rothschild, a now-retired former Apple employee who helped spearhead that project, and he emphasized that the internal motto was always “Best of Both Worlds”, abbreviated internally to just “BOBW”. At the time, laptops were just profoundly less powerful than desktop computers, but desktop computers of course were the opposite of “portable”. The Macintosh Duo was a terrific success, because it really did achieve that “best of both worlds” experience. Here’s a 2015 retrospective on the PowerBook Duo by Christopher Phin that captures and illustrates just how groundbreaking it was.

BOBW is exactly what the iPhone Duo needs to be. It needs to be a great iPhone on the outside, and a great mini tablet on the inside.

Bonus link: Rothschild’s daughter Gabby made a nice “This is not Apple’s first Duo” video, including footage of her dad doing the initial on-stage demo back in 1992.

International Standard Paper Sizes ★

Markus Kuhn:

In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). In other words, the width and the height of a page relate to each other like the side and the diagonal of a square. This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to each other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side into two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the same width/height ratio.

Same principle as using the square root of 2 to achieve a very similar aspect ratio on both the iPhone Duo’s inner and outer displays. With the international paper system, you can do things like scale up 2× or scale down 0.5× without changing the relative margins. E.g. print or photocopy at 50 percent to get two virtual pages per printed page of output. It’s an elegant system.

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