My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring this last week, once again, at DF.
\n\nSSO 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.
\n\nOr, 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.
\n\nLink: workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Confirms iPhone 18 Pro Max AT&T Cellular Issues, Affected Devices Require Hardware Replacement", "date_published" : "2026-10-03T18:21:14Z", "date_modified" : "2026-10-03T21:07:30Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/10/03/iphone-18-pro-max-att-issues", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/10/03/iphone-18-pro-max-att-issues", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/10/02/apple-confirms-iphone-18-pro-max-att-cellular-issues-affected-devices-require-hardware-replacement/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nChance Miller, 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nIn a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said:
\n\n\n\n\nWe have identified an issue affecting a small number of iPhone 18\nPro Max users on the AT&T network that may cause a device to lose\nservice and be unable to make calls. We released iOS 27.0.1\nearlier this week and strongly encourage all iPhone 18 Pro Max\nusers to update now, and are also issuing a carrier settings\nupdate today. These updates together are meant to help prevent\nthis issue from occurring.
\nThe carrier settings update for the iPhone 18 Pro Max will\ndownload automatically over the next 14 days. However, users can\nmanually trigger the download by going to Settings, choosing\nGeneral, then About.
\n\nApple explains that the software updates will help prevent future\nissues for iPhone 18 Pro Max users on AT&T. The software updates\nwill not restore service on devices that have already lost it.
\n\nApple says that iPhone 18 Pro Max users who have already lost\nservice will need a hardware replacement. Those users should\ncontact Apple Support or AT&T, or visit an Apple Store or AT&T\nlocation.
\n\nAs we reported this morning, iPhone 18 Pro Max users\naffected by this problem can’t connect to AT&T’s\nnetwork for calls, texts, and data. Instead, those users see\n“SOS” in their iPhone’s status bar. The connectivity issues aren’t\nimpacting every iPhone 18 Pro Max user on AT&T.
\n
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:
\n\nIt’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.
\n\nSomething 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.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/10/02/apple-confirms-iphone-18-pro-max-att…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Apple Is Going to Further Tighten the Screws on Full Disk Access on MacOS, in Response to Agentic AI Apps Running Amok", "date_published" : "2026-10-02T20:40:15Z", "date_modified" : "2026-10-03T00:49:40Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/10/apple_full_disk_access", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/10/apple_full_disk_access", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Developer News, in a post titled “Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS”:
\n\n\n\n\nWe give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities\ninto their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls\ndesigned to protect users’ private data. Full Disk Access largely\nsidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function\nproperly on the Mac. Some developers are using Full Disk Access in\nways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their\nsystems — including files, mail, messages, and even browsing\nhistory — without users’ full knowledge and understanding. For\ncommunication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the\npeople users are communicating with.
\n\nGoing forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure\nthat users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary\nlevel of access can only do so with very explicit user action.\nAddressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly\ncapable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of\naccess will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users\nclearly understand these risks before granting such access, so\nthey can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.
\n
They don’t name names, but clearly this is in response to Meta Muse (cf. Jason Aten’s misadventure with Muse accessing Aten’s iMessages), Grok Bot, Claude, Dots, and the rest. This is why we can’t have nice things.
\n\nI really worry about just how much Apple is going to lock Full Disk Access down. I use it with several apps that couldn’t function properly without it, and would be severely hampered if I needed to authorize it manually every time they do something.
\n\nBut before we Mac power users riot in Cupertino, we should note that we have no idea how many unsophisticated Mac users are calling Apple and queuing up at the retail store Genius Bars to complain about Muse and these other agents having run amok on their Macs, against their desires, after convincing these users to grant them access. It is a legitimate frustration for the highest-functioning users among us that the Mac has, for years, already seemed “too locked down”. But there are now around 150 million Mac users worldwide. Most of them are unsophisticated technically — a majority of them, profoundly so. Many of them have technical needs that cannot be met by the baby computer OS that is iPadOS. For a lot of them it might just be the ability to run the real version of Google’s Chrome web browser — or even the desktop version of Safari. So there are tens of millions of people who need to use a Mac to do things that cannot be done on an iPad, but who have zero understanding of what it means, say, to grant Muse permission for Full Disk Access. And then they think it is Apple’s fault that Muse is suddenly able to read their private iMessage conversations.
\n\n(Anyone out there who, say, works at an Apple retail store and can confirm whether this is an escalating support issue — one way or the other — I’d love to hear from you, confidentially.)
\n\nOn iOS (and its tablet variant, iPadOS), you can say OK to every single thing an app like Muse asks for and Muse still won’t be able to read your email or end-to-end encrypted messages from iMessage or WhatsApp. There is no level of permission that grants third-party apps permission for such things. (The EU wants to force Apple to allow that under the DMA.) MacOS isn’t like that. You still need to grant apps permission for such things, but if you say OK to everything an app like Muse asks for on the Mac, you’re granting that app access to, effectively, almost everything on your startup drive. There are still some things it can’t see, but not many. A lot of non-technical Mac users do not understand this and cannot be expected to understand this. They just think, wrongly, that Apple protects them from allowing anything truly dangerous, because that’s how their iPhone (and/or iPad) works. So they just click OK to every access request from Muse and presume they’re still largely protected.
\n\nHopefully Apple has in mind a solution to this situation that will still enable knowledgeable power users to confirm agreement to a sufficiently scary warning and put their Macs in a state similar to what we have today. I worry. What alleviates my worst fears is the knowledge that every technical user at Apple itself needs to use their Mac as the powerful Unix workstation OS that it is. Some of us need dangerously powerful tools. Most Mac users, however, do not — and don’t realize they’re using a dangerously powerful Unix workstation with a very friendly (literal) face.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "Yankees Sweep Boston in Two Games, by Combined Score of 18-2", "date_published" : "2026-10-02T00:06:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-10-02T20:47:19Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/10/01/yankees-sweep-sox", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/10/01/yankees-sweep-sox", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7648172/2026/09/30/yankees-beat-red-sox-mlb-wild-card-series/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nIn 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.
\n\nIn 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.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/athletic/7648172/2026/09/30/yankees-beat-red…
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] WorkOS: How SSO Works and the Fastest Way to Add It", "date_published" : "2026-09-30T20:17:32Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-30T20:17:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_sso_works_and_the_f_1", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_sso_works_and_the_f_1", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nSSO 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.
\n\nLearn 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.
\n\n\n\nLink: workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source…
\n" }, { "title" : "Gurman Reports Apple Is Launching New ‘Smart Home’ Products on October 13", "date_published" : "2026-09-30T20:14:31Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-30T23:14:52Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/30/gurman-october-13-smart-home", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/30/gurman-october-13-smart-home", "external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-30/apple-is-finally-ready-to-enter-its-next-big-category-the-smart-home?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MDc3MDk0MywiZXhwIjoxNzkxMzc1NzQzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTTM0SDRUOTZPU0cwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.11wEtJfuMwCkznTkepXugZ2wuZTmxO9CdsNJLAcBd1M", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nApple Inc. plans to make its long-delayed push into the smart-home\nmarket on Oct. 13, marking a critical product expansion for the\ncompany under new Chief Executive Officer John Ternus. At the\ncenter of the strategy is a smart-home hub code-named J490,\naccording to people familiar with the matter. Apple also plans to\nannounce the first update to the HomePod mini since that device’s\n2020 debut and its first new TV set-top box since 2022. [...]
\n\nThe home hub will take the form of a roughly 6-inch square\ndisplay, with versions that can be mounted on a wall or placed on\na countertop, according to the people, who asked not to be\nidentified because the products haven’t been announced. [...]
\n\nBecause the device is intended to remain stationary, it has a\nsingle FaceTime camera on the front and no rear camera. The\nproduct has microphones and speakers in its connected base. The\nhub is about as thick as an iPhone, and its display is surrounded\nby a quarter-inch, black bezel reminiscent of older iPads. It has\nrounded corners and no sharp edges. The device lacks a battery, so\nit has to be plugged in at all times, and there are no volume or\npower buttons.
\n\nThe product comes in Apple’s standard gray aluminum finish and\nincludes a USB-C port for power. The screen sits above a metal,\nround base with multiple rings of perforated speaker holes and\nconnects to it through a polished metal arm. Users can manually\ntilt the display forward or backward. And the base has a\nrubberized bottom to help it stay on a table.
\n
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?
\n\n\n\n\nThe hub’s defining feature will be its ability to serve multiple\nmembers of a household. It is designed to recognize who is\nspeaking to it or approaching it, and then display personalized\ncontent and provide answers based on that person’s data and\naccounts. When a user walks up, for example, the device will show\nthat person’s contacts, messages, calendar appointments, notes and\npreferred app layout. The interface can then change automatically\nwhen another recognized household member approaches. It will also\nhave a mode for visitors that hides personal information.
\n\nThe device identifies users by their voices or through a\nfacial-recognition system, though the latter is less reliable than\nFace ID on the iPhone. Users can require secondary authentication\nthrough an iPhone if they don’t want to rely solely on voice or\nfacial recognition. The iPhone also serves as a fallback when the\nhub cannot identify someone correctly.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-30/apple-is-finally…
\n" }, { "title" : "Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Is a Fucking Doozy", "date_published" : "2026-09-30T19:23:42Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-30T19:23:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/30/reuters-anthropic-ipo-prospectus", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/30/reuters-anthropic-ipo-prospectus", "external_url" : "https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-2026-09-28/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nEcho Wang, reporting for Reuters yesterday:
\n\n\n\n\nAnthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the\nglobal economy more profoundly than industrialization,\nelectricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen\nby Reuters.
\n
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.
\n\nYou know, something exactly akin to the “rapture” events that religious cultists believe are coming.
\n\n\n\n\nBut the cost to get there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a\nnet loss of $42 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $518 billion\non cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming\nyears, according to the prospectus.
\n
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.
\n\n\n\n\nThe prospectus details how the company has grown sharply in the\nlast year — while also posting wider losses. Revenue grew 12-fold\nin 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, even as the company lost more than\n$8 billion on an operating basis, excluding writedowns of various\nliabilities mostly tied to previous fundraising, according to the\ndocuments, reported here for the first time. [...]
\n\nAnthropic said nearly a quarter of its revenue came from two\ncustomers last year, and as part of its risk factors, warned that\nmany of its largest clients were not locked into long-term\ncontracts and could cut or stop spending.
\n
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?
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnthropic’s proposed valuation is easily calculated, as -50 times\n2025 losses.
\n\nThe more they lose, the more they win!
\n
Link: reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus…
\n" }, { "title" : "Follow-Up on my Spitballed Predictions for Apple’s October", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T15:08:19Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T15:09:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/29/fu-october-spitball", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/29/fu-october-spitball", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/spitballing_predictions_for_apples_october", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nRegarding 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:
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/2026/09/spitballing_predictions_for…
\n" }, { "title" : "Destroy Any Website", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T14:29:28Z", "date_modified" : "2026-10-02T21:08:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/29/destroy-any-website", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/29/destroy-any-website", "external_url" : "https://destroy.spritefusion.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDesktop only, and you definitely want sound on. (Update: Now works great on mobile devices, too!)
\n\nWith 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.)
\n\nLink: destroy.spritefusion.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "Bastardica", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T02:15:36Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T02:15:37Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/bastardic", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/bastardic", "external_url" : "https://bastardica.mitpit.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n“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.
\n\nThis is why I’m not at all worried about AI destroying the world. Look at the horrible things human beings have made.
\n\nLink: bastardica.mitpit.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "‘When Did Google Get So F-Ing Weird?’", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T01:51:50Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T01:51:50Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/google-is-fing-weird", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/google-is-fing-weird", "external_url" : "https://sancho.bearblog.dev/google-weird/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSancho Panza:
\n\n\n\n\nI recently had an experience while doing a simple Google search\nthat was so profoundly weird that it stopped me in my tracks.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: sancho.bearblog.dev/google-weird/
\n" }, { "title" : "Joanna Stern Pokes the Pickle", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T01:42:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T01:42:01Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stern-pickle-poke", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stern-pickle-poke", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNqYEMuoQAI", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nIf anyone could devise a funny way to measure battery life, it’s her.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=YNqYEMuoQAI
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Donald Decodes’ Interview Craig Federighi Regarding the iPhone Duo", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T01:10:48Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T15:26:46Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/donald-decodes-federighi", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/donald-decodes-federighi", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y227RF0smAg", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple 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.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=y227RF0smAg
\n" }, { "title" : "Why Stolen Device Protection Makes Passwords Safer", "date_published" : "2026-09-29T00:43:51Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T00:59:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stolen-device-protection-fleishman", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stolen-device-protection-fleishman", "external_url" : "https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/09/stolen-device-protection-passwords-glenn/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nGlenn Fleishman:
\n\n\n\n\nLeaving Stolen Device Protection enabled does mean that you may\nhave to wait an hour in some scenarios to manage aspects of your\nApple Account, make changes to Face ID or Touch ID, change your\ndevice passcode, and a few other actions. But this minor\ninconvenience might assuage the kinds of concerns that Scott wrote\nin about, and make you more comfortable that your big basket of\nsecret eggs won’t scramble.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: sixcolors.com/post/2026/09/stolen-device-protection…
\n" }, { "title" : "Jeremy Stern’s Profile of Mark Zuckerberg for Colossus", "date_published" : "2026-09-28T22:41:40Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-28T23:16:07Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stern-zuck-colossus", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/stern-zuck-colossus", "external_url" : "https://colossus.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-profile/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJeremy Stern, in a massive and massively good profile of Mark Zuckerberg for Colossus:
\n\n\n\n\nUnsure of my own ability to evaluate such things, I leave Meta HQ\nand spend another few days in Palo Alto and San Francisco ahead of\nmy interview with Zuckerberg, seeking out a number of MSL’s\ncompetitors and investors who agree to speak to me on background.\nMany of them take pleasure in what they describe as the\norganizational “mess” of MSL, in the people there allegedly being\nmotivated more by money than by true belief, and in Zuckerberg as\na maker of boredom-relief apps and targeted advertising, not of\ngodlike intelligence or the singularity.
\n\nI’m inclined toward sympathy with much of what they say, though I\nam also irritated and want to shove them in a locker. While I am\nnot the first to chafe at their combination of messianism,\ncontempt for ordinary consumers, and denial that they, too, are\nrapacious capitalists, I am apparently the first to ask them to\nsteelman the outcome in which Zuckerberg, in light of his long\nhistory, survives and expands. Which turns out to be simple:
\n\nAI is not, in fact, God. Instead, it does math and solves a\nlimited set of problems humans face, and is otherwise simply\nuseful and cool. Anthropic, and to a lesser extent OpenAI, have\ntrouble ever accepting this fact. Zuckerberg does not. He has not\nspent a decade comparing his company to the Manhattan Project, and\nthus he is not above pushing the frontier of AI to help people\nbook airline tickets, make dinner reservations, and edit photos.\nHe will use it to drive down the cost of serving his users to\nzero, and to drive up his revenue by improving ads. He will use\ncash from the ad business — and his ownership of data centers,\nchips, and other infrastructure that Anthropic and OpenAI have to\npay to rent — to undercut them on price. The potential install\nbase for his AI is 3.6 billion people, who don’t care whether a\ngiven model is six months behind the frontier.
\n\nIf AI commoditizes, then Anthropic and OpenAI go to zero, and\nvalue accrues instead at the complements Meta already dominates,\nlike distribution, attention, personalization, and commerce. If it\ndoesn’t commoditize, then at least he is not his competitors’\nprisoner the way he’s been with Apple, and all he has to do is\nremain within six months of the frontier, which he’s already close\nto. Heads, he wins; tails, he wins.
\n
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.
\n\nThere 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.
\n\nWhatever your expectations are for a “long profile of Mark Zuckerberg”, Stern’s piece will surprise and delight you.
\n\nLink: colossus.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-profile/
\n" }, { "title" : "Muse, Instagram, and VLC Lookalike Rip-Offs in the Mac App Store", "date_published" : "2026-09-28T19:50:19Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-28T19:51:56Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/lookalike-ripoffs-mac-app-store", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/lookalike-ripoffs-mac-app-store", "external_url" : "https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/8.html", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJeff Johnson:
\n\n\n\n\nIn other words, Muse AI is a blatant copy of Muse from Meta, the\nlatter of which is currently the #1 iOS App Store download in the\nUnited States. I don’t know where Muse AI ranks in the iOS App\nStore, but I do know that it’s currently the #20 Mac App Store\ndownload in the US.
\n
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.
\n\nI do wonder what the guy who made Muse AI was thinking. How long did he think he was going to get away with this?
\n\nLink: lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/8.html
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Spitballing Predictions for Apple’s October", "date_published" : "2026-09-28T18:43:48Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-28T19:34:21Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/spitballing_predictions_for_apples_october", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/spitballing_predictions_for_apples_october", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nOn the new episode of The Talk Show that dropped over the weekend, Andru Edwards and I talked first about the September event Apple held three weeks ago at Apple Park, and then moved on to speculate about what they might do in October. The rumor mill says Apple has a bunch of as-yet-unannounced products coming: a new iPad Mini (8th generation), new Apple TV hardware (4th generation — maybe they’ll give it a better name than “Apple TV 4K”?), new HomePod Mini (2nd generation), and an altogether new HomePod-type hub with a display. Also, October is the usual month for new Mac hardware, like maybe M6 iMacs and a new high-end MacBook lineup with OLED displays that (ugh) are also touchscreens.
\n\nThat’d be a lot to introduce all at once. Maybe they hold one event/keynote movie for all of it, or maybe they split it in two — one for “home” stuff, and one for new Mac stuff. (Not sure where the iPad Mini would go in that split.) Or maybe they announce it all in one keynote but split the product availability, like they did with the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo at the keynote three weeks ago. Maybe the new MacBooks, if they really do have touchscreens, get announced in October but won’t ship until November to give developers time to adopt touch APIs — just like with the Duo. Apple is secretive, but they stick to predictable patterns if you pay attention.
\n\nThe dates we do know are those for the iPhone Duo, with pre-orders beginning on Friday, October 16 and shipments beginning one week later on October 23. Apple, in my experience, sticks to a very predictable schedule for review units. They typically go into reviewers’ hands mid-week (Tuesday or Wednesday) during the week when pre-orders begin (usually a Friday, sometimes a Saturday, like this month, when the iPhones 18 Pro and new Apple Watches went on sale Saturday, September 12). Reviewers typically get only six or seven days with hardware before the embargo lifts for publishing reviews. (Most reviewers have their reviews ready to publish by that time; others enjoy the whooshing sound the embargo deadline makes as it goes by.) The review embargo thus typically lifts on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the same week when the product is set to begin shipping to customers on Friday.
\n\nI have been told absolutely nothing about when, or even if, Apple plans to seed advance units of the iPhone Duo to reviewers. In my experience, even off the record, Apple never talks about these things in advance, nor offers hints. But if they do seed review units of the Duo, I would expect that to start on Tuesday, October 13 or Wednesday the 14th, with the embargo lifting on October 20 or 21, two or three days ahead of the Duo reaching customers on Friday the 23rd. It’s also my experience that Apple does not like shipping review units of high-profile new products like the Duo before they are released to the public. They prefer handing review units like the Duo to reviewers in person. You sign the embargo agreement in person, and they hand you the product in person. One natural way to hand reviewers iPhone Duo units in person would be to hold a media event, for other new products, on October 13 or 14. Kill two birds with one stone.
\n\nIf they hold such an event in New York that week, it would be really nice if it coincided with a Yankees home game in the ALCS. But now I’m really getting ahead of myself.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "Duo-Man", "date_published" : "2026-09-28T16:35:02Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-29T15:21:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/duo-man", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/28/duo-man", "external_url" : "https://x.com/viditb/status/2104103592726765722", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nVidit Bhargava (developer of LookUp and Movie Buzz):
\n\n\n\n\nDuo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo.\nOpen the Duo to pick and “insert” the cassette, Close the Duo to\nstart listening.
\n\nYes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a\nreal Walkman!
\n
More like this, please.
\n\nLink: x.com/viditb/status/2104103592726765722
\n" }, { "title" : "Mux: Turn Your Video Into Context", "date_published" : "2026-09-27T20:22:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-27T20:30:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/27/mux", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/27/mux", "external_url" : "https://www.mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy thanks to Mux for sponsoring last week at DF. Video isn’t just something to stream; it’s structured data you build with.
\n\nMux 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.
\n\nMux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Perplexity. Start building for free. Use code FIREBALL for an extra $50 credit.
\n\nLink: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF
\n" }, { "title" : "Katie Notopoulos on Alexandr Wang’s ‘Faux-Hallmark Pap’", "date_published" : "2026-09-27T20:21:43Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-27T20:29:23Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/27/notopoulos-wang", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/27/notopoulos-wang", "external_url" : "https://x.com/katienotopoulos/status/2103993429659386026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nKatie Notopoulos, in a short tweet thread regarding Alexandr Wang’s “Why We’re Building Muse” essay:
\n\n\n\n\nThis makes me feel insane! This is faux-hallmark pap and if you\nbelieve for 1 sec that he cares about helping people “spending\nmore time with family” or “opening a bakery” you don’t need to\nwait for AI to kill us; you’re stupid enough to drown from looking\nup at the rain.
\n
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.
\n\nWang 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.
\n\nWang’s premise only reaffirms my longstanding hunch that Zuckerberg sees Buy n Large as the good guys in Wall-E.
\n\nLink: x.com/katienotopoulos/status/2103993429659386026
\n" }, { "title" : "Reelizer Returns", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T21:08:08Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T21:08:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/reelizer-redux", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/reelizer-redux", "external_url" : "https://www.reelizer.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBack 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.
\n\nLink: reelizer.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "Alexandr Wang: ‘Why I’m Building Muse’", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T20:34:54Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T20:34:54Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/wang-muse", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/wang-muse", "external_url" : "https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/2103551714536439951", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAlexandr Wang, blogging on X:
\n\n\n\n\nNow imagine every person on earth with a second mind beyond their\nown. A general manager whose whole job is to find out what you\nwant and make sure it happens. Someone that hears the\nhalf-sentence, “I feel like there’s something more I could be\ndoing,” and helps fill in the blanks. This might not be a genie in\na bottle, but it can be someone that says, “This is the thing\nyou’ve been dreaming of your whole life. Let’s go get it. Here’s\nhow.” And then builds a plan. Sends the email. Makes the phone\ncall. Finds the funding. Keeps you on schedule. Clears the way and\nsolves all the problems it can until the human part, the wanting\nand the dreaming, is all that’s left.
\n
Via Manton Reece, who writes:
\n\n\n\n\nThis is a mission statement. It’s ambitious and clear. Compared to\nMeta’s usual “connecting people” pitch — which we just translate\nto “scale to everyone and serve ads” — this new statement from\nAlexandr feels almost shockingly personal and new.
\n
Link: x.com/alexandr_wang/status/2103551714536439951
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple’s Other Recent ‘Duo’", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T19:41:39Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-27T18:10:12Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/apples-other-recent-duo", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/apples-other-recent-duo", "external_url" : "https://support.apple.com/en-us/111812", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI 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.
\n\nA 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.
\n\nBOBW 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.
\n\nBonus 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.
\n\nLink: support.apple.com/en-us/111812
\n" }, { "title" : "International Standard Paper Sizes", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T18:46:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-10-02T21:07:50Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/international-standard-paper-sizes", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/international-standard-paper-sizes", "external_url" : "https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMarkus Kuhn:
\n\n\n\n\nIn the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all\npages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). In other words, the\nwidth and the height of a page relate to each other like the side\nand the diagonal of a square. This aspect ratio is especially\nconvenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to\neach other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side\ninto two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the\nsame width/height ratio.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
\n" }, { "title" : "Microsoft Took the ‘Copilot+ PC’ Brand Out Behind the Shed", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T16:53:14Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T16:53:32Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/copilot-plus-behind-the-shed", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/copilot-plus-behind-the-shed", "external_url" : "https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/the-copilot-pc-brand-is-dead-microsoft-and-pc-makers-quietly-pull-back-on-tarnished-windows-11-ai-pc-branding", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nZac Bowden, Windows Central:
\n\n\n\n\nIn 2024, Microsoft and Qualcomm kicked off a new category\nof Windows hardware it called “Copilot+ PCs” that set the\nbaseline for a new wave of AI-first computers, and launched with\nexclusive features that would not be made available on PCs that\ndidn’t meet a new set of system requirements.
\n\nThe launch didn’t go smoothly. [...]
\n\nI’ve noticed that none of the Surface PCs launched in 2026\ninclude the Copilot+ PC moniker in their product names, unlike\nthe Surface PCs that launched in 2025 and before. Now, you have\nto go digging to find any mention of Copilot+ compatibility in\nspecification sheets.
\n
Microsoft’s had to dig a lot of holes in the ground behind that shed over the years. The lesson here is that good devices are just good devices. A good PC is going to be a good PC for AI too. Wasting time with special branding is a distraction from the core task of just making the devices good.
\n\nLink: windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/the-copilot-pc…
\n" }, { "title" : "The Talk Show: ‘I’m Thinking X, Not X’", "date_published" : "2026-09-26T16:21:38Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T16:21:39Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/the-talk-show-455", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/26/the-talk-show-455", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/09/25/ep-455", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAndru Edwards returns to the show to discuss Apple’s big September event and their new products: the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo, AirPods 5, and Apple Watch Series 12/Ultra 4.
\n\nSponsored by:
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/09/25/ep-455
\n" }, { "title" : "Mr. Choyka Is Apparently Doing Well", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T23:50:45Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T15:24:15Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/choyka-doing-well", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/choyka-doing-well", "external_url" : "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2020/02/02/golf-amateur-gary-choyka-sinks-two-holes-one-same-round/4639969002/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nA reader asked if this Gary Choyka who hit two holes-in-one in the same round of golf back in 2020 is the same Gary Choyka who was my history teacher 30+ years ago. Indeed it is. He looks good. (He was a hell of a basketball player too.)
\n\nLink: usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2020/02/02/golf-amateur-gary…
\n" }, { "title" : "Stock UI in MacOS 27 Eschews Clarity", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T20:54:34Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-25T20:54:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/stock-ui-in-macos-27-eschews-clarity", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/stock-ui-in-macos-27-eschews-clarity", "external_url" : "https://mastodon.design/@thibault/117320401426286497", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n“Thibault”, in post on Mastodon responding to Brent Simmons’s “stock Mac UI” post that I just linked to:
\n\n\n\n\nIt reminded me of my own explorations with the macOS design\nlanguage, especially the modern title/toolbar which I believe is\none of the most foundational design regression on the platform.
\n\nI played with the idea of redesigning the Finder with the\noriginal hierarchy but keeping the current Liquid Glass styling.\nThough it’s still far from what I’d like to see on my Mac, I\nthought I’d share.
\n
Here’s his subtle mockup:
\n\n\n\nThe changes in Thibault’s redesign, if you describe them verbally, sound minor. But looking at the differences feels like a huge — and much needed — breath of fresh air. It relaxes my nervous system to see obvious differentiation for window chrome at the top. The hierarchy is clear: this area is the window, this area is the content of the window.
\n\nApple’s MacOS 27 Golden Gate stock UI deliberately does away with that differentiation, for no good reason. I crave clarity, and Apple’s current MacOS design language rejects clarity. Like: where exactly can you click to drag a window around? That ought to be obvious; instead it’s literally a guessing game. And Thibault’s simple example also shows that the problem has nothing to do with “Liquid Glass” controls.
\n\nLink: mastodon.design/@thibault/117320401426286497
\n" }, { "title" : "Brent Simmons on ‘Stock’ Mac UI", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T19:45:44Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-25T23:29:54Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/brent-simmons-stock-mac-ui", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/brent-simmons-stock-mac-ui", "external_url" : "https://inessential.com/2026/09/22/that-about-wraps-it-up-for.html", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBrent Simmons:
\n\n\n\n\nTo recap: the reasons for using stock Mac UI are 1) user\nfamiliarity, which we’ve known for a while just isn’t a thing, and\n2) hoping to be able to expend less developer effort, which we’ve\nseen can work against you.
\n\nBut there’s another reason: the stock Mac UI is designed by Apple,\nthe best designers in the world, and do you really think you can\ndo better? Really?
\n\nThe app world is full of people who think they’re better and\nthey’re really, really, really not.
\n\nWell, I still think Apple has the best collection of UI designers\nin the world, but, for whatever reasons, the guidance from above\non how the Mac UI should look is missing the mark. I’m not blaming\nthe people doing the work — they’re doing great work with the\ndirection they’re given.
\n\nSo this — bad direction — is where the secret third reason falls\ndown. And we’re left with no real reason to stick with stock Mac\nUI (except for wanting approval from longtime Mac people like me,\nand you really shouldn’t care about that at all).
\n
I was hesitant to quote anything from Simmons’s post, because you really ought to read the whole thing. (I’ve always loved the way Brent writes.) But I really like his emphasis throughout the piece on the term “stock Mac UI”. Debating the nuances of what it means for software to be “Mac-like” is one of the through lines of Daring Fireball since the very beginning. It doesn’t mean just one thing, and it doesn’t encompass just a few things. It’s a lot of things. But that makes it susceptible to picking and choosing — what one considers “Mac-like” might just be what one personally prefers.
\n\nBut using the stock Mac UI — or building your custom UI atop (or in OOP terms, subclassing) stock Mac UI controls — is so thoroughly agreed-upon as a fundamental aspect of Mac-like-ness that it’s seldom even discussed. This relatively short post from Simmons bursts that bubble — or if you’ll permit a grosser but perhaps more apt metaphor, lances that boil. The emperor has no clothes, and MacOS’s stock UI is bad. It’s that simple.
\n\nAt the end of the post Simmons includes two screenshots of NetNewsWire after a day of noodling where he removed the stock window chrome and toolbar (the venerable NSToolbar, perhaps the stockiest of stock UI elements) and replaced them with custom controls. If you told me 10 or 20 years ago that Brent Simmons spent a day replacing NSToolbar in NetNewsWire just to see what it looked like, I’d have called him on the phone to see if he was OK.
\n\nBut today, after the last few years of Apple losing the plot with the Mac user interface, I look at these two screenshots and my first thought isn’t that they look old-school. It’s simply that they look refreshingly Mac-like. Understated, humble, and obvious. Not nostalgic. Just ... good. And more Mac-like than the actual current version of NetNewsWire, which thoroughly embraces the stock Mac UI from Apple.
\n\nLink: inessential.com/2026/09/22/that-about-wraps-it-up-for.html
\n" }, { "title" : "★ I’ll Wait", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T18:16:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T00:00:10Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/ill_wait", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/ill_wait", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nIt’s Friday, and Muse is still the #1 app in the iOS App Store — that’s a full week in the top spot. Who knows if it’s a flash in the pan or not. (Remember Clubhouse? Sora?) But at the moment it’s clearly a hit. It certainly helps that Meta itself is promoting Muse heavily on its own channels like Instagram and Facebook.
\n\nThe Muse iOS app is sandboxed — because it has to be. So that’s the only version I’m personally tinkering with. But the Mac app is the more powerful one, because, well, it lets Muse drive your Mac. The fact that the Muse Mac app is so powerful is why it has to be downloaded from the web. It’s not in the Mac App Store because apps that do what the Muse Mac app does aren’t permitted in the Mac App Store — or are only permitted with hard-to-get entitlements. There are a lot of good reasons why good Mac developers have long been frustrated by those rules. (Users too.) But the upside of Apple’s restrictive Mac App Store policies is that users can blindly install apps from the Mac App Store and trust that those apps cannot run amok on their system.
\n\nThe way I think about running an agentic AI on my Mac is simple. I would never let an unknown person use my Mac. Not even for a minute, not even with me watching them. Let alone letting them use it nonstop, without my watching them. I’d be uncomfortable letting even a trusted friend use my Mac, logged into my user account. So why would I let an AI robot, no matter the source? It doesn’t even get to the point of my considering Meta as Muse’s creator. I wasn’t tempted an iota to try OpenClaw, and I’m not tempted to try Muse on my Mac. On a Mac, maybe. But not my Mac.
\n\nSame thing for granting Muse — running in the cloud, not on my Mac — access to my email, or calendar, or banking. I wouldn’t grant a stranger access to my email. So why would I grant a robot? But my refusal to grant Muse access to anything like that means that it’s basically just a toy for me to poke at.
\n\nA lot of people hire personal assistants — humans — and give them access to their email (and calendar, files, bank accounts, etc.). I’ve never done that, but I’ve long considered it. I see the appeal. But if I hired a personal assistant, I’d get to know them first. Develop some trust. My time is valuable, but not as valuable as my comfort, and I’d be excruciatingly uncomfortable giving anyone — or anything — I didn’t trust access to my life. I’m not saying I will never grant access to such things to an AI agent. In fact, I bet that sooner or later I will, to some carefully measured extent. But not now.
\n\nOne of my favorite teachers in high school was a history teacher named Gary Choyka. I had him for morning homeroom too, and I loved that he had a daily subscription to The Philadelphia Inquirer, a real newspaper, not just our Podunk suburban rag. Mr. Choyka was a great teacher, full stop. I learned a lot about the world, and a ton about our civil rights and liberties here in the U.S., from him. It was from Mr. Choyka that I learned that you do not have to allow the police to enter your home just because they’re at the door claiming that they’re going to enter the home. That came in handy at some high school parties (and made me the designated knock-at-the-door answerer).
\n\nPart of what made Mr. Choyka a great teacher is that he had a wonderful presence, a mastery of the classroom. And he had one devastatingly effective technique. If he was giving a lecture and a bit of chatter between students grew to the point of even slight disruption, he’d just stop talking, mid-sentence, stare at the chattering students, and after waiting a few beats, say, “I’ll wait.”
\n\nHaving been the disruptive whisperer more than once, I still feel small thinking about that phrase. It was like getting zapped by Rick Moranis’s kid-shrinking machine. Thirty-some years later and I can still hear him saying it. I’ll wait. It worked because he meant it. He wasn’t going to compete for attention.
\n\nIt’s not really an analogous situation at all. But somehow it’s Mr. Choyka’s signature line that comes to mind when I ponder how I feel about AI agents — at least the sort of ones like Muse that want control over my personal computing, and really, personal life. I’ll wait.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "Regarding the Provenance of Charm Within Meta", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T17:07:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-26T15:41:10Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/charm-provenance", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/charm-provenance", "external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/meta-debuts-a-dedicated-palm-sized-muse-charm-device-to-use-ai-on-the-go?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MDIwNzg4MCwiZXhwIjoxNzkwODEyNjgwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTFRUVUxUOU5KTFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.k7amXXn8zTVQuiTpQIE0Q_IJY9ny_TINEpSrguxIva8&leadSource=article-gifting", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg Wednesday, after Meta’s 2026 Connect keynote (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nMeta Platforms Inc. unveiled a palm-sized, dedicated gadget for\nusing Muse, the company’s popular new artificial intelligence\nassistant, pushing deeper into the AI devices market with a\nsurprise announcement.
\n\nThe product, unveiled on stage by Meta Chief Executive Officer\nMark Zuckerberg, was born out of the company’s new design lab led\nby former Apple Inc. interface design chief Alan Dye and its\nSuperintelligence AI group. [...]
\n\nDye, the former Apple design executive, and Billy Sorrentino, one\nof his top deputies at the iPhone maker, were two of the driving\nforces behind the project and the creation of the Muse\ncharacter-based interface, Bosworth said.
\n\nMeta recruited the executives at the end of 2025, forcing\nApple to shake up its own design team to fill the void left by\ntheir absence. Dye and Sorrentino hired a slew of other designers\nfrom Apple as well, and they contributed to Muse Charm as well as\nthe interface of its Muse smartphone apps, Bosworth said.
\n
On today’s episode of Dithering (which you should subscribe to), Ben Thompson dropped a juicy tidbit about this (starting around 5m:15s):
\n\n\n\n\nThompson: By the way, do you want to hear some gossip about this?
\n\nGruber: Yeah, of course!
\n\nThompson: Well, Mark Gurman has a piece crediting Alan Dye. Utter\nand complete theft of credit is what I’m hearing. Alan Dye doing Alan Dye things.
\n
Link: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/meta-debuts-a…
\n" }, { "title" : "Muse Looks Cute, but Looks Are Deceiving", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T16:38:39Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-25T17:26:48Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/aten-muse", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/aten-muse", "external_url" : "https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/meta-keeps-apologizing-for-muse-its-explanations-miss-the-point-entirely/91409363", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJason Aten, in a good follow-up to his previous column at Inc. (the one where he described how Muse, running on his Mac, read his Messages database):
\n\n\n\n\nThe entire reason Muse is interesting is that it isn’t just a\nchatbot, but can actually do things for you. But that promise also\ncomes with a pretty high bar of responsibility. If your goal is to\nput a powerful AI agent on millions of devices, you have to be\nincredibly clear about what’s happening, and what people are\nagreeing to.
\n\nIf your primary audience does not understand what Full Disk Access\nmeans, you should not surprise them with “I’m reading your text\nmessages.” It’s unreasonable to expect them to learn about things\nlike virtual machines, permission architectures, macOS TCC,\nSentinel agents, or database synchronization in order to\nunderstand what the thing is doing or what is happening with their\npersonal information.
\n\nHaving an agent installed on people’s computers that appears\novereager to access their information or take action on their\nbehalf isn’t helpful. It’s terrifying.
\n
Aten makes some good points about the inherent tension between Muse — especially in the context of running on your Mac desktop — being powerful cutting-edge technology yet being presented by Meta in an extremely consumer-friendly package. Muse is getting a lot of attention — including mine — because it’s both groundbreaking technically (each user gets their own entire persistent Linux VM running in Meta’s cloud) and because it’s packaged in an easy-to-install easy-to-use way. It’s literally presented as a cute mascot. It’s the first consumer-accessible agentic AI system, and Meta has truly done an amazing job with that. But it’s a genuinely open question whether consumers have any understanding what this means. If you buy a power saw that can cut your fingers off, you are almost certainly aware that you are buying a power saw that can sever your fingers. You may or may not choose to use it with appropriate carefulness. But you know just by looking at it that a power saw (or a nail gun, or a chef’s knife, or a hammer, or any other powerful tool) is dangerous. I don’t think people realize how powerful — and thus dangerous — Muse is, especially if it’s running on your Mac.
\n\nLink: inc.com/jason-aten/meta-keeps-apologizing-for-muse-its…
\n" }, { "title" : "I Was Not Blown Away by Eli Tan’s ‘I Was Blown Away’ Review of Meta Muse", "date_published" : "2026-09-25T14:41:29Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-25T20:35:48Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/eli-tan-meta-muse-blown-away", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/25/eli-tan-meta-muse-blown-away", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/technology/meta-muse-ai-agent.html?unlocked_article_code=1.D1E.Wram.T8Ww85vXKKYU", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nEli Tan, writing for The New York Times, “I Gave My Life Over to Meta’s A.I. Agent and Was Blown Away” (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nFor one final task, I asked Wren for a good way to spend that\n$44.99 it had saved me. At this point, it knew my life pretty\nwell. I thought it might suggest something altruistic, like\ndonating the money to charity or buying flowers for my girlfriend,\nwho was recovering from surgery.
\n\nInstead, it suggested something even better — buying bowls from\nHeath Ceramics, a local ceramics maker with a dedicated\nfollowing, on Facebook Marketplace, one of my favorite pastimes.
\n
Reading Tan’s “blown away” review (which words only appear in the headline, but it’s his byline under it) made me feel like I was on a hidden camera show. Like I’ve been told I’m about to be served some blow-you-away good coffee and what I’m tasting sure tastes like Folger’s fucking crystals. I’m not saying Muse isn’t capable of blow-you-away things, but I sure didn’t read any of them in Tan’s review. And then, at the end, it steers him toward buying something from ... Meta’s own Facebook Marketplace? And the reaction isn’t a hard eye roll?
\n\nI get the feeling that Tan believes he’s supposed to be impressed by Muse so he wrote a piece saying he was impressed even though he didn’t use it to do a single impressive thing. If Tan asked the new Siri AI for a recommendation on what to do and it suggested he go to an Apple Store and buy new AirPods, would he not think that a bit cynical? Or if Alexa suggested that he should buy more Kindle books?
\n\nHere’s Rusty Foster, over at Today in Tabs:
\n\n\n\n\nTan and Johnson both seem like they have totally ordinary middle\nclass white collar 2026 American lives, so I don’t mean anything\npersonal against them when I say these reviews both make their\nauthors sound like the biggest imaginable losers. You can’t call\na guy to pick up a branch? Within two weeks? You can’t actually\npick up a branch yourself with your own meat hands and throw it in\nthe woods or something? What do you mean you had your robot shop\nfor collectible ceramics? Is there any other part of collecting\nceramics as a hobby besides shopping for them? Is your hobby now\n“having bowls?” Hi, I’m Eli Tan, writer for the New York Times. In\nmy leisure time I enjoy owning dishes.
\n
Link: nytimes.com/2026/09/22/technology/meta-muse-ai-agent.html…
\n" }, { "title" : "Victoria Song on Meta Muse’s Cuteness", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T22:30:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-25T14:25:19Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/song-meta-muse-cute", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/song-meta-muse-cute", "external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/column/999999/optimizer-meta-muse-ai-cute?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkFlVU9GbXpuZFUiLCJwIjoiL2NvbHVtbi85OTk5OTkvb3B0aW1pemVyLW1ldGEtbXVzZS1haS1jdXRlIiwiZXhwIjoxNzkwNzAxNDAwLCJpYXQiOjE3OTAyNjk0MDB9.chaHCz3wgiI4jn9EzA11I7fHhqQkEmn17aCiXtOBPEU", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nVictoria Song, in her Optimizer column/newsletter for The Verge:
\n\n\n\n\nI’ve been aggressively avoiding Muse since it launched a few weeks\nago. Sure, some of that is because I was busy testing other\ndevices. But the number-one reason why is that I am horribly\nvulnerable when faced with extreme cuteness.
\n\nAlas, at Meta Connect, I couldn’t escape this pink-cheeked fella\nwith his plush ivory fur, and so I finally downloaded the app once\nI returned to my hotel room. He was plastered on every screen\nduring the keynote. My eye twitched with maximum cute aggression\nwhen Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth showed us his Muse agent Cooper. The\nduderino was dressed in a lil pilot outfit because he’s Boz’s test\npilot. My face scrunched with rage when Cooper picked up his pudgy\nround arms to wave. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen at a tech\nkeynote. The tiny demon in my head thought to itself, “I WANT TO\nSQUISH ITS LITTLE FACE.” [...]
\n\nMost people I know would say that Meta stuffing an AI agent into\neverything and anything feels sinister. Now look at Jolly’s\nlittle smile. Tell me it doesn’t make the corners of your mouth\ntwitch slightly upward. If you honestly say no, you’re stronger\nthan I am.
\n
What attracted Song to Muse is what has, to be honest, turned me off. I don’t think it’s because I’m stronger than Song. I just think it’s weird that Muse wants me to give it a name and design a cartoon mascot for it. My impression of Muse isn’t that it’s even vaguely cute. I’m not trying to be obtuse here. I see that it’s supposed to be cute. I can see why some people see it as cute in the way it’s clearly intended to be cute. But I just see it as phony. And I despise phoniness as much as Holden Caulfield did.
\n\nMy wife and son both love cilantro. I can’t stand it. I’m one of those people who thinks it tastes not just like soap, but soap that I’d regret washing my hands with because if I did I’d hate how my hands smell and I’d want to find another sink with different soap to scrub that off. I don’t have better taste than my wife or son. (My wife says quite the opposite.) It just registers differently for me.
\n\nMuse’s cutesy appearance and tone hits my mind like cilantro hits my tongue. I want my humans and animals warm, and my computers cold. Fun? Sure! But not cute. That’s a fine line between fun and cute, but I know it when I see it, just as surely as I know when something has cilantro in it.
\n\nLink: theverge.com/column/999999/optimizer-meta-muse-ai-cute?view…
\n" }, { "title" : "Joanna Stern Interviews Mark Zuckerberg", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T20:53:03Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T23:33:36Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/stern-zuck-meta-connect", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/stern-zuck-meta-connect", "external_url" : "https://thenewthings.com/p/exclusive-mark-zuckerberg-interview", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nGreat interview from Stern, as usual, seemingly conducted on the old set of Three’s Company. She opened by asking if AI is going to wipe out humanity, and I think Zuck whiffed by not simply laughing and saying no. She also directly asked his thoughts on people calling Meta Glasses “pervert glasses”.
\n\nRegarding the shift from “the metaverse” to AI, Zuckerberg likened it to Apple having started work on touchscreen tablets and then pivoting to turn the technology into the iPhone first. His point being that it’s not that iPads weren’t a big successful idea, but they’re not as big as phones.
\n\nThere are four big players in consumer AI: Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I don’t think Zuckerberg mentioned any of the others by name — neither in his Meta Connect keynote, nor in this interview with Stern. But much of what he unveiled and explained, in both, makes the case for Meta as the leader in this space. Compared to Google, Meta is highly focused and Google is seemingly utterly unfocused. Focus matters when you’re trying to ship something new while exploring uncharted territory. Compared to OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta has consumer-product chops. If there’s no moat around the AI model technology — and I’m ever more convinced there is not — it’ll be the products AI is wrapped into that matter.
\n\nLink: thenewthings.com/p/exclusive-mark-zuckerberg-interview
\n" }, { "title" : "Meta Connect Keynote 2026", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T20:30:01Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T20:30:01Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/meta-connect-keynote-2026", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/meta-connect-keynote-2026", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKFDIAGF24", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMeta’s annual keynote yesterday was a tight 55-minute live event held on their campus in Menlo Park. I watched the whole thing this morning, before recording tomorrow’s episode of Dithering. (Which you should subscribe to.)
\n\nIt was a good keynote. Consumer products announced:
\n\nThird-generation Meta Glasses with cameras.
A new glasses product: Ray-Ban Meta Audio. These are audio-only smart glasses, with microphones and speakers, but no camera. Zuckerberg pitched them as being less expensive, having longer battery life, and looking much more like regular glasses. All of those things are true, but he deftly avoided the privacy backlash against glasses with cameras. They’re not that much less expensive than the camera models, starting at $350.
Meta VR Glasses. Slogan: “The weight is over.” Some similarities to Vision Pro: use cases include immersive movies and sports, virtual displays for computing, and gaming; the computer is a thick phone-sized puck connected to the glasses via a cable. Some significant differences from Vision Pro: Meta VR Glasses only weigh 100g; Vision Pro weighs 750–800g. It’s almost an order of magnitude difference by weight. Also: these are only going to cost $1,300. Not out yet, coming in “spring”. I used to think I’d at least use my Vision Pro when I fly, but I haven’t taken it with me on a flight in two years. It’s too big and too heavy — a small piece of carry-on luggage unto itself. By dint of their weight alone, Meta VR Glasses seem far more comfortable, and also far more portable. They look a lot more like regular sunglasses than Vision Pro (or Meta’s own Quest goggles) — but they definitely don’t look like regular sunglasses.
Meta Charm. A pendant/stopwatch-sized thing with a screen and fingerprint reader, that serves as a dedicated device for interacting with Muse. Will supposedly have 5G cellular connectivity in addition to Wi-Fi, but it’s not a phone. Vaporware at the moment but supposedly shipping by December. No price given. My daily “World in Brief” newsletter from The Economist described Charm thus: “Imagine a tiny smartphone that can’t do 95% of the things that the one in your pocket can.”
The star of the show wasn’t any of the hardware products but Meta Muse. Muse is the through line for Meta this year. If there’s one thing I think Zuckerberg did wrong in the keynote, it’s that he didn’t explain where Muse stands compared to Meta AI. I’m pretty sure that the answer is that Muse, as an AI agent, is a superset of Meta AI, a mere chatbot. If you use Muse, you should have no reason to use Meta AI; if you use Meta AI, Zuckerberg should have encouraged you to upgrade to Muse. I think that’s the gist. But it would have been good for Zuckerberg to explain it.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=SdKFDIAGF24
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Apple Opens Apple Music Hall, a State-of-the-Art Live Music Venue in London’", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T17:29:49Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T17:29:50Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/apple-music-hall", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/apple-music-hall", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-opens-apple-music-hall-a-state-of-the-art-live-music-venue-in-london/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Newsroom:
\n\n\n\n\nApple today announced the opening of Apple Music Hall, a brand-new\nstate-of-the-art live music venue in London’s storied Battersea\nPower Station, designed to connect artists and fans through\nbespoke, intimate performances unlike anywhere else.
\n
Apple might be the most interesting architecture company in the world this century. They have a core look and feel they apply to their own facilities built from the ground up (e.g., Apple Park, certain flagship retail stores), but they also have tremendous respect for historic buildings they take over.
\n\nThe balconies in Apple Music Hall are bronze, but the lighting (at least in Apple’s photos) is so warm that the balconies look a little like giant Mac Minis.
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-opens-apple-music-hall-a…
\n" }, { "title" : "Ed Zitron’s AI Prediction Track Record", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T17:10:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T17:10:56Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/luu-zitron-claim-chowder", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/luu-zitron-claim-chowder", "external_url" : "https://danluu.com/zitron/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDan Luu serves up some copiously documented claim chowder:
\n\n\n\n\nAfter this point, most further predictions that I saw were either\nnon-falsifiable or resolve in the future. Note that I didn’t\nattempt to catalogue statements that are nonsensical or were\nsimply factually incorrect statements at the time, such as his\nDecember 2024 claim that “Generative AI’s products have\neffectively been trapped in amber for over a year.” January 2026\nclaim that “[models are] basically the same as they were a year\nago. They have the same efficacy”. Zitron has not only made\nforward-looking statements that AI capabilities will not improve,\nhe’s also consistently made backwards-looking statements that\ncapabilities have not improved which, while obviously false at the\ntime, seem to play well to his base (along with his other false\nstatements). If you connect all his statements together, it’s\nimplied that AI had the same capabilities in January 2026 as they\ndid in December 2023 (and if you connect later statements, it’s\nactually implied that capabilities in August 2026 are the same as\nin December 2023, though to be fair to Zitron he frequently\ncontradicts himself and has also admitted to limited improvement\nin mid 2026).
\n
Link: danluu.com/zitron/
\n" }, { "title" : "Copland D11E4, Emulated in Your Browser", "date_published" : "2026-09-24T16:47:16Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T17:41:10Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/copland-emulator", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/24/copland-emulator", "external_url" : "https://www.pagetable.com/300", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMichael Steil:
\n\n\n\n\nApple’s ill-fated Copland operating system is notoriously hard\nto run on real hardware, and has not previously been available in\nemulation. Here is the last build, D11E4 from June 1996, in an\nimproved DingusPPC.
\n
Playing around with the GXSlidemaster app, I found a bug. The keyboard shortcut for File → Print One is ⌥⌘P, but the menu manager displays it as ⌘π (because Option-P is how you type a lowercase pi; add Shift to get an uppercase pi (∏)). I should file a Radar.
\n\nAnyway, I don’t think I’ve ever used Copland before. It wasn’t just hard to run on real hardware, but hard to get. It’s fun but kind of gross to see it boot up spewing console detritus rendered in good old bitmapped Monaco 9 (inside windows — even as an early developer build Apple was still Apple). There’s really not much there there, though. The only work they’d accomplished was under the hood, and there’s seemingly nothing of actual interest in the user interface.
\n\nLink: pagetable.com/300
\n" }, { "title" : "Changes to App Tracking Transparency in the E.U.", "date_published" : "2026-09-23T23:41:46Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T17:06:08Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/23/changes-to-app-tracking-transparency-in-the-eu", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/23/changes-to-app-tracking-transparency-in-the-eu", "external_url" : "https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Developer:
\n\n\n\n\nAs part of agreements with select European competition\nauthorities, Apple is introducing changes to its App Tracking\nTransparency framework in the European Union. Beginning with iOS\n27.2 and iPadOS 27.2, developers will have the option to use an\nalternative version of the App Tracking Transparency system prompt\nin the EU. The requirements for when you must seek permission to\ntrack users will remain the same. Due to legal requirements, only\nthe alternative version of the system prompt is available for apps\ndistributed in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania.
\n\nIn addition, for users in the European Union, you can reprompt\n[sic] a user via the App Tracking Transparency system prompt one\nyear after the user’s previous choice in your app’s App Tracking\nTransparency system prompt, regardless of whether that choice was\nto accept or reject. A user cannot be re-prompted if they have\ndisabled “Allow Apps to Request to Track” (renamed to “Allow Apps\nto Request to Link Your Activity Across Companies” in the EU) in\ntheir device’s Settings.
\n
As Benjamin Mayo notes, “Allow Apps to Request to Link Your Activity Across Companies” is catchy.
\n\nThe gist of this is that there are three constituent groups: Apple, users, and third-party developers. I’ve long argued that Apple prioritizes those groups in that order. What DMA/EU proponents have fooled themselves into believing is that the European Commission works to move users into, or at least closer to, the top spot. The truth is that they (and national regulatory authorities in Europe) work to move third-party developers and publishers into a more privileged position, at the expense of users’ privacy and experience. Users don’t want to be tracked without permission. Apple doesn’t want users to be tracked without their permission. But an awful lot of third-party developers and publishers want to track users without their permission or knowledge.
\n\nJust getting the term changed from “tracking” (one word, easily understood) to “linking your activity across companies” (five words, obfuscated) tells you all you need to know.
\n\nSee also: Nick Heer has a different take at Pixel Envy.
\n\nLink: developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/
\n" }, { "title" : "★ The iPhone 4 ‘Antennagate’ Press Conference Q&A — Finally", "date_published" : "2026-09-23T22:15:05Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-23T22:36:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/iphone_4_antennagate_q_and_a", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/iphone_4_antennagate_q_and_a", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThe most extraordinary Apple event in the company’s modern history was the emergency press conference on Friday, 16 July 2010 to address “antennagate” — the out-of-control media narrative that the iPhone 4 had a defective antenna design. The event was only scheduled one day in advance — I got invited around noon ET on July 15 and was on my way to the airport about an hour later. It remains one of the most interesting press events I’ve ever attended.
\n\nThe event was held in Apple’s Town Hall auditorium at the old Infinite Loop headquarters. Town Hall is a tiny venue but it wasn’t full. It opened with Jonathan Mann’s “The iPhone 4 Antenna Song” (refrain: “If you don’t want an iPhone 4, don’t buy it; if you bought one and you don’t like it, bring it back”), then Steve Jobs took the stage for what he said would be a 15-minute presentation but which took 30 minutes. Then Jobs had COO Tim Cook and hardware chief Bob Mansfield join him on stage to answer questions from the assembled members of the media.
\n\nApple itself hosted video of the presentation — minus the Q&A — for some time after the event. But after a few years they took their copy down. There have been copies on YouTube, but the only one that seems to be left is this 14-year-old copy from the YouTube account Tech Knowology. It’s got Mann’s opening song and Jobs’s half-hour prepared presentation, but it cuts off right as Jobs invites Cook and Mansfield to join him on stage. To my recollection this is where Apple’s own official video cut off too — I think this version on YouTube is just a copy of Apple’s.
\n\nThe Q&A was on the record (which is the entire point of a Q&A), and was reported widely, but I don’t think there’s ever been video of it. Here’s a report by Jeff Carlson at TidBITS, published the day the event was held, which states, “The video omits a long and interesting Q&A at the end.”
\n\nThen, yesterday, video of the Q&A hit YouTube. I don’t know what truck it fell off the back of, why it took 16 years, or how it came into the hands of “Sir Mix-A-Lot Rare Music”,1 but I’m sure glad it did. There are parts of this Q&A that I remembered, and parts I didn’t. Carlson was exactly right: it was long and it was interesting.
\n\nOne part I remembered was my own question, asked at the 18:45 mark, which was answered — by all three executives — visually, not verbally. It really was an answer best shown not told, but heretofore I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t in the room has seen this. There were photographs (e.g. AllThingsD and MacRumors), but not video. Now you can watch.
\n\nMy main takeaway, though, watching the whole thing for the first time since I was in the room, is how goddamn thoughtful Steve Jobs was. He takes a long time to think before answering many of the questions. A few minutes after my question, Jobs was asked what he’s learned from this experience. Jobs takes several seconds to think and then his answer lasts five minutes. It’s a good answer.
\n\nI seldom suggest you spend 47 minutes watching a video, but this one is worth your time. (And, given that it clearly fell off the back of a truck, you might want to put a copy on your own truck sooner rather than later.) A lot of times with a long Q&A the whole thing gets repetitive, with the same questions asked in rephrased ways, and the same answers (or, worse, non-answers) regurgitated from the same set of prepared talking points. Not this one. In fact, one of Jobs’s most interesting answers comes over 40 minutes into the Q&A segment, when he re-articulates what Horace Dediu coined “The Cook Doctrine”. (Which Cook deserves credit for, having expressed it a year prior while Jobs was on a medical leave of absence.) Here’s part of that answer:
\n\n\n\n\nTo understand Apple, it helps to realize that one of our biggest\ninsights came about eight years ago. We didn’t want to get into\nany business where we didn’t own or control the primary\ntechnology. Because if somebody else owns the primary technology,\nthey’re going to beat you in the end. Because you’re going to\nhave to buy that from them and add your stuff on top. But if\ntheir technology is the most important one, they’re going to beat\nyou in the end. So we wanted to own or control the primary\ntechnology for those businesses that we’re in. And in the\ncomputer business, even though we didn’t make our own\nmicroprocessors, we thought software was the most important\ntechnology. And we made our own operating system.
\n\nOur big insight about eight years ago was that for most areas of\nconsumer electronics going forward, it was going to shift from big\ndisplays being the most important component, or electro-optical\nlaser pickup heads for DVD drives being the most important\ncomponent, or radios and cell phones being the most important\ncomponent, to software being the most important component. And we\nrealized that we were pretty good at software.
\n
Watch the whole thing, I implore you. I mean if you’re only going to watch a minute, sure, skip to my question. But you should watch the whole thing — if only to hear Jobs pronounce “component”.
\n\n\n\nChannel description: “A somewhat poorly named channel which used to constantly upload Sir Mix-A-Lot’s rare videos, music. Now it’s a lot of everything else except that.” He’s got a few other Steve Jobs-era bootlegs, including a 1998 interview about the just-released iMac, in which Jobs is wearing a blue checked button-down flannel shirt, and a 2008 interview about the iPhone 3G and its new features geared toward the business market. ↩︎
\nApple Support:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\niPhone 18 Pro Max offers a huge increase in battery life, in part\ndue to increasing the battery capacity to over 20 watt-hours (Wh).\nDevices with a single-cell battery over 20 Wh have additional\nshipping requirements in most countries and regions. To address\nthese requirements, iPhone 18 Pro Max uses an innovative\nbattery-firmware solution that limits battery capacity to below 20\nWh from the time it’s manufactured through its transport from the\nfactory. When you activate your iPhone, the limit is removed and\nthe battery’s full charging capacity is available.
\n\nAfter activation, if you need to ship your iPhone 18 Pro Max for a\nrepair, trade-in, return, or as a gift for example, use the\nPrepare to Ship feature in Settings. This feature discharges your\nbattery to below 20 Wh and sets a charge limit so your iPhone\nstays below this limit while shipping. This can be reversed and\nyou can reset your charge limit after shipping.
\n\nThe battery in iPhone 18 Pro Max is safe, including for shipping\nand air travel. This process is needed only to meet shipping\nrequirements and isn’t required while traveling or for any other\niPhone model.
\n
Link: support.apple.com/en-us/127848
\n" }, { "title" : "App Store Scam of the Week: ‘Update My Phone & Apps: Guide’ by Tair Olzhasev", "date_published" : "2026-09-23T18:38:58Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-24T16:54:52Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/23/app-store-scam-update-my-phone", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/23/app-store-scam-update-my-phone", "external_url" : "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/update-my-phone-apps-guide/id6753936837", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n“Update My Phone & Apps: Guide” is an iOS app from developer Tair Olzhasev. By default, the only thing it does for free is give you a “Check for Updates” button that launches the system Settings app. It doesn’t even take you to the General → Software Update screen. It just takes you to the root level of Settings.
\n\nEverything else it purports to do requires a $15/week subscription. That’s $780 per year. (It does offer a three-day free trial before weekly billing starts.) These other features, gated behind the “pro” subscription:
\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n- Clear device status: iOS version and storage usage at a glance
\n- One-tap shortcut to system update settings
\n- Tip of the Day with practical hacks and best practices
\n- Lightweight, private, and fast — no accounts or tracking
\n- Optional Premium for extra guidance and tools
\n
In other words, the app does nothing that iOS doesn’t automatically do for all users. Absolutely nothing. I came across it from a user on Mastodon who discovered their father was paying $8/week ($416 per year) for it. It seems like the esteemed Mr. Olzhasev, savvy businessman that he is, changes the subscription price frequently.
\n\nOlzhasev’s other two apps are Thermal Camera Filter Effects (a neat trick, given that iPhones do not have thermal cameras or heat sensors) and Settings App: Simulator, a $15 app that admittedly gives you just what it says on the tin. It’s an inaccurate mirror of the Settings app “so you can practice without changing the real system.”
\n\nUpdate, next day: These apps are no longer in the App Store.
\n\nLink: apps.apple.com/us/app/update-my-phone-apps-guide…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ AppZapper 3000", "date_published" : "2026-09-23T17:31:23Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-23T22:37:30Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/appzapper_3000", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/appzapper_3000", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBack in the mid-2000s there was a golden era of exuberantly designed Mac apps. Paul Kafasis coined it “The Delicious Generation”, a perfect name. The delicious was both a reference to Wil Shipley and Mike Matas’s Delicious Library — a personal media library management app that made something that sounds really boring look super fun — and a perfect description of the aesthetic. It clearly harks back to Steve Jobs’s description of the Aqua user interface in 2000: “One of the design goals was when you saw it, you wanted to lick it.”
\n\nOne of the delicious generation apps was Disco, a CD/DVD disc-burning utility. When it burned a disc, it rendered smoke coming out of the app’s main window. It wasn’t a simple “poof” animation. It was fully interactive. From their own description:
\n\n\n\n\nWith Disco we tried pushing the boundaries of interface,\nusability, and utter functional simplicity. Well, once you realize\nthat Disco is emitting real time interactive smoke as you burn, we\nstart redefining the boundaries. Want to push it out of the way?\nBlow into your microphone and the smoke will react accordingly.\nOr, go ahead and flick at it with your mouse. Remember, you’ll\nneed a recent Mac to play with the full interactive smoke.
\n
Here’s a video of Disco in action.
\n\nAnother delicious generation peer was AppZapper, from Austin Sarner and Brian Ball. AppZapper was a utility to uninstall apps along with all of the apps’ associated files and folders, and its gimmick was that, well, you zapped the apps with a Zap button and a supposedly fun sound. Totally boring premise with a fun implementation and presentation.
\n\nTwo things brought that trend to an end. The first was the launch of the iPhone App Store in 2008. Indie developer attention that had previously been single-mindedly focused on the Mac was now split between the Mac and iPhone, and given the iPhone’s novelty and larger market, it soon was more like the attention went single-mindedly to the iPhone. The delicious aesthetic was a niche novelty on the Mac. On the iPhone, in those early years, it was the aesthetic of the platform. Apple’s own iBooks app had page-turning animation that tracked your finger; the built-in Calendar app had a UI rendered in rich Corinthian leather; the Notes app used a silly handwriting font. But then iOS 7 arrived in 2013, wiping the slate clean. Deliciousness was out. Blandness was in. And the whole industry has never really recovered.1
\n\nI bring very good, very fun news. After a decade-plus hiatus, AppZapper is back, perfectly renamed for a long future as AppZapper 3000. It’s completely over-the-top and I love it. Just look at it.
\n\nThere’s long been a whole cottage industry of Mac “app uninstallers”, a sort of subset within the larger category of system “cleaners”. Some of these apps are scams, and some are borderline scams that prey on the false notion that users should be worried about the detritus that deleted apps leave behind. A lot of people who come to the Mac from Windows are uncomfortable with the idea that you don’t typically run installers for apps — you just copy the .app bundle from your Downloads folder or from a disk image to your Applications folder, and that’s it. It’s installed. It’s a beautiful system, to me, because it teaches you how the system works. There ought not be any hidden magic behind “installing” an app on the Mac.
\n\nAnd to uninstall an app, you just drag it to the Trash. Some users are more uncomfortable with that than they are with just-drag-to-Applications-to-install, because deleting the application’s .app bundle doesn’t delete anything else it might have left behind. Like its preferences, or any associated files it might have left behind in subfolders within your ~/Library/ folder. The simple truth is that you don’t really need to worry about that stuff. I sometimes prefer leaving a deleted app’s preferences behind, just in case I ever re-install the app. The Mac’s NeXT-derived defaults system for software preferences is designed such that it doesn’t get bogged down by unused preferences from long-ago deleted applications. (The Windows Registry leaves people forever scarred.)
But sometimes apps download large associated files and stash them in ~/Library/. Those files aren’t bogging your system down but they are taking up space. Storage space has never been free of charge, and, on one side of the AI coin, it’s become a lot more expensive. On the other side of the AI coin, there are a lot more new Mac apps coming out these days. I’m trying more new apps every week than I have since the earliest days of the App Store. Sometimes I really just want to nuke all traces of them after taking a test drive.
\n\nAppZapper 3000 does that job well, and it makes it fun as hell. You drag an app you want to uninstall to its main window, and AppZapper lists all of the app’s associated files (including, of course, the app itself). Then you shoot the ones you want to delete. Zapped files are safely moved to your Trash, and AppZapper itself supports Undo if you get trigger happy. It’s terrific fun. There’s even a “Zap All” button for the lazy. It re-launched last Monday but I’ve been testing AppZapper 3000 since a few weeks before that. My Applications and Library folders haven’t been this trim in years.
\n\nWay, way back in the day with The Grouch system extension for System 6 and 7, there were stories claiming that people who had the Grouch installed would let their young kids play with their Macs, and come to find that the kids had deleted gobs of important files and folders, just to make Oscar pop out of the Trash and sing his songs. (Oscar only sang when you emptied the Trash.) The Grouch seemed old even when the original AppZapper was new. But AppZapper 3000 brings back that sort of fun — while being genuinely useful. And the Mac has never in its history been more in need of new UI fun. Is it absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary to make an uninstall utility with an exquisitely detailed 3D laser gun as its UI? Fuckin’-A right it is.
\n\nIf you’ve got a fun bone in your body you should check AppZapper 3000 out. It’s a free download with a free trial. Licenses cost $18 for a single user, $29 for a 5-user family pack, and $99 for a 25-Mac enterprise license. One-time purchases, not subscriptions. Sarner was kind enough to create a 20 percent discount code for DF readers, good through next Monday: DARING. This is not a sponsorship. I’m sharing this code (and writing this article) simply because I’m so happy to see such a much-needed injection of pure fun on the Mac.
\n\nDelicious — dare I say lickable — hardware never fell out of fashion at Apple. But I think that was, in a very small nut, the core problem with Jony Ive taking control of all design at the company. With a hardware designer in charge of software design, of course the aesthetic changed to one where the software look-and-feel deferred to the hardware. In the 2000s, if you asked me what was more exciting, just to look at, Apple’s hardware or software, I’d have to say “I don’t know.” They both were full of exuberance. They both continued to surprise and delight. Starting with iOS 7, and ever since, the answer is clearly “Oh, the hardware.”
\n\nAt a first approximation, the problem with Liquid Glass last year is that it just plain sucked. In the way that Donald Trump is a poor idiot’s idea of a rich genius, Liquid Glass exemplifies bad graphic designers’ idea of a good user interface. But looking deeper, the real problem with Liquid Glass is the lack of ambition. Even a good implemention of the ideas behind Liquid Glass — which we’re starting to see Apple incrementally edge toward in this year’s version 27 OS releases — is still fundamentally bland. It aspires only to see-through blandness. The whole point is for the application chrome to defer to “content”, which necessarily results in applications that look shy. They all look alike. Even their icons suck. A good user interface is obvious, consistent, efficient, functional etc. But an insanely great user interface is one that makes you want to use the software not because of what it does but just because it looks so goddamn cool. That’s not instead of actually getting fundamental functionality right. It’s on top of it. But Apple stopped striving for insanely great UIs like that. And, alas, everyone followed. ↩︎
\nPresident Donald Trump, in a prepared speech before the United Nations General Assembly yesterday (one-minute video clip from Aaron Rupar, posted on Bluesky):
\n\n\n\n\nThe United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a\nglobalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence — being spoken of so much, now — here and after officially called\n“super intelligence”, changing the name. The use of the word\n“artificial” makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake, and\nit is not fake. It’s actually amazing. But we have to be careful.\nIn fact it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From\nthis point forward, all of United States’ documents and hopefully\nthe world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term\n“super” as opposed to “artificial”. So it’s “super intelligence”.\nIn other words, welcome to the world of super intelligence dash\nSI. SI. Let’s see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much\nbetter. And it’s much more accurate. Let’s see if I have any\npower. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t, we’re going to find out\npretty soon. Super intelligence.
\n
Pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to say the “dash” aloud, but other than that, no signs of dementia or madness. Sharp as a tack, directly addressing the nation’s top concerns regarding AI.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn the 1971 comedy film Bananas a third-world nation’s strongman\nannounces his new policies:
\n\n\n\nFrom this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be\nSwedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be\nrequired to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will\nbe worn on the outside so we can check.
\n
Link: bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mw4it5l5fd23
\n" }, { "title" : "Meta’s Muse Logomark, Designed by Jessica Hische ", "date_published" : "2026-09-22T22:51:09Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-22T22:54:28Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/22/meta-muse-hische", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/22/meta-muse-hische", "external_url" : "https://thedieline.com/jessica-hische-metas-muse-and-the-ethical-landmines-of-design/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBill McCool, writing at Dieline:
\n\n\n\n\nThis past Wednesday, lettering artist, designer, and author\nJessica Hische took to Threads to announce that she had\nworked alongside Meta’s team to create the icon and logotype for\ntheir agentic AI, Muse. Acknowledging that people would be “mad\nbecause it’s AI and Meta,” Hische sought to explain at least why\nshe had taken the gig in the first place. Obviously, she took some\nflak for working with Meta. While plenty of comments voiced\nsupport, just as many chastised her for even considering the\nproject, which I can mostly sum up as a general narrative thread\nof “How could you?”
\n\nFWIW, it’s pretty rich to criticize someone for working with Meta\nwhile you’re very much using a Meta product to issue said\ncriticism. But I digress.
\n
I like the Muse mark/icon. It’s both an obvious “M” and yet at the same time, not an “M”. It’s friendly but not un-serious.
\n\nAnd, as Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang noted today on X (not Threads), it doesn’t look like a butthole. (Yet Meta AI’s logo/icon is a little butthole-y.)
\n\nLink: thedieline.com/jessica-hische-metas-muse-and-the-ethical…
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] Mux: Turn Your Video Into Context", "date_published" : "2026-09-21T23:04:15Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-21T23:04:15Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/mux_turn_your_video_into_conte", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/mux_turn_your_video_into_conte", "external_url" : "https://www.mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nVideo isn’t just something to stream; it’s structured data you build with.
\n\nMux 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.
\n\nMux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Perplexity. Start building for free. Use code FIREBALL for an extra $50 credit.
\n\nLink: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF
\n" }, { "title" : "★ The iPhones 18 Pro", "date_published" : "2026-09-18T02:05:11Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-20T17:44:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphones_18_pro", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphones_18_pro", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nEvery year since 2007, Apple has debuted a new flagship iPhone. Other than the just plain “iPhone” original, they all have numbers of some sort in their name. If you make a list of them in order, it’s a bit of a marketing curiosity that the only one of the bunch whose number in its name corresponds to its generation number is the iPhone 4, which was in fact the fourth iPhone. (The “ten” in iPhone X marked 10 years, but it was the 11th flagship model.)
\n\nThe iPhone 18 Pro, in fact, heralds Apple’s 20th iPhone generation:
\n\n\n\n\n\n| \n | Flagship | \nYear | \nMilestones | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | \niPhone | \n2007 | \nHoly shit | \n
| 2. | \niPhone 3G | \n2008 | \nEDGE → 3G, GPS | \n
| 3. | \niPhone 3GS1 | \n2009 | \nSpeed, shooting video | \n
| 4. | \niPhone 4 | \n2010 | \nRetina | \n
| 5. | \niPhone 4S | \n2011 | \nLate spring → early fall release | \n
| 6. | \niPhone 5 | \n2012 | \nLightning, 3.5″ → 4″ | \n
| 7. | \niPhone 5S | \n2013 | \nTouch ID, 64-bit | \n
| 8. | \niPhone 6 | \n2014 | \nPlus-size option | \n
| 9. | \niPhone 6S | \n2015 | \n\n |
| 10. | \niPhone 7 | \n2016 | \n2nd camera (Plus only) | \n
| 11. | \niPhone X | \n2017 | \nHoly shit redux | \n
| 12. | \niPhone XS | \n2018 | \n\n |
| 13. | \niPhone 11 Pro | \n2019 | \n3rd camera | \n
| 14. | \niPhone 12 Pro | \n2020 | \nMagSafe | \n
| 15. | \niPhone 13 Pro | \n2021 | \nProMotion | \n
| 16. | \niPhone 14 Pro | \n2022 | \nNotch → Dynamic Island | \n
| 17. | \niPhone 15 Pro | \n2023 | \nPro video, USB-C, Action button | \n
| 18. | \niPhone 16 Pro | \n2024 | \nCamera Control button | \n
| 19. | \niPhone 17 Pro | \n2025 | \nCamera plateau expands, Ceramic Shield 2 | \n
| 20. | \niPhone 18 Pro | \n2026 | \n\n |
I compiled this list from memory. I had to double-check a few of the milestone notes, but I literally remember every single new flagship iPhone. And I don’t really have a particularly good memory. The fact that Apple has just incremented integers annually since the iPhone 11 makes that easier. But the iPhone is unique in this way. I can sort of do it off the top of my head with the major Apple II models: II, II Plus, IIe, IIc, IIGS.2 But I can’t do it with iPads, and I don’t think there’s even a way to make such a list for Macs.
\n\nMaybe next year Apple will commemorate the 20th anniversary with an iPhone 20 (there’s no way they’re going to call it “XX”, right? Right?). They skipped right over 9, and could do the same with 19. But the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are the 20th new flagship models. That’s something.
\n\nBut ... is the 18 Pro even the flagship iPhone of this generation? Apple first started launching multiple phones the same year with the “unapologetically plastic” 5C alongside the 5S. Starting with the simultaneous unveiling of the forgettable iPhone 8/8 Plus and unforgettable iPhone X in 2017, Apple has launched multiple models at different tiers each fall. But it’s always been obviously clear which iPhone was the iPhone.
\n\nThis year, it’s not quite so obvious. Apple made no mention of the plain no-adjective iPhone 18 last week, and, now that I think about it, no one in the media wondered where it was. Apple never said “It’s coming early next year” and no one asked. Nor did Apple mention the year-old iPhone Air or offer even a hint that a sequel is coming alongside the 18 and 18e in early 2027.
\n\nBut the 18 Pro debuted alongside the iPhone Duo. The Duo got the anchor spot in the announcement keynote. The Duo is getting the billboards. It was a pearl white Duo that John Ternus pulled from his tuxedo jacket on the red carpet at the Emmys Monday night. If it had been a burgundy iPhone 18 Pro instead, would the reporter from Deadline have screamed? Would it make a difference if someone told her the 18 Pro main camera now has variable aperture?
\n\nI do think the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are the flagship iPhones this year. But I wonder if I’m biased from habit. The Duo makes this year different, unlike any other, because clearly it is the most exciting new iPhone. One week out and it feels like the most exciting new iPhone since the iPhone X nine years ago. A decade from now, if I make a list like the above with 30 years of “flagship” iPhones, might not the Duo occupy the 2026 spot?
\n\nReply hazy, try again.
\n\nApple hasn’t put an “S” in an iPhone’s name since the XS in 2018, but the 18 Pro is a very S-like phone. The S models all had similar attributes: they looked nearly identical to their year-prior predecessors, and their improvements were often internal or technical. The 3GS was remarkably faster than the 3G. The 5S added 64-bit support years ahead of when observers expected mobile ARM chips to do so, and introduced Touch ID. The S years tend not to be exciting but they are workmanlike. Apple’s rigorous annual update schedule for the iPhone as a whole, and Apple Silicon A-series chips specifically, leads to compounding gains. I’ll leave it to others to benchmark the A20 Pro chip rigorously, but some quick poking around suggests that the A20 Pro is about 1.2× faster than last year’s A19 Pro for single-core CPU. And the A17 Pro was about 1.2× faster than the A16 Pro.
\n\nYear over year, that’s nice, but it’s not game-changing. But these performance gains compound. 20 percent faster, give or take, every year, and after a few years the improvement is breathtaking. And most people only upgrade their phones every few years.
\n\nBut, looking back at that list of 20 years of flagship iPhones, there’s a stark difference between the first ten and the second ten. In the iPhone’s first decade, genuinely radical changes appeared every two or three years. In the second decade, there haven’t been any radical changes from year to year at all. That’s not a slag on Apple’s design chops or an accusation of apathy or laziness. It’s just the nature of a design that Apple steered toward its platonic ideal. The general form of a MacBook Pro hasn’t changed much since the Titanium G4 PowerBook in 2002 — which came right around a decade after Apple invented the modern laptop with the PowerBook 100 series.
\n\nLet’s make a list of Hall of Fame iPhone models. I’ll arbitrarily cap it at five. Pick five iPhones for the Hall of Fame (or just up to five if you want to be stingy). Here’s my list:
\n\nPerhaps it’s recency bias that has me putting last year’s 17 Pro on that list. But surely some iPhone in the post-X era qualifies for the Hall of Fame. I think it’s the 17 Pro. There was a long stretch of iPhones in the last 10 years when the entire back of the phone was glass. This glass cracked, a lot. I’ve only cracked the display glass of an iPhone twice in 20 years of carrying them. I’ve cracked the back glass on a bunch of them in the last five or six years. The iPhone 17 Pro fixed this, by going to a unibody aluminum frame, reducing the glass on the back to a panel. This looks better, feels better, and is seemingly far sturdier. The full-width camera plateau is more obtrusive, obviously, than the square corner plateau of previous iPhone Pro generations, but it’s more honest — both optically and physically more balanced. The camera system is such a prominent feature of these devices that it deserves a prominent protuberance. It’s very obvious to me that this is the best hardware design of the post-X era.
\n\nThe iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are nearly identical to the 17 Pro and Pro Max in size and shape. Per Apple’s own specs, they’re precisely the same width, height, and thickness. In my personal testing, 17 Pro cases fit 18 Pro phones perfectly, as do 18 Pro cases (included from Apple in my review unit kit) on 17 Pro phones. I asked Apple if they’re stating that 18 Pro models are case-compatible with the iPhone 17 Pro, and they are not, because the 18 Pro camera plateaus are slightly thicker this year. I measured with a digital caliper and the difference is one-tenth of a millimeter: 11.5mm vs. 11.4mm. So Apple has raised the plateau guard lip on its own 18 Pro cases by one-tenth of a millimeter. I say that’s close enough to declare that you can use 17 Pro cases on 18 Pro iPhones and vice-versa.
\n\nBut zooming back in time, I just happen to have an iPhone 13 Pro next to my desk. And in broad strokes, I can’t say that the iPhone 18 Pro form factor is all that different. I do think the 18 Pro form factor is better in every single way. Just as objects in hand, there’s not one aspect I prefer about the 13 Pro to the 18 Pro. I’m glad Apple moved away from sharp corners, polished metal sides (slippery) and all-glass backs (my 13 Pro is cracked in the corner); expanded the camera plateau; and replaced the mute switch with the Action button and added the Camera Control button. But overall, these two phones, five years apart, are fundamentally similar. Familiarity may not breed contempt in this case, but it does breed boredom.
\n\nThe iPhone Duo is not boring.
\n\nThe iPhone 18 Pro, let’s just say it, sort of is. But it’s boring because it’s exactly like the iPhone 17 Pro — except for specific details inside the phone that are obviously better:
\n\nVariable aperture on the main 1× camera lens. Most users will never adjust this manually but the Camera app will use it automatically, and results will be better. Even if you don’t know squat about photography it’s rather intuitive what aperture does, just knowing that it involves an iris-like mechanism. Open wide, it lets in more light (useful in low light); closed up, it lets in less light (useful in bright light). Open apertures decrease depth of focus; closed apertures increase depth of focus. Those facts can be used to artistic effect. In manual control, the iPhone 18 Pro 1× camera offers four stops for aperture: ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4.0. This is a genuine hardware breakthrough. Over the next five years or so, I expect variable aperture to expand to the telephoto and ultrawide lenses. I’m not saying iPhone camera hardware won’t continue to improve after that — I’m sure it will — but I suspect variable aperture is the last remaining “easy win”. I think every camera gain after this will be more incremental.
A20 Pro chip. It’s noticeably faster and more efficient. Not radically faster and more efficient. Just noticeably. This is how Apple rolls.
Redesigned thermal system with a much larger vapor chamber. It’s much easier to report on peak performance with benchmarks than it is to assign a score to sustained performance, but sustained performance is what matters most to users who really push their phones as computers. This could be playing games, shooting 4K ProRes video, or running local AI models. We all know the drill. You push your phone and it gets hot, and when it gets hot it slows down. An improved thermal system sounds so much like a pocket-protector-wearing nerd feature, but it really matters. I suspect that for sustained use cases, it would be more performant to have the 18 Pro’s new thermal system running the 17 Pro’s A19 Pro chip than to have the new A20 Pro chip running with the 17 Pro’s first-generation vapor chamber. But with the iPhone 18 Pro, you get both: you get the faster and more efficient A20 Pro chip and the second-generation vapor chamber thermal system. This, again, is how Apple rolls.
C2 cellular modem. The one and only odd spec regarding the iPhone 18 Pro lineup is that they use Apple’s own C2 cellular modem in all models worldwide with one notable exception: 18 Pro Max models sold in the United States. The regular-size iPhone 18 Pro in the U.S. gets the C2, and all 18 Pros — regular and Max — outside the U.S. get the C2. Apple isn’t explaining this oddity but I think Joe Rossignol at MacRumors deduced correctly: it’s for minimal compliance with their 2023 contract with Qualcomm, which Qualcomm promoted as covering “smartphone launches in 2024, 2025 and 2026.” I’ve spent time over the last week with both the 18 Pro and Pro Max and didn’t notice one whit of difference network-performance-wise. And there’s no easy way to measure the effect the modem has on battery life. But we know Apple’s C-series modems are noticeably more power-efficient than Qualcomm’s. If Apple had to use a Qualcomm modem in one model, in one region, it makes sense that it would be the 18 Pro Max in America. All Pro Max variants have larger batteries than the regular-size models, and the U.S. 18 Pro Max model has the very biggest battery of them all, because U.S. iPhones no longer have SIM card trays. Thus the 18 Pro Max is taking one for the team, while still delivering better battery life than last year’s 17 Pro Max. The U.S. iPhone 18 Pro Max will almost certainly be the last product Apple ever ships with a Qualcomm modem. Good riddance.
Photographic Styles 3 and pro controls in the Camera app. I’ll mostly leave it to better photographers than me to evaluate the iPhone 18 Pro camera system and its exclusive Camera app features in detail. But I’ll say this, before getting to a few example photos below: it’s worth separately considering the iPhone camera hardware from the iOS Camera app software. For my own personal photography, I’ve switched away from Apple’s Camera app to a mix of third-party camera apps: Halide, Not Boring Camera, and Analogue. That’s a discussion for another time, but the basic reason is that I strongly prefer a more film-like look that embraces the nature of the iPhone’s small image sensors with grain, to Apple’s overly processed digital look that compensates for the noisy small sensors by applying computational smoothing. I’m far from alone in having grown tired of the smooth over-processed look, and the optional new “Film” texture look in the Camera app — exclusive to the A20 Pro-powered iPhones 18 Pro and Duo, thus far — is a move in that direction. This makes photography using Apple’s own Camera app far more appealing to me. But the variable aperture in the main camera makes the iPhone 18 Pro camera system better for all camera apps. And if you don’t like the new film texture and optional grain from Apple’s own Camera app, it’s optional (and, unsurprisingly, off by default — by default the Camera app takes photos that look like what people expect iPhone photos to look like).
The 18 Pro is the third generation with the Camera Control button. But that button hasn’t changed at all since the 16 Pro, the phone on which it debuted. At some point in the last year, I gave up on using the Camera Control button as anything other than a simple button. I went into Settings and turned off all the features where you can soft-press it and slide your finger back and forth to adjust camera features while using Apple’s Camera app. What I found is that I kept changing things inadvertently and undesirably. It’s too prone to accidental half-presses that put it into slide-to-adjust for some setting, and because it’s an accident, my finger would start changing things. I turned that all off and I’m much happier for it. Now I just use the Camera Control button for four things:
\n\nA full click of the button to jump me into the camera app of my choice. It doesn’t matter if the phone is locked, or if I’m using it for something else at the moment. I click this button and boom, I’m ready to snap a photo.
Click-and-hold the button to launch the Camera app in Siri mode, for Visual Intelligence. I don’t use this often but that’s less a statement about its usefulness than it is about the fact that I just haven’t yet developed the habit of pointing my camera at something to ask Siri about it. It’s really quite useful with Siri AI in iOS 27, and even if you only use it occasionally, there’s no reason not to assign it to a long press of the button. That said, I don’t think this feature belongs in the Camera app. It ought to be a tab in the Siri app. The Camera app should be for photography; the Siri app ought to be for all things Siri, including Visual Intelligence.
While I’m in a camera app, I sometimes half-press the button for AE/AF Lock.
While I’m in a camera app, I sometimes use a full click of the button as the shutter. But most of the time, I still use the on-screen shutter button. The reason is something I complained about in my iPhone 16 Pro review two years ago:
\n\n\nAt first, though, I was frustrated by the physical placement of\nCamera Control. As a hobbyist photographer who has been shooting\nwith dedicated cameras all the way back to the late 1990s, my\nright index finger expects a shutter button to be located near the\ntop right corner. But the center of Camera Control is 2 inches (5\ncm) from the corner. I’ll never stop wishing for it to be closer\nto the corner, but after a week I’ve grown acclimated to its\nactual placement. And I get it. I’m old enough that I shoot all of\nmy videos and most of my photos in widescreen orientation. But\nsocial media today is dominated by tallscreen video. As Apple’s\nPiyush Pratik explained during last week’s keynote, Camera\nControl is designed to be used in both wide (landscape) and tall\n(portrait) orientations. Moving it more toward the corner, where\nmy finger wants it to be, would make it better for shooting\nwidescreen, but would make it downright precarious to hold the\niPhone while shooting tall. I hate to admit it but I think Apple\ngot the placement right. Shooting tallscreen is just way too\npopular. And, after just a week, my index finger is getting more\nand more accustomed to its placement. It might prove to be a bit\nof a reach for people with small hands, though.
\n
After two years, I still think Apple put the Camera Control where it was to make it useful to people who shoot video and take photos vertically. But, proud Gen-Xer that I am, I still shoot almost all my videos and photos horizontally, and this button is too far away from the corner to be a convenient shutter button while holding the phone horizontally. So I tend not to use it. I would use it as a shutter much more often if it were as close to the corner as the Action button is to the opposite corner. I’m a little bitter about this.
\n\nWhen shooting with Apple’s Camera app, iPhone 18 Pro introduces support for Apple’s Photographic Styles 3. As with previous generations of Photographic Styles, these styles are non-destructive. You can shoot photos without them and add Photographic Styles later, in Apple Photos. Or you can shoot with them, and adjust or remove them later. The non-destructive nature of Photographic Styles is essential to note. You can capture images in black-and-white, to name a conspicuous example, and go back to full color in post.
\n\nThe first two generations of Photographic Styles adjust only color. Apple calls this “Palette”. Photographic Styles 3 adds Texture, with four options:
\n\nThe only one I’ve tried, both because I’ve only had the iPhones 18 Pro for one week and because it’s the only one that appeals to me, is Film. When you change a style to use the Film texture, there are two additional adjustments: the strength of the film-like texture (0–100), and an on/off toggle for “Grain”. Soft Skin and Glow also have 0–100 sliders to adjust the strength of those textures, but only Film has the option to add Grain. Soft Skin defaults to 88 strength, Glow defaults to 50, and Film defaults to 100. Grain is on by default when you switch to Film.
\n\nGrain, to my eyes, and based on my conversations with Apple folks who worked on it, is not a simplistic lessening of image sensor noise reduction. It’s a process that attempts to replicate actual film grain, based on a microscopic study of actual film prints from the last century. So too with the look of the Film texture, aside from Grain.
\n\nAside from Grain (which, again, you can turn off), the most noticeable thing about the Film texture is halation. I think it’s a bit much, at least with Film at its default 100 strength. But the overall effect of Film, with and without Grain, is interesting, and at least in some cases, pleasing to me.
\n\nHere are three example photos, all of them shot using an iPhone 18 Pro, all of them developed using the Standard Photographic Style palette. The Standard palette with standard texture (which is to say no special texture) is the default style, which matches the general look of iPhone photos captured with the Camera app on other iPhone models.
\n\nFirst example, starting with the default look (Standard style, no texture):
\n\n\n\nHere’s that same image, now with Film at 100, with Grain off:
\n\n\n\nHere it is with Film at 100, with Grain on:
\n\n\n\nThis image illustrates what I mean about Film, at full strength, being a bit heavy on the halation. Here’s that same image, with Grain turned back on, with Film dialed back to 50:
\n\n\n\nMuch better. I prefer this image (Film: 50, Grain on) to the others.
\n\nNext example, a small car whose environmentally conscious owner got it in green (Standard style, no texture):
\n\n\n\nSame image, with Film texture at 100, Grain off:
\n\n\n\nThat image helps show the effect of the Film texture, without adding any grain. Here it is with Film at 100, with Grain:
\n\n\n\nI’m a grain fan myself, but in this particular image, the grain prevents the image from representing the nature of the car’s smooth green finish. A perfect example of why it’s so great that Photographic Styles are non-destructive. You might shoot with Film + Grain by default, but want to disable Grain on an image like this one after you’ve looked at it.
\n\nOne last photo. This one is a picture of Carl, my favorite employee at my favorite local hardware store. I’ll start again with the default look, the Standard style with no texture:
\n\n\n\nNow here’s the same image, with Film texture at 100, no Grain:
\n\n\n\nAnd with Film at 100, with Grain:
\n\n\n\nIf you look closely at Carl’s face in those last two, with Film at 100, you’ll see what I consider unpleasant halation above his snout. Here’s the same image, keeping Grain on, but with the Film texture dialed back to 33:
\n\n\n\nI prefer that one, by far.
\n\nOK, OK, I get it. You want another picture of Carl. Here he is with the Standard style, no texture:
\n\n\n\nSame photo, but this time with the Natural base style (my personal favorite, with Tone: -60, Color: +25), Film at 100, with Grain:
\n\n\n\nThe halation around Carl’s head in that photo is undeniably distracting. It looks like the poor guy is radioactive or something. I absolutely love that Apple added this Film texture to Photographic Styles, but I think the default strength should be quite a bit lower than 100. Here’s that same image with Grain still on, but Film texture dialed back to 50:
\n\n\n\nNow that’s a good photo of a good boy.
\n\nApple moved the Face ID infrared camera under the display. It’s up in the top left, underneath the area where iOS displays the time in the status bar. This means that the dedicated black cutout for the Dynamic Island is now noticeably smaller. But it also means that when iOS is rendering the dynamic features of the Dynamic Island, it’s effectively bigger, because now iOS can draw to the left of it, where the Face ID sensor had previously occupied dedicated space. On all previous iPhones with the Dynamic Island, you can see up to two Live Activities at once in the Dynamic Island. With the iPhone 18 Pro, you can now see up to three. I don’t often have three Live Activities going at once, but sometimes I do — simultaneous sporting events, upcoming flights plus an Uber to the airport, etc. So the permanent cutout for the Dynamic Island is smaller, but the usable space for content in the Dynamic Island is now larger.
\n\nThere’s a minor tradeoff with this design. Even my middle-aged eyes can see that the pixels on top of the Face ID sensor aren’t quite as sharp as those on the rest of the screen. The time of day in the status bar looks like it’s just a tad fuzzy, like the text isn’t anti-aliased correctly. No big deal, and you need to look for it to notice it.
\n\nOver the past decade, Apple has taken this design from a big notch, to a smaller notch, to the Dynamic Island, and now to a smaller cutout for the Dynamic Island. I don’t know if they’re ever going to get there, but the goal, obviously, is to eventually put all sensors under the display, creating a genuine all-display front. Putting Face ID under the display on the iPhone 18 Pro is a significant step toward that.
\n\nThe most exciting iPhone years are those when the new flagship screams “new”. But the best iPhone models were the ones from the S years. I only included one S model in my top-five Hall of Fame list above: the iPhone 5S from 2013.3 But that’s in some ways profoundly unfair to the S models. The iPhone XS was a much better camera than the iPhone X. The iPhone 4S introduced Siri, which was actually amazing for its time. And not only was the 3GS far better than the 3G, but the 3G was much better than the original iPhone simply for going from EDGE to 3G networking.4 I have no affection for the 3G and 3GS devices because of their plastic bodies, but as practical devices, both were great improvements.
\n\nThe S years (and S-type years, even when there’s no S in the name) are low on excitement but high on practical gains. That’s the iPhone 18 Pro. The one and only trade-off compared to the year-ago 17 Pro, in my utterly subjective opinion, is that cosmic orange was an iconic super-fun color and neither burgundy nor glacier have that appeal. That’s it: orange.5 Every other difference between the 18 Pro and 17 Pro, every single one, is something that is objectively better about the 18 Pro. Faster performance, better thermals, better cameras, longer battery life.
\n\nIn the first decade of the iPhone, there were so many ways to improve the hardware that changes came fast and furious. It was breathtaking and exhilarating. At the end of the iPhone’s second decade, there are no longer big obvious ways to improve. The low-hanging fruit was picked long ago, and the mid-hanging fruit might be gone now too. Performance, battery life, durability, camera quality — all of those things are important, but all of them have been raised to the level of excellence. There may well be extraordinary breakthroughs to come, the sort of breakthroughs that only appear once a decade in an established product category. Waiting for those things to happen isn’t a strategy. Apple’s strategy is to push for incremental gains across the board, every single year, year after year after year. Do that, and the experience for someone upgrading every fourth or fifth year will be exhilarating.
\n\nI didn’t review the iPhone 17 Pro until last week, when I unabashedly declared it the best phone Apple had ever made. The iPhone 18 Pro is only different from the 17 Pro in ways that make it better. Thus, it is clearly now the new best phone Apple has ever made. It’s the culmination of an entire decade of year-after-year iteration on the iPhone X’s ground-up redesign. It’s the best version of the most successful product ever made. And yet by nature of how the iPhone 18 Pro improved in the last year, it’s not exciting at all. How jaded we all are.
\n\nFor reasons I do not remember, I apparently never wrote a standalone review of the iPhone 3GS. Until I went looking for it to link to in this list, I didn’t even remember that I hadn’t written one. I know that I waited in line to buy one on launch day. I easily recall that it truly was a significantly faster device than the two previous models. But I never wrote a review of the 3GS. I don’t think it had even occurred to me then that “the new iPhone” would soon become an annual tradition, worth chronicling not just for years, but for decades. ↩︎︎
\nThe IIGS, coincidentally, was announced 40 years ago this week. Graphics and sound, baby — and what a keyboard. ↩︎︎
\n64-bit silicon was huge, but Touch ID really changed the game. I don’t even remember what we did before Touch ID to protect the content on our iPhones. I think I had my passcode preferences set to let me — or anyone with my phone in their hand! — unlock my phone without typing my measly 4-digit code for 15 minutes after the code had been successfully entered? In hindsight it really seems crazy. Either we forced ourselves to enter a passcode manually every single time we unlocked our iPhones, or, we left them unlocked for convenience. The three fundamental step changes in iPhone history were: retina displays (iPhone 4), biometric ID (iPhone 5S), and all-screen design (iPhone X). That’s why those are the phones I place in my Hall of Fame. And there hasn’t really been a step change like that since the iPhone X — until, maybe, the Duo. ↩︎︎
\nThe odds are pretty low that you used an original iPhone. If you didn’t, it’s hard to put into words just how slow EDGE cellular networking was. Best I can compare it to is to say that it was like a poor airplane Wi-Fi connection. Not a mid airplane Wi-Fi connection. A poor one. You could practically feel the ones and zeroes coming in, bit by bit. The best you got on EDGE was really, really slow. And we loved it. It was the Internet, away from home. And websites meant for mobile consumption were optimized for slow-as-molasses connections. Some still are. But once you tried 3G there was no going back, no matter how much better the original iPhone’s aluminum body looked and felt compared to the iPhone 3G’s plastic one. The iPhone 3G could have been carved out of a potato and I’d have switched to get 3G instead of EDGE. ↩︎︎
\nThat said, I personally bought my iPhone 17 Pro last year in deep blue, and if I buy an 18 Pro, you know I’m getting black. My review units are a glacier 18 Pro and a burgundy 18 Pro Max. I’ve spent most of the week carrying the 18 Pro Max, just to force myself to use the size I don’t usually carry. I still don’t like it, and still can’t believe how many people do. Burgundy is a very strong color that I somehow don’t have strong feelings about. Glacier isn’t so strong, and I rather like it — perhaps because it reminds me more than a little of America’s Pants. ↩︎︎
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