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{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "Daring Fireball", "home_page_url": "https://daringfireball.net/", "feed_url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/json", "authors": [ { "url": "https://twitter.com/gruber", "name": "John Gruber" } ], "icon": "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/apple-touch-icon.png", "favicon": "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/favicon-64.png", "items": [ { "title": "★ The iPhones 18 Pro", "date_published": "2026-09-18T02:05:11Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-18T02:30:33Z", "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": "\n<p>Every 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 <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/06/4\">iPhone 4</a>, which was in fact the fourth iPhone. (The “ten” in iPhone X marked 10 years, but it was the 11th flagship model.)</p>\n\n<p>The iPhone 18 Pro, in fact, heralds Apple’s 20th iPhone generation:</p>\n\n<!-- Markdown table:\n| | Flagship | Year | Milestones\n|----:|:----------------|:-----|:---------------------------------\n| 1. | [iPhone] | 2007 | Holy shit\n| 2. | [iPhone 3G] | 2008 |\n| 3. | iPhone 3GS | 2009 | Speed\n| 4. | [iPhone 4] | 2010 | Retina\n| 5. | [iPhone 4S] | 2011 | Late spring → early fall release\n| 6. | [iPhone 5] | 2012 | Lightning, 3.5″ → 4″\n| 7. | [iPhone 5S] | 2013 | Touch ID, 64-bit\n| 8. | [iPhone 6] | 2014 | Plus-size option\n| 9. | [iPhone 6S] | 2015 |\n| 10. | [iPhone 7] | 2016 | 2nd camera (Plus only)\n| 11. | [iPhone X] | 2017 | Holy shit redux\n| 12. | [iPhone XS] | 2018 |\n| 13. | [iPhone 11 Pro] | 2019 | 3rd camera\n| 14. | [iPhone 12 Pro] | 2020 |\n| 15. | [iPhone 13 Pro] | 2021 |\n| 16. | [iPhone 14 Pro] | 2022 |\n| 17. | [iPhone 15 Pro] | 2023 | Pro video, USB-C, Action button\n| 18. | [iPhone 16 Pro] | 2024 | Camera Control button\n| 19. | [iPhone 17 Pro] | 2025 | Camera plateau expands, Ceramic Shield 2\n| 20. | iPhone 18 Pro | 2026 |\n -->\n\n<p><style>\ntable td,\ntable th {\n vertical-align: top !important;\n}\n</style></p>\n\n<p><table width=500 style=\"margin-left: -10px;\">\n<thead>\n<tr>\n <th align=\"right\"></th>\n <th align=\"left\">Flagship</th>\n <th align=\"left\" style=\"padding-right: 1.5em;\">Year</th>\n <th align=\"left\">Milestones</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">1.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/iphone_first_impressions\">iPhone</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2007</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Holy shit</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">2.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2008/10/iphone_3g\">iPhone 3G</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2008</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">3.</td>\n <td align=\"left\">iPhone 3GS<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-09-17\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-09-17\">1</a></sup></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2009</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Speed</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">4.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/06/4\">iPhone 4</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2010</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Retina</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">5.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2011/10/iphone_4s\">iPhone 4S</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2011</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Late spring → early fall release</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">6.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/iphone_5\">iPhone 5</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2012</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Lightning, 3.5″ → 4″</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">7.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2013/09/the_iphone_5s_and_5c\">iPhone 5S</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2013</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Touch ID, 64-bit</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">8.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2014/09/the_iphones_6\">iPhone 6</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2014</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Plus-size option</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">9.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2015/09/the_iphones_6s\">iPhone 6S</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2015</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">10.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2016/09/the_iphones_7\">iPhone 7</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2016</td>\n <td align=\"left\">2nd camera (Plus only)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">11.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2017/12/the_iphone_x\">iPhone X</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2017</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Holy shit redux</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">12.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2018/09/the_iphones_xs\">iPhone XS</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2018</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">13.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/the_iphone_11_and_iphones_11_pro\">iPhone 11 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2019</td>\n <td align=\"left\">3rd camera</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">14.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2020/10/the_iphone_12_and_iphone_12_pro\">iPhone 12 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2020</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">15.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2021/09/the_iphones_13\">iPhone 13 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2021</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">16.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2022/09/the_iphones_14_pro\">iPhone 14 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2022</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">17.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2023/09/the_iphones_15_pro\">iPhone 15 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2023</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Pro video, USB-C, Action button</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">18.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2024/09/the_iphones_16#fnr1-2024-09-18\">iPhone 16 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2024</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Camera Control button</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">19.</td>\n <td align=\"left\"><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro\">iPhone 17 Pro</a></td>\n <td align=\"left\">2025</td>\n <td align=\"left\">Camera plateau expands, Ceramic Shield 2</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">20.</td>\n <td align=\"left\" style=\"white-space: nowrap;\">iPhone 18 Pro</td>\n <td align=\"left\">2026</td>\n <td align=\"left\"></td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table></p>\n\n<p>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.<sup id=\"fnr2-2026-09-17\"><a href=\"#fn2-2026-09-17\">2</a></sup> 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.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe next year Apple will commemorate the 20th anniversary with an iPhone 20 (there’s no way they’re going to call it “XX”, right? <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/x_man\">Right</a>?). 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.</p>\n\n<p>But ... 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 <em>the</em> iPhone.</p>\n\n<p>This 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.</p>\n\n<p>But the 18 Pro debuted alongside the iPhone Duo. The Duo got the anchor spot in the announcement keynote. The Duo is <a href=\"https://x.com/nandoprince93/status/2100247481237815567\">getting</a> the <a href=\"https://x.com/gruber/status/2100343833200370161\">billboards</a>. It was a pearl white Duo that <a href=\"https://x.com/DEADLINE/status/2099645816361332775\">John Ternus pulled from his tuxedo jacket</a> on the red carpet at the Emmys Monday night. If it had been a burgundy iPhone 18 Pro instead, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/duo-ternus-pocket\">would the reporter from Deadline have screamed</a>? Would it make a difference if someone told her the 18 Pro main camera now has variable aperture?</p>\n\n<p>I 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?</p>\n\n<p><em>Reply hazy, try again.</em></p>\n\n<h2>An ‘S’ by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet</h2>\n\n<p>Apple 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 <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/12/samsung-64\">years ahead</a> 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.</p>\n\n<p>Year 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.</p>\n\n<p>But, 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 <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4\">Titanium G4 PowerBook in 2002</a> — which came right around a decade after Apple invented the modern laptop with the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_100\">PowerBook 100 series</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Let’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 <em>up to</em> five if you want to be stingy). Here’s my list:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>iPhone (original)</li>\n<li>iPhone 4</li>\n<li>iPhone 5S</li>\n<li>iPhone X</li>\n<li>iPhone 17 Pro</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Perhaps it’s <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro\">recency bias</a> that has me putting last year’s 17 Pro on that list. But surely <em>some</em> 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 where 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.</p>\n\n<p>The 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 <em>not</em>, 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.</p>\n\n<p>But 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 <em>every single</em> 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 <em>and</em> 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.</p>\n\n<p>The iPhone Duo is not boring.</p>\n\n<p>The 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 <em>inside</em> the phone that are <em>obviously</em> better:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><em>Variable aperture on the main 1× camera lens.</em> 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 lighting); 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.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>A20 Pro chip.</em> It’s noticeably faster and more efficient. Not radically faster and more efficient. Just noticeably. This is <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/05/this_is_how_apple_rolls\">how Apple rolls</a>.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Redesigned thermal system with a much larger vapor chamber</em>. It’s much easier to report on <em>peak</em> performance with benchmarks than it is to assign a score to <em>sustained</em> 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 <em>and</em> the second-generation vapor chamber thermal system. This is <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/05/this_is_how_apple_rolls\">how Apple rolls</a>.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>C2 cellular modem</em>. 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 but with one 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 <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/17/iphone-18-pro-c2-vs-qualcomm-modems\">but I think</a> Joe Rossignol at MacRumors <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/12/iphone-18-pro-max-us-model-difference/\">deduced correctly</a>: it’s for minimal compliance with their 2023 contract with Qualcomm, which <a href=\"https://investor.qualcomm.com/news-events/press-releases/news-details/2023/Qualcomm-Announces-Agreement-with-Apple-for-Chip-Supply-09-11-2023/default.aspx\">Qualcomm promoted</a> 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.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Photographic Styles 3 and pro controls in the Camera app</em>. 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 <em>hardware</em> from the iOS Camera app <em>software</em>. For my own personal photography, I’ve switched away from Apple’s Camera app to a mix of third-party camera apps: <a href=\"https://halide.cam/\">Halide</a>, <a href=\"https://notbor.ing/product/camera\">Not Boring Camera</a>, and <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/analogue-film-camera/id6748702405\">Analogue</a>. 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 <em>all</em> 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).</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Sidenote on Camera Control</h2>\n\n<p>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:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>A 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.</p></li>\n<li><p>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.</p></li>\n<li><p>While I’m in a camera app, I sometimes half-press the button for AE/AF Lock.</p></li>\n<li><p>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 <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2024/09/the_iphones_16#fnr1-2024-09-18\">my iPhone 16 Pro review two years ago</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>At 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. <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/uarNiSl_uh4?t=3462\">As Apple’s\nPiyush Pratik explained during last week’s keynote</a>, 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.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<h2>Photographic Styles 3, With Film Texture and Grain</h2>\n\n<p>When 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 <em>with</em> 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.</p>\n\n<p>The first two generations of Photographic Styles adjust only color. Apple calls this “Palette”. Photographic Styles 3 adds Texture, with four options:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Standard (no texture)</li>\n<li>Soft Skin</li>\n<li>Glow</li>\n<li>Film</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The 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.</p>\n\n<p>Grain, 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.</p>\n\n<p>Aside 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.</p>\n\n<p>Here 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.</p>\n\n<p>First example, starting with the default look (Standard style, no texture):</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-standard.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-standard-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Afternoon in Rittenhouse Park, Philadelphia, on lovely late summer day. A man (himself taking photos or photo) sits high atop a planter between park benches.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Here’s that same image, now with Film at 100, with Grain off:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainOFF.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainOFF-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Afternoon in Rittenhouse Park, Philadelphia, on lovely late summer day. A man (himself taking photos or photo) sits high atop a planter between park benches.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Here it is with Film at 100, with Grain on:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Afternoon in Rittenhouse Park, Philadelphia, on lovely late summer day. A man (himself taking photos or photo) sits high atop a planter between park benches.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>This 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:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film50-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/rittenhouse-sitters-iphone-18-pro-std-film50-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Afternoon in Rittenhouse Park, Philadelphia, on lovely late summer day. A man (himself taking photos or photo) sits high atop a planter between park benches.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Much better. I prefer this image (Film: 50, Grain on) to the others.</p>\n\n<p>Next example, a small car whose environmentally conscious owner got it in green (Standard style, no texture):</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-standard.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-standard-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"A bright green Porsche 911 GT3 in a parking lot.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Same image, with Film texture at 100, Grain off:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-film100-grainOFF.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-film100-grainOFF-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"A bright green Porsche 911 GT3 in a parking lot.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>That image helps show the effect of the Film texture, without adding any grain. Here it is with Film at 100, with Grain:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-film100-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/porsche-gt3-iphone-18-pro-film100-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"A bright green Porsche 911 GT3 in a parking lot.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>I’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.</p>\n\n<p>One last photo. This one is a picture of Carl, my favorite employee at my <a href=\"https://rittenhousehw.com/\">favorite local hardware store</a>. I’ll start again with the default look, the Standard style with no texture:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-standard.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-standard-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, a delightful English setter (white with black spots), sitting at attention in the aisle of an ideal local hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Now here’s the same image, with Film texture at 100, no Grain:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainOFF.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainOFF-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, a delightful English setter (white with black spots), sitting at attention in the aisle of an ideal local hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>And with Film at 100, with Grain:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film100-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, a delightful English setter (white with black spots), sitting at attention in the aisle of an ideal local hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>If 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:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film33-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-iphone-18-pro-std-film33-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, a delightful English setter (white with black spots), sitting at attention in the aisle of an ideal local hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>I prefer that one, by far.</p>\n\n<p>OK, OK, I get it. You want another picture of Carl. Here he is with the Standard style, no texture:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-std-standard.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-std-standard-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, sitting on a rug at a different spot in the hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Same photo, but this time with the Natural base style (my personal favorite, with Tone: -60, Color: +25), Film at 100, with Grain:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-nat-film100-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-nat-film100-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, sitting on a rug at a different spot in the hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>The 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:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-nat-film50-grainON.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n width = 500\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-18-camera-examples/carl-carpet-iphone-18-pro-nat-film50-grainON-thumb.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Carl, sitting on a rug at a different spot in the hardware store.\"\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>Now that’s a good photo of a good boy.</p>\n\n<h2>Conclusion</h2>\n\n<p>The most exciting iPhone <em>years</em> are those when the new flagship screams “new”. But the best iPhone <em>models</em> 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.<sup id=\"fnr3-2026-09-17\"><a href=\"#fn3-2026-09-17\">3</a></sup> But that’s in some ways profoundly unfair to the S models. The iPhone XS was <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2018/09/the_iphones_xs\">a much better camera</a> 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.<sup id=\"fnr4-2026-09-17\"><a href=\"#fn4-2026-09-17\">4</a></sup> I have no affection for the 3G and 3GS devices because of their plastic bodies, but as practical devices, both were great improvements.</p>\n\n<p>The 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.<sup id=\"fnr5-2026-09-17\"><a href=\"#fn5-2026-09-17\">5</a></sup> Every other difference between the 18 Pro and 17 Pro, every single one, is something that is <em>objectively</em> better about the 18 Pro. Faster performance, better thermals, better cameras, longer battery life.</p>\n\n<p>In 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. 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.</p>\n\n<p>I didn’t review the iPhone 17 Pro <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro\">until last week</a>, when I unabashedly declared it the <em>best</em> 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 <em>best</em> 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 <em>how</em> the iPhone 18 Pro improved in the last year, it’s not exciting at all. How jaded we all are.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-09-17\">\n<p>For 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. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-09-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2026-09-17\">\n<p>The IIGS, coincidentally, <a href=\"https://oldbytes.space/@savetz/117277318012408507\">was announced 40 years ago this week</a>. Graphics and sound, baby — and <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uozzGBBvrfM\">what a keyboard</a>. <a href=\"#fnr2-2026-09-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2026-09-17\">\n<p>64-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. <a href=\"#fnr3-2026-09-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn4-2026-09-17\">\n<p>The 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. <a href=\"https://lite.cnn.com/\">Some</a> <a href=\"https://text.npr.org/\">still</a> <a href=\"https://plaintextsports.com/\">are</a>. 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. <a href=\"#fnr4-2026-09-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn5-2026-09-17\">\n<p>That said, I personally bought my iPhone 17 Pro last year in deep blue, and <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/iphone-duo/\">if</a> 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 <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/01/americas-pants\">America’s Pants</a>. <a href=\"#fnr5-2026-09-17\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n " }, { "title": "Why Do U.S. Models of the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and Only U.S. Models of the 18 Pro Max, Use Qualcomm Cellular Modems Instead of Apple’s Own Superior C2 Modem?", "date_published": "2026-09-17T14:41:53Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-18T01:52:30Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/17/iphone-18-pro-c2-vs-qualcomm-modems", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/17/iphone-18-pro-c2-vs-qualcomm-modems", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/12/iphone-18-pro-max-us-model-difference/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Joe Rossignol at MacRumors over the weekend:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple now says the iPhone 18 Pro has a C2 modem worldwide, while\nthe iPhone 18 Pro Max uses the chip in every country except for\nthe U.S. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Apple has yet to provide an explanation for this modem difference,\nso we can only speculate for now. In 2023, <a href=\"https://investor.qualcomm.com/news-events/press-releases/news-details/2023/Qualcomm-Announces-Agreement-with-Apple-for-Chip-Supply-09-11-2023/default.aspx\">Qualcomm announced</a>\nthat it would supply Apple with smartphone modems through 2026, so\nperhaps Apple is equipping the U.S. version of the iPhone 18 Pro\nMax with a Qualcomm modem in order to honor this agreement in a\nminimum way.</p>\n\n<p>Apple’s C2 modem supports ultra-fast mmWave 5G in the U.S., unlike\nits previous-generation C1 and C1X modems. Qualcomm modems in the\niPhone 12 and newer already supported mmWave 5G in the U.S., so\nApple is playing catch up here. Apple said the C2 delivers\n“meaningfully faster uploads” compared to the C1X while consuming\n15% less energy.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’d say Apple <em>played</em> catch-up here, past tense. They caught up in terms of support for mmWave. And ever since the C1 first shipped <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/the_iphone_16e\">with the iPhone 16e in early 2025</a>, Apple has been noticeably <em>ahead</em> of Qualcomm on energy efficiency.</p>\n\n<p>Apple isn’t explaining why the U.S. iPhone 18 Pro Max models are the only 18 Pro models worldwide using Qualcomm modems, but I think Rossignol’s explanation must basically be it: they needed to use it in <em>some</em> models in order to minimally comply with their 2023 contract with Qualcomm.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/12/iphone-18-pro-max-us-model-difference/\">macrumors.com/2026/09/12/iphone-18-pro-max-us-model…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Xcode 27.2 Is Out, but 27.1 Is Not, Which Means Developers Still Can’t Get Started on Duo-Adapted Apps", "date_published": "2026-09-16T22:40:41Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-16T22:53:35Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/xcode-27-iphone-duo", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/xcode-27-iphone-duo", "external_url": "https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-27_2-release-notes", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>A note flagged “Important” atop the Xcode 27.2 release notes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The iOS SDK and simulator support for iPhone Duo will be available\nlater this month in an upcoming release of Xcode 27.1.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Adapting apps for the Duo is not just a simple “recompile with the new SDK”. It’s different. For just about all apps it’s going to be a significant amount of work, and for some apps it’s going to be a <em>lot</em> of work. But without Xcode 27.1, developers cannot get started. Developers wanted this SDK a week ago. And when day one preorder buyers start using their Duos on October 23, they’re going to wish Apple had shipped this SDK last week too.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-27_2-release-notes\">developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Is That a Duo in Ternus’s Pocket or Was He Just Happy That Apple TV Shows Won 28 Emmys?", "date_published": "2026-09-16T22:21:30Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-16T22:21:30Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/duo-ternus-pocket", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/duo-ternus-pocket", "external_url": "https://x.com/DEADLINE/status/2099645816361332775", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Note the reaction from the Deadline reporter.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/DEADLINE/status/2099645816361332775\">x.com/DEADLINE/status/2099645816361332775</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Woz Launches Merch Store", "date_published": "2026-09-16T21:38:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-16T22:54:15Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/woz", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/woz", "external_url": "https://x.com/stevewoz/status/2100074363605397658", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Steve Wozniak:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I’ve decided it’s time to have a little more fun on X this\nyear! 😄⚡</p>\n\n<p>I get to speak at some amazing events, meet fascinating people,\nhear great stories, and occasionally find myself in places I\nnever expected to be. So I figured… why not share some of those\nmoments here?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>He announced this on X, you will note, not “social media”.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/stevewoz/status/2100074363605397658\">x.com/stevewoz/status/2100074363605397658</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple OS 27.2 Betas Are Out; Version 27.1 Is the Duo-Exclusive iOS Fork", "date_published": "2026-09-16T18:36:08Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-16T22:47:13Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/272-betas", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/272-betas", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/16/heres-why-apple-released-ios-27-2-beta/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple just seeded the first beta of iOS 27.2 to developers for\ntesting. Yes, you read that correctly: iOS 27.2, not iOS 27.1.</p>\n\n<p>Why no iOS 27.1 beta? The answer likely relates to the iPhone Duo.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This unusual version numbering is entirely about the Duo. The Duo is on its own branch of iOS — heretofore to keep details about its software secret / internal to Apple. When it launches October 23, Apple has already announced it will ship with iOS 27.1. Apple is thus using 27.2 as the version number for the first post-27.0 updates to all of its OSes for devices other than the Duo, to keep those version numbers aligned. The 27.2 releases, I am to understand, are scheduled to ship in October too. I bet they’ll ship <em>after</em> the iPhone Duo launches on October 23. So, putting beta releases aside, we’ll see the versions hit the public in numeric order:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>All OS 27.0 releases: two days ago.</li>\n<li>iOS 27.1: October 23, exclusively on the iPhone Duo.</li>\n<li>All OS 27.2.0 releases: probably in late October, after the 23rd, but with the Duo remaining on its own 27.1 branch.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Then, with a subsequent 27.2.x update, the Duo will join the other devices and version numbers across all devices on all platforms will converge, in November or early December. I believe that’s the plan. Maybe Duo convergence will wait for 27.3, but I think it’ll be a 27.2.x update.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/06/marble_mystery_solved\">Something similar happened back in 2010</a> with the original iPad, which launched in April 2010 running what was then still called iPhone OS, version 3.2. iPhone OS 3.2 was exclusive to the iPad — no iPhone or iPod Touch ever ran it. (Those devices remained on v3.1 after the iPad launched.) Apple renamed the OS to <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/06/07Apple-Presents-iPhone-4/\">iOS at WWDC in June that year</a>, but iOS 4.0 <em>and</em> 4.1 remained exclusive to iPhones and iPod Touches. Convergence with the iPad didn’t happen <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/11/22Apples-iOS-4-2-Available-Today-for-iPad-iPhone-iPod-touch/\">until iOS 4.2 in late November</a>.</p>\n\n<p>This time it should only take a month or so to converge for the Duo, not seven or eight months like it did for the iPad in 2010. But iOS 27.1 is exclusively for the Duo in a very similar way that 3.2 was exclusive to the iPad.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/16/heres-why-apple-released-ios-27-2-beta/\">macrumors.com/2026/09/16/heres-why-apple-released-ios-27-2…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "AirPods 5 With Wireless Charging Case Works With MagSafe, But Not Magnetically", "date_published": "2026-09-16T14:35:49Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-17T13:42:22Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/airpods-5-magsafe", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/16/airpods-5-magsafe", "external_url": "https://www.apple.com/airpods-5/specs/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>In <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/thoughts_and_observations_on_apples_surprise_and_shine_event\">my long take yesterday</a> on Apple’s event last week, I wrote that when you pay $20 extra to get the $150 AirPods 5 With Wireless Charging Case, that the case is compatible for inductive charging with “MagSafe, Qi, or Apple Watch pucks”. But the compatibility section of Apple’s tech specs page for AirPods 5 doesn’t list MagSafe:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Works with USB‑C connector, Apple Watch charger, or Qi‑certified chargers</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That’s because for Apple, true MagSafe compatibility means magnetic attachment. The AirPods 5 case doesn’t have MagSafe magnets (the case is seemingly too small), only magnets for the Apple Watch puck. AirPods Pro cases have magnets to attach to both pucks. So when you charge AirPods Pro with MagSafe, they snap to the puck. I can snap my AirPods Pro 3 case onto a nearly vertical MagSafe charger, like <a href=\"https://nomadgoods.com/products/stand-one-4th-gen-carbide\">the Nomad Stand One</a> I keep next to my keyboard. (Great product — you should get one. I have two; the other is on my nightstand.) I can’t charge the AirPods 5 case on that stand because it just falls off.</p>\n\n<p>But if I lay the AirPods 5 case on a horizontal MagSafe puck, it charges just fine. That’s because MagSafe pucks are themselves Qi-compatible. I see why Apple is a stickler for this — the “Mag” in MagSafe carries an obvious meaning — but by not mentioning MagSafe, it’s reasonable to draw the conclusion that the AirPods 5 Wireless Charging Case doesn’t work with MagSafe at all.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/airpods-5/specs/\">apple.com/airpods-5/specs/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography’", "date_published": "2026-09-16T02:38:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-16T02:38:52Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/15/apple-reference-image", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/15/apple-reference-image", "external_url": "https://security.apple.com/blog/apple-reference-image/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Apple Security Research has released a concise, cogent paper describing how Apple Reference Image works, and why they made it. A terrific read. Here’s just one fascinating bit regarding privacy:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Other industry solutions require a photographer or institution to\nvouch for an image using their own credentials. We are concerned\nthis puts some photographers, such as those operating in conflict\nzones, in a difficult position; it should not be necessary to\nforgo anonymity in order to prove image authenticity. We built\nApple Reference Image to avoid using an explicit, public\ncredential for photographers, and to avoid even implicit public\nassociation between different photos taken by the same sensor. The\nfinal reference image is instead signed by Apple’s signing\nservice, after validation by PCC. That signature is backed by\nApple’s strongest technical guarantees.</p>\n\n<p>Our implementation also protects the confidentiality of the image\nitself, including from Apple. Merely capturing a reference image\nshould never expose the actual pixels to Apple or anyone else. We\nachieve this through the exceptional privacy properties of PCC — the nodes themselves are architected so that not even Apple can\naccess image data, just as Apple cannot see the information\nprocessed for Apple Intelligence in PCC. While the revocation\nservice must maintain a private record of photo GUIDs and\nassociated sensors to allow for revocation, it never has access to\nthe image data, and does not allow for public access to this\nrecord. And as final revocation checks occur using on-device\nlists, a device never reveals to anyone which photo it’s looking\nat in order to find out whether it’s still valid.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://security.apple.com/blog/apple-reference-image/\">security.apple.com/blog/apple-reference-image/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "FT: ‘Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders Unite in AI Safety Call’", "date_published": "2026-09-15T19:01:30Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-15T19:01:30Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/15/bannon-sanders", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/15/bannon-sanders", "external_url": "https://www.ft.com/content/bab5c4c5-5377-4dd0-8b46-d8c4ce9a36d5?syn-25a6b1a6=1", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Joe Miller, reporting for the Financial Times (<a href=\"https://politicalwire.com/2026/09/14/steve-bannon-and-bernie-sanders-unite-in-ai-safety-call/\">via Political Wire</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Veteran socialist Bernie Sanders and rightwing activist Steve\nBannon are joining forces to call for greater guardrails on AI,\neven as Donald Trump insists concerns about the technology are a\nhoax that will help China overtake the US.</p>\n\n<p>In a sign of how the outcry over AI safety is reshaping the US\npolitical landscape, speakers from the far right and left of the\npolitical spectrum will join an event billed as the “Pro-Human\nAssembly” in Washington on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to do more to\ntackle the effects of AI.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One take would be that Sanders is a voice of sound reason and compassion, and Bannon is aligned with him on this issue in the way that a stopped clock shows the correct time twice a day. Another take is the <a href=\"https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-origins-of-horseshoe-politics\">horseshoe theory</a>, which holds that leftwing and rightwing zealots are more alike than different, because they’re all crackpot ideologues.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/bab5c4c5-5377-4dd0-8b46-d8c4ce9a36d5?syn-25a6b1a6=1\">ft.com/content/bab5c4c5-5377-4dd0-8b46-d8c4ce9a36d5?syn…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Thoughts and Observations on Apple’s ‘Surprise and Shine’ Event; the Announcements of the iPhones 18 Pro, AirPods 5, Apple Watches Series 12 and Ultra 4, and the iPhone Duo; and the Dawn of the Ternus, John Ternus Era at Apple", "date_published": "2026-09-15T17:54:09Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-17T14:31:03Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/thoughts_and_observations_on_apples_surprise_and_shine_event", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/thoughts_and_observations_on_apples_surprise_and_shine_event", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<h2>The Keynote</h2>\n\n<p>I loved <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39BalPDuTo0\">the keynote</a>’s “You want a great opening scene?” opening, which ran through a series of genre-inspired hook-you-from-the-first-shot pretend movie openings. Apple started with a title card that said “The following was shot on iPhone”, but the whole keynote — including the fun fake-movie openings — was shot on iPhone 18 Pros. <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/behind-the-scenes-at-scary-fast-apples-keynote-event-shot-on-iphone/\">Apple started shooting</a> its keynote movies using iPhone Pros in October 2023, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/31/downplaying-shot-on-iphone\">with the “Scary Fast” Mac event</a>. That first one was shot on the then-just-released iPhone 15 Pro, the first iPhone Pro generation to support the necessary pro video features to enable Apple-level production quality (e.g. ProRes recording and Apple Log encoding).<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-09-15\">1</a></sup> For the next few years, Apple shot each of its keynotes using whatever the current iPhone Pro model was. But last year, with <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KnMyojEQU\">the September 2025 “Awe Dropping” event</a>, they shot the keynote using the as-yet-unreleased iPhone 17 Pro itself — a bit of a risk given that it was running mid-summer iOS 26 beta software. They did the same this year, shooting the entire keynote, including the prelude fake movies, using iPhone 18 Pros. But, they couldn’t say that it was the 18 Pro on the title card because the 18 Pro wasn’t announced until later in the keynote.</p>\n\n<p>There was at least <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/07/tim-cook-wont-appear-apple-sept-9-event-video/\">one report</a> from an ill-informed know-it-all who claimed, with odd certainty given how often he’s wrong, that Tim Cook would not appear in the keynote. But the last segment of the keynote’s cold opening gave us Cook, Tim Cook, framed in an obvious homage to the opening of 2012’s <em>Skyfall</em>:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/craig.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/craig.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Daniel Craig in “Skyfall”.\"\n width = 400\n /></a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/cook.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/cook.jpeg\"\n alt = \"Tim Cook in a “Skyfall” homage at the beginning of the keynote.\"\n width = 400\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>I’ve stolen those comparison frames from <a href=\"https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2026/09/apple-event-film-2018-vs-james-bond.html\">this splendid blog post by Vaziri, Todd Vaziri</a>, in which he points out a few other Bond homages in this keynote — including using the new variable aperture on the 18 Pro’s main camera as a reference to the Bond title-sequence gun barrel. Fun stuff all around, and a perfect way to commemorate the Cook-to-Ternus passing of the torch.<sup id=\"fnr2-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn2-2026-09-15\">2</a></sup> Also, the variety of visual styles in these mini movies really showed off the capabilities of the iPhone 18 Pro as a cinematic camera.</p>\n\n<p>The little Cook / Bond homage that closes the opening segment starts with a voiceover from Cook himself (<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/39BalPDuTo0?t=127\">starting at 2m:07s</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Forget all that. Keep it classic. Open on an aerial shot, high\nabove the California coast. A car drives down the highway. Then it\ndisappears into a tunnel. Cut to an interior. Camera follows a\nmysterious figure, before revealing our main character...</p>\n\n<p>No no no no no. Not me. <em>That’s</em> your guy. <em>That’s</em> your opener.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s a perfect segue, and Cook’s line reading is sublime. Cook’s on-screen persona improved a <em>lot</em> in the 15 years he served as CEO and keynote emcee, but even at his best he always came across as a bit, well, stiff. Voicing this introduction of John Ternus, on the other hand, he sounds cool as hell — relaxed, certain, and comfortable. I think the chairman role suits him better than CEO did. He’s a natural born <em>éminence grise</em>. And if <em>this</em> was Cook’s last appearance in a keynote, he went out on top.</p>\n\n<h2>Ternus’s Turn</h2>\n\n<p>For those of us invited to Apple Park, Ternus actually took the stage in person at 9:58 am, for a brief in-person greeting and introduction. What I recall isn’t anything he said but how he was greeted, which was with tremendous enthusiasm. The annual iPhone events always have a unique charge to them. WWDC is a far bigger event attendee-count-wise, but the September iPhone event is sharper, higher pressure. The exclusivity heightens the stakes — Apple only invites as many people as fit in Steve Jobs Theater: <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/02/apple-park-opens-to-employees-in-april/\">1,000</a>. The <em>new era begins</em> energy was palpable, if subtle. In the morning meet-and-greet coffee-and-apple-tarts mingling in and outside the Steve Jobs Theater upstairs atrium, attendees were genuinely unsure what to expect. A few were genuinely wondering if Ternus would bring back live-on-stage keynotes. (The apple tarts were supposedly made using apples grown on campus, and were quite good.)</p>\n\n<p>In person, Ternus wore a dark t-shirt and jacket. In the keynote video, a burgundy shirt that clearly served as a reference to burgundy as the color of the year. (It’s hard to imagine Ternus in a cosmic orange shirt if he’d taken the top job a year prior.)</p>\n\n<p>I think Ternus came across fine as emcee. Not great, but fine. He’s comfortable but I think the role still feels like a new pair of shoes he hasn’t yet broken in. Ternus’s opening line in the video was “Hello, and welcome to Apple Park”. I <em>think</em> that’s what he said on stage too. They’re leaving “Good morning!” as Cook’s signature, as they should.</p>\n\n<p>Before any product announcements, Ternus laid out his theory of an “intelligent personal hub” for the AI era, making the case that if one were to design such a device from the ground up, starting today, you’d wind up with something exactly like an iPhone — with you all the time, with a great display, ubiquitous networking, great cameras and mics, and long battery life. The cynical take would be that this is an “<em>If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail</em>” guiding doctrine. Apple is not a leading AI model company, and is completely sitting out the capex data center rat race, so of course they’re going to argue that the most popular product they make — the iPhone — is the central device of the AI era. But, well, I think it’s true. You need devices to run AI. I wrote an entire column about this back in May — “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product\">AI Is Technology, Not a Product</a>” — responding to <a href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/apples-next-ceo-needs-to-launch-a-killer-ai-product/\">Steven Levy’s argument</a> that Ternus “needs to launch a killer AI product”.</p>\n\n<p>Levy, in Wired, wrote:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>By the end of this decade, it’s unlikely that people will swipe on\ntheir phones to tap on Uber or Lyft. They will just tell their\nalways-on AI agent to get them home. Or that agent will have\nalready figured out where they need to go, and the car will be\nwaiting without the friction of a request. “There’s an app for\nthat,” may be replaced by “Let the agent do that.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I wrote:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Actual products have to be real. Actual experiences have to rely\non actual products. How exactly in Levy’s end-of-this-decade\nscenario will we tell our “always-on AI agent” to get us home?\nWhat microphone is listening to the command? What speaker is\ntelling us the request was understood and acted upon? What screen\ndo we look at to see how far away the hailed car is? I’d bet a\npretty large sum of money that in 2030, when someone hails a\nride-share vehicle to take them home, the most common product\nthey’ll use to do that will be their phone. Whether they’re doing\nit via a verbal command issued to an “always-on AI agent” or good\nold tapping and swiping, it’ll be a phone.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ternus’s “intelligent personal hub” doctrine seems very much in line with my retort to Levy’s not-entirely-thought-through fantasy. It also sounds an awful lot like a modern-day reimagining of a former Apple CEO’s “digital hub” strategy for the Mac. I highly recommend you take 8 minutes of your time, right now, and watch <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI\">Steve Jobs’s introduction of the digital hub strategy</a> from January 2001’s Macworld Expo. History doesn’t repeat but it does echo, and Ternus’s “intelligent personal hub” sure sounds <em>exactly</em> like Jobs’s “digital hub” echoing a quarter century later. If Ternus’s “intelligent personal hub” strategy works out like Jobs’s “digital hub” one did a quarter century ago, Apple’s going to be alright.</p>\n\n<h2>iPhone 18 Pro</h2>\n\n<p>Heretofore, to my recollection, the iPhone Pro always came last in the September keynotes (including the years when the higher-tier iPhones didn’t yet have the word “Pro” in their names, like the XS in 2018 and X in 2017). This year the 18 Pro came first. This worked both as the immediate product announcement after Ternus’s expression of Apple’s intelligent personal hub strategy, and to clear the final act of the keynote for the much-anticipated Duo. (It’s <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/last-years-iphone-share-amongst-users-of-widgetsmith\">somewhat telling</a> that the Air didn’t get that cleanup spot in the announcement batting order a year ago.<sup id=\"fnr3-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn3-2026-09-15\">3</a></sup>)</p>\n\n<p>Thoughts on the colors, based on my hands-on experience:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Black: Truly deep black. Reminds me a lot of the flat black iPhone 7 (not to be confused with the jet black iPhone 7 — <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2016/09/the_iphones_7\">what a year for black that was</a>).</li>\n<li>Silver: Looks good. Not sure how it’s different from last year’s silver, because I had no way to compare side-by-side.</li>\n<li>Glacier: Nice. I think this will be popular. It’s definitely blue, not silver / gray (which you’d hope would be true in general, but especially alongside an explicit silver colorway).</li>\n<li>Burgundy: Last year the iPhone 17 Pro only came in three colors: silver, deep blue, and cosmic orange. I sort of thought of the strategy as “light”, “dark”, and “special”. But this year there are two specials, glacier and burgundy, but burgundy seems more special. Last year cosmic orange was clearly the color of the year. It was the most-used by far in Apple’s advertising, and I suspect it was the most popular sales-wise. Burgundy is that color this year. I don’t like it nearly as much, and I don’t think it will prove to be as popular or as iconic as cosmic orange. The cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro seems set to go down as one of the most iconic iPhone colors ever made. I don’t think that will be true for the burgundy iPhone 18 Pro.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Pricing:</p>\n\n<p><!-- Markdown table:\n| | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB <br />\n| ---------: | :----: | :----: | :----: | :----:\n| 18 Pro | $1,200 | $1,400 | $1,800 | $2,400\n| 18 Pro Max | $1,300 | $1,500 | $1,900 | $2,500\n-->\n<table width = 400>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n <th></th>\n <th align=\"center\">256 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">512 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">1 TB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">2 TB</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">18 Pro</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,200</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,400</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,800</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,400</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">18 Pro Max</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,300</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,500</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,900</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,500</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table></p>\n\n<p>Compared to <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/09/2025-iphone-lineup-storage-and-prices/\">the 17 Pro one year ago</a>:<sup id=\"fnr4-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn4-2026-09-15\">4</a></sup></p>\n\n<p><!-- Markdown table:\n| | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB <br />\n| ---------: | :----: | :----: | :----: | :----:\n| 17 Pro | $1,100 | $1,300 | $1,500 | — | 17 Pro Max | $1,200 | $1,400 | $1,600 | $2,000\n-->\n<table width = 400>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n <th></th>\n <th align=\"center\">256 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">512 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">1 TB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">2 TB</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">17 Pro</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,100</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,300</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,500</td>\n <td align=\"center\">—</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">17 Pro Max</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,200</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,400</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,600</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,000</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table></p>\n\n<p>So:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Max remains $100 extra.</li>\n<li>2 TB is now available on the regular-size Pro; last year it was exclusive to the Max.</li>\n<li>256 and 512 GB storage options are only $100 more expensive this year. </li>\n<li>1 TB costs $300 more this year.</li>\n<li>2 TB costs $500 more.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>256 and 512 GB are by far the most popular sizes (and I think 256 in particular far outsells 512 — the base size truly is large enough for the majority of users), so for most 18 Pro buyers, the RAM/SSD shortage is only resulting in a $100 year-over-year price increase. The higher storage tier prices aren’t too bad, all things considered.</p>\n\n<p>It’s worth pointing out here that coincident with the announcement of the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo on Wednesday, <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-raises-iphone-17-prices/\">Apple raised the prices of all existing iPhones in its lineup</a> by the same amounts, depending on storage — $100 for models with 128, 256, or 512 GB storage; and $300 for the iPhone Air with 1 TB.</p>\n\n<p>Technically, the iPhone 18 Pro mostly offers three new things compared to the 17 Pro: the A20 Pro SoC (faster cores, two Neural Engines instead of one, and 50% faster memory bandwidth); variable aperture on the 1× main camera, ranging from ƒ/1.48 to ƒ/4.0; and an all-new thermal management system, including a much larger vapor chamber. The A20 Pro means peak performance is faster; the new thermal system allows it to maintain peak performance longer.</p>\n\n<p>In a curious decision, the regular-sized 18 Pro models ship with Apple’s C2 cellular modem worldwide, but the <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/12/iphone-18-pro-max-us-model-difference/\">18 Pro Max models use a Qualcomm modem in the U.S.</a>, and <a href=\"https://x.com/LelloucheNico/status/2098370012570333689\">the C2 everywhere else</a>. Apple’s C-series modems are power efficiency marvels, with (in my experience) just as good reception and speed. I’d be just ever so slightly bummed about this if I were a Pro Max fan in the US.</p>\n\n<p>That said, both the 18 Pro and Pro Max models continue to get slightly longer battery life <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/iphone-18-pro/specs/\">in the US models</a> than <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-18-pro/specs/\">worldwide models</a>, because the US models are eSIM-only, but most (all?) models elsewhere still have a physical SIM tray. The US models use the space occupied by the SIM tray in international models to make the batteries physically larger. Going by Apple’s new “typical use” tech spec, the US Pro / Pro Max models are rated for 24 / 30 hours respectively; the international models with a physical SIM tray for 23 / 29. Not a big difference, but not nothing.</p>\n\n<p>In line with my belief that modern iPhones are best thought of as cameras with phones, not phones with cameras, most of the 18 Pro’s year-over-year improvements (and the features that set the Pro models apart from all other iPhones, including the Duo) are related to photography — both still and video:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Photographic Styles is now up to version 3, adding new controls for “texture”, film-look, and grain. One stated goal of this is to enable shooting images with a less processed look; on the other end of the aesthetic spectrum, though, I think it will also enable shooting with a <em>more</em> processed look, with the addition of “glow” and “soft skin” as texture alternatives alongside “film” (which is the only texture with the new grain option). The other, and default, texture option is “standard”, which effectively means no texture processing.</p></li>\n<li><p>Apple Reference Image is a new shooting mode (main 1× camera only, because it’s tied to new features on that sensor) that performs pixel-by-pixel signing of the sensor data and embeds that signature in the file. After capture, reference images can be sent to Private Cloud Compute servers for verification and comparison to the original image sensor data. To capture images in Apple Reference format, you must shoot them in that mode, and you must enable that shooting mode first. The embedded sensor data doesn’t make files that much larger, but the sensor data stored in the file does uniquely identify your iPhone. When you “develop” a reference image — something the user must choose to do (not something that happens automatically each time you capture one) — the raw sensor data, sensor identifier, and time window when the image was captured are sent to Private Cloud Compute. When you share a photo captured in Apple Reference Image format, the sensor identifier is <em>not included</em> in the developed image, and you have the option to share a plain version without the embedded verification data. Apple Reference Image capture is not available in the EU or China, the world’s two largest bastions of freedom, but <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-debuts-iphone-18-pro-and-iphone-18-pro-max/#:~:text=In%20the%20EU\">according to an Apple footnote</a>, users in the EU “with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will be able to develop and view reference images.”</p></li>\n<li><p>Cinematic Mode can now be applied after shooting a regular video; on previous iPhones the Cinematic Mode effect was only available via a specific shooting mode.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To the layman’s eye, though, the 18 Pro just looks like it comes in new colors. That’s not a complaint, just a fact. Oh, but the Face ID infrared camera is now <em>underneath</em> pixels on the display, so the Dynamic Island cutout is now smaller. So the part of the Dynamic Island that is always black is smaller, but because there are now more display pixels next to it, the 18 Pro Dynamic Island can now show three active Live Activities, up from two. Apple is getting closer and closer each year to achieving a no-notch / no-cutout display.</p>\n\n<h2>AirPods 5</h2>\n\n<p>Just like with AirPods 4, Apple continues to make two different products under the same name. For $130, the cheaper AirPods 5 now have active noise cancellation (previously reserved for the higher-priced tier of AirPods 4), including Transparency and Adaptive modes. For $150, you get AirPods 5 with a wireless charging case (using MagSafe, Qi, or Apple Watch pucks), volume control by swiping up / down on the earbud stems, <em>and</em> longer battery life. It’s a much better product for just $20 extra, but it must have worked out well for Apple with a similar split with AirPods 4. I honestly can’t see why anyone should buy the $130 models, but someone must be buying them.</p>\n\n<p>Apple provided me with a pair (the $150 model) to review, with no embargo. I wore them on the cross-country plane ride home, and compared them to my own AirPods Pro 3 for noise cancellation. It’s hard to make a direct comparison of the overall acoustic quality, but solely in terms of reducing the noise of the airplane cabin while trying to work, I found the new AirPods 5 with full noise cancellation to be roughly equivalent to the AirPods Pro 3 in Adaptive mode. That’s pretty good, and makes the ambient noise level in an airplane much more pleasant. But the full noise cancellation mode of the AirPods Pro 3 delivers an entire step change in noise reduction that the open-ear AirPods 5 cannot match.</p>\n\n<p>I feel bad for people who despise airplane cabin noise but whose ears aren’t comfortable with closed-ear fit earbuds like AirPods Pro. But the noise reduction quality of the AirPods 5 seems impossibly good given their open-ear design. I don’t find AirPods Pro uncomfortable, but I do find regular AirPods more comfortable, especially for long stretches like hours-long flights. I’ll take the small trade-off in comfort for the big improvement in audio quality and noise cancellation with the AirPods Pro, though. With AirPods Pro you can truly forget you’re on an airplane at all if you’re watching a movie with Vision Pro or even on a MacBook or iPad display in a dark cabin.<sup id=\"fnr5-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn5-2026-09-15\">5</a></sup></p>\n\n<h2>Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4</h2>\n\n<p>The big new health thing is a next-generation heart sensor that takes readings every 5 seconds — 60× as frequent as with Series 11 / Ultra 3 a year ago. Apple commissioned a study comparing their new watches against a slew of competing heart rate monitoring devices, <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/Heart_Rate_Accuracy_Study_2026.pdf\">and released a paper with the results</a>, claiming that Apple Watch was the most accurate. That’s an Apple-commissioned, Apple-released study, so take it with a grain of salt, but it looks solid to me and I’m unaware of any other studies showing otherwise. (And if I’m reading the results correctly, rings like Oura’s are crummy heart rate monitors.)</p>\n\n<p>Ultra 4 looks the same as Ultras 1–3 (although Ultra 1 only came in natural titanium, not black). Series 12 comes in some tweaked colors in matte aluminum ($400) and polished titanium ($700), and for the first time since Series 5 seven years ago, brings back ceramic, in two colors: pearl white and night blue ($900). Those prices are for the smaller 42mm size; add $50 to each of them for the larger 46mm size. As has been true for every Series model to date, only the higher-priced materials come with sapphire crystal displays; the entry-model aluminum models still use Ion-X glass. But now those glass displays offer Ceramic Shield 2, which treatment has <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/13/ceramic-shield-2-is-the-real-deal\">proven to be a tremendous boon to scratch resistance</a> on iPhones. </p>\n\n<p>The S11 chip powering the new watches enables <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/148354\">two very interesting, and instantly controversial Apple Intelligence features</a>:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Live Rewind is a feature that allows you to double-click the digital crown to bring up a transcript of the last 15 seconds of conversation around you. Apple claims, somewhat preposterously, that audio isn’t being continuously recorded, when it clearly is. What they mean is that audio is only being cached for 15 seconds, continuously. There is no way to set Live Rewind to transcribe more (or less, for that matter) than the last 15 seconds of audio.</p></li>\n<li><p>Siri Recap is a feature that produces Apple Intelligence-generated summaries of your conversations throughout the day, while the feature is enabled on your Apple Watch. These are not transcripts, just bullet-point style summaries. You can set Siri Recap to only be enabled during certain times (like work hours), and you can toggle it on and off in Control Center at any time. But when it’s on, that’s the only control you have over it. You can’t manually start / stop conversations to record, like you do when recording something with Voice Memos. You just turn Siri Recap on, and Siri generates summaries when it thinks you’ve had a conversation worth summarizing. It’s entirely and exclusively automatic, when the mode is enabled.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Neither of these features are available in WatchOS 27.0. They’re both described as coming “in beta later this year”. I asked Apple reps if that meant 27.1, and they wouldn’t answer other than to repeat “later this year”, but I thought I saw a smile. Both features are English-only for now.</p>\n\n<p>Some people are objecting to the very existence of these features as privacy intrusive. I think they’re pretty reasonably thought out. There are surveillance cameras all over the place now. I was walking home from dinner here in Philadelphia a few weeks ago with a friend visiting from out of town, talking about this, and he stopped midway between the restaurant and my house and asked me to count how many cameras we were on at that spot. I think we counted seven or eight. Who knows how many we missed? I’m not saying that’s good or bad, it’s just the world today. So too it’s soon going to be with personal devices recording audio. This is inevitable. I’m glad to see Apple ship features like this early, with pretty limited scope, to provide good examples before other companies ship devices that record and save audio continuously throughout the day. I think it’s better for Apple to lead with privacy-minded versions of ambient transcripts and AI-generated conversation summaries than to follow <em>after</em> other products have hit the market with all-day recordings and whole-life transcripts.</p>\n\n<p>Think back to Apple’s announcement of AirTags. A lot of people had a perfectly reasonable “<em>Hey I don’t know if it’s a good idea for a product like this to even exist</em>” initial reaction. But having Apple lead the way actually proved good. I suspect Live Rewind and Siri Recap will turn out like that.</p>\n\n<p>It’s also interesting to think about why these two features are only on Apple Watch, not iPhone. I think it’s because once an Apple Watch is on your wrist and unlocked, it remains a “trusted device” until you take the watch off. An iPhone is only a trusted device while it’s unlocked. It’s locked, and thus untrusted, while it’s in your pocket or bag, or even just sitting on a desk. I leave my iPhone unattended in our kitchen all the time. I’m often not in the room for conversations that take place in the kitchen while my iPhone is there, sitting on the counter. I shouldn’t get summaries of those conversations. And, thinking more nefariously, I shouldn’t be able to hide my iPhone on or near someone’s desk, or in a conference room, or in a car, or anywhere else, to get Siri Recap summaries of conversations where I’m not present. Making this an Apple Watch exclusive feature avoids that. Thus, I think Apple Watch can be trusted to “listen” ambiently, all the time while it’s unlocked on the wearer’s wrist, in ways that even an iPhone can’t.</p>\n\n<h2>iPhone Duo</h2>\n\n<p>Ternus broke out the hallowed “But actually, there is one more thing...” to introduce the Duo, which line — to circle back to the keynote’s intro — is for Apple CEOs what “Vodka martini, shaken not stirred” is for actors playing James Bond.<sup id=\"fnr6-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn6-2026-09-15\">6</a></sup></p>\n\n<p>Pre-orders for the Duo don’t start until October 16, and it doesn’t ship until October 23. In my experience, Apple never seeds review units for any product until a few days before pre-orders open, so we’re not going to hear or see anything more about the Duo until those review embargoes lift on October 20 or 21, I bet.</p>\n\n<p>Duo is available in only two colors: star white (polished silver) and night sky (a deep blue-black). As predicted, the Duo is expensive. I’ll put it alongside the 18 Pro models for comparison:</p>\n\n<p><!-- Markdown table:\n| | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB <br />\n| ---------: | :----: | :----: | :----: | :----:\n| 18 Pro | $1,200 | $1,400 | $1,800 | $2,400\n| 18 Pro Max | $1,300 | $1,500 | $1,900 | $2,500\n| Duo | $2,000 | $2,200 | $2,600 | $3,200\n-->\n<table width = 400>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n <th></th>\n <th align=\"center\">256 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">512 GB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">1 TB</th>\n <th align=\"center\">2 TB</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">18 Pro</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,200</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,400</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,800</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,400</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">18 Pro Max</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,300</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,500</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$1,900</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,500</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td align=\"right\">Duo</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,000</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,200</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$2,600</td>\n <td align=\"center\">$3,200</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table></p>\n\n<p>At every storage tier, it’s $800 more than an 18 Pro and $700 more than an 18 Pro Max.</p>\n\n<p>Key facts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>It has no Face ID sensor, either open or closed. The only authentication is an iPad Air-style Touch ID side button.</p></li>\n<li><p>It has a Camera Control button, but does not have an Action button.</p></li>\n<li><p>The interior display has a matte nano-texture display. It looks great and apparently this is a key element of Apple’s efforts to make the crease as unnoticeable as possible. By next year I expect all competing foldables to have matte interior displays and 1.4 : 1 aspect ratio displays.</p></li>\n<li><p>It is very satisfying to open and close.</p></li>\n<li><p>The outer glossy screen has a “Center Stage” 12 megapixel front-facing camera, that seems very similar to the 18 megapixel Center Stage front cameras in the iPhone 17 generation phones. Year-ago tech but still high quality. There’s a circular hole punch in the corner of the display for this camera.</p></li>\n<li><p>The inner matte screen has an under-the-display “FaceTime” camera for which Apple hasn’t even given a megapixel count. Clearly this is a lesser camera — the question is how much lesser. The idea presumably is that this camera is solely for use in Zoom or FaceTime apps, where you might want to use the bigger inner display to view the meeting, and don’t care as much about your own image quality. But there’s no reason ever to capture a self portrait with the camera on the larger inner display. If the Duo is opened, and you care about image quality for self portraits, you can shoot using the <em>main</em> camera and use the small display to frame yourself, turning the large display around to the back. When not using the inner FaceTime camera, there is no visible cutout showing where it goes. If you look closely at the display however, you can see where it is. Under-display cameras aren’t magic.</p></li>\n<li><p>The regular cameras are a 1× / 2× main, and a 0.5× ultra wide. I suspect the main 1× camera is very similar optically to that of the iPhone Air, but the Duo has A20 Pro features like Photographic Styles 3, although it lacks Pro Controls, Apple Log, <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/apple-announces-final-cut-camera-2-0/\">genlock</a>, and other pro camera features. (The Air only has last year’s Photographic Styles 2.)</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The initial introduction of the Duo was handled by two keynote newcomers: industrial design VP <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/leadership/molly-anderson/\">Molly Anderson</a>, and human interface VP <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/leadership/steve-lemay/\">Steve Lemay</a>. A hardware / software design duo (<em>ahem</em>), if you will. What made it worth having Anderson and Lemay present together is that the iPhone Duo exemplifies Apple’s integrated approach to product design. Are they a hardware company that writes their own software or a software company that makes their own hardware? The answer is yes.<sup id=\"fnr7-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn7-2026-09-15\">7</a></sup> The defining aspect of the Duo isn’t that it folds open and closed — we’ve seen almost a decade of Android phones that do that — but its aspect ratio, roughly 1.4 : 1. Because that’s effectively the square root of 2, doubling the outer display’s shorter dimension when you unfold it produces an inner display with roughly the same aspect ratio. That’s elegant and satisfying conceptually. And I think in practice it will feel right, too.</p>\n\n<p>Heretofore the iPhone has only had three display aspect ratios:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The original iPhone (2007) display was precisely 3 : 2 (480⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠320 pixels, and let’s call it 1.5 : 1 for comparison’s sake to the following ratios), and this remained true through the iPhone 4 and 4S (960⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠640 pixels, 2× retina).</p></li>\n<li><p>Then the iPhone 5 (2012) display size went from 3.5 inches to 4 inches, but added all the extra pixels on the long dimension. Held vertically, it got taller, but not at all wider, changing the aspect ratio to 16 : 9 (roughly 1.77 : 1). This 16 : 9 aspect ratio held for all of the 5, 6, 7, and 8 generation iPhones, including the Plus models.</p></li>\n<li><p>The iPhone X (2017) introduced the “all-screen” era. The actual device hardware <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-x,iphone-8,iphone-8-plus\">didn’t change size or aspect ratio by much</a>, but eliminating the chin (with Home button) and forehead and filling those areas with the screen, the display aspect ratio went to roughly 2.17 : 1, and every new model since then, including the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, has maintained that aspect ratio.<sup id=\"fnr8-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn8-2026-09-15\">8</a></sup></p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Thus, over 20 years, iPhone displays (and thus all phones, since all the other phones mostly just copy iPhones) have only gotten more elongated: from 1.5 : 1 to 1.77 : 1 to 2.17 : 1. Now, though, the iPhone Duo goes <em>squatter than the original iPhone</em> for the first time, to 1.4 : 1 on both the outer and inner displays.<sup id=\"fnr9-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn9-2026-09-15\">9</a></sup> That’s a noticeable change from the original iPhone, but it’s a downright striking change from every iPhone released in the last 10 years.</p>\n\n<p>This aspect ratio is <em>so</em> different that it demands a different UI layout for the Duo to have any chance at being a good experience. That’s exactly what Apple has done, and what Steve Lemay was there in the keynote to unveil. A lot of UI chrome that previously was at the top or bottom of the display is now on the right — the dock on the home screen, the toolbars in apps, etc. And these elements are always on the right. You can’t turn the Duo upside down to move them to the left, nor is there an accessibility setting to move them to the left. This layout puts these controls on the right not because 90 percent of people are right-handed and Apple thinks lefties can get bent, but, I think (and so I’ve been told in conversations with Cupertinoites), because that’s the nature of a book-like shape. The arrow keys on keyboards always fall on the right, publishers don’t print left-handed books, and carmakers don’t make left-handed steering wheels. The right-side bias in the Duo iOS layout is like that.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve only spent a few minutes, in total, playing with the Duo, so I really can’t say whether it succeeds or not. But I will say that it’s <em>weird</em>. Not saying it’s weird <em>good</em> or weird <em>bad</em> — just weird <em>different</em>. In some ways iOS on the Duo feels more different from iOS on all other post-iPhone-X phones than iOS on the original iPad felt from iOS on the iPhones of that time. The original iPad just felt like a much bigger iPhone. The Duo feels like a different layout entirely, in every single app that I had time to poke around with.</p>\n\n<p>Is the Duo good? I do not know. Is it different? Very much.</p>\n\n<p>Here’s the thing. If you take a 2 : 1 or even 2.2 : 1 aspect ratio phone display and turn that into a book-like foldable, the inner screen comes out square — or so close to square that we might as well just call it square. Nobody makes any device of any sort that just has a square display. Square is a terrible aspect ratio for a phone or a tablet or a laptop or a desktop display. The only square displays on the market are the inner displays for Android foldables from the last decade. Square being a shitty aspect ratio is half the reason <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/birchler-folding-iphone-predictions\">almost no one has bought those things</a>. The other half of the reason is that no developers truly adapted software to take advantage of the double-area inner displays. Google didn’t do it, Samsung didn’t do it, and since neither of them bothered to do it, of course third-party developers didn’t do it either. Nothing <em>adapts</em> to the inner display on Android foldables — it just <em>expands</em> to fill the space.</p>\n\n<p>Apple’s insight to go with 1.4 : 1 on the outside and thus also 1.4 : 1 on the inside gives the Duo a chance. Maybe this will be a huge hit. But maybe not? There are no 5-inch phone displays with aspect ratios anywhere near as squat as the Duo’s. That’s a tablet aspect ratio. The current A17 Pro iPad Mini has a 2266⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1488 pixel display: roughly 1.5 : 1. The 11-inch iPad Air is 1.4 : 1 and the 13-inch Air is 1.33 : 1. So I think the Duo’s inner display is going to feel just right.</p>\n\n<p>But that outer display? I don’t know. Even in the best case, it’s going to be no better than a tolerable compromise. If it were actually a good idea there would be non-folding phones with 1.4 : 1-ish squat displays, and there aren’t any such phones. And even if the Duo proves to be a hit, I don’t think there will be. If you only have one display you don’t want it to be the size and shape of the Duo’s outer display. So the questions are: How tolerable has Apple’s UI redesign made it? And how will Duo users split their time between using it closed vs. using it open? Someone who spends more of their time using it open might absolutely love it with a “you’ll take it away only from my cold dead hands” fervor. Someone who winds up mostly using the outer display because so many of their iPhone interactions are quick <em>take it out → use it for a bit to check something, jot something down, or snap a quick photo → put it back in pocket / bag</em> situations, might wind up regretting it.</p>\n\n<p>Given the design brief of creating a book-shaped foldable phone, I feel quite certain already that Apple has nailed it with the Duo. But having only seen the keynote spiel and poked around with one in hand for a few minutes Wednesday afternoon, I think it remains an open question whether a book-shaped foldable phone is a good idea in the first place. Folks from Apple who have actually spent time carrying the Duo seem genuinely enthused. I remain highly skeptical about its appeal for me personally, and somewhat skeptical about its appeal broadly. That’s OK if it’s not suited for me, but is suited for many (but not most) people. No one in the keynote described the iPhone Duo as the future of iPhone, like they did when introducing the iPhone X in 2017. I just wonder if the fundamental idea appeals to all that many people at all. We’ll find out starting in late October.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding some specific Duo details:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The lack of Face ID is a serious sad-trombone bummer, and in my opinion could sink the first-generation model. Side-button Touch ID is OK, but OK is not <em>good</em>, and even good is not <em>insanely great</em>. Face ID is insanely great. For whatever reason, the only iPads with Face ID are the iPad Pro models. Every time I review an iPad Air or iPad Mini, my biggest gripe is the lack of Face ID. I complained about it <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2022/03/the_2022_ipad_air#:~:text=Face%20ID%20alone%20is%20worth%20%24150\">reviewing the iPad Air in 2022</a> and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2021/09/the_2021_ipad_mini#:~:text=biggest%20annoyance\">the iPad Mini in 2021</a>, and in the five years since then my annoyance has only grown. With Face ID, so long as you’re looking at the screen as you unlock the device, it’s like not having it locked at all. It just unlocks, seemingly automatically. With Touch ID you must think about putting one of your registered fingers on the button every single time you unlock it. It never ever feels automatic. I feel quite certain Apple tried to fit a Face ID sensor on the outer Duo display and could not make the engineering work.</p></li>\n<li><p>I’m much more concerned about convenience than security, but Face ID is 20× more secure than Touch ID. That’s according to Apple’s own <a href=\"https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_GB/apple-platform-security-guide-b.pdf\">Apple Platform Security</a> whitepaper, updated just last month, which states:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The probability that a random person in the population could\nunlock a user’s iPad, iPhone, or Apple Vision Pro is less than 1\nin 1 million with Optic ID or Face ID — including when Face ID\nwith a mask is turned on. For a user’s iPad, iPhone, Mac models\nwith Touch ID, and those paired with a Magic Keyboard with Touch\nID, it’s less than 1 in 50,000. This probability increases with\nmultiple enrolled fingerprints (up to 1 in 10,000 with five\nfingerprints) or appearances for Face ID (up to 1 in 500,000\nwith two appearances).</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>As a sign of how inconvenient the lack of Face ID is, Apple is promoting the fact that the iPhone Duo can be unlocked by your Apple Watch, like a Mac. No other iPhone needs such a crutch.<sup id=\"fnr10-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn10-2026-09-15\">10</a></sup> Based on my experience with Touch ID iPads, wearing an Apple Watch all the time to unlock the Duo will feel essential. I don’t wear an Apple Watch all the time, and don’t want to start wearing an Apple Watch all the time, so I suspect this alone will keep me from switching to an iPhone Duo personally. On the other hand, for people who <em>do</em> wear an Apple Watch all the time and are happy to do so, the Duo’s lack of Face ID might prove to be only an occasional inconvenience rather than a constant annoyance.<sup id=\"fnr11-2026-09-15\"><a href=\"#fn11-2026-09-15\">11</a></sup></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/24/iphone-ultra-could-be-missing-5-features/\">Contrary to some speculation</a>, the Duo does support MagSafe. (Samsung’s latest, the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra, support inductive Qi charging but don’t have magnets, so you need to use a case or something to get chargers to snap into place.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Closed, the Duo has — per Molly Anderson’s dulcet keynote description — “a distinctive asymmetric shape, with two rounded corners, that invites you to open it.” Expect this to be copied by every other foldable phone in 2027, and then for Android dorks to argue that it’s a totally obvious design. (Same for the matte interior display.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Apple rates the Duo as IP68 for dust and water resistance, <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-duo,iphone-air,iphone-18-pro\">with exactly the same description</a> as the iPhones 18 Pro (and all other iPhone models currently in the lineup): “Rated IP68 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes) under IEC standard 60529”. Samsung’s new <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/tech/979421/ifixit-samsung-galaxy-z-fold-8-hinge\">Z Fold8 is only IP48</a>. With these <a href=\"https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings\">IEC ratings</a> the second numeral is for water. The first numeral is for “solid foreign agents” (read: dirt and dust). iPhone Duo’s IP6<em>x</em> rating means “dust-tight”. The Z Fold8’s IP4<em>x</em> rating isn’t even “dust-protected” (that would be IP5<em>x</em>) but instead only protection against particles 1mm or larger. 1mm is pretty big for a piece of grit. That doesn’t mean it’s susceptible to ingress from every particle smaller than 1mm, but it’s not good. Pocket lint is a real thing and people put their phones in their pockets.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>I’m Trying So Hard Not to Be Insufferable About Predicting the ‘Duo’ Name That I’ve Put This Entire Section 6,500 Words Deep Into the Column</h2>\n\n<p>Yours truly, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/04/14/name-of-foldable-iphone\">back on April 14</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have no inside knowledge about what Apple plans to name this\ndevice, but I’ll eat my proverbial hat if they name it “iPhone\nFold”. That name is so dumb it’s what Samsung calls their\nfoldables. You don’t name a device for what it does, you name it\nfor what it connotes. A good name conveys feeling, not just\nfunction. “iPhone Ultra” or “iPhone Max” would both work, and\n<em>Ultra</em> sounds more luxe. So while unsurprising, that’s probably\nthe best bet, even without the reliable word of Mr. Digital Chat\nStation.</p>\n\n<p>But if you want my take on a wildcard name, one with some\n<a href=\"https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/index-powerbook-duo.html\">history</a>, how about “iPhone Duo”?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>My thinking re: “Duo” seemingly jibed with that of Apple’s crack marketing team:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It’s two devices in one.</li>\n<li>The early 1990s <a href=\"https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/index-powerbook-duo.html\">PowerBook Duo</a> (and <a href=\"https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Dock\">corresponding Duo Dock</a>) were extraordinary Macs that were ahead of their time.</li>\n<li>It’s not <em>ultra</em>, if we take ultra to mean “better than what’s less than ultra in every way”. The iPhone Duo is different — quite different — from the iPhones Pro but, to name one conspicuous example, the iPhones Pro have better camera systems. (The Duo is ultra-priced, but one can also say it’s double-priced.)</li>\n<li><em>Duo</em> looks and sounds so good alongside <em>Neo</em>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>When I suggested “Duo” in April and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/birchler-folding-iphone-predictions\">again the day before the event</a>, the number one objection was that Microsoft had used the name “Duo” <a href=\"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-duo-unlocked/8S3V46W10HFR?activetab=pivot:overviewtab\">for one</a> of its many forgettable Surface products. The half dozen or so readers who argued thus might be the only people alive who remember this product. No one cares. Microsoft <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Neo\">also had a Surface Neo</a>, and no one cares about that one either. Even if Apple hadn’t offered a line of (successful, memorable) PowerBook Duos from 30 years ago, it wouldn’t matter that Microsoft had used “Duo” in 2020. For chrissakes <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(trademark)\">Cisco had the rights to the name “iPhone” in 2007</a> and had been making products with the name since 1998.</p>\n\n<p>I love the name Duo for this iPhone. It just feels right. And, just five days in, I already find myself saying and writing just “Duo”, without “iPhone”, when referring to it.</p>\n\n<h2>Miscellaneous</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Too many cooks spoil the stew. It was very fun and a little touching to have <em>the</em> Cook hand things off to Ternus at the start, but I think there were too many presenters in the keynote. Duo was effectively introduced three or four separate times. First by the Anderson / Lemay (<em>I’m going to pun it again</em>) duo, then Joz, then Craig Federighi (covering much of the same software ground Lemay did), then Johny Srouji (covering much of the same ground Anderson did). Maybe the thinking was that everyone wanted a part in Ternus’s debut keynote. Maybe this is just the way of the future — many small segments, rather than one continuous on-stage live monologue. It didn’t make the keynote run overly long (running time was just 1h:17m), so maybe I’m all wet here. But I think what I wanted was to see Ternus do more of the explaining — not just the <em>what</em> but the <em>why</em>.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39BalPDuTo0\">Apple’s YouTube video of the entire keynote</a> has over 49 million views, and that doesn’t count the views from Apple’s own hosted version, presented on Apple.com and Apple TV. <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@Apple/videos\">Apple has</a> 12 other shorter keynote-related videos on YouTube, including “<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3zwkxqh1t0\">Introducing the new iPhone 18 Pro</a>” with 18 million views, and “<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUfGcZ092b0\">Introducing the new iPhone Duo</a>” with 28 million views. For comparison, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF8swzNR1-o\">this year’s WWDC keynote on YouTube</a> has 8.9 million views. 9 million views is a hell of a view count for the introduction of operating systems, but the iPhone remains king — not just for Apple, but the industry. It remains the Super Bowl of the annual tech calendar. </p></li>\n<li><p>For an even better comparison, <a href=\"https://archive.org/details/mwsf01_300\">in the full version</a> of that 2001 Macworld Expo keynote that I suggested you watch earlier in this column — the one where Steve Jobs introduced the Mac-as-digital-hub strategy — when Jobs takes the stage, he’s beaming with pride when he says there are “tens of thousands” of people watching the stream live. Both streaming and Apple have come a long way in 25 years.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-09-15\">\n<p>I’ll just tuck in a footnote here that another necessary technical feature was high-speed USB-C, for recording video to external SSD drives. EU regulatory cheerleaders hang their hats on the belief that Apple switched iPhones from Lightning connectors to USB-C solely because of the EU charging port mandate. Some of them believe that absent EU intervention, iPhones today would still be on Lightning. That’s nonsense. These things are all true: the EU now mandates USB-C charging ports for phones (and most other devices); Apple opposed the EU USB-C mandate; the iPhone switched to USB-C in 2023 with the iPhone 15 generation; and the iPhone’s Lightning port was the last remaining proprietary phone connector that anyone cared about. But correlation is not causation. Apple opposed (and still opposes) the EU USB-C mandate not because they think USB-C is bad today, but because the mandate will stymie moving to something better (thinner / smaller / faster) in the future. (In 2011 the EU soft-mandated the terrible Micro-USB connector <a href=\"https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/memo_11_75\">in a “Memorandum of Understanding”</a> that Apple of course ignored. USB-C is a good connector, but the lesson the European Commission took from their Micro-USB attempt was to hard-mandate their preferred universal connector this time — to switch from <em>should</em> to <em>must</em>.) Apple started moving iOS devices from Lightning to USB-C all the way back <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2018/11/the_2018_ipad_pros\">in 2018 with the iPad Pros</a>. The EU USB-C mandate <a href=\"https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/eu-common-charger-rules-power-all-your-devices-single-charger-2024-12-28_en\">didn’t come into effect until December 2024</a>. Apple had planned to move the iPhone to USB-C starting with the iPhone 15 generation years prior. If Apple had switched the iPhone to USB-C only for begrudging compliance with the EU mandate, they would have waited until 2024; Apple never complies early with regulations they disagree with. They also might have shipped USB-C iPhones exclusively within the EU. For years Apple shipped iPhones with two physical SIM card slots in China — region-specific hardware wouldn’t be new. They still today ship new iPhones with physical SIM card trays in most of the world but without them in the US models. But the best proof is that the iPhone 15 Pro models had camera features that required USB-C for data transfer performance.</p>\n\n<p>The theory that the EU dragged Apple kicking and screaming into switching the iPhone to USB-C is predicated on the notion that because Lightning was proprietary and USB-C is not, that Apple made a fortune selling Lightning accessories and didn’t want to give up that revenue stream. But Apple sells just as many <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/made-by-apple/cables\">$20–30 USB-C cables</a> as they did $20–30 Lightning cables, and dirt-cheap Lightning cables from third-party companies were always plentiful (albeit not in Apple Stores). The iPhone switching to USB-C hasn’t affected Apple’s bottom line at all. This footnote, I’m sure, will put this matter to rest. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Also interesting knowing that this was the first keynote produced <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/schiller-steps-down\">after Phil Schiller stepped down from running events</a>, yet Schiller is as big a Bond fan as anyone I know. The Bond references in the keynote might have been a nice nod to Schiller from his former team. <a href=\"#fnr2-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Last year’s keynote announcement order: AirPods Pro 3, Apple Watch (Series 11 and Ultra 3), iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro. This year’s order: iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5, Apple Watch, iPhone Duo. <a href=\"#fnr3-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn4-2026-09-15\">\n<p>As I write this in mid-September, you can still purchase the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max at last year’s prices from carriers like <a href=\"https://www.att.com/buy/phones/apple-iphone-17-pro.html\">AT&T</a> and <a href=\"https://www.verizon.com/smartphones/apple-iphone-17-pro-max/\">Verizon</a>, including the 1 TB 17 Pro for $1,500 and 2 TB 17 Pro Max for $2,000. It doesn’t make much sense to me to buy a 256 or 512 GB 17 Pro today just to save $100, unless you really love cosmic orange and feel disappointed by the 18 Pro colors. But if you really want 1 or 2 TB of storage, you’ll save $300 or $500 respectively buying a 17 Pro model instead of an 18 Pro. That’s real money. <a href=\"#fnr4-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn5-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Have you noticed that more and more, people in window seats keep their windows closed, keeping the cabin dark, even for mid-day flights? I get it for early morning flights, but I don’t get it for mid-day and late afternoon flights. Sunlight is good. I’m an aisle-seat man myself, but when I get stuck with a window seat the best part is the view out the window. With the window closed, those seats aren’t much better than middle seats. <a href=\"#fnr5-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn6-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Roger Moore played Bond in <a href=\"https://www.007.com/the-films/\">seven films</a>, but never once ordered a martini nor uttered the “shaken not stirred” line. He did enjoy martinis in three of the movies, but in each case, the drink was <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwvN0qvs5tA\">ordered or prepared for him</a>. This, despite Moore himself <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/23/moore-perfect\">having been a dry martini aficionado</a>. <a href=\"#fnr6-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn7-2026-09-15\">\n<p>But the fact that the new CEO spent his career in hardware engineering tells you which side at Apple is the bigger 50 percent. <a href=\"#fnr7-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn8-2026-09-15\">\n<p>The iPhone X (2436⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1125 pixels) worked out to 2.165<span style=\"text-decoration: overline;\">3</span> : 1. This week’s new iPhone 18 Pro (2622⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1206 pixels) is 2.1741… : 1, and the 18 Pro Max (2868⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1320) is 2.1<span style=\"text-decoration: overline;\">72</span> : 1. To two decimal places they’re all 2.17 : 1. <a href=\"#fnr8-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 8 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn9-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Let’s keep going with the math pedantry. The Duo’s 5.4-inch outer display is 2034⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1398 pixels, which <a href=\"https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2C034+%2F+1%2C398\">works out to about</a> 1.455 : 1. The 7.8-inch inner display is 2670⁠ ⁠×⁠ ⁠1878 pixels, which works out to about 1.422 : 1. Calling them both “1.4 : 1” is close enough for government work. <a href=\"#fnr9-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 9 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn10-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Back in 2021 during the COVID era, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2021/02/unlock_with_apple_watch_with_face_mask\">iOS 14.5 added a then-much-needed feature</a> that allowed Apple Watch to unlock your iPhone. That feature <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/unlock-your-iphone-apd2a4393dc1/watchos\">remains available</a>, and I guess that’s what Apple is promoting for use with iPhone Duo. But I had to check that this feature was still available in iOS because I haven’t used it since last wearing a face mask four or five years ago. <a href=\"#fnr10-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 10 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn11-2026-09-15\">\n<p>Which raises an obvious question that I’ve never really thought hard about before: Why the hell can’t you unlock a Touch ID iPad with your Apple Watch, like you can with a Mac (or, now, an iPhone Duo)? <a href=\"#fnr11-2026-09-15\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 11 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n " }, { "title": "[Sponsor] WorkOS: How SSO Works and the Fastest Way to Add It", "date_published": "2026-09-15T15:32:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-15T15:32:24Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_sso_works_and_the_f", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_sso_works_and_the_f", "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": "\n<p>SSO is table stakes for enterprise deals, but building it into your app yourself means writing SAML controllers, parsing XML assertions, and handling IdP-specific quirks for each provider.</p>\n\n<p>Learn how SAML flows work, the tradeoffs between building or buying, and best practices for security, routing, and UX. Or skip the hassle and add SSO with <a href=\"https://workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q22026\">WorkOS</a>.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026\">Read the guide →</a></p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026\">workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple’s 27.0 OS Updates", "date_published": "2026-09-14T19:41:41Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-14T19:41:41Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/apples-270-os-updates", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/apples-270-os-updates", "external_url": "https://scriptingosx.com/2026/09/apple-27-platform-updates-september-2026/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Armin Briegel at Scripting OS X has compiled links for all the release notes for all of today’s OS updates (features, developer, security). In addition to the 27.0 updates, Apple also released 26.7 updates <em>and</em> MacOS 15.8 Sequoia. Big day.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://scriptingosx.com/2026/09/apple-27-platform-updates-september-2026/\">scriptingosx.com/2026/09/apple-27-platform-updates…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Dumpster Fire – Litterbox-Inspired Extension for Firefox", "date_published": "2026-09-14T14:47:43Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-14T14:47:44Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/dumpster-fire", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/dumpster-fire", "external_url": "https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dumpster-fire/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Miles Abbott:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Open x.com links in a popup so you can read the one post and\nleave. Port of the Litterbox Safari extension.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Litterbox is a cleverer name, but Dumpster Fire is funnier.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dumpster-fire/\">addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dumpster-fire/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "XCancel Shuts Down Again", "date_published": "2026-09-14T13:24:10Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-14T17:22:51Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/xcancel-shuts-down-again", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/14/xcancel-shuts-down-again", "external_url": "https://xcancel.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>XCancel:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal\nproceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until\nfurther notice. We can’t share more details.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not surprised, and not sure what to make of the “can’t share more details” part. Again, if you want to avoid visiting X but want to see the content posted there linked from other sites (and, let’s admit it at this point: there’s not just a lot posted on X, it is outright resurgent in popularity), install a browser extension like <a href=\"https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox\">Litterbox</a> (Safari) or <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/post-peek\">Post Peek</a> (Chrome).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://xcancel.com/\">xcancel.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Glyphs 4", "date_published": "2026-09-13T21:44:17Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-14T03:25:51Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/13/glyphs-4", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/13/glyphs-4", "external_url": "https://glyphsapp.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to Glyphs for sponsoring this last week at DF. Glyphs 4 is a truly native Mac app for creating fonts, lettering, icons, and pictograms. Glyphs lets you draw with flexible strokes and efficiently reuse shapes across huge sets of glyphs, and explore variable vector designs with complex higher-order interpolation. Glyphs lets you build and manage massive font family and icon sets with ease, and it exports all modern font formats, as well as SVG, PNG, and PDF.</p>\n\n<p>Earlier this year Glyph co-creators <a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/news/frederic-w-goudy-award-2026-for-the-makers-of-glyphs\">Georg Seifert and Rainer Scheichelbauer were awarded</a> the <a href=\"https://www.rit.edu/carycollection/rit-frederic-w-goudy-award\">RIT Frederic W. Goudy Award</a> for their work on Glyphs. The list of previous winners of this prestigious award reads like a hall of fame for typography: Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Gudrun and Hermann Zapf, Robert Bringhurst, and Robert Slimbach, to name a few.</p>\n\n<p>Glyphs hits my personal interests hard. I’m deeply interested in and fascinated by typography, and nothing pleases me more than a Mac-assed Mac app. I am not, however, a typeface designer. Glyphs is so good, though, that it makes me want to be. This comment from one Glyphs user says a lot: “After using Glyphs, the pen tool in Illustrator feels like carving a chicken with a chainsaw.” In addition to Glyphs 4, the complete font editor, they also offer <a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/buy\">Glyphs Mini</a>, a “light-weight Mac font editor for beginners”. Their documentation is thorough, and both Glyphs 4 and Glyphs Mini have 30-day free trials. To say it’s been a pleasure to have Glyphs sponsor Daring Fireball is an understatement.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/\">Download Glyphs 4 today</a>, and make note of a special offer just for DF readers: use code <strong>FIREBALL</strong> to save $30 if you purchase in the next month.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/\">glyphsapp.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Unread 5.0", "date_published": "2026-09-12T19:27:37Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T19:28:19Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/unread-5", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/unread-5", "external_url": "https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/2026/09/unread-50/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>John Brayton:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Unread 5.0 is <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unread-an-rss-reader/id1363637349\">available now from the App Store</a>. This update adds these improvements and more:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Improvements around hero images, article list thumbnails, and widget thumbnails</li>\n<li>Syncing with FreshRSS and Miniflux</li>\n<li>The ability to quickly mark old articles read</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m a NetNewsWire man personally, but I’ve <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/unread-2\">long admired Unread</a> as a different, very good take on a feed reader. Just a gorgeous app. One of the very best things about RSS is that feed readers take such different shapes and approaches.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/2026/09/unread-50/\">goldenhillsoftware.com/2026/09/unread-50/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Post Peek — Litterbox-Inspired Tweet Viewing Extension for Chrome", "date_published": "2026-09-12T18:05:01Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T18:05:01Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/post-peek", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/post-peek", "external_url": "https://github.com/tsvb/post-peek", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Tim VanBenschoten:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Post Peek is an independent, open-source project inspired by\n<a href=\"https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox\">Litterbox</a>, the Safari extension by Zhenyi Tan (And a Dinosaur).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://github.com/tsvb/post-peek\">github.com/tsvb/post-peek</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Where Are the AI-Generated Killer Apps?", "date_published": "2026-09-12T16:23:57Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T16:25:41Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/paul-ford-ai-killer-apps", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/paul-ford-ai-killer-apps", "external_url": "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/opinion/ai-software-coding-apps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.C9EE.H2j5a1eHFUbQ&smid=nytcore-ios-share", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Paul Ford, writing for The New York Times (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For a while, I must admit, it looked as if software developer\nroles like mine were done for. How could we fight against tireless\nrobots? But our industry is slowly realizing that making truly\ncutting-edge software still requires humans to think and work\ntogether, to maximize their skill sets and to practice their\nrespective crafts. A.I. can write very good software, but it also\nmakes it easy to do someone else’s job badly, which is part of why\nall those projects fail. Now that everyone can code, it’s become\nclearer why many shouldn’t.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ford, <a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/ftrain.bsky.social/post/3mvd5gb4as22r\">linking to his own column on Bluesky</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I just want one killer app before we get a killer robot. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/opinion/ai-software-coding-apps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.C9EE.H2j5a1eHFUbQ&smid=nytcore-ios-share\">nytimes.com/2026/09/12/opinion/ai-software-coding-apps.html…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Yours Truly on Off Protocol With Jim Ray", "date_published": "2026-09-12T15:36:53Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T15:36:53Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/yours-truly-on-off-protocol-with-jim-ray", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/yours-truly-on-off-protocol-with-jim-ray", "external_url": "https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-your-own-thing-john-gruber", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My old friend Jim Ray now runs developer relations at Bluesky, and part of that gig is hosting a podcast, Off Protocol (“a show about building a better Internet”). I was delighted to appear as his latest guest. I generally don’t like talking about my career, but I did enjoy talking about it with Jim. He has that effect on people.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-your-own-thing-john-gruber\">atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-your-own-thing…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "T-Mobile Is Charging $5/Month for iPhone Handoff", "date_published": "2026-09-12T15:24:09Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T15:26:12Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/tmobile-iphone-handoff-price-gauging", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/tmobile-iphone-handoff-price-gauging", "external_url": "https://www.t-mobile.com/news/devices/iphone-18-pro-iphone-duo-apple-watch-release", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>T-Mobile, in their iPhone 18 Pro / iPhone Duo press release:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Plus, T‑Mobile is one of the first to support Apple’s new <a href=\"https://www.t-mobile.com/devices/new-apple-iphone-release\">iPhone\nHandoff</a> feature, where customers with two compatible iPhone\nmodels can use their T‑Mobile number across both devices and\nchoose which phone is active at any given time. The secondary\niPhone works seamlessly, including essential T‑Mobile services\nlike calls, texts, data, mobile hotspot, Scam Shield and\nT-Satellite on eligible plans, allowing customers to get the most\nfrom two devices without clunky handoffs or the hassle of managing\nanother number. iPhone Handoff is available on any iPhone with iOS\n27 via iPhone settings and ready to use from day one on the new\niPhone 18 Pro lineup and iPhone Duo. T‑Mobile is introducing the\nfeature at $5/month.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This seems like a ridiculous thing to charge for. It’s not adding a separate device to your plan, like adding a cellular iPad or even an Apple Watch. It’s just switching your active eSIM between two iPhones. You can do this for free, now, on any carrier via Settings → Cellular — but it takes a bunch of taps, confirmation on both iPhones, and a few minutes for the carrier to register the eSIM transfer. iPhone Handoff just eliminates all the annoying friction and waiting.</p>\n\n<p>But, it’s utterly unsurprising that a carrier will charge a ridiculous monthly fee. I’ll be very surprised (pleasantly) if Verizon doesn’t do the same. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/16/verizon-20-bucks\">Verizon charges for <em>everything</em></a>.</p>\n\n<p>Still curious to me why AT&T isn’t yet announced as supporting iPhone Handoff at all. I have no idea why anyone remains on that turd of a network unless they live or work in a location where only AT&T provides a good signal, but even then, if it were me, I’d use AT&T by way of <a href=\"https://www.usmobile.com/blog/darkstar-is-here/\">US Mobile</a>. AT&T is the worst company I’ve ever dealt with, and I live in <a href=\"https://www.vulture.com/2011/01/30_rock_kabletown_nbc.html\">Kabletown</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.t-mobile.com/news/devices/iphone-18-pro-iphone-duo-apple-watch-release\">t-mobile.com/news/devices/iphone-18-pro-iphone-duo-apple…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Tristan Buckmaster’s Statement on Getting Scooped by OpenAI on the Navier–Stokes Problem", "date_published": "2026-09-12T14:55:12Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-13T21:02:22Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/buckmaster-statement", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/buckmaster-statement", "external_url": "https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Tristan Buckmaster, <a href=\"https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/\">professor of mathematics at NYU</a>, in his own statement, regarding his and Levent Alpöge’s interactions with employees at OpenAI regarding <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/marcus-ai-drama\">this week’s math-proof controversy</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I asked when the first prompt had been sent by them. This question\nwas not answered directly by OpenAI for some time. Eventually it\nwas agreed that it had been sent in the past few days, after\ninformation about our work had reached OpenAI.</p>\n\n<p>I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to,\nour sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our\ndrafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not\nlook up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not\nget an answer.</p>\n\n<p>Two proposals were offered to me. The first was that we post our\nEuler result, and that OpenAI post its Navier–Stokes result the\nnext day. The second was that, after posting Euler, I alone write\na paper presenting the Navier–Stokes result, acknowledging that an\ninternal OpenAI model had resolved it. Sebastien twice asserted\nthat he wanted Levent removed from authorship, and said it would\nall be simple if only it were not the case that, and it was so\nannoying that, Levent works at Anthropic. It was also said that if\nOpenAI posted after us, they would say that we deserved the Clay\nPrize, and that we were the “closest humans to the problem”. I\ndeclined both offers.</p>\n\n<p>I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I\nwould go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you\nruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why\nhe thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If\nyou don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>“Sebastien” is <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sébastien_Bubeck\">Sebastien Bubeck</a>, who came to OpenAI by way of Microsoft (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/nba-clippers-ballmer\">shocker</a>).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf\">cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Gary Marcus on This Week in AI Drama", "date_published": "2026-09-12T14:25:07Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-13T21:13:27Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/marcus-ai-drama", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/12/marcus-ai-drama", "external_url": "https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire-warnings-one-from-terence", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>I have been busy with new-iPhone-week stuff, so I haven’t been able to follow either of these stories closely, but <a href=\"https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire-warnings-one-from-terence\">Marcus summarizes them both well</a>. First: the drama regarding OpenAI claiming a solution to the Navier–Stokes math problem. In short, OpenAI continues to prove itself to be a company full of cheaters. In this case, they seemingly were willing to tank the company’s reputation to first claim the solution to one of mathematics’ top unsolved problems. Apparently they <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/\">spent $23 million in compute</a> to win a $1 million prize, and <a href=\"https://x.com/markchen90/status/2097400166554993041\">admit they used a model</a> that might have trained on the work mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge had been working on for months, who had been using a combination of tools from OpenAI and Anthropic (where Alpöge is employed). With no hyperbole, the message here seems to be “Don’t use Codex or ChatGPT unless you’re OK with OpenAI stealing your work if it’s of interest to them.”</p>\n\n<p>As for Anthropic, the news of the week is this guy Jacob Coxon, <a href=\"https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843\">who quit the company in a public huff</a> (on X, where most of this public drama is taking place), because he thinks they’re increasingly reckless despite everyone inside Anthropic believing that there’s a good chance LLMs will destroy humanity (or at least civilization?) in the next few years. <a href=\"https://x.com/evanhub/status/2097497037956891126\">Here’s Evan Hubinger</a>, still at Anthropic, not dismissing Coxon as an alarmist but <em>agreeing</em> with him: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Jacob is correct here — we really do earnestly believe AI could\nkill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next\ndecade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet\nhave a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not\nclearly on track to.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is crazy talk. Put aside whatever the actual risks are. If you truly believe there’s a greater than 10 percent chance that “AI could kill all humans ... within the next decade”, this is not how a reasonable person in their right mind would talk about it. Coxon thinks he’s blowing the whistle that Anthropic is a threat to the world. What he’s actually done is confirm that Anthropic is a cult, and its employees can’t really be talked to rationally, because they’re cultists. Sometimes members leave cults and they reveal to the world details about what’s going on inside the cult. But a lot of the time <a href=\"https://www.aetv.com/articles/manson-family-members-charles-manson\">you can tell those whistleblowers still aren’t hooked up right</a>, because they’re still people who joined and spent years inside a cult. They leave the cult not because they suddenly snap back to sanity but for other reasons.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire-warnings-one-from-terence\">garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire-warnings-one-from…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Last Year’s iPhone Share Amongst Users of Widgetsmith", "date_published": "2026-09-12T00:19:57Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-12T14:14:27Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/last-years-iphone-share-amongst-users-of-widgetsmith", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/last-years-iphone-share-amongst-users-of-widgetsmith", "external_url": "https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/117253170115740653", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>David Smith, developer of the widely-used <a href=\"https://widgetsmith.app/\">Widgetsmith</a>, on Mastodon:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The eve of iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders seems a good time to look back\nat the iPhone 17 family’s adoption. Here’s the 17 family data as a\npercentage of overall usage for Widgetsmith.</p>\n\n<p>Generally they followed the usual adoption pattern, and overall\ndid very well ending at around 20% of total usage.</p>\n\n<p>With the exception of the Air really struggling to find market\nshare. For comparison the 16 Plus ended its first year at around\n1.4% (vs the Air’s 0.3%).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/widgetsmith-iphones-17-share.png\">The chart</a> looks rough for the iPhone Air. Amongst all Widgetsmith users, here’s the share as of September by model:</p>\n\n<pre><code> iPhone 17 7.2%\niPhone 17 Pro Max 5.9%\n iPhone 17 Pro 5.8%\n iPhone 17e 0.5%\n iPhone Air 0.3%\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>But if we only consider the 19.7 percent of Widgetsmith users using one of these new 17-generation iPhones, the percentages look like this:</p>\n\n<pre><code> iPhone 17 36.5%\niPhone 17 Pro Max 29.9%\n iPhone 17 Pro 29.4%\n iPhone 17e 2.5%\n iPhone Air 1.5%\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>In the entire year since the iPhone Air was announced, I’ve never seen Apple advertise it. No billboards, no commercials. It raises a chicken/egg question: did no one buy it because Apple didn’t market it, or did Apple not market it because no one wanted it?</p>\n\n<p>It’s a shame, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro\">because I truly believe</a> not only that it’s the nicest iPhone Apple has ever made, but that if most people tried it, they’d love it. They don’t need a bigger battery and, wouldn’t take better photos with a Pro model, and would love the thin feel and low weight. But the shame of these low iPhone Air sales reminds me, very much, of the late great iPhone 12 and 13 Mini — also a truly great design, also terribly disappointing sales numbers.</p>\n\n<p>If the iPhone Air 2 rumored to be coming in the spring doesn’t turn things around, it might follow the Mini as a twice-and-done design.</p>\n\n<p>That said, the 17e seemingly isn’t setting the world on fire either. That’s a bit surprising to me. (Maybe the sort of people who buy the “e” models (and the SE models before them) aren’t the demographic for an app like Widgetsmith.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/117253170115740653\">mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/117253170115740653</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Clarus the Dogcow Easter Egg in Apple’s OS 27 Settings", "date_published": "2026-09-11T20:33:03Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-11T23:52:10Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/clarus-settings-ios-27", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/clarus-settings-ios-27", "external_url": "https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/11/apple-hid-a-classic-mac-easter-egg-in-the-ios-27-settings-app/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Many have complained that Apple design has been sapped of some of\nits trademark whimsy in recent years. Well, here’s the latest\nexample of how the tides seem to be changing.</p>\n\n<p>Buried in the Settings app on iOS 27, Apple has hidden an easter\negg that hails back from classic Mac OS; Clarus the Dogcow. Here’s\nhow to trigger it …</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Very fun. Alas, this easter egg isn’t present in MacOS 27, only iOS 27. But the MacOS 27 version of the Liquid Glass settings panel does have a drawing glitch <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/no-moof-for-mac.mov\">that makes the magnifying glass in the fake search field flicker terribly</a>, so Golden Gate does have that going for it.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> A bunch of readers have kindly reported that the Clarus easter egg is present in MacOS 27 Golden Gate, <a href=\"https://x.com/avstorm/status/2097787965552406756\">illustrated on X by Andreas Storm</a> and <a href=\"https://512pixels.net/2026/09/liquid-glass-dogcow/\">at 512 Pixels by Stephen Hackett</a>. I still can’t get it to work on the MacBook Neo I’m running the latest beta of Golden Gate on though. One of the readers who sent a note says they don’t see the magnifying glass flicker, either.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/11/apple-hid-a-classic-mac-easter-egg-in-the-ios-27-settings-app/\">9to5mac.com/2026/09/11/apple-hid-a-classic-mac-easter-egg…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "XCancel Is Back", "date_published": "2026-09-11T19:15:19Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-11T19:15:52Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/xcancel-is-back", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/xcancel-is-back", "external_url": "https://xcancel.com/cdclegal", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>XCancel:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Following the legal progress as announced in the <a href=\"https://github.com/zedeus/nitter\">Nitter GitHub\nproject</a>. The XCancel service is resumed.</p>\n\n<p>More details will be shared on the Nitter GitHub project page.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Glad to hear it and I wish them well, but I think Zhenyi Tan’s <a href=\"https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox\">Litterbox Safari extension</a> is a <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/litterbox\">much better solution</a> for viewing tweets on X without going to X.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://xcancel.com/cdclegal\">xcancel.com/cdclegal</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "iPhone Duo Only Works With the $80 USB-C Apple Pencil, Not the $130 Apple Pencil Pro", "date_published": "2026-09-11T16:32:21Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-11T16:42:15Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/iphone-duo-pencil-support", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/11/iphone-duo-pencil-support", "external_url": "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-pencil-usb-c-iphone-duo/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Juli Clover, MacRumors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It’s likely the iPhone Duo doesn’t support the Apple Pencil Pro\nbecause there’s no magnetic surface for charging the pencil. The\nApple Pencil Pro charges magnetically when connected to a\ncompatible iPad, while the Apple Pencil with USB-C charges with a\nUSB-C port hidden behind a sliding cap.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Charging is the least of the problems. Because the Duo doesn’t have the magnetic attachment for Pencil Pro, there’s no way to even <em>pair</em> a Pencil Pro. The easiest way to think about it isn’t to compare which devices support which features (like pressure sensitivity, or double-tapping) — it’s just to think about which devices can even <em>pair</em> with which Pencil models. Unless I’m missing an exception in <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/108937\">Apple’s compatibility support document</a>, if a Pencil-compatible iPad or iPhone can pair with a certain Pencil’s connector, then it can use that Pencil. The iPads with both the magnetic attachment point and USB-C can use either the Pencil Pro or regular Pencil, and the devices without the magnetic attachment can only use the regular Pencil.</p>\n\n<p>But the bottom line is that Apple’s entire Pencil compatibility story remains a mess. Imagine you own an iPad Pro and a Pencil Pro, and you love using the Pencil. You’ve always wanted to be able to use a Pencil with your iPhone. Now you can, if you buy a Duo. But you also have to buy a different Pencil — and then pack two different Pencils whenever you leave the house with both your iPad and iPhone. That’s ridiculous.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-pencil-usb-c-iphone-duo/\">macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-pencil-usb-c-iphone-duo/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Apple’s OS 27 Updates Will Be Released on Monday, 14 September", "date_published": "2026-09-10T20:15:52Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-10T20:18:54Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/10/os-27-release-date-monday-14-september", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/10/os-27-release-date-monday-14-september", "external_url": "https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/09/apple-confirms-macos-27-golden-gate-launch-date-september-14/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>9to5 Mac has <a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/09/ios-27-here-are-apples-full-release-notes/\">the iOS 27 release notes</a> too. I haven’t spent much time using Golden Gate, but I’ve been using iOS 27 full-time ever since WWDC. It’s in excellent shape for a .0 release.</p>\n\n<p>Now I need to think about how long I want to still hang onto MacOS 15 Sequoia on my main Mac. I’ll probably skip 27.0 and wait for 27.1, but maybe I’ll bite the bullet and upgrade when a 27.0.1 update comes out.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/09/apple-confirms-macos-27-golden-gate-launch-date-september-14/\">9to5mac.com/2026/09/09/apple-confirms-macos-27-golden-gate…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Joanna Stern on the iPhone Duo", "date_published": "2026-09-10T17:29:30Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-10T17:34:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/10/joanna-iphone-duo", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/10/joanna-iphone-duo", "external_url": "https://youtu.be/VNzl-q0EGfg", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>One thing I learned from this video is that I’m way, way too careful when playing with the hands-on area demo units. I handle them like museum pieces; Stern treats them like hot dog buns.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://youtu.be/VNzl-q0EGfg\">youtu.be/VNzl-q0EGfg</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ The iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro", "date_published": "2026-09-09T00:55:53Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-15T17:54:29Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphone_air_and_iphone_17_pro", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Last year, an unplanned personal hiatus coincided with the time when I should have been reviewing the then-new iPhones 17 and iPhone Air. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/09/personal_note\">In my brief note</a> explaining my absence, I wrote:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I look forward to getting back to writing very soon. I can feel\nit: I will be back soon. I’m itching to go. I mean, jiminy, it’s\nnew iPhones week. But it’ll be a few more days before I get those\nreviews out.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>354 days is arguably more than a few, but given that I missed the window for reviewing them when they were new, I thought it might be interesting to consider the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air on the cusp of their being obsoleted by the next generation of iPhones.</p>\n\n<h2>The iPhone Air</h2>\n\n<p>The iPhone Air is the <em>nicest</em> phone Apple has ever made, and probably the nicest device Apple has ever made, period. It’s just so goddamn nice. Over the years, Apple has gone back and forth with its treatment of the metal side rails on iPhone hardware: some years polished like jewelry, other years, matte like a tool. The iPhone Air is polished, and the effect is luxe. (And it stands in contrast to the matte iPhones 17 Pro.)</p>\n\n<p>The whole point of the device is that it is absurdly thin. A year later, it still feels remarkably thin and light in hand — and, even better, thin and light <em>in pocket</em>. It is delightful to hold and carry. The screen is terrific. The buttons are perfect: they stick out just enough and have just the right clickiness.</p>\n\n<p>The big concern most people have regarding the Air is battery life. I used my Air review unit extensively and battery life was never once a problem. Yes, battery life is shorter than with other iPhone models, but it’s more than long enough. When you know you might need to top it off, you just do it here and there throughout the day. I not only never once ran out of battery by the end of the day with the Air, I never once came all that close. It’s fine.<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-09-08\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-09-08\">1</a></sup> I mean, if you’re the sort of person who struggles to get through the day battery-life-wise with a regular (thicker) iPhone, the iPhone Air obviously isn’t for you. But that’s <em>really</em> obvious.</p>\n\n<p><em>My</em> biggest concern going into it was the camera system. The iPhone Air has only a single rear-facing camera, with non-interpolated 1× and 2× zoom factors.<sup id=\"fnr2-2026-09-08\"><a href=\"#fn2-2026-09-08\">2</a></sup> In practice, yes, sometimes while carrying the Air I regretted not having either the ultra wide 0.5× lens or telephoto lens, both of which I’m accustomed to having at my disposal. But ultimately I didn’t miss either of those lenses enough that I regretted having the Air in my pocket that day. And conversely, there’s something mentally freeing about having just one lens. There’s no question which lens you should use. <a href=\"https://www.mpb.com/en-us/content/tips-and-techniques/zooming-with-your-feet-or-how-i-learned-to-understand-focal-length-distance-and-perspective\">Zoom with your feet</a>.</p>\n\n<p>And the one lens the iPhone Air has is excellent. It’s not quite as good as the main 1×/2× lens on the Pro models, but it’s much closer to the Pro models in image quality than it is to the single-lens iPhone 17e. (But even the 17e <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/the_iphone_17e\">is a damn good camera for a phone</a>.) One thing you miss by not having a 0.5× ultra wide lens is a true macro mode. But because it uses a slightly smaller sensor, the camera on the iPhone Air has a closer minimum focus distance than the iPhone 17 Pro’s main camera (15 cm vs. 20 cm — those 5 cm often make a big difference). I like the iPhone Air camera so much that it didn’t factor all that much into my decision whether to buy one to use as my personal iPhone for the last year. It’s that good.</p>\n\n<p>But I did not buy one to use as my personal iPhone for the last year. I bought an iPhone 17 Pro. The reason is size.</p>\n\n<p>The iPhone 17 Pro comes in two sizes: regular and Max. I find the Max sizes too big — unpleasant to hold, unpleasant to pocket. The iPhone Air comes in only one size — a sort of one-size-fits-all midway point between the regular iPhone models and Max models.</p>\n\n<pre><code> WIDTH HEIGHT THICKNESS WEIGHT\niPhone 17 Pro Max 78mm 163mm 8.75mm 233g\n iPhone Air 75mm 156mm 5.64mm 165g\n iPhone 17 Pro 72mm 150mm 8.75mm 206g\n</code></pre>\n\n<!--\n\n\n70a62dd8dd157eec2ce222ebeaf6013b\n\n\n-->\n\n<p>Width- and height-wise, the Air is pretty much halfway between the Pro and Pro Max. For me, in practice, the factor that really matters is width — and I find the Air too wide. Just holding the phones as objects to admire, the dramatic thinness and lighter weight make the iPhone Air the nicest, by far. But holding them to actually <em>use</em>, I find the Air feels too wide. Specifically, too wide to use with one hand, gripping it with my palm and fingers and swiping and tapping with my thumb. If I had my druthers, the <em>regular</em>-sized iPhones would be slightly smaller, footprint-wise. The regular iPhone 17 Pro is pretty much as wide as can be for me to use it one-handed. The Air is too wide for that — it’s a two-handed device for me. And that was the dealbreaker.<sup id=\"fnr3-2026-09-08\"><a href=\"#fn3-2026-09-08\">3</a></sup> I use my iPhone one-handed frequently, often while walking around the city carrying a bag or beverage in my other hand.</p>\n\n<p>If the iPhone Air came in two sizes, regular and Max, corresponding to the widths and heights of the two Pro sizes, I would have bought the regular-sized Air model and, I’m convinced, been delighted with it for the past year. But the iPhone Air only comes in one size, and that size is too wide for my taste, and in practical use, that factor overrides everything I love about the Air.</p>\n\n<p>If you use your iPhone two-handed almost exclusively — perhaps because you find even the regular-sized models too wide to use one-handed — there’s a good chance you’d be happier with the Air than whatever model you’re currently carrying. It’s so goddamn nice.</p>\n\n<h2>The iPhone 17 Pro</h2>\n\n<p>The iPhone 17 Pro is the <em>best</em> phone Apple has ever made, and perhaps the best device Apple has ever made, period.</p>\n\n<p>After two years of titanium side rails and full-glass backs \n(the 15/16 Pro generations), the 17 Pro went back to aluminum, and the metal is now more of an entire frame for the device than just a side rail. There remains a matte glass panel on the back, but only for the bottom three-quarters or so, underneath the camera plateau. (Inductive MagSafe/Qi charging doesn’t work through metal.) The camera plateau is now aluminum, and, most noticeably, extends across the full width of the device, even though the three camera lenses (0.5×, 1×/2×, 4×/8×) remain in a triangle arrangement in the corner.</p>\n\n<p>This new full-width plateau is a winning design. I think it looks good, but more importantly, feels great. It looks more balanced and feels more balanced too. It still wobbles when placed on a table, but it wobbles less. The camera capabilities, to me, are <em>the</em> defining aspect of the Pro models. It thus feels correct for them to be so physically prominent on the devices.</p>\n\n<p>The iPhone 17 Pro was offered in three colors: cosmic orange, deep blue, and silver. All three colors are excellent, and each of them tempted me to some extent. I’m not sure why silver didn’t get an adjective — it’s a very nice colorway. But cosmic orange is the eyecatcher. For <em>years</em>, Apple has been releasing non-pro iPhones in fun colors, and Pro iPhones only in no-fun (or at best low-fun) colors. It really seemed like a mystery why Apple never released an iPhone Pro model in a vibrant fun color. Now that they finally did it, it seems like even more of a mystery why it took them so long — anecdotally, cosmic orange has been an <em>incredibly</em> popular choice. I see orange iPhone 17 Pros in use every day, often in clear cases to show off the color.</p>\n\n<p>My personal rule has been to always buy black, or the nearest to black offered. Deep blue isn’t all that near to black, but it was the nearest, so that’s what I bought. I wouldn’t call it fun but I liked it when I bought it and I’m not tired of it now, nearly a year later. It’s a serious blue. After 10+ months of near-daily use, the anodization is beginning to wear away at the top corner of my iPhone’s camera plateau, where there’s a bit of a sharp corner. I find this to be a charming patina, not a flaw, and looking at that wear increases my affection for this little guy.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-17-pro-deep-blue-one-year.jpeg\" class=\"noborder\">\n <img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-17-pro-deep-blue-one-year.jpeg\"\n alt = \"My deep blue iPhone 17 Pro, showing the worn anodization at the corner of the camera plateau.\"\n width = 525\n /></a></p>\n\n<p>(<em>Photo taken with the iPhone Air, using <a href=\"https://halide.cam/\">Halide Mark III</a>.</em>)</p>\n\n<p>I’ve shot (and kept) 5,365 photos and 97 videos with the iPhone 17 Pro. (Perhaps I should shoot more videos.) The iPhone camera has long been the best camera in the sense of “<em>The best camera is the one you have with you</em>.” With each successive year, they come closer and closer to being the best camera I’ve ever owned, period. It’s really quite remarkable how good a camera it is.</p>\n\n<p>Battery life has been excellent. I charge to 100 percent every night while I sleep, and never worry about it during the day. Very seldom is the battery under 25 percent by the end of the day. According to the statistics in Settings → Battery → Battery Health, maximum battery capacity remains at 96 percent after 230 cycles. That seems pretty good.</p>\n\n<p>Durability has been terrific as well. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/13/ceramic-shield-2-is-the-real-deal\">I mentioned a month ago</a> that Apple’s “Ceramic Shield 2” process seems to be the real deal. Even under close inspection, there’s seemingly not a single micro abrasion on the front glass. I used a <a href=\"https://nomadgoods.com/products/magnetic-leather-back-rustic-brown-horween-iphone-17-pro\">Nomad leather back</a> during the very coldest weeks of the East Coast winter, but otherwise have never used a case. Despite near-daily use for 10-ish months, it’s in near-mint condition. I’ve also found that the phone, naked, is about as grippy as one could hope in most weather conditions, the frigid cold being the one exception.</p>\n\n<p>Dust and fuzz accumulates in the USB-C port — just like every phone with a USB port. I clean it out every few months. Some sort of crud also accumulates in the very thin, easily overlooked slit for the speaker at the top of the display. That requires something like a pin or needle to clean. I don’t know what that crud is and I don’t want to know. I also don’t know what Apple could do about this crud accumulation, but I need to reach deep to find anything at all to complain about regarding this iPhone. I look forward to a future hermetically sealed iPhone which has no crevices in which to accumulate crud.</p>\n\n<p>One year later and it feels like both the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air could be announced tomorrow, not a year ago, and would seem fresh and exciting.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-09-08\">\n<p>Apple also created a battery pack exclusively for the Air: the <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mgpg4am/a/iphone-air-magsafe-battery\">$100</a> <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/125312\">iPhone Air MagSafe Battery</a>. Like Apple’s late great Lightning <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/111857\">MagSafe Battery Pack</a>, the Air MagSafe Battery is a much better product than any third-party battery pack I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried an embarrassing number of them. It sticks better magnetically, and there’s software integration with iOS that shows the battery pack’s remaining power when you first connect it, and in the Battery widget. iOS also seems smarter about when to draw power from it, making it last longer. It’s a no-brainer recommendation for anyone who buys an iPhone Air. You won’t need it most days, but on the days when you need it, it’s perfect. </p>\n\n<p>My only gripe about the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery remains the same <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/09/09/moren-awe-dropping-details\">from the day it was announced last year</a>: it has “Air” in the name because it’s designed exclusively for the iPhone Air. Apple’s old Lightning MagSafe Battery Pack was designed to fit <em>any</em> iPhone. (In fact, it debuted in 2020 alongside <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_iphone_12_mini_and_iphone_12_pro_max\">the iPhone 12 Mini</a>, an iPhone that actually needed help getting through the day on a single charge.) The old Lightning battery pack remains so good that I continue to use mine (I own two) instead of the numerous third-party ones I’ve blown money on in the intervening years. The old Lightning ones don’t pack much of a punch, juice-wise — particularly because they’re now several years old — but no matter how much I use my iPhone, it’s always enough to extend me through the day. (The key is not to start using it until your iPhone drops under 30 percent — it takes less energy to recharge a mostly depleted battery.) I continue using them because they stick to the back of the iPhone so strongly, and, once attached, are so comfortable. It’s the last Lightning device I actively use, but unless Apple comes out with a proper USB-C replacement that works on iPhones other than the Air, I don’t foresee retiring mine until they’re completely shot. <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-09-08\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2026-09-08\">\n<p>The front-facing camera on the iPhone Air is <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/iphone-17-use-center-stage-front-camera/\">the new (for 2025) Center Stage camera</a>. It’s exactly the same front-facing camera as the iPhone 17 Pro and non-pro models, and uses a square sensor with a wider field of view. <a href=\"#fnr2-2026-09-08\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2026-09-08\">\n<p>This, of course, makes me wonder about the one-handed usability of the passport-sized foldable iPhone that Apple is expected to unveil tomorrow. <a href=\"#fnr3-2026-09-08\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n " }, { "title": "‘Modern Day Typographer’", "date_published": "2026-09-08T22:57:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-08T22:57:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/08/modern-day-typographer", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/08/modern-day-typographer", "external_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ck-NPqf2c8", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>There are good Elle Cordova videos, and there are great ones. (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/16/papyrus-2\">Last mentioned here</a> for her “<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXbW42uTKYo\">Fonts Hanging Out</a>” trilogy.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ck-NPqf2c8\">youtube.com/watch?v=0Ck-NPqf2c8</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ SuperDuper 4", "date_published": "2026-09-08T14:55:20Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-08T14:55:22Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/superduper_4", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/superduper_4", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>I have mentioned and recommended <a href=\"https://www.shirt-pocket.com/superduper4.php\">Shirt Pocket’s Mac backup app SuperDuper</a> quite <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/search/super+duper\">a few times</a> over the years, and for good reason: it performs very important functions very well. Version 4, which shipped just over a month ago, is an extraordinary update to an extraordinary app.</p>\n\n<p>Visually, the interface is all new. That took some getting used to, but not much. It didn’t take long for me to see how the new UI is better in every way. The style of presentation is new and modern, but the core idea remains the same: the interface of SuperDuper is self-explanatory. It explains what, exactly, is going to happen. It remains a marvel of clarity, especially when you consider the complexity of what it does.</p>\n\n<p>Functionally, SuperDuper 4 is also much improved. SuperDuper has never been slow, but now some copy operations are over 2× faster. Scheduling options are more powerful. You don’t need to worry about the details to use SuperDuper, but the details are there for your inspection.</p>\n\n<p>Shirt Pocket’s Dave Nanian designed it, implemented it, and <a href=\"https://www.shirt-pocket.com/guide.php\">thoroughly documented</a> it. I don’t know how that’s possible. SuperDuper feels like impossibly good software. Read his post <a href=\"https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/supererduperer\">announcing version 4</a> to start, then catch up on <a href=\"https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/\">the rest of the blog</a> to get a feeling for how much work he’s put into SuperDuper 4. Just extraordinary.</p>\n\n<p>In the 22 years since SuperDuper first shipped, Shirt Pocket has never charged for updates and never raised the price. (This too seems impossible, at least for a company that remains in business.) Version 4 costs $44 — an astonishing value — and discounts are available for anyone who bought version 3 after July 2020. Sans license, free of charge, SuperDuper 4 still allows you to make bootable backups.</p>\n\n<p>I recommend SuperDuper 4 wholeheartedly.</p>\n\n<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href=\"https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/08/review-superduper-4-gets-a-stem-to-stern-revamp-but-is-just-as-seaworthy-as-ever/\">Dan Moren at Six Colors</a> and <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/08/13/superduper-4/\">Michael Tsai</a>.</p>\n\n " }, { "title": "[Sponsor] Glyphs 4", "date_published": "2026-09-07T22:16:26Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-07T22:16:27Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/glyphs_4", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/glyphs_4", "external_url": "https://glyphsapp.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Glyphs 4 is here: a Mac-native app for creating fonts, lettering, icons, and pictograms. Draw with flexible strokes and efficiently reuse shapes across huge glyph sets, explore variable vector designs with complex higher-order interpolation. Build and manage massive font families and icon sets with ease, export all modern font formats, SVG, PNG and PDF. Hundreds of refinements and native Tahoe support make designing, testing and shipping your vectors smoother than ever. Glyphs 4: Create. Love the process.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/\">Discover Glyphs 4</a>, and use code <strong>FIREBALL</strong> to save $30 if you purchase in the next month.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://glyphsapp.com/\">glyphsapp.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Trackables 1.5", "date_published": "2026-09-07T22:01:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-07T22:02:33Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/trackables", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/trackables", "external_url": "https://trackables.app/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Trackables:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There are plenty of health tracking apps. Surprisingly, nearly all\nof them are bloated, subscription-gated, or blatantly harvesting\nour data; often all three. We wanted something simpler, less\nannoying and more fun, that’s where it started.</p>\n\n<p>Trackables turns the data your Apple Watch already collects — activity, sleep, steps, heart rate — into a clear, friendly,\ntransparent interface.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Totally free of charge, totally private, made by a small team of ex-Apple folks. (They might add a paid tier in the future, but core functionality will remain free.) I’ve been using Trackables for months and it’s just a better dashboard to the stats I care about than the Health app itself.</p>\n\n<p>(One interesting detail: HealthKit only makes raw data available to apps. Apple Health’s “sleep score” isn’t part of that data — only the raw input, like how many hours you slept, and how much time was spent in each sleep stage. So Trackables computes its own sleep score. When I bother to compare, Trackable’s score is almost always similar to Apple’s, but seldom exactly the same. But I personally find that Trackable’s sleep score corresponds better to how I feel I slept. Which, admittedly, is <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@gruber/116137135641505082\">usually pretty good</a>.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://trackables.app/\">trackables.app/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Larry Ellison", "date_published": "2026-09-07T20:09:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-07T21:30:19Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/onion-ellison", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/onion-ellison", "external_url": "https://theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-larry-ellison/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>The Onion:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>The Onion: How did you get into the entertainment industry?</em></p>\n\n<p>Ellison: I remember going to the movies as a kid, and when the\nhouselights went down and that hush fell over the crowd, I’d\nthink to myself: I’d like to build a massive propaganda apparatus\none day.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-larry-ellison/\">theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-larry…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "McKinley 1.0", "date_published": "2026-09-07T20:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-07T22:13:26Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/mckinley", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/mckinley", "external_url": "https://mckinleysymbols.com/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Crackerjack new Mac app for creating and editing custom <a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/sf-symbols/\">SF Symbols</a>, from developer Amy Worrall:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>McKinley is an all-in-one studio for drawing and annotating SF\nSymbols. It bundles vector tools with knowledge of the SF Symbols\nstructure, so you can edit one set of objects across multiple\nweights, sizes and colours. Import SVG or start from scratch, live\npreview your work using Apple’s own renderer, and export directly\nto Xcode, so you never need touch the SF Symbols app again!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>McKinley is Mac-assed out the wazoo:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Rich AppleScript support, including a library of practically useful example scripts.</li>\n<li>Quick Look previews and thumbnails for documents.</li>\n<li>A well-written comprehensive <a href=\"https://mckinleysymbols.com/docs/welcome\">user manual</a>. (Me, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/12/kagi-snaps\">a few months ago</a>: “There exist good products with bad or no documentation, but there are very few poor products with great documentation.”)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I mean just look at McKinley. It’s both beautiful and quite obviously <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@marioguzman/117230477915225971\">a serious professional tool</a>. McKinley is a $60 one-time purchase, and there’s a 15 percent launch discount this week only (taking the price to just $51). What a remarkable 1.0.</p>\n\n<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/09/07/mckinley-1-0/\">Michael Tsai</a>; <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@amyworrall/117229433095095428\">Worrall on Mastodon</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://mckinleysymbols.com/\">mckinleysymbols.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Matt Birchler’s Folding iPhone Predictions", "date_published": "2026-09-07T19:59:36Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-08T12:35:24Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/birchler-folding-iphone-predictions", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/07/birchler-folding-iphone-predictions", "external_url": "https://birchtree.me/blog/my-folding-iphone-predictions/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Matt Birchler:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>So, yeah, I do think that, especially this year, unit sales will\nfar lag behind the 18 Pro models, the normal iPhone 18, and\nprobably the Air 2 and 18e. I think they will lag next year as\nwell for similar reasons. I don’t know if this will ever become\nthe <em>most</em> popular iPhone, but I do not think it will fail, and I\nthink it will sell more units every year for its first few years\non the market (especially if they can get the price down over that\ntime as well).</p>\n\n<p>My evidence for this is the increasing market share folding phones\nhave in the Android world, as well as my personal experience using\nsomething very similar to what Apple is about to announce and\nhaving my own aha moment, where it really clicked with me.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Birchler has been using a Samsung Galaxy Fold8 — the new one that preemptively copied the folding iPhone’s aspect ratio — for the last month or so. So I’m intrigued by his firsthand experience with the same general form factor. But I have no idea what he’s talking about regarding “the increasing market share folding phones have in the Android world”. For 2025, <a href=\"https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/Foldable-Smartphone-Market-Set-for-20-percent-Growth-in-2026\">Counterpoint</a> and <a href=\"https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20250722-12649.html\">TrendForce</a> both pegged foldable phones at 1.6% of the global market. Just <em>today</em> <a href=\"https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-foldable-shipments-to-hit-100-million-cumulative-milestone-by-end-of-2026\">Counterpoint released a report</a> that says “Foldables still account for only about 2% of the overall smartphone market, leaving plenty of room for the category to grow.”</p>\n\n<p>Anecdotally I find it hard to believe the 2 percent number. It’s my nature to take notice of the phones people use, and there’s no way that 1 in 50 people I see have foldable phones. I don’t even think it’s 1 in 100. On a recent vacation, I didn’t see a single foldable at the airport nor at the resort hotel where we stayed. Obviously my own anecdata could be all wet, but I think “2 percent” is generous — and presumably, if it’s accurate, it’s almost entirely from outside the U.S. It’s like saying “touchscreen phones” had “increasing market share” before the iPhone. Going from 0.1% to 0.2% is a doubling of share, but the share is still tiny.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding the name, Birchler spitballs a decent suggestion:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Finally, there’s the name. Everyone seems to think it’s going to\nbe the iPhone Ultra, and I guess if I were putting money down,\nthat’s what I’d bet on as well.</p>\n\n<p>But I just don’t like it. I don’t like it because it’s not\n“ultra” in many ways, and I don’t like it because what do you\ncall the bigger version of it in a year or two? The Ultra Max?\nMaybe you do…</p>\n\n<p>I personally think it should be called the iPhone Folio. I think\nthere’s a 99% chance I’m wrong, but hey, won’t it be amazing if\nI’m right?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The problem with “Folio” is that it’s too descriptive only of the form factor. Not the feeling it’s supposed to convey. I’m betting on “Ultra”, but I’m <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/04/14/name-of-foldable-iphone\">still rooting for “Duo”</a>, which <a href=\"https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/index-powerbook-duo.html\">has some history</a> <em>and</em> sounds like a nice companion adjective to “Neo”.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://birchtree.me/blog/my-folding-iphone-predictions/\">birchtree.me/blog/my-folding-iphone-predictions/</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ And It’s True That I Stole Your Lighter, and It’s Also True That I Lost the Map", "date_published": "2026-09-07T16:31:55Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-07T21:00:20Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/its_true_that_i_stole_your_lighter", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/its_true_that_i_stole_your_lighter", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Last week <a href=\"https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/\">both Google</a> <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/01/apple-maps-lake-america/\">and Apple</a> updated their maps to accommodate Trump changing the United States Geological Survey’s recognized name for Lake Ontario to “Lake America”. Just as with Trump’s fiat renaming of the Gulf of Mexico back in the first days of his 2.0 administration, Google and Apple are showing the same names to the same people, by region. Here are the names you now see for Lake Ontario, based on what region your device is set to:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>United States: “Lake America”</li>\n<li>Canada: “Lake Ontario”</li>\n<li>Everywhere else in the world: “Lake Ontario (Lake America)”</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This is exactly the same as <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/golfo_del_gringo_loco\">their joint solution to the Gulf of Mexico renaming</a> — the U.S. sees “Gulf of America”, Mexico sees “Gulf of Mexico”, and the rest of the world sees “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.</p>\n\n<p>Here is the solution I strongly believe Google and Apple <em>should</em> follow:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>United States: “Lake America (Lake Ontario)” and “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)”</li>\n<li>Everywhere else in the world: “Lake Ontario” and “Gulf of Mexico”</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There is no reason to show these new Trump-dictated names anywhere outside the U.S., even putting them in parentheses. There is no reason to show only the actual traditional names exclusively for users in Canada (for Lake Ontario) and Mexico (for the Gulf). Treating Canada and Mexico as special cases only makes sense if they’re part of some sort of dispute over the names. They’re not. The names of these two bodies of water are not contentious. There is no long-simmering debate about them, like there is with <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali–Mount_McKinley_naming_dispute\">Denali/Mount McKinley in Alaska</a>. The one and only country on the planet with a crackpot kook-ridden government that claims these bodies of water have new names is the United States; the only country that should see the new names is the United States.<sup id=\"fnr1-2026-09-07-maps\"><a href=\"#fn1-2026-09-07-maps\">1</a></sup></p>\n\n<p>So, I disagree with how Google and Apple have chosen to handle these re-namings. But it <em>is</em> correct that users in the United States do see the new names.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://ihnatko.com/she-made-harry-eat/\">Here’s Andy Ihnatko, at his eponymous website</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We all have every right to be upset. Google’s receiving plenty of\nflak over this move (as is Apple; Apple Maps now shows “Lake\nAmerica,” reportedly after <a href=\"https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-trump-93232341c99a10d35338d3f1afd54171?ref=ihnatko.com\">being pressured directly by\nTrump</a>). I dislike Google’s and Apple’s choices, but I can’t\npersonally fault them.</p>\n\n<p>That said, Trump’s move is clearly meant to antagonize Canada\nduring a volatile period in our relations. He’s throwing gasoline\non a tariff fight that’s already creating uncertainty and\nsuffering among vulnerable businesses and consumers on both sides\nof what was once an impeccably peaceful border. Google and Apple\ndidn’t need to move so damned <em>quickly</em>. I wish they’d deferred\nthe name change long enough for things to cool down a little.\nDoing so would have avoided creating the perception of handing one\nside a swift, validating victory.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I doubt a cooling-off period would help. Wounds don’t feel better when they’re reopened after healing. It’s best to get it over with. Applying the change to Google and Apple Maps while the <a href=\"https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis\">GNIS</a> database ink is still wet at least serves to remind <em>who</em> made this change and why. And whose change it rightfully is to make.</p>\n\n<p>This is a bitter pill for some to swallow. What a lot of people want is for Google and Apple to just ignore the U.S. government’s official new names. E.g., to pick just one high-profile pundit, here’s Kara Swisher <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@karaswisher/post/Dcq_BjdEQyF\">regarding Google</a> (“quislings”) <a href=\"https://www.threads.com/@karaswisher/post/DcwocY9kio6\">and Apple</a> (“craven”, “pathetic”). But I suspect, quite strongly, that the people who profess to be the most angry at Apple and Google for going along with this change are the same people who would argue most strongly that Goliath tech companies and mega-billionaires wield too much anti-democratic power and influence.</p>\n\n<p>It’s not coherent to argue that Google and Apple should decide which names to put on their maps only when <em>you</em> want them to ignore the names from the official government database. Neither Google nor Apple are going to sell their maps apps, but it’s not outlandish to think that in some alternative universe, one or more of the leading maps app might be owned by, say, Elon Musk or Larry Ellison. Would the people who want Apple and Google to ignore the official names from the GNIS support the same stance if the two leading maps apps were owned by SpaceX and Oracle instead? Obviously they would not.</p>\n\n<p>What we want is a system where geographic names are determined democratically, by voting. And that is the system we in fact have. Trump won. The Department of the Interior has the power to change these names. If you’re angry that their official names in the United States are now Lake America and Gulf of America, stay angry that Trump won the 2024 election. Stay angry that our president continues to debase his office and embarrass our nation. Directing your anger at Google and Apple for reflecting that change is shooting the messengers.</p>\n\n<p>But this is why I find it embarrassing that both Google and Apple are foisting these absurd names on the rest of the world, even if only between parentheses. These names are nonsense, and they are Americans’ nonsense to deal with.</p>\n\n<p>China is another country with ridiculous geographic dogma. China demands that Taiwan, which is an independent free nation, be <a href=\"https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-apple-maps-taiwan-03072024174451.html\">falsely labelled as a province of China</a>. Apple Maps reflects that policy — <em>within China</em>. It doesn’t label Taiwan as “(Province of China)” on maps outside China. Bullshit inside parentheses is still bullshit. Less seriously but more preposterously, the Chinese government also insists that the obscure Diaoyu Islands, subject of a long-running territorial dispute with Japan, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/golfo_del_gringo_loco#:~:text=China%E2%80%99s%20State%20Bureau%20of%20Surveying%20and%20Mapping\">be drawn larger than they actually are on maps</a>. Apple Maps dutifully renders those inflated false island sizes to users in China. It doesn’t show them to users anywhere else in the world — not even as dotted outlines. Chinese users see Chinese government dogmatic nonsense; no one else does.</p>\n\n<p>So too it should be for U.S. government dogmatic nonsense. Spreading the nonsense to the rest of the world only makes it more embarrassing.</p>\n\n<p>Neither Google nor Apple claim to be cartographic editorial authorities. I do not think we should want them to be. Other non-governmental institutions do claim to be independent authorities. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._Budowich\">The Associated Press has stuck to their guns</a> even in the face of losing its White House press pool seat over their refusal to adopt the “Gulf of America” name. And then there’s Wikipedia, whose reputation, integrity, popularity, and independence <a href=\"https://gizmodo.com/is-elon-musks-grokipedia-dead-no-longer-updates-articles-2000795280\">haunt</a> the right wing. <a href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/02/tech-lake-ontario-01062631\">From Politico, last week</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Other platforms will soon follow, a senior administration official\ntold Politico on Tuesday. “We got Lake America changed on Google\nMaps, and many other maps are changing in a couple days. And\nWikipedia is going to change as well,” said the official, who was\ngranted anonymity to speak frankly.</p>\n\n<p>As of Wednesday, Wikipedia was still using the original names of\nboth the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, while noting that Trump\nhad signed orders to rename them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Regarding this, <a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki/post/3murrlnufd22w\">Molly White noted</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A Wikipedia editor put it well: “You almost want to pat them on\nthe head and say ‘Yes, of course it will’ in the same way you’d\ntell a small child that Santa Claus will be delivering their\npresents.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2026-09-07-maps\">\n<p>And, I feel strongly, the traditional names should remain visible, in parentheses, even for users in the U.S. for a period of, say, five years. What is someone who doesn’t follow current events — god bless them — to think if they go looking for Lake Ontario on Google Maps or Apple Maps and don’t see it? <a href=\"#fnr1-2026-09-07-maps\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n " }, { "title": "Meta AI Has a Native Mac App Now, and It Seems Decent", "date_published": "2026-09-06T20:44:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-08T12:33:00Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/meta-ai-mac-app", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/meta-ai-mac-app", "external_url": "https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/19/meta-ai-is-now-available-as-a-more-capable-desktop-app-for-mac/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Zac Hall, writing for 9to5Mac on August 19:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The <a href=\"https://ai.meta.com/meta-ai/assistant/\">new Meta AI desktop app</a> is version 1.0 beta at launch and\nweighs just 16MB once installed. Based on initial inspection, it\nruns natively on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later, using\nan AppKit and SwiftUI shell with WebKit for richer chat content.\nIn other words, this is not an Electron app or a repackaged iPad\nrelease.</p>\n\n<p>It includes Mac-specific hooks, making the desktop experience more\nrobust than the Meta AI mobile app. Quick Invoke uses Option-Space\nto place a compact Meta AI composer over whatever you are doing. A\nseparate dictation feature lets you hold a shortcut, speak, and\nhave the resulting words typed into any app, from Mail and\ndocuments to code editors.</p>\n\n<p>Meta AI can also attach another Mac window to a conversation. With\nScreen Recording and Accessibility permission, the app reads the\nwindow’s visible text and captures a screenshot for the next\nquestion. This is context gathering rather than computer control\nfor now.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Passes the Settings window sniff test too — it actually has a Settings window. Meta, institutionally, seems more keen on native Mac apps <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2025/11/meta_whatsapp_windows_shitty_web_app\">than they are native Windows apps</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> The Mac app is <em>not</em> available in the App Store. You need to download it directly from Meta’s web page, using the <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/meta-ai-mac-download-link.png\">“Download for Mac (Beta)” link</a>. The ChatGPT and Claude Mac apps aren’t in the Mac App Store either — they do too many things outside the App Store’s mandatory <a href=\"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351522\">sandbox</a> (and probably use APIs require that special entitlements in the App Store too).</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/19/meta-ai-is-now-available-as-a-more-capable-desktop-app-for-mac/\">9to5mac.com/2026/08/19/meta-ai-is-now-available-as-a-more…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "WorkOS: How to Give an Agent a Task Instead of a Token", "date_published": "2026-09-06T19:06:27Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T19:06:28Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/workos-agent-task", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/workos-agent-task", "external_url": "https://workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>My thanks to WorkOS for once again sponsoring Daring Fireball. Give an agent an access token and it spreads: into the context window, into tool call logs, into notes it keeps between steps. Each copy works from anywhere, long after the fact.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/docs/pipes/relay?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026&utm_content=docs\">Relay</a> keeps the credential at WorkOS. Your agent names the user, WorkOS attaches that token, refreshes it, and releases it only to allowlisted hosts. A hijacked agent session is a live process you can kill.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026\">Learn how it works</a> at WorkOS’s blog.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026\">workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Matt Haughey: ‘The Car Industry A/B Tested Selling a Car With and Without CarPlay and the Results Are Not Shocking’", "date_published": "2026-09-06T19:04:12Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T22:24:49Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/haughey-chevy-honda-carplay", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/haughey-chevy-honda-carplay", "external_url": "https://a.wholelottanothing.org/the-car-industry-a-b-tested-selling-the-same-car-with-and-without-carplay-and-the-results-are-not-shocking/", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Matt Haughey:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>One case in point is the Honda Prologue EV. It’s a partnership\nbetween Honda and Chevrolet, where the Prologue is basically a\nChevy Blazer EV with Honda badges, slight visual differences in\nthe sheetmetal and interior, but all the underpinnings are\nstraight up Chevy. Even though the keys say Honda on a Prologue,\nit’s a General Motors key design with a Honda logo over it.</p>\n\n<p>But one big difference the Prologue has from the Blazer it is\nbased on is this: it includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto\nintegration. [...]</p>\n\n<p>For the years these cars were sold together, the Honda outsold the\nBlazer by 43%, 73%, and 166% in each time period. Today in 2026,\npeople are buying a Honda Prologue over one and a half times more\noften than the Chevy Blazer EV the Prologue is based on.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s not a perfect test. It’s reasonable to argue that Honda has a better brand and reputation than Chevrolet, and is just plain better at selling cars. But the trendline over the last three years is pretty stark.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://a.wholelottanothing.org/the-car-industry-a-b-tested-selling-the-same-car-with-and-without-carplay-and-the-results-are-not-shocking/\">a.wholelottanothing.org/the-car-industry-a-b-tested-selling…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Trump Administration Launches Rip-Off Video Games at Arcade.gov", "date_published": "2026-09-06T17:51:09Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T22:28:16Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/trump-arcade", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/trump-arcade", "external_url": "https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2095615734567100766", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>A handful of Temu-style knockoffs of games like Flappy Bird, Snake (that’s the one where you round up border-crossing migrants), and, <a href=\"https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/tetris-company-trump-white-house-build-the-wall-game-copyright-1236851993/\">most notably</a>, Tetris (the one where you “build a wall” to keep border-crossing migrants out) — the copyright to which is held by the notoriously litigious The Tetris Company, <a href=\"https://x.com/tetris_official/status/2095933372019216384\">which tweeted</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing\npeople together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we\nlove you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our\ncommunity.</p>\n\n<p>P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of\n ‘Build the Wall’.</p>\n\n<p>P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Whatever you think of these games, just like with the rebranding of Lake Ontario, Trump Arcade shows American voters that this administration is focused on their problems and concerns.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2095615734567100766\">x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2095615734567100766</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Gurman on Schiller’s Departure and Ternus’s Goals for the App Store", "date_published": "2026-09-06T17:00:01Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T17:04:04Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/gurman-schiller-app-store", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/gurman-schiller-app-store", "external_url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-09-06/apple-s-new-ceo-like-cook-pay-package-shows-he-s-going-nowhere-sept-9-event-mtpvpcj1?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4ODcwNTgwOCwiZXhwIjoxNzg5MzEwNjA4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUS1k0ODFLR0NURlEwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.VPVLP03ZWjEbH48efjq8Q7n0_vk4t7OynYeaUbOfYzU&leadSource=article-gifting", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Mark Gurman, in his weekend Power On column at Bloomberg (gift link):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The Schiller exit is a bit more notable. Unlike Maestri, he still\nhad a real job: The veteran executive ran the App Store and Apple\nEvents. The App Store portion alone is no joke. It generates an\nestimated $30 billion a year and can be very challenging to\nmanage. Apple’s app marketplace is loved by many consumers, but\noften criticized by developers and subjected to increasingly\nonerous regulations. It was a busy, all-encompassing gig and\nnowhere near a semiretirement. Apple Events, meanwhile, is how the\ncompany communicates its new product launches to customers. It’s\nalso nothing close to fun and games.</p>\n\n<p>Now, Schiller is 66 and clearly wanted to have some semblance of\nretirement. He can focus on philanthropy and spend more time with\nfamily. But there’s a bit more to the story, I’m told. Ternus and\nservices chief Eddy Cue want to make even more money from the App\nStore and figure out ways to raise margins and squeeze additional\nrecurring revenue from the platform. Schiller, on the other hand,\nseems to believe that such moves will only further irk developers\nand governments. While there was no internal blowup or anything\nlike that, it’s something he wanted no part of.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I sure hope that’s not true, because that would be awful — making a bad situation worse — and pretty much the exact opposite of what Apple ought to do.</p>\n\n<p><strong>From the archive:</strong> Schiller, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2021/06/app_store_the_schiller_cut\">in a 2011 email to Cue and Steve Jobs</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Just as one thought, once we are making over $1B a year in profit\nfrom the App Store, is that enough to then think about a model\nwhere we ratchet down from 70/30 to 75/25 or even 80/20 if we can\nmaintain a $1B a year run rate? I know that is controversial, I\njust tee it up as another way to look at the size of the business,\nwhat we want to achieve, and how we stay competitive. Again, just\nfood for thought.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-09-06/apple-s-new-ceo-like-cook-pay-package-shows-he-s-going-nowhere-sept-9-event-mtpvpcj1?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4ODcwNTgwOCwiZXhwIjoxNzg5MzEwNjA4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUS1k0ODFLR0NURlEwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.VPVLP03ZWjEbH48efjq8Q7n0_vk4t7OynYeaUbOfYzU&leadSource=article-gifting\">bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-09-06/apple-s-new-ceo…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Dickover of the Week: Slashdot Put One in Their RSS Feed", "date_published": "2026-09-06T16:30:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T16:30:01Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/dickover-slashdot-rss", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/dickover-slashdot-rss", "external_url": "https://discourse.netnewswire.com/t/dickover-in-the-slashdot-rss-feed/372", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>How does this even happen? Who is this for? What possible purpose could by served by injecting a “We value your privacy” <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover\">dickover</a> into an RSS feed via iframes in the entry bodies?</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://discourse.netnewswire.com/t/dickover-in-the-slashdot-rss-feed/372\">discourse.netnewswire.com/t/dickover-in-the-slashdot-rss…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Litterbox: Safari Extension for Viewing X Tweets", "date_published": "2026-09-06T16:19:31Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T16:20:44Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/litterbox", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/06/litterbox", "external_url": "https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>In the wake of <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/25/xcancel-cease-and-desist\">Nitter/XCancel’s demise</a>, here’s a delightful new Safari extension from Zhenyi Tan (of And a Dinosaur fame):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But sometimes people still post X content. Maybe you want to see\n<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/12/google-design-pants-pissed\">Gruber roast Google Design</a>. Maybe you want to see posts by\n<a href=\"https://ticci.craft.me/explanation\">Federico Viticci</a> who recently returned to X. So I made\nLitterbox, a Safari extension that opens x.com links in a\npopup. The idea is you open it, take a look, gag a little, then\nclose the lid. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Litterbox doesn’t send your cookies when you open those popups,\nbecause of course. It uses the same API X uses for its website\nembeds. I don’t think they’ll kill the website embed feature. But\nif they do, it will be very funny.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I love it. I’ve got it installed even though I don’t avoid visiting X.com. It’s just faster and nicer to view tweets in Litterbox’s popup. And if I <em>do</em> want to proceed to X.com, there’s a link at the bottom of the popup. Perfect.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox\">andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Gloria Steinem’s Final Essay", "date_published": "2026-09-05T19:42:43Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-05T19:42:44Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/05/steinem", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/05/steinem", "external_url": "https://www.newyorker.com/culture/life-and-letters/gloria-steinems-final-essay?cndid=66114350", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Gloria Steinem, in a posthumous essay for The New Yorker:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For me, saying that I am a feminist has always meant that I\nbelieve in the social, economic, and political equality of all\nmales and females of all races and groups. I know this sounds too\nsimple to need a word, but equality is still the exception, not\nthe rule.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe we should call it egalitarianism, or even humanism. The\nproblem with humanism is that it is often interpreted as being\nanti-religion, so I don’t think it’s inclusive enough. Regardless\nof what we call it, it just means treating each of us as uniquely\nhuman. The experiences of race and gender and class are very real\nand important, but they are also constructed and changeable. Our\nhumanity is consistent and sacred.</p>\n\n<p>Still, for some, it remains a mystery why women need a movement to\ndistinguish our efforts toward equality. For me, it seems quite\nobvious.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/life-and-letters/gloria-steinems-final-essay?cndid=66114350\">newyorker.com/culture/life-and-letters/gloria-steinems…</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "‘Bob and Van’", "date_published": "2026-09-05T16:08:24Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-05T16:08:25Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/05/bob-and-van", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/05/bob-and-van", "external_url": "https://marco.org/2026/09/04/bob-and-van", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Marco Arment:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>And I can’t help but feel that maybe we were better off before we\nknew <em>everyone’s</em> hot takes on <em>everything.</em></p>\n\n<p>The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly\nshamed for going there because one of the owners was an ass. It\nwas just a place to hang out with our friends.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://marco.org/2026/09/04/bob-and-van\">marco.org/2026/09/04/bob-and-van</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "Adobe Names Anil Chakravarthy as CEO, Replacing Shantanu Narayen", "date_published": "2026-09-05T00:05:47Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-05T00:05:47Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/adobe-new-ceo", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/adobe-new-ceo", "external_url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/adobe-anil-chakravarthy-ceo.html", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Annie Palmer, CNBC:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Adobe on Thursday named Anil Chakravarthy as its next president\nand CEO, succeeding Shantanu Narayen, who announced he would step\ndown earlier this year. Chakravarthy, who most recently served as\npresident of Adobe’s customer experience orchestration and\nworldwide field operations, will take the helm Dec. 1, the company\nsaid. He will also join Adobe’s board.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m sure promoting the head of “customer experience orchestration” to CEO will restore Adobe’s focus on creating great tools for artists and designers.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/adobe-anil-chakravarthy-ceo.html\">cnbc.com/2026/09/03/adobe-anil-chakravarthy-ceo.html</a></strong></em></p>\n" }, { "title": "★ Writing With Unnatural Constraints", "date_published": "2026-09-04T18:07:18Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-06T00:20:11Z", "id": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/writing_with_unnatural_constraints", "url": "https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/writing_with_unnatural_constraints", "authors": [ { "name": "John Gruber" } ], "content_html": "\n<p>Marcin Wichary, <a href=\"https://unsung.aresluna.org/i-just-chose-words-carefully/\">writing at Unsung</a>, regarding <a href=\"https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/588741-super-metroid/faqs/10114\">a rather subtly astonishing FAQ for the game Super Metroid</a>, written in the late 1990s by “rs1n”. It’s over 17,000 words long, and the whole thing is full-justified when viewed with a monospaced font, using no trickery with extra spaces or hyphenation to achieve the layout:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The author lightly covers in the FAQ at the bottom:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What program did you use to justify the text?</p>\n\n<p>None. I just chose words carefully so that everything lined up on\nthe right hand side. Everything was done with an ASCII editor.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’m sharing this mostly as a curiosity; some rewrites for physical\nbooks are par for the course to avoid widows and orphans, but you\ndon’t see them as much in onscreen writing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The FAQ reads pretty well, but to my ear, there’s something obviously off about it. The justification gimmick is very fun and the fact that the prose reads as well as it does is quite the feather in rs1n’s cap. He tried something very difficult and pulled it off with aplomb. And I’m sure many people have read the FAQ without even noticing the accomplishment, or considering just how difficult it is to write with such an unyielding constraint. There were many FAQs and other documents from the plain-text era that were full-justified, using extra spaces between words and paragraphs and occasional hyphenation to achieve the effect. rs1n’s FAQ achieves the effect with no trickery, and the result looks so natural that it doesn’t call attention to itself. It just looks nice.</p>\n\n<p>But it doesn’t <em>read</em> entirely naturally. It’s stilted, as though written by someone for whom English is their second language. Which, for all I know, is true for rs1n, but I doubt it — I think the ESL-like stiltedness is just the result of making word choices to fit the line length, not simply for meaning and tone.</p>\n\n<p>The line-length constraint brings to mind <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogram\">lipograms</a>, “writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided”. Ernest Vincent Wright published an entire novel in 1939, <em><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)\">Gadsby</a></em>, without using the letter <em>e</em>. The Wikipedia page for lipograms lists more examples. That’s a hell of a trick, but there’s a reason why <em>Gadsby</em> is almost unheard-of, and Fitzgerald’s <em>The Great Gatsby</em> remains famous. <em>Gadsby</em> is <a href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47342\">miserable to read</a>. Wright was obviously a fine writer. <em>Gadsby</em>’s “Introduction” is written without the no-<em>e</em>’s constraint — and largely about the no-<em>e</em>’s constraint — and it reads just fine. But the text of the novel is a goddamn laborious slog. I couldn’t get through more than two paragraphs before deciding that my point was proven. It’s a fun challenge to compose lipograms but it’s no way to actually write. The gimmick necessarily becomes the highest priority of your word choices, not clarity or meaning.</p>\n\n<p>So too, goes my thinking, regarding the “watermarking” of AI-generated text through word choices alone. Fitting words into the watermarking pattern surely results in prose <em>far</em> less stilted than omitting the letter <em>e</em>, and surely also less stilted than rs1n’s hard-wrapped-at-75-characters-per-line Super Metroid FAQ, but it’s necessarily stilted to some degree. It’s sophistry to argue that one can write within a constraint without the constraint affecting the quality of the writing.</p>\n\n<h2>Bonus Quibble</h2>\n\n<p>Wichary opens his post with the following:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I don’t think anyone particularly enjoys typesetting in monospace.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I disagree! I think typesetting in monospace is fun — or at least <em>satisfying</em>. I think it’s part of the appeal of Markdown that you can make a document look <em>just right</em>. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/writing_with_unnatural_constraints.text\">What you see reading Markdown</a> is what I saw writing it. And just look at the fun people still have printing “large type” banners <a href=\"https://www.figlet.org/\">using ASCII punctuation characters</a> or <a href=\"https://www.macstories.net/news/notesctl-a-club-macstories-preview-of-federicos-advanced-apple-notes-cli-tool/\">fancier box-drawing Unicode glyphs</a>. When you format something in plain text, you know exactly how it’s going to look everywhere.</p>\n\n " } ] }