Last year, an unplanned personal hiatus coincided with the time when I should have been reviewing the then-new iPhones 17 and iPhone Air. In my brief note explaining my absence, I wrote:
\n\n\n\n\nI 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.
\n
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 obviated by the next generation of iPhones.
\n\nThe iPhone Air is the nicest 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.)
\n\nThe 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 in pocket. 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.
\n\nThe 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.1 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 really obvious.
\n\nMy 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.2 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. Zoom with your feet.
\n\nAnd 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 is a damn good camera for a phone.) 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.
\n\nBut 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\n| Width | Height | Thickness | Weight | \n\n\n|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 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
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 use, 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 regular-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.3 I use my iPhone one-handed frequently, often while walking around the city carrying a bag or beverage in my other hand.
\n\nIf 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.
\n\nIf 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.
\n\nThe iPhone 17 Pro is the best phone Apple has ever made, and perhaps the best device Apple has ever made, period.
\n\nAfter 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.
\n\nThis 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 the defining aspect of the Pro models. It thus feels correct for them to be so physically prominent on the devices.
\n\nThe 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 years, 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 incredibly popular choice. I see orange iPhone 17 Pros in use every day, often in clear cases to show off the color.
\n\nMy 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.
\n\n\n\n(Photo taken with the iPhone Air, using Halide Mark III.)
\n\nI’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 “The best camera is the one you have with you.” 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.
\n\nBattery 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.
\n\nDurability has been terrific as well. I mentioned a month ago 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 Nomad leather back 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 it’s about as grippy as one could hope in most weather conditions, the frigid cold being the one exception.
\n\nDust 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.
\n\nOne 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.
\n\nApple also created a battery pack exclusively for the Air: the $100 iPhone Air MagSafe Battery. Like Apple’s late great Lightning MagSafe Battery Pack, 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.
\n\nMy only gripe about the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery remains the same from the day it was announced last year: 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 any iPhone. (In fact, it debuted in 2020 alongside the iPhone 12 Mini, 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. ↩︎
\nThe front-facing camera on the iPhone Air is the new (for 2025) Center Stage camera. 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. ↩︎?
\nThis, of course, makes me wonder about the one-handed usability of the passport-sized foldable iPhone that Apple is expected to unveil tomorrow. ↩︎?
\nThere are good Elle Cordova videos, and there are great ones. (Last mentioned here for her “Fonts Hanging Out” trilogy.)
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=0Ck-NPqf2c8
\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" : "\nI have mentioned and recommended Shirt Pocket’s Mac backup app SuperDuper quite a few times 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.
\n\nVisually, 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.
\n\nFunctionally, 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.
\n\nShirt Pocket’s Dave Nanian designed it, implemented it, and thoroughly documented it. I don’t know how that’s possible. SuperDuper feels like impossibly good software. Read his post announcing version 4 to start, then catch up on the rest of the blog to get a feeling for how much work he’s put into SuperDuper 4. Just extraordinary.
\n\nIn 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.
\n\nI recommend SuperDuper 4 wholeheartedly.
\n\nSee also: Dan Moren at Six Colors and Michael Tsai.
\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" : "\nGlyphs 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.
\n\nDiscover Glyphs 4, and use code FIREBALL to save $30 if you purchase in the next month.
\n\nLink: glyphsapp.com/
\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" : "\nTrackables:
\n\n\n\n\nThere 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.
\n\nTrackables turns the data your Apple Watch already collects?—?activity, sleep, steps, heart rate?—?into a clear, friendly,\ntransparent interface.
\n
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.
\n\n(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 usually pretty good.)
\n\nLink: trackables.app/
\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" : "\nThe Onion:
\n\n\n\n\nThe Onion: How did you get into the entertainment industry?
\n\nEllison: 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.
\n
Link: theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-larry…
\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" : "\nCrackerjack new Mac app for creating and editing custom SF Symbols, from developer Amy Worrall:
\n\n\n\n\nMcKinley 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!
\n
McKinley is Mac-assed out the wazoo:
\n\nI mean just look at McKinley. It’s both beautiful and quite obviously a serious professional tool. 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.
\n\nSee also: Michael Tsai; Worrall on Mastodon.
\n\nLink: mckinleysymbols.com/
\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" : "\nMatt Birchler:
\n\n\n\n\nSo, 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 most 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).
\n\nMy 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.
\n
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, Counterpoint and TrendForce both pegged foldable phones at 1.6% of the global market. Just today Counterpoint released a report that says “Foldables still account for only about 2% of the overall smartphone market, leaving plenty of room for the category to grow.”
\n\nAnecdotally 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.
\n\nRegarding the name, Birchler spitballs a decent suggestion:
\n\n\n\n\nFinally, 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.
\n\nBut 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…
\n\nI 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?
\n
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 still rooting for “Duo”, which has some history and sounds like a nice companion adjective to “Neo”.
\n\nLink: birchtree.me/blog/my-folding-iphone-predictions/
\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" : "\nLast week both Google and Apple 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:
\n\nThis is exactly the same as their joint solution to the Gulf of Mexico renaming?—?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)”.
\n\nHere is the solution I strongly believe Google and Apple should follow:
\n\nThere 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 Denali/Mount McKinley in Alaska. 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.1
\n\nSo, I disagree with how Google and Apple have chosen to handle these re-namings. But it is correct that users in the United States do see the new names.
\n\nHere’s Andy Ihnatko, at his eponymous website:
\n\n\n\n\nWe 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 being pressured directly by\nTrump). I dislike Google’s and Apple’s choices, but I can’t\npersonally fault them.
\n\nThat 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 quickly. 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.
\n
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 GNIS database ink is still wet at least serves to remind who made this change and why. And whose change it rightfully is to make.
\n\nThis 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 regarding Google (“quislings”) and Apple (“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.
\n\nIt’s not coherent to argue that Google and Apple should decide which names to put on their maps only when you 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.
\n\nWhat 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.
\n\nBut 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.
\n\nChina is another country with ridiculous geographic dogma. China demands that Taiwan, which is an independent free nation, be falsely labelled as a province of China. Apple Maps reflects that policy?—?within China. 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, be drawn larger than they actually are on maps. 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.
\n\nSo too it should be for U.S. government dogmatic nonsense. Spreading the nonsense to the rest of the world only makes it more embarrassing.
\n\nNeither 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. The Associated Press has stuck to their guns 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 haunt the right wing. From Politico, last week:
\n\n\n\n\nOther 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.
\n\nAs 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.
\n
Regarding this, Molly White noted:
\n\n\n\n\nA 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.”
\n
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? ↩︎
\nZac Hall, writing for 9to5Mac on August 19:
\n\n\n\n\nThe new Meta AI desktop app 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.
\n\nIt 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.
\n\nMeta 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.
\n
Passes the Settings window sniff test too?—?it actually has a Settings window. Meta, institutionally, seems more keen on native Mac apps than they are native Windows apps.
\n\nUpdate: The Mac app is not available in the App Store. You need to download it directly from Meta’s web page, using the “Download for Mac (Beta)” link. 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 sandbox (and probably use APIs require that special entitlements in the App Store too).
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/08/19/meta-ai-is-now-available-as-a-more…
\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" : "\nMy 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.
\n\nRelay 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.
\n\nLearn how it works at WorkOS’s blog.
\n\nLink: workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source…
\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" : "\nMatt Haughey:
\n\n\n\n\nOne 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.
\n\nBut one big difference the Prologue has from the Blazer it is\nbased on is this: it includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto\nintegration. [...]
\n\nFor 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.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: a.wholelottanothing.org/the-car-industry-a-b-tested-selling…
\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" : "\nA handful of Temu-style knockoffs of games like Flappy Bird, Snake (that’s the one where you round up border-crossing migrants), and, most notably, 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, which tweeted:
\n\n\n\n\nAt 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.
\n\nP.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of\n ‘Build the Wall’.
\n\nP.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2095615734567100766
\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" : "\nMark Gurman, in his weekend Power On column at Bloomberg (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nThe 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.
\n\nNow, 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.
\n
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.
\n\nFrom the archive: Schiller, in a 2011 email to Cue and Steve Jobs:
\n\n\n\n\nJust 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.
\n
Link: bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-09-06/apple-s-new-ceo…
\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" : "\nHow does this even happen? Who is this for? What possible purpose could by served by injecting a “We value your privacy” dickover into an RSS feed via iframes in the entry bodies?
\n\nLink: discourse.netnewswire.com/t/dickover-in-the-slashdot-rss…
\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" : "\nIn the wake of Nitter/XCancel’s demise, here’s a delightful new Safari extension from Zhenyi Tan (of And a Dinosaur fame):
\n\n\n\n\nBut sometimes people still post X content. Maybe you want to see\nGruber roast Google Design. Maybe you want to see posts by\nFederico Viticci 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. [...]
\n\nLitterbox 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.
\n
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 do want to proceed to X.com, there’s a link at the bottom of the popup. Perfect.
\n\nLink: andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox
\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" : "\nGloria Steinem, in a posthumous essay for The New Yorker:
\n\n\n\n\nFor 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.
\n\nMaybe 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.
\n\nStill, for some, it remains a mystery why women need a movement to\ndistinguish our efforts toward equality. For me, it seems quite\nobvious.
\n
Link: newyorker.com/culture/life-and-letters/gloria-steinems…
\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" : "\nMarco Arment:
\n\n\n\n\nAnd I can’t help but feel that maybe we were better off before we\nknew everyone’s hot takes on everything.
\n\nThe 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.
\n
Link: marco.org/2026/09/04/bob-and-van
\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" : "\nAnnie Palmer, CNBC:
\n\n\n\n\nAdobe 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.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: cnbc.com/2026/09/03/adobe-anil-chakravarthy-ceo.html
\n" }, { "title" : "NBA Brings the Hammer on the Clippers?—?$30 Million Fine, 5 First-Round Draft Picks, and Steve Ballmer Is Banned for a Year", "date_published" : "2026-09-04T23:23:34Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-04T23:28:14Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/nba-clippers-ballmer", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/nba-clippers-ballmer", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7513882/2026/09/02/clippers-kawhi-leonard-punishment-fine-suspensions-nba-investigation/?unlocked_article_code=1.-lA.wcSN.awOHwzojR5nR", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMike Vorkunov, reporting for The Athletic (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nThe NBA levied the largest punishment in league history on the LA\nClippers and owner Steve Ballmer on Wednesday after a year-long\ninvestigation determined that they circumvented the league’s\nsalary cap rules to help funnel millions to Kawhi Leonard. The\nClippers will lose five first-round picks?—?selections in 2029,\n2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033?—?and are being fined $30 million, the\nleague announced.
\n\nBallmer has been suspended for one year, the NBA said, “for\nknowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income\nopportunities.” The NBA said Ballmer approved a Clippers deal with\nAspiration because he knew it was a precondition for the company\nto enter into a sponsorship deal with Leonard.
\n\nThe Clippers, according to NBA investigators, tried to evade NBA\nrules on circumvention by creating a “novel theory” that it was OK\nto introduce business partners to players if the player or their\nrepresentative asked for introductions. The NBA did not find that\npersuasive.
\n
Basically Steve Ballmer invested over $50 million in a now-bankrupt startup named Aspiration. Aspiration was the jersey-patch sponsor for the Clippers, and after Leonard signed with the Clippers, Aspiration signed Leonard to a $28 million no-show “endorsement” deal. Leonard asked for, and then received, more money than his on-the-books salary.
\n\nIt’s a classic Microsoft dirty-tricks move to circumvent the NBA’s player salary cap. There’s nothing illegal about what Ballmer and the Clippers did. They violated league rules, not the law. The difference is that the NBA is a league with a strong commissioner’s office that can investigate cheating and impose serious penalties. If tech companies were teams in a similar league, Microsoft would have been fined dozens of times throughout the ’80s and ’90s and ’00s. Ballmer would have been suspended multiple times and Bill Gates would have been suspended so many times he probably would have been kicked out of the league. If there was anything underhanded Microsoft could do to get ahead?—?or to stick the knife in a competitor?—?they did it.
\n\nThat worked out fabulously well for Microsoft. It doesn’t work in the NBA. The Clippers remain a loser franchise that not only has never won a title, but has never even appeared in the Finals. Losing a first-round draft pick each year from 2029–2033 (inclusive) certainly won’t help get them off the schneid.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/athletic/7513882/2026/09/02/clippers-kawhi…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Fixed ?TestFlight’s Screwy Sort Order", "date_published" : "2026-09-04T20:04:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-04T20:55:29Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/testflight-sort-order-fixed", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/testflight-sort-order-fixed", "external_url" : "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/testflight/id899247664", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI wrote two weeks ago about how the v4.3.0 update to TestFlight (released on July 21) broke the sort order for apps in the sidebar. Apple yesterday released v4.3.1, with these helpful release notes:
\n\n\n\n\nThis update includes stability improvements and bug fixes.
\n
One of the weirdest parts about this sort-order bug is that it only affected some people. I was obviously one of them; so was John Siracusa. For both of us, yesterday’s v4.3.1 update fixes the bug.
\n\nLink: apps.apple.com/us/app/testflight/id899247664
\n" }, { "title" : "Vinted", "date_published" : "2026-09-04T19:55:45Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-04T19:55:45Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/vinted", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/vinted", "external_url" : "https://www.vinted.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nRemarking on MapQuest taking the #1 spot in the App Store (in the wake of their decision to ignore President Trump’s fiat renaming of Lake Ontario to “Lake America”), I mentioned yesterday that I’d never heard of Vinted, the #3 app. (A day later and MapQuest is still #1, by the way.)
\n\nVinted, it turns out, is an eBay-like market for buying and selling used clothing. From a Lithuanian startup and the whole thing has been popular in Europe for a while, and obviously now is gaining popularity in the U.S.
\n\nLink: vinted.com/
\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" : "\nMarcin Wichary, writing at Unsung, regarding a rather subtly astonishing FAQ for the game Super Metroid, 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:
\n\n\n\n\nThe author lightly covers in the FAQ at the bottom:
\n\n\n\n\nWhat program did you use to justify the text?
\n\nNone. I just chose words carefully so that everything lined up on\nthe right hand side. Everything was done with an ASCII editor.
\nI’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.
\n
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.
\n\nBut it doesn’t read 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.
\n\nThe line-length constraint brings to mind lipograms, “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, Gadsby, without using the letter e. The Wikipedia page for lipograms lists more examples. That’s a hell of a trick, but there’s a reason why Gadsby is almost unheard-of, and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby remains famous. Gadsby is miserable to read. Wright was obviously a fine writer. Gadsby’s “Introduction” is written without the no-e’s constraint?—?and largely about the no-e’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.
\n\nSo 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 far less stilted than omitting the letter e, 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.
\n\nWichary opens his post with the following:
\n\n\n\n\nI don’t think anyone particularly enjoys typesetting in monospace.
\n
I disagree! I think typesetting in monospace is fun?—?or at least satisfying. I think it’s part of the appeal of Markdown that you can make a document look just right. What you see reading Markdown is what I saw writing it. And just look at the fun people still have printing “large type” banners using ASCII punctuation characters or fancier box-drawing Unicode glyphs. When you format something in plain text, you know exactly how it’s going to look everywhere.
\n\n " }, { "title" : "FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses", "date_published" : "2026-09-04T16:15:43Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-04T16:16:12Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/fbi-krebs-153-million-ids", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/fbi-krebs-153-million-ids", "external_url" : "https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBrian Krebs, reporting at KrebsOnSecurity:
\n\n\n\n\nOn Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service\nadvertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit,\noffering access to digital scans of identity documents on more\nthan 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to\nmy attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service\noffered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their\ninitial sales thread on Exploit.
\n\nThe service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million\ndrivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as\nwell as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three\nmillion travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least\n579,000 medical cards.
\n\nA quick look around Nexus finds they are likely not exaggerating\nabout that 153 million number: Running a blank search in Nexus\n(with no search parameters entered) returns approximately 11.5\nmillion pages of results, with roughly 15 results displayed per\npage. It includes documents from people in both Canada and the\nUnited States, but the bulk of these records are on Americans:\nsearching for just Canadian drivers licenses returns approximately\n1.1 million results, with the largest concentration from Ontario\n(473,673 records).
\n
Krebs seemingly tracked down the source: IDScan.net, an outfit that is used by car rental agencies like Hertz (seemingly where they got Krebs’s own drivers license) and marijuana dispensaries. They kept over 150 million ID card scans and lost them all in a data breach. Unreal.
\n\nLink: krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m…
\n" }, { "title" : "OpenAI Soft-Releases GPT?6 Astra", "date_published" : "2026-09-04T01:35:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-04T01:36:58Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/gpt-6-astra", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/gpt-6-astra", "external_url" : "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/3/gpt6-astra/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSimon Willison:
\n\n\n\n\nGPT-6 Astra is “rolling out today to a limited set of organizations and over the coming days will become available to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, as well as through the OpenAI API and AWS”?—?I’ve not tried it yet myself, so I don’t have a great deal to say about it yet.
\n\nIt’s going to be API priced at the same rate as Claude Fable 5 and 5.1: $10/million input and $50/million output. This is clearly OpenAI’s Fable competitor, and appears to score higher than Fable on most of OpenAI’s self-reported benchmarks.
\n
Link: simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/3/gpt6-astra/
\n" }, { "title" : "Phil Schiller Steps Down From Running App Store and Product Events", "date_published" : "2026-09-03T16:39:09Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-03T21:13:56Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/schiller-steps-down", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/schiller-steps-down", "external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-31/apple-s-phil-schiller-steps-down-from-running-app-store-and-product-events?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4ODE5Mzk5NywiZXhwIjoxNzg4Nzk4Nzk3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUS0VDTE1LSkg2VjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.G1fAbZQH31AQBLUajPYPUJ7BqRyeIUN7SbxQZFAqMXE", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMark Gurman:
\n\n\n\n\nApple Inc.’s Phil Schiller, one of the most visible and\ninfluential executives across both the Steve Jobs and Tim Cook\neras, has stepped down from his role leading the App Store and\nproduct events.
\n\nThe 66-year-old executive, who was Apple’s senior vice\npresident of marketing until leaving that job in 2020, made the\nlatest change in recent days, according to people with\nknowledge of the matter.
\n
This is true, I’ve confirmed. Seems natural for this to coincide with the CEO transition. What a run for Schiller.
\n\nLink: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-31/apple-s-phil…
\n" }, { "title" : "MapQuest Refuses to Relabel Lake Ontario, Rewarded With Surge in Popularity", "date_published" : "2026-09-03T16:30:09Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-03T21:20:00Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/mapquest-surge", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/03/mapquest-surge", "external_url" : "https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6063924-mapquest-tops-apple-google-maps-in-downloads-after-refusing-trumps-lake-america-change/?ref=ihnatko.com", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nFinya Swai, reporting for The Hill two days ago:
\n\n\n\n\nMapQuest has surged in popularity on the app charts after the\nmapping service said it would not rename Lake Ontario to “Lake\nAmerica” after President Trump signed an executive order changing\nits name.
\n\nThe company said its mobile app received hundreds of thousands of\ndownloads after it announced Thursday that the name Lake Ontario\nwould remain on its apps, despite Trump directing the Interior\nDepartment to update the lake’s name in the Geographic Names\nInformation System (GNIS).
\n\nBy Monday morning, MapQuest had climbed to No. 1 among navigation\napps in Apple’s U.S. app store and No. 4 in non-gaming apps. In\nCanada, which shares the lake with the U.S., the app reached No. 2\noverall over the weekend. The app’s usage also jumped to roughly\n50 times its normal level, according to MapQuest.
\n
Here we are on Thursday and MapQuest still holds the #1 spot, ahead of ChatGPT, Vinted (never heard of it), “TikTok Pro - Events” (a confusing new app, apart from the main TikTok client), ESPN Fantasy Sports (the NFL season is about to start), Claude, and Gemini.
\n\nWhen opportunity knocks, you need to open the door. The political corner that both Apple and Google get painted into when Donald Trump asserts a new name for an established geographic feature is a huge opportunity for an underdog like MapQuest. Good for them.
\n\nLink: thehill.com/homenews/administration/6063924-mapquest-tops…
\n" }, { "title" : "iOS 27 Introduces New ‘iPhone Handoff’ Feature", "date_published" : "2026-09-02T20:58:28Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-02T21:11:54Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/02/iphone-handoff", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/02/iphone-handoff", "external_url" : "https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/02/ios-27-iphone-handoff-feature/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJoe Rossignol, MacRumors:
\n\n\n\n\n“iPhone Handoff” can be set up from the Settings app, under the Cellular menu. During the setup process, you can choose which iPhone you want to be the main device that you use most often and which one you want to be the companion device.
\n\nApple says a user’s main eSIM will remain on the main iPhone, while the companion iPhone will receive a companion eSIM, and this will enable you to switch between the devices back and forth while using the same phone number.
\n\nAll cellular settings are managed on the main iPhone, and location sharing is based on whichever iPhone is actively using the phone number.
\n
This sounds amazing for those of us who use multiple iPhones. It’s not a common use case but it’s not that unusual. Developers come to mind, as do, ahem, new-phone reviewers. I presume there are a lot of people in Cupertino who use multiple iPhones, too.
\n\nThe only downside is that it requires carrier support. Hopefully they’ll all adopt it as quickly as they did for, say, cellular Apple Watches.
\n\nLink: macrumors.com/2026/09/02/ios-27-iphone-handoff-feature/
\n" }, { "title" : "Tim Cook’s Departure Memo on His Last Day as CEO", "date_published" : "2026-09-01T18:11:57Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-01T21:26:07Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/01/tim-cook-departure-memo", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/01/tim-cook-departure-memo", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/read-tim-cooks-full-memo-to-apple-employees-on-his-last-day-as-ceo/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nTim Cook:
\n\n\n\n\nThere is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of\nwhat an annual report could never capture. This place is proof\nthat culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what\nwe build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the\nresponsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That\npurpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple\nhelps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long\nbefore you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company\nand what continues to drive the work you do every day. Together,\nwe have created something far greater than any one of us could\nhave imagined or accomplished alone. And that’s the secret to our\nsuccess. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other\nup. We have made it possible to leave our “dent in the universe,”\nas Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we\nbelieve, because of what we value and how we see the world. How\nfortunate we are. How fortunate I am.
\n
That’s the best paragraph of the memo. I like those last two “fortunate” lines, and I think they’re the most open Cook gets. But on the whole the memo reads to me like the classic Far Side cartoon about the dog listening to its owner: “Blah blah Apple, blah blah blah blah Apple. Blah blah....”
\n\nThe truth is he was CEO for 15 years and he revealed very little of his true self to the public. That’s fine. In a meta sense, remaining so private was revealing. I think that’s who Tim Cook is?—?an intensely private man who took on a high-profile public role. The more revealing stories about the real Cook aren’t his public performances or memos. There’s the 2009 “Why are you still here?” one with Sabih Khan. And then there’s a remark I came upon recently, re-reading chapter 35 of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, regarding Jobs’s 2009 medical leave of absence:
\n\n\n\n\nCook had done a good job running the company during Jobs’s\nabsence. He kept Apple’s temperamental actors performing well,\nand he avoided stepping into the limelight. Jobs liked strong\npersonalities, up to a point, but he had never truly empowered\na deputy or shared the stage. It was hard to be his understudy.\nYou were damned if you shone, and damned if you didn’t. Cook\nhad managed to navigate those shoals. He was calm and decisive\nwhen in command, but he didn’t seek any notice or acclaim for\nhimself. “Some people resent the fact that Steve gets credit\nfor everything, but I’ve never given a rat’s ass about that,”\nsaid Cook. “Frankly speaking, I’d prefer my name never be in\nthe paper.”
\n
That’s Tim Cook. He clearly feels the same way now as he did when he told that to Isaacson before he took the CEO job.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/read-tim-cooks-full-memo-to-apple…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Reveals Forensic Evidence From Chang Liu’s MacBook in OpenAI Lawsuit", "date_published" : "2026-09-01T17:36:08Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-01T18:04:14Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/01/apple-reveals-change-liu-evidence-openai-lawsuit", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/01/apple-reveals-change-liu-evidence-openai-lawsuit", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/apple-openai-forensic-macbook-evidence/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nChance Miller, 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nIn today’s filing, Apple says that Liu’s lawyers recently handed\nover his MacBook that he used after leaving Apple. According to\nApple, an “initial forensic analysis” of that MacBook revealed\nfour things, quoted from Apple’s filing:
\n\n\n
\n- \n
Mr. Liu not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit\nschematic but also used it in his work at OpenAI;
- \n
Far from his unauthorized access to Apple’s third-party cloud\nstorage being unknown to him, Mr. Liu and others at OpenAI were\nwell-aware of that access;
- \n
Mr. Liu, upon learning of Apple’s internal investigation of him,\nsent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague\nwho confirmed she would comply; and
- \n
Mr. Liu used a tool in his work at OpenAI that has the same name\nas an internal Apple engineering application used for Apple\ndevelopment work.
9to5Mac is hosting a copy of the original filing from Apple’s lawyers.
\n\nThe first point seems really bad for OpenAI. On the fourth point, I’m not sure what Apple is alleging here?—?I think they’re alleging that Liu took an Apple internal engineering app with him over to OpenAI? This is the entirety of that allegation from Apple’s filing:
\n\n\n\n\nD. New evidence shows previously unknown use of a tool at OpenAI\n that has the same name as an Apple internal engineering tool.
\n\nThe MacBook also reveals additional acts of potential trade secret\nmisappropriation previously unknown to Apple. While working at\nOpenAI, Mr. Liu referred to using a tool and related software\npackages with names identical to proprietary internal engineering\ntools used at Apple.
\n
It sounds like the MacBook Apple examined didn’t have the proprietary app on it?—?just emails or messages where Liu referenced using it.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/apple-openai-forensic-macbook…
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] WorkOS: How to Give an Agent a Task Instead of a Token", "date_published" : "2026-09-01T07:59:07Z", "date_modified" : "2026-09-01T07:59:07Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_to_give_an_agent_a", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/09/workos_how_to_give_an_agent_a", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nGive 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.
\n\nRelay 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.
\n\n\n\nLink: workos.com/blog/delegated-access-for-ai-agents?utm_source…
\n" }, { "title" : "Finalist 4", "date_published" : "2026-08-30T18:35:22Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-30T18:35:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/30/finalist-4", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/30/finalist-4", "external_url" : "https://www.finalist.works/?utm_source=df-aug-2026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy thanks to Finalist for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Finalist is a remarkable, ambitious, and novel app for iPhone, iPad, and the Mac from indie developer Slaven Radic. It’s a planner inspired by paper day planners. I wrote quite a bit about Finalist when it first sponsored DF back in December?—?you should read that post. I’ve been using Finalist ever since. It’s a really good app. I’ll just reiterate from the first post that what really resonates for me is the idea of adding tasks to days, not assigning dates to tasks. If you add some tasks and then never actually do them, they’re still there, but they’re in the past, not harassing you in an ever-growing list of undone stuff today.
\n\nFinalist 4, which just came out a few weeks ago, is the biggest update yet. The headline new feature is notes, in the app or as a folder of Markdown files that round-trips with Obsidian. Tasks in those files land on the right day, next to your reminders and events, even inside the Mac menu bar app. Finalist’s rebuilt Timeline lets you pencil tasks into your day, and Apple Pencil gets special powers to sketch the plan in seconds.
\n\nThere’s tons more, brewed over four months with 1,000 beta testers. Try it free on the App Store?—?for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and now Apple Watch.
\n\nLink: finalist.works/?utm_source=df-aug-2026
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Thoughts and Observations on Apple’s First Immersive MLB Broadcast, a Yankees 1-0 Win Over the Red Sox", "date_published" : "2026-08-29T17:53:34Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-29T17:53:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/thoughts_and_observations_apple_immersive_mlb_broadcast", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/thoughts_and_observations_apple_immersive_mlb_broadcast", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJason Snell, writing at Six Colors, has an exemplary review of the experience:
\n\n\n\n\nI didn’t mind the reduced pace of the NBA broadcast, which toggled\nbetween cameras under each basket, but Stratechery’s Ben Thompson\nfelt strongly that the best option would’ve been a single\ncamera at mid-court, to completely eliminate the disorienting cuts\nand replicate being at the game in person.
\n\nApple’s approach with baseball, at least based on Friday’s game,\nseems to lean toward Thompson’s preferred approach?—?and it does\nbenefit from it. Each half inning was shown from a single camera\non the dugout rail next to the on-deck circle, giving a great view\nof pitcher and hitter and the infield, as well as the goings on\nright in front of the dugout in foul territory. The camera\nswitched between innings, so you were always viewing from the\nperspective of the at-bat team’s dugout.
\n\nMaking it all work better was Apple’s addition of a “virtual\njumbotron” floating in the sky, a scoreboard with graphics and a\nvideo feed of the standard 16:9 telecast on Apple TV. It was easy\nto look up and catch a replay or even get a better view of\nsomething happening in the far-off outfield, without getting in\nthe way of my view of the game itself.
\n
I concur with Snell’s review. The camera placement was terrific. You watched each team bat from the perspective of its own dugout. Perfect. A few other thoughts:
\n\nThe whole thing was legit exciting. Vision Pro continues to get a bad rap because Apple hasn’t sold many of them, and isn’t going to sell many of them until they come out with new models that are cheaper and lighter and less fussy. But there’s no denying that these immersive experiences are fucking cool. And an immersive live experience adds something else. It’s ineffable. Hard to say why, but feeling like you’re at another place watching something happen live is magic. Just a few years ago it would have required literal magic. It wasn’t possible. Now it is.
The immersive audio was terrific. It really sounded like being at Yankee Stadium, and truly added to the you-are-there feel of the experience. It seems corny to say this, but I really had the urge to stand during the national anthem, and it felt slightly wrong not to take the “hat” off my head (where the “hat” was the Vision Pro). It’s exciting to feel 43,000 fans roar around you. Baseball is a slow game but when the crowd roars, it erupts. That never comes across on regular TV broadcasts. It did here.
Like Snell though, I felt Apple’s commentators were too chatty. I’d love an option to toggle the commentary on and off, to just experience the natural audio of the ballpark.1
The only thing missing was aroma. Cement, grass, dirt, sweat, beer, peanuts, hot dogs with the works. Ballparks smell like fun. (Even Fenway.) But the you-are-there experience was so visceral I swear I could almost smell it. It’s like my brain was filling in the missing sensation. It didn’t feel like watching a 3D TV broadcast. It didn’t feel like a better version of TV broadcasting. It felt like something new and different. Something at least as different from watching on TV as watching on TV is different from merely listening on radio. It’s profound. TVs are small?—?laptops, tablets, and phones are even smaller. Yankee Stadium is huge. Watching this game immersively felt huge. Awesome, in the literal sense.
I love how you could look around and see how filthy everything really is in baseball: the on-deck mats, the interior of the dugouts, the tiny bits of schmutz on the warning track. It’s a lot of dirt and quite a bit of spit. That’s baseball, Suzyn.
There’s a resolution and/or depth of field limitation with the cameras, exacerbated by the fact that Vision Pro’s displays are, compared to reality, low resolution. They’re the highest-resolution VR displays on the market but I still couldn’t see the ball once it left the infield. When balls were hit to the outfield you just kind of had to judge what was happening by what the infielders and baserunners were doing. Ben Rice hit a double in the first inning and I thought the Sox outfielder caught it and I was confused why Rice was running to second base. Turns out the outfielder stopped running because Rice hit the ball over his head and he was waiting to play the carom off the left field wall. I was happy to be wrong. A few years from now, with better cameras and better Vision headset displays, these problems will be solved. But in the meantime, the outfield is fuzzy.
The best part about the immersive perspective compared to a traditional broadcast is watching how complex infield play really is. It’s fun to quickly look around the whole infield right before the pitch. You really see how much more stressful it is for the pitcher once there’s a runner on base?—?let alone more than one. It’s what I love about going to the ballpark?—?so much more complexity and intricacy is revealed?—?and watching this immersive broadcast enables the same thing. You can see the whole game, at all times, not just the pitcher, catcher, and batter.
The virtual “jumbotron” is a fine idea but I wish you could move it a bit higher, and it would be even better if you could configure it with the stats you want to see. But positioning it higher is my big request.
I have to admit I hadn’t used my Vision Pro in quite a few weeks before last night’s game. One thing that really struck me, almost certainly because baseball is a long game, is how heavy it is. My chin wants to droop and my face wants to look down when I’m wearing it. It’s the weight more than the isolation that makes it tiresome for anything other than short-form content, for me at least.
The whole thing was a great success. I’m writing these notes on Saturday afternoon while watching the old flat broadcast of game 2 of this 4-game series, and it feels ... well, boring. And small. Bodes well for the future of sports.
\n\nEven better would be an option to swap in the local radio broadcasts, like bringing a portable radio to the ballpark. Go skeuomorphic with the UI and make it look like an old handheld Sony or Panasonic transistor radio, and make the toggle “click” on and off. Go skeuomorphic with the audio too?—?make it sound like it’s coming out of a little speaker or a little earpiece and have the tuner play static as you switch between home/away (and English/Spanish) stations. That’d be so fun. And the regular old flat Friday Night Baseball telecast already supports swapping in local radio broadcasts?—?they’ve already got the rights. Bring that to these immersive games! ↩︎
\nChance Miller, 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nHere are the full details on the price increases:
\n\n\n
\n\n- Apple TV (monthly): $14.99 (up from $12.99)
\n- Apple TV (annual): $119 (up from $99)
\n- Apple One Individual: $21.95 (up from $19.95)
\nPrices for other Apple One plans are unchanged. When Apple\nincreased the price of Apple Music last month, it also raised\nthe Apple One Family and Apple One Premier plans, but not the\nIndividual plan.
\n\nThe higher prices go into effect today for new subscribers. Apple\nsays existing subscribers will be notified of the price increase\nabout a month before they are charged the new price.
\n
Seems poetic that Tim Cook’s last action as CEO is a goose to services revenue.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/08/28/apple-announces-price-increase-for…
\n" }, { "title" : "‘I’m the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books After We Scan Them Into Our Company’s Insatiable AI Platform’", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T21:35:22Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T21:35:22Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/mcsweeneys-book-destroyer", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/mcsweeneys-book-destroyer", "external_url" : "https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-the-guy-who-destroys-antique-books-after-we-scan-them-into-our-companys-insatiable-ai-platform", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJack Loftus, writing at McSweeney’s:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPeople assume scanning is the exciting part. And, sure, it is\nimpressive. They shear off the spine, separate the pages, and run\neverything through these enormous machines so the computer can\nabsorb every sentence ever written and use it to create some\nfairly compelling LinkedIn posts. But then, boy oh boy, the\nwheeled cart carrying those decimated remains comes to me. That is\nwhere the human touch enters the process, assuming you count\nindustrial shredders and a giant burn pit out back as an extension\nof the hand, which I certainly do.
\n
Link: mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-the-guy-who-destroys-antique…
\n" }, { "title" : "‘How Americans See E.U. Tech’", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T21:27:21Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T21:27:22Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/how-americans-see-eu-tech", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/how-americans-see-eu-tech", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGlpBuW6ZFc", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI think at least half a dozen people have sent me a link to this video and now that I’ve watched it, I understand why. Perfect.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=gGlpBuW6ZFc
\n" }, { "title" : "We Certainly Have Made a Hames Out of This", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T19:42:59Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T19:42:59Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/making-a-hames-out-of-it", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/making-a-hames-out-of-it", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/trump-lake-ontario", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI mentioned earlier that for anyone going along with the ruse that Lake Ontario is now named Lake America, the HOMES mnemonic no longer holds, the only two valid words in English with the new five letters are hames and shame, and that hames is rather too obscure.
\n\nBut it’s not so obscure in Ireland, where they use it in an idiom: to make a hames of something is to make a mess of it. With that in mind, it’s hard to say which is more apt for this embarrassment, hames or shame.
\n\n(The other longstanding Great Lakes mnemonic is the phrase “Super Man Helps Every One”, which I don’t love because neither Superman nor everyone ought to be treated as two words, but it does have the advantage of sorting the lakes geographically from west to east.)
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/trump-lake-ontario
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Not Sure How You Own Canada by Deleting Your Own History’", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T16:25:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T21:04:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/matt-walsh-lake-ontario", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/matt-walsh-lake-ontario", "external_url" : "https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2093060290371870948", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMatt Walsh, described by Wikipedia as “an American far-right political commentator and podcast host” (a description that sounds harsh, but I’d say is describing him euphemistically), on Twitter/X (retweeting the official White House account’s announcement of the name change):
\n\n\n\n\nThis will be an unpopular opinion on the Right but I think this is\nkind of dumb, even as a troll. Lake Ontario was given that name on\nmaps by European explorers long before the Canadian province of\nOntario was named. There are several cities in America called\nOntario?—?at least one of them predating the Canadian province by\nlike 100 years?—?because the word originates with native tribes\nin North America. It’s not a Canadian invention. Canadians never\nuniquely owned the lake or the name. So in effect all you’re doing\nhere is actually giving them credit for a thing that wasn’t theirs\nto begin with. Yeah it’s funny when Canadians are upset I guess or\nwhatever, but Lake Ontario, the name itself, is American history\ndating back many centuries. Not sure how you own Canada by\ndeleting your own history.
\n\nPolitically this is also stupid because the number one challenge\nRepublicans will face in the midterms is the charge that they\nhaven’t used their time in power to advance the interests of\neveryday Americans. This kind of thing will be used as evidence\nto make that case. That might not be fair. Sure technically you\ncan advance the interests of everyday Americans and also do dumb\nshit like this. But the fact is that far from “making liberal\nheads explore [sic],” you’re actually handing them a political gift. It\nhelps their case much more than it helps ours. And, like I said,\nthe historical logic here is totally confused. Lake Ontario was\nnot named after the Canadian province of Ontario. It’s the other\nway around.
\n
Good sign that the whole mad-king thing is running on fumes when even Daily Wire commentators agree that this is stupid and isn’t even an effective troll. Every deluded fool runs into reality eventually. (Via Oliver Darcy’s Status.)
\n\nAlso: Applying a new name to the Gulf of Mexico is equally ahistorical?—?Mexico only achieved independence from Spain in 1821; the Gulf’s name is twice as old as Mexico as a nation and 150 years older than the United States.
\n\nLink: x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2093060290371870948
\n" }, { "title" : "From the DF Archive: ‘Golfo Del Gringo Loco’", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T15:00:39Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T15:32:00Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/df-archive-golfo-del-gringo-loco", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/df-archive-golfo-del-gringo-loco", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/golfo_del_gringo_loco", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nYours truly back in February 2025:
\n\n\n\n\nThe motivation behind the name change is simple as well. Trump\ndidn’t change the US’s officially recognized name of, say, the\nAtlantic Ocean or the continent of Africa. He just as easily\ncould, but he won’t.
\n
I’m starting to worry how well that’s going to hold up.
\n\n\n\n\nAnd it’s not like “Gulf of Mexico” was on a list of “debatable or\ncontroversial names” until he created this controversy out of thin\nair. It’s just the one name on the globe that a president of the\nUnited States can change to stick it to Mexico, a country Donald\nTrump has objectively racist feelings toward. Trump\nnever campaigned on building a wall at our northern border with\nCanada, nor has he (yet?) attempted to rename Lake Ontario.
\n
That “(yet?)” held up very well, alas. The rest of my essay holds up very well too, I think, especially pertaining to how Google and Apple present the change in their respective maps apps:
\n\n\n\n\nSo whether Google and Apple should show the new name at all\nshouldn’t be the question we’re asking. The right question is\nnecessarily more nuanced: Who should see which names, where? And\nGoogle and Apple’s answers to that question are, alas,\ndisappointing and worrisome. I’ll repeat the seemingly identical\npolicy both companies are actually presenting today, by region:
\n\n\n
\n\n- United States: “Gulf of America”.
\n- Mexico: “Gulf of Mexico”.
\n- Everywhere else in the world: “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of\nAmerica)”.
\nThe best politically realistic option they could have chosen would\nbe (I’ll use italics to emphasize that these are my own\nsuggestions):
\n\n\n
\n\n- United States: “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)”.
\n- Everywhere else in the world: “Gulf of Mexico”.
\nThere’s no good reason to even show “Gulf of America” in\nparentheses outside the US. We’re the ones with the stupid name\nchange on the books, so we’re the ones who should get stuck seeing\nthe stupid name. No one else should suffer the consequences of our\npolitical lunacy. But it is correct to show us, in America, the\nnew dumb “Gulf of America” name. Again, if it were up to me,\nAmerican users would see “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)”, and\neveryone else would just see “Gulf of Mexico”. But that’s surely\nthe best we in the reality-based community could hope for.
\n
Earlier in the essay, I wrote:
\n\n\n\n\nTo ignore political reality is to court political controversy. It\nis not in the interests of large multinational corporations to\ncourt controversy. But it’s not possible to avoid controversy.\nWhat is reasonable is to minimize controversy.
\n
Trump has delivered fresh “Lake America” shit sandwiches for Google and Apple to eat. I suggest that the path I recommended 18 months ago remains the path of eating the least shit, maintaining the most integrity, and courting the least collective controversy. Label it “Lake America (Lake Ontario)” to those of us here in the U.S., and keep it as “Lake Ontario” with no mention of Trump’s petulant fiat name anywhere else in the world.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/2025/02/golfo_del_gringo_loco
\n" }, { "title" : "Trump Declares That Lake Ontario Is Now ‘Lake America’", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T14:02:53Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T14:17:34Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/trump-lake-ontario", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/28/trump-lake-ontario", "external_url" : "https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/lake-america-ontario-canada-trade-war-trump-executive-order-rename", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJackie Llanos and Jenna Monnin, reporting for NOTUS:
\n\n\n\n\nPresident Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order meant\nto rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” taking his apparent jab\nat Canada one step further as a trade war between the two\ncountries escalates.
\n\nThe president said the name change was “effective immediately”\nduring a signing ceremony in the Oval Office. The executive order\ndirects Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic\nNames Information Service to reflect the name change. When asked\nby reporters about the move, Trump said he was sending “no\nmessage” to Canada with the name change.
\n\n“Lake of America was something I’ve been thinking about for a long\ntime,” the president said. “Actually, as you know, we took\nsomething called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s\nvery routinely the Gulf of America.”
\n
Aaron Rupar has video clips of Trump declaring the change in an Oval Office press event, here and here. In the second clip Trump ruminates, “So if you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean, so maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.” Those who deny that he’s a mad king slipping ever deeper into dementia might say, well, he’s obviously joking. But if I had told those same people just two years ago, in the run up to his reelection, that Trump was going to declare new names for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, they’d have said I was crazy because that would be nutty.
\n\nIt is nutty. Renaming these large bodies of water is nuts. He’s nuts. This is not complicated. Crazy people do crazy things and this is obviously crazy. I often use the phrase jokingly but Donald Trump is not hooked up right, and the proof is right before our eyes on camera every day.
\n\nFactoid: HOMES is the longstanding mnemonic for recalling the five Great Lake names: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. “Hames”, technically, is a playable Scrabble/Wordle word (“a part of a horse collar”), but it’s far too obscure to serve as a mnemonic. That leaves one word in the English language consisting of the five necessary letters: SHAME.
\n\nLink: notus.org/trump-white-house/lake-america-ontario-canada…
\n" }, { "title" : "U.S. Judge Blocks Trump Defense Department’s Anthropic Blacklisting", "date_published" : "2026-08-28T02:59:46Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-28T03:00:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/anthropic-beats-defense-department", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/anthropic-beats-defense-department", "external_url" : "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-pentagons-anthropic-blacklisting-2026-08-28/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJack Queen, Reuters:
\n\n\n\n\nA U.S. judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of\nAnthropic, ?the latest turn in the Claude maker’s high-stakes\nfight with the military over AI safety on the battlefield.
\n\nAnthropic’s lawsuit in California federal court alleges that\nDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when\nhe designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk,\na label the government can apply to companies that expose\nmilitary systems to potential infiltration or sabotage by\nadversaries. [...]
\n\nU.S. District Judge Rita Lin, an appointee of former Democratic\nPresident Joe Biden, ?made the ruling in a 59-page order where she\nfound that the Pentagon’s decision was “illegal and baseless.”
\n\n“The empty invocation of national ?security is not a blank check\nto punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.
\n
The imperial aspects of Trump 2.0 are increasingly coming apart at the seams.
\n\nLink: reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-pentagons…
\n" }, { "title" : "Afterglow?—?Classic After Dark Screen Savers on Today’s MacOS", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T21:49:50Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T23:12:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/afterglow", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/afterglow", "external_url" : "https://morphing.cloud/afterglow/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJeff Halter has done it again: after bringing back the single greatest After Dark module (Ben Haller’s Lunatic Fringe game, via a modern runtime named Lunacy), he’s now released Afterglow:
\n\n\n\n\nRunning After Dark modules in the present day has involved fussy\nconfiguration of Mac OS emulators or vintage hardware. Even then,\nno single emulator or vintage computer can faithfully run every\nmodule: some animate too fast, some too slow.
\n\nAfterglow is an emulator built specifically for running After Dark\nmodules?—?the original 68k module code, not a remake or port?—?with no dependencies on ROMs or classic Mac OS. Created in the\nspirit of software preservation, it makes After Dark easy to enjoy\ntoday and for years to come.
\n
All this in the same summer during which Halter released Stacks, his beautiful native modern HyperCard player. And don’t even look at his reproduction of volume 68 of MacWarehouse from 1997.
\n\nLink: morphing.cloud/afterglow/
\n" }, { "title" : "The Load-Bearing Vocabulary of Claude", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T21:09:42Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T21:09:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/the-load-bearing-vocabulary-of-claude", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/the-load-bearing-vocabulary-of-claude", "external_url" : "https://louisabraham.github.io/load-bearing/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nFun (but depressing?) data analysis project from Louis Abraham, showing how repetitive Claude is in the words it chooses when submitting GitHub pull requests. Abraham, in the project’s readme:
\n\n\n\n\nGitHub pull request descriptions, grouped by the words they are\nwritten with rather than by anything they were told to look for:\neight ways of writing, and every description belongs to one of\nthem. One of the eight was 1.0% of the corpus at the start of 2025\nand is 45% of it by the middle of 2026.
\n
If you want to get a little more depressed, I’ve been doing deeper reading into AI watermarking research, and one of the admissions in Google’s white paper on SynthID-Text?—?the watermarking scheme Anthropic says Claude is going to start using?—?is that the technique incurs “some reduction to inter-response diversity”. That means different answers to the same prompt become more similar to each other?—?there’s less variety to watermarked text responses. That’s a load-bearing problem given that Claude clearly already struggles in this regard before watermarking its output.
\n\nLink: louisabraham.github.io/load-bearing/
\n" }, { "title" : "Elizabeth Warren’s Incoherent Outrage Regarding Apple’s Tariff Refund", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T20:46:08Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T20:46:22Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/elizabeth-warren-apple-tariff-refunds", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/elizabeth-warren-apple-tariff-refunds", "external_url" : "https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-pushes-giant-corporations-to-give-billions-in-tariff-refunds-back-to-consumers/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSpeaking of tariff refunds, here’s an official statement from Senator Elizabeth Warren from a few weeks ago:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nU.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Target, Apple,\nAmazon, Nike, Motorola, Walmart, and Energizer pushing these\ncompanies?—?each of which have or are expected to receive massive\nrebates from the Trump Administration for tariffs paid last year?—?to provide refunds to customers.
\n\n“I urge you to pass along any refund you may receive to the\nconsumers who paid higher prices for your products while the\ntariffs were in place,” wrote Senator Warren.
\n
\n\n\nNEW: Apple reportedly got $2.2 BILLION back in tariff refunds.\nAmazon got $600 MILLION.
\n\nWhat’s their plan to give YOU your money back?
\n
Warren published the letters she sent to the CEOs, including Tim Cook:
\n\n\n\n\nReports indicate that Apple has applied for a refund of the\nroughly $3.3 billion in tariffs you paid in 2025, and as of July\n30th, that you have received nearly $2.2 billion in refunds.\nThis amounts to a multi-billion dollar windfall, which could still\ngrow if more of your refund petitions are granted. You have\nclaimed that you “plan to reinvest any amount we receive back into\nU.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing,” but this vague\nstatement offers no clarity as to where this money will go:\nindeed, it implies that you will not be returning it to the\nmillions of consumers who purchased Apple products last year and\npaid higher prices. [...]
\n\nYou have received an astronomical cash infusion in the form of a\ntariff refund, and Apple customers who paid increased prices for\nyour products, ostensibly due to tariffs, deserve to know how that\nmoney will be spent. Your vague statements about “reinvesting”\nthe refund leave hardworking Americans who paid hundreds of\ndollars more to buy Apple products in the dark about why they paid\nthose increased prices and where their money will go. To better\nunderstand the disposition of any tariff refund you might receive,\nI request that you respond to the following questions by August\n21, 2026.
\n
Amongst the 11 questions she asks, the only one that seems pertinent is #5:
\n\n\n\n\n(5) How much did Apple increase prices on products in 2025?
\n
\n(a) For what products did Apple increase prices, and how many of\n these products were directly impacted by tariffs?
Unless I’m missing something, the answers are “$0” and “none”. Apple increased none of its prices on any of its products in response to tariffs in 2025. The iPhone 17 lineup, in fact, surprised many observers and made news by holding prices steady.
\n\nIn May 2025, Warren co-signed a letter to the FTC encouraging them to discourage large profitable companies from raising prices due to tariffs. Apple?—?a large profitable company?—?didn’t raise prices at all, which seemingly was what Warren thought they should do. But now she’s expressing outrage that Apple got a refund for the tariffs whose costs the company covered, and her followers are left to believe that Apple did raise prices and is keeping the money.
\n\nLink: warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-pushes…
\n" }, { "title" : "Panic Is Refunding Tariff Fees to Playdate Buyers", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T20:10:13Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T20:10:14Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/panic-playdate-tariff-refunds", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/panic-playdate-tariff-refunds", "external_url" : "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/playdate-maker-is-refunding-tariff-fees-to-customers", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNicole Carpenter and Diego Argüello, reporting for Game Developer:
\n\n\n\n\n“There was a specific window of time this year where we charged\ntariffs to customers,” Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explained in\nan e-mail to Game Developer confirming the news. “We tried\nabsorbing the cost for a while, but that was financially difficult\nfor a small company like ours. We made the tariff a very obvious\nand clearly labeled line item on checkout for any customer\naffected.”
\n\nPanic also set up a website to explain the 19% tariff surcharge.\n[...] The refund amount a customer will get back depends on how\nmuch they purchased.
\n\n“It’s just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give\nit back,” Sasser said. “That’s an easy way to know you made the\nright decision.”
\n\nHe continued: “Still, it took a lot of work for us to file all the\npaperwork to get the refund from the government, and it took work\nto build a little system to process the refund, and sometimes it\nfelt like, wait, why are we seemingly doing more work than even\ngigantic companies are on this issue? That felt weird. But I guess\nit makes sense in a way, because our small size means we’re far\nmore directly affected by something like a tariff.”
\n\nSasser said he hopes Panic never has to talk about tariffs again.
\n
Cool story from a cool company, and amen to the day we never hear about tariffs again.
\n\nLink: gamedeveloper.com/business/playdate-maker-is-refunding…
\n" }, { "title" : "Ads in Apple Maps Have Now Launched", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T20:02:35Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T20:04:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/ads-in-apple-maps", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/ads-in-apple-maps", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/25/apple-maps-launches-ads-on-iphone-heres-whats-new/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nRyan Christoffel, 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nApple confirmed to 9to5Mac that the ads rollout in Maps began in\nthe last few days. And it will continue ramping in the weeks ahead\nto all users.
\n\nThere are two places you’ll find ads in the Maps app:
\n\n\n
\n- Before searching: Suggested Places in the search screen will\nfeature an ad.
\n- After searching: Ads will appear in search results when\nrelevant.
\n
Before searching, I saw an ad for an HVAC contractor 12 miles away in “Suggested Places”. Knock on wood but I currently have no HVAC problems, and even if I did, I’d just call someone and have them come here. Then I waited a few minutes and looked again. This time I saw an ad for Tommy’s Express Car Wash (“Get your first month free”), 23 miles away in the middle of a suburban shopping mall. Apple Maps estimates it would take me 1 hour 8 minutes to drive there right now. I’ll get right on that.
\n\nThe first organic (non-ad) suggested place is a coffee shop 300 feet away.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/08/25/apple-maps-launches-ads-on-iphone…
\n" }, { "title" : "‘How Europe Is Killing Makers and Micro-Entrepreneurs’", "date_published" : "2026-08-27T19:42:48Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-27T19:42:48Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/lectronz-europe-epr", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/27/lectronz-europe-epr", "external_url" : "https://lectronz.com/u/lectronz/articles/how-europe-is-killing-makers-and-micro-entrepreneurs", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAlain Pannetrat, founder of Lectronz:
\n\n\n\n\nLectronz is a marketplace for open-source hardware makers and\nDIY electronics. Most of our sellers are not factories or\nwell-funded start-ups. They are engineers, independent designers,\nand hardware enthusiasts working from spare rooms, garages, and\ntiny workshops.
\n\nSome earn a living from their products. Some sell only a handful\nof boards each year. Others build ten units simply because they\ncreated something useful and want to share it with the community.\nOccasionally, one of those experiments grows into a real business.\nEvery Arduino begins somewhere.
\n\nBut the European Union’s new packaging rules now threaten to kill\nthe world of makers and micro-entrepreneurs, putting jobs,\nlivelihoods and an entire ecosystem of innovation at risk.
\n
Pannetrat says these new regulations will require even one-person hobbyists to spend hundreds of euros per year (and file paperwork) for each country they ship to. The costs will far outstrip the money they make from selling a few dozen gadgets or circuit boards, and the hassles are probably worse than the costs. But these regulations are no big deal at all to big companies like Amazon?—?they only hurt smaller companies, and they’re effectively crushing to hobbyists.
\n\nA couple of years ago Philadelphia banned retailers from using plastic bags. It’s worked out great. More people bring reusable shopping bags with them, and if you need a bag from the store, you get paper bags that they charge you a nickel each for. A small price to encourage bag reuse, and the end result is no more plastic bags. Regulations can be very effective without adding any complexity or annoyance to daily life.
\n\nLink: lectronz.com/u/lectronz/articles/how-europe-is-killing…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Memory and Storage Configurations and Pricing for the New Mac Minis (M6/M5 Pro) and Mac Studios (M5 Max/M5 Ultra)", "date_published" : "2026-08-25T14:38:01Z", "date_modified" : "2026-08-25T21:57:10Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/configurations_and_pricing_for_new_mac_minis_and_mac_studios", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/configurations_and_pricing_for_new_mac_minis_and_mac_studios", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple today announced an all new lineup of Mac Mini (M6 and M5 Pro) and Mac Studio (M5 Max and M5 Ultra) desktops. The Apple Newsroom announcements for Mac Mini and Mac Studio only note base model prices. Here’s my attempt to put all of the RAM/SSD configurations into condensed tables, so you can see which storage and memory options are available for each chip, and how much they cost.
\n\n![\n](/html/feeds/json/"https:/daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/iphone-17-pro-deep-blue-one-year.jpeg/"){kind=link}
![“Download for Mac (Beta)” link](/html/feeds/json/"https:/daringfireball.net/misc/2026/09/meta-ai-mac-download-link.png/"){kind=link}
![saw an ad](/html/feeds/json/"https:/daringfireball.net/misc/2026/08/tommys-express-carwash.jpeg/"){kind=link}
12-core CPU, 12-core GPU: $900\n RAM:\n 16 GB $0\n 24 GB $200\n 32 GB $400\n SSD:\n 256 GB $0\n 512 GB $200\n 1 TB $500\n 2 TB $1000\n15-core CPU, 16-core GPU: $1,700\n18-core CPU, 20-core GPU: $1,900\n RAM:\n 24 GB $0\n 48 GB $600\n 64 GB $1000\n SSD:\n 512 GB $0\n 1 TB $300\n 2 TB $800\n 4 TB $1800\n 8 TB $3800\n18-core CPU, 32-core GPU: $2,500\n RAM:\n 36 GB $0\n18-core CPU, 40-core GPU: $3,100\n RAM:\n 48 GB $0\n 64 GB $400\n 128 GB $2000\n SSD:\n 512 GB $0\n 1 TB $300\n 2 TB $800\n 4 TB $1800\n 8 TB $3800\n30-core CPU, 64-core GPU: $5,500\n36-core CPU, 80-core GPU: $6,800\n RAM:\n 96 GB $0\n 256 GB $4000\n 512 GB “Coming late October”\n SSD:\n 1 TB $0\n 2 TB $500\n 4 TB $1500\n 8 TB $3500\n 16 TB $7500\nEthernet: Across all Mac Mini models, upgrading from 2.5 gigabit to 10 gigabit is $100. On Mac Studio, 10 gigabit is standard on all models.
If you configure an M6 Mac Mini with 2 TB of storage, the SSD upgrade ($1,000) costs more than the entire base model computer ($900). So too with the 4 TB SSD upgrade for the M5 Pro Mini ($1,800 upgrade for a $1,700 computer).
Both Mac Mini and Mac Studio are available in a wide array of cool color choices, including silver.
It kind of stinks that there are no RAM options for the M5 Ultra Studio between the 96 GB base and the $4,000 256 GB upgrade. There “should be” a 128 GB tier, but if you squint you can see why they did it this way.
The best currently-available-to-order Mac Studio (36/80 cores, 256 GB RAM, 16 TB SSD) costs $18,300. But if you’re OK with the base 30/64-core chip and just 8 TB storage, you can cut the price to a smooth $13,000.
“Coming late October” = “Bend over”.