Sosumi.ai: Ever notice Claude struggling to write Swift code? It might not be their fault! Apple Developer docs are locked behind JavaScript, making them invisible to most LLMs. If they try to fetch it, all they see is “This page requires JavaScript. Please turn on Java...

My thanks to Impending for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their new app, Walk the World. You surely know some of Impending’s other apps, like the innovative checklist/task app Clear. Walk the World turns your steps — your real-world activity — into a new kind of virtu...

From Apple’s Xcode 26 Beta 7 release notes: Claude in Xcode is now available in the Intelligence settings panel, allowing users to seamlessly add their existing paid Claude account to Xcode and start using Claude Sonnet 4. (155826755) When using ChatGPT in Xcode, users ...

Shelby Talcott, reporting under the euphemistic headline “White House Fires CDC Director Over Vaccine Disagreements”: A showdown at the CDC culminated in the White House formally firing its director, Susan Monarez, on Wednesday night. Monarez was ousted earlier in the d...

Truly phenomenal video from Real Engineering about a genuinely phenomenal product. In my review of the AirPods Pro 2 in 2023 — a year after they originally shipped, when the cases were changed to use USB-C — I called them “the best single expression of Apple as a company today”. That remains true. AirPods exemplify everything that sets Apple apart: miniaturization, “it just works” ease of use, opinionated design (you get them in any color you want, so long as it’s white), and, most of all, joyfulness.

It occurs to me that Apple doesn’t brag enough about its engineering accomplishments these days. Under their previous CEO, they’d spend more time in product introduction explaining how things work, like a lecture in a 101 college course. I miss that. This Real Engineering video fills in those gaps.

Link: nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-hidden-design-of-the…

Christopher Yasiejko, reporting last week for Bloomberg Law: CBP exceeded its authority in an Aug. 1 internal advice ruling that overturned its own January decision without notice or input from Masimo, the medical-device maker said in a complaint filed Wednesday in the U...

Matthew Panzarino returns to the show. Topics include 007 logo creator Joe Caroff’s death at 103, Google’s weird “Made by Google” event hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the UK supposedly dropping its demand for an iCloud encryption backdoor, and Apple’s workaround for the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor patent stalemate.

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Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/08/25/ep-429

Supply chain leaker Majin Bu has the scoop, including photos of the cases and their packaging, of Apple’s second attempt at a fabric-based successor to leather iPhone cases. Apple’s first attempt two years ago, FineWoven, was so unpopular that they didn’t even offer a premiu...

After a 25-year run, the website MacSurfer closed in 2020. But, as brought to my attention two weeks ago by Nick Heer, MacSurfer quietly returned in June. No one seemed to notice until this month. The original MacSurfer was a bit of a weird site. Content-wise it was a daily...

Tulsi Gabbard — who, believe it or not, is the US director of national intelligence — on X last week: Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with our partners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our Cons...

Elon Musk, Friday:

Join @xAI and help build a purely AI software company called Macrohard. It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!

In principle, given that software companies like Microsoft do not themselves manufacture any physical hardware, it should be possible to simulate them entirely with AI.

If it’s “a purely AI software company” why do they need to hire anyone?

Link: x.com/elonmusk/status/1958852874236305793

John McCoy, on the supposedly controversial Cracker Barrel rebranding: But just because I doubt that these choices were motivated by politics doesn’t mean the detractors don’t have a point: something basic is being lost here. In both cases the companies have discarded ch...

Right on schedule: second Tuesday of September, so long as that second Tuesday doesn’t fall on September 11. (Last year’s event went on Monday 9 September, probably because the Harris-Trump debate was already scheduled for Tuesday the 10th.) There’s an interactive animated version of the “heat map” event logo on Apple’s homepage. (A little bit odd that the second item below the event announcement, after a back-to-school promotion, is a “Meet the iPhone 16 family” promotion.)

Expected announcements for this event include:

• iPhones 17 (regular, Pro, Air)
• Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3
• AirPods Pro 3

Link: macrumors.com/2025/08/26/apple-september-2025-event/

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, on page 17 of her dissent in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association:

In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.⁶ We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.

The footnote refers to the OED’s entry for “Calvinball”.

Link: supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf

Do you miss being excited about cool new apps?

We’ve made some before like Clear and Heads Up!, and today, we have a new one for you.

Walk the World turns your steps into a new kind of virtual globe-trotting adventure.

Wouldn’t it be cool to know you’ve walked the length of the Boston Marathon this past week?

You can conquer iconic hikes and trails from around the world presented as gorgeous map milestones to complete with your hard earned steps.

If you enjoy or aspire to go on walks more regularly, and beautiful indie apps with a fun new twist, this is your new healthy addiction.

Try it free today for your iPhone.

Link: apps.apple.com/us/app/walk-the-world-virtual-trails…

MacOS has shipped with a collection of “utility” apps since the prehistoric era of classic Mac OS. A good rule of thumb for what makes an app a “utility” is that it’s a tool for doing something to or about your computer. Ever since Mac OS X 10.0, most of these apps have been...

My thanks to Fly.io for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Phoenix.new, their new AI app-builder. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by Fly.io, deploy wherever you want. Just try it, and see how far you can go.

Link: phoenix.new/?utm_source=df

Nice update to Menial’s excellent SQLite developer tool for the Mac. Worth the wait.

Link: menial.co.uk/blog/2025/08/16/base-3.0-released/

Fox (capitalization verbatim): Fox Corporation today announced the official launch of FOX One, a bold new streaming service that brings together the full portfolio of FOX’s News, Sports and Entertainment branded content — all in one place, both live and on demand. Avail...

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac: Apple today announced that the monthly price of Apple TV+ is rising in the United States and some international markets. From today, the monthly subscription will cost $12.99, up from $9.99. Existing subscribers will see the price change 30 days ...

New video game, just out:

Herdling is a brand new adventure from Okomotive, creators of the atmospheric and acclaimed FAR games, and Panic, publishers of Firewatch.

Looks absolutely beautiful. Painterly. Darth says it’s good.

Available now for Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Epic Games Store. Not (yet?) in the Mac App Store — not because of any hassles regarding the App Store, but because there’s not (yet?) a Mac port of the game, period.

Link: herdling.game/

Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge back in February: Two weeks ago, we exclusively reported Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on how many pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses the company had recently sold and might theoretically sell: 1 million pairs in 2024, with t...

Added this footnote just now to yesterday’s piece on MSNBC’s rebranding to “MS NOW”:

Historical pedantry: from 1975–1979, Microsoft spelled its name “Micro-Soft”, with, yes, an uppercase S. But that’s not camel-case, and that hyphenated spelling is as much a footnote to Microsoft’s brand history as the woodcut Isaac-Newton-under-a-tree logo is to Apple. Microsoft’s logo from that era was very disco-’70s and kind of cool — but while “Micro” and “Soft” were broken across two lines, there’s no hyphen in the logotype.

Link: daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding#fn1-2025…

Sara Fischer, Axios: MSNBC, the progressive cable network owned by NBCUniversal, is rebranding to MS NOW, an acronym that stands for My Source for News, Opinion and the World. The rebrand is part of a wider effort by NBCU to create a distinction between the cable networ...

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan, reporting for Business Insider five months ago:

Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI startup Anthropic, said on Monday that AI, and not software developers, could be writing all of the code in our software in a year.

“I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event on Monday.

Complete bullshit, but, I guess he still has one month to go. (Via Dave Winer on Threads.)

Link: businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6…

Five-minute short film from Apple, about people with severe hand tremors from Parkinson’s disease using the iPhone’s Action mode to shoot steady video — including filmmaker Brett Harvey, who was diagnosed at the way-too-young age of 37. There’s also a brief short with Harvey explaining the settings to shoot in Action mode by default, or to use voice controls to avoid needing to tap buttons.

Apple at its very best. If this doesn’t hit you, you’re not hooked up right.

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=hEalzEnT70k

Kieran Healy on, just now — amidst all this — becoming an American citizen: When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relation...

I’ve been using two iPhones throughout the summer — one running iOS 18, the other running iOS 26 betas. I found myself wanting to switch between them with iPhone Mirroring on my Mac, but couldn’t figure out how. The answer, from Apple Support, “iPhone Mirroring: Use your iPh...

Counterpoint Research, in a report titled “Global Smart Glasses Shipments Soared 110 Percent YoY in H1 2025, With Meta Capturing Over 70 Percent Share”: The global smart glasses market grew by 110% YoY in H1 2025, fueled by robust demand for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses an...

Resurrect your side projects with Phoenix.new, the new AI app-builder from Fly.io. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by Fly.io, deploy wherever you want.

Link: phoenix.new/?utm_source=df