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John Gruber
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Text • John Gruber

Mux: Turn Your Video Into Context

mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF

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

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

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

Link: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF

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Reelizer Returns

reelizer.com/

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

Link: reelizer.com/

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Alexandr Wang: ‘Why I’m Building Muse’

x.com/alexandr_wang/status/2103551714536439951

Alexandr Wang, blogging on X: Now imagine every person on earth with a second mind beyond their own. A general manager whose whole job is to find out what you want and make sure it happens. Someone that hears the half-sentence, “I feel like there’s something more I could...

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Apple’s Other Recent ‘Duo’

support.apple.com/en-us/111812

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

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International Standard Paper Sizes

cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

Markus Kuhn: In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). In other words, the width and the height of a page relate to each other like the side and the diagonal of a square. This aspect ratio is especially c...

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Microsoft Took the ‘Copilot+ PC’ Brand Out Behind the Shed

windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/the-copilot-pc-brand-is-dead-microsoft-and-pc-makers-quietly-pull-back-on-tarnished-windows-11-ai-pc-branding

Zac Bowden, Windows Central: In 2024, Microsoft and Qualcomm kicked off a new category of Windows hardware it called “Copilot+ PCs” that set the baseline for a new wave of AI-first computers, and launched with exclusive features that would not be made available on PCs th...

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The Talk Show: ‘I’m Thinking X, Not X’

daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/09/25/ep-455

Andru Edwards returns to the show to discuss Apple’s big September event and their new products: the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo, AirPods 5, and Apple Watch Series 12/Ultra 4.

Sponsored by:

  • Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year, while supplies last, with code talkshow50off.
  • Notion: The collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents work side by side, with a developer platform teams can build on.

Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/09/25/ep-455

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Mr. Choyka Is Apparently Doing Well

usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2020/02/02/golf-amateur-gary-choyka-sinks-two-holes-one-same-round/4639969002/

A reader asked if this Gary Choyka who hit two holes-in-one in the same round of golf back in 2020 is the same Gary Choyka who was my history teacher 30+ years ago. Indeed it is. He looks good. (He was a hell of a basketball player too.)

Link: usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2020/02/02/golf-amateur-gary…

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Stock UI in MacOS 27 Eschews Clarity

mastodon.design/@thibault/117320401426286497

“Thibault”, in post on Mastodon responding to Brent Simmons’s “stock Mac UI” post that I just linked to: It reminded me of my own explorations with the macOS design language, especially the modern title/toolbar which I believe is one of the most foundational design regre...

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Brent Simmons on ‘Stock’ Mac UI

inessential.com/2026/09/22/that-about-wraps-it-up-for.html

Brent Simmons: To recap: the reasons for using stock Mac UI are 1) user familiarity, which we’ve known for a while just isn’t a thing, and 2) hoping to be able to expend less developer effort, which we’ve seen can work against you. But there’s another reason: the stock ...

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★ I’ll Wait

It’s Friday, and Muse is still the #1 app in the iOS App Store — that’s a full week in the top spot. Who knows if it’s a flash in the pan or not. (Remember Clubhouse? Sora?) But at the moment it’s clearly a hit. It certainly helps that Meta itself is promoting Muse heavily o...

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Regarding the Provenance of Charm Within Meta

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/meta-debuts-a-dedicated-palm-sized-muse-charm-device-to-use-ai-on-the-go?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MDIwNzg4MCwiZXhwIjoxNzkwODEyNjgwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTFRUVUxUOU5KTFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.k7amXXn8zTVQuiTpQIE0Q_IJY9ny_TINEpSrguxIva8&leadSource=article-gifting

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg Wednesday, after Meta’s 2026 Connect keynote (gift link): Meta Platforms Inc. unveiled a palm-sized, dedicated gadget for using Muse, the company’s popular new artificial intelligence assistant, pushing deeper into the AI devices mark...

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Muse Looks Cute, but Looks Are Deceiving

inc.com/jason-aten/meta-keeps-apologizing-for-muse-its-explanations-miss-the-point-entirely/91409363

Jason Aten, in a good follow-up to his previous column at Inc. (the one where he described how Muse, running on his Mac, read his Messages database): The entire reason Muse is interesting is that it isn’t just a chatbot, but can actually do things for you. But that promi...

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I Was Not Blown Away by Eli Tan’s ‘I Was Blown Away’ Review of Meta Muse

nytimes.com/2026/09/22/technology/meta-muse-ai-agent.html?unlocked_article_code=1.D1E.Wram.T8Ww85vXKKYU

Eli Tan, writing for The New York Times, “I Gave My Life Over to Meta’s A.I. Agent and Was Blown Away” (gift link): For one final task, I asked Wren for a good way to spend that $44.99 it had saved me. At this point, it knew my life pretty well. I thought it might sugges...

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Victoria Song on Meta Muse’s Cuteness

theverge.com/column/999999/optimizer-meta-muse-ai-cute?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkFlVU9GbXpuZFUiLCJwIjoiL2NvbHVtbi85OTk5OTkvb3B0aW1pemVyLW1ldGEtbXVzZS1haS1jdXRlIiwiZXhwIjoxNzkwNzAxNDAwLCJpYXQiOjE3OTAyNjk0MDB9.chaHCz3wgiI4jn9EzA11I7fHhqQkEmn17aCiXtOBPEU

Victoria Song, in her Optimizer column/newsletter for The Verge: I’ve been aggressively avoiding Muse since it launched a few weeks ago. Sure, some of that is because I was busy testing other devices. But the number-one reason why is that I am horribly vulnerable when fa...

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Joanna Stern Interviews Mark Zuckerberg

thenewthings.com/p/exclusive-mark-zuckerberg-interview

Great interview from Stern, as usual, seemingly conducted on the old set of Three’s Company. She opened by asking if AI is going to wipe out humanity, and I think Zuck whiffed by not simply laughing and saying no. She also directly asked his thoughts on people calling Meta G...

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Meta Connect Keynote 2026

youtube.com/watch?v=SdKFDIAGF24

Meta’s annual keynote yesterday was a tight 55-minute live event held on their campus in Menlo Park. I watched the whole thing this morning, before recording tomorrow’s episode of Dithering. (Which you should subscribe to.) It was a good keynote. Consumer products announced...

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‘Apple Opens Apple Music Hall, a State-of-the-Art Live Music Venue in London’

apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-opens-apple-music-hall-a-state-of-the-art-live-music-venue-in-london/

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced the opening of Apple Music Hall, a brand-new state-of-the-art live music venue in London’s storied Battersea Power Station, designed to connect artists and fans through bespoke, intimate performances unlike anywhere else.

Apple might be the most interesting architecture company in the world this century. They have a core look and feel they apply to their own facilities built from the ground up (e.g., Apple Park, certain flagship retail stores), but they also have tremendous respect for historic buildings they take over.

The balconies in Apple Music Hall are bronze, but the lighting (at least in Apple’s photos) is so warm that the balconies look a little like giant Mac Minis.

Link: apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-opens-apple-music-hall-a…

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Ed Zitron’s AI Prediction Track Record

danluu.com/zitron/

Dan Luu serves up some copiously documented claim chowder: After this point, most further predictions that I saw were either non-falsifiable or resolve in the future. Note that I didn’t attempt to catalogue statements that are nonsensical or were simply factually incorre...

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Copland D11E4, Emulated in Your Browser

pagetable.com/300

Michael Steil: Apple’s ill-fated Copland operating system is notoriously hard to run on real hardware, and has not previously been available in emulation. Here is the last build, D11E4 from June 1996, in an improved DingusPPC. Playing around with the GXSlidemaster app,...

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Changes to App Tracking Transparency in the E.U.

developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/

Apple Developer: As part of agreements with select European competition authorities, Apple is introducing changes to its App Tracking Transparency framework in the European Union. Beginning with iOS 27.2 and iPadOS 27.2, developers will have the option to use an alternat...

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★ The iPhone 4 ‘Antennagate’ Press Conference Q&A — Finally

The most extraordinary Apple event in the company’s modern history was the emergency press conference on Friday, 16 July 2010 to address “antennagate” — the out-of-control media narrative that the iPhone 4 had a defective antenna design. The event was only scheduled one day ...

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‘Prepare to Ship’ Is a Clever Software Solution That Allows iPhone 18 Pro Max to Ship With a Battery That Would Otherwise Exceed International Shipping Regulations

support.apple.com/en-us/127848

Apple Support: iPhone 18 Pro Max offers a huge increase in battery life, in part due to increasing the battery capacity to over 20 watt-hours (Wh). Devices with a single-cell battery over 20 Wh have additional shipping requirements in most countries and regions. To addre...

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App Store Scam of the Week: ‘Update My Phone & Apps: Guide’ by Tair Olzhasev

apps.apple.com/us/app/update-my-phone-apps-guide/id6753936837

“Update My Phone & Apps: Guide” is an iOS app from developer Tair Olzhasev. By default, the only thing it does for free is give you a “Check for Updates” button that launches the system Settings app. It doesn’t even take you to the General → Software Update screen. It ju...

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★ AppZapper 3000

Back in the mid-2000s there was a golden era of exuberantly designed Mac apps. Paul Kafasis coined it “The Delicious Generation”, a perfect name. The delicious was both a reference to Wil Shipley and Mike Matas’s Delicious Library — a personal media library management app th...

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Super Intelligence, Indeed

bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mw4it5l5fd23

President Donald Trump, in a prepared speech before the United Nations General Assembly yesterday (one-minute video clip from Aaron Rupar, posted on Bluesky): The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial...

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Meta’s Muse Logomark, Designed by Jessica Hische

thedieline.com/jessica-hische-metas-muse-and-the-ethical-landmines-of-design/

Bill McCool, writing at Dieline: This past Wednesday, lettering artist, designer, and author Jessica Hische took to Threads to announce that she had worked alongside Meta’s team to create the icon and logotype for their agentic AI, Muse. Acknowledging that people would b...

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Meta’s New Muse AI Agent Read Jason Aten’s Messages Database

inc.com/jason-aten/metas-new-muse-ai-agent-read-my-private-messages-i-never-asked-it-to/91408202

Jason Aten, writing for Inc: Then, yesterday, I was having a conversation with my Primary Technology podcast co-host, Stephen Robles, about the new iPhones. Moments later, I got a push notification from Muse suggesting that the conversation we were having would make for ...

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Why Didn’t Google Build Muse?

spyglass.org/why-didnt-google-build-muse/

MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass: The number one response I’ve gotten to my thoughts on Meta’s Muse personal assistant agent is some variation of “I will never trust Meta with my data.” But the number two response is arguably more interesting (and related): “Why didn’t Go...

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Amazon Blocks Meta’s Muse AI Assistant

geekwire.com/2026/amazon-blocks-metas-muse-ai-assistant-in-new-standoff-over-agentic-shopping/

Todd Bishop, reporting at GeekWire: Amazon says it has cut off Meta’s new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com on behalf of customers, after attempting unsuccessfully to get the Facebook parent company to voluntarily exclude the e-commerce site from the exp...