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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter:
For his first movie job — he would work on more than 300
campaigns during his career — United Artists executive David
Chasman hired him to design the poster for West Side Story
(1961), then asked him to come up with the letterhead for...
My thanks to Dekáf Coffee Roasters for sponsoring last week at DF. Dekáf believes that people who drink coffee for its flavor are the true connoisseurs. While other roasters treat decaf as a side project, they’ve made it their entire mission. They’re dedicated to creating ex...
Jason Lalljee, reporting for Axios Tuesday:
President Trump’s nomination of Heritage Foundation economist E.J.
Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday drew
criticism from economists across the political spectrum. Why it
matters: The growing negative conse...
Emma Roth, reporting for The Verge back on July 1 (emphasis added):
Threads’ DMs are currently available to users aged 18 and over on
Android, iOS, and the web, but you can only have one-on-one
conversations right now. Moving forward, Threads plans to roll out
the abilit...
From a press release from the UK’s National Drought Group this week, quoting group chair Helen Wakeham (emphasis added):
“We are grateful to the public for following the restrictions,
where in place, to conserve water in these dry conditions. Simple,
everyday choices — s...
Steve Wozniak turned 75 (!) and was profiled by John Blackstone for CBS News (also posted to YouTube). Slashdot linked to it, and in the comments, someone gently jabbed at Woz for having sold, rather than hoarded, his stock in Apple. Woz himself chimed in, with this comment ...
Bloomberg:
The Trump administration is in talks with Intel Corp. to have the
US government take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, according
to people familiar with the plan, in the latest sign of the White
House’s willingness to blur the lines between state and indus...
Dieter Bohn left The Verge to work for Google on their “Platforms & Ecosystems” team. He hasn’t had much of a visible presence since, or least not one that I’ve noticed. But this 90-second video he made showing off the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is nice. It’s a better pitch for the device than anything I’ve seen from Samsung itself, and it’s a good pitch for Google Gemini too.
Greg Ip, chief economics commentator for The Wall Street Journal, under the euphemistic headline “The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics”:
A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China
liberalized, its economy would come to resem...
Apple Newsroom this morning, “An Update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch in the U.S.”:
Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for
some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2
users through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming
l...
Alexandra Alper, reporting for Reuters:
Donald Trump’s Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly
complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800
million combined to develop, work initially aimed at overhauling
antiquated human resources systems....
The Information (paywalled, alas):
In December, Perplexity discussed possibly buying the six-year-old
The Browser Co. with that company’s leaders, according to two
people with knowledge of the discussions. Talks with the company,
which operates an AI-powered web browser,...
Max Read, two years ago, “A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials”:
I’m talking about the mocked-up texts and emails Apple puts
together to demonstrate new messaging features in its
operating-system updates, presumably written by some well-paid
pr...
Eric Migicovsky:
First off, for those who didn’t catch the news from a few weeks
ago — we’ve been able to recover the Pebble trademark! Our
new watches will change from being called Core 2 Duo → Pebble 2
Duo, and Core Time 2 → Pebble Time 2.
The big news today is that w...
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