MG Siegler, back on Sunday, before Judge Gonzales Rogers’s “settle this between yourselves or I’ll see you in court next week” order on Monday: Again, Sweeney is not a moron, he has to know all of this. But why simply sit quietly when you have an excuse to poke the bear...

PJ Vogt, in a very fun episode of his podcast, Search Engine:

A small group of Americans becomes convinced they’ve discovered something strange about their iPhones: a forbidden phrase the phone will refuse to transmit. A crack podcasting team searches for answers, wherever they may lead.

The bug is that if you send an audio voice message in Apple Messages, and mention the name “Dave & Busters”, the recipient will never receive the message. I had a good guess, right away, what was happening. But I don’t want to spoil it — it’s a fun listen.

But when you’re done listening, and you want a thorough explanation, check out Guilherme Rambo’s thorough investigation. So good.

The Daily Show:

Award-winning journalist Patrick McGee joins Jon Stewart to discuss how Apple built China in his new book Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company. They talk about Apple “sleepwalking” into this crisis, building a competitive market in Xi Jinping’s authoritarian state, the vocational training that boosted rivals, how Trump’s attempted Apple boycott backfired, and whether investments may be facilitating the annexation of Taiwan.

Terrific interview. I’m a few chapters into the book, and it’s good. McGee’s a good writer and a serious reporter — the depth of his research shows. It feels not like a few stories padded out to book length, but instead the distillation of a complex story that demands an entire book to tell.

The Sunday Times of London ran a good excerpt from Patrick McGee’s Apple in China (News+ link, in case you need it): The ripple effect from Apple’s investments across Chinese industry was accelerated by a rule imposed by Apple that its suppliers could be no more than 50 ...

Barry Ritholtz, in an excerpt from his brand-new book, How Not to Invest, marking the occasion of the 24th anniversary of Cliff Edwards’s claim chowder hall of famer, predicting doom for Apple’s then-new foray into its own chain of retail stores: There are many genuinely...

No details on what yet, but a lovely little 9-minute video on why. Sam Altman: “What it means to use technology can change in a profound way. I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago.” J...

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States. Epic Games announced the return of the battle royale gaming app this afternoon, and you can head to the App Store now to download it...

Taegan Goddard:

When Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for the definition of “habeas corpus,” Noem incorrectly described it as a right that the President of the United States has to deport people.

You can go the Latin route (“produce the body”) or the English common-law route (the accused have a right to be shown the evidence against them and defend themselves in court). Noem went the “biggest clown of the clown-car Trump 2.0 administration” route.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

With Apple blocking Fortnite from returning to the U.S. App Store, Epic Games told the court that Apple was violating the injunction and asked that Apple be forced to approve the app. The judge overseeing the case responded to Epic’s request today, and she is sounding more and more fed up with Apple’s continued defiance and Epic’s grousing.

“More and more fed up” is perhaps euphemistic, given Gonzalez Rogers’s tone today.

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John Siracusa, in a piece that, in a bit of rhetorical deftness, only mentions Tim Cook by name once: What should be motivating Apple to make improvements — the desire to make great products — seems absent. What should not be motivating Apple — the desire for power, cont...

The reader who sent me this video said, “I’ve never seen a more Star Wars + Gruber combo on Instagram” and — right down to the profanity — I have to agree.

The president of the United States, on his blog: Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT...

Rolfe Winkler and Yang Jie, reporting last week for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link, but also here’s a News+ link): Apple is weighing price increases for its fall iPhone lineup, a step it is seeking to couple with new features and design changes, accord...

I never linked to the viral blog post where Jobs was quoted recommending my article, I never mentioned it in a post, but I *did* acknowledge it, in what is clearly the most Daring-Fireball-ish way possible: I made it the slogan under the logo banner.

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Month-old news but I’m cleaning up tabs today. I love everything about this pickup except the fact that it doesn’t have a speaker system built-in. No one wants to put a Bluetooth boombox in their cabin and, worse, isn’t that sort of an obvious safety hazard? You get in a crash and now there’s a boombox flying around inside. Just put a simple bluetooth speaker system in.

But the aesthetics of this are chef’s-kiss good. It’s a beautiful little truck. It gets everything right that the Cybertruck gets wrong.

However, I have some questions about how real this is. You pay $50 now to get in the queue for pre-orders, but pre-orders haven’t even started. Deliveries are supposed to start in “late 2026” but Car and Driver is cautiously describing it as a “2027 truck EV”. I’m rooting for them but at this point it’s a promise not a truck.

Tyler Pager, The New York Times: Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was diagnosed Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office said in a statement on Sunday. The diagnosis came after Mr. Biden reported urinary symptoms, wh...

There’s an accompanying blog post too, but the video (around 18 minutes) is (unsurprisingly, from Top Gear) better. It’s just a great tour of everything from how you set it up to what it offers, and what the various “themes” look like — and how you switch between them. The ...

Scheduled to drop Monday, but you can click-through to pre-download it now. If you’re not familiar, Puzzmo is sort of a collection of “newspaper puzzle games for the online age”. (Which is also a good description for recent DF sponsor Lex.Games.) One of Puzzmo’s cofounders is Zach Gage, whose hits include Really Bad Chess and Knotwords, and who was my guest on The Talk Show back in 2022.

Anyway, if casual puzzle games are your jam, you should check out Puzzmo. My suggestion is check them out now, see how you like it as a web app on your iPhone, and then compare when the app hits the App Store on Monday. Puzzmo is a really good web app. I bet, though, the app is better.

See also: This blog post from Puzzmo developer Orta Therox from February, discussing some of the engineering changes they made while developing the app.

There’s an old adage in poker: If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the fish is, that means you’re the fish.

If you’re surprised at how this publicity stunt from Epic has turned out, especially if you’re a reporter and ran a piece accepting Tim Sweeney’s word that Fortnite was — not might be, but was — coming back to the US App Store as a fact, then you are Tim Sweeney’s fish.

So, what would *you* do if Steve Jobs was quoted in a viral blog post saying, “We think «*Your Name Here*»’s post is very insightful and not negative”? I decided to just sit there with a smug look on my face for a few days.

Nilay Patel: There’s a lot of tactical stuff you might talk about in the aftermath of this ruling — about what Apple might do next, how it might impact revenue, and how developers might respond. But I really wanted Gruber to talk about Apple’s big picture and how a compa...

Speaking of Jacob Eiting, his company RevenueCat today posted some interesting findings from a test comparing conversions rates for IAP vs. web checkout for the same app: Two weeks ago, there was a court order in the Apple vs Epic case that forced Apple to allow develope...

Andy Allen, of Not Boring Software, last week on Threads: While the focus on the App Store injunction has been mostly on the commission rate, what’s been overlooked is just how far the tools of the App Store have fallen behind. There’s a long and growing list of feature...

Apple proposed a much less objectionable “external payments” disclosure in August, but claims that the EC told them not to implement it.

Dr. Drang, writing at And Now It’s All This: Back before the LaserWriter and PostScript (it’s an all InterCaps day here at ANIAT) made resolution independence commonplace, most printers were of the dot-matrix variety, usually at a fairly low resolution. The original Imag...

Jacob Parry, reporting last week for Politico: “We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for,” said Apple spokesperson Emma Wilson. “Despite countless meetings, the Com...

Arjun Kharpal, reporting for CNBC: “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India....

Apple Newsroom: Starting today, CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, is available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S. and Canada, and will be available for existing models that feature the brand’s next-generation infotainment system through a softw...