FeedCity: Daring Fireball

Daring Fireball
25 Sep 17:09 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
25 Sep 16:42 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
25 Sep 15:42 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 23:06 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 21:18 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 20:39 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 17:54 • John Gruber

‘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…

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 17:54 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
24 Sep 16:54 • John Gruber

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,...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 23:42 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 22:30 • John Gruber

★ 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 ...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 20:24 • John Gruber

‘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...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 18:57 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 17:33 • John Gruber

★ 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...

Daring Fireball
23 Sep 15:03 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 22:54 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 21:39 • John Gruber

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 ...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 21:00 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 21:00 • John Gruber

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...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 20:27 • John Gruber

Meta’s New Muse AI Agent App Overtakes ChatGPT as Top iPhone App

9to5mac.com/2026/09/18/metas-new-muse-ai-agent-app-overtakes-chatgpt-as-top-iphone-app/

Zac Hall, writing for 9to5 Mac on Friday: Meta’s new Muse AI agent app has taken the top spot on the free iPhone charts for the U.S. App Store, displacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT from the first place. Muse by Meta only launched this month, although the app has been around for ...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 19:27 • John Gruber

Xcode 27.2 Now Supports a New JSON Project File Format

developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-27_2-release-notes

Apple Developer: Xcode now supports a JSON-based project format (.xcproj) that’s more readable, merge-friendly, and easier for coding agents to edit. Enable it in the file inspector. Projects using .xcproj also open in earlier versions of Xcode 27. Apple released, on G...

Daring Fireball
22 Sep 16:15 • John Gruber

Siri AI Class-Action Lawsuit Settlement Website Is Now Live

macrumors.com/2026/09/20/siri-ai-settlement-website-now-live/

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: In May, Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a U.S. class action lawsuit over Siri AI’s delayed launch, and the settlement website is now live. Apple will pay an estimated $25 per eligible iPhone to eligible customers, who can submit a cl...

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 23:09 • Daring Fireball Department of Commerce

[Sponsor] Mux: Turn Your Video Into Context

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

Video isn’t just something to stream; it’s structured data you build with.

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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

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 22:54 • John Gruber

Lex Friedman Brings Back Strategery

lexontech.org/strategery-is-back-and-im-the-developer

I first recommended Strategery back in May 2009, including a link to Friedman’s review at Macworld. I described it thus: Strategery is a beautiful $2 Risk-like strategy game for the iPhone. Lots of fun and the gameplay has a great feel. Still lots of fun and still has ...

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 21:54 • John Gruber

GM Confirms They’re Still Smoking Crack

x.com/JoannaStern/status/2102105565195288859

Joanna Stern, on X:

GM has confirmed it is NOT rolling phone projection to GM EVs. Instead this announcement is specific to JUST their new gas powered light-duty pickups, which have always supported Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Link: x.com/JoannaStern/status/2102105565195288859

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 21:24 • John Gruber

America’s Decline Can Be Measured by the Names of Ballparks and Arenas

mlb.com/news/tigers-ballpark-name-changed-to-fifth-third-park

MLB:

Comerica Park has had several alternate identities since it became the Tigers’ home in 2000. Some have called it Comerica National Park for its spacious dimensions. Some fans simply came to call it Comerica, or abbreviated it to CoPa, as they grew comfortable with it over the years.

Starting next year, the Tigers’ ballpark will have a new formal name: Fifth Third Park.

Filth Turd Park. Rolls right off the tongue.

Link: mlb.com/news/tigers-ballpark-name-changed-to-fifth-third…

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 17:51 • John Gruber

Ichiro, at 52, Throws 127-Pitch Shutout Against All-Star Girls Team in Japan

seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/ichiro-at-52-throws-127-pitch-shutout-against-all-star-girls-team-in-japan/

Sofia Schwarzwalder, reporting for The Seattle Times: Since turning 50, the Mariners legend has been inducted into the Hall of Fame, launched eight homers at the Mariners Alumni Home Run Derby this summer and, most recently, tossed a 127-pitch shutout with 17 strikeouts ...

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 17:51 • John Gruber

Glenn Fleishman on the Increasing Impracticality of Shipping From the U.S. to the E.U.

glog.glennf.com/blog/2026/09/17/u-s-small-biz-cant-ship-to-the-eu-anymore/

Glenn Fleishman: Recent protectionist changes by the European Union further effectively exclude U.S. small businesses like mine from selling to EU customers. It’s a little complicated, but it has to do with how tax and customs fees are collected and extracted from low-va...

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 17:51 • John Gruber

David Pogue: ‘125 Tests of the New AI Siri’

pogueman.substack.com/p/125-tests-of-the-new-ai-siri

David Pogue: The hardest part will be getting out of the habit of opening apps, and remembering that you have Siri. Give it a few tries. Learn to trust it. You’ll save incredible amounts of time and fumbling. I used the beta-test version all summer, growing more and mor...

Daring Fireball
21 Sep 16:54 • John Gruber

Matthew Butterick: ‘Big AI to Humanity: Drop Dead’

matthewbutterick.com/chron/drop-dead.html

Matthew Butterick:

So let’s not take the bait. Nor overcomplicate. We needn’t spin our collective wheels spitballing answers to big-picture, long-term Al-policy questions. We don’t know enough yet. The best next steps are the concrete ones: Big Al needs to follow all current laws — just like everyone else. So far — they haven’t. When Big Al breaks those laws, they must face prosecution and penalties — just like everyone else. So far — they haven’t. The state and federal agencies tasked with enforcing those laws need to apply them to Big Al — just like everyone else. So far — they haven’t. In short, we have to attend to the basic features of the rule of law. So far — we haven’t. If we can’t or won’t insist on that now, then we shouldn’t expect to be able to later.

Link: matthewbutterick.com/chron/drop-dead.html