Here’s a bit of an eye-opener from Anthropic’s “System Card” for its new Claude 4 Opus and Sonnet models:
We conducted testing continuously throughout finetuning and here
report both on the final Claude Opus 4 and on trends we observed
earlier in training. We found:
Li...
Anthropic:
Today, we’re introducing the next generation of Claude models:
Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, setting new standards for
coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents.
Claude Opus 4 is the world’s best coding model, with sustained
performance on complex, long-...
Juli Clover at MacRumors:
To change your default app, you’ll need to install the latest
version of the Google Translate app, which was released today.
From there, you can open up the Settings app, select the Apps
section, tap on Default Apps, tap Translation, and choose ...
Mark Gurman and Shirin Ghaffary, reporting yesterday for Bloomberg:
Billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is an io backer as
well, through her firm the Emerson Collective. Other investors
include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures
and SV Ang...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
Some “thank god some of you remembered because I thought I was going nuts” follow-up regarding my remembrance the other day, “15 Years Later: ‘Very Insightful and Not Negative’”. I wrote:
So, what would you do if Steve Jobs was quoted in a viral blog
post saying, “We thi...
My thanks to Bolt for sponsoring last week at DF. You can prompt, run, edit, and deploy full-stack web and mobile apps with Bolt, the AI-powered web development agent that brings coding to your browser.
Bolt lets you build, edit, and test web applications in real time with simple, chat-based prompts. No experience needed.
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 cra...
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 i...
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.
Earlier this week Nilay Patel was working on the show notes for the episode of Decoder I guested on, and he texted me to ask if I could recall the time Steve Jobs sent some random developer a link to an article I wrote about the App Store. He wanted to cite it as an example ...
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...
Some interesting follow-up on that piece yesterday about the warning — with a prominent red “!” icon — in App Store listings for apps in the EU that use their own payment processing. Apple told me that exact same warning has been in place since the very beginning of their DM...
