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 during an annual All-Star Game against the best high-school girls in Japan. [...]

The All-Star Game took place Sunday at the Tokyo Dome in front of a reported 25,000 fans. The game also featured former New York Yankees All-Star outfielder Hideki Matsui. In addition to his dazzling performance on the mound, Ichiro led off the game and had a pair of hits.

Speaking to reporters in Japanese, Ichiro said, “I wanted to see what my current limits were, and this gave me confidence in myself.”

Trung Phan, on X, posted a short video of clips. Ichiro was tossing some nasty stuff.

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...

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...

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.

Seth Godin back in 2014:

You can’t tell if a book is any good by the number of words it contains, even though it’s quite easy and direct to measure this.

(Vis-à-vis my sidenote over the weekend about Apple refusing to publish mAh battery specs for iPhones.)

Nellie Andreeva, reporting for Deadline: The release of The Savant is back on. A year after Apple TV put the thriller starring Jessica Chastain on hold three days before it was slated to premiere on Sept. 26, 2025, the streamer has rescheduled it for spring, 2027. The ex...

I genuinely enjoyed that Sara Eisen laughed a little when introducing me as having written a 5,000-word review of the iPhone 18 Pro.

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring this last week — a big week — at DF.

SSO is table stakes for enterprise deals, but building it into your app yourself means writing SAML controllers, parsing XML assertions, and handling IdP-specific quirks for each provider. Learn how SAML flows work, the tradeoffs between building or buying, and best practices for security, routing, and UX.

Or, skip the hassle and add SSO with WorkOS. Read their developer’s guide to learn more.

Natalie Neff, Autoweek: General Motors is reversing course after having begun to remove Apple CarPlay from its vehicles, showing off instead a redesigned infotainment interface for the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups that melds the smartphone apps with th...

He takes the same “this is pretty much exactly what Apple used to label an ‘S’ year” angle I did, so, unsurprisingly, I think his review is spot-on. Brownlee emphasizes one point that I should have, but didn’t: according to Apple’s published specs, the regular iPhone 18 Pro ...

Splendid video. Love that Stalman shot photos side-by-side with a film SLR using Kodak Portra 400, for comparison to Apple’s new film-look Photographic Styles.

Austin Mann:

I’m here at the beautiful Dunton River Camp in southwest Colorado, where I’ve spent the last week testing the new camera and features on the iPhone 18 Pro.

Beyond the variable aperture and Pro Controls, Apple also built in a bunch of other new features like Photographic Styles 3 with film texture and grain control, 4K Time-lapse and Focus Tracking. As always, when I start a field test I’m asking one question:

How will this new tech make our pictures and videos better?

Outstanding example photos, a terrific video that illustrates how some of the new “pro controls” in the Camera app work, and some terrific examples of Photographic Styles 3.

(I love how Mann takes these new phones to exotic locales around the globe each year, and I take them to the hardware store.)

Cleaning up my notes this morning, I realized I forgot to write about the new under-display Face ID sensor in the iPhones 18 Pro, and the corresponding change to the Dynamic Island. I just added it to my review. For those of you who’ve already read the review, here’s the new...

Miriam Pawel, in an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that the University of California should not bring back the SAT requirement for admission:

What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. [...] Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.

A success story would be increasing the number of people with solid math skills. Printing degrees for students who struggle with basic math is not a success story, and sounds like the antithesis of “academic excellence”.

Will Oremus, writing for The Atlantic last week, “Okay, Sure, a Folding iPhone” (gift link): Apple’s next big invention, the company revealed at a launch event in Cupertino, is a $2,000 iPhone that sports — get ready — a “remarkable hinge.” Is it not possible for a hin...

In addition to the Duo-specific 27.1 SDK, which allows third-party developers to get started adapting apps to the Duo’s new screen sizes and layouts, Apple’s developer site also has Figma and Sketch design kits.

Warren Buffett, in a letter to Berkshire shareholders:

Recently, I celebrated my 96th birthday with family and friends, including one of my great-grandchildren, who had just turned one. He’s moving a bit faster than I am these days. [...]

So the timing is right to complete the transition. I will become Chairman Emeritus and remain a Director. My son, Howard, will succeed me as Chairman.

Howard has been a Berkshire Director for 33 years. That is a longer apprenticeship than I served before taking the reins at the age of 34. Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.

Not many 71-year-olds rise to the position of chairman at leading corporations.

Let’s check in on the president of the United States, having a normal one on his blog: I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Polit...

Page Six Hollywood:

Ternus attended an intimate Apple party the night before the Emmys, filled with stars and powerbrokers, where some talent brazenly hit him up for the phone.

“The new phone is big news,” said one top Hollywood exec, who added that they heard of at least one star, “asking [Ternus] to get him on the list” for a phone. Joked the source about who gets the phones: “It’s like CEOs. That’s like the ‘Eddy Cue list of illuminati.’” (Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and health.)

Max Roberts, after looking at the list of MKBHD’s all-time most popular videos, and noting that his Duo first-look is #3, and a Duo follow-up is already at #36: Apple enters the category and in a week it blows past every other folding video. Now, this doesn’t translate ...

A next-day addition to my iPhones 18 Pro review.

YouTube Help: Last year, we updated how we count public views for Shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now, we’re aligning all other video formats to this same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8/24/2026, a view will be counted ...

It’s the best version of the most successful product ever made. And yet by nature of *how* the iPhone 18 Pro improved in the last year, it’s not exciting at all.

Joe Rossignol at MacRumors over the weekend: Apple now says the iPhone 18 Pro has a C2 modem worldwide, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max uses the chip in every country except for the U.S. [...] Apple has yet to provide an explanation for this modem difference, so we can only...

A note flagged “Important” atop the Xcode 27.2 release notes:

The iOS SDK and simulator support for iPhone Duo will be available later this month in an upcoming release of Xcode 27.1.

Adapting apps for the Duo is not just a simple “recompile with the new SDK”. It’s different. For just about all apps it’s going to be a significant amount of work, and for some apps it’s going to be a lot of work. But without Xcode 27.1, developers cannot get started. Developers wanted this SDK a week ago. And when day one preorder buyers start using their Duos on October 23, they’re going to wish Apple had shipped this SDK last week too.

Note the reaction from the Deadline reporter.

Steve Wozniak:

I’ve decided it’s time to have a little more fun on X this year! 😄⚡

I get to speak at some amazing events, meet fascinating people, hear great stories, and occasionally find myself in places I never expected to be. So I figured… why not share some of those moments here?

He announced this on X, you will note, not “social media”.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: Apple just seeded the first beta of iOS 27.2 to developers for testing. Yes, you read that correctly: iOS 27.2, not iOS 27.1. Why no iOS 27.1 beta? The answer likely relates to the iPhone Duo. This unusual version numbering is entirely about ...

In my long take yesterday on Apple’s event last week, I wrote that when you pay $20 extra to get the $150 AirPods 5 With Wireless Charging Case, that the case is compatible for inductive charging with “MagSafe, Qi, or Apple Watch pucks”. But the compatibility section of Appl...

Apple Security Research has released a concise, cogent paper describing how Apple Reference Image works, and why they made it. A terrific read. Here’s just one fascinating bit regarding privacy: Other industry solutions require a photographer or institution to vouch for ...