Every year since 2007, Apple has debuted a new flagship iPhone. Other than the just plain “iPhone” original, they all have numbers of some sort in their name. If you make a list of them in order, it’s a bit of a marketing curiosity that the only one of the bunch whose number...

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.

Link: developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode…

Note the reaction from the Deadline reporter.

Link: x.com/DEADLINE/status/2099645816361332775

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”.

Link: x.com/stevewoz/status/2100074363605397658

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 ...

Joe Miller, reporting for the Financial Times (via Political Wire): Veteran socialist Bernie Sanders and rightwing activist Steve Bannon are joining forces to call for greater guardrails on AI, even as Donald Trump insists concerns about the technology are a hoax that wi...

The Keynote I loved the keynote’s “You want a great opening scene?” opening, which ran through a series of genre-inspired hook-you-from-the-first-shot pretend movie openings. Apple started with a title card that said “The following was shot on iPhone”, but the whole keynote...

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 the guide →

Link: workos.com/guide/the-developers-guide-to-sso?utm_source…

Armin Briegel at Scripting OS X has compiled links for all the release notes for all of today’s OS updates (features, developer, security). In addition to the 27.0 updates, Apple also released 26.7 updates and MacOS 15.8 Sequoia. Big day.

Link: scriptingosx.com/2026/09/apple-27-platform-updates…

Miles Abbott:

Open x.com links in a popup so you can read the one post and leave. Port of the Litterbox Safari extension.

Litterbox is a cleverer name, but Dumpster Fire is funnier.

Link: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dumpster-fire/

XCancel:

Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can’t share more details.

Not surprised, and not sure what to make of the “can’t share more details” part. Again, if you want to avoid visiting X but want to see the content posted there linked from other sites (and, let’s admit it at this point: there’s not just a lot posted on X, it is outright resurgent in popularity), install a browser extension like Litterbox (Safari) or Post Peek (Chrome).

Link: xcancel.com/

My thanks to Glyphs for sponsoring this last week at DF. Glyphs 4 is a truly native Mac app for creating fonts, lettering, icons, and pictograms. Glyphs lets you draw with flexible strokes and efficiently reuse shapes across huge sets of glyphs, and explore variable vector d...

John Brayton:

Unread 5.0 is available now from the App Store. This update adds these improvements and more:

• Improvements around hero images, article list thumbnails, and widget thumbnails
• Syncing with FreshRSS and Miniflux
• The ability to quickly mark old articles read

I’m a NetNewsWire man personally, but I’ve long admired Unread as a different, very good take on a feed reader. Just a gorgeous app. One of the very best things about RSS is that feed readers take such different shapes and approaches.

Link: goldenhillsoftware.com/2026/09/unread-50/

Tim VanBenschoten:

Post Peek is an independent, open-source project inspired by Litterbox, the Safari extension by Zhenyi Tan (And a Dinosaur).

Link: github.com/tsvb/post-peek

Paul Ford, writing for The New York Times (gift link):

For a while, I must admit, it looked as if software developer roles like mine were done for. How could we fight against tireless robots? But our industry is slowly realizing that making truly cutting-edge software still requires humans to think and work together, to maximize their skill sets and to practice their respective crafts. A.I. can write very good software, but it also makes it easy to do someone else’s job badly, which is part of why all those projects fail. Now that everyone can code, it’s become clearer why many shouldn’t.

Ford, linking to his own column on Bluesky:

I just want one killer app before we get a killer robot.

Link: nytimes.com/2026/09/12/opinion/ai-software-coding-apps.html…

My old friend Jim Ray now runs developer relations at Bluesky, and part of that gig is hosting a podcast, Off Protocol (“a show about building a better Internet”). I was delighted to appear as his latest guest. I generally don’t like talking about my career, but I did enjoy talking about it with Jim. He has that effect on people.

Link: atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-your-own-thing…

T-Mobile, in their iPhone 18 Pro / iPhone Duo press release: Plus, T‑Mobile is one of the first to support Apple’s new iPhone Handoff feature, where customers with two compatible iPhone models can use their T‑Mobile number across both devices and choose which phone is ac...

Tristan Buckmaster, professor of mathematics at NYU, in his own statement, regarding his and Levent Alpöge’s interactions with employees at OpenAI regarding this week’s math-proof controversy: I asked when the first prompt had been sent by them. This question was not ans...

I have been busy with new-iPhone-week stuff, so I haven’t been able to follow either of these stories closely, but Marcus summarizes them both well. First: the drama regarding OpenAI claiming a solution to the Navier–Stokes math problem. In short, OpenAI continues to prove i...

David Smith, developer of the widely-used Widgetsmith, on Mastodon: The eve of iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders seems a good time to look back at the iPhone 17 family’s adoption. Here’s the 17 family data as a percentage of overall usage for Widgetsmith. Generally they followed...

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac: Many have complained that Apple design has been sapped of some of its trademark whimsy in recent years. Well, here’s the latest example of how the tides seem to be changing. Buried in the Settings app on iOS 27, Apple has hidden an easter egg tha...

XCancel:

Following the legal progress as announced in the Nitter GitHub project. The XCancel service is resumed.

More details will be shared on the Nitter GitHub project page.

Glad to hear it and I wish them well, but I think Zhenyi Tan’s Litterbox Safari extension is a much better solution for viewing tweets on X without going to X.

Link: xcancel.com/cdclegal

Juli Clover, MacRumors: It’s likely the iPhone Duo doesn’t support the Apple Pencil Pro because there’s no magnetic surface for charging the pencil. The Apple Pencil Pro charges magnetically when connected to a compatible iPad, while the Apple Pencil with USB-C charges w...

9to5 Mac has the iOS 27 release notes too. I haven’t spent much time using Golden Gate, but I’ve been using iOS 27 full-time ever since WWDC. It’s in excellent shape for a .0 release.

Now I need to think about how long I want to still hang onto MacOS 15 Sequoia on my main Mac. I’ll probably skip 27.0 and wait for 27.1, but maybe I’ll bite the bullet and upgrade when a 27.0.1 update comes out.

Link: 9to5mac.com/2026/09/09/apple-confirms-macos-27-golden-gate…

One thing I learned from this video is that I’m way, way too careful when playing with the hands-on area demo units. I handle them like museum pieces; Stern treats them like hot dog buns.

Link: youtu.be/VNzl-q0EGfg

Last year, an unplanned personal hiatus coincided with the time when I should have been reviewing the then-new iPhones 17 and iPhone Air. In my brief note explaining my absence, I wrote: I look forward to getting back to writing very soon. I can feel it: I will be back s...

There are good Elle Cordova videos, and there are great ones. (Last mentioned here for her “Fonts Hanging Out” trilogy.)

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=0Ck-NPqf2c8