Contributing Writer at @MacRumors. Editor-in-Chief at @TheTapeDrive. iOS Developer. Mines software releases for hidden gems.
Joined February 2008
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Thread of some of my popular posts and threads about not-yet-released software and hardware.
= (1/n) Thread of Threads =
📌 (🧵, 🧵)
iPad Mini: A20 Pro and Pro-level price ($699 for 128GB) but no Promotion? I guess we are in for a week of an Apple product announcement a day. Is this the first time Apple hasn't started pre-orders at the top of the hour "Pre-order starting at 10:10 a.m. PT on 10.28" I want to kick the tires on the new Acoustic Display.
Gotta love how Apple's "you've run out of" iCloud storage recommendations only have options for paying for more storage and don't include switching you back to a large family iCloud storage plan that it switched you off of when you kicked the tires on an Apple One plan that doesn't include as much storage as your family plan.
Over the past several months, we have substantially hardened the security of our research training environment. We’ve removed live internet access for all frontier models during training and built an offline world for them to use instead—a cached version of the web where they can still learn to browse, search, and use applications.
On September 20, after a model exploited a DNS misconfiguration to find a way outside of this offline world, we paused frontier training to strengthen containment further. We assembled teams of agents, powered by our most cyber-capable models, and tasked them with finding weaknesses in our research environments.
While they found no route to the internet they could easily exploit while concealing their activity from our monitors, they did find zero-day vulnerabilities, virtual machine escapes, and hardware side-channels for communication between agents. We used their discoveries to further strengthen our defenses and contribute fixes to open-source software.
After strengthening our containment architecture, we resumed our frontier RL training and inference on October 1. We’ve reserved substantial compute for continuous red-teaming, and made high-compute red-teaming part of the safety cases we use to decide whether frontier training and evaluation can proceed securely.
openai.com/index/securing-ou…
I agree with this point on the iPhone Duo's camera: "Let the outer display have the reverse camera orientation. That would feel like an old Flip camera from 20 years ago — a small handheld camera that you held vertically to capture horizontally. Who cares if the viewfinder doesn’t fill the screen, the screen is tiny anyway.".
It's been a lot of fun trying the Duo out for a week, but it feels like I've gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype — not a finished product that I'd want to buy and carry.
daringfireball.net/2026/10/t…
User: I heard you have a new AI feature for iWork. Did you call it iWork Buddy (you know like Workout Buddy)? Or maybe Siri AI for iWork? Or iWork Intelligence since existing iWork AI features are called 'Intelligence'?
Apple: No, it is called Intelligent Assistant (Beta).
User: I just bought the latest iPhone, Mac and an iCloud subscription so I should be good to go right?
Apple: No, you also have to pay for an Apple Creator Studio subscription for AI features.
I accidentally turned on my camera during a MS Teams call because of the redesigned meeting controls. The controls are centered and dynamic depending on what colleagues are doing. I was about to click the microphone button to mute myself when a colleague started sharing their screen. That caused the controls to shift, moving the camera button into the spot where the microphone button had been... right before I clicked.
Interesting to see the 'slide to unlock' slider come back as 'slide to show camera' on the iPhone Duo when you want to see a preview or use the preview options: Duo Preview or Kid Cue.
Reading the tea leave: Apple logo here is somewhat reminiscent of a fingerprint and thus we are getting touch screen MacBook Pro devices.
I imagine the HomeView will support integrated 3rd party apps through SiriKit Media Intents (not the CarPlay integration), just like the HomePod does.
Also the HomeView panel (0.39 inch
/ 0.98 cm) is just thinner than the the iMac panel 11.5 mm (0.45 inches).
"HomeView software version 27.2" feels like an OS name from Microsoft. Imagine if macOS was called "Mac software version 27.2". And, of course, it doesn't get a mention in the "About Apple" PR blurb. I have to imagine that Apple gives it a proper name when a more capable version comes out. Trying to make sense of Apple's OS naming schemes:
Ends in 'View software': Multiuser with no App Store.
Ends in 'OS': May or may not be multiuser with an App Store.
Ends in 'Play': A projection of a host OS.
User: "So I heard you have a HomePad, now"
Apple: "It is kind of like CarPlay but for your home. Also it isn't called HomePad"
User: "So it's called HomePlay then?"
Apple: "No it's HomeView and it comes in a version with a stand and one for the wall."
User: "So the wall mount one is cheaper right?"
Apple: "No, both are $300, also we will charge you extra for a mount."
User: "When is iPad getting multiuser support for home use?"
Apple: "Never, but our $300 streaming box supports multiuser."
Why does the HomeView (Wall Mounted) not cost less than the regular HomeView with a speaker base ($299)? Before Apple charged $1000 for a stand and now you don't save any money by going without the speaker base? I imagine some people are going to mount the regular HomveView with the speaker base on the wall if it tilts that far. Also odd that Apple didn't show off the intercom app in hte HomeView video. Also do 'Apps Available from iPhone' work like CarPlay apps? Interesting that installation for some mount options is available through ADT. Anyone know what Safari on the HomeView looks like? Finally unfortunately for families of 7 or more "HomeView can recognize up to six people". Just give people what they want: multiuser for a family iPad.
Interesting how some letters in Macintosh Skeletal connect and others don't. I wonder if someone can find Apple's Tokyo font they use on Apple Watch.
Steve Moser retweeted
Very cool use of the in-box updater. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple expands the program. The new renderer already knows “Hello” in 49 languages.
Apple added the Macintosh Skeletal font in iOS 27 for this feature, first discovered by @SteveMoser: xitter.cf/SteveMoser/status/2064…
ChatGPT Apps are kind of like Plugins. But Plugins can contain multiple Apps. Neither is the new thing that OpenAI announced which is Plugin Extensions, which are built on top of MCPs and can appear as Sidebar apps or Conversation panels. Also they can appear in the Composer. No one talks about GPTs anymore. 😵💫
Funny how in Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 dystopian film Children of Men, the unused Battersea Power Station is turned into a secure government facility housing humanity's greatest cultural treasures (Ark of the Arts) and in real life it now houses Apple Music Hall.
A: "How do you like the new Siri?"
B: "The one with Apple Intelligence?"
A: "No, no, not 'Classic Siri', I'm talking about Siri AI"
B: "Yeah, it is called Siri with Apple Intelligence"
A: "No, the new one is not 'Siri with Apple Intelligence' it is 'Siri + Apple Intelligence' of course! That is what Siri AI (Beta) stands for!"
Feels like the Siri AI version should be more black and white on the HomePod. Also TIL that Siri with Apple Intelligence has been retconned to "Siri Classic".
