2026-09-29 03:50:19
Jeff Johnson:
In other words, Muse AI is a blatant copy of Muse from Meta, the latter of which is currently the #1 iOS App Store download in the United States. I don’t know where Muse AI ranks in the iOS App Store, but I do know that it’s currently the #20 Mac App Store download in the US.
It wasn’t languishing in obscurity — it had risen to #20 in the Mac App Store. A lot of Mac users are very confused when they’re told that Mac apps are available but they’re not in the Mac App Store, so it’s a rife opportunity for scammers. In the same post Johnson also documents an app named “App for Instagram º” and another named “Video Player for VLC”, both of which use rip-off icons in addition to their rip-off names. “Muse AI” is now gone, but “App for Instagram °” and “Video Player for VLC” are both still there.
I do wonder what the guy who made Muse AI was thinking. How long did he think he was going to get away with this?
2026-09-29 02:43:48
On the new episode of The Talk Show that dropped over the weekend, Andru Edwards and I talked first about the September event Apple held three weeks ago at Apple Park, and then moved on to speculate about what they might do in October. The rumor mill says Apple has a bunch of as-yet-unannounced products coming: a new iPad Mini (8th generation), new Apple TV hardware (4th generation — maybe they’ll give it a better name than “Apple TV 4K”?), new HomePod Mini (2nd generation), and an altogether new HomePod-type hub with a display. Also, October is the usual month for new Mac hardware, like maybe M6 iMacs and a new high-end MacBook lineup with OLED displays that (ugh) are also touchscreens.
That’d be a lot to introduce all at once. Maybe they hold one event/keynote movie for all of it, or maybe they split it in two — one for “home” stuff, and one for new Mac stuff. (Not sure where the iPad Mini would go in that split.) Or maybe they announce it all in one keynote but split the product availability, like they did with the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo at the keynote three weeks ago. Maybe the new MacBooks, if they really do have touchscreens, get announced in October but won’t ship until November to give developers time to adopt touch APIs — just like with the Duo. Apple is secretive, but they stick to predictable patterns if you pay attention.
The dates we do know are those for the iPhone Duo, with pre-orders beginning on Friday, October 16 and shipments beginning one week later on October 23. Apple, in my experience, sticks to a very predictable schedule for review units. They typically go into reviewers’ hands mid-week (Tuesday or Wednesday) during the week when pre-orders begin (usually a Friday, sometimes a Saturday, like this month, when the iPhones 18 Pro and new Apple Watches went on sale Saturday, September 12). Reviewers typically get only six or seven days with hardware before the embargo lifts for publishing reviews. (Most reviewers have their reviews ready to publish by that time; others enjoy the whooshing sound the embargo deadline makes as it goes by.) The review embargo thus typically lifts on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the same week when the product is set to begin shipping to customers on Friday.
I have been told absolutely nothing about when, or even if, Apple plans to seed advance units of the iPhone Duo to reviewers. In my experience, even off the record, Apple never talks about these things in advance, nor offers hints. But if they do seed review units of the Duo, I would expect that to start on Tuesday, October 13 or Wednesday the 14th, with the embargo lifting on October 20 or 21, two or three days ahead of the Duo reaching customers on Friday the 23rd. It’s also my experience that Apple does not like shipping review units of high-profile new products like the Duo before they are released to the public. They prefer handing review units like the Duo to reviewers in person. You sign the embargo agreement in person, and they hand you the product in person. One natural way to hand reviewers iPhone Duo units in person would be to hold a media event, for other new products, on October 13 or 14. Kill two birds with one stone.
If they hold such an event in New York that week, it would be really nice if it coincided with a Yankees home game in the ALCS. But now I’m really getting ahead of myself.
2026-09-29 00:35:02
Vidit Bhargava (developer of Lookup and Movie Buzz):
Duo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo. Open the Duo to pick and “insert” the cassette, Close the Duo to start listening.
Yes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a real Walkman!
More like this, please.
2026-09-28 04:22:00
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2026-09-28 04:21:43
Katie Notopoulos, in a short tweet thread regarding Alexandr Wang’s “Why We’re Building Muse” essay:
This makes me feel insane! This is faux-hallmark pap and if you believe for 1 sec that he cares about helping people “spending more time with family” or “opening a bakery” you don’t need to wait for AI to kill us; you’re stupid enough to drown from looking up at the rain.
My take is much closer to Notopoulos’s than to Manton Reece’s. I think it’s fascinating that Wang’s essay doesn’t sound at all like the sterile neutered voice of a Meta executive. I think it’s his voice, and he really wrote it. I just think the sentiment he’s expressing is creepy.
Wang wrote that Muse “Clears the way and solves all the problems it can until the human part, the wanting and the dreaming, is all that’s left.” That’s dystopic, not utopic. It’s the actual creation and doing of things that makes life worthwhile — not just wanting and dreaming about it.
Wang’s premise only reaffirms my longstanding hunch that Zuckerberg sees Buy n Large as the good guys in Wall-E.
2026-09-27 05:08:08
Back in 2011 I linked to Reelizer, a splendid archive of movie posters curated by Roger Erik Tinch. Reelizer went away for a few years, but Tinch has brought it back, seemingly better than ever. Huzzah.
