Apple on October 20, 2026 announced new and expanded American Manufacturing Program (AMP) partnerships with U.S. companies supplying materials and components for iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro. Apple says it will commit up to $100 million over the next three years with Pennsylvania titanium producer Perryman Company, and is expanding its partnership with Delaware-based […]

The post Apple taps Perryman titanium and Qnity films for iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro appeared first on The Mac Observer.

Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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© filo | DigitalVision Vectors

Meta:

If you subscribe to a Meta One plan, you can add links to a set number of posts and reels each month based on your plan:

• Meta One Advanced plan: up to 4 posts and 4 reels with links per month
• Meta One Expert plan: up to 8 posts and 8 reels with links per month
• Meta One Max plan: up to 12 posts and 12 reels with links per month

Via Nick Heer:

Instagram has never supported links of any kind in individual posts, so that is a new feature with two links per month permitted for free, and more enabled by this pricey subscription — starting at $50 USD per month for four posts per month containing external links. But links in Reels have been commonplace for years. Meta is now gating that, too; and there is more.

[…]

Meta seems to have two objectives here: to take a cut from businesses that use Meta’s services as a referral source more generally, and — more specifically — to capture some of the money made by influencers.

Requiring login, removing RSS, discouraging links. Things are not looking good for the open Web.

Previously:

• Reddit to Remove RSS
• Twitter Now Requires Logging In
• “Link in Bio” Is Apparently a Billion-Dollar Business
• “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife

In late 1970, a Titan IIIC rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at what was then called Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It carried a top-secret payload for the US military.

Much has changed in spaceflight since then. The Titan IIIC would bow out in 1982 after dozens of launches. Various Titans continued launching from Space Launch Complex 40 until 2005, at which point the US Air Force—in a competitive process hotly opposed by United Launch Alliance—turned the pad over to a small, largely unknown startup called SpaceX. And Cape Canaveral is now a "Space Force" station.

But those unspecified payloads? Until last month, some of them were still flying operationally.

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© ULA/Carleton Bailie

Micron and Samsung executives this week said the memory shortage will continue for at least the next couple of years.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra expects demand for the firm’s memory to exceed its available supply over that period, he told investors last night.

Micron no longer sells consumer RAM, and Mehrotra’s statements refer to Micron’s business-to-business sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI and DRAM for servers. However, his comments also have implications for consumer devices. Manufacturing capacity is prioritizing memory for AI and servers, limiting the supply of memory manufactured for consumer devices.

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Jeff Johnson:

The Muse from Meta app description says at the beginning, “Muse is your personal AI agent that gets things done, always working on what matters to you.” The Muse AI app description says at the beginning, “Muse is your professional AI agent that gets work done, always helping move important tasks forward.” Near the end, the Muse from Meta app description has the heading “SMART, BUT STILL LEARNING.” Near the end, the Muse AI app description has the heading “POWERFUL, BUT STILL LEARNING.”

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.

And the real Muse app isn’t in the Mac App Store, so it has no competition.

By the way, I’d also like to draw your attention to the #11 Mac App Store download, as shown in my screenshot above: App for Instagram º. Yes, the app name includes the º character, a phenomenon I’ve written about before.

[…]

The top search result for “VLC” in the Mac App Store is Video Player for VLC, developed by muhammad faisal jabbar, not by VideoLAN. VLC for Mac is distributed outside the Mac App Store. You may notice a similarity between the icon of the official VLC app in the iOS App Store and the icon of Video Player for VLC.

Previously:

• Meta AI for Mac and Muse
• Apps for YouTube℠™®•!
• Sketchy ChatGPT App Soars Up App Store Charts

Update (2026-09-29): John Gruber:

“Muse AI” is now gone, but “App for Instagram °” and “Video Player for VLC” are both still there.

Jeff Johnson:

The Reddit commenter claims that the scams receiving public attention are “the tip of the iceberg from a limited, outsider perspective,” which is an accurate metaphor, yet the commenter and I have dramatically different interpretations of that metaphor. For the commenter, the iceberg represents the vast number of scams allegedly caught by Apple app review but not seen by the public; for me, the iceberg represents the vast number of scams not caught by Apple app review and not seen by the public either. To put the argument another way, the commenter appears to assume that the majority of scams in the App Store receive widespread public attention, in blog posts such as mine or in the news media, so the relatively small number of stories we hear is indicative of a relatively small number of scams in the App Store, whereas my own impression is that the vast majority of scams in the App Store do not receive widespread public attention. Scam hunting is not my job, merely an occasional hobby. It’s so easy for me to find scams, they practically fall into my lap whenever I look. I could spend all day every day finding and listing App Store scams, if I were sufficiently motivated (I’m not). You would think that someone working for Apple would be sufficiently motivated, by a paycheck, to spend all day every day finding and listing and most importantly removing App Store scams, but I’ve seen no evidence of it.

I think Johnson is right about the iceberg. Most of the scams that get publicity are at the top of the charts. One view is that all the scam apps that Apple misses end up being popular. What are the odds? The other is that we notice them because they’re popular and that there’s also a vast number of deceitful or dangerous apps lurking.

Dan Moren:

Speaking of App Store shortcomings, I really hate when I want to see how much an app costs and I get this impenetrable list of IAP options. It’s impossible to know without installing and opening the app what the payments options are. Be great if Apple helped make this clearer—which options are actually available? What are their various plans (monthly, weekly, etc.)?

Zac Hall:

The new Meta AI desktop app is version 1.0 beta at launch and weighs just 16MB once installed.

Based on initial inspection, it runs natively on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later, using an AppKit and SwiftUI shell with WebKit for richer chat content. In other words, this is not an Electron app or a repackaged iPad release.

It includes Mac-specific hooks, making the desktop experience more robust than the Meta AI mobile app.

Karissa Bell:

The Mac app brings a few new capabilities compared with Meta AI’s existing website and mobile app. For example, it enables users to share part of their screen so the assistant can “see” what they’re working on and provide more specific answers.

Juli Clover:

The app is primarily meant for businesses and content creators, and it integrates with Facebook and Instagram. It incorporates analytics tools so it can answer questions about performance, and connects with Google Workspace for document access. Google Workspace access requires a professional Facebook or Instagram account.

John Gruber:

Passes the Settings window sniff test too — it actually has a Settings window.

[…]

The Mac app is not available in the App Store. You need to download it directly from Meta’s web page, using the “Download for Mac (Beta)” link. The ChatGPT and Claude Mac apps aren’t in the Mac App Store either — they do too many things outside the App Store’s mandatory sandbox (and probably use APIs require that special entitlements in the App Store too).

Sarah Perez:

Meta’s new AI assistant app, Muse, is now available on Mac.

On the Mac, Muse can interact with your files, messages, calendar, notes, and mail, all within their native applications.

Terrence O’Brien:

Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine, posted on Threads screenshots of an interaction he had with Muse in which the assistant asks him some questions about a conversation he was having in Messages.

The problem is that Aten says he didn’t give Muse access to his messages. When asked how it knew about the contents of his messages, Muse replied, “I saw the notification previews, not your message history. I haven’t been reading your texts.” Aten continued to push, asking how Muse was receiving message previews, it didn’t have a good answer.

M.G. Siegler:

The number one response I’ve gotten to my thoughts on Meta’s Muse personal assistant agent is some variation of “I will never trust Meta with my data.” But the number two response is arguably more interesting (and related): “Why didn’t Google build this?”

Pieter Arntz:

Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle says it’s trivial to turn Muse into “the ultimate backdoor.”

[…]

According to Ars Technica, Wardle found that a locally running application or terminal command could alter an undocumented Muse configuration setting that controls the server used for dictation transcription. By redirecting dictation traffic to an attacker-controlled server, an attacker could capture voice prompts and obtain the authentication token for the victim’s Muse account.

John Gruber:

Four days later and Muse still holds the #1 spot in the U.S. iOS App Store.

See also: Joanna Stern.

Alexandr Wang (Watts Martin, John Gruber):

Here’s the best part: we have no idea what people will want. The world until now has been shaped by the small number of fanatics who have somehow found a way to make their wants real. But we’ve never seen humanity with every single person’s agency fully switched on. Eight billion people who just need to write their dream down in order to get started making it happen.

So we built Muse to help people build the world they want.

Damien P. Williams:

So uhhhhhh… Apparently meta’s muse “AI” is just straight up doxxing people to strangers on FB marketplace???

Via Mike Masnick:

Almost all of Meta’s PR about Muse was about how careful they had been to set it up not to do things like this, how they delayed the launch by months to carefully design it so it could be trusted. And then…

Previously:

• Not Muse in the App Store
• Grok Bot
• OpenClaw 2.0
• Siri AI Ships (But Still Beta)
• ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT Classic
• Claude Desktop App
• Gemini App for Mac

A Apple lançou na semana passada, após anos de espera, uma nova Apple TV 4K — mais precisamente, a quarta geração do produto.

Abaixo, vamos conferir como a nova Apple TV 4K se compara ao modelo anterior, de terceira geração, lançado em 2022.

Design

De relance, ambos os modelos têm virtualmente o mesmo visual, formato e cor. Para não dizer que absolutamente nada mudou, a luz indicadora de status branca está agora centralizada na parte frontal da nova Apple TV 4K.

Na ponta do lápis, o modelo mais recente tem algumas ligeiras mudanças nas dimensões.

Dimensões	Apple TV 4K (quarta geração)	Apple TV 4K (terceira geração)
Altura	31mm	31mm
Largura	93,24mm	93mm
Espessura	93,24mm	93mm
Peso	217 gramas	Modelo Wi-Fi: 208 gramas Modelo Wi-Fi + Ethernet: 214 gramas

Já o Siri Remote que acompanha ambos os modelos tem as mesmas dimensões (136mm de altura, 35mm de largura e 9,25mm de espessura), com exceção do peso: 69,6g na versão mais recente e 66g na anterior.

Especificações

Uma das principais mudanças é, naturalmente, um novo chip. A nova Apple TV 4K conta com o A19, o mesmo que estreou nos iPhones 17 no ano passado. A Apple TV 4K de terceira geração, por sua vez, trazia o chip A15 Bionic, lançado em 2021.

A Apple afirma que o novo chip “oferece desempenho de CPU ¹Central processing unit, ou unidade central de processamento. até 50% mais rápido e de GPU ²Graphics processing unit, ou unidade de processamento gráfico. até 2x mais rápido”, o que resulta em “maior responsividade, navegação mais ágil e animações mais fluidas”. O A19 também inclui um novo decodificador AV1 dedicado, que possibilita “streaming de alta qualidade e maior eficiência, consumindo menos largura de banda”.

Em matéria de armazenamento, enquanto a Apple TV antiga possuía opções de 64GB (modelo Wi-Fi) e 128GB (modelo Wi-Fi + Ethernet), a nova Apple TV 4K vem apenas com 128GB — a versão de 64GB, portanto, saiu de cena.

Ademais, com relação à memória, a nova Apple TV 4K tem 8GB, ante os 4GB no modelo anterior.

Recursos

Entre os recursos, o destaque vai para a Siri AI, que permitirá funções como “compreensão de contexto pessoal, amplo conhecimento geral e a capacidade de realizar ainda mais ações em aplicativos em todo o sistema”.

Embora a Siri AI estreie na nova Apple TV 4K, ela também chegará aos modelos de segunda e terceira gerações. Ainda assim, é de se esperar que a assistente tenha uma resposta mais rápida no hardware mais recente com o chip A19.

Uma melhoria exclusiva da Apple TV 4K de quarta geração é a inclusão de um conjunto de três microfones com isolamento de voz integrado ao próprio aparelho, o que permite interações sem o uso das mãos, como chamar a assistente dizendo “Siri” ou “E aí, Siri”, sem a necessidade de ter o controle remoto por perto.

Além disso, se você tem vários HomePods em casa ou planeja investir bastante no ecossistema de casa inteligente da Apple, a Apple TV 4K de quarta geração traz um novo recurso de som surround.

Com o HomePod mini 2 ou o HomePod de segunda geração, a Apple TV 4K permitirá uma experiência de som surround com quatro alto-falantes. Segundo a Apple, “os quatro alto-falantes trabalham em conjunto com a Apple TV 4K para reconhecer de forma inteligente suas posições no ambiente, permitindo que o timing e os níveis de áudio sejam calibrados automaticamente para o espaço”.

Siri Remote

Embora o Siri Remote não tenha sofrido mudanças externas, como vimos acima, ele foi atualizado para funcionar com o recurso Buscar (Find My) com a Busca Precisa (Precision Finding).

Com isso, ao perder o Siri Remote, você poderá receber orientações passo a passo para chegar até ele. Ademais, graças a um novo alto-falante integrado, você pode até reproduzir um som no controle para ajudar a encontrá-lo.

Ainda que venha com a Apple TV 4K de quarta geração, o novo Siri Remote é compatível com modelos mais antigos da set-top box.

Conectividade

No que diz respeito à conectividade sem fio, a Apple TV 4K de quarta geração tem suporte a Wi-Fi 7 (uma evolução em relação ao Wi-Fi 6 do modelo anterior), Bluetooth 6 (ante o Bluetooth 5.0) e Thread (anteriormente limitado ao modelo de 128GB).

Acredita-se que essas atualizações decorram da inclusão do chip sem fio N1, da Apple, embora isso não tenha sido confirmado oficialmente.

Além disso, a porta Gigabit Ethernet agora vem de fábrica na Apple TV 4K de quarta geração. Anteriormente, a porta não estava presente no modelo básico de 64GB.

Preço

Talvez uma das diferenças mais pertinentes entre o novo modelo e seu antecessor seja o preço: no Brasil, a nova Apple TV 4K custa R$3.600 (US$300 nos Estados Unidos e 350€ em Portugal).

Trata-se de um aumento considerável ao levar em conta que o modelo anterior partia de R$2.500 no Brasil (US$200 nos EUA e 170€ em Portugal).

Já disponível em pré-venda (exceto no Brasil, pois ainda precisa ser homologada pela Anatel), a Apple TV 4K chegará às lojas em 13 de novembro.

NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada a mais pelos produtos/serviços ao usar os nossos links de afiliado.

Notas de rodapé

• 1
  Central processing unit, ou unidade central de processamento.
• 2
  Graphics processing unit, ou unidade de processamento gráfico.