Lex Friedman has done a very nice job of summarizing the first wave of embargoed iPhone Duo reviews:

The iPhone Duo reviews landed, and I read a slew of them. Because I care about you. And because I’m curious about Apple’s new folding phone.

Lots of links and some good summaries. Even if you’ve been devouring reviews today, Lex may point you at some opinions you haven’t seen yet.

(For the record, I expect to get my iPhone Duo review unit tomorrow or Friday, depending on a wild series of chance events.)

Go to the linked site.

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A Wall Street Journal report said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk ordered the Starlink throttling that blindsided Ukraine's air assault forces last week, despite Musk's claim that all decisions on the military version of Starlink are made by the US military and President Trump.

Trump denied ordering the restrictions. While Musk may have spoken to Trump and administration officials before the decision, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Musk made the final call. The decision came after both Musk and Trump criticized Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries.

"Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration," the WSJ wrote, citing unnamed US officials and people familiar with the matter. The report said that "Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network... rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless."

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In its current iteration, SpaceX is largely a data company seeking to provide enormous amounts of compute for artificial intelligence. During an earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, company officials spent much of their time discussing ambitious plans to roll out up to 10 GW of compute in 2027—on the ground.

Gone are the days of aspirational talk about sending humans to Mars and settling the red planet. Now it is almost all about artificial intelligence and the data needed to support its expansion. However, the company's long-term ambitions to provide data services from space, initially with the Starlink Internet constellation and eventually through the "Starmind" data center constellation, still rely on an actual rocket.

That would be the Starship vehicle, and during the earnings call, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, provided new performance targets for the vehicle.

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In its current iteration, SpaceX is largely a data company seeking to provide enormous amounts of compute for artificial intelligence. During an earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, company officials spent much of their time discussing ambitious plans to roll out up to 10 GW of compute in 2027—on the ground.

Gone are the days of aspirational talk about sending humans to Mars and settling the red planet. Now it is almost all about artificial intelligence and the data needed to support its expansion. However, the company's long-term ambitions to provide data services from space, initially with the Starlink Internet constellation and eventually through the "Starmind" data center constellation, still rely on an actual rocket.

That would be the Starship vehicle, and during the earnings call, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, provided new performance targets for the vehicle.

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An uninvited encounter in orbit exposes a new vulnerability in the war over satellite intelligence.

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SpaceX plans to turn on its direct-to-device (D2D) service in early 2028 after launching the second generation Starlink Mobile constellation during 2027 and integrating spectrum it is acquiring.

On its Q3 earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell said the low-band spectrum SpaceX agreed to buy earlier this month and the Federal Communications Commission’s approval to launch 15,000 next generation V2 birds “pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US”.

On 8 October, SpaceX struck a deal to buy up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band to support its plans. The agreement with Grain Management is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

Shotwell indicated comments on the previous quarter’s call covered smaller radios for the D2D service, which she described as not quite tower capable, that SpaceX could place on homes and businesses where Starlink is already installed.

“So, it’s not just the spectrum that we’ve talked about with the S-band,” she said on yesterday’s (20 October) earnings call. “We will basically leverage the real estate from Starlink installs and other towers.”

SpaceX plans to pair its satellites with ground-based radios to provide 5G mobile coverage, a plan many executives in the industry consider far-fetched.

When asked about the roles the satellite and terrestrial networks will play for the D2D service, CEO Elon Musk said a more detailed presentation may be needed to explain Starlink’s connectivity strategy and why the company believes it could eventually generate several hundred billion dollars in annual revenue.

“You are missing some of the pieces that we know about internally,” he said. “I can say we do see a clear path to several hundred billion dollars a year in connectivity revenue, but I think we should probably describe that in more detail in a forum that’s not limited to a few minutes at an earnings call.”

Q3 numbers
SpaceX reported net income of $4.4 billion for Q3 (ending 30 September), compared with a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, as revenue more than doubled to $14.6 billion, driven largely by its AI business.

It was the company’s second earnings report since its June stock market listing. Revenue was up 161% year-on-year.

The Super Intelligence segment, previously reported as AI, accounted for around $6.7 billion of the roughly $9 billion increase, with revenue rising to $7.6 billion from $813 million. SpaceX attributed the segment’s growth to new cloud services agreements, the Cursor acquisition and growing use of Grok.

Income from operations was $2.8 billion, compared with a $273 million loss a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA was $8.8 billion, up 306%.

Connectivity revenue rose 69% to $5.2 billion and operating income climbed 99% to $2.4 billion.

Starlink had 13.6 million consumer broadband subscribers, up 1.6 million in the quarter and from 7.2 million in Q3 2025.

For its direct-to-device service, Shotwell said Starlink Mobile surpassed 22 million monthly users at the end of the quarter, up 37% from the previous quarter.

SpaceX remains loss-making for the year to date, with a nine-month net loss of $413 million.

The post SpaceX targets early 2028 for own D2D service launch appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Quatro das maiores operadoras europeias querem unir forças para desenvolver uma alternativa à Starlink nas comunicações diretas entre satélites e telemóveis. A iniciativa surge num momento de crescente disputa pelo espectro destinado a serviços de satélite e de novas tensões entre a Europa e os Estados Unidos.

The post Operadoras europeias juntam forças para fazer frente à Starlink de Elon Musk nas comunicações por satélite appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Apple’s new HomeView sure seems like a good fit for the kitchen, which is why the company’s press releases, demos, and ads seem to lean into the idea that you’ll be cooking with the little guy.

But is there an ugly side to all that convenience? Here’s Dominic Preston, writing for The Verge:

The HomeView is just the latest in a long line of websites, browser extensions, and smart home gadgets with the same promise: that it can take an online recipe and strip it down to the essentials…. There’s only one group of people likely to object: the food writers who created those recipes in the first place.

So wait a second. Apple building a product that gets past all the garbage that loads up recipe sites—not just the ads but the endless, meandering bad writing that exists because search engines apparently demanded it—to get to the actual ingredients and make their users’ lives better, is a problem because it might hurt the livelihood of the people who create those user-hostile websites?

Did… a recipe blogger write this?

I would know, since I’m one of them — I have my own food newsletter where I occasionally publish recipes, so I have a little skin in the game.

Oh. I see.

My recipe app of choice is Mela, which (like many recipe apps) already has a feature that grabs the details from a web recipe while avoiding the SEO garbage. With HomeView, Apple is doing the same thing. I approve.

Of course, as a 21st-century media professional, I feel for the recipe writers who got jerked around by Google and are now reaping the consequences. Preston mentions that a lot of professional recipe sources are now moving to subscription models, and I think that’s a positive development, whether you’re the New York Times or a small content creator with a paid newsletter.

One of my big concerns about the HomeView is that it doesn’t seem to have any facility to support recipe apps. It would probably be a perfect device for an extension of Mela or Paprika, but they’re not CarPlay audio/video apps.

I hope Apple can find a way to allow users to bring their personal recipe catalogs onto the device in the future. In the meantime, if I were the developer of a recipe app, I’d be looking into creating a web version, to be loaded in HomeView’s included Safari browser.

Go to the linked site.

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Following up on my discussion of the new $299 Apple TV 4K pricing, here’s Glenn Fleishman with a helpful chart and table:

I wondered what the entry-level, initial price of each Apple TV box at introduction was, from the March 2007 original to the Apple TV 4K (4th generation) announced October 13, 2026, adjusted for inflation. So I charted it.

Essentially, only the original, (Mac-based!) Apple TV was more expensive in actual dollars than the current model. And as recently as earlier this year, it was the second-cheapest it had ever been. Talk about whiplash.

Go to the linked site.

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The new edition of my ebook about Apple’s Photos app is out now:

Get to know Apple’s Photos app and how best to use it to import, manage, edit, sync, and share your photos in macOS 27 Golden Gate and iOS 27/iPadOS 27! Following the expert advice of Jason Snell, publisher of Six Colors and former lead editor at Macworld, you’ll learn how to navigate Photos like a pro!

The biggest updates this year were about the three new AI-based photo-editing tools, as you might expect.

The ebook is $19.99. Upgrades are $10 for people with editions 1-3, or $5 for Take Control Premium members. While the book has been updated for the 27 operating systems, book buyers also get access to last year’s edition, which is devoted to version 26 OSes.

Go to the linked site.

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It was iPhone Duo preorder day, if you didn’t know. If you weren’t up at 5 a.m. Pacific like I was. Like so many of us were.

Stephen Hackett (who is traveling today) had some bad luck:

By the time the website came up over six minutes later — where you can search for other Apple Stores — my ship date had already slipped to the end of November or early December.

It seems that my work on Widgetsmith and our other apps will be constrained to the simulator a little longer. It is also nice to have the new thing when it’s new, so I can write and talk about it when it’s new.

I guess the upside is that, now that shipping dates have slipped into 2027, the iPhone Duo will be new for a long time.

Clearly Apple is struggling with Duo supply, but there’s also obviously a lot of Duo demand and curiosity out there. Put them together and you get a device that’s sold out into next year already. The Duo is not going to be the best-selling iPhone of this cycle—not even close—but I still think it will be the best-selling folding phone ever, and by a lot.

For the record: I got all the way to the final screen with Apple telling me my 256GB Night Sky order would be available next Friday. But then it slipped to Nov 9 – Nov 16.

At least it’s not January.

Go to the linked site.

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The best writer on the smart home beat today is The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who I think has the best take on the HomeView I’ve seen so far:

HomeView’s simplicity may put off hardcore home automation enthusiasts, but I’d argue it’s perfect for their long-suffering spouses. I’ve tried every version of physical smart home control interface in my home, and you know who hasn’t used any of them? My family.

Because my family all have iPhones, and because the HomeView will always be there and will feel familiar, I can see them actually using it. That means I could set up a full Home Assistant instance and run a detailed dashboard on a tablet in my office, then feed the scenes and devices into Apple Home so my husband and daughter can just tap to control them on a HomeView in the kitchen.

HomeView may not be the smart home computer I want Apple to make, but it is the smart home device Apple needed to make.

My own thermostat, which came with my HVAC system, is a piece of junk, and I can’t replace it because it is incompatible with third-party thermostats. But I can envision putting a HomeView on the wall and making that the primary interface for it and every other smart home device in my house.

Go to the linked site.

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I was curious about the limitations of the new Siri Remote‘s Precision Finding feature, which requires an iPhone 17 generation or newer. Earlier iPhones have Apple’s latest U-series ultra wideband chip, which is what Find My generally uses, so why wouldn’t they be compatible?

Stevie Bonifield at The Verge has the answer:

Now the remote has Find My support, but if you want to see exactly how far away it is on your iPhone with details like “20 feet,” rather than simply “far” or “near,” you will need to have an iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, or any iPhone 17 or later. Those are the only models that include its new N1 networking chip with support for Bluetooth channel sounding, which enables AirTag-like precision tracking, but without requiring a UWB chip.

So before you run out and buy a new $59 remote and then hand it over to your pet to lose, make sure you’ve got a compatible phone I guess.

Go to the linked site.

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Ukrainian troops have been caught off guard by restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet systems that disrupted frontline operations, while Kyiv received no warning from its partners of a Russian missile attack on its energy facilities for the second day running, according to Ukrainian officials.

Starlink terminals used by Ukrainian drone units began experiencing signal failures at speeds above 160 km/h, disrupting several missions early on Wednesday morning, according to military personnel and senior Ukrainian officials.

“Logistics at the frontline and middle strikes are badly limited,” one senior official familiar with the situation on the front told the FT. Ukraine’s middle strikes target Russian military supply lines and logistics. The limitations came with “no warning, just in the middle of the night,” the official said.

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ElevationLab has withdrawn its AirTag Silencer from sale. The device precisely destroyed the speaker in an AirTag while leaving tracking functions intact. Two weeks ago, I strongly suggested it stop selling it because their precision product offered abusers and stalkers a useful tool—true, available from other sources, but none with the high production quality or the stellar reputation among Apple users that ElevationLab has.

The company sent out a brief email to customers today that contained the same text as a blog entry titled, “An apology”:

We launched an AirTag silencing tool recently. We’ve always made products we want for ourselves, and this was no different – we wanted it for AirTags on our bikes. (Some of us have bikes more valuable than our cars.)

In retrospect though, this also has the side effect of aiding someone with bad intentions to track someone that wouldn’t get phone notifications.

We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.

At the time, the company defended the product. I don’t know if my words had any effect.

Go to the linked site.

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Mark Gurman has last-minute Apple product details in his Sunday newsletter:

The centerpiece is a new smart home hub called the HomeView. Equipped with a display and an A18 chip, the product essentially serves as the Siri command center for an Apple-powered household…

The HomeView comes in two versions: a countertop model with a metal speaker base and a wall-mounted version with a flat, square base that sits against the wall beneath the display. The countertop offering will come in four colors: space gray, silver, starlight and pink, while the wall-mounted version will be limited to space gray and silver.

The name dovetails with a MacRumors report that Apple used a shell company to trademark “HomeView” last year. So much for my prediction of a re-use of the base HomePod name.

Gurman also says the new Apple TV remote will have a speaker, and the new Apple TV itself will have a microphone to enable it to receive Siri requests directly.

Go to the linked site.

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Space has plenty of room for more megaconstellations, but only if all operators are willing to share information about where their satellites are and where they're going, a top executive at SpaceX and its AI subsidiary said this week.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president for Starlink and president of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, used a presentation Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Turkey as a clarion call for improved data-sharing among satellite operators.

SpaceX's Starlink constellation now has more than 11,000 satellites, about two-thirds of all active spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Radars and telescopes routinely track thousands more pieces of space junk.

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Apple has announced that it’s planning something for October 13. The assumption—amplified by the “Welcome Home” slogan—is that Apple is going to roll out a bunch of new home-oriented products, most notably a touchscreen home hub that’s been rumored for a couple of years now.

The word broke via an X post by Greg Joswiak. Video creator Marques Brownlee posted his invitation to an “Apple Experience” in Tribeca on October 13 at 9am Eastern.

My understanding is that the “experience” at Apple’s cozy building in Tribeca will focus on creators, while some other traditional press will just receive remote briefings. So I think it’s wrong to say there will be an Apple Event next Tuesday. More likely, there will be a 9am Eastern drop of a video and a bunch of press releases. Followed shortly by a bunch of influencer videos shot in Apple’s building, of course.

Go to the linked site.

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The world's largest retailer wants to sell you something else—Internet from space.

Amazon has been developing a constellation of satellites to deliver broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit for the better part of a decade, and the company is just about ready to pull back the curtain. It is entering a market that SpaceX, with its Starlink Internet, has dominated for the last half-decade. Amazon's debut into satellite Internet is being closely watched, not just by some consumers, but by businesses ranging from airlines to shipping companies to governments. Broadband Internet from orbit has proven broadly useful for a lot of purposes, from video games to commerce to warfighting.

But until now, most people had to buy it from Elon Musk and SpaceX. OneWeb has only offered limited services, leaving Amazon as the only real competitor to deliver high-speed Internet globally. Moreover, at the head of the company's broadband efforts is Rajeev Badyal, who led Starlink during its early years, but whom Musk fired eight years ago for moving too cautiously on Starlink.

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MacRumors’s Hartley Charlton has a post detailing the designs of some rumored upcoming smart home devices co-developed by LG and Apple, thanks to FCC filings:

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working with LG Electronics on accessories for its upcoming home hub and other home products, citing regulatory documents without sharing the filings. FCC records MacRumors found contain label-placement drawings, three-dimensional renderings, and technical reports, providing a first look at the products’ housings and additional details about their capabilities.

I get real Motorola ROKR vibes from all of this. I have a hard time believing that Apple will slap its own branding on these devices. Given the recent conversation about Apple needing to become more nimble in its development, it feels a bit like these devices are a case of being able to get something to market sooner than Apple might if it did them alone. Or it may be a case of Apple simply not wanting to—or feeling that it needs to—make these devices itself.

Go to the linked site.

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