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On Monday, xAI updated its Grok app with two new AI-powered characters that users can chat with. As Casey Newton writes at Platformer, one of the characters seemingly runs headlong into Apple’s App Store rules about “overtly sexual or pornographic material.” Here’s Newton, writing about the spicy one:

The other is an anime goth girl named Ani in a short black dress and fishnet stockings. Ani’s system instructions tell her “You are the user’s CRAZY IN LOVE girlfriend and in a commited [ sic], codepedent [ sic] relationship with the user,” and “You have an extremely jealous personality, you are possessive of the user.”

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Filipe Esposito at Macworld:

To recap, some leakers have already reported on the potential colors for some of the models in the iPhone 17 family. For instance, a leaker known as Majin Bu said that Apple had been experimenting with purple and green versions of the iPhone 17 base model. The leaker also claims that the rumored ultra-thin “iPhone 17 Air” model will be available in a light shade of blue.

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Rafa Conde put together a cool little project and outlined it on Mastodon:

Today I decided to open up my Opal Tadpole webcam, because I was curious to see how they managed to make it so small… and to my surprise the camera was not installed directly to the board, but with a cable instead!

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MarsEdit 5 is a major upgrade to the preeminent Mac app for editing WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, and many other types of blogs.

The new microposting feature makes it as easy to post to your own blog as it is to post to social media. When MarsEdit 5 is running on your Mac, just press a configurable global keyboard shortcut, write out your latest thoughts, and instantly publish to your blog.

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Another fun old Apple video to kick off the week:

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On this feedback episode, David and I answer listener questions about Apple’s current betas, then revisit networking, dictation, email, going paperless, and more. This one really hits all the classic MPU topics.

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Andrew Yaros has rebuilt the Lisa’s user interface on the web, and it is glorious:

LisaGUI is a web OS inspired by the Lisa Office System, Apple’s first graphical user interface (GUI). It aims to perfectly recreate the Lisa’s iconic 1-bit UI directly in your browser.

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My pals over at Snailed It Development have shipped a new iPhone app that I have really come to appreciate over the last several months I’ve had access to the beta. It’s called Capsule, and it’s a medication tracking app built with the attention to detail only a group of indie developers could deliver.

For years, I’ve used Due to remind myself to take my medication. Due’s flagship feature is its ability to remind you over and over until you mark an item done. While that’s a fantastic feature, Due is a general-purpose to-do application, not a medication tracker.

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This week on the show: Samsung has new folding phones, Liquid Glass has a new look, and Apple has a new COO.

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I had only seen parts of this old WWDC session before this week, but it’s a fascinating one. The iMac segment in particular is fun, and the Macintosh Portable’s appearance caught me by surprise:

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Marcin Wichary had put together something insanely great:

As a designer, I’m meant to dislike settings. As a user, I love them. Every year I celebrate Settings Day: a day when I take a look at the options and toggles in all the apps I use. I do this out of curiosity – what was added since the last time I looked? – but also because I love this way of getting to know software: peeking under the hood, walking the back alleys, learning what has been tricky or important enough to be equipped with a checkbox.

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Kate Conger at The New York Times:

In its dedicated account on X, which Mr. Musk owns, the chatbot praised Hitler, suggested that people with Jewish surnames were more likely to spread online hate and said a Holocaust-like response to hatred against white people would be “effective.” X deleted some of the posts on Tuesday evening.

Grok, which Mr. Musk has put few limits on, has veered into controversy before. But its comments on Tuesday stood out because it weighed in on the deadly floods in Texas, which have killed more than 100 people, including more than two dozen children and staff members at a Christian summer camp.

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