Marco Arment wrote a post today called “Community”, about taking six weeks off Mastodon, feeling lonely, and deciding to wade back into social media everywhere, X included.

I’ve written a lot about X lately. Three whole pieces, which is roughly three more than I planned to. So you might expect me to come out swinging.

I’m not going to. Mostly.

Because Marco did the thing I’ve been wishing John Gruber would do.

He made it about himself.

Read Marco’s post and count the “I”s. He works alone, in his house. Nobody in his town is a computer nerd. He felt the same loneliness he felt as a teenager in the ’90s, before he found his people on forums and Tumblr and Twitter. Without a tech community, he says, his work has suffered, his skills have stalled, and his world has gotten smaller.

That’s vulnerable. It’s not easy to write “it’s been profoundly lonely” on your popular personal blog.

And crucially, Marco never claims X is good. He never says it’s cheerful, or friendly, or inclusive. He calls its owner an asshole. He isn’t telling anyone else that X is fine. He’s telling us that he needs a community, and that he’s going to go look for one.

In my last piece, I wrote that there’s an enormous difference between “X is a cheerful place for me” and “X is a cheerful place.” Marco lands squarely on the correct-for-him side of that line. He’s describing his own experience and his own needs, and he’s not pretending they’re universal.

I disagree with his decision even if I appreciate his approach. I do, and I do.

I hope he finds his people. Everyone deserves a community. He’s right about that.

But there are two things in his post that I can’t let slide.

X isn’t less political. It’s just not political at you.

Here’s how Marco sizes up his options:

All I’ve found on Bluesky is even more anger and politics, the last things I need or want.

A few sentences later, X is the place with “a strong but different tech community.”

I understand the feeling. Bluesky really is full of politics, and some of it is angry. People are angry because there’s a lot to be angry about.

But X isn’t a politics-free alternative. X is the most political social network on Earth. It just doesn’t feel political if you agree with the house, or if you’re not the one it’s aimed at.

The owner of X is a bad person. He uses it to boost Germany’s far right and Tommy Robinson’s rallies. He posts slogans from The Turner Diaries. He’s spending $100 million to elect Trump allies in November. He tuned his chatbot to be less “politically correct” until it called itself MechaHitler.

Politics are so pervasive on X that they underscore everything there.

On Bluesky, the politics is loud because it’s people yelling about power. On X, the politics is quiet for some users because it is the power. If you’re a white, straight, cis guy posting about Swift concurrency, it’s easy to mistake that quiet for calm. If you’re trans, or Black, or Jewish, the wallpaper is talking to you, and it isn’t saying nice things.

Choosing X to get away from politics is like moving into the campaign office to get away from the campaign signs.

I don’t think Marco means it that way. But it’s a framing that John has used, too — Bluesky and Mastodon are full of angry kooks, X is chill now — and I’ll push back every time it shows up.

Mastodon isn’t owned by an asshole.

Marco’s argument boils down to this:

I’d love to participate in communities without any assholes benefiting from it, but in the modern world, that simply isn’t possible.

He then lists everything he’d have to give up to avoid assholes: his smartphone, his computer, his car, most of his food, and his country.

I made this point in my second piece: You can’t avoid every bad billionaire, but that’s an argument for never doing anything at all. Imperfect lines are still lines. I live in the US, which, as Marco pointed out, has an asshole in chief. I can still log my protests.

But here’s the thing. For social networking specifically, it is possible to avoid bad billionaires. Marco knows this, because he was just there.

Mastodon isn’t owned by an asshole. It isn’t owned by anyone, really. The software is open source. The organization behind it is a nonprofit. The network is thousands of independent servers, and if you don’t like how yours is run, you can move, or run your own. No billionaire profits when you post there. Nobody is using your posts to make their own timeline louder.

To his credit, Marco says “most of them” are owned by assholes. He’s not claiming otherwise. And his frustration with Mastodon isn’t about ownership; it’s that the community stopped feeling like a good fit. I won’t tell him he’s wrong about his own experience.

But “the community there isn’t what I want right now” and “there’s no way to have community without an asshole benefiting” are two very different statements. The first is true for Marco. The second isn’t true for anybody.

The asshole-free option exists. It’s imperfect, it can be cranky, and it’s smaller than X. Those are reasons to help make it better, not reasons to declare it impossible.

Fewer absolutes

Marco closes by saying he’s learning to declare fewer absolutes in a complex, imperfect world.

That’s a good instinct. I’ve tried to avoid absolutes in my own writing about this, too. I’ve never said everyone on X is a bad person. I’ve never said Marco or John or Barack Obama should be shunned for posting there. People can post wherever they want.

But “it’s impossible to avoid assholes” is an absolute, too. And “X is the calm one” is a judgment that only holds up from a pretty specific vantage point.

So welcome back, Marco. I mean that. I hope you find your people again, and I hope a lot of them are on Mastodon.

X is still bad, though.

Matt Braun makes apps under the Magnate Interactive name, and has done so since 2005. Two of his apps, SketchParty TV and Waypoint EDU, have shown up in Apple’s WWDC keynotes. Matt mostly makes games, plus one very practical app for people who work on job sites.

SketchParty TV is a Pictionary-style party game for Apple TV. One player draws on an iPhone or iPad, the drawing shows up on the TV, and teammates try to guess the word before time runs out. It’s $5.99, and SketchParty TV 6 arrives as a free update on November 10 with a full redesign, support for any iPhone or iPad in any orientation, and a press-and-hold word reveal so nobody can peek.

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StareMaster is a staring contest for iPhone. The front camera watches for blinks while you face off against a 3D opponent, or you can play the endless Stare-a-thon mode to see how long you can last. It’s free, and for professional-level staring, there’s a $1.99 Pro upgrade.

Waypoint EDU is an augmented reality scavenger hunt for classrooms and families. A teacher or parent builds a Hunt on a map and writes quiz questions for it, and then kids head out to find the waypoints. It’s free on iPhone and iPad, with add-on Hunt packs covering topics like state capitals.

Truth Truth Lie brings Two Truths and a Lie to iMessage. You record two true statements and one lie on video (or type them out), and your friends guess the lie. It’s free, and a $1.99 upgrade adds a Lie Lie Truth mode that flips the format.

MASH is the classic fortune-telling game you may have played on paper as a kid: Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. You fill in your lists, the app draws the spiral and does the counting, and out comes your future. Matt has been making MASH apps since 2008. It’s free on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, and there’s a free web version, too.

ProofRoll is Matt’s newest app, and the one that isn’t a game. It’s for contractors, landscapers, pool pros, and other trades: You take job photos, track your time on site, and send a branded PDF report or a before-and-after before you leave the job site. It’s free to download, with a subscription after your first three shared reports.

Matt also consults on mobile apps for other companies, and has been blogging again at mattbraun.co, which I’ve really enjoyed. Check out Matt’s apps.

It’s long past time Apple stop approaching support for third-party iOS app stores only when forced, while complaining about it the whole time.

Apple only allows the App Store for iOS in the US. But various countries have issued rulings requiring that Apple offer third-party app store support.

As of October 22, 2026, there are 29 countries where Apple permits third-party iPhone app stores — because it’s forced to by regulatory requirements. Now, in Australia, a court ordered Apple to allow such stores starting in 2027.

Apple says it will appeal. In fact, Apple told Reuters:

“We will request a stay and appeal the outcome to seek a resolution that respects our ⁠intellectual property and protects the safe, secure experience that consumers and ⁠developers expect from the App Store.”

Baloney. Consumers and developers want freedom to install whatever they want on their iPhones.

We’re up to 30 countries with an implemented requirement or a court order requiring Apple allow precisely this: Besides Australia, there’s the European Union, Japan, and Brazil. (It’s worth noting that Russia has also required that Apple support third-party app stores; Apple has thus far refused to comply.)

Apple’s claims haven’t held

Apple fights against needing to implement iOS app sources that aren’t the official App Store by claiming such apps are a security risk. Riley Testut has disproved those claims pretty well; AltStore hasn’t had any such issues.

The Mac obviously supports apps from outside the Mac App Store. I, for one, don’t bother putting most of my Mac apps in the App Store; I’d rather release them directly and not worry about Apple’s approval process.

And my Mac is doing just fine. So is yours. It has been just fine for decades. Nobody at Apple argues that your MacBook is a security nightmare because you can download an app from a developer’s website. The company just quietly accepts that we can be trusted with our own computers, and then insists that your iPhone is somehow totally different. You’ve probably seen the warning Apple pops up when you open a non-Mac App Store app, when your Mac asks, essentially, Are you sure about this? You say yes, you move on.

The argument Apple won’t make out loud

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Apple’s real objection, of course, is money. Every app that ships outside the App Store is a transaction Apple never gets a cut of. I get it. It’s rude to count other people’s money, I guess, but Apple’s doing just fine. Regardless, “we’d rather keep the money” is a business preference, not a safety argument, and dressing it up as one has earned Apple nothing except a growing list of regulators and judges who stopped believing it — and a slew of frustrated developers… along with customers who could get more. (Riley’s AltStore has a true iOS clipboard manager called Clip. An App Store app can’t offer that, because of Apple’s sandboxing rules. I want an iOS clipboard manager! If Apple wants to warn me about using one, fine! I still want it!)

Apple willfully ignores the obvious reality that the App Store would “win” anyway. It’s preinstalled. People trust it. Most iPhone owners will never go looking for an alternative store — unless an app gets huge mainstream attention. And if it’s the kind of app Apple doesn’t want, Apple still shouldn’t police what its users can install of their own free will.

Look at what’s actually popular in AltStore in Europe: a game emulator, a clipboard manager, a utility for jailbreaking your e-scooter. Those apps aren’t a threat to Apple’s business.

Apple is building third-party app store support country by country, under protest, with a different set of rules in each place, and appealing every ruling along the way. They are frustrating developers, and in some cases users, and in many places — governments. This is the most expensive and painful way possible for Apple to support these stores that it seems it will inevitably need to support in more and more places.

One global policy would be simpler to build, simpler to explain, and simpler to live with — for Apple, for developers, and for the customers who’d like to know what their iPhone can do regardless of what country they’re in.

Build it once, build it everywhere

So, Apple: Quit it. Stop making courts force your corporate hand on this front. Open the iPhone to third-party app stores everywhere, on your own terms, with the notarization you already do in the EU, and then go back to making the App Store the place developers want to be, rather than the only place they’re allowed to be.

Riley told me that when Apple finally stopped treating AltStore as an enemy, it started feeling like a partner. The developers who love this platform most, with the biggest and most creative ideas, are the ones Apple keeps fighting. It could stop. It should have stopped a long time ago. The best time to allow third-party app stores and legitimate side loading was years ago. The second best time is right now.

As I never shut up about, I offer a slew of apps. I want to highlight three that are embracing Halloween in ways unique to them.

The latest version of Strategery, out today, fixes some bugs related to stalemates occurring in very large maps with chokepoints. But it also marks the start of the app’s Halloween mode, which — in addition to some obvious visual flourishes — includes custom maps in the shapes of witch hats, jack-o-lanterns, and ghosts. (For the uninitiated, Strategery is a Risk-inspired game that I took over a few months back, and it’s a boatload of fun.)

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Also updated today is The Universe, Controlled. Its Halloween theming includes a pumpkin-shaped planet, and flying spacecraft are replaced with bats, ghosts, and a witch on broomstick. (The Universe, Controlled, if you’re unaware, is my homage to the late great Flight Control.)

And a couple days ago, Halloween mode started in my first app, Lex.Games. The puzzles are the puzzles, but the app’s main menu is adorned with zombies, witches, ghosts, bats, gravestones, and other Halloween mainstays.

I recognize not everyone wants their apps to change their look and feel for Halloween. (Or Thanksgiving, or Christmas and Hanukkah, or Valentine’s Day.) For those users, my apps each include a setting to disable themes, if you’d rather things go back to normal.

But I can’t deny I’ve been eagerly awaiting the date when it’s not too early to turn on the Halloween theming in these apps, because it brings a smile to my face!

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.

The phone arrives Friday — for the lucky few whose pre-orders didn’t slip to later, anyway.

I should say up front: I have never held an iPhone Duo. No review unit, no pre-order. More on that at the end. But the reviews are strikingly consistent about what Apple nailed and what it didn’t, so here’s the consensus I’m seeing from early write-ups.

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Everyone loves the hardware

Every reviewer praises the phone hardware itself. TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff lists “Best folding hinge ever?” among his reasons to buy, and describes the Duo as “a digital fidget spinner” he couldn’t stop opening and closing. Gizmodo’s Raymond Wong points out that it opens completely flat, to a full 180 degrees, which most Android foldables still don’t. Tom’s Guide’s Mark Spoonauer calls it “the best designed foldable phone I’ve ever tested.” Polished titanium, IP68 water and dust resistance, a satisfying magnetic clap when it closes, and at 5.2mm open, the thinnest iPhone ever in that position.

The matte screen is the star

Every review I read praised the nano-texture finish on the 7.6-inch inner display. It hides the crease (you can still feel it, and spot it at the right angle, but it mostly disappears), and it kills glare. The Verge’s Allison Johnson liked it enough to write a separate piece about it:

The matte screen is the best thing about the Duo, and I hope every other foldable maker copies it.

Wired’s Julian Chokkattu calls it “the star of the show.” The tradeoff, which Tom’s Guide and Gizmodo both flag: matte means the colors are a little less vibrant and the blacks a little less inky than a glossy OLED. Spoonauer preferred Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 screen for watching a movie trailer. Wong thinks Apple made the right call anyway. So does Johnson. I’m not one who notices if the blacks are inky or not, so this tradeoff doesn’t fuss me.

It’s heavy

The Duo weighs 254 grams. That’s heavier than an iPhone 18 Pro Max, and 53 grams heavier than the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Every reviewer feels it. Wong says it made his front pocket sag badly enough that he started wearing a belt again. Engadget’s Sam Rutherford says it can feel like an anchor in loose pockets. Chokkattu says it gets tiring after extended doomscrolling, and suspects Apple will go after the weight with the Duo 2, the way Samsung did with its latest fold.

The cover screen is the big question mark

Apple gave both displays the same 1.4:1 aspect ratio, so the phone is the same shape open and closed. Clever. But it means the 5.4-inch outer screen is short and squat, and Apple parks the dock and app controls in a strip down the right side, which makes it narrower still.

The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Allison Johnson are the harshest about this:

Apple says you’re getting 90 percent of the screen area of an iPhone 18 Pro, but that’s pretty small for today’s apps. It’s like having an iPhone 5 in a world of iPhone Pro Maxes.

Texting with the keyboard up, they could see two or three messages at a time. Everything about the phone, they say, nudges you to flip it open. Tom’s Guide notes the dock can’t be moved to the left, so lefties are out of luck. Reaching the far side of the cover screen one-handed, on a phone this heavy, is a stretch for everyone. Ulanoff predicts the right-side layout “will divide opinion.” Apple has said a Reachability feature is coming in a software update.

The apps aren’t ready

This is the one I whined about back in September, and the reviewers all say the same thing. The Verge describes three tiers of apps: plain iPhone apps that run with black bars and look silly; a “messy middle” of apps updated for iOS 27 but not for the Duo, with a telltale black bar on the right of the cover screen; and true Duo apps built against iOS 27.1, which look great. Slack, Netflix, Instagram’s Edits app, Carrot Weather, and Spotify all get shout-outs in that last group.

Chokkattu sums up the gap: “When an app is properly optimized, the experience is chef’s kiss.” His advice is to wait a few months for developers to catch up. Spoonauer expects they will, “out of fear of sheer embarrassment.” As one of those developers: Yeah. We will; be patient.

Multitasking gets a mixed grade. The Duo runs iOS, not iPadOS, and Apple built a new split-screen system for it. Two apps, side by side, landscape only, always a 50/50 split. Rotate to portrait and the split goes away, unless one of the apps is a video player. Wired and The Verge both find it rigid; Tom’s Guide likes it fine.

The camera and Face ID compromises

Two 48-megapixel rear cameras and no telephoto: Every review flags the camera setup, and most call it the biggest hardware disappointment on a $1,999 phone. The Verge says the main sensor is smaller than the 18 Pro’s, more in line with the iPhone Air. Spoonauer’s 10x zoom comparison against an 18 Pro Max came out looking, on the Duo, “like a blurry watercolor.” The 4-megapixel under-display camera on the inner screen is fine for FaceTime and nothing else.

And there’s no Face ID. Touch ID lives in the side button. Nearly every reviewer confesses to staring at the cover screen waiting for it to unlock. Spoonauer calls it a downgrade. I once went from an iPad Pro (with Face ID) to an iPad Air (without), and I still stare at it to unlock sometimes. It never goes away.

Battery and heat

Mixed reports. Wired and Engadget both ended most days with around 40 percent left, and Engadget’s video rundown test ran nearly 29 hours. The Verge had a rougher time: Nilay needed a midday charge on a normal workday, and Nilay’s is the only review that really complains about heat. Third-party video apps, Google’s apps, and the two-screen camera tricks made it hot enough to lag.

The verdicts

The scores line up neatly. Engadget gives it 8.8 out of 10 and says “there’s no doubt Ternus and company have made a first-class foldable.” Gizmodo gives it 4 out of 5: worth the wait, but very expensive. Tom’s Guide calls it the best foldable yet. TechRadar says for Apple fans who’ve been waiting, “there is no other or better choice.” The Verge and Wired both land on 7 out of 10. The Verge’s headline calls it “a messy, expensive, good time” and “an early adopter special.” Wired suggests that it may be prudent to wait for the Duo 2.

Wong’s closing line stuck with me: “The iPhone Duo isn’t the ‘definitive’ iPhone to own… Only you can be honest with yourself about your needs.”

So, honestly

I’ve never held an iPhone Duo. I decided a while ago that I’d sit this round out with my iPhone 18 Pro, and nothing in these reviews changed my mind.

The iPhone Duo, as promoted so far, solves a problem I don’t have. I like using my iPhone one-handed. I like it slim in my pocket. And when I want more screen to work with, I have an iPad Air. The part of the Duo that reviewers struggled with most — a cramped cover screen on a heavy phone that keeps nudging you to unfold it — is precisely the part of an iPhone I like best about my iPhone.

But I’m intrigued and impressed by what I’m hearing about the hardware. I’d love to play with one — just not pay for one.

I’m just curious whether I’ll ever need one for myself. Maybe the Duo 2 will be lighter, the apps will be ready, and the problem it solves will turn out to be one I have after all. For now, my 18 Pro stays in my pocket, and my iPad stays on my desk. Or, if I’m honest, my kitchen table.