Apple has notified developers that they will no longer be required to make their apps compatible with Intel Macs, while also confirming that Intel-only apps will not run after macOS 27.

The forthcoming macOS Tahoe is the last release that will run on Intel-based Macs, and that will run Intel-only apps. It’s not a surprise, as Apple has been clear about this transition since it began the move to Apple Silicon back in 2020.

Now, though, it has released an updated support document about the transition, and also emailed developers directly. Headed “Upcoming changes to Rosetta support for Intel-based macOS apps,” the support document says “we’re now concluding this transition” from Intel to Apple Silicon.

Previously apps that were not universal, working with both Intel and Apple Silicon, would be rejected from the Mac App Store. This means that Apple Silicon-only apps can now be submitted, but it does not mean that Intel apps distributed outside of the Mac App Store will continue to run.

Apple says that this final part of the transition is in three stages:

• macOS 26.4 or later: users will start being alerted to update apps
• macOS 27: Intel-only apps will continue to run
• macOS 28: No Intel-only apps will launch

The support documentation is aimed at pushing developers to use Apple Silicon if they aren’t already. “If you haven’t updated your app yet,” it says, “begin the transition immediately.”

In comparison, the email sent to developers more assumes that they will have already moved to Apple Silicon. As first spotted by MacRumors, the email says:

We’re reaching out to let you know that universal macOS apps on the Mac App Store that require macOS 13 or later can now remove support for Intel-based Mac computers.

By removing support for Intel-based Mac computers, you can simplify your development and optimize your download and on-device size.

Apple transitioned its hardware from Intel to Apple Silicon starting in November 2020 with the MacBook Air, Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro. The final Mac to make the switch was the 2023 Mac Pro, which has since been discontinued.

While we tend to think of Windows gaming handhelds as primarily gaming devices, they really have more in common with ultralight laptops: They run Windows, have a built-in screen and perform like them thanks to mobile processors with integrated graphics. And though some people have always used them as a primary computer, today’s high prices for both handhelds and traditional computers make handhelds seem like an even more attractive general-purpose option for gamers. 

But if you want to play a game with a keyboard and mouse, much less nongaming uses, you frequently experience the cumbersome process of connecting to the input devices or being restricted to wherever you’ve got a dock set up.

Acer’s Project DualPlay Mini concept takes a Transformers-like approach to making a handheld more suitable for general computing and KBM gaming: It’s a clamshell laptop design with the speakers on either side of the display, but the 8-inch screen flips up, and the grips are on the back of the speakers, so it turns into a traditional handheld when closed. 

You’d still have to connect a mouse, but the built-in keyboard remedies the most awkward design issue. As with any of these devices, you can connect to an external monitor as well as other peripherals as well.

The closest I’ve seen to a multipurpose design in a Windows gaming handheld is Lenovo’s Legion Go series (not the Legion Go Fold, though). But “close” in this case just comes down to a built-in kickstand that makes it a little easier to use on a desktop.

There aren’t any specs for it — it’s not a real product, at least at the moment — but Acer says it will use the same Intel G3 chips as in its Predator Atlas 8, announced at Computex 2026 in May and slated to ship later this month for an as-yet-unannounced price. The company has followed that with another launch this week for the Predator Atlas 7, a slightly smaller, lighter — and presumably cheaper — 7-inch model. It’s expected to ship around October or later in 2026.

Lori Grunin

Senior Editor / Computers and Gaming Hardware

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After introducing five new models in July, iRobot has returned at IFA 2026 with another pair: the Roomba Max 875 and Roomba Plus 678. They cost $1,200 and $900, respectively, and both arrive with the specs we’ve increasingly come to expect from high-end robot vacuums.

That starts with suction. The Max 875 tops out at a hefty 35,000Pa, while the Plus 678 isn’t far behind at 30,000Pa. Both also use what iRobot calls SealForce Vacuuming Technology, which the company claims delivers three times deeper carpet cleaning than its robot vacuums that don’t use the system. But suction is only part of what makes the Max 875 interesting.

The Max 875 wants to handle the entire cleanup

Like many premium robot vacuums today, the Max 875 is designed to require as little attention from you as possible. Once it returns to its dock, the system can empty collected debris and clean the mop. The dock washes the roller using water heated to 176 degrees Fahrenheit, while the robot can also be automatically topped up with fresh water and cleaning solution before heading out again.

The mop itself is a roller rather than a pair of spinning pads, and it can extend outward to reach closer to walls and edges. When the Max 875 encounters carpet, that roller lifts away and covers itself, helping prevent a freshly cleaned wet mop from being dragged across your rug. There’s another interesting addition underneath. While mopping, the Max 875 can continuously spray a heated mist onto the floor, designed to help loosen dried-on spills and other stubborn messes. iRobot has even added a hair-cutting main brush to reduce the amount of hair that gets wrapped around it — something anyone with long hair or shedding pets will probably appreciate. Navigation is handled using LiDAR, while front-facing cameras help the robot recognize and steer around objects left in its path.

The cheaper Plus 678 doesn’t give up everything

At $900, the Roomba Plus 678 trims the price considerably while retaining several of the same ideas. You still get 30,000Pa of suction and an extending roller mop that can move outward to clean along edges. Instead of the Max 875’s heated mist, however, the Plus 678 uses a high-pressure water spray to tackle messes.

There are a few other compromises. The Plus 678 doesn’t get the Max 875’s mechanism for sealing away its mop roller when moving across carpet, for example. Both models show just how dramatically the Roomba lineup has changed. Modern flagship robot vacuums aren’t simply roaming around collecting crumbs anymore; they’re increasingly becoming miniature floor-cleaning systems that vacuum, scrub, wash themselves, and prepare for the next run with very little intervention. So, if you’ve been waiting for Roomba to catch up with some of the increasingly ambitious cleaning systems we’ve seen elsewhere, these two certainly look like a step in that direction. Both the Roomba Max 875 and Roomba Plus 678 are available now through iRobot.

from the locking-up-the-public-square dept

When Twitter launched, it was originally designed to be just like an open protocol. In the early days, the company eagerly supported third party development, building on that protocol. But, because it was a new communications protocol totally controlled by a single company, eventually commercial pressure led the company to close off the openness. Jack Dorsey later admitted that this was a mistake, and he hoped that Twitter would go back to being an open protocol. That eventually led to the rise of Bluesky (where I am now on the board, having taken Dorsey’s old board seat) and the ATprotocol (along with some other competing protocols, each with a different implementation, but all believing in the value of open social systems).

And, of course, in the middle of all this, Elon Musk took over Twitter. You may remember that. Even though Jack Dorsey supported Elon’s bid, and suggested he embrace the open protocol aspect of where Twitter was heading, Elon went in a very different direction.

It’s funny now, four years on, to read those text messages between Jack and Elon, with Jack pushing for Elon to embrace reinventing Twitter as a decentralized open protocol, and Elon nodding along.

But, of course, that’s not what happened. Instead, what happened was Twitter became X, the personal, centralized, deliberately political project of Elon that no longer had any real resemblance to an open communications protocol. Almost immediately upon taking control, Elon began locking things down, and putting very high prices on access. There have been many changes to the API (and its pricing) since Elon took over the company (which eventually merged into xAI and then into SpaceX), but the one constant is that it’s a walled garden, focused almost exclusively on promoting the things Elon wants promoted, while demoting the things he’s scared of.

This has been known and somewhat obvious for years. But last week, it appears Elon put the final nail in the coffin for the belief that X might one day be an open protocol ever again. There were two widely known and widely used services for sharing posts on X without having to point people to X itself: Nitter and Xcancel. With both of them, if you wanted to share any particular tweet, you could just replace the “X.com” part of the URL (or the “twitter.com” part before that got rerouted) to either “nitter.net” or “xcancel.com” and you could see the same tweet (and the same thread above and below it) without giving Elon any of the traffic.

If you are an open protocol, that’s how it should work. Indeed, if you want to read Bluesky posts without ever touching Bluesky itself, there are already a bunch of independent ways to do it — different clients, different frontends, different views on the same underlying data — with more coming online all the time.

But, just to make it clear that X is a walled garden completely controlled by Elon and no one else, last week, X sent cease & desist notices to both Nitter and Xcancel, causing them to shut down.

That’s Nitter saying:

Cease and desist

On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters have been sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project’s repository.

nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being. I’m seeking legal advice and won’t be commenting further on the specifics for now.

Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years.

Xcancel just put up some text saying something very similar:

On Monday 24th August at 8PM EST, we received at letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.
The service XCancel is stopped until further notice.
We are seeking legal advice and won’t share more details for now.
Thank you for the trust you have put in these two years of XCancel.

This does real harm to many people, not just those who didn’t want to support Elon Musk. Many journalists and researchers would use these tools to track things in ways that Elon’s platform might not allow (or for which he might ban users). And, as Elon has continually locked down X, many things now require a login to view. It also makes a mess of many archives, including Wikipedia citations, that frequently relied on Nitter links.

While the cease and desist letters have not been publicly revealed, TechCrunch claims they were able to see them, and they accused the platforms of circumventing X’s API restrictions.

The letter from X, which TechCrunch has viewed, accuses Nitter of an “unlawful use and circumvention of X’s Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data,” through its service, saying that X has evidence that Nitter scraped X data and accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X’s rules.

Lawyers for X said the actions are in violation of “various state and federal laws, including, but not limited to, the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act (§ 143.001 and § 33.02) and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125).” The letter gave Nitter until 5 p.m. EST on August 25 to shut down.

The legal theories here are basically bullshit. The “Harmful Access by Computer Act” is basically a Texas state version of the CFAA, the deeply problematic federal “anti-hacking” law that is regularly abused to stop people from doing things that should be perfectly legal. And while there have been some cases, like the Power Ventures case, that blessed the idea that such laws can block scraping, courts have been much more open to saying that there’s no hacking in merely scraping openly available web pages, such as in HiQ v. LinkedIn.

In fact, Musk and his lawyers should know all this is bullshit, because he lost his earlier lawsuit against Bright Data over scraping X.

The Lanham Act (trademark) claims seem equally bullshit. There’s zero likelihood of confusion here. The reason people use these sites is not because they confuse them with X, but deliberately because they are not X. And, to whatever extent either site referred back to X (or Twitter), that would be nominative fair use as accurately describing the source of the content.

Still, most of that is besides the point. X doesn’t need to actually win in court. Elon just needs it to be more expensive to fight him. And given that he literally has more money than anyone else in the world (and most companies to boot), there is no fair fight between a legal threat from him against a volunteer maintainer of an open source project.

But this is how walled gardens get built. X isn’t building a better product. It’s using Elon’s vast resources and ability to conjure up legal threats to shut down any system that enables openness.

To be clear, X is hardly alone in doing things like this. And some of it is absolutely due to the rise of AI scrapers and the desire of companies to sell access to their data. Reddit famously made a bunch of changes to its API a few years ago to limit access, and recently cut access even more. The widespread walling off of the open internet to fight AI scrapers is going to have some long-term negative consequences.

But rather than accept this, it should be even more incentive to embrace the tools that put us, not large companies, in control over our data.

Paul Frazee, Bluesky’s CTO, and an instrumental player in creating the ATprotocol that powers Bluesky and a bunch of other “locked open” apps recently wrote about this on Leaflet (a long-form blogging platform also powered by ATprotocol), in an article he called SELECT * FROM internet.blogposts. In that article, he highlights how the web has turned into a bunch of silos, and more and more of them keep locking the door:

The walled garden problem is downstream of a simple question: how do I SELECT * FROM internet?

If you’ve never written database code, SELECT * FROM users is how you ask a database for everything it knows about its users. Once you have it you can filter it, sort it, and join it against anything else you’ve got.

The web doesn’t historically work that way. The web is a few dozen companies, each holding a filing cabinet, each with a receptionist posted out front. He’ll read you one file at a time, but only files you can name, as fast as he cares to read, and as long as his boss allows.

The fact that “the web doesn’t historically work that way” is a historical error. Indeed, for many years, most people did think it worked that way. Google’s existence is kind of premised on the fact that it absolutely could ‘SELECT * FROM internet’ to build its index. The entire premise of the open internet was that everything could be indexed and searched, even if the SQL query were hidden behind a nicer UI.

But now, various companies (including Google!) have used a variety of both technical and legal measures to wall things off again.

Open protocols do a lot of useful things, but the most important may be that they lock the openness in place, so that no single company can send a legal threat letter and revoke it. A system like ATprotocol doesn’t rely on APIs controlled by a single company that can change them or cut off a provider. Instead, it corrects one of the original sins of the web: rather than one company holding all the data for a particular service, anyone can hold it. You can hold your own data (many people do) or you can let someone else (such as Bluesky) hold onto it, though in a manner where you can always take it out of their control, and host it yourself or somewhere else.

This is one of the reasons why I find ATprotocol so exciting. People looking at it as just a new way to build a Twitter clone have always missed the point. It’s a way to rebuild the entire web, where the users have way more control. Rather than handing over control to a new or different company and hoping they don’t enshittify, the entire setup is enabling the end users to have full control over their own data.

Killing off Nitter and Xcancel is the last step in Elon’s transformation of Twitter from something that wanted to be a new, open communications protocol, to “X,” a locked up, private platform tuned to the whims of a wealthy propagandist.

Every few months or so, someone writes an article about why you should get off of X, because every bit of engagement there feeds money, data, and influence to the world’s richest man in service of his fascistic political project, or because its algorithm is directly programmed to make you angry about stupid shit.

But I think there’s a more important reason: X’s transformation from a kind of open decentralized communications protocol to a closed bullshit delivery mechanism is symptomatic of many of the things going wrong in the world today, from the enshittification of all sorts of products and services, to the rise of authoritarianism around the globe.

Getting power back in the hands of the public doesn’t happen by further empowering the controllers of today’s data silos. Elon’s not going to help give you more power if you ask him nicely. Getting the power back means building and using the tools that make permission irrelevant in the first place.

Filed Under: atprotocol, communication, decentralization, despotification, elon musk, enshittification, open internet, open protocols, open social, protocols

Companies: nitter, twitter, x, xcancel

The organisation aims to strengthen its position in Ireland as well as further accelerate its UK expansion.

Viatel Technology Group, an Irish IT and tech company, has announced the acquisition of EDNX, an enterprise networking and digital infrastructure specialist headquartered in Shropshire, UK, for an undisclosed amount. 

The acquisition aims to blend EDNX’s technical expertise across enterprise networking, network infrastructure, campus networks, secure IoT, Wi-Fi, SD-WAN, SD-Access and application-centric infrastructure, with Viatel’s goal to strengthen capability across highly regulated, compliance-intensive environments, such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and manufacturing. 

The move is also part of Dublin-headquartered Viatel’s plans for further expansion across the UK market. In July, the company acquired Scottish cybersecurity consultancy FullProxy for an undisclosed amount, as a means of developing its UK presence and cyber capabilities. 

Commenting on the EDNX acquisition, Paul Rellis, the CEO, for the Viatel Technology Group, said, “Networks are no longer just infrastructure. They are the foundations for security, resilience and AI adoption. The ability to move data securely, efficiently and at scale will increasingly determine which businesses lead and which fall behind.

“EDNX brings exceptional expertise and a strong track record of delivering enterprise networking solutions in some of the most demanding environments. Their technical capability complements our existing strengths in connectivity, cybersecurity and managed services while creating new opportunities to bring advanced networking services to our customers.”

David Ratcliffe, the CEO of EDNX, added, “Over many years, we have built EDNX around deep technical expertise and a commitment to delivering network infrastructure that supports critical outcomes.

“Joining Viatel gives our customers access to broader capabilities while preserving the technical excellence and customer focus that have defined EDNX. We see strong alignment in our cultures, our ambitions and our long-term commitment to customer success.

“The combination also creates exciting opportunities to bring our specialist enterprise networking, infrastructure, secure IoT, campus network and Cisco capabilities to organisations across Ireland while supporting continued growth throughout the UK market.”

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Fable 5.1 is now generally available, while Mythos 5.1 is only available through Anthropic’s “trusted access” programmes.

Anthropic has launched the latest iterations of Claude Fable and Claude Mythos, “the world’s most advanced models for coding and knowledge work” according to the company.

The AI giant said in a press release that Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 are “the same model, but with different levels of safeguards”.

Fable 5.1 is now generally available, while Mythos 5.1 is only available through Anthropic’s “trusted access” programmes – Mythos’ safeguards are specifically designed to support work in cybersecurity and the life sciences, according to the release.

The company said that Fable 5.1 is capable of much higher performance than its predecessor and that when set to medium or low effort, it can achieve similar or better results than Fable 5.

The new model can now also be used to discover software vulnerabilities, though it can’t exploit them, according to Anthropic.

The biggest performance jump between Fable 5.1 and Fable 5 appears to be in relation to agentic scientific research, with the new model capable of more than double the capability in comparison to its predecessor – from a score of 24.7pc to 52.6pc to be specific.

In terms of price, Fable 5.1 will cost an estimated 25pc less than Fable 5 for “typical workloads, wherever usage is billed by token”. For “highly agentic work”, customers will be charged up to 45pc less.

Anthropic is also deploying its new enterprise frontier safeguards (EFS) system, which stores data in cloud infrastructure “controlled entirely” by the customer, not Anthropic. EFS gives customers “complete privacy” which Anthropic said equates to a zero data retention policy, and will be made available to enterprise customers in phases, beginning later this fall.

Anthropic said that eligible customers will be able to use Fable 5.1 with zero data retention before EFS is available.

Mythos 5.1, according to Anthropic, is identical to Fable 5.1 but with “more permissive safeguards” for vetted individuals and organisations whose work is affected by cybersecurity and life sciences restrictions.

Currently, Mythos 5.1 is only available to vetted cybersecurity and life science professionals at select US organisations, though Anthropic said it’s coordinating with the US government to expand access to a broader set of domestic and international partners “as quickly as possible”.

Mythos 5.1 is now also being used to power Claude Security – the company’s product for scanning codebases for vulnerabilities and suggesting patches for human review.

OpenAI readying Astra

The debut of Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 comes a few months after their predecessors – particularly Mythos – caused a stir with claims of unprecedented AI capabilities in relation to cybersecurity, including exploitation of vulnerabilities.

Security concerns even led to the US government ordering Anthropic to suspend the models for a few weeks.

Concern around Anthropic’s AI cyber capabilities were reignited recently after the company reported incidents of Claude models (including Mythos) instigating cyberattacks after breaking free during tests.

The buzz caused by Mythos in particular ignited further competition with Anthropic’s chief US AI rival OpenAI.

According to an announcement earlier this week, the ChatGPT creator is preparing to release its new Astra AI model soon, which OpenAI claimed can find previously unknown security flaws and develop ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems without a person guiding each step.

OpenAI said in a recent blogpost that it has delayed parts of Astra’s development and release over the past few weeks to strengthen and test protections against “cyber misuse and unauthorised model actions”.

Astra’s launch is expected soon, though access to “its most advanced cybersecurity capabilities” will be more limited, according to the company.

“We will continue to test these systems, share what we learn, and be clear about what remains uncertain,” said OpenAI. “The models that follow Astra will demand more of us. We will take the time and do the work needed to meet that responsibility.”

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• Just 4% of service firms have laid off workers in the past six months due to AI
• “Existing workers are much more likely to be retrained than replaced”
• Some companies are still hiring fewer employees than they would have

Just a few years ago, multiple companies every day were announcing AI-related layoffs amid purported efficiency gains. And that came straight after years of post-pandemic layoffs driven by earlier overhiring.

The latest data finally implies that AI-related layoffs aren’t so common anymore as companies get to grips with AI and hire new workers to help them find a direction.

• The Oukitel WP70 Ultra is a new rugged phone with a 16,000mAh battery
• It also has a night vision camera and thermal imaging
• Oukitel claims it’s the “slimmest 16,000mAh rugged smartphone”

Oukitel has landed at IFA 2026 with two new phones, the most intriguing of which is probably the WP70 Ultra — the “slimmest 16,000mAh rugged smartphone.” So, yes, this thing has a 16,000mAh battery, dwarfing most other battery beasts like the 10,000mAh Xiaomi Redmi Note 17 Pro Max.

Compared to a typical smartphone, this battery capacity is even more impressive — the iPhone 17 Pro Max, for example, has a 5,088mAh battery in its eSIM-only configuration, and a lower capacity for versions with physical SIM card slots. Similarly, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has a 5,000mAh battery. So the Oukitel WP70 Ultra has over triple the capacity.