Nilay Patel

Truth Social is hurting for cash and user growth and an SEC investigation into its go-public deal with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp. has prompted users of the service to — what else? — call for the entire SEC to be shut down.

You never know with Elon, but his offer to actually buy the company after all this drama is weird because he’s asking for the case to be put on hold before he closes the deal. Why would Twitter — or the court — agree to that, after Elon has already walked away once? I’ll believe this is real when the deal finally closes.

Ian is starting to make landfall in Florida, and AT&T says it’ll waive text, talk, and data overage fees for both postpaid and prepaid wireless customers with billing addresses in 828 zip codes across Florida from September 28, 2022 through October 28, 2022. The company is also prepping its huge Network Disaster Recovery team, which has everything from truck-based mobile cell towers to entire basecamp setups for field work.

Ford’s newest big work trucks are the first pickups in the US with 5G modems (supplied by Qualcomm, of course), and the first vehicles I’ve seen with 5G at all, really. It mostly allows the built-in WiFi hotspot to support 10 devices. Audi and GM have plans to add 5G in 2024, as do other carmakers like Stellantis. Remember when 5G was going to revolutionize cars?

You have to watch this video, and PC Gamer’s writeup is also great.

Going on The Talk Show to dive deep on our iPhone reviews has become one of my favorite yearly traditions. A little bit of Apple Watch Ultra conversation in there too — and yes, I asked John what he thought of our redesign fonts.

This is like the fifth or sixth generation of these things. What are their meetings like? Do they go to frat parties to get feature ideas? Why did they go from “Mega Bass” to “Extra Bass” for the past few years back to “Mega Bass” for this one? Is this one team’s passion project or do they hire mercenary party speaker engineers? Please, someone contact me.

Dan posted about CarPlay earlier and it reminded me that wireless CarPlay has actually set Apple back in its quest to somehow take over the car market — problems with it disconnecting are the number one complaint from new car owners, according to JD Power. Something to think about as Apple continues its relentless quest to remove all the ports from our phones.