Amazon Blocks Meta's Muse • Apple's iPhone Duo Pencil Pivot
Well, it didn't take long for a full-on AI Agentic War to break out. No, not the kind that could potentially end humanity, but the kind that could end civility between the various players in Big Tech...
Meanwhile, Apple's 'one more thing' iPhone Duo almost had its own 'one more thing' in the form of an Apple Pencil Mini. Just imagine if John Ternus has busted out there, "actually, there are two more things..." and pulled an Apple Stylus out of his pocket. He could have made a great joke about not blowing it, despite the stylus...
Read on, for thoughts on...
Amazon Blocks Meta's Muse
Begun, the Agentic Wars have. I mean technically they started when Amazon blocked Perplexity's 'Comet' agents from doing the same thing: trying to shop on their users' behalf – which Amazon first won and then lost, in court. But Meta is a whole other scale here, obviously. As Todd Bishop reports:
The problem, Amazon says, is that it never agreed to any of it. Meta didn’t tell Amazon that Muse would access its store, the agent doesn’t identify itself when it browses, and it appears to capture and store customer credentials, which the company says could create privacy and security risks.
As of Sunday night, people trying to use Muse to shop on Amazon were seeing the popup, “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed.”
Amazon is clearly using this "Conditions of Use" violation after they lost said Perplexity case which even more ridiculously equated such agentic workflows to "hacking". But this also seems silly. What if I had, say, a human assistant buying something on my behalf? Would this be a violation too? Okay, what if you set up an Amazon account specifically for your Muse assistant? Would they try to block it too saying it would have to have its own method of payment in its name? What if you're disabled and need someone else to be able to use your account on your behalf? Where does this end and begin?
The real issue, of course, is twofold. First, Amazon has their own agentic shopping assistant that they'd prefer you to use for such needs. The artist formerly known as Rufus is slowly morphing into Alexa+ as Amazon tries to get their own agentic strategy in order. (Yes, they note that they let brands opt-out of 'Buy For Me' features, which Meta does not.)
But the second issue is the bigger one: Amazon's ads business. An agent may "see" a suggested product ad on Amazon's page when browsing, but it obviously doesn't have the same impact because if that agent is tasked with buying something specific, there's going to be no deviation no matter how enticing the ad may be. Further, it could fuck up the impression count – should an agent "seeing" the ad count as one? Presumably not!
What Amazon probably wants is some sort of deal in place with Meta around all of this, to ensure they get compensated. And unlike the other deals they have in place with Meta, there's no real framework here yet. And given the Perplexity situation, Meta may be fine to try to have Amazon challenge the legality of this to start.
But it sucks for the users. And it certainly won't be the last such situation. Shopping aside, you can see all sorts of services trying to block the agents by competing services simply because the two sides are in competition. How long until Google pulls Gmail/Calendar/Docs support from Muse? Would Apple dare try, which could open them up legally as the platform owner?
Maybe this is the path that allows startups like Instinct to win given their "Switzerland" status. Until, of course, someone buys them. Then, just like Cursor post-SpaceX deal, how long until rivals (OpenAI) pull support? This is just the beginning of trying to define what is means to "use" a service in the AI era.
Apple's iPhone Duo Pencil Pivot
Last December, my first prediction for 2026 felt like a fairly straightforward one: that the foldable iPhone, when released, would be a hit. And while it doesn't exactly seems like going out on a limb to think that an Apple product will be a hit, I would just note (as I did) that many of Apple's first takes on products actually aren't immediate hits – including the Apple Watch, Vision Pro, and even the iPhone Air. Anyway, now that the iPhone Duo is real, I'm felling decidedly more confident here – the only thing that may stop it from being a huge hit – beyond the huge price,1 which I don't expect to be too big of an issue to start – are supply constraints. Anyway, here's the full blurb from December 31, 2025 for context:
The 'iPhone Fold' is a big hit at launch – While it may not seem like a stretch to say that an Apple product will be a hit, actually Apple has a pretty poor track record when it comes to first iterations of devices in recent years – see: iPhone Air, Vision Pro, even the Apple Watch wasn't a blockbuster out of the gate. But I think the iPhone Fold could break that trend and not just because it's Apple's take on a category which is growing, though not yet massive in "foldables". I suspect Apple's entry will be a bit different than what others have been doing. It will be Apple's first phone that's not just a rectangular slab – and it may not even be a rectangle at all, with a rumored 4:3 ratio?! In our world of ever-growing screen sizes, that could be a welcomed change. And when unfolded, it could be more akin to an iPad mini, a device I've long loved but hasn't caught on in the way the regular iPads have. Would it run iOS? iPadOS? Some sort of new hybrid? And what if Apple has a special, new accessory built for it? Given that it's likely to launch towards the end of the year, we won't have a ton of sales data on the device by year end (and it may be constrained anyway), but I'm guessing the buzz will be huge – despite the huge price tag of $2,000+...
Yeah, that all holds up well, but did you catch my own little one more thing in there? About that special, new accessory built for it? I went a bit deeper a few months later in March:
As I wondered in my prediction post for the year, what if any sort of newfangled experience for the 'iPhone Fold' also included a new type of accessory? Maybe an 'Apple Pencil Mini' – heaven forbid, the actual 'Apple Stylus'?!
Obviously the unveil came and went without such an accessory. But curiously, Apple did note that the Duo would have support for the Apple Pencil. But it also wasn't that straightforward, because it wasn't all Apple Pencils. Nor was it the top-of-the-line Apple Pencil Pro. It would only be the USB-C variant of the Apple Pencil. Which was weird. But now we seemingly have more as to what happened. Here's Mark Gurman:
The original plan was to introduce the Pencil designed for the Duo but, a few months ago, the accessory ran into technical problems ahead of mass production. Apple then pivoted to just supporting the iPad versions of the accessory.
But getting the iPad Pencils to work on the iPhone Duo isn’t as simple as hitting a button to enable support. Apple has to roll out new software to make them compatible and run loads of internal tests. That process is now underway within Apple, with the company — as it said during the Duo unveiling — believing that support will be ready by the end of the year. I would take that literally: It will be fairly late in 2026.
So it seems pretty clear that Apple was closing in on launching with that accessory I envisioned, a shorter, magnetic Apple Pencil – dare I say an Apple Stylus – but had to pull it pretty late in the process due to those technical issues. And given that they pivoted to the USB-C version of the current Pencil, it seems clear that the Apple Pencil Mini was built with that same technology (i.e. not all the "premium" features of the Pro model – nor wireless charging).
It's too bad, because I imagine that would have been pretty fun to see in action. Because you know Apple was cooking up some fun software features to go along with the hardware. Things that would even further differentiate and separate it from the other foldables out there – yes, even those that have had stylus support before. But maybe we'll see it with the iPhone Duo 2 – Duo Two!
