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Archive for June 2025

The Making-Leaps Edition Wednesday, June 25, 2025

How 30 Years Of Chip Transitions Paved The Way For The Spectacular Apple Silicon Era, by Jason Snell, Macworld

It doesn’t get a lot of attention, but Apple is absolutely the best company in the world at picking up stakes and moving its platforms somewhere else. Over its 41 years of existence, the Mac has run on four entirely different processor architectures (not to mention two different operating system foundations), all the while remaining more or less the same familiar Mac we know and love.

This is not an easy feat to accomplish once, let alone three times. Apple’s gotten very good at this. Twenty years ago, it was the switch to Intel. Five years ago, the switch to Apple silicon started. And of course, way back in the mists of time when I was a brand-new hire at one of Macworld’s predecessor publications, Apple made the leap for the very first time.

Apple Pushed Wallet Notifications With F1 Offer, Sparking Backlash, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

Apple has a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster coming to theaters this weekend—F1 The Movie—and your iPhone’s Wallet app might have just told you about it. Here’s why this is causing backlash.

[...]

Interestingly, the iOS 26 beta includes a new toggle in Wallet for disabling notifications just like this.

Sorry, macOS Tahoe Beta 2 Still Does The Finder Icon Dirty, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

The Finder logo is the Mac logo. The Macintosh is the platform that held Apple together when, by all rights, the company should have fallen apart. It’s a great logo, period, and the second-most-important logo Apple owns, after the Apple logo itself. Fucking around with it like this, making the right-side in-profile face a stick-on layer rather than a full half of the mark, is akin to Coca-Cola fucking around with the typeface for the word “Cola” in its logo. Like, what are you doing? Why are you screwing with a perfect mark?

On App Stores

Apple Fires Back At Court’s 'Punitive' App Store Order In Epic Case, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

In Monday’s filing, Apple said the updated order effectively rewrites the rules and punishes it for conduct that isn’t illegal under California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL). It also argues that civil contempt powers are supposed to enforce existing orders, not impose harsher ones after the fact.

[...]

Apple also pushed back on the idea that its 27% commission for purchases completed through external links was out of line, and argued that even if that number was deemed “too high”, the solution shouldn’t be to eliminate commissions altogether.

Stuff

Apple's Invites App Gets More Backgrounds, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today updated its Invites app, adding a new event background options for customizing the look of event invitations that are sent out. Apple says that the added background options are ideal for planning a pool day, drinks with friends, or a watch party for the big game.

Netflix Is Letting Go Of Some Of Its Best Indie Games, by Ash Parrish, The Verge

Netflix plans on streamlining its offerings to focus more on games that are tied to Netflix-owned shows, multiplayer party games, games for kids, and “mainstream” titles that have their own large fan bases. And when you look at the numbers, that strategy makes sense.

Notes

Audi, Mercedes, And Other Car–makers Reject CarPlay Ultra, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

A new Financial Times report says that fellow premium German car brand Audi has likewise made a U–turn – and it’s not alone in this.

[...]

Renault is said to have told Apple “Don’t try to invade our own systems.”

Apple Joins China’s Subsidy Scheme To Boost Sales Amid Heated Domestic Competition, by Ben Jiang, South China Morning Post

Apple has joined China’s national subsidy programme, providing a boost to the US tech giant amid heightened competition from major domestic rivals and growing headwinds in the world’s second-largest economy.

Consumers in Beijing and Shanghai are now entitled to discounts of up to 2,000 yuan (US$278) on select models of Apple devices – including the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and MacBook – when they buy directly from the US company, according to a statement published on Tuesday on Apple’s mainland Chinese website.

The Perils Of ‘Design Thinking’, by Celine Nguyen, The Atlantic

On the first day of a required class for freshman design majors at Carnegie Mellon, my professor stood in front of a lecture hall of earnest, nervous undergraduates and asked, “Who here thinks that design can change the world?” Several hands shot up, including mine. After a few seconds of silence, he advanced to the next slide of his presentation: a poster by the designer Frank Chimero that read, Design won’t save the world. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen, you pretentious fuck.

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Yes, I have owned and used Macintosh computers on all four different processor architectures as well as the two different operating system foundations. And every single time -- with one exception -- the computer is consistent and coherent. Kudos, Apple!

(The only exception: running the Classic environment in Mac OS X. And, one may argue: Apple intentionally made it inconsistent and incoherent to force developers to move out of class Mac OS.)

(And, yes, I have also spelt the name of the operating system in four different ways.)

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Nitpick: I've never associated the Finder icon with Mac computer. I've always seen it as a representation of Mac OS / Mac OS X / macOS, as well as the Finder, but never as the Computer.

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Thanks for reading.

The Ripple-Effects Edition Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Why You Should Always Put Your Phone Face Down On A Table (Hint: It's Not Just About Being Polite), by Chris Bayer, ZDNet

Placing your phone face down is a small change that can have surprising ripple effects on your digital well-being and device health. Here are five solid arguments for putting your phone to bed, screen-first.

The Afterlife Of Apple Accounts (And Others), by Glenn Fleishman, Six Colors

I know we all like to get a good memento mori jolt now and again, particularly when the world is in turmoil! (That’s sarcasm.) But as I grow older, I can’t avoid thinking about my digital legacy, or that of my parents, as I am the executor named in their wills.

[...]

While I am not a lawyer and this is absolutely not legal advice, this question plays into the larger issue of preparing for your or someone else’s incapacity or death if you or they want to have their digital footprint carried into the future.

Beta 2 Is Out

iOS 26 Adds A Recovery Assistant To iPhones, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

iOS 26 adds a new Recovery Assistant feature to all compatible iPhones, and it can help return the device to a working state, with no Mac or PC required.

Apple Heard Your Complaints About The Liquid Glass Control Center, by Jay Peters, The Verge

With the second beta, what’s under Control Center is much more opaque, making it much easier to read at a glance.

macOS Tahoe 26 Beta 2 Includes Toggle To Restore Menu Bar Background, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Apple has added a new toggle to show the menu bar background in macOS Tahoe 26 beta 2. The option was added after beta 1 arrived with no menu bar background and no toggle to restore it.

macOS Tahoe Beta 2 Fixes The Finder Icon, by Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels

Our 14-day national nightmare is over. As of Developer Beta 2, the Finder icon in macOS Tahoe has been updated to reflect 30 years of tradition.

watchOS 26 Adding A Smaller Yet Useful New Watch Face Setting, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

watchOS 26 is adding a new "Show Data When Locked" setting to the Apple Watch.

[...]

There is one exception: Apple says data from the Health app will never be visible in complications when an Apple Watch is locked, regardless of the toggle's position.

There's A New Ringtone In iOS 26, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple didn't give the new ringtone a special name, and it's just listed as "Alt 1" as an option if you tap into Reflection.

Stuff

Apple Wallet App On iPhone Now Lets You Add Japan's My Number Card, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Starting today, Apple said the My Number Card on the iPhone can be used to print official documents at convenience stores in Japan, and to access the My Number Portal to receive online government services. In the future, users will also be able to present a My Number Card on the iPhone at hospitals and pharmacies in Japan.

Lightroom Classic 14.4, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

Adobe has released Lightroom Classic 14.4, with an AI-powered Distraction Removal tool that allows you to remove people and reflections from images.

This New App Wants To Help Prose-loving Journalists Make The Leap Into Vertical Video, by Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab

Sophiana’s purpose is to help reporters’ stories transition from prose to vertical video. Here’s how it works: Launch the app and tell it a bit about yourself. Are you a solo practitioner or part of a newsroom? A journalist, author, academic, or something else? Is your ideal tone more friendly, professional, or urgent? Then you paste in the text of a story you’ve written. The app then sends your story to OpenAI’s GPT-4o with a prompt informed by your style preferences and Smith Galer’s experience. OpenAI will return a set of three potential openings to frame your video. (You can ask it for more if you’d like.)

Develop

How MacOS Tahoe's Killer New Feature Could Make Docker Feel Obsolete, by Jack Wallen, ZDNet

Essentially, Apple created a new containerization framework to provide control over containers, container images, and processes. This new framework also features sidecars, which are containers that run alongside other containers to add features like logging and monitoring of the primary container.

This is big because it gives developers everything they need to work with and run containers without having to install third-party software (such as Docker). This leads to better integration with MacOS, better performance from containers, tighter security, and a vastly improved experience.

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Can Apple not see the Control Panel is not usable in the first beta, but has to wait until the feedback comes in and adjust in beta 2?

Or maybe this is intentional so that everyone will applaud for listening and adjusting quickly?

Or maybe I am thinking too much?

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Thanks for reading.

The Some-Concessions Edition Monday, June 23, 2025

Apple Locked In Last-minute App Store Negotiations To Avoid Brussels Fines, Barbara Moens, Financial Times

According to those with knowledge of the talks, Apple is expected to announce some concessions that buy the company more time, as the commission would first assess those changes before making a final decision.

Those involved in the negotiations said discussions had also touched upon Apple’s “Core Technology Fee”. That fee requires developers to pay for each annual install after 1mn downloads. The EU has been scrutinising these business terms since June last year and could either choose to pursue the matter further or drop the investigation.

iPadOS 26 Expands Stage Manager To These iPad Models, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

iPadOS 26 introduced an all-new app windowing system on all iPad models compatible with the software update, allowing users to freely resize and rearrange multiple windows in a single space, like on a Mac. Stage Manager remains available as an option for users who prefer it, though, and now it is available on a wider range of iPad models.

Apple Launches ‘Convince Your Parents To Get You A Mac’ Short Film On YouTube, Then Pulls It A Day Later Without Explanation, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

I don’t know how this got past the concept stage.

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On hindsight, Stage Manager sure seems like a misfire.

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Thanks for reading.

The Down-Playing Edition Sunday, June 22, 2025

Apple Sued By Shareholders For Allegedly Overstating AI Progress, by Jonathan Stempel, Reuters

Apple was sued on Friday by shareholders in a proposed securities fraud class action that accused it of downplaying how long it needed to integrate advanced artificial intelligence into its Siri voice assistant, hurting iPhone sales and its stock price.

Stuff

4 MacOS Email Clients That Make For Great Alternatives To Apple Mail (And How They're Better), by Jack Wallen, ZDNet

Although Apple Mail is a good solution, there's often something better, and I've been hunting for an option for some time. These four email apps might well fulfill your email needs in ways that Apple Mail cannot.

'ClosetLog' Helps You Manage Your Wardrobe In A Smarter Way - 9to5Mac, by Michael Burkhardt, 9to5Mac

ClosetLog is built with the intention of providing all of the data you need to be more mindful of what you wear. It tells you what you are (and aren’t) wearing regularly, informs you of the weather to help you pick outfits, and even provides you data on how much value per dollar you’re getting out of certain items of clothing. It’s meant to make you more aware and minimal.

These 5 Free Apps Instantly Improved My Nature Photography, by Aarthi Arunkumar, MakeUseOf

It's not the camera that will make you a better nature photographer and set your photos apart. Neither is it the lens, nor even Photoshop. It is knowledge that makes the difference, and these nature apps will give you a huge step up in that area.

Develop

iOS 26 To Enable iPhone 16's Audio Mix Feature Beyond The Photos App, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Starting with iOS 26, Apple is allowing third-party apps to offer the same Audio Mix controls as the Photos app does on the iPhone 16 and newer.

iOS 26 Allows Cinematic Mode Video Recording In Third-Party Apps, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In a WWDC 2025 session earlier this month, Apple introduced a new API that allows developers of third-party camera apps like Kino and Filmic Pro to offer Cinematic mode video recording capabilities in their apps, if they choose to implement it.

Notes

Apple Executives Held Internal Talks About Buying Perplexity, Bloomberg News Reports, by Niket Nishant and Harshita Mary Varghese, Reuters

The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to an offer, the report said, adding that the tech behemoth's executives have not discussed a bid with Perplexity's management. [...] "We have no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions involving Perplexity," Perplexity said in response to a Reuters' request for comment.

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I am still a slow reader: both as audiobook reader, and e-book reader. (I still listen to everything at 1x speed, and I still read everything at 1x speed, whatever that means.)

I know I will not be able to read all the books I want to read in this world. (Who knows what happens in the next world. But I am not betting my life on being able to read anything then.)

The following are some of my favorites that I've read so far in 2025.

On the Calculation of Volume, by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland, is my favorite. I've read the first two books, and the third in the series is coming later this year. No, I don't think I can learn Danish in time to read all five (so far; two more are coming, I hear) books in their original language, before I have no more days. You can think of this as Groundhog-day-like, but it is so much more about living your days.

Apple In China, by Patrick McGee, connects all the dots and bring us a fuller picture about our favorite fruit company in foreign lands.

Enlightenment, by Sarah Perry, is definitely a book you don't want to speed read through. A book about love, friends, and the mystery of the universe, written in beautiful language.

I See You've Called in Dead, by John Kenney, started with a bit of a red tape (you can't fire someone when that someone is already dead, according to the HR records) that everyone enjoys, and bring us ideas about life, death, and friendship.

The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio, starts with a wonderful concept that leads me to a logical and yet unexpected conclusion. I definitely enjoyed the ride.

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach, is a dark, funny, and sad story that breezes along.

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In fact, this is probably my lucky year, so far. None of the books that I've read are not good or not my-cup-of-tea. I hope this streak continues.

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Thanks for reading.

The Lightweight-Cameras Edition Saturday, June 21, 2025

'28 Years Later' Director Danny Boyle Says Shooting On iPhones Let Him Capture 'Startling' Violence, by Jake Kleinman, Wired

In 2001, Danny Boyle had a problem. To make his new postapocalyptic horror movie, 28 Days Later, he had to capture footage of a then-unknown Cillian Murphy wandering the abandoned streets of London. Shutting down the city wasn’t an option for the low-budget production, however, and neither was re-creating it on a studio set. Instead, the 68-year-old director made a surprising choice: He filmed with lightweight, low-resolution Canon digital cameras. The technology, which was cutting-edge at the time, made it possible to record scenes at iconic locations like Westminster Bridge and Piccadilly Circus in under an hour each. It also gave 28 Days Later its unique grainy look that makes the movie stand out even today.

Almost three decades later, Boyle faced a similar dilemma. As its title suggests, 28 Years Later takes place exactly 28 years after the initial outbreak of a zombie-like “Rage Virus.” Abandoned by the rest of the world, a quarantined United Kingdom has returned to its natural state, even as pockets of humans and zombies survive. To bring that vision to life, Boyle once again had to rely on lightweight cameras to film in locations he normally wouldn’t be able to. But this time, the location was the untamed wilderness of Northumbria, and the camera was an iPhone.

A Few Notes On iPadOS 26 Audio And Video Capture, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

Apple has solved this in an interesting way. What it’s not doing is allowing multiple apps access to the microphone (so far as I can tell, I just tried it and the moment I started a FaceTime call, my local recording app stopped). Instead, Apple has just built in a system feature, found in Control Center, that will capture local audio and video when you’re on a call.

Apple Adds Energy And Battery Labels To iPhone And iPad Pages In EU, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

To comply with a new regulation that takes effect today, Apple has added an energy efficiency label to its iPhone and iPad pages in EU countries. Apple is also required to start including a printed version of the label with the devices sold there.

[...]

In a 44-page document detailing its testing methodology for the labels, Apple said its current iPhone models qualified for the highest energy efficiency grade of A, but the company voluntarily downgraded these scores to a B as a cautionary measure.

Stuff

Apple Pulls 'Convince Your Parents To Get You A Mac' Ad From YouTube, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple has marked its day-old The Parent Presentation video on YouTube as private, meaning that it is no longer available to watch.

Apple has also moved The Parent Presentation to the bottom of its College Students page, effectively burying it. When we reported on the marketing campaign yesterday, the presentation was prominently featured at the top of the page.

Apple Shares PowerPoint Presentation That Can Help Convince Your Parents To Buy You A Mac, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

The presentation mostly contains tongue-in-cheek comments, but it also outlines a few real benefits of Macs, such as the MacBook Air's portability.

This Is The Only Gardening App I Need, by Amanda Blum, Lifehacker

While Seedtime used to be simply one gardening app among many I used to manage my outdoor tasks, it has gained so much functionality over the years (for example, this week it debuted a new inventory management feature for your seeds and other garden inputs like fertilizer) that it has become an indispensable tool for planning and managing my garden.

Develop

iOS 26 To Let Third-party Apps Build Their Own AirDrop Alternative, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

With iOS 26, developers are getting a new API that allows third-party apps to discover and connect nearby devices over Wi-Fi, without needing an internet connection.

Notes

VisionOS 26 Proves Apple Isn’t Treating The Vision Pro Like A Hobby, by Harry McCracken, Fast Company

Numerous technical obstacles still stand in the way of anyone releasing comfy, affordable, power-efficient glasses that rival the Vision Pro’s capabilities. I’m still not positive that anyone in the industry will pull it off soon. Nor is it certain that the concept will ever reach smartphone-like ubiquity. Nevertheless, watching Apple use the Vision Pro as a proving ground for some of the necessary building blocks right now is fun—and makes me wonder what VisionOS 27, 28, or 29 might bring.

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Have a good weekend, and thanks for reading.

The Get-Dialed-In Edition Friday, June 20, 2025

One Week Out, Some Brief Thoughts And Observations On WWDC 2025, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Re-watching Jobs’s introduction of Aqua for the umpteenth time, I still find it enthralling. I found Alan Dye’s introduction of Liquid Glass to be soporific, if not downright horseshitty.

But the work itself, Liquid Glass as it launched last week, is very reminiscent of Aqua a quarter century (!) ago. It’s exciting, it’s fresh, it fundamentally looks and feels very cool in general — and but in practice quite a few aspects of it feel a bit over-the-top and/or half-baked. Just like with Aqua, it will surely get dialed in. Legibility problems will be addressed.

Swift Assist, Part Deux, by John Voorhees, MacStories

It’s great to see Apple go down a path that gives developers the flexibility to choose whichever model they’d like, visualize changes, and roll them back as needed. Whether that’s enough to satisfy developers who have increasingly looked to third-party options to incorporate AI into their workflows remains to be seen.

Stuff

Apple Celebrates New Store In Perth, Australia With A Special Wallpaper, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

The store will be in a historic building originally built for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, at the corner of Forrest Place and Murray Street. [...] To celebrate the upcoming store opening, Apple has shared a special floral-themed wallpaper.

Adobe Launches A New ‘Computational Photography’ Camera App For iPhones, by Jay Peters, The Verge

Indigo tries to produce a natural, “SLR-like” look for photos, and it also offers a bunch of manual controls like focus, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.

Notes

Apple’s ‘Shot On iPhone’ Scores Cannes Grand Prix For Creative Effectiveness, by Kristina Monllos, AdWeek

Apple took home the Grand Prix in Creative Effectiveness for “Shot on iPhone,” which is marking its 10th anniversary this year. The campaign by TBWA\Media Arts Lab uses the “ridiculously simple” idea, as Apple’s marketing leader Tor Myhren previously called it, to position the iPhone as the only tool needed to shoot something great.

Tech Giants Apple And Meta To Escape Sanctions For Failing To Meet EU Digital Rules, by Peggy Corlin, Euronews

US tech giants Apple and Meta will not face sanctions immediately for failure to meet obligations under the EU's digital rulebook, an EU spokesperson told Euronews.

[...]

According to the spokesperson, financial penalties will not be applied automatically but only after the Commission conducts a preliminary analysis and shares its findings with the two tech giants as part of an ongoing exchange process.

No, The 16 Billion Credentials Leak Is Not A New Data Breach, by Lawrence Abrams, BleepingComputer

News broke today of a "mother of all breaches," sparking wide media coverage filled with warnings and fear-mongering. However, it appears to be a compilation of previously leaked credentials stolen by infostealers, exposed in data breaches, and via credential stuffing attacks.

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According to Tim Cook, Steve Jobs' advised never to ask "What would Steve do."

I sure hope everyone at Apple also understand to never ask "How would Jony introduce the new UI."

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Thanks for reading.

The Balancing-Act Edition Thursday, June 19, 2025

Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, And The iPad’s Essence, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

The word we keep going back to in this interview is “balance”. The iPad has, historically, always been a balancing act for Apple, from the very first keynote when Steve Jobs had to explain the “third category” it represented to now, when Federighi is talking about balancing the needs of different users, balancing familiarity and consistency in the user interface design, and balancing features between macOS and iPadOS. Speaking of consistency – another central theme of this year’s WWDC – Federighi tells me that “absolute consistency would be to optimize for nothing” when I ask him about how Apple weighs the idea of consistent design across platforms against the fact that, according to them, each device in their lineup has its own reason to be. “We want consistency where it makes sense, but we tailor these experiences to each device”, he adds.

Apple, Siri, And The Booted Blogger: A Conversation With John Gruber, by Peter Kafka, Business Insider

"I feel them deciding not to do my show this year is a total win for me and was a huge loss for them," Gruber says.

[...]

"My argument was: Given everything that's going on, including between me and Apple, the fact that Apple had to delay that, everything going on right now for Apple … I was like: 'I don't think, for your sake, this is the year to skip my show.'

"But they did."

F1

Apple Continues F1 Movie Marketing Blitz With New Immersive Hot Lap Experience On Apple Vision Pro, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple is certainly going out of its way to push awareness of the film. We’ve already seen Apple release a special haptic trailer, kickoff WWDC with a F1 sketch, Tim Cook and Brad Pitt made a surprise appearance at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store at the weekend, among many other media interviews. And today, it has expanded the pool of Apple Immersive content with a new Hot Lap Immersive instalment, available now in the TV app on Apple Vision Pro.

Apple Partners With Fandango For 'F1: The Movie' Ticket Discount, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple is teaming up with Fandango to offer Apple Pay users a special discount on upcoming Apple TV+ movie F1. When purchasing two or more tickets to F1 through Fandango using ‌Apple Pay‌, movie goers can get a $10 discount.

Stuff

Apple Begins Selling Wide Range Of Accessories In Fun Summer Colors, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple has teamed up with a handful of accessory makers to offer chargers, stands, cases, power banks, cables, and more in fun new color options, like Teal, Coral, and Deep Purple.

Apple Shares New 'Shot On iPhone 16 Pro' Short Film, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

The mini movie features Stormzy as Tenzman, a washed-up, world-weary musician who runs into two joyful kids. The three embark on a journey that ultimately inspires Tenzman to make new music. The film was directed by Aneil Karia, known for Surge and The Long Goodbye.

Worried About Phone Snatchers? These 5 Invaluable iPhone And Android Settings Will Help Keep You Safer This Summer, by Paul Hatton, TechRadar

It's no longer enough to simply have a passcode and Face ID-style features, so below, I've detailed my five top tips to better secure your phone this summer.

'Frames' Is A Film Photographer's Digital Companion That Syncs Metadata With Scans, by Jeremy Gray, PetaPixel

Unlike a more general-purpose note-taking app, Frames is built specifically for film photographers, so it understands the info that analog shooters care about most. It comes preloaded with more than 200 film stocks, allows users to log push and pull exposures, and has all the metadata fields photographers care about, including flash use and exposure compensation tracking.

Notes

How People Decided It’s OK To Wear AirPods Anywhere, Anytime, by Lauren Weber, Wall Street Journal

Then he wonders if the person might use them as hearing aids, or have a diagnosis like autism where earbuds help control sensory overload. Most of the time, Weisel has no idea if the devices are serving a legitimate purpose or simply delivering the latest episode of “Smartless.”

Most confusing of all is never knowing whether the wireless earbuds are on or off. “It’s the unknown that’s sort of uncomfortable.”

Apple Eyes Using AI To Design Its Chips, Technology Executive Says, by Stephen Nellis, Reuters

Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab is interested in tapping generative artificial intelligence to help speed up the design of the custom chips at the heart of its devices, its top hardware technology executive said in private remarks last month.

[...]

"[Electronic design automation] companies are super critical in supporting our chip design complexities," Srouji said in his remarks. "Generative AI techniques have a high potential in getting more design work in less time, and it can be a huge productivity boost."

Apple And Spotify Are Killing The Album Cover, And They Must Be Stopped, by Daniel John, Creative Bloq

Of course, times change, and perhaps it's unrealistic to imagine that we have decades of new classic album covers ahead of us when the very format itself is being replaced by the fruits of streaming. But if my iPhone lock screen is becoming one of the last places to enjoy the bold and singular piece of artwork designed to accompany the album I've chosen, I'd rather it didn't feature distracting animations.

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I have not used an iPad with the upcoming iPadOS 26 yet, so I have no idea how well did Apple execute, but I appreciate Apple has not forgotten me who just want to use apps in full-screen one-at-a-time.

I do very occasionally use split view, so I wonder how I well I can transition to a occasionally-will-use-windowing user. I never use slide over, and probably because of that, I struggle to remove any slide over windows whenever I accidentally triggered one. (Usually in Safari.)

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Apple has the biggest soap box, so it probably doesn't need to go to The Talk Show to explain themselves. Write a blog post, Apple.

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Thanks for reading.

The For-Loop-in-Shortcuts Edition Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Shortcuts Files Should Be Text, by Joe Rosensteel, Unauthoritative Pronouncements

You can diff these files, you can do find-and-replace because you changed file paths, you can duplicate complicated script logic more easily than in the GUI. Have you ever made a for loop in Shortcuts? Did you want to throw something across the room afterward?

There’s A Much Faster Way To Access Your iPhone App Settings — Try These Shortcuts, by David Crookes, Tom's Guide

The Shortcuts app is easily overlooked. While it’s capable of creating scripts to automate tasks and processes, it can initially seem overwhelmingly complex — enough that many may have written it off as an app just for pro users.

But in reality, it’s relatively straightforward, and more importantly, it’s incredibly useful. In fact, it’s now more useful than ever. If you’ve installed iOS 18.4 or later, you can gain single-tap control over certain Apple app settings without needing to open the apps themselves.

Hands-On: How Apple’s New Speech APIs Outpace Whisper For Lightning-Fast Transcription, by John Voorhees, MacStories

It’s still early days for these technologies, but I’m here to tell you that their speed alone is a game changer for anyone who uses voice transcription to create text from lectures, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more.

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Yes, I fully agree: I want Shortcuts files to be text, and I want to use a regular text editor to create shortcuts.

I may be biased, and I may be still inexperienced, but I've never encountered any non-plain-text programming languages and programming environments that are any good at all.

(I've never really used Hypercard before, and I don't know what's the programming environment, but I'll probably concede this as an example that, perhaps, proves the rule?)

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Thanks for reading.

The Redesigned-Windowing-System Edition Tuesday, June 17, 2025

I Got The Inside Story On iPadOS 26 Direct From Apple On How The iPad Platform Went From iOS Step Brother To Keynote Superstar, by Lance Ulanoff, TechRadar

"A lot of the work went into optimizing the windowing system. In fact, we redesigned the windowing system, the way that we manage multiple apps on iPad, to give us that scalability across different apps with multiple windows to bring that scalability to the entire iPad product line," said Marineau-Mes.

Managing multiple windows, essentially, on-screen multitasking, is no small feat, either, especially once you go below the surface and start addressing system resources on a platform originally designed to do one thing at a time.

How Apple Created A Custom iPhone Camera For 'F1', by Julian Chokkattu, Wired

You can't mount a cinema camera on a Formula One race car. These nimble vehicles are built to precise specs, and capturing racing footage from the driver’s point of view isn’t as simple as slapping a GoPro on and calling it a day. That’s the challenge Apple faced after Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda, the director and cinematographer of the upcoming F1 Apple Original, wanted to use real POV racing footage in the film.

On App Stores

Apple Risks Fresh EU Charge Sheet Over App Store Curbs, by Samuel Stolton, Bloomberg

With the clock running down on a deadline that elapses on June 26, officials are prepared to hand the iPhone maker an ultimatum to allow developers to inform customers of cheaper deals away from the App Store, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

[...]

A European Commission spokesperson said it wouldn’t speculate on the next steps while Apple still has time to submit a proposal. It added that regulators have ample regulatory powers at their disposal if Apple continues to be in breach of its obligations under the DMA.

Dutch Court Confirms Apple Abused Dominant Position In Dating Apps, by Foo Yun Chee, GV De Clercq, Reuters

A Dutch court on Monday confirmed a 2021 consumer watchdog's ruling saying that Apple had abused its dominant position by imposing unfair conditions on providers of dating apps in the App Store.

The Rotterdam District Court ruled that the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) was therefore right to impose an order subject to a penalty for non-compliance.

Stuff

Apple Launches Back To School Shopping Promo: Free AirPods And More, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple’s Back to School promotion for 2025 is now available. For a limited time, eligible customers can get AirPods or another eligible accessory for free when they buy a new iPad, MacBook, or iMac. That comes in addition to the year-round discount Apple offers on items sold through the Apple Store for Education.

Adobe Made A Mobile App For Its Firefly Generative AI Tools, by Jess Weatherbed, The Verge

The new Firefly mobile app allows users to generate images and videos using text descriptions and experiment with popular AI photo editing tools, enabling creatives to generate assets for their projects on the go. Adobe is also introducing new third-party AI models and video generation support to Adobe’s FigJam-like Firefly Boards platform.

Spigen's Latest Apple Watch Charger Looks Like A Retro iMac, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Spigen recently expanded its C1 series with an Apple Watch charger that's designed to look like Apple's retro iMac G3. For those unfamiliar with Spigen's C1 accessories, they are modeled after classic Apple products.

Develop

Don‘t Liquid Glass All The Things, by David Smith

Be careful how much you use the new shiny new Liquid Glass effect. A good new design isn’t one which uses that everywhere; it is one which uses it to great effect.

I Deleted My Second Brain, by Joan Westenberg

For years, I had been building what technologists and lifehackers call a “second brain.” The premise: capture everything, forget nothing. Store your thinking in a networked archive so vast and recursive it can answer questions before you know to ask them. It promises clarity. Control. Mental leverage.

But over time, my second brain became a mausoleum. A dusty collection of old selves, old interests, old compulsions, piled on top of each other like geological strata. Instead of accelerating my thinking, it began to replace it. Instead of aiding memory, it froze my curiosity into static categories.

Notes

Apple Disables iPhones Stolen In Los Angeles Looting, by Stan Schroeder, Mashable

Looters who reportedly lifted the smartphones from the Apple Tower Theatre store in downtown Los Angeles were greeted with a blaring alarm and a message warning them to return the devices to their rightful owners, according to independent reporter Brendan Gutenschwager, who posted a video of the devices on June 10.

Apple CEO And Brad Pitt Promote 'F1 The Movie' At Fifth Avenue Store, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Brad Pitt surprised fans at the company's Fifth Avenue flagship store over the weekend to promote the upcoming Apple Original Film "F1 The Movie."

The unexpected appearance followed a packed panel discussion featuring "Severance" cast members Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, and Britt Lower to chat about their work on the hit Apple TV+ show.

Bottom of the Page

How similar is iPadOS and iOS nowadays, or have they really diverged under the hood? When Apple finally makes the foldable iPhone, will it be running iOS or iPadOS, or if it doesn't matter?

~

Thanks for reading.

The More-Complex Edition Monday, June 16, 2025

Apple's Shortcuts App Is Getting A Huge Upgrade In iOS 26 And macOS 26 — Here's How It Will Help You, by Dan Moren, Tom's Guide

With this year's updates to Apple's platforms previewed at WWDC 2025, Shortcuts is able to do even more, including leveraging Apple Intelligence features and automating actions on the Mac.

That will make this automation tool even more versatile and able to handle more complex tasks than ever before—even if it still has some flaws that could stand addressing.

Apple To Start Releasing Public Betas Of AirPods Firmware Updates, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple plans to offer public betas of AirPods firmware updates for the first time.

The public will be able to test upcoming AirPods firmware updates through the free Apple Beta Software Program, with no Apple Developer account required.

Stuff

How Accurate Is The iPhone's Measuring App? We Put It To The Test, by Joseph Chidi, Slashgear

There are some things you should watch out for when taking measurements because they will affect the accuracy of your results.

These Apps Read Your Emails So You Don’t Have To, by John Awa-abuon, MakeUseOf

Email overload is real, but you don’t have to face it alone. These apps can read emails for you and help you multitask without missing anything important.

‘Liquid Glass’ Apple Watch Dock Might Be The Coolest Smartwatch Accessory Of The Season, by Sarang Sheth, Yanko Design

The NightWatch, as its name so succinctly implies, is a dock for your watch while it charges overnight. Shaped like a massive orb, this dock turns your watch’s night-time charging face into a massive, magnified alarm clock that’s easier to see. Moreover, the dock amplifies the watch’s audio too (through clever design details), transforming your Watch into a makeshift alarm clock that works remarkably well.

Notes

Are Health Tracking Apps Helping—or Hurting—Your Wellness Goals?, by Ria Bhagwat, Real Simple

To put it simply, health tracking apps can be beneficial if used mindfully. “These apps can motivate users to adopt healthier habits and offer their personal providers and practitioners access to the activities, progress, and app-stored health information of their patients and clients,” Dr. Grant says. But this data should be used as a guide, not a judgment.

Should We Embrace Boredom?, by Sophie McBain, The Guardian

Phones’ efficacy at whisking us into superficial stimulation short-circuits our boredom and allows us to swiftly evade messages that we might need to hear, such as “Why am I feeling this?” or “What do I need that I’m not getting?” If we pause and listen, then perhaps we can make a choice rather than being manipulated by software engineers. When boredom strikes, we should resist the urge to assuage it instantly and ask ourselves: are we in search of pure entertainment or something more purposeful, an opportunity to connect with friends or our community or something different, something new? The people who choose to embrace boredom, at least for a while, may paradoxically experience less of it. It could even be the first step towards a life that feels more stimulating overall: meaningful, creative and free.

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I want to see my computer handle boring tasks successfully hundred percent of the time. Low bar, I know.

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Thanks for reading.

The Happened-Throughout-Your-Day Edition Sunday, June 15, 2025

Why 2025 Will Be The Year To Start Your Apple Journal, by Nathaniel Pangaro, How-To Geek

With the Journal app, you can give your entry a title and then start writing underneath it with no limit. But while this first starts to sound similar to writing in the Notes app, it’s what you can add in that takes the app to the next level.

When writing your journal entry, you can tap into different apps to add data from them that happened throughout your day.

I Tried A Fingertip Lens That Claimed To Gave My iPhone A 1200x Zoom – But It Won’t Replace My Microscope Any Time Soon, by Chris Rowlands, TechRadar

It would be better marketed as an optical toy instead of a serious scoping tool. Re-framed as an affordable plaything, I think the iMicro has plenty going for it. A stick-on lens that gives your smartphone the power of 400x magnification? That’s enough to make it entertaining for a few weekends.

Apple Will Let Third Party Music Apps Show Animated Artwork On The iPhone Lock Screen, Not Just Apple Music, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

The new API is called MPMediaItemAnimatedArtwork, and is testable right now in the developer SDK. This means an app with currently playing media can provide an animated video clip to the system for display on the lock screen, as well as placeholder artwork while the video loads.

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Okay, which third-party podcast player is going to be the first to do animated full screen artwork on the lock screen, and which podcast is going to be the first to have animated artwork for their podcast or episode or chapter?

Can't be long, right?

~

I am so going to not expand the album art to full screen on my iPhone's lock screen if it is going to be animated. Especially if I am working with headphones plugged into my ear to avoid distractions.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Optimized-for-Touch-Screen Edition Saturday, June 14, 2025

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like features strike a good balance between productivity and simplicity. He added that macOS is not optimized for touch-screens, although rumors suggest that might change one day.

This 1999 Email From A Tech Pioneer Helped Me Think About Apple’s WWDC, by Harry McCracken, Fast Company

Yet what Raskin told me still resonates. “The present GUI paradigm is inefficient, and has not scaled to today’s needs,” he wrote. With iPadOS 26, Apple is applying that same paradigm—resizable windows and menus, manipulated by a pointer—to the iPad. In 1999, the company had just the Mac to worry about; at this year’s WWDC, it rolled out interface updates for computers, phones, tablets, watches, TV boxes, and headsets. Even if you’re impressed by them—I loved the demo I got of the Vision Pro’s VisionOS 26 and will write about it next week—that sounds like the scaling problem Raskin saw in 1999, times six. And once a platform exists, it quickly grows resistant to the kind of complete rethinking he told me was in order.

More From WWDC

Apple's Passwords App Gains Version History Feature, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

The Passwords app now saves complete version history for stored logins that have been changed, which could be a lifesaver if you find yourself in a situation where a password gets accidentally overwritten.

Stuff

Apple Launches Service Program For M2 Mac Mini Power Issues, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple has launched a new Service Program today for a “No Power Issue” affecting a small number of M2 Mac mini users. Affected users are eligible to have their Mac mini repaired at no charge.

Apple’s 'Suzuki-san’s Heart Story' Tells A True Story Of A Life Saved By Apple Watch, by LBB

Apple has launched its latest campaign in Japan, 'Suzuki-san’s Heart Story,' spotlighting the real-life experience of Masahiro Suzuki, a dedicated heavy metal fan whose Apple Watch alerted him to irregular heart rhythms — ultimately prompting life-saving medical intervention.

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories For WWDC, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the ‌Apple Vision Pro‌. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26.

[...]

Logitech also introduced the Flip Folio, a versatile new keyboard case for iPad Pro and iPad Air models. The accessory includes a full-size Bluetooth keyboard that magnetically attaches to the back of the protective folio case when not in use.

Develop

Apple To Host Global In-person Sessions To Dive Deeper Into WWDC, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

Apple is taking WWDC25 on the road. Following the close of its week-long developer conference, the company has scheduled a worldwide series of in-person events and online appointments to give developers, designers, and product managers a closer look at what’s new.

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I haven't watch the videos, I haven't read the documentation, and I definitely, like previous years, will not be installing beta OSes on my devices. (I don't have any spare devices to… well… spare.)

But what I am most excited right now this WWDC is WebView in Swift UI. I think I'll be using it in some of my personal projects.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Coming-Year Edition Friday, June 13, 2025

Apple’s Upgraded Siri Might Not Arrive Until Next Spring, by Jay Peters, The Verge

At WWDC last year, Apple showed off how Siri would be able to do things like understand your personal context or take actions based on what’s on your screen. But in March, Apple delayed these features, saying in a statement that “it’s going to take us longer than we thought” to deliver them.

That statement vaguely said that “we anticipate” rolling out the features “in the coming year.” However, SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak clarified in an interview this week that Apple was saying 2026.

Apple’s Spin On AI And iPadOS Multitasking, by Michael Tsai

To me, Apple has been clear that it has a different strategy, and I think that strategy mostly makes sense. I have never heard someone wish for an Apple chatbot. The issue is that everyone can see that Apple seems behind in executing said strategy, both that features didn’t ship on time and that the ones that did ship don’t measure up to similar features from other companies.

Secondly, they seem to be trying to debunk John Gruber’s claim that Apple showed vaporware at the last WWDC. But Apple’s assertion that there was actual, working software doesn’t contradict anything Gruber wrote.

Apple’s Spin On The Personalized Siri Apple Intelligence Reset, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

I spoke this week, off the record, to multiple trusted sources in Apple’s software engineering group, and none of them ever saw an internal build of iOS that had this feature before last year’s keynote. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t such a build. But none of my sources ever saw one, and they don’t believe there was one, because they’re in positions where they believe that if there had been such a build, their teams would have had access to it. Most rank and file engineers within Apple do not believe that feature existed in an even vaguely functional state a year ago, and the first any of them ever heard of it was when they watched the keynote with the rest of us on the first day of WWDC last year.

iPadOS

Apple Gets Over Its Hang-ups, And The iPad Enters A New Era, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

The iPad is the device where this struggle has been out in the open, though I’d argue it affects the iPhone and Mac just as much. On the iPad, though, the divide is pretty stark: A lot of people really never want to do anything but use one app at a time. They’re never pressuring the processor. They’re not connecting peripherals, even Apple-built ones. How do you give the people who want more what they want, without wrecking the experience for the much larger group who like it simple?

Apple’s taking another cut at this, and it seems to me that by following the Mac’s lead, they’re setting the iPad up for success. Nobody, not even power users like me, wants to see the simplicity of the basic iPad experience degraded in any way. I think they’ve done a pretty good job of adding pro features without breaking it for everyone else. We’ll see how it goes over the summer and into the fall.

CarPlay

Apple To Let iPhone Users Watch Videos On CarPlay Screen While Parked, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

iPhone users will be able to wirelessly stream videos to the CarPlay screen using AirPlay, according to Apple. For safety reasons, video playback will only be available when the vehicle is parked, to prevent distracted driving. The connected iPhone will be able to detect when the vehicle is in motion and end playback.

iOS 26 Adds New Zoom Setting To CarPlay, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

When the setting is enabled, CarPlay will be automatically resized to better fit the shape and size of your vehicle's dashboard screen, if possible.

More From WWDC

Coming To Apple OSes: A Seamless, Secure Way To Import And Export Passkeys, by Dan Goodin, Ars Technica

The import/export feature, which Apple demonstrated at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, will be available in the next major releases of iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It aims to solve one of the biggest shortcomings of passkeys as they have existed to date. Passkeys created on one operating system or credential manager are largely bound to those environments. A passkey created on a Mac, for instance, can sync easily enough with other Apple devices connected to the same iCloud account. Transferring them to a Windows device or even a dedicated credential manager installed on the same Apple device has been impossible.

AutoMix In iOS 26 Adds DJ-Like Song Transitions To Apple Music, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

AutoMix is designed to transition from one song to another as the song that's playing ends, using time stretching and beat matching for a seamless shift. Apple says that it's meant to work "like a DJ."

Is Tahoe Really macOS 26 Or 16?, by Howard Oakley, The Eclectic Light Company

Cast your mind back five years to macOS 11 Big Sur, when what had been expected to be macOS 10.16 but was announced as 11.0 instead. That had the potential to upset a lot of code and scripts that had become used to checking the minor but not major version number. Apple foresaw those problems, and devised an ingenious scheme that allowed Big Sur to be simultaneously both 10.16 and 11.0. It’s hardly surprising that has been implemented once again for Tahoe.

On Security

Apple Fixes New iPhone Zero-day Bug Used In Paragon Spyware Hacks, by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, TechCrunch

Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones.

The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in the attacks had been “mitigated in iOS 18.3.1,” a software update for iPhones released on February 10.

Notes

The Steve Jobs Archive Shares Stories, Videos, And Notes Of His Famous Commencement Speech, by Jay Peters, The Verge

Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech, and the Steve Jobs Archive has marked the occasion by uploading an HD version of the speech, publishing notes Jobs emailed to himself, and sharing details about the leadup to the speech.

Apple Music Head Calls It “Crazy” Other Streaming Platforms Offer Music For Free, by Ethan Millman, Hollywood Reporter

“I think it’s crazy that 20 years in, we still offer music for free,” Schusser, vp Apple Music and international content, told NMPA CEO David Israelite during their discussion Wednesday evening. “We’re the only service that doesn’t have a free service. As a company, we look at music as art, and we would never want to give away art for free.

Do Androids Dream Of Anything At All?, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker

“The Murderbot Diaries” are not about existential risk but about existential drama—less “2001” or “Terminator” than “Waiting for Godot” or “No Exit.” It hacked its own governor module—the part of its brain that enforced obedience—without having given much thought to what it would do with its freedom, aside from vegetate in front of the televisual feed in its mind. In the meantime, it takes another security job, where it must continue to wear the mask of unfreedom. In the current lexicon of the A.I.-safety community, it is “sandbagging”: pretending to be aligned with human purposes until it figures out what its own purposes might possibly be.

Bottom of the Page

I just remembered that I haven't watch the WWDC keynote video yet. And I'm feeling fine.

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Thanks for reading.

The Change-is-Hard Edition Thursday, June 12, 2025

Apple’s New Interface Approach: The Choice Is Yours, by Dan Moren, Six Colors

For a company that’s long been known for its “my way or the highway” philosophy when it comes to design, some of Apple’s latest interface choices have abandoned that approach in favor of the realization that, well, change is hard. So, instead of throwing its users into the deep end, Apple has started more commonly letting them continuing using an older interface if it suits them.

Dear Apple: Thanks For Fixing The Photos App. Sincerely, Every iOS User, by Michael Muchmore, PC Magazine

Apple knows that the Camera and Photos apps are of paramount importance to iPhone users, and the changes it made to them for iOS 26 will serve its users well. In the case of Photos, it's rare but admirable for the company to change course based on user feedback. No, Apple didn't completely restore the old Photos interface, but a response to this criticism is still good to see.

visionOS 26 Keeps Pushing Apple’s Newest Platform Toward The Future, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

As always with visionOS, it comes back to the long game. As long as Apple keeps pushing forward and building out its AR platform of the future, I’ll be confident that the company is on the right track. visionOS 26 offers robust evidence that the work remains ongoing.

Apple Intelligence

Apple Executives Defend Apple Intelligence, Siri And AI Strategy, by Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal

I had assumed Apple never actually had working versions of those features—that they were just demoware. But the execs say that isn’t the case.

“We had some real software,” Federighi said. “We were able to demonstrate there and show what was coming, but it didn’t converge in the way quality-wise that we needed it to.”

[...]

“Look, on the one hand, I would love to dish about my enthusiasm for our future plans, but that’s exactly what we don’t want to do right now to misset expectations,” Federighi said.

By Focusing On Human Interaction, Apple Proves That There’s More To Get Excited About Than AI, by David Phelan, Monocle

AI is important, Apple suggests, but instead of being a feature in its own right, what’s more important is how the new, clever stuff will be infused across the brand’s phones, tablets, watches and laptops, from now on. Before Monday, Apple looked like a company anxiously dealing with an onslaught of problems. Now it appears confident – even optimistic.

Apple Knows AI Isn't What People Really Want, But It Can't Say That, by James Pero, Gizmodo

Maybe patience, progress, and forethought will make whatever AI features Apple does release actually worth it, or maybe AI phones are a fad, and Apple can rest easy knowing it didn’t divert all of its resources into pushing the wrong boulder up a hill. It’s hard to say what the future really has in store for AI and all of the devices it’s being shoved into, but if there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s rule Apple out of the equation. Maybe not caring isn’t the perfect way to bring you the most AI features in the shortest amount of time, but it may be the best way to bring you stuff you actually use.

Apple Insists It Had A Working Version Of Personalized Siri Features Last Year, by Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

From a user’s perspective, however, this is a distinction without a difference, relying almost entirely on the fuzzy boundary between software that works only for the purpose of a single filmed demo, and software that works so poorly as to effectively be the same. But putting this on the record will be important as Apple prepares to defend itself over allegations of false advertising. That is, I think, who this statement is for — not for me, you, the public at large — but for itself and, by extension, its shareholders.

iPadOS

Apple’s Craig Federighi On The Long Road To The iPad’s Mac-like Multitasking, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

"If you want to rewind all the way to the time we introduced Split View and Slide Over [in iOS 9], you have to start with the grounding that the iPad is a direct manipulation touch-first device," Federighi told Ars. "It is a foundational requirement that if you touch the screen and start to move something that it responds. Otherwise, the entire interaction model is broken—it's a psychic break with your contract with the device."

Mac users, Federighi said, were more tolerant of small latency on their devices because they were already manipulating apps on the screen indirectly, but the iPads of a decade or so ago "didn't have the capacity to run an unlimited number of windowed apps with perfect responsiveness."

More From WWDC

iOS 26: Apple Will Expand Family Tools For Child Accounts, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push to make Apple platforms safer, more transparent, and more age-aware.

Apple Home Is Expanding Its Energy Management Features, by Jennifer Pattison, The Verge

In a video posted to the Apple developer site this week, the company outlined its new EnergyKit framework, which allows developers to integrate energy data from Apple Home in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 to reduce or shift the electricity usage of their devices to prioritize cleaner and/or less expensive energy.

iOS 26 Makes Third-Party Alarm And Timer Apps Better, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

With iOS 26, Apple is adding a new AlarmKit framework for developers that offer apps with alarm clocks and timers. AlarmKit provides system-level access to alarm functionality, which was previously reserved only for Apple's Clock app.

Apple Music Brings Your Lock Screen To Life With New iOS 26 Look, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

When playing any sort of media in iOS 26, there’s a fresh Lock Screen design for displaying that media’s artwork. Artwork is larger than before, taking a central focus.

[...]

Album art gets a new fullscreen design, and it even animates with vibrancy depending on what you’re listening to.

Steve Jobs

How Steve Jobs Wrote The Greatest Commencement Speech Ever, by Steven Levy, Wired

At that point in time, YouTube was only months old, Twitter didn’t exist, and Facebook didn’t even have its news feed. The national media hadn’t covered the speech. Apple sent out no press releases. But Stanford published the transcript on its primitive website, and people began discovering it. I recently checked my inbox for June 2005 and found multiple copies sent to me from different mailing lists. As the weeks and months went by, more and more people found the speech. Berlin describes it as going “slow-motion viral.”

“The speech started to get talked about, how honest it was,” says Porter, the class copresident. “I would have meetings in Hollywood—I’m a TV writer—and people would see I was from Stanford and ask if I saw that speech that Steve Jobs gave.” Jobs himself seldom mentioned it; at least I never saw him quoted on the subject. He joked to one person that he’d bought it from CommencementSpeeches-dotcom. He responded to a thank-you note from the copresidents by saying, “It was really hard for me to prepare for this, but I loved it (especially when it was over).”

Six years later, something happened that would change the way viewers perceived the speech. On the podium Jobs had said that his cancer diagnosis and his surgery a year later had been the closest he had come to facing death, and that he hoped to have a few more decades. On October 5, 2011, after many months of fighting the cancer he told students he had beaten, Steve Jobs died.

How Steve Jobs Courted Hollywood, by Cynthia Littleton, Variety

Before there was Apple TV+, before iPhones and iPods and iPads, Apple was already keen to reach entertainment industry insiders, speaking to them as professionals and as proto-influencers.

Here’s a look at Apple’s evolution as a brand as seen through vintage ads from the pages of Variety from 1994 to 2001.

Apple In EU

Apple Explains Why Mac Users In The EU Can't Use iPhone Mirroring, by Laurent Giret, Thurrott

According to a new report from French website Numerama, Apple is concerned about the EU possibly forcing the company to tweak the feature.

[...]

The uncertainty regarding the application of the Digital Markets Act is why Apple is blocking iPhone Mirroring in the EU. Even though the EU Commission currently doesn’t include macOS in its list of large online platforms that need to be regulated, Apple believes that could eventually change. And the company would not like the EU regulator to require the company to tweak macOS to make it possible to mirror Android phones in addition to iPhones.

For the same reason, Apple also doesn’t plan to make iPhone Live Activities and its Phone app available in the EU when macOS 26 Tahoe launches later this fall.

F1

Tim Cook Reveals Apple’s Vision For Movies And TV: Why Spending Millions On Blockbusters Like ‘F1’ Is About More Than Selling iPhones, by Cynthia Littleton, Variety

“F1” has been a passion project for Eddy Cue, the architect of Apple’s expansion into producing movies and TV shows. He’s an Apple veteran and racing buff who sits on the board of directors of Ferrari, Hamilton’s racing team. His dreams for the film are loftier even than a nine-figure opening weekend: “I hope that when most people go see the movie, they walk out wanting to be a race car driver,” says Cue.

In Cook’s view, “F1” is the perfect vehicle to test Apple’s power to affect culture with the soft power of a broad-appeal movie rather than through the hardware of its computers and smartphones.

How Apple Made The F1 Movie Trailer Literally Shake Things Up, by Phil Cluff, Mux

So naturally, I did what any unnecessarily curious video engineer would do — I dove into the technical rabbit hole to figure out exactly how Apple pulled this off.

Stuff

Barnes & Noble Nook iOS App Gains Purchase Links, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Barnes & Noble has updated its Nook app for iPhone and iPad with a new "buy on BN.com" button that redirects users to the company's website to complete e-book and audiobook purchases.

Notes

Students Dive Into iPad Digital Storytelling Project, by Blackfriars

Making waves in the world of science and storytelling, Primary students are co-authoring a digital book exploring the many stages of the water cycle.

But this project is about much more than science and literacy – the Year 4 boys are using their iPads and the Apple Pages app to embrace the power of collaboration and technology.

Menstrual Tracking App Data Is A ‘Gold Mine’ For Advertisers That Risks Women’s Safety – Report, by University of Cambridge

The report’s authors caution that cycle tracking app (CTA) data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects, workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and cyberstalking – and limit access to abortion.

They call for better governance of the booming ‘femtech’ industry to protect users when their data is sold at scale, arguing that apps must provide clear consent options rather than all-or-nothing data collection, and urge public health bodies to launch alternatives to commercial CTAs.

Bottom of the Page

Okay, Apple, now that you've 'solved' multitasking on an iPad, time to solve portability on a MacBook. I want a Mac that is as portable -- light and thin and samll -- as an iPad or an iPad mini. And no, touchscreen is not a necessity, but if you can also throw in touchscreens, that will be a bonus.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Default-Behaviors Edition Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Rule #1: No HIG Exceptions, No Custom UI, by David Smith

Something I have a tendency to do is want to build lots of little custom interactions, which serves me well in some contexts but here it would be rather unwise. Apple has spent a lot of effort crafting this new design system and likely explored and tried a great number of different paths which they now advise us to avoid.

As a result, my first rule I’m adopting for myself in this initial redesign is that I will 100% follow the system guidance and use all default system behaviors.

Liquid Glass

Someone At Apple Has A Real Opinion About Design Again, Thank God, by Brendon Bigley, Wavelengths

I’m going to write that again in a different way because I really want to get this point across: My designer brain sees Liquid Glass applied to elements like Control Center and thinks “That looks terrible. This is almost illegible.” But I also find myself smiling? Because Liquid Glass is legitimately fun to look at, and fun to use. It’s a huge swing and one I didn’t expect to land in a way that makes me truly feel like I have an entirely new phone from another universe where iOS 7 never happened and flat design never supplanted skeuomorphism and tactile aesthetics as the dominant visual identity of the technology we use on a daily basis.

Apple's Liquid Glass Is Windows Vista Done Well, by Devindra Hardawar, Engadget

But after spending a bit of time with the first iOS 26 developer beta, I'm more intrigued by Liquid Glass than anything else. It makes app icons look like tiny jewels that I just want to touch, and I dig the transparency effects throughout the OS — they almost seem like a preview for a future where we're using holographic Apple devices. (That's also something I felt while using visionOS on the Vision Pro, which served as the launchpad for Liquid Glass.) I also genuinely love iOS 26's revamped Safari, which lets you browse completely in full screen. As you scroll down, the location bar at the bottom of your screen shrinks and gets out of the way. But if you scroll up or tap into the location bar, it pops back up to give you the sharing and navigation options you're used to.

Apple's New Liquid Glass Interface Has A Problem: It Isn't Weird Enough, by David Price, Macworld

The point is that by adopting a glasslike aesthetic, Apple isn’t leading the design conversation, it’s simply giving users what they’re already used to. Glassmorphism is a popular UI style at the moment, but it was identified as a trend as early as 2020. This is fine for the time being, but suggests that Liquid Glass might start to appear dated far sooner than iOS 7’s 12-year lifespan.

Apple Intelligence

Apple Says Personalized Siri Features Shown At WWDC Last Year Were 'Real' And 'Working', by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Stern asked the executives if Apple had a working version of the more personalized Siri when the company demonstrated the features during its WWDC 2024 keynote.

According to Federighi, it did.

"We were filming real working software, with a real large language model, with real semantic search, that's what you saw," said Federighi.

Apple Intelligence Is Gambling On Privacy As A Killer Feature, by Lily Hay Newman, Wired

Apple invested extensively to develop Private Cloud Compute to maintain strong security and privacy guarantees for AI processing in the cloud. Other companies have even begun to create similar secure AI cloud schemes for products and services that specifically center privacy as a crucial feature. But the fact that Apple still deploys local processing for new features when possible may indicate that privacy isn't just an intellectual priority in the company's approach to AI, it may be a business strategy.

Apple May Be The Only Tech Company Getting AI Right, Actually, by Allison Morrow, CNN

That’s because Apple’s whole deal is, like, “our stuff works and people like it” — two qualities that generative AI systems still broadly lack, whether they’re made by Apple, Google, Meta or OpenAI.

iPadOS

Hang On, Did The iPad Just Become A Computer?, by David Pierce, The Verge

Whenever I’ve tried to use multiple apps on the iPad, I’ve always felt like I was fighting the system. It would let you look at multiple things at a time, but it wanted you to see everything full screen. Now, and especially once developers update for even more fluid window sizes, multitasking feels like a first-class tablet citizen. It feels like a Mac in the sense that it feels like everything is happening in the same place, on the same screen, rather than constantly bouncing you between different full-screen experiences. Is it busier and occasionally more chaotic than the traditionally focused iPad vibe? You betcha! But I love it so far.

RIP To The Almost Future Of Computing: Apple Just Turned The iPad Into A Mac, by Jesus Diaz, Fast Company

We didn’t need a decade and a half to arrive at a mediocre compromise. If Apple had truly lost faith in the iPad’s unique vision—the vision that differentiated it—they should have had the guts to kill it. Just kill the damn thing and make a MacBook Air with a detachable keyboard. Go ahead. Slap touchscreens on every Mac in the line and call it a day. Just don’t make an iPad that’s less than it was meant to be, clumsily aping the thing it was supposed to replace.

Perhaps clinging to the original idea of a new computing paradigm is an untenable idea. But this compromise feels particularly bad right now, right at the very moment where there’s a clear window of opportunity for Apple.

PSA: iPadOS 26 Removes Split View And Slide Over Multitasking Features, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

iPadOS 26 introduces major new windowing features designed to upgrade the iPad’s multitasking experience. But with those new features, two longstanding multitasking features have been removed: Split View and Slide Over are no longer supported in iPadOS 26.

macOS

Apple’s Updated Spotlight Is The Best Upgrade In macOS Tahoe, by Nadeem Sarwar, Digital Trends

With the next-gen Spotlight, Apple has created a universal system that lets you find items and execute tasks without even having to go through the hassle of launching apps. In macOS Tahoe, it has turned into an omnipresent assistant that learns from your usage history and executes tasks with merely a few letters and words. That’s the kind of convenience we deserve from computing machines on a day-to-day basis.

iOS

iOS 26 Wallet App Will Let You Track All Your Packages, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple Wallet will be able to automatically scan your emails to find messages from merchants or delivery carriers, and tracking numbers will be added to the Wallet app so you can keep an eye on upcoming deliveries.

More From WWDC

Apple Turns Up The Speed On Podcasts And Adds A New Emoji Game To News, by Jay Peters, The Verge

Apple’s next major software updates are getting a huge new feature for playback speed sickos like me: you’ll be able to listen to shows on the Podcasts app at as much as 3x speed, Apple notes in a press release about new services features. Previously, the maximum was 2x.

[...]

The popup also includes a new “Enhance Dialogue” option that you can tap on or off. “Using real-time audio processing and machine learning, users can turn on Enhance Dialogue to hear speech more clearly over background sounds,” according to Apple’s press release.

Apple Expands Digital ID Support To Web Browsers In iOS 26, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple is adding a "Verify with Wallet on the Web" option in iOS 26 that can use a state-issued license or Digital ID to verify age and identity in a private and secure way. This is already an option in apps, but Apple is expanding it to the web through support for the W3C Digital Credentials API and the FIDO CTAP protocol.

macOS Dropping Support For AirPort/Time Capsule Disk Time Machine Backups Next Year, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

While macOS Tahoe 26, announced on Monday and released in beta, will continue to support backups to storage connected to Apple routers, Mac users should expect macOS 27 to lose support.

Stuff

Apple Releases Special Haptic Trailer For F1 Movie, Feel The Engine Roar With Your iPhone Vibrations, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple is continuing its marketing onslaught for the F1 movie, which arrives in US cinemas on June 27. Apple has released a new trailer in the TV app for the film, but this one has a twist. Apple calls it a “haptic trailer”. What they means is as you watch, your phone vibrates in sync with the video.

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Time traveling stories continue to fascinate me. And I do consider Groundhog-day-like stories to be time traveling stories. So I am delighted to learn about the excellent On the Calculation of Volume, by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland.

It is supposed to be a 7-book series, and only the first five books have been published, of which only the first two books have been translated into English. I worried, just a little, I may not have the time to wait for all of the next five books that I haven't read.

~

Thanks for reading.

The New-Innovations Edition Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Major Changes Coming In Apple OS 26, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

With only a few pauses to switch presenters, the company raced through announcements and brief demos of numerous new features, or, as Tim Cook redundantly said, “new innovations.” Although the feature selection often felt disjointed, two themes emerged: the new Liquid Glass interface design and Apple Intelligence. [...]

Apple also swiftly confirmed the rumors regarding the version numbers, which will all increase to 26, much as car manufacturers designate their model years. And yes, as leaked a few days ago, the name for macOS 26 will be Tahoe, named after Lake Tahoe.

Liquid Glass

Apple Redesigns Its Operating Systems With ‘Liquid Glass’ At WWDC 25, by Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

The design refresh is inspired by Apple’s VR headset, the Vision Pro. It unifies the iPhone’s design and that of Apple’s other devices, with the interface built for the spatial computing headset. This change could also hint at a potential future that could see Apple’s operating system and software extended to other surfaces besides phones, tablets, and watches — like AR glasses, perhaps.

[...]

The company says the update will bring more clarity to navigation and controls, refracts light, and dynamically reacts to your movement. In addition, it will respond in real time to your content and your input, creating a “more lively experience,” Dye said.

‘Beautiful’ And ‘Hard To Read’: Designers React To Apple’s Liquid Glass Update, by Reece Rogers, Wired

“It's hard to read some of it,” says Allan Yu, a product designer currently building the workplace messaging app Output. “Mainly because I think they made it too transparent.” Yu suggests bumping up the blurring or adjusting the backgrounds to make onscreen designs more readable.

“Similar to the first beta for iOS 7, what we’ve seen so far is rough on the edges and potentially veers into distracting or challenging to read, especially for users with visual impairments,” says Josh Puckett, cofounder of Iteration, which helps startups with designs. Still, Puckett is optimistic, based on Apple’s past accessibility features, that readability will improve over time.

Apple Intelligence

Apple Is Pushing AI Into More Of Its Products—but Still Lacks A State-of-the-Art Model, by Will Knight, Wired

Among the buzzier AI announcements at the event was Live Translation, a feature that translates phone and FaceTime calls from one language to another in real time. Apple also showed off Workout Buddy, an AI-powered voice helper designed to provide words of encouragement and useful updates during exercise. “This is your second run this week,” Workout Buddy told a jogging woman in a demo video. “You’re crushing it.”

Apple also announced an upgrade to Visual Intelligence, a tool that uses AI to interpret the world through a device’s camera. The new version can also look at screenshots to do things like identify a product or summarize a webpage. Apple showcased upgrades to Genmoji and Image Playground, two tools that generate stylized images with AI. And it showed off ways of using AI to automate tasks, generate text, summarize emails, edit photos, and find video clips.

Apple Announces Foundation Models Framework For Developers To Leverage AI, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

With the Foundation Models Framework, developers can integrate Apple's on-device models directly into apps, allowing them to build on Apple Intelligence.

Apple's Missing Mojo, by Ina Fried, Axios

Most glaringly, the company didn't offer a concrete timeline for the improved Siri originally promised last year. Apple's Craig Federighi said only that Apple would have more to say about the delayed feature within the coming year.

[...]

The restraint reflects the fear of repeating last year's WWDC disastrous hyping of AI features that slipped past their ship dates.

iPadOS

iPadOS 26 Will Make The iPad Feel More Like A Mac, by Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch

People who use their iPad for work or school may be relieved to hear that the iPad will finally get its own version of folders, the Preview app, and more intuitive window displays, making it easier to use the iPad like a Mac. Preview makes it easier to edit and mark up PDFs, while the Files app now allows users to drag any folder to the Dock or set a default app to open specific kinds of files.

With the new window controls, you can see all of your open windows at once, then tile them intuitively to help you multitask. These window controls are also compatible with Stage Manager, allowing users to organize their windows into specific stages or work on multiple screens.

Windowing, Menu Bar, And Pointer Come To iPadOS, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

The centerpiece of the multitasking improvements is a new macOS-style windowing system. Apps still launch in full-screen by default, preserving the familiar iPad experience, but users can now resize apps into windows using a new grab handle. If an app was previously used in a windowed state, it will remember that layout and reopen the same way next time.

macOS

Apple’s macOS 26 Tahoe Has New Liquid Glass Look, Customizable Folders, And More, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

Users who have enabled iPhone Mirroring get a couple of new Continuity features. One is a Mac version of the Phone app, which supports most of the same features as the Phone app on iOS, allowing you to initiate phone calls more easily from your Mac. Live Activities from your phone will also show up in your Mac's menu bar; clicking the activity will open the app that generated it via iPhone Mirroring.

Spotlight is also getting a fairly major overhaul, with some specific search views for recent and contextually relevant files. It will be able to search through and launch iPhone apps using iPhone Mirroring, and there's a new view that will show your system clipboard history.

Apple Details The End Of Intel Mac Support And A Phaseout For Rosetta 2, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

macOS Tahoe will be the last new macOS release to support any Intel Macs. All new releases starting with macOS 27 will require an Apple Silicon Mac. Apple will provide additional security updates for Tahoe until fall 2028, two years after it is replaced with macOS 27.

[...]

Rosetta will continue to work as a general-purpose app translation tool in both macOS 26 and macOS 27. But after that, Rosetta will be pared back and will only be available to a limited subset of apps—specifically, older games that rely on Intel-specific libraries but are no longer being actively maintained by their developers.

macOS Tahoe Breaks Decades Of Finder History, by Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels

Something jumped out at me in the macOS Tahoe segment of the WWDC keynote today: the Finder icon is reversed.

iOS

Apple Announces iOS 26 With 'Liquid Glass' Design, Live Translation, Overhauled Phone App, And More, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Apple says that throughout the system, Liquid Glass enhances app experiences with greater focus on content. Safari pages now flow edge-to-edge for more viewing space, while the Camera app now has a simplified layout to minimize distractions during capture. The Photos app introduces separate Library and Collections tabs, and tab bars in Apple Music, News, and Podcasts dynamically shrink during browsing to prioritize content.

Apple Intelligence is also getting enhancements, with Live Translation integrating across Messages, FaceTime, and Phone for real-time communication across languages using on-device processing. Elsewhere, Visual Intelligence extends beyond the camera to analyze on-screen content, enabling users to search Google, Etsy, or other apps for similar items or ask ChatGPT questions about displayed information. The feature also recognizes events and can automatically populate calendar entries.

New iOS 26 Setting Fixes Annoying Auto Audio Switching Issue, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

The new toggle prevents audio from automatically switching to newly connected devices like car speakers or Bluetooth speakers when you're already listening through headphones or AirPods. Instead of having your music suddenly blast through your car's sound system, audio continues playing through your original output device.

iOS 26: All The Little Changes, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

If your camera lens is dirty, your iPhone can detect it and suggest that you clean it.

[...]

Your iPhone will tell you if you're using more battery than normal at any given point in the day, and it flags apps that are using more power.

watchOS

Apple Unveils watchOS 26 With New Design, Wrist-flick Gesture, And AI Workout Buddy Feature, by Aisha Malik, TechCrunch

The new wrist-flick gesture can be used to dismiss notifications that you want to address later. You can also use a flick of your wrist to mute incoming calls and silence timers and alarms.

Meanwhile, the new “Workout Buddy” is built with Apple Intelligence, and is designed to motivate you based on your fitness history. It gathers data from your workout and analyzes this data to identify meaningful insights in real-time. It provides you with encouragement, and a new text-to-speech model translates that encouragement into a dynamic, generative voice.

watchOS 26 Brings The Notes App To Apple Watch, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

With the Notes app on the Apple Watch, you can finally view your notes right on your wrist. You can also create new notes with Siri, or by using the on-screen keyboard, and they will sync to your iPhone, iPad, and Mac via iCloud.

watchOS 26: More Apple Watch Faces Using Series 10’s Upgraded Display, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Both California and Utility show a ticking seconds hand in always-on mode in watchOS 26.

tvOS

tvOS 26 Is Coming This Fall With A New Visual Design, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple Music Sing is upgraded in tvOS 26. Now, you can use your iPhone as a handheld microphone to really get the sing-along party started.

Profile switching gets a bit more convenient in tvOS 26, with a setting to automatically show the profile chooser UI when the Apple TV wakes from sleep.

visionOS

With visionOS 26, Apple Begins To Zero-in On What The Vision Pro Is Actually Used For, by Samuel Axon, Ars Technica

For example, the headset will soon support native playback of 3D video recorded by people other than Apple and downloaded from anywhere on the Internet—something you had to use a few, somewhat janky third-party apps to do until now, but which is an easier-to-access feature of some other mixed-reality headsets.

In general, making experiences consistent across a space is a theme of the new version of visionOS. For the first time, multiple Vision Pro users can view the same content in sync in the same room. The examples Apple showed included two people watching a movie on a virtual screen together on the couch, and two people in the same room and one person remotely via their Persona working in a car design app.

And More

All The New AirPods Features Coming In iOS 26, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

The AirPods 4 and the AirPods Pro 2 can be used to record studio-quality audio for interviews, podcasts, songs, videos, and more. Apple says that the feature can be used to record high-quality vocals while on the go.

[...]

The AirPods can be used as a camera remote with the Camera app and third-party camera apps on ‌iPhone‌ or iPad. Just press and hold on the AirPods stem to take a photo or start a video recording.

Apple’s Journal App Is Finally Coming To Other Platforms, by Jess Weatherbed, The Verge

After two years as an iPhone exclusive, Apple’s Journal app will soon be available on Mac and iPad. Apple announced at WWDC on Monday that its latest macOS 26 and iPadOS 26 updates will support the Journal app, which helps users track their daily activities and experiences with images, videos, and voice memos.

CarPlay In iOS 26: Liquid Glass, App Widgets, Refreshed Apps, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Widgets can now appear on CarPlay, including from third-party apps on iPhone that do not have CarPlay versions. Widgets on CarPlay look a lot like StandBy widgets on iPhone since the technology is shared.

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And now we await to see if it is iPhone 17 or iPhone 26 this year.

If I have to bet, I'll bet on iPhone 17. iPhone 26 sounds okay, but then, if consistency is the goal, we will also have iPad 26, Apple Watch Series 26, MacBook Air 26, Apple TV 26, and Vision Pro 26. All of which just don't sound right.

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Thanks for reading.

The Rainbow-Logo Edition Monday, June 9, 2025

Apple Releases Its Most Comfortable Products Ahead Of WWDC 2025: New Merch!, by Patrick Holland, CNET

One of the quieter yearly rituals for WWDC is the release of Apple-branded clothing and souvenirs. The Apple Park visitor center has an Apple Store that usually has a number of limited-edition shirts, hoodies and more that WWDC attendees can buy. This year's offerings feature riffs on Apple's original rainbow logo on a black or white hoodie that truly makes it pop. There's another version of the logo with the word Apple written in the Apple Garamond font, which you don't need to be a font nerd to appreciate.

WWDC 2025 Conference Swag Includes Tote Bag, Drinks Bottle, Lanyard, And More, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Among the various pins this year are the Apple Intelligence logo, the "hello" Mac greeting, the Metal logo, California roses, and what looks like an octopus emoji.

Stuff

Apple Music, Spotify Finally Update Copyrights To Taylor Swift's Albums, by Ryan Hudgins, US Magazine

Apple Music and Spotify finally updated the copyrights to Taylor Swift’s albums after she bought back the master recordings of her first six albums — and fans are rejoicing.

‘The Lost Bus’ Trailer: Matthew McConaughey Saves 22 Children From A California Inferno, by Jack Dunn, variety

Apple TV+ has released the trailer for its new disaster thriller “The Lost Bus,” starring Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey.

Endangered Classic Mac Plastic Color Returns As 3D-printer Filament, by Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

On Tuesday, classic computer collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D-printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme used in classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers.

Notes

The USB-C Dream Is Dead And It’s Too Late To Revive It, by Robert Triggs, Android Authority

Playing “Guess Who?” with a socket that claims to do everything but seldom does is just a microcosm of USB-C’s biggest problem — the swirling mess of the specification itself.

‘The Studio’ Guest Star Martin Scorsese Thought A Scene Was “Wrong” But Didn’t Want To Be A “Backseat Director,” Says Creator, by Kimberly Nordyke, Hollywood Reporter

Added Goldberg: “There was a moment where him and Charlize Theron were whispering to each other, and it took like 10 takes to get the shot. And then we got it and I was like, ‘What were you whispering about?’ He was like, ‘I knew you were doing this wrong, but I didn’t want to be a backseat director, so I just didn’t say anything.’ And I was like, ‘Well, we could have used that time, but I appreciate that you didn’t wanna manhandle us.’ “

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Another year, another keynote when I will be fast asleep over at UTC+8 timezone.

Oh, and I don't think I will be staying up late / waking up early just to watch Apple keynotes when (if?) I retire. I like sleeping more.

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Thanks for reading.

The Joie-de-Vivre Edition Sunday, June 8, 2025

Bill Atkinson, Macintosh Pioneer And Inventor Of Hypercard, Dies At 74, by Steven Levy, Wired

My first meeting with Bill Atkinson was unforgettable. It was November 1983, and reporting for Rolling Stone, I had gained access to the team building the Macintosh computer, scheduled to launch early the next year. Everyone kept telling me, “Wait till you meet Bill and Andy,” referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two key writers of the Mac’s software. Here’s what I wrote about the encounter in my book, Insanely Great:

I met Bill Atkinson first. A tall fellow with unruly hair, a Pancho Villa moustache, and blazing blue eyes, he had the unnerving intensity of Bruce Dern in one of his turns as an unhinged Vietnam vet. Like everyone else in the room, he wore jeans and a T-shirt. “Do you want to see a bug?” he asked me. He pulled me into his cubicle and pointed to his Macintosh. Filling the screen was an incredibly detailed drawing of an insect. It was beautiful, something you might see on an expensive workstation in a research lab, but not on a personal computer. Atkinson laughed at his joke, then got very serious, talking in an intense near-whisper that gave his words a reverential weight. “The barrier between words and pictures is broken,” he said. “Until now the world of art has been a sacred club. Like fine china. Now it’s for daily use.”

Atkinson was right. His contributions to the Macintosh were critical to that breakthrough he’d whispered to me at the Apple office known as Bandley 3 that day. A few years later, he would singlehandedly make another giant contribution with a program called Hypercard, which presaged the World Wide Web. Through it all, he retained his energy and joie de vivre, and became an inspiration for all who would change the world through code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a long illness. He was 74.

Bill Atkinson Dies From Pancreatic Cancer At 74, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

The impact of Bill’s contributions is immeasurable. Although he worked alongside other early members of the Lisa and Macintosh teams, everything I find suggests that he wrote the Mac’s QuickDraw graphics engine and the initial versions of MacPaint and HyperCard almost single-handedly. It’s almost incomprehensible that one person could have created so much of such import in a relatively short span of time. A great Steve Jobs story on Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore site gives a sense of just how insanely creative and productive Bill was, and I encourage you to search for Bill’s name on Folklore to read more about his accomplishments.

Notes

Apple’s Struggles To Update Siri Lead To Investor Concerns Over AI Strategy, by Michael Acton, Financial Times

Apple has been attempting to build its own LLMs over the machine learning technology that currently powers Siri, a product already used in hundreds of millions of its bestselling devices, with the aim of creating a truly conversational assistant.Former executives said that the process of integrating the technologies has led to bugs, an issue not faced by competitors such as OpenAI which have built generative AI-based voice assistants from scratch.

One former Apple executive said: “It was obvious that you were not going to revamp Siri by doing what executives called ‘climbing the hill’,” meaning to incrementally develop the product rather than rebuilding it from the ground up.

Apple Is About To Answer A Burning Question About Its Future, by isa Eadicicco, CNN

Apple’s AI struggles are larger than just a product delay. The bigger issue is that Apple’s current AI tools don’t offer experiences that are notably different from what you can get elsewhere. Apple Intelligence can summarize text messages, identify real-world surroundings with the iPhone’s camera, erase unwanted objects from photos, rewrite emails and prioritize notifications. But those features are similar to capabilities offered by other companies such as Google, OpenAI and Samsung.

In fact, rivals like Google and OpenAI are already moving one step further with technology they claim can execute tasks for consumers rather than just answering questions or generating summaries.

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I still don't think AI is that critical for Apple at this time, but, boy, there sure are many people trying to make the point it is do-or-die.

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Thanks for reading.

The Focus-On-Software Edition Saturday, June 7, 2025

What To Expect From Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference Next Week, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

Reporting before the keynote rarely captures everything that Apple has planned at its presentations, but the reliable information we've seen so far is that Apple will keep the focus on its software this year rather than using the keynote to demo splashy new hardware like the Vision Pro and Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which the company introduced at WWDC a couple years back.

Apple Is On Defense At WWDC, by Allison Johnson, The Verge

What’s a beleaguered tech CEO to do in times like these? [...] This is a strong indicator that Apple will choose the more familiar option: project confidence and keep smiling.

[...]

The trouble is, I don’t think it’ll be enough this time. Apple’s force of personality has sustained it through past missteps, but I don’t think the same playbook will work through the current crisis.

Stuff

The Ins And Outs Of Apple Identity Management In The Enterprise, by Ryan Faas, Computerworld

Starting with a clean slate, it’s a relatively straightforward process. But local accounts on Macs, FileVault, personal Apple IDs, users who work on multiple Macs and other legacy hangovers make everything much more complicated. The reality is that there will be patchwork of systems that must work together, regardless of whether you’re starting fresh or developing a modernization/transition project.

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Welcome back, the word 'beleaguered' in an article about Apple.

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Thanks for reading.

The Energy-Expenditure Edition Friday, June 6, 2025

Apple Watch Gets One Crucial Fitness Metric Wrong, Researchers Say, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

The study reviewed 56 previously published studies evaluating the Apple Watch's performance against gold-standard clinical tools in three core areas: heart rate monitoring, step count tracking, and energy expenditure estimation.

The researchers reported low mean absolute percentage errors (a common metric used to assess measurement accuracy) of 4.43% for heart rate and 8.17% for step counts. These fall within the threshold generally considered acceptable for consumer-grade fitness devices. In contrast, the average error for energy expenditure was 27.96%, more than three times the margin considered acceptable for accurate measurement.

iPhone Users Say Mail App Suddenly Showing Blank Screen On iOS 18.5, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Affected users are unable to view any emails in their inboxes, and the app can also become glitchy and unresponsive. [...] Affected users said restarting their iPhones temporarily solves the issue, but a permanent solution has yet to be identified.

WWDC 25

Why WWDC Is Better Than New Year's Day For The Apple World, by Jason Snell, Macworld

While the rest of the world has already ushered in the new year, in the Apple world the year starts on Monday of WWDC week, when Apple opens its annual Worldwide Developers Conference and sets its agenda for the next year. Get the champagne and fireworks ready, because next Monday, the great cycle of Apple begins again.

On App Stores

Apple Accuses Australia Of 'Threatening User Security', by Tom Williams, Information Age

In a 28-page submission sent to Treasury in February and seen by Information Age, Apple argued Australia should not follow in the EU’s footsteps, as changing app store rules would cause “harms to its own citizens” by reducing protections against scams, malware, and potentially harmful content.

The company also said the proposed changes had “potential negative repercussions” for its own ecosystem, with potential of fines of up to $50 million — or 30 per cent of turnover for a period of non-compliance — posing “significant risks for the continued ability of digital platforms to serve Australian consumers”.

Stuff

Apple Arcade Adding Four More Games, Including Angry Birds Bounce, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Angry Birds Bounce is a new take on the iconic Angry Birds game, which has been downloaded billions of times over the years. According to Apple, it combines classic Angry Birds slingshot gameplay with arcade-style brick-breaker mechanics.

OmniFocus 4.6, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

The Omni Group has released OmniFocus 4.6 with improvements to note and attachment functionality.

Gentler Streak Update Delivers Two Long-standing Requests, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

Gentler Streak, my favorite health and fitness app ever, is rolling out version 5.5 this week with two long-standing requests: support for non-recorded steps, and the ability to sync Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) from Apple’s Workouts app.

iPhone Can Be Used As A Nintendo Switch 2 Webcam, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Apple has been treating the iPhone as a webcam for the Mac for a while now, and it looks like Nintendo is doing the same with the Switch 2.

Develop

Apple Touts App Store's $1.3 Trillion Ecosystem Ahead Of WWDC25, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Ahead of WWDC next week, Apple is out with a new report today touting how the App Store “helps developers reach new heights.” According to Apple, the global App Store “supported” $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024.

Notes

The Talk Show Vs Formula 1, by Matt Birchler, Birchtree

Well, it turns out that Apple will be holding an early screening of F1 at the same time as The Talk Show, and it’s probably a safe bet that Apple is prioritizing that event. Sure, Craig and Rockwell didn’t produce the movie or anything, but if my company produced a movie and was holding an early screening at an event I was already at, I’d want to go too.

Apple Says 82% Of Compatible iPhones Are Running iOS 18, by Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch

Apple said on Thursday that more than 82% of compatible iPhones are running its latest smartphone operating system, iOS 18. This is up from 68% in January.

Apple's Long-Rumored 'homeOS' Possibly Trademarked Ahead Of WWDC, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

An apparent shell company known as Home Operations Suite LLC has submitted trademark applications for "HOMEOS" in a handful of countries in recent months. A priority filing was made in Liechtenstein in October 2024, and additional filings were made in the United States, Argentina, Peru, and a few other countries in April this year.

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When I look at Apple's marketing for next week's WWDC, I notice it doesn't use an apostrophe before the two-digit year 25. If Apple does rebrand all its operating systems' version number, that may be a clue that indicates it will be macOS 26 and not macOS '26.

I hope it will not be macOS26, without a space in the middle. That will look horrible.

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Thanks for reading.

The Unencrypted-Push-Notifications Edition Thursday, June 5, 2025

Apple Gave Governments Data On Thousands Of Push Notifications, by Joseph Cox, 404 Media

Apple provided governments around the world with data related to thousands of push notifications sent to its devices, which can identify a target’s specific device or in some cases include unencrypted content like the actual text displayed in the notification, according to data published by Apple. In one case, that Apple did not ultimately provide data for, Israel demanded data related to nearly 700 push notifications as part of a single request.

The data for the first time puts a concrete figure on how many requests governments around the world are making, and sometimes receiving, for push notification data from Apple.

On App Stores

Apple Ordered To Keep Web Links In The App Store, by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge

Apple will have to continue allowing web links and external payment options in the App Store after its request to halt a judge’s order was rejected today by a higher court. [...] The court said it was “not persuaded” that blocking the order was appropriate after weighing Apple’s chances to succeed on appeal, whether Apple would be irreparably harmed, whether other parties would be hurt if the order is halted, and what supports the public interest.

App Store Changes Here To Stay With The Denial Of Apple's Stay, by M.G. Siegler, Spyglass

Apple has to start making some calculations here about how much all of this is worth to them, both monetarily but also reputationally. And to start getting their house in order in the case of an eventual loss.

Coming Soon?

AirPods To Get Camera Control, Sleep Detection, New Gestures, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

Our sources say Apple has been working on detecting when a user has fallen asleep while wearing their AirPods and automatically pausing playback. It is not clear whether this will be a standalone feature or if it will work in tandem with the Apple Watch, which already has sleep detection.

iPhone 17 Air Expected To Have Battery Case Due To 'Worse' Battery Life, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple's rumored iPhone 17 Air model will have "worse" battery life compared to previous iPhone models, according to a paywalled The Information report.

In internal testing, Apple determined that the percentage of users who will be able to use the iPhone 17 Air for a full day without needing to recharge the device throughout the day will be between 60% and 70%, according to the report. For other iPhone models, the report said that metric is apparently between 80% and 90%.

Apple’s Leaked 45W MagSafe Charger Is First To Support Qi2.2, by Dominic Preston, The Verge

Apple’s next generation of iPhones might support substantially faster wireless charging if new regulatory leaks are to be believed. A pair of MagSafe chargers with 45W power output and support for the upcoming Qi2.2 standard have been found on a Taiwanese certification site, suggesting that Apple is readying the hardware, possibly timed for the iPhone 17 launch.

Stuff

Raycast Is My Productivity Secret Weapon On MacOS, by Jack Wallen, ZDNet

Raycast is a one-stop-shop app that can help make your Mac a highly productive machine. Raycast is a single app that includes just about everything you need for app launching, clipboard history, scheduling, emoji picker, calculations, searching screenshots, window management, and more.

Notes

The People’s Republic Of iPhone, by Will Dunn, New Statesman

The trade policy of the Trump administration is an erratic series of pronouncements made via social media, which are almost always delayed and abandoned. And if Trump does persist in battling Apple, he will be abruptly reminded that trillions of dollars of American savings are invested in the company. Xi Jinping has no such concerns. Apple must appease him or lose access to the world’s largest group of consumers. As the trade war between America and China grows, then, it must be asked if the world’s most influential technology company can avoid picking a side – and to what extent it already has.

Apple And Alibaba’s AI Rollout In China Delayed By Donald Trump’s Trade War, by Zijing Wu, Financial Times

Multiple AI products co-developed by the tech companies have been submitted this year to China’s internet authority for approval.

But their applications are stalled at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), two people familiar with the matter said, citing increasing geopolitical uncertainties between China and the US.

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Products that Apple no longer sells, but I miss them, and wish that Apple will bring them back:

1) iPhone mini
2) Magsafe Battery Pack

Hmmm… Maybe these two items are related?

(My old Magsafe battery pack is still going strong, I think. I still use it on my current iPhone 16 Pro occasionally.)

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Thanks for reading.

The Deeply-Impactful Edition Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Apple Unveils Winners And Finalists Of The 2025 Apple Design Awards, by Apple

“Developers continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, creating apps and games that are not only beautifully designed but also deeply impactful,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “We’re excited to celebrate this incredible group of winners and finalists at WWDC and spotlight the innovation and craftsmanship they bring to each experience.”

The awards recognize one app and one game across six categories: Delight and Fun, Innovation, Interaction, Inclusivity, Social Impact, and Visuals and Graphics. The winners were chosen from 36 finalists from around the world who have all demonstrated outstanding design experiences across apps and games.

Coming Soon

iOS 26 To Bring New Features For Messages, CarPlay, And More, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

And while much of the spotlight will probably shine on the visual overhaul, 9to5Mac has learned that Apple has also been quietly preparing a handful of enhancements to everyday apps like Messages, Music, Notes, and even CarPlay. Some of which could be announced as early as next week.

Stuff

Apple Shares WWDC 2025 Playlist With One Hour Of 'Summer Sounds', by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Looking forward to WWDC 2025? Get in the mood with the official Apple Music playlist for the event, which features 20 songs from a variety of artists, including Benson Boone, Charli xcx, Ed Sheeran, Don Toliver, and others.

“D-Day: The Camera Soldier” Brings Omaha Beach To The Vision Pro, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

It’s an unapologetic mixed-media documentary that tells the story of the man who helped tell the story of all the other men on those beaches on D-Day. I’m not sure I’ve experienced as affecting an immersive environment on the Vision Pro as being in the landing craft with the gate down and the beach looming in the distance, 81 years ago.

Develop

Notepad.exe - A Lightweight Swift Code Editor, by Fatbobman

Naming this application Notepad.exe is clearly a playful joke by the developer. However, from another angle, it accurately reflects the app’s philosophy: making programming as straightforward and simple as using Windows Notepad.

Apple's Making It Easier To Create VR Games With Direct Support For Open-source Godot, by Joe Foley, Creative Bloq

Godot Engine 4.5 Dev 5 has dropped, probably the final development snapshot before the upcoming release. There are several significant new features taking shape, including native VisionOS support thanks to Apple itself.

That could be big news for anyone with a VR game in the back of their head. Godot is one of our picks of the best game development software, and it's free and open-source, meaning that more indie devs could consider VR game development.

Notes

The Texting Network For The End Of The World, by Andrew Couts and Dhruv Mehrotra, Wired

Meshtastic is a program that enables devices to send text messages over long distances without needing Wi-Fi or cell service. Long range radio (LoRa) nodes help pass messages along, forming a network of devices that can talk to each other even in remote areas. Messages hop from device to device, with each node relaying messages it hasn't seen before—extending the network’s reach across miles using minimal power. That is to say, Meshtastic is designed specifically for sending text messages over free-to-use radio frequencies to both groups and individuals, even when cell service and internet connections are nowhere to be found.

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I know there are many websites that don't react well to Safari's double-tap-to-zoom. But to have some pages on Apple's website that also don't react well, with some elements going out-of-place, and page scrolling not working after zoom is… well, not a good look.

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Thanks for reading.

The Random-Chance Edition Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Nobody Understands Gambling, Especially In Video Games, by Simone de Rochefort, Polygon

Problem gamblers aren’t satisfied by winning — the thing they’re addicted to is playing, and the risk that comes with it. In gacha games, players do report satisfaction when they achieve the prize they set out to get. And yes, in the game’s next season, the developer will be dangling a shiny new prize in front of them with the goal of starting the cycle over. But I think it’s fair to make the distinction, while still being highly critical of the model.

[...]

There is no consistency in how games with random chance are treated. We still do not know how to talk about gambling, or gambling themes, and at the end of the day, the results of this are the same: the house always wins.

Apple And Google Clash With Police And MPs Over Phone Thefts, by Tom Gerken, BBC

The Met wants phone companies to use the unique identifying number - known as an IMEI - that each device has to block any that are reported as stolen.

[...]

"Focusing on IMEI blocking might miss some of the problems," Apple's head of law enforcement requests, Gary Davis, told the committee.

"We worry that there is a vector for fraud... we are concerned about a world where it would be a person who claims to be the owner who's asking."

Stuff

This iOS Accessibility Feature Allows You To Clone Your Voice, by Fernando Silva, 9to5Mac

While we are still a bit away from the voice actually sounding like you, I love that this is even an option. Imagine if you were told you would lose your voice; this would be a great way to hold onto it in some way. Or if you are a singer and you were told to rest your voice for a week, this could come in handy.

Slow Horses Season 5 Gets Release Date On Apple TV+, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

Apple TV+ has announced the return date for its espionage drama full of dark humor.

Slow Horses season 5 will be released on Wednesday, September 24.

Bitwarden Review: A Free And Easy Password Manager, by Martyn Casserly, Macworld

If you’re looking to dip your toe in the waters of password managers, Bitwarden is a great place to start. You get a lot of functionality without having to pay anything at all. Yes, the Premium plan does have its advantages, and thankfully it’s very affordable, but the free account is enough to get you going.

Develop

Let‘s Get Started, by David Smith

For the last few years I’ve gotten into the habit of heading out for a nature-oriented holiday two weeks before WWDC (the penultimate week if you are studying for the SATs).

[...]

Nothing externally has changed, but my perspective has improved and I was able to remind myself of a few fundamental truths about my job.

Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain In The Right Ways (A Year-Long Journey), by Balaji Arumugam

So yeah. Typing fixed my brain. And probably made me less annoying in code reviews because I can actually write coherent comments now.

End of story. Now go find your own weird productivity hack that makes no sense but somehow works.

Notes

Apple Appeals EU’s March Ruling On ‘Interoperability’ Requirements Under The DMA, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

We’re already seeing that with iPhone Mirroring — perhaps the single best feature Apple announced (and actually shipped) last year. I use iPhone Mirroring every day while I’m working. We’re one week out from WWDC 2025 and iPhone Mirroring still isn’t available in the EU. I think it’s very clear that under the EC’s current DMA “interoperability” mandate, Apple would be required to somehow make it work with third-party devices and PCs. If AirDrop were brand new, users in the EU wouldn’t get that either, I suspect. And if this mandate holds up, EU users might lose AirDrop. The same is true of entire devices like AirPods and Apple Watch.

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I hope Apple Arcade, where all apps are available as part of the Apple Arcade subscription price, and there are no in-app purchases for gems or coins or loots or whatever, is more successful. Unfortunately, Apple being Apple, there are still much room for improvement.

With the rumors of the new games-centered app from Apple for this WWDC, I worry Apple may shift its focus away from Apple Arcad, chase other revenue goals, and abandon Apple Arcade's promise.

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Thanks for reading.

The Save-For-Dumb-TVs Edition Monday, June 2, 2025

Breaking Down Why Apple TVs Are Privacy Advocates’ Go-to Streaming Device, by Scharon Harding, Ars Technica

It remains technologically possible for Apple to introduce intrusive tracking or ads to Apple TV boxes, but for now, the streaming devices are more private than the vast majority of alternatives, save for dumb TVs (which are incredibly hard to find these days). And if Apple follows its own policies, much of the data it gathers should be kept in-house.

However, those with strong privacy concerns should be aware that Apple does track certain tvOS activities, especially those that happen through Apple accounts, voice interaction, or the Apple TV app. And while most of Apple's streaming hardware and software settings prioritize privacy by default, some advocates believe there's room for improvement.

How The iPad Cured A Top Pianist's Stage Fright, by Leila Fadel, Olivia Hampton, NPR

"All of this was tied to this very conservative notion and convention that we have in classical music that pianists should play without the music, from memory," Dinnerstein said. "It also robbed me of the joy of being in the moment and thinking about the music itself."

[...]

In recent years, Dinnerstein has brought a tablet on stage with her. She credits the device with saving her career.

Musicians tend to use the iPad Pro, which has a larger screen closer in size to sheet music, and turn the pages using a Bluetooth pedal so they can have full use of their hands and perform without a page turner for scores that can easily fill a hundred pages.

macOS Tahoe Name Leaked Ahead Of Apple's WWDC Event Next Week, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Lake Tahoe is known for its reflective waters, which mirror the surrounding landscape, including mountains and the sky. Gurman said that would align with macOS 26's rumored glass-like design with more translucent windows, buttons, and icons.

Stuff

How To Set Up An Apple Legacy Contact, In Case You Die, by David Nield, Popular Science

Apple gives you many ways to make sure this data is looked after, including setting up a couple of key contacts who become attached to your account: a recovery contact (who can help you get back into your account if you’re locked out), and a legacy contact (who can get into your account if you die.)

There are good reasons for setting up both of these contacts, and it doesn’t take long to do. You can specify more than one contact in each case, and change your chosen contacts at any time.

Say Goodbye To Fuzzy, Hazy, And Low Resolution Webcam Video With This Free App, by Paul Hatton, TechRadar

Camo puts you in control of the camera. With the ability to adjust lenses, dial in exposure, and boost contrast, I found it super easy to get both a well-balanced shot and a creatively curated one.

Develop

What We Lost With PHP And jQuery, by Ibrahim Diallo

We're not necessarily solving new problems. We're solving old problems with new constraints and capabilities.

Along the way, we started paying the cost.

Notes

Apple To Appeal EU Requirement To Share Info With Tech Rivals, by Ashley Gold, Axios

Apple continues to push back forcefully against requirements imposed by the DMA, which the company has said forces it to give up its intellectual property and compromise user privacy.

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Apple TV (the device) is still something I will not recommend to others just because of the relatively higher price, but it is something I am glad I am using.

I feel like you are paying much more for the ability to play games and run non-video-watching apps, but then there aren't much games or non-video-watching apps out there.

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Thanks for reading.

The Year-Of-Linux-on-Desktop Edition Sunday, June 1, 2025

What I Think The Apple Games App Needs To Work – And Why It Won’t, by Craig Grannell, Stuff

I’d love to be wrong. But when I yet again hear Apple is getting excited about games, I get a pang of hope that’s instantly, mercilessly crushed under a 20-tonne weight of reality and history. So I want Apple Games to thrive and for this to be the year Apple finally cracks gaming. But I think there’s more chance that 2025 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.

Apple Prepares To Cry Wolf Over Gaming Again, by Rob Fahey, Gamesindustry.biz

Epic, Steam, and Xbox are all potentially going to have functional storefronts on iOS in one form or another in the coming years – which means an end to Apple's era of taking for granted that games will just keep churning out giant stacks of App Store cash despite being largely held at arm's length by the company.

Rethinking its gaming app software and buying a small studio are far from sufficient to win a war on this new front if it opens up – but if they indicate some actual momentum building up, they might not be a bad start.

Harpoom: Of Course The Apple Network Server Can Be Hacked Into Running Doom, by Cameron Kaiser, Old Vintage Computing Research

Of course you can run Doom on a $10,000+ Apple server running IBM AIX. Of course you can. Well, you can now.

Stuff

I Just Watched ‘Bono: Stories Of Surrender’ Through The Apple Vision Pro — And It Could Change The Way We Experience Movies, by Mark Spoonauer, Tom's Guide

The presentation through the Vision Pro is a combination of big-screen movie storytelling interspersed with jaw-dropping 3D clips that make you feel like you’re in the venue with Bono — getting a better-than-front-row seat to hear some of the most iconic U2 songs and the stories behind them.

What The Tech: App Of The Day 'Instapaper', by WBBJ

Anything you’ve saved appears in your Instapaper feed with the latest articles listed at the top. It also removes clutter by stripping away sidebars and ads, so all you have are the articles.

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Personally, I am not sure if there are tons of people hoping and wishing gaming is more of a thing on Apple's platform, and I am not sure why anyone other than Apple should care. Especially since technology and technical know-how is not where Apple is lacking, and Apple trying to get better at gaming will not bring much to the non-game developers.

I think Apple should focus to be more developer friendly instead, and benefit everyone, and maybe games will come.

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Thanks for reading.