2025-11-08 06:50:20
Here's a quote from a post on Reddit. I'm not linking to it because this could be seen as punching down, and I really don't mean it that way. I’m sure you could Google for it if you want to see the whole post.
Here is why and all the things that most YT have missed because they only care about views. 1- every action is instant coming from the M2. You open a new window (app, safari…) and it is there before you know it 2-setting up my persona was done in half the time 3- right after my setup was done I noticed how sharper and more vivid all the icons are [sic] images were.
I'm sharing this quote because I think it's a perfect example of the disconnect between people who have found use cases they love for the Vision Pro and those who have not. If you love the Vision Pro and have things that you use it for all the time, then these sound like nice upgrades, in the same way that a spec bump to a MacBook appeals to me. That said, if the Vision Pro hasn't proved its worth to you yet, and I think it's fair to say that's the vast majority of people in the world, then this update doesn't do much for you.
I cannot stress this enough. If the Vision Pro launched apps instantaneously, if my persona was created automatically the moment I took the device out of the box, and the pixels were completely invisible to me (aka, we have achieved retina in mixed reality) I would use my Vision Pro precisely 0% more than I do now.
Let's just say it plainly: At $3,500, the Vision Pro is a product that is only possible to be purchased by those who are doing quite well in life. A very common story for VR headsets of all kinds is that most people buy them, are really impressed for a few weeks, and then stop using it. Optimistic pundits at the time suggested Apple would buck this trend, but everything I have seen indicates they have very much fallen into the same pit as every other company who's tried to do this.
I think it's worthwhile for reviewers to consider the upgrades to the new Vision Pro, and how the improved performance makes it a better product for people who enjoy it. But I also think it's very well worth recognizing that the vast majority of the people in the world won't suddenly plonk down their hard-earned money to buy this product because it's faster, and the screens are slightly more clear.
2025-11-06 22:57:42
This video brings up some salient points on the security concerns of using a browser that has an agent capable of doing things. New technology tends to bring new security concerns that need to be tackled, and prompt injection is undoubtedly one we have for LLMs.
One thing I found really interesting in his complaints was this idea of memory in your browser. He, and I suspect a good number of people reading this blog post, really seem to hate the idea of ChatGPT (or Claude, Gemini, etc.) having any sort of “memory” about you. It seems many would prefer these apps to have a completely blank slate every time you open them. And you know what? Fair enough, I’m sure there is a large number of people who feel this way.
What I think is interesting is that there are also absolutely a large number of people who think the exact opposite. I’ve talked to many people who use LLMs (aka most people these days) and for a lot of them, the memory is one of their favorite things. My wife, for example, has (unprompted) told me how nice she thinks it is that when she asks ChatGPT a question, it already knows things about her and can answer the question more tailored to her needs.
This post isn’t for me to say anyone’s right or wrong here, this is mostly just me calling out the disagreement among people around how privacy should work with LLMs. For some, the fact that ChatGPT can remember things about what you’re interested in is a crisis that ought to be made illegal by the federal government. For others, it’s genuinely the best thing about them, making the experience much better.
Watch this space.
2025-11-06 08:48:07
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this notification pop up on my phone this evening.
After nearly 2 months of fighting with App Review (in fairness, I haven’t done much the last month as I’d lost the will to fight for a bit), it’s finally available and I think it’s quite good.
I’ve been using it all summer to make subtitles for Comfort Zone and my YouTube videos, and it’s the tool I’d be using to do my work whether I made it or not.
You can read my original announcement to learn all about the app, and you can download it from the Mac App Store here.
And yes, your in-app purchase works across all platforms, so if you bought it already on the iPhone or iPad, you can use everything in the Mac version as well.
2025-11-06 01:00:00
John Voorhees: Apple Recreated the App Store on the Web With No Way to Download or Buy Apps
An even bigger difference from the native App Stores is that you can’t buy anything on the web. That’s right: there’s no way to log into your Apple account to download or buy anything. It’s a browse-only experience.
Well, this is kind of annoying, and the Google Play Store has allowed buying apps from the web forever, but I'm not particularly bothered by it. For someone like me, it's actually pretty convenient. You might be surprised how hard it is to find the price for an app you've already purchased on the App Store, for example.
But man, can you imagine if they had to pay 30% of all sales in the browser to someone else? That would completely destroy their entire business model. That would be rough. 😉
2025-11-06 00:00:00
Joe Rossignol for MacRumors: iOS 26.2 Lock Screen Gets Liquid Glass Slider
When you select the "Glass" option, you can use the new slider to make the time look almost entirely clear, or give it a more frosted, solid look.
Honestly, it's a nice change, and it makes a lot of sense for the lock screen, which has become the hub for personalization on the iPhone. I can't wait to see what new items will get frosted in iOS 26.3.
Also, did you know that text contrast ratios change depending on the text size? You can actually get away with less color contrast if your text is larger. This is a big reason why you may have had trouble reading some things in the liquid glass interface element while the lock screen clock was always legible.
2025-11-05 23:00:00
Last night was an absolute drubbing for conservative politics across America, and I couldn't be happier about it. Zohran Mamdani demolished Andrew Cuomo for the second time this year, and will be the next mayor of New York City.
And California's Prop. 50 passed with an overwhelming majority, nearly 2-to-1. Am I pleased that we're doing mid-cycle redistricting? Not really, but Republican states started doing it explicitly to swing electoral power to them, so our options are to deal with an impossible electoral map or fight back, and I guess here we are.
What really stuck out to me were Virginia's results. Virginia had lots of state legislature elections as well as governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. This is a state that went for Harris in the 2024 Presidential election, although it's one that shifted right compared to 4 years previous. This rightward shift was something we saw all over the country last year, and it made election night pretty tough for people like me. Every single county in the state shifted right compared to the last election…oof. That's what made this year's results especially encouraging to me. Here's an image with a ton of data:
The data point we're looking at here is the arrow that is either blue or red and shifts right or left. As you can see, with scant few exceptions, every part of Virginia shifted left, sometimes by significant margins, over just one year ago. Yes, the Republican candidate won a decent number of counties. However, even in those cases, the margins came down from what they were a year ago. There are multiple variables here, and it could represent a general distaste for Republican policies, and it could also be an indicator that Donald Trump has a unique popularity that not all Republicans can replicate. Whatever the case may be, Virginia has a Republican governor today, and soon their new Democratic governor will be sworn in with a convincing victory.
The Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor elections also went convincingly for the Democrat, in one case ousting the Republican incumbent. And then the state legislature had a massive shift. Going into the election, Democrats held a two-seat majority, 51 to 49, and coming out, it looks like they'll have a 64 to 36 majority. It's a certified catastrophe for Republicans in a state that was decidedly purple.
I can only hope Democrats take the lessons from last night (very liberal policies can be very popular in the right areas, a diversity of candidate types can massively swing a state like Virginia, and charismatic candidates like Mamdani can do things many thought was impossible) into the midterms.