2025-12-31 05:24:46
Once again the year draws to a close and so we are forced by contractual obligation to tell you, dear readers, about our favorite things from the last arbitrary period of time. I’ve assembled (arbitrarily) my top three picks across several different categories, just to pull out some things I really enjoyed which, who knows, you might like too.1
Wi-Fi password filling — I only noticed this somewhat recently, but if you log in to a captive Wi-Fi network in macOS Tahoe (and, I assume, other Apple 26 platform updates), it will offer to fill in the Wi-Fi password for you. I’m not sure why this was never a feature before, but I absolutely love it.
Preview app on iOS/iPadOS – The Quick Look option previously offered by Files was fine for doing exactly what it said on the tin, but for anything more in-depth, the shortcomings of smushing PDFs into the Files app became quickly apparent. Fortunately, after only eighteen years, Apple finally shipped its own PDF viewer on both the iPhone and iPad, and it’s really improved the experience of dealing with PDFs on those devices.
Sleep Score – Continuing this year’s theme, which is apparently “arbitrariness”, yes, the idea of scoring one’s sleep on a 100 point scale seems ridiculous, but I’ve found that since starting to track my sleep with Apple’s Sleep Score feature, I get antsy when I don’t do it. Yes, there are other apps that take more direct health metrics into account, but Apple’s scores being potentially more inflated do weirdly make me feel better about my sleep? So I guess that’s something.
Nike Run Club – I got back into running for several months this year, though the cold weather has recently put paid to that. However, I still really appreciate the Nike Run Club app for its Guided Run feature, which provides an audio accompaniment to your workouts, often in the form of the very cheerful “real life Ted Lasso” Coach Bennett; it puts Apple’s soulless Workout Buddy feature to shame. Having a Watch app that lets me download the audio guides to listen to locally, and therefore not require me to bring my phone along, is an added bonus.
Dark Noise – Speaking of sleep, I’ve gotten more into using white noise this year when I wake up in the middle of the night, and Charlie Chapman’s Dark Noise app has become my weapon of choice. Great assortment of sounds, easy to use, and it lets you make custom mixes of your sounds. (My personal favorite is a mix of Airplane Interior with Green Noise. Puts me right out.)
Wipr 2 – I retired 1Blocker this year in favor of this little indie app by Kaylee Calderolla. It’s a universal app across all of Apple’s platforms, easy to set up, and does its job without ever getting in your way. Best of all it’s a paid app that doesn’t require a subscription! Buy once and you’re done.
Wake Up Dead Man (Netflix) – The third Benoit Blanc movie is fantastic. I was lucky enough to catch it in a cinema and it was my favorite moviegoing experience of the year. Good mystery, great performances, and Johnson (who I’ve been a fan of since his debut, Brick) always has a great eye for filmmaking. I hope they keep making these as long as he and Daniel Craig are up for it; they’re endlessly entertaining.
Thunderbolts* (Disney+, or rent/buy) – Of all the superhero movies this year, this was my favorite. I’m a longtime MCU fan, but even I’ve been left cold by some of the most recent entries (sorry, Fantastic Four). Thunderbolts* proved to me that there’s still life in the franchise, and a lot of that is down to great work by Florence Pugh, who continues to steal pretty much every scene she’s in. Most of all, though, this is a movie that has heart and is about something, and that’s what too many genre films often forget: the genre conventions are there to enhance your storytelling, like a great sauce, not to necessarily be the main course itself.
F1: The Movie (Apple TV) – Throwing this in here just because I watched it very recently and Joseph Kosinski shows that he continues to thrive in his role as spiritual successor to the late Tony Scott in delivering high-stakes blockbusters that look great, sound great, and hit all the right levers for building tension. Plus the car footage is really, really good if you’re into that sort of thing.
Empire of the Wolf by Richard Swan – A dark fantasy trilogy set in a world where the laws are enforced by roving justices who serve as judge, jury, and executor. But the empire is beginning to crumble, as empires do, and this chronicles its fall through the eyes of Helena, an assistant to one such justice, Konrad Vonvalt. Swan, himself a former lawyer, is not only great at building out this world in exacting detail, but peopling it with interesting and compelling characters.
The Will of the Many/The Strength of the Few by James Islington – The first two volumes of a truly sprawling fantasy epic, this is the story of Vis, a young man who has vowed revenge on those who destroyed his life, the Catenan Republic. The Republic a powerful nation that has mastered the power of Will, which is ceded by citizens in a pyramid structure that gives the people higher up mathematically increasing power based on how many people are ceding to them. But there are levels within levels of intrigue here as Vis is recruited to unwind another mystery, the death of a young man at the Republic’s prestigious Academy. The second book takes matters in a truly wild direction that I can’t divulge without spoiling too much, but I’m eagerly anticipating the third.
If Wishes Were Retail by Auston Habershaw – Disclaimer upfront: this book is a by a friend who’s also represented by my agent. That aside, this is an extremely fun and funny fantastic story about a genie who sets up a kiosk in the local mall and starts selling wishes. He recruits help in the form of the novel’s protagonist, a teenage girl named Alex, and hijinks ensue. Despite its comedic bent, it’s also a book about the family we can’t live with or without and has a lot of heart.
Honorable mentions: We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison, Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley.
The Lowdown (Hulu) – I’d be hard-pressed to find a show that is more up my alley. In this Tulsa-set crime story from Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo, low-rent truthstorian/journalist/private investigator Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is looking into the death of the wealthy and eccentric Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), whose brother, Donald (Kyle MacLachlan), is running for governor. In the best noir fashion, this plot unfolds into much, much more, set against the backdrop of the state’s complicated relationship with its Native American population. Hawke is at his best here, whether it’s getting beat up for poking his nose into matters or trying desperately to stay connected to his teenage daughter (Skeleton Crew‘s Ryan Kiera Armstrong). Funny, twisty, and incisive.
Andor (Disney+) – If I have to explain what this show is to you, I honestly do not know what space rock you have been under. But the second season of this Star Wars series delivers in spades, as Cassian Andor comes into his own amidst the burgeoning rebellion. Standout performances not only from lead Diego Luna but Mon Mothma portrayer Genevieve O’Reilly, Stellan Skarsgard as the devious Luthen, and relative newcomer Elizabeth Dulau as Luthen’s partner in crime Kleya. If this doesn’t take your breath away at least a couple times this season, you should check your Apple Watch and make sure you have a pulse.
Peacemaker (HBO Max) – Nobody is perhaps more surprised than I am to find this show on my best of the year list, but I’m still thinking about it months later. On its tin, I could swear that this show—about a somewhat meat-headed and violent “hero”—isn’t the kind of show I’m into and while it does occasionally veer into sophomoric humor that isn’t quite my bag, it’s still very funny and, as I mentioned above, is actually about something: in this case, coming to terms with your past and your regrets. John Cena has ably made the jump from wrestling to acting, and there’s a great supporting cast of wacky characters, from which my MVP is the dweeby, sociopathic Adrian Chase (Freddie Stroma). It does, alas, end on a bit of a cliffhanger as part of the revamped DC Universe, but assuming James Gunn remains in creative control over there, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of these characters. Plus, have I mentioned they actually topped season one’s theme song?
Honorable mentions: Severance season 2 (Apple TV), Foundation season 3 (Apple TV), Ludwig (BritBox).
I’m not usually a huge music person, as I tend mostly to listen to movie and video game scores (for which this year I’d recommend Brandon Roberts’s season two Andor accompaniment and Wilbert Roget, II’s Star Wars: Outlaws soundtrack—what can I say, I’m consistent?), but I figured I’d call out three songs that were on heavy repeat in my year-end recaps.
“Don’t Let Me Down” by ELO – An oldie but a goodie. I’m not sure how I missed this for, oh, all of my life, but it came up on my Apple Music station at the beginning of this year and it’s still a “never skip” when it comes up.
“Oh Lord” by Foxy Shazam – The aforementioned theme song to Peacemaker season two. An absolute banger.
“Save it For Later” by Eddie Vedder – Yeah, it was in The Bear this year (as have been several versions of the song over the seasons, apparently). Just a really great song.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PS5, Xbox) – A triple A Indiana Jones adventure? Sign me up. It’s simply great, nailing the feeling of being Indy, from whip tricks to puzzles to punching Nazis. Troy Baker taking over for Harrison Ford is simply astonishing: not good enough perhaps to convince you he is Ford, but good enough to pass for Indy. I appreciate that it’s not too laden down with mechanics—in that sense it’s more Uncharted than Tomb Raider. Probably better than a few of the movies. I’d certainly play more!
The Case of the Golden Idol (Most platforms) – I love a good puzzle game and this fit the bill. You have to reconstruct several tableaus from over the course of a couple centuries, all revolving around a mysterious idol. The game requires you deduce what happened, not dissimilar from one of my past favorites, Return of the Obra-Dinn, while a storyline arcs from the past onward. I played it obsessively during a trip earlier this year, though I haven’t quite managed to get through the sequel (The Curse of the Golden Idol) yet.
Pips (iOS, web) – The New York Times Games department has built an extensive game repertoire now, with some better than others. While I still religiously do the crossword, Wordle, and Connections, I was surprised to find myself so compelled by the latest addition, Pips. It’s a logic game where you have to place dominos on a board to meet certain conditions (such as all values within a certain region being equal, or summing to a certain number). This isn’t usually my style, but there is something so well-done about Pips that I often find it the game I’m most excited to play on any given day. I also appreciate that the times offers three difficulty levels everyday: while I can usually solve the easy puzzle in a matter of seconds, I have found hard puzzles occasionally vexing me for 15 minutes or more.
This is the year I put solar panels on my house, and though I no longer check my app quite as feverishly as I did in early months (chalk some of that up to the lower production rates of the winter), I’m extremely glad that we had them installed. Just seeing my electric bills zero out through the hot summer months was delightful in itself.
I really loved Whole Foods’s new Limited Edition Blood Orange seltzer. Make it year-round, you cowards!
This year I got more into fixing stuff. I put a new battery in our baby monitor, repaired the light table from my kid’s daycare classroom, and replaced some light switches and outlets in a room we were redoing. Nothing quite as satisfying as getting something working right. I’m not sure whether that will continue in 2026, but I definitely found it rewarding.
2025-12-31 04:39:23
Here’s a nice overview of what might happen for Apple in 2026 by Mark Spoonauer of Tom’s Guide. I’m happy to be one of the contributors to his story, along with analysts Carolina Milanesi and Avi Greengart.
2025-12-31 02:29:48
The year is at an end, and as is tradition, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite stuff from the year gone by. This is it!
Also, Myke Hurley and I create a collaborative list of favorites every year called the Upgradies. This year’s episode is the 12th annual, so you can listen to our favorites in audio form or even watch them on YouTube.
iPad Multitasking: They finally did it. Apple got over all of its hang-ups over not making the iPad too much like the Mac, and just went for it: iPadOS 26 multitasking is full, no-compromises Mac-style windowing. Put a window wherever you like, drag ’em around, do what you want. And because the feature is hidden behind a mode toggle, people who don’t want to use the feature will never see it. If I had any quibbles about Apple’s implementation, they were mostly about Apple ignoring some unique utility users found in Split View and Slide Over, two old-school iPad multitasking features that didn’t make it over in 26.0. Fortunately, Apple added most of the missing features back in 26.1 and 26.2.
Private Cloud Compute in Shortcuts: Say what you will about Apple’s AI models, but the 26 OS updates gave every user access, for free, to Apple’s private cloud models via Shortcuts. Being able to pass steps of an automation to an LLM unlocks a lot of functionality, and I’m happy to do that all in a private environment and without setting up and paying for an API key from a third-party AI company. Next up: Apple needs to keep improving its models and start offering a way for third-party apps to hook into Private Cloud Compute. But this is a great start.
Over the decades, I’ve built up some intricate workflows based on apps I’ve been using forever. I try to remain open to new apps and new ways of working, but there’s a high bar to clear there. As a result, most of my time is spent with old favorites like BBEdit, Fantastical, and Safari. On the iPad, I’m still using 1Writer for writing, though I am constantly scanning for other apps that combine my preferred style of Markdown editing with an appropriate level of automation support.
Still, there are some apps that I want to single out.
I got to use Final Cut Camera this year for a few multi-camera recording sessions for Upgrade, and came away very impressed. The integration between Final Cut Pro for iPad and Final Cut Camera on iPhone is solid, making it super easy to capture multiple camera angles and then put them all together later. My only real complaint is that there’s no way to use Final Cut Pro on the Mac to do the same thing. That makes about as much sense as the fact that Final Cut Pro for iPad still doesn’t support the background export feature in iPadOS 26 that was practically written for it.
Callsheet by my pal Casey Liss has only become more firmly ensconced in our everyday lives, as we watch movies and TV shows and wonder who that actor is and what else we’ve seen them in, or how old they were, or what the age difference is between that older actor and his much younger co-star. I’m so glad to never have to visit IMDB again.
Numbers is this obscure app from some fruit company in Cupertino that’s in the esoteric genre of “spreadsheet” apps. Anyway, in the last few years, I finally stopped using Excel, because I’ve discovered that I’m more comfortable in Numbers and Google Sheets. The end of a decades-long relationship is admittedly weird, but the more I dig into Numbers, the more I appreciate it. This year, with the help of a few readers, I managed to completely revamp how I generate financial charts using Numbers formulas I had never seen before. I still use Sheets a lot because it’s a lightweight answer to basic collaboration, but Numbers is an increasingly large part of my life.
ChatGPT and Claude aren’t great Mac apps yet, but the more they properly integrate with the Mac, the more promise they show. ChatGPT gained the ability to look right into specific windows on my Mac, and Claude’s support for MCP servers and AppleScript creates some delightful synergies. I firmly believe that most AI discourse is hype, but that there are also genuinely useful applications for the technology underneath that giant hype bubble. Last week, I got Claude to grab text from BBEdit, proofread it, and insert the result back into a new BBEdit window. Just amazing—but of course, the Claude app isn’t automatable, and there’s no way to “save” a Claude prompt for re-use later. You have to laugh—this technology is so remarkable and so primitive at the same time. Given OpenAI’s purchase of Software Applications, a startup from the creators of Shortcuts that aimed to fuse LLM technology with the Mac interface, this is an area worth close attention in the next few years.
Longplay arrived for the Mac this year, bringing its delightful album-oriented approach to listening to music over from iOS. I listen to most of my music while working at my Mac, so this is a great fit. I admire the developer’s commitment to automation hooks: he built in support for AppleScript, Shortcuts, and even control via MCP from AI apps. The real bummer is that it’s constrained by a macOS limitation that prevents apps from directly AirPlaying Apple Music tracks. Apple needs to fix that.
Superwhisper exemplifies the potential for good integration between our devices and AI systems that goes beyond chatbots. While I doubt I will ever be a voice-first user of computer interfaces, Superwhisper’s concept is flexible enough to impress even me. It will convert your speech into text, yes, but it can also process it through an LLM—and change how it processes it based on how you’re currently using your Mac. I really like the idea of a tool that knows that my text in BBEdit is not the same as my text in Mimestream or Safari. Superwhisper gets that.
Festivitas delighted me last year with its ability to string holiday lights across my Mac’s menu bar. For the Mac’s entire history, there have been “utilities” that don’t do anything useful, but provide delight, and this one fits right in. This year’s update added snowfall and, more importantly, support for automation via Shortcuts. I’ve spent the last month with a one-in-seven chance of a snowfall every 20 minutes, and it’s been delightful. I can not tell you how much delight about seeing those first flakes and saying to myself, “Oh, it’s snowing!” As someone who has never used a snow blower or shoveled a sidewalk, snow is a delightful effect that I generally only see in holiday-themed movies.
The Pitt (HBO Max): Set in more-or-less 15 hours of real time in an emergency room in Pittsburgh, this show is incredibly intense. The crucible of emergency medicine is a perfect place for human drama of all kinds, and “The Pitt” has Noah Wyle at its center, holding it all together—or at least trying to. Beyond his history as a star of “ER,” Wyle’s just got the perfect mix of wisdom and weariness and personal hang-ups to drive the show, assisted by an excellent ensemble cast that allows the show to whip from case to case, never letting the pace slacken. This show is a throwback to the classic days of the adult network TV drama—yeah, to the days of ER”—but with a modern sensibility only available on a streaming service. I can’t wait for the second season, which debuts in a matter of weeks.
Pluribus (Apple TV): Creator Vince Gilligan steps back a bit from the antiheroes he covered in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” and instead focuses on a flawed, reluctant hero: Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), an anhedonic romantasy novelist who is exactly the wrong person to save the world nearly singlehandedly. And yet that’s what Carol is forced to do. She’s rebuffed in attempts to get help, has moments of misery and desperation, but in the end, I think she’s gonna save the world.
Ludwig (Britbox/BBC): What a premise. This is a British mystery show about a reclusive world-famous puzzle constructor who (for reasons) must pretend to be his identical twin brother, a police detective. His lack of social graces or knowledge of how the police work should give him away immediately, but his preternatural ability to solve puzzles ends up saving the day. This is like a weirder, funnier “Sherlock,” and star David Mitchell hits the tone perfectly. “Ludwig” feels like it was constructed just for me.
Severance (Apple TV): The first season of “Severance” was so good, at least in part, because it was so simply structured and constrained. There were innies and outies, and the two worlds did not collide (until they did, in the finale). But I admit really doubting if the show could pull off a second season after it overturned the game board and changed the conditions of the show’s premise. Turns out it could. Season two was different, and broadened the world of the show, but managed to keep the same themes in play, amp up the weirdness at the edges of the premise, and lead to a satisfying conclusion that makes me anxiously anticipate the third season.
Adolescence (Netflix): A gut-wrenching tour de force, this British series consists of four episodes, each of which is performed as a single unbroken shot. “The Studio” plays with this trick to comedic effect, but in “Adolescence,” the same technique is used to prevent you from ever looking away from the heartbreaking truth: A girl has been killed, a boy has been arrested for the crime, the parents have to come up to speed in a hurry, and the wheels of justice grind slowly. This is not easy viewing, but it’s powerful and brilliantly executed.
Murderbot (Apple TV): This adaptation of Martha Wells’s wildly successful series of science fiction novellas about a killer cyborg manages to be both a great sci-fi action series and an incredible comedy that gets to the heart of the human condition. In “Star Trek,” there’s usually a non-human character (Spock and Data being the most famous examples) who lets the show get to the heart of the human condition. Murderbot does the same, but in reverse: It doesn’t want to be human, but it wants to be recognized as a person with free will all the same. And yes, between the philosophy, there are exploding alien planets and funny jokes, usually at the expense of Murderbot’s space-hippie clients.
Dept. Q (Netflix): Led by Matthew Goode’s incredibly magnetic performance as a detective who is parked in a do-nothing job after a catastrophic shooting incident, this British crime show is about Goode’s DCI Carl Morck identifying misfits and outcasts and slowly building up an entire department that’s going to solve cold cases despite the desire of management for them to simply sit still and do nothing. If this sounds like a spin on “Slow Horses,” well, you’re not wrong—these are just detectives instead of spies. Alexej Manvelov dazzles as Akram, a former Syrian policeman who has been emptying trash cans when he’s spotted by Morck, who knows a good copper when he sees one.
The Studio (Apple TV): It would have been easy for Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire to crash and burn. Elevator pitch: It’s “The Player”, but “Curb Your Enthusiasm!” Except “The Studio” makes every moment count, and every joke hits dead center. The inside jokes (praising Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, shooting extravagant one-shots, a cameo from Matt Belloni) are fine, but even if you’re not a Hollywood insider, there’s enough humor in this story of Rogen fighting to become a studio head only to find that the chalice is just as poisoned as it was for the last person to hold the job.
Hacks (HBO Max): Season four of HBO’s series about two women in the comedy business—young writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and veteran performer Deborah (Jean Smart)—found the show back on top creatively. Deborah gets to realize her dream as the host of a late-night network TV show, and Ava makes sure she’s got the clout as the show’s head writer. As 2025 proved in real life, being the high-profile host of a late-night talk show is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. A special shout-out to co-showrunner Paul W. Downs as Jimmy, Deborah and Ava’s eternally put-upon manager.
Andor (Disney+): The first season of “Andor” proved that franchises like Star Wars can produce adult prestige television drama. The second and final season wrapped things up in a satisfying way, but the whole thing left me with the slightest sense of disappointment. The second season offers four three-episode blocks set in different timeframes, and it all felt a little rushed. I’m not saying “Andor” absolutely needed to be five seasons long, but I think it deserved more time than it got. As a result, while I liked “Andor” season two, I couldn’t help but consider it a bit of a letdown compared to the incredible heights of season one.
Honorable mention: “The Diplomat” (Netflix), “Slow Horses” (Apple TV), “The Lowdown” (Hulu/FX), “The American Revolution” (PBS).
I didn’t see enough movies to rank, but here are the ones I liked the best:
Thunderbolts*: If you’re expecting the Marvel take on the Suicide Squad, you’ll miss out on Marvel’s best movie in quite some time. “Thunderbolts*” is about people who have made mistakes and find themselves at rock bottom, finding a reason to live and seeing the value of connecting with other people. David Harbour and Florence Pugh are both excellent, and a scene involving a limo ride through the desert made me fall in love with this movie.
Flow: Winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, this dialogueless movie about a cat and a ragtag group of other animals (excellent capybara and lemur!) trying to survive a mysterious flood is just a treat from beginning to end.
My Old Ass: Don’t let the title distract you. This is an excellent movie about a teenager suddenly being put into contact with her future self (Aubrey Plaza) is a heartfelt and funny coming-of-age story with a science fictional twist. Or as I wrote on Letterboxd, it’s like “Arrival,” but with a boat.
The best movie I saw all year was Das Boot, from 1981. I had never seen it before, but since we covered seven submarine movies on The Incomparable this year, I decided to watch the legendary film about the crew of a German submarine during World War II to see what all the fuss was about. Short answer: Every accolade received by “Das Boot” is accurate. It’s a masterpiece. Action, suspense, character moments, and moments of sheer terror. Versions of this film vary from a 149-minute theatrical release to a 300-minute TV miniseries version; I watched and highly recommend the 208-minute “Director’s Cut,” which keeps things moving while allowing time for character moments.
Moonbound by Robin Sloan. Just great. Mythic fantasy, sort of, but undergirded by science fiction. Post-apocalyptic, sort of, but also about the start of something new rather than the end of something old. Concerned with young people on quests but also deep time. Moonbound is a charming, sweet, weird tour of a far future of talking beaver engineers and multi-dimensional witches.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. Like a sci-fi version of Travis Baldree’s “Legends & Lattes,” this is a sweet book about robots who just want to live their lives and make noodles. There’s the occasional negative noodle review on social media and plumbing problem to deal with in a post-21st-century-civil-war San Francisco, but mostly it’s just about nice robots who want to open a restaurant. Delightful.
Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway. Harkaway made a lot of news this year, as he continued the series of spy novels begun by his late father, John Le Carre. But Harkaway isn’t just the son of Le Carre, he’s one of our very best writers. “Sleeper Beach” is the sequel to his excellent “Titanium Noir,” both set in a world where billionaires can get drug treatments that allow them to defeat aging—at the cost of their growing taller with every treatment. The billionaires are literally titans, and gradually peeling themselves away from the rest of humanity. (Subtext much?) Unfortunately, “Sleeper Beach” is only available in hardcover in the United States right now as an import, not as an e-book. So if you haven’t read “Titanium Noir,” just read that, and hopefully “Sleeper Beach” will be out more broadly in 2026.
Can You Solve the Murder? by Antony Johnston. Antony’s a friend, but I have to plug this book. It’s a real crime novel, but you choose the direction the investigation goes. It’s vastly more sophisticated than the Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a kid. You have to take notes and write down codes that lead to different outcomes as you move through the book. By the end, I felt satisfied as a mystery reader and felt like I had played a very wordy video game.
The Barker and Llewelyn Mysteries by Will Thomas. Holmes and Watson inspire this series of mystery novels, and while Barker and Llewelyn have a somewhat different dynamic, it’s a similar vibe. Will Thomas brings a modern take on the classic Victorian mystery genre, and while each book solves a mystery, the series tells a larger story as you watch the characters grow and change. I read book 10, Blood is Blood, this year. Those nine books of character groundwork lead to some spectacular payoffs and really show off how long-running series can be so much richer than standalone books.
Apple In China by Patrick McGee. I usually keep my “work reading” separate from my novel reading, but I have to mention McGee’s book, which offers revealing details never before reported and explains the complex way Apple builds manufacturing dominance while also elevating China’s ability to manufacture world-class products. It’s maybe the best Apple-related book I have ever read.
Honorable Mention: “Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global” by Laura Spinney, “The Wind Through the Keyhole” by Stephen King, “The Incandescent” by Emily Tesh, “The Why Is Everything” by Mike Silver, the entire Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman, “Royal Gambit” by Daniel O’Malley, and “Strong Female Character” by Fern Brady.
Herdling, from Okomotive and Panic, is exactly my kind of game. It’s calm, beautiful, has great music, and only runs three or four hours. In Herdling, you lead a herd of strange fuzzy creatures on a journey from a dilapidated city to mountainous heights. It reminds me most of Journey, one of my all-time favorite games. (I played it on the Switch 2, which is excellent, but I’m not using it enough. Story of my life. It’s all those books I read!)
The Rest Is History remains my favorite podcast find of the last few years, and was my most-listened-to podcast of the year. Apparently, I was just at the start of an immense wave of popularity for the show, as it won Apple’s Podcast of the year award this year.
A new robot entered my life. I bought a RoboRock vacuum to replace my five-year-old, noisy, annoying Roomba, and thus far, it’s an improvement in almost every single way for a quarter of the price I paid for that old Roomba. The only issue: RoboRock claims to support Siri and Shortcuts, but… none of that stuff works. Still, the app is fine, and the robot is quieter and smarter. (I wasn’t willing to spend $1000 on a robot vacuum, but I got this one on sale for about $230? What a deal.)
The Combustion Predictive Thermometer isn’t cheap, but it’s really great—a wireless temperature probe with multiple sensors that can dynamically determine when my cooking will be done. As my kids will tell you, I love a gadget, and this is a great kitchen gadget.
2025-12-31 01:53:01
I enjoyed this thoughtful post from Garrett Murray, itself a link to a post by Louie Mantia about the departure of Alan Dye from Apple:
I sometimes think about what we lost along the way as Apple chased ultra-simplicity and luxury. Jony Ive spent a decade slowly removing any trace of personality from every product Apple released. Apple went from the original translucent-colored plastic aesthetic of the “Bondi blue” iMac G3 and the Power Mac G3 “Blue & White” to the more refined and unique design of the iMac G4 to… a bunch of aluminum rounded rectangles for decades. Chasing thinness, removing ports, simplifying everything down to metal and glass with no differentiation.
As Mantia wrote:
[Ive] and his team designed great products during the first half of his tenure at Apple. But as he became wealthier, he started to conflate good taste with luxury. Jony often described Apple products with words about craft, material, and precision, all things that appeal to a luxury market. Apple shifted away from making products “for the rest of us” and started making products that appealed specifically to rich people.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they started making products that appealed to themselves. Because since Steve Jobs died, Apple, its executives, and its corporate employees got significantly wealthier. It wasn’t just Jony who took an interest in luxury. The whole company did. Anyone with even a little bit of power in the company started to dress more expensively. They all look like they could walk right out of a fashion advertisement.
Part of Apple’s appeal is “affordable luxury”. There’s no super-luxe iPhone for the billionaire class. But there is something about what Murray and Mantia write that strikes me as being absolutely right.
In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, Apple elevated Jony Ive to a position of total design authority as a way of signaling to the wider world that the company was going to be okay after losing its co-founder and leader. In that era, there was a genuine fear that a company led by an operations guy was not going to be able to keep the magic going. (Certainly, that’s a narrative that current and former Apple designers have been happy to push ever since.)
The more I think about it, the more this (perfectly reasonable!) tactical decision has come to feel like the original sin of the Tim Cook era. An unchained and elevated Ive sent the right message to the world, and Ive really is a talented designer who built beautiful things. But without Steve Jobs to rein things in, Apple’s design sense got more insular, more obscure, more minimal.
It’s one reason I’m so critical about Ive, his overlong tenure at Apple when he was obviously burned out, and the fatal mistake of placing software design in the clutches of him and his lieutenants: I just get the sense that those designers became untethered from the rest of us, chasing idealized product dreams based on the expensive luxury brands they wore, drove, and otherwise used every day. Not that Apple designs ugly stuff, but there is undoubtedly an antiseptic sameness to a lot of it that smacks of a design team that has disappeared up its own white void.
2025-12-30 06:45:02
It’s time for the 12th Annual Upgradies! Myke and Jason discuss their favorites of 2025, take the input of many Upgradians, and hand out awards in numerous categories! Only the finest will walk away with the most coveted of titles: Upgradies Winner.
2025-12-30 01:00:42
PowerPhotos is the ultimate toolbox for Photos on the Mac. It works in conjunction with the Apple Photos app, filling in missing features that Photos itself doesn’t provide.
PowerPhotos allows you to work with multiple Photos libraries and store them wherever you want, including on an external drive or a network drive. Split up your giant library into smaller ones by copying photos and albums with a simple drag and drop, preserving metadata such as descriptions and keywords along the way. You can free up space on your laptop’s drive or save space on iCloud while still keeping all your photos handy in the Photos app.
Or, if you already have multiple libraries, use PowerPhotos to merge them together while weeding out duplicates along the way. PowerPhotos also features a powerful duplicate photo finder, batch photo metadata editing, multi library search with nested search terms, advanced export, and more.
PowerPhotos 3.0 can be downloaded for free from https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos and offers many of its features for free. Purchasing a license at https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/store will unlock advanced features such as library merging, deletion of duplicate photos, and unlimited photo copying, metadata editing, and exporting. Existing users of PowerPhotos 1 or 2, or iPhoto Library Manager can use their license key to upgrade for 50% off the regular price, and Six Colors readers can use the coupon code SIXCOLORS26 to receive a 20% discount for both regular and upgrade orders.
