• Before We Begin! You can watch the event here, if you haven't already...

   
• Bye Tim! I have mixed feelings on Tim Cook. On one hand, he stepped into impossible shoes to fill and took Apple to being the most profitable company on earth. On the other hand, I feel that a lot of his decisions were not for Apple customers, but for Apple wealth, and it lead to a lot of decisions I vehemently disagreed with. Still, it was kinda a bittersweet good bye with his brief appearance in the keynote. It will be interesting to see how John Ternus approaches being the new CEO. He was VP of hardware for five years, so maybe this will lead to bigger leaps in product technology that Tim wasn't taking so he could drive up profits with smaller incremental changes. I guess we'll see.

   
• iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max! I've said repeatedly that the only thing I care about on a smartphone is the camera. Everything else is secondary, and if it weren't for the camera improvements, I'd probably have kept my iPhone 12 all this time. It's for this reason that I didn't upgrade from the 16 Pro Max to the 17 Pro Max. There just wasn't anything new enough with the cameras to force me into upgrading. But now? A real

When I think of things that would get me to upgrade, this would be near the top of the list... and so... I'm saving my pennies! — When it comes to all the other stuff, I don't care. Faster and more capable? Whatever. It's all overkill for me. I do care about Apple once again giving us a shitty color selection for the Pro line. The black is okay, but the white is drab, the blue is so muted as to not matter, and the burgundy looks like a blood clot. For the love of God, Apple, can we PLEASE get just ONE FUCKING COLOR that doesn't look like a funeral accessory? Bright blue, red, yellow, green... pick one!. But nope. Always the same "classy" colorways that look boring as fuck.

   
• AirPods 5! I will never buy the regular AirPods line. They are slick plastic that fall out of your ears, and losing one down a sewer grate is money out the window. No, I am only interested in the "Pro" line which has the earbuds which keep them in your ears.

   
• iOS 27! I've been a beta tester for iOS 27 since it was available. There's some niceties to be found... Siri isn't a dumb as a box of rocks most of the time thanks to "Apple Intelligence," but all the AI crap is lost on me, and when I run across it by accident (like in the Photos editor when I swipe wrong) it pisses me off. I was intrigued with the promises of faster syncing on things (especially photos) but I haven't really noticed it yet, even though all my devices are on the beta offerings.

   
• Apple Watch Series 12! I have clung to my Series 9 Apple Watch because it's the last Product(RED) watch Apple has released. No idea why. So the fact that the watch is a tiny bit thinner and faster doesn't mean much to me when mine does all I want it to do and is a beautiful, bright, red color. The new aluminum options are "Dark Bronze" (pretty, not my style), Light Gold (boring), Space Gray (more boring), and Black (which is the only one I could see myself wearing). So... until my red watch dies, I will not be upgrading until Apple decides to make some brighter colors that fit my tastes better. Like Product(RED). Even the bands are boring.

   
• iPhone Duo! And here it is... the famous Steve Jobsian "One More Thing" that everybody and their dog already knew about... the iPhone Duo! It's an iPhone that folds out to an iPad! I absolutely love the idea of it all. This is the perfect phone for me. Except for the fact that the cameras can't even remotely compete with the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Not even in the same ballpark. And since the camera is all I care about... well... this model is a non-starter for me. But one day they'll get it all figured out and get the cameras where they need to be so I'll end up dropping TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS on a frickin' phone. I dunno...

Apple is not the first company to release a folding phone. They do what they always do and wait to perfect it so they aren't rushing a sub-par option to market and experimenting with their customers to get something working as it should (the first foldable phones had some crazy flaws that was proof positive that first adopters were beta-testers). And I have to say the iPhone Duo looks very polished and well-thought-out. The way it operates and the way the interface adapts is truly smart work. But starting at $2,000 makes it not a smart option for me. Maybe one day.

   
• Absentee Products! The long-rumored "Smart Home" device was a no-show. As was a new HomePod and HomePod mini. Also an updated AppleTV or iPads. And no new Macs, though that's mostly a WWDC thing. But the missing item which really caught me by surprise was that no "regular" iPhone 18 was to be seen. Which is to say there's nothing new for those customers who don't want to spend the money for a "Pro" model but might be wanting to upgrade their phone. Could be a memory constraint issue since RAM prices are still sky-high, but who knows?

   
And now back to our regular non-Apple content.