Since I'm a member of the Apple Developer Program thanks to interface design projects I was involved with years ago, I went ahead and installed the developer beta of iOS 27 on my iPhone (but not on any of my Macs, because I value my sanity).

The first thing I did... the very first thing... was to run to the settings and change the "Liquid Glass" interface to maximum opaqueness. Still not as good as a solid color, but the frosted appearance is a heck of a lot easier to read than what we previously had. I remain utterly dumbfounded that Apple, a pioneer in computer graphical interfaces, shipped something this fucking bad. Maybe it's because I have old, fucked-up eyes, but "Liquid Glass" is an abhorrent step backwards that is now tolerable. Kinda.

The next thing I did was say "Hey Siri... when is my next flight?" because I was psyched at the thought of Siri not being a brain-dead pile of shit for once. BUT NOPE!

Turns out that "New Siri" isn't on by default. I had to turn it on. At which point it said that I've been added to the waitlist. Which is to say that Siri will continue to be dumb as a box of fucking rocks for the foreseeable future...

That this extremely basic question requires "New Siri" in order to be answered is beyond the pale. Android has been able to do this mundane shit for years! But it gets worse. On my way home from work today, I asked Siri when the last day of school is. Siri blanked out. Realizing that Siri doesn't know where my fucking location is despite it being set up to know that, I re-asked the question but included my city and state. "I can search the internet when you're done driving" (or whatever). Infuriated, I asked why they have to wait for me to stop driving to search the internet. "I can search the internet for that when you're not in the car." I mean, holy fucking shit is Siri a complete waste of time! Apple has BILLIONS of dollars. They couldn't have spent a small fraction of that to make a capable voice assistant? I guess not. Which is why they're licensing technology from Google, of all places.

Something that threw me into shock was a massive decrease in battery life. I usually end the day with around 70% battery left. Less if I ended up playing games or taking a bunch of photos. But suffice to say that anything less than 50% is exceedingly rare for me. But after installing iOS 27? I am lucky to end my day with 10%. Now, this is a developer beta, so you would expect that there's extra stuff running to track bugs and monitor ho things are working. But this much battery life? Doubtful. If I had to guess, it's the indexing which is taking up most of the battery power...

If that's the case, Apple could do themselves a big favor and add that message to the indexing message.

One of the more intriguing new features (and one of the few things AI seems made for doing well) is to help you create shortcuts. I had no idea how smart the system would be, and just asked for a shortcut idea off the top of my head...

I was not expecting much. So you can imagine my total shock when I actually got exactly what I asked for...

Now, see, this right here is where I want my AI. This is fantastic! I will have to play with it further to see what it's limits are, but this is a game changer.

One of the new features I was interested in is the ability to see better 3D representations in Apple Maps. I love playing armchair traveler to places I have never been (and places I've been, for that matter) so the idea of it all was intriguing. Not that I expected my small city to get a fancier 3D representation... but I was expecting Seattle to have far better 3D. But nope. Everything is just as wonky as it has been. I guess it's going to take time to reach anything outside of San Francisco and New York...

When it comes to HomeKit HomeShit, my expectations are always in the basement. This is hands-down Apple's biggest reoccurring failure. It hasn't worked properly since Day One, and they've made zero attempts at improving it. I am having the same problems now that I've always had. And one of the biggest problems is my Automations disappearing at random. No reason for it... they just vanish. For example, I have a sensor on my garage door which turns the light on when triggered. The Automation for this disappeared a week ago. I also have an Automation which turns some lights on at night. This Automation didn't disappear a week ago, but a part of it did. My neon light all of a sudden stopped turning on, but all the other lights were operating normally. It's frustrating, because going back and fixing all this shit is time-consuming.

Well guess what? The night after installing iOS 27 Developer Beta, my neon started turning on with the other lights again! The garage is still fucked, but one thing that was broken seems to have healed itself. Heaven knows for how long, but it is offering a little bit of encouragement. As I suspected, my older Nest cameras are not compatible with any of the new camera improvements in HomeKit. Typical.

One thing which hasn't been touched is that the Mail unread message count badge is still fucked. If messages get deleted without being read on a different device, the iPhone displays the deleted messages as unread messages with the app icon badge. I honestly have no fucking clue why this can't be fixed. It's fucking embarrassing that this is still a problem in the Year of Our Lord 2026.

And now we come to Photos...

Even though we're talking about a mobile phone, 75% of what I do on my iPhone is take photos. Camera improvements are the only reason I buy new models of iPhone, because I don't care about anything else. The reason I didn't upgrade to the 17 Pro Max is because the camera was almost the same.

This time Apple added a bunch of AI tools to Photos and the result is a mixed bag. Let's walk through some of the things I tried.

The "extend" tool is remarkable. Better than the AI tools in Adobe Photoshop. What I think is going on is that the Google Gemini engine searches the internet to identify what's in your photo, then generates an extension around your image based on what it figures out. Take for example this photo I took in Italy...

I zoom out to extend it...

And vióla! A stunning job of adding the missing information around your photo...

I pulled back on this photo of me, which I selected because of the pattern on my shirt. I thought that might prove to be a challenge, but it did a remarkable job getting that sorted...

   
The new reframe tool works, to a very limited degree of "turning" but the results are a bit odd. There's some uncanny valley going on. This photo of my mom eating in Rome looks okay, but it screws up the angle in a way that feels bizarre. Especially in the eyes. The rotation wasn't very much, but she appears to be looking in an entirely different direction?

   
The next photo I tried got flagged as some kind of safety violation because it had a bare ass in it. Or so I'm guessing...

I have a lot more playing around to do with the Photos app before I can fully understand how it's going to benefit me. And I remain conflicted over the fact that Google's AI models were created based on untold numbers of photographers who weren't compensated for their work. Yes, these are my photos being changed, but the abilities being offered were partly stolen.

I understand that Apple's Image Playground app has been updated, but since there's absolutely no question that it's based on theft of photographers and artists, I won't be messing with it.

There's probably some other improvements that I'm missing, but these are the ones I was wanting to explore. The only thing left that I truly care about is New Siri, because I'm dying to see if Apple finally... FINALLY... has a voice assistant that isn't totally fucking stupid. I'll look at that when (and if) it's ever loaded on my iPhone.

A boy can dream, can't he?

Today was Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference!

Big news of the day? Siri is profoundly smarter now! Sure it's not like that was a high bar to clear. Siri has been stupid as shit for years.

But anyway... let's get into it all, shall we?

• GOLDEN GATE! Craig is hilarious, as always. The naming announcement of MacOS 27 was almost too on the nose. That's how people think Apple operates in their big spaceship HQ, so why not lean into it?

• REFINEMENT! Focusing on fixing all the crap that users have been begging for seems like a good focus to have. And starting with addressing the horrendous readability problems with "Liquid Glass" is something I never thought Apple would even admit (remember the butterfly keyboard fiasco?). Fine tuning performance is also essential, and speeding up Photos will be a welcome change that's been a long time coming. Fixing searches is nice, but it looks like they aren't going far enough in Mail. I switch over to Microsoft Outlook whenever I have to find stuff because Mail is so flippin' bad.

EQ? I had to rewind, because they blazed past being able to customize the equalizer on AirPods. Holy crap has this been a long time coming!

STREET VIEW! Dang dang dang does the new refinements to Apple Maps 3D views look stunning. I know it will take a while to roll out to everywhere (and some locations like my backwater will be skipped as usual) but this is very cool.

PRIVACY! Apple has always seemed to be more concerned with personal privacy than other companies... and I'm happy that they are going full-throttle on keeping kids safe... but boy did they spend a lot of time on the topic. I get having this as a supplement to the keynote, but to go this hard on it within the keynote just made it feel that Apple didn't have enough material to present, so they dragged this out.

• BAIL OUT! At least they're not hiding that Google bailed out their asses. Apple couldn't manage to get AI working on their own, two years after telling us "Apple Intelligence" was here, so they had to form a "deep collaboration" with Google to use their Gemini AI instead. Unreal. And, as much as I love Craig, his presenting Apple's catastrophic failure as a positive thing was pathetic. I would have had far more respect if he had said "We announced too soon, we lied about where we were at, we fucked up, we apologize, and here's how we're fixing things." But that's not what we got, and I think it was a misstep.

• CONTEXT! The above point having been said, I do appreciate that Apple is putting rails on their AI "solution." The fact that there's an abstraction layer which disassociates users from the AI servers seems a responsible way to keep privacy as a priority.

• FUNKY ORB! I am very, very disappointed with the new representation of Siri in MacOS. I wanted them to use Lil' Finder Guy... but instead we get an orb? I do like that it's being integrated into the island.

• SIRI AI & DEEP INTEGRATION! So far, I have not been impressed with how AI has been "helping" me out on a day to day basis. It's been so bad that I've turned it off or am regularly ignoring it. Watching the demonstration of the new Siri AI makes it seem that Apple it finally... finally upgrading dipshit Siri to something useable. Something that other platforms (namely, Android) has been doing for years now. Better late than never, I guess?

&bulls; VOICE! I'm telling you right now... if Apple removes the Australian guy who's been my default voice for Siri, I will be upset. Hopefully they hired the same guy to create this new "more expressive" voice.

• A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION! The guy presenting Siri conversational chat was way, way too excited about something you have been able to do with ChatGPT for years. I mean, sure, it's nice that Apple has integrated all of it into their OS offerings, and it seems that it's a take on AI that's actually useful for once... but let's stop pretending that this is brilliant new technology. It's kinda embarrassing. And I maintain that before any of these people demonstrate some "amazing new feature" they should have apologized that they forced people to buy new iPhones TWO YEARS AGO to get the crap that they're delivering only just now. I wouldn't have bought the iPhone 16 Pro Max had I known dumbass Siri wasn't going to be fixed until iPhone 18 Pro Max was nigh. Apple owes me an apology... and money.

• APP INTEGRATION! Apple Intelligence being dumped into apps seems like something that sounds great but, in reality, is something I don't want and don't use. For example, having Safari monitor a web page for changes might be useful, but it remains to be seen whether it can recognize what I'm wanting... or just blow out an alert for hundreds of changes that have nothing to do with what I'm wanting it to watch. Another example? The Passwords app being able to go update all my bad passwords with more secure passwords is great. But I have had numerous problems with Passwords not recording new passwords, so this could quickly turn into a nightmare. I hope there's a way to select the sites so I can test this.

• HOMESHIT! HomeKit is a fucking disaster. Here's hoping that, at minimum, Apple Intelligence can fucking backup all my fucking automations so they can be restored when Apple fucking deletes them for no reason. And forgive me for being doubtful that my existing Nest cameras will be "supported" so Apple Intelligence can keep watch on stuff for me. Nope. Apple will likely only be compatible with brand new cameras with no help for older models. So they are announcing something that likely won't be able to be used by the majority of people who would actually like to use it. Not cool.

• SHORTY! Using Apple Intelligence assistance to create shortcuts is nice... but I can't help but wonder how reliable the shortcuts will be. If Home is deleting shit all the time, I don't know that I feel the shortcuts won't do the same. Still, this is a use of AI that seems an actual benefit. Hopefully.

• IMAGE SLOPGROUND! Oh great. Apple is helping people create their own AI slop easier than ever! Fuck them for this Image Playground bullshit that steals from real artists.

• DISRESPECT! Here we go. Apple "respects photography" SO MUCH that the AI tools they're giving you are going to honor the original photo. Sure. Surrrrrre. I mean, the new "reframing" tool looks crazy-cool, but is it really "respecting" anything about the original photo if it's changing everything about it? I'm not going to lie, if these tools are any good I will undoubtedly use them because they are getting more and more capable... but I have so many questions about whether these tools were built ethically by compensating the photographers whose work was used to "generate" stuff... or if it was scraped without permission?

• GET PAID! Well, the AI photo crap isn't free... it costs real money by way of "credits" that come with iCloud Plus subscriptions. Wonder how much of that money goes to all the photographers and artists who got ripped off to train these tools? What's that? ZERO DOLLARS?!? Wish I could even pretend to be surprised.

• MODELS! Oh shocker. The most "advanced" features of all this AI crap won't be available on my two-year-old iPhone 16 Pro MAX, even though I bought it specifically because Apple told me that it would be able to take advantage of the cool "any day now" features they were releasing. This is profoundly shitty, and fuck Apple for being such assholes about it. Everybody who bought the iPhone 16 Pro Max should get a huge sweetheart deal on a new model. But will that happen? No. Trillions of dollars in valuation doesn't come from taking care of your customers and keeping promises.

• IN SUMMARY: "Enhanced with Apple Intelligence, not replaced by it." Sure, Jan. Sure.

Today I took a couple photos with my iPhone, as I do almost every day. It all went well, the photos were nice, and I went on with my life. Then, about an hour later, I picked up my iPhone and it was hot to the touch. That's when I noticed the camera was still running. I exited out of it, assuming it was hot because I accidentally left the camera going. But when I picked up the phone to go home for the day, it was still hot to the touch. So I rebooted it thinking that something was stuck running and off I went.

The reboot did nothing. Furthermore, I saw that my battery level was almost zero. So I ran upstairs and put it on my wireless charger. But when I finally went to bed, I saw that it would charge enough to turn on, run out of charge immediately, then turn off and repeat the cycle over and over and over.

Multiple resets did nothing, probably because it ran out of charge before it could register the reset. So I finally hooked it up (wired) to the most powerful charger I own. This got it charged quickly enough that I was able to shut it down completely before it ran out of power. And when I woke up, it was back to normal.

At which point I realized that I left a malfunctioning phone plugged in all night.

I'm lucky it didn't explode.

In other news, I think I'm too susceptible to social media marketing.

There's a content creator who operates under What the F Show who has been making some Nerf War skits that have been making me regret giving away my Nerf gun...

And so I spent a whole $7 to order a new one. Just to have on-hand, because sometimes I like shooting random visitors to my house with a Nerf dart.

Plus I'll feel safer at night knowing that I'm armed.

But last week my email stopped working on both Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. Any time I click on a message to view it, there's nothing there. The emails are blank. They're just fine on the server, but on the MacBook they don't display. My guess is that the internal database where programs store their data is somehow corrupted. And no amount of rebuilds or restarts would resolve it. And so I decided to wipe everything and start over.

It's been interesting.

All the clutter that's been accumulating... all the abandoned parts and pieces of discarded software... all the fragmentation... all the things that made my computer grow increasingly inefficient over the years... it's all gone now. My computer isn't noticeably faster in all things, but it is faster in some. And also more efficient to use.

I should probably write down the steps I took to reinstall everything and just intentionally do a scrub and reset every year.

I'm just not sure it's worth the effort if nothing has gone wrong.

But it does feel good.

Snow at last. Snow at last. I still think we're going to be in the middle of a drought come Summer, but on Friday there was finally snow. Quite a lot of it actually. But don't you worry about me... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Nowalla, Part Deux! Remember location-sharing apps from back in the day? The primary players were FourSquare and Gowalla. My hands-down favorite was Gowalla, which made exploring fun and had stamps you could collect. I was such a fan, that I bought my own Gowalla stamp for Blogography HQ...

Then one day Gowalla shut down after being acquired by Facebook (I'm positive that Facebook bought it just to kill it because they didn't want any competition for their "check-ins"). All the stamps I collected, all the places I logged, all the travels I shared, all the objects I found, all the spots I founded... not to mention my custom stamp... were gone. We were promised that we'd be able to download our data, but it never happened. I'm still a bit raw over it. Then it was announced that Gowalla would be relaunching back in 2021. I somehow missed that the new app was released in 2023. At which point it immediately ceased development. When I found it last week, I downloaded it just to see what it was like. And it was shit. All the charm was gone. And of course none of the stamps or any other stuff from the original was still there. It just lets you share your location with friends in a boring way... like Facebook... and they shouldn't have even bothered.

   
• Lil'! Just the internet doin' it's internet thing. And right now the internet is obsessing over Lil' Finder Guy. He briefly appeared in Apple marketing for their new MacBook Neo...

Now he's been modeled and is popping up everywhere...

From Basic Apple Guy

He's based on the Apple Finder logo which Apple appears to be playing with...

Apple marketing is waking up, it would appear.

   
• New! And speaking of Apple's MacBook Neo, the reviews are starting to hit and it's more impressive than I thought it would be. I selected this one to share, because it nicely puts things in perspective...

Nice! But not shocking. The A-series chip in an iPhone is very capable. I just wasn't expecting it to be this capable in a laptop. It's marketed to people who want to do simple things and have no need for the power of a MacBook Pro. But apparently you can still use it for Pro things.

   
• Human Clay! I had seen the story that Aardman, the company behind some of my favorite animation, was in danger of shutting down because the company making the clay they use was being shut down. It was nowhere nearly so dramatic, which I found out from this video I saw last night. Still, it's interesting...

If nothing else, I'm a little encouraged that this video dispells the idea that Aardman is going to give up on hand-hewn clay to tell their stories and start using 3D modeling instead.

   
• Crumbley! My undying love for Zoey Deschanel cannot be overstated. I thought I was alone in finding Crumbl cookies do not even remotely live up to the hype. Most times I find them to be a lump of sugar that are underbaked. Other times I enjoy the topping more than the cookie underneath...

I've had one cookie I enjoyed from Crumbl, and it was no more special than other bakery cookies I've had. It was essentially a soft version of a big OREO cookie with OREO crumbs on top.

   
• No Love Like Christian Hate! This is absolutely fucking outrageous...

If you're going to imply that Mayor Zohran Mamdani had something to do with 9/11 and call him an "enemy" because of his faith, then are you also going to tie every atrocity committed by Christians to every Christian in this country? All the shootings and bombings by self-professed Christians means that Christians are "the enemy within the gates?" It shouldn't be a surprise that Tommy Tuberville is dropping stupid racist shit like this. That's all he does. And he can't comprehend what "freedom of religion" means in the "land of the free" so ignorant dipshit bigoted crap and lies are all you get. And lest we forget that his "Tommy Tuberville Foundation" gave less than 18% of the money it took in to actual charity. So even if he wasn't already douchebag, he'd still be a piece of shit. Just look into how he treats our military veterans. How he treats any American who isn't Tommy Tuberville. This is the guy who calls Democrats "a satanic cult," but his every action just proves where true evil is, and it looks him in the mirror every morning. Tommy proudly processes to be a member of The Church of Christ, but is one of the lease Christ-like people on the planet. I have Muslim friends who are worth a hundred of him. A thousand of him. It's not hard when they're being compared to inhuman garbage.

   
• I'm a Meme! This is a better story than it has a right to be...

Fate, sometimes, has other plans.

   
• Aeon! One of the most amazing apps I use on a regular basis is Aeon Timeline. It's mainly a writing tool, but I started using it to outline projects at work and it's a complete and total game-changer. Of course if you are a writer, it is a godsend. I haven't found an easier way to organize my thoughts for events in time... no matter what they may be.

If you need to work with timelines for whatever reason, it's worth a look.

   
Since the snow hasn't all melted yet, I'm going to be cowering in my home all day. If I get ambitious, I might clean my house and wash clothes.

Yesterday Apple unleashed the MacBook Neo... which is not so much a MacBook, but an iPhone with a screen and keyboard. That's because it's using the Apple iPhone A18 Pro chip instead of the M-Series found in MacBook Air & Pro. And yet it runs all Mac apps out of the box, which is pretty cool.

And it's just $599 ($499 for students!). Or $699 if you want the memory upgraded from 256GB to 512GB.

It's a wacky topsy-turvy world where Apple has value for the money against the PC competition. Or, in this case, the ChromeBook competition. This is a great laptop for those who don't require the raw power of an M5 chip, which is overkill in a lot of ways for most people. If you're mostly surfing the web and writing emails, or taking notes in class, here's your machine. And it arrives in four colors...

The promo video is kinda fun...

What's surprising is that Apple didn't cheap out where they absolutely could have. It's got an aluminum chassis, a great keyboard (with TouchID on the $699 model!), a real trackpad, and a decent display (which is 13-inches, an inch bigger than the 12-inch Mac that I used for travel back in the day). The only thing that gives me pause is the mere 8GB of memory, but that's probably adequate for light computer use.

Earlier, Apple upgraded the MacBook Pro to a pair of bigger M5 series chips. My current laptop is the M2 Max with a MacBench score of 2749, so naturally I'm coveting the newer, faster, more powerful machine. For the work I do, it's looking pretty incredible. The base-model M5 from last year scores 4228 on MacBench... which means the new M5 Pro and M5 Max are probably a leap above that, pushing 4500 or higher.

Alas, the ads Apple created for both the US and UK are awful, which is a bizarre contrast to the Neo ad...

Ye gads what a mess.

I don't really have the money for a new laptop (I just had to pay $800 to get a pressure regulator installed on my water line because it was getting dangerously high for some reason), but given the time it would save me for renders and such, it might just be worth trying to scrape some money together to have it. I don't even know that I'd need the Ultra. The Pro is probably plenty. For now. Because once you get used to really fast renders, all you want is even faster renders.

Or maybe I should wait for the M6 models?

Why can't I be a millionaire who doesn't have to worry about the cost of always buying the latest and greatest.

Last night after work I went out to eat because it had been a very long day, I was too tired to cook, and I wanted breakfast. And it was wonderful. Perfectly cooked. Perfectly seasoned. I couldn't have made it better myself. It was so good that I was able to overlook the cost, which was expensive. But no more expensive than anything else out there now-a-days, which means it was actually a fair price.

Tonight when it was time to go home after another very long day, I was seriously wanting to go out for breakfast again, but didn't want it to get weird, and furthermore didn't have the money to be spending two nights in a row.

Instead I went home and had cereal with toast. Followed by apple sauce and crackers. Followed by freeze-dried strawberries and more crackers.

And I ate all that in the cold.

Can somebody please explain Apple's thinking when Siri's response to "Hey Siri, make it warmer" inevitably ends up being "It's 70° in here and could take a while to warm up. Are you sure you want to make it warmer?"

When I'm cold and want it warmer, what the fuck difference is telling me a number going to make? Is their thinking that I'm going to hear a number and think "Oh. I guess I'm not cold after all! Never mind, Siri!"... because what kind of stupid shit is that?

Likewise, what good does telling me that it could take a while to heat up going to do? Do they honestly believe that I'm going to hear that and say "Oh, if it's going to take a while, just forget it then!"... because that's even more stupid.

JUST MAKE IT FUCKING WARMER LIKE I ASKED! DON'T WASTE MY TIME WITH THIS NONSENSE THAT'S NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY BEING COLD!

This kind of idiotic shit drives me insane. But when it comes to Siri, about all you get is idiotic shit. Siri is 14 years old but, due to how smart everything else is getting smarter while it stays the same, Siri seems to be getting more and more stupid. We were supposed to get an update well over a year ago, but it still hasn't shown up.

What has shown up is a headache, so I guess I'll grab an aspirin and call it an early night.

Assuming my cats don't wake me up because they're cold.

Every year or so people are sharing what apps they have on their phone's home screen, and I'm not immune to the immense pressure to join in.

Either that, or I am totally lacking content for today's post.

Anyway... here's my home screen...

Yes. I know. I am aware.

My screen is boring as hell. But that's intentional. I want as distraction-free an experience as possible. Which means my background is black so the icons have focus. I know what the icons are, so I remove the text by having them at maximum size. The only widget I have is Carrot Weather (both hourly and forecast). And there's the apps...

• Carrot Weather: The weather is kinda important where I live, and I appreciate the raw snark and hate you can get from Carrot. The widget at the top is also from the app, which shows the hourly and 4-day forecast in one.
• World Clock Pro: Having to coordinate time zones is not as important now as it used to be, but it's still handy to know what the time is in Uzebekistan from time to time.
• Apple Maps: After years of using a combination of Waze and Google Maps, I finally went to Apple late last year because I preferred the experience (and it's what I like for CarPlay).
• TickTick: I bounced between this, Things, Todoist, and Apple Reminders for forever. But eventually decided to just settle on the one I like the best, which is this. Also on my "Action Button" because it's constantly in use.
• Messenger/Facebook: Despite the fact that I despise the platform, this is the place where most of my online friends are. And so I use shitty Facebook Messenger and shitty Facebook apps to connect to the shitty service.
• Telegram: Mostly used to communicate for some of my work which requires it.
• WhatsApp: Used for work and for friends in foreign countries where this is what's used instead of texting.
• FindMy: I am forever losing my shit. And losing my stuff. So using Apple's FindMy to figure out where my Apple Watch, iPad, or stuff tagged with AirTags are hiding is something I do often enough that I keep the app on home.
• Photos: I take photos not just for keepsakes (or to have an hourly record of what my cats are doing), but also for communicating complex things more easily and remembering stuff. So I'm in this app all the time.
• Halide: My "Camera Control" opens Apple's Camera app, which is what I use most of the time. It's quick and easy. But when I want to take a photo where I have absolute control, Halide is my go-to.
• Wallet: Despite the fact that Washington State is a backwards fucking void when it comes to allowing us to have our driver's licenses stored digitally, I love Apple's Wallet. My house key, all of my credit cards, my loyalty cards, my insurance cards, my tickets, my passes... just everything lives here and is immediately accessible.
• Settings: I put this here years ago because I was constantly having to fiddle with something. But now-a-days I keep wanting to replace it with something because I'm rarely using it. Something to think about, I guess.
• Toyota: This app ain't great, but it's the only one they have to interact with my car. I don't use it very often, but when I do it's usually important enough to be slapped on my home screen.
• HomeKit: There's a growing list of things that suck about Apple's apps... but HomeKit HomeShit is at the top of the list as to being the suckiest. Lord how I fucking hate it. But, that's how my entire home is controlled, so here it is living on my home screen like it has earned it rather than just being semi-useful.
• Nest: This is where I can view my abundance of security cameras and smoke alarms and such. I keep thinking that I'll be forced to switch to the Google Home app, but this still kinda works. I have to re-log-in way more often than I should and you get errors often, but it's better than Google Home until I can no longer use it. Which is probably any minute now.
• Microsoft Outlook: It ain't perfect, but it's a damn site better than Apple's shitty fucking Mail and Calendar apps which have absolutely zero features for people who need to use these critical services for actual serious work. My personal email is still in Apple Mail on the next page so I can keep things separate.
• Phone: Yet another Apple app that's not as good as it should be, but it works for those times I am forced to make or receive a call.
• Safari: I actually rather like the browser better than most. But Arc is gaining ground fast and I may end up switching one day.
• Messages: This is an Apple app that's okay... but that's a serious problem, because it needs to be better than okay. It's a clutzy app that's more interesting in looking pretty than actually being a functional texting app. Most of the time, that's fine by me. But there are times I wish that Apple would just get their shit together for the love of God. I probably wouldn't be so sour on it if it would only handle spam in a sane way. But, alas...

Oh... by the way, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

For future reference, these recipes turned out pretty great and are suitable for Thanksgiving or any time...

• Roasted Butternut Squash With Brown Butter Vinaigrette — I love butternut squash, and this is an incredible way to cook it.
• Cacio e Pepe Green Beans — If I had it to do over, I would steam the beans, shake them in melted butter, salt, and pepper... then layer the cheese. The water doesn't evaporate fast enough and the beans don't cook as well as steamed.
• Corn Casserole — I wasn't sure it was done and ended up overcooking it. I did like the surface area of a 13×9 dish for the cheese topping.

Last night I was looking through my photos to send one to a friend who was asking for travel advice. While digging through the archives, I noticed something strange... before 2008, my photos were a lot less personal. Sure, I had photos of me and my friends when we're together, but so many things in my day-to-day life along more casual moments went undocumented.

It took me all of two seconds to figure out why.

The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. I got one a month later.

Before iPhone, I was usually using a digital SLR as a camera which was (mostly) only taken on trips. I was never hauling it around with me everywhere I went. I also had a pocket camera, of course, but it was just one more thing to carry around, so I mostly didn't. On top of that, a lot of places... like concerts, shows, and such... wouldn't allow you to take a camera in with you anyway. You had to be a professional photographer with a permission card to take photos.

Then iPhone came along, and I had a camera with me wherever I went. And everything changed. It wasn't a great camera, but it was good enough. Far better than the cameras on the phones I owned before (which I never used because they were so bad).

It took a few months before my brain was suitably programmed to remember that I had a camera in my pocket, but by 2008 I was very much in the habit of whipping out my iPhone to snap a photo when something fun or interesting happened.

I didn't have cats yet, but suddenly my iPhone was filled with photos of all the cats I met...

And occasional selfies, which I had never taken before (note I'm off-center because a front-facing camera wouldn't appear until iPhone 4)...

And mundane moments, like the food I was served on a plane...

And of course food in general. I rarely photographed food before... only when it was incredibly special... but now? From 2008 onwards, food photos were everywhere in my camera roll and on my blog...

Yeah, yeah... the photos I was getting were only ever decent when the lighting was perfect (I took seven photos of that cat trying to find the best angle and position to get the best detail in the fur), but even drab, low-res, blurry shots were cool at the time! Documenting the stuff I did and saw became second nature.

Back then, like now, people were telling me that I was spending too much time taking photos instead of enjoying the moment... but they were (and are) wrong. At least when it comes to me. Unlike traditional photos which required planning and camera choices, iPhone photography was just pressing a button on an object you already had in your hand. It was seconds of your life captured forever.

And I loved that.

Every one of the moments captured in photos above would have been easily forgotten if I didn't have photos. But instead I remember the cat that sat in my chair at a photo shoot I was at in Seattle... I remember everybody wearing cracker crowns at my sister's house for Christmas dinner... I remember how disappointed I was that I was in First Class on a flight and feeling Last Class because all they had was Pepsi instead of Coke... I remember loving Chicago-style veggie dogs so much that I didn't eat anything all morning so I would have room to eat two of them at lunch... I remember the Key Lime pie I got for lunch at Universal Studios Florida right before I rode the Incredible Hulk Coaster three times in a row... and I remember how my life changed when I ordered extra cashews on my cashew-caramel-frozen-custard sundae on a work trip to Wisconsin. Little moments preserved in time that I probably wouldn't have given a second thought if I wasn't able to scroll through them over and over whenever I want.

I'm sure as I get older and memories are more difficult to recall, I'll be very glad to have so many things digitally captured to help me remember the life I lived.

Including that time I had to chisel my car out of a hotel parking lot while working in Maine after an ice storm hit the night before...

Who wouldn't want to vividly remember that?

APPLE NEWS: Apple to use Google's AI model to run new Siri, Bloomberg News reports.

So... when I bought my Apple iPhone with the promise that they would make their stupid-as-shit Siri voice assistant smarter with it... this was a crock of bullshit all along? They NEVER had the ability to fix Siri. I've been waiting OVER A YEAR for something that was never coming.

And now they're going to have Google fix it for them? Why the fuck wouldn't I have just bought an Android phone if that's what I was going to get? That way I would have had a working voice assistant all this time.

Remember when Apple wouldn't talk about something until it was ready to release? Apple doesn't... BECAUSE NOW-A-DAYS THAT'S ALL THEY FUCKING DO! It's all lies. The company has billions of dollars and yet they still have to use OTHER COMPANY'S TECHNOLOGY to get shit done? How fucking embarrassing. I guess Apple's done.

This seems like a situation that's ripe for a lawsuit.

Because this was my morning with my iPod mini as I was going to take a shower...

ME: Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing music by Taylor Swift.
ME: Hey Siri, STOP! — Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift.

And it's not like you can tell Siri that they're a flaming pile of shit that's terrible at their ONE job. They'll just say "I won't reposnd to that" and go back to doing whatever stupid shit they were doing.

Which should be Apple's slogan now-a-days.