Happy WWDC to all who celebrate!

And lo did Apple descend from the heavens to bestow upon all of us the glory that is World Wide Developer Conference 2024! As usual, I will be jotting down my thoughts as the keynote progresses.

UPDATE: Somebody compiled Craig being Craig and it's perfect. Except they didn't show the part with his Daily Hair Journal...

Vision OS

• Cool story, bro. If $3,500 drops in my lap so I can buy one, I'll get excited. I do like that camera manufacturers are bringing 3D lenses to their cameras though.

iOS

• Craig is my favorite Apple spokesperson at these things.
• Control Center has always been useful... it's nice to see that they're adding some important functionality. Being able to get to Home controls so easily is going to save time and frustration.
• Being able to manually arrange my home screen is a plus. But the last thing I want to spend time on is customizing icons and whatnot. Nice it's there for people who want it, and Apple does make it look quick and easy, so maybe?
• App protection is cool beans. Less likely to worry about handing my phone over to somebody if I know that the sensitive information on it is better protected. Not that I hand my phone over to people on the regular, but it does happen. I suspect that people cheating on their spouses will be particularly happy about being able to hide specific apps so they are not immediately visible!
• More formatting options in Messages is nice. Most people I know don't use formatting at all, but I definitely do all the time, so happy birthday to me, I guess. And did Craig just verify that RCS is happening so that Android owners will stop being Big Mad? But it's likely more important to them that they don't get green-bubbled. Though I seriously doubt Apple will go that far. They know what an exclusivity boost blue bubbles are for iPhone users.
• Messages via Satellite is interesting. But do you have to pay to use it? Or is it like SOS which is free for two years after you buy an iPhone? Given that my new carrier, Verizon, is absolute shit for signal, I'd actually have use for this if it were free. Interesting to note that I know somebody personally who has used the SOS feature to get rescued. That's a game-changer right there.
• Trail Maps is cool, but seems as though it's an unnecessary add-on given how the people needing things like this are already using something like All Trails which has additional features beyond maps.
• Tap to Cash is a great idea... assuming that the person you want to pay uses Apple Cash. So few people I know have it because Venmo is easier to set up and use. If Apple wants to make Apple Cash be more pervasive, they really need to take a look at getting it set up with people.
• Photos is such an important app, and yet it's kinda bad if you have a lot of images. Fortunately Apple has shown the app some love so searching is much easier. I love how she said Amazing Intelligence... AI... so it's AI without saying AI. LOL. The app looks great, but until I use it I honestly won't know if it's going to be that big of a help compared to where we were.
• LARGER ICONS ON THE HOME SCREEN?!? It's like they knew I need this after my eye surgery! Thanks, Craig!

iPods

• Okay... the head shakes to answer Siri in your headphones is glorious. That's smart thinking! But the noise isolation is going to be the real party trick. I hope it's as good as they make it out to be.

TV OS

• InSight... very handy and clever. I am definitely one of those people who is constantly wondering "Where have I seen this actor before?" so I feel seen.
• Audio improvements are always welcome.
• FUCK!! ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING IMPROVEMENT FOR THE HORRENDOUSLY SHITTY APPLE TV USER INTERFACE?!? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, APPLE?!?

Watch OS

• The Vitals app goes beyond the sleep app I am currently using, so I am fully onboard for this. I have to say, it's so nice to see that Apple is really invested to helping people being more proactive about staying healthy like this.

iPad OS

• Look, all these new bells and whistles are nice and all (the handwriting Smart Script feature is incredible), but it is categorically absurd that they have done absolutely nothing to address the stupid shortcoming when it comes to file-handling, lack of background tasks, and multitasking. My God. Again, if Apple is going to intentionally nerf the iPad because they don't want it cutting into MacBook sales, they should just shut down iPad and move on. This is fucking ridiculous. Fully configured iPads cost more than a MacBook!

MacOS Sequoia

• Craig going all PARKOUR! PARKOUR! is why everybody loves Craig.
• The new iPhone Mirroring control of your iPhone on MacOS X is fantastic. So incredibly handy. Not having to constantly grab my iPhone for stuff when working on my Mac is going to be so nice.
• No need for a 3rd party app to control screen positioning is handy. But not for the developers of those apps.
• Safari is such a mixed blessing. When it works as intended, it's my favorite browser. But constantly running across incompatibilities is really fucking annoying. I really wish that Apple would pause the "improvements" and focus on compatibility for a minute!
• I, for one, welcome our new Safari Password overlords. That's something that should be built into Safari. Ever since 1Password went the subscription model, I don't care whether it lives or dies, and this is pretty much signing off on its death warrant.
• Gaming is such a hard sell for the Mac, so it's understandable that Apple would want to keep improving tools to port new games to their platforms. But until there's a cheap television console available for advanced gaming, I think that many developers are going to continue to skip out. You'd think it's a no-brainer for Apple to do this. A Mac mini retool would be so easy. Not sure why this hasn't been a priority.

A.I. Apple Intelligence

And here we go. The thing that everybody has been waiting for...

• LOL. Leave it to Apple to address the things that the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 promised but didn't deliver, i.e. integrating AI with a personal context that's already defined within the Apple ecosystem. No having to add a bunch of data to get useful AI is why platforms like Apple and Google will succeed where others will struggle. Plus... no need to carry around a second device? Sign me up!
• Privacy is a big Apple flex, and the fact that they have been working on hardware which allows localized AI processing (AKA "Neural Engine") for years just proves that they have been working on AI for quite a while. For external AI needs, the anonymized "Private Cloud Compute" seems like an ideal situation. That Apple allows the code to be inspected by 3rd parties to verify privacy is how it should work.
• Siri has been a pile of stupid almost since its inception. And Apple hasn't done a damn thing to improve it, favoring instead to add features that don't address the base problem while Google Assistant eats their lunch. And now? Finally... finally... Apple has actually added smarts to actually have a smart assistant.
• BWAH HA HA HAAAA! Type to Siri is shots fired to Humane's AI Pin. But, seriously, I still don't understand how people could rationally believe that voice instructions should be the only way to interact with a device. If you're in a meeting, that's almost impossible. Humane AI Pin was doomed from the start, and the fact that there are people surprised at this (mostly at Humane, I'm betting) just blows my mind.
• Apple's demos of the new Siri is exactly what everybody has been wanting since Star Trek debuted. True voice control and interaction with a smart device has been a pipe dream until recently, when it's becoming reality.
• Apple kept reiterating the privacy controls, because it can be genuinely scary to think about Siri having such intimate knowledge of who you are and everything you do. I still don't know if I should be excited or worried. But I have to say I'm less worried with Apple's assurances of on-device processing, privacy, and 3rd party inspection of the code which makes it all work.
• I never, ever use Siri on Mac. It's just so fucking useless. But apparently that's a thing of the past, which actually is exciting.
• More demos. Rewrite being able to adjust the tone of your emails is something that will be very interesting to see. I always think that things like this will present people not as who they are, but who they want to be. Is this a good thing? I really don't think so. I'd rather interact with people exactly for who they are... warts and all... rather than have everybody I know sound like a machine.
• Smart Reply in email is lovely. Being able to write out replies to inane emails without having to actually write anything is something I will very much be happy to have.
• Apple Intelligence just making all the little everyday things easier and less work is where AI is really going to be felt. That's the promise of AI fulfilled. Until AI takes over the earth and eradicates all humans, of course.
• Genmoji is hysterical. But looks oddly useful. But will things like this make us more effective at communicating ourselves... or less? Is our future not words but strings of emojis? Maybe. And I, for one, will not be decrying the death of language if accommodations can be made for cultural differences which could result in a serious, serious problem. Different peoples of the world attach different meaning to visual cues. I imagine this will be an ever-evolving transition of expression. The way that the "high-five" emoji has evolved to be "praying hands" emoji which is often used to express gratitude in many places on earth.
• Image Playground is cute. Being able to create an AI image to convey a feeling or situation is nice. Especially if you can't draw well. Though I hope that Apple's implementation is compensating those artists whose work has been used to train it. We may never know.
• Image Wand interprets rough drawings and photos to allow redrawing and touchup with zero effort. This is a mixed blessing. Bringing tools once only used by professionals to everybody... but at the cost of jobs by those professionals? If I were still in that line of work, I know I'd be worried. Will companies even bother with artists now that Generative AI can steal their art to reimagine it as whatever they want? God I hope not. But here we are.
• Then Craig says and that's not all! and promises that these few examples are just the beginning of "AI for The Rest of Us." And I believe it. By allowing integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT services, which are at the forefront of AI development, Apple doesn't have to worry about falling behind. It's genius, I suppose. Though I'd imagine it's going to cost Apple a metric fuckton of money to make it happen. Good thing that money is the one thing Apple doesn't have to worry about.

So... out of my Top Five Most Needed Things to Come Out of WWDC 2024, Apple managed to check one of them. My #2 ask. Oh well. That's so very Apple that I wouldn't imagine it having gone any other way.

Overall I'm excited to see how AI being integrated to seamlessly into our lives is going to change the world. For better? For worse? Time will tell. At which point it will be too late to do anything about it one way or the other.

UPDATE: There's buzz out of WWDC that we will finally be able to specify which device we want to use as a "Home Hub." Color me fucking shocked. Of course I'm going to specify my hardwired via Ethernet AppleTV that's connected to my main television. Since Apple's shitty fucking software can't figure out that's the best bet on its own. So damn embarrassing. So, yeah, I guess I'm giving Apple a half-point for that (doesn't seem like there's any other much-needed improvements happening, but maybe?).

This is the post I was planning to write yesterday on the occasion of the Macintosh's 40th anniversary. But after hat happened, I'm having to write it today.

The first compputer not programmed with punchcards that I ever used was an Apple ][ at school. But the first computer I owned at home was an Atari 800. My parents went for the big ticket version instead off the cheaper Atari 400, which meant I had glorious full-sized physical keys instead of an impossible-to-type-on membrane keyboard. From there I migrated to the Atari 1040 ST, and later the Atari TT.

It was at this point that I got a scanner, which I wanted so I could scan my drawings into my computer. It was huge and very, very expensive. And it didn't work directly with an Atari, but required kludgy drivers to operate. Badly.

Included with the scanner was a copy of Photoshop.

Which ran on Macintosh only.

Frustrated with the limitations and lack of software for the Atari, I saved up for a Mac, at last. It was the cheapest model I could get, a Mac Performa 600 (a poor man's Mac Quadra, which was the model I coveted). I bought it at Sears on credit. The very next month, it was discontinued, and I could have gotten a more powerful machine for the same money (or saved a chunk on my now-outdated model), but thems the breaks...

My memory of what came after is hazy. I believe my next Mac was actually a Mac clone by Power computing. Then there was a Mac G3 tower of some kind that I bought and ended up selling... a Power Mac G4 Cube (which remains my favorite Mac design ever, even though it wasn't all that powerful)... a number of MacBook laptops (culminating with my MacBook Pro M2 Max I'm using now)... a few iMacs (culminating with my iMac M1 desktop that I have now)... not to mention the legion of Macs that I've had at work (culminating in the Mac Studio M1 Ultra).

And eventually, just to satisfy the completist in me, I ended up buying one of the original models from the early years of the Mac, a Macintosh 512K. Not sure if it still works, as it's been over a decade since I turned it on, but it's still collecting dust in my garage.

We won't mention the various other Apple products that have accompanied my Macs over the years. QuickTake cameras, a Newton Message Pad, all kinds of iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and such. I'm a certified Apple Whore through and through who bleeds in six colors.

So, yeah, that's a brief history of the Mac and Me. A computer that, despite my growing hatred of Apple, is still my favorite kind of computer to use.

At least for now.

I'm still waiting for computer implants to come along.

Maybe in another 4o years.

And so Apple has unleashed their mixed reality headsets on the world.

Do I want an Apple Vision Pro? Of course I do. Am I going to pay $3,500 plus lens inserts plus AppleCare plus accessories plus tax to get one? Of course not. That being said... Apple's new video introducing the device makes it look pretty great...

And their short video about how the devices are made is very cool...

For something like this I might pay $1000 (assuming I could scrounge up $1000)... just for the ability to watch movies on a massive screen in my home, because that's cheaper than a massive TV... but everything else just feels like a gimmick to me. I dunno. Maybe if I were to go to an Apple Store so I could try it in person and see the possibilities for how I could use it I might change my mind. But, for now at least, the $5000 price of entry is too damn high.

UPDATE: And... they immediately sold out. Couldn't get one at launch if I wanted to. Thank heavens. I need to pay my mortgage.

Today I was much like a kid at Christmas given that my new Apple Watch Series 9 and iPhone 15 Pro Max arrived. It happened the morning I was hanging out with my friends, so I was anticipating the transfer from my old phone to be shit-butt city as we went bar-hopping and I was climbing on and off Wi-Fi all afternoon.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Unlike last year when I upgraded to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, everything went off without a hitch. Well, almost. There's one teeny tiny problem that's giving me fits, but I'll get to that.

Apple Watch Series 9

As I mentioned during the keynote, I had zero intention of upgrading my Apple Watch Series 6. There just doesn't seem to be anything worth upgrading for. Well, except having a new battery, since the one in my old watch would no longer last the day if I had the always-on display set to "on." Still. With the display off except for tap-to-wake, I easily made it through the day and it did everything I needed it to do.

What tipped the scales for me was the fact that Series 9 does most all Siri processing locally. Which means that simple requests aren't passing through the cellular radio on my iPhone for a round trip that causes a noticeable delay. And, sure enough, the Apple Watch is really quick with Siri requests, which makes the price of admission worth it for me (once you factor in the $115 that Apple will give me to trade in my old one).

But it turns out this isn't the best part of upgrading.

The display is not just brighter... it's bigger!

It's five o'clock somewhere...

I have to get the little watch since, as you can see, my arms are so thin. The Series 6 is 40mm. The Series 9 (in red) is 41mm. But there's also the fact that the display goes out further to the edges. Everything looks bigger. Very nice.

The double-finger-tap control works as advertised. Everything is very zippy. Fast and smooth. Overall, a good upgrade from where I was. I dunno if this is a worthy upgrade if you've got a Series 8, but for me it was a good choice.

iPhone 15 Pro Max

I gave serious consideration to skipping an upgrade for a year so I could own my iPhone 14 Pro Max outright. But ultimately I figured one of the benefits of being in the Apple Upgrade Program is getting the latest and greatest, so I caved. Mostly because I use it more as a camera than a phone and the 5× optical zoom lens plus claims of better night photos swayed me. Along with the fact that iPhones hold their value well... but not so great that I'm leaving loads of money on the table from what I can tell looking at the 13 Pro Max used market.

Camera aside, I honestly don't notice a big difference with the 15. Sure it's a touch lighter, but all the things I like are mostly the same and the one thing I hate (Apple's silicone cases do not stay attached like they used to) is also the same. It's fast. It's capable. It runs all my apps very well. The end. Maybe I'll buy a game that has ray-tracing to see how that looks. Stunning, I'm sure.

Setup was far, far better than the past two years. Pairing my new Apple Watch was seamless. Everything copied over just fine. The only problem I have is that my phone app shows a red badge notification with a "1" in it... even though there's no fucking notifications when I look everywhere in the app. I've restarted three times and shut it down once. No joy. I finally just turned off badge notifications. Hopefully Apple will fix this shit one of these days. UPDATE: Turned off my iPhone for 20 full minutes then restarted. That did the trick.

Other than that, my complaints are A) They don't have a (Product)RED silicone case for it... B) The new Action Button is a cool thing, but it's WAY up on the side, so it's only hand if you're holding your phone horizontally... and you can't customize it for double-click or triple-click, and... C) The blue that I got is pretty much black with a blue cast... in the right light. And it's like... what's the fucking point? You've already got a black phone. So why not make a bright red (Product)RED phone or something that will truly look bold and different? Why do Pro users always get fucked with these boring-ass "premium" color choices? Of course, I'll take these over the fucking PASTELS that the regular iPhone 15's got. Because yikes. Those look like total shit. Maybe I should have gone with Raw Titanium color to have something different? Meh. It doesn't bother me that much. It's just disappointing.

Lastly there's USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 which will allow you to transfer much, much faster than Lightning (480 megabytes per second vs. 10 gigabytes per second). If you've got the right cable. And it's about fucking time. Jesus. Apple puts these massive sensors in their cameras and allow shooting RAW, but it takes an eternity to get them off of it because the resulting files are huge. I didn't even bother to shoot RAW, because it can take days to get them all in your computer to actually work on them. I've got USB-C 3.2 cables, so maybe now I will. Thank you to the EU for mandating USB-C on all phones... otherwise Apple would probably stick with obsolete Lightning ports for years longer. The one thing I don't understand it why they didn't just go with Thunderbolt4 (100Gps) compatibility to really make it worthwhile. Guess they're saving that to get you to upgrade in the future? In any event, you can record ProRes 4K 60Hz video directly to an external SSD now, which is pretty special.

iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera

First a caveat on that spiffy new 5× lens. It needs good light to function. If you don't got that, it switches back to you main camera. This did not happen with the 3× lens on my old camera. At least not that I recall. This is a pretty big downgrade, if you ask me. It may very well be a deal breaker for some people who would rather have a 3× lens with more flexibility. As for me? I'm greedy. I wish we would have gotten both. Add a fourth lens on the Pro Max to get the best of both worlds! Or, ideally, give us a 3× and a 10×. UPDATE: If you want to force the camera to use the 5× lens in low light, some third party camera apps (like Halide) will let you.

That being said, when you've got some light it's very nice. This was shot in a bar with not great lighting, but look how good it turned out at 5×! Very sharp and the color is beautiful, despite the fact that we're very clearly entering HDR "Deep Fusion" territory here...

Click here to look at a bigger version.
Click here to see the full size version.

That's pretty impressive... but the main lens really looks great...

Click here to look at a bigger version.
Click here to see the full size version.

Interesting that Apple now calls the "Main Camera" the "Wide Camera" and the "Wide Camera the Ultra Wide Camera. Note that the "Wide Camera" has a goodly number of pixels more than the previous generation (but with bigger files, natch)...

Now... I have only had the camera for a tiny amount of time. I will obviously be taking more photos and a closer look at the features and quality sometime soon (especially when it comes to being able to change the focal point after the fact... because in playing around with it, this is a very cool feature). And of course I'll want to look at how well it shoots ProRes video (especially its ability to shoot LOG video that can be color graded easily and pushed in directions you can't get easily otherwise).

But last thing I want to say before I go is how Apple's claim that the new camera has "seven lenses" is not quite the bullshit it seems given that there's only three lenses on the back. The main lens allows you to use "virtual lenses" that crop into the data with common focal lengths (24mm, 28mm, and 35mm). But you still end up with 5712×4284 images, which means that Apple is upscaling or doing some kind of magic to get there. And the result is very good. I did the same thing in Photoshop to compare, and Apple's method always comes out on top. Which means that they must have specialized computational photography routines to come much closer than a mere crop.

Ultimately I don't know that going for the upgrade was the best choice for me. I likely could have gotten along with the 14 Pro Max for another year without issue. But as somebody who likes any improvement Apple will give me on the cameras, the 15 Pro Max will likely make me happier overall.

Until next year.

LOL.

When you assign a Memoji to your Apple profile, it propagates everywhere across all your Apple stuff. It's even on my computers now, and I notice that if you don't touch it for a while your Memoji falls asleep...

Which is not a good thing, because it just makes me want to take a nap.

Another year, another Apple World Wide Developer Conference. Guess we're doing this...

• TIM! Every time I see Tim Cook, I wish he was more of an asshole. He's just so nice. But somebody in his position really needs to be at least a little bit of an asshole so that broken shit GETS THE FUCK FIXED! See: Steve Jobs.

• MacBook Air 15-Inch! This looks like an amazing computer for the price. Capable. Powerful. Beautiful (especially that dark blue one). I need a MacBook Pro for the work I do... but, if I didn't, this would be my laptop of choice.

• Mac Studio! The Mac Studio M1 Ultra I hsve at work is the best Mac I've ever used. It's nice that they are committed to keeping it moving forward. The performance jump of the M2 Ultra is nice, but not big enough to make me jealous.

• Mac Pro! After it was announced, people were freaking out over the $7,000 price tag. Yeah, this Mac isn't for you. It's for people who need the raw power and PCI expansion it has. And, if these same people took two seconds to compare it to the old Mac Pro... you're getting a far, far more powerful machine for way less. Because the old Intel-based Mac Pro was insanely expensive. I saw an article which had the headline Maxed-out Apple Silicon Mac Pro costs 1/4 what a maxed Intel one did. And so... yeah... for people who need this, it's actually quite the bargain.

• iOS 17! I'm not going to run through all the features since there are plenty of sites happy to do this... but I will make a few comments here. ONE) The Live Voicemail is so nice because I don't EVER want to pick up. Now I can see if it's actually necessary for me to do so (the live message typing out about the family of raccoons in the basement while Craig is talking is hilarious). TWO) I don't give a fuck about the new Messages features... I JUST WANT IT FUCKING FIXED! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!* THREE) The Check-In feature is nice. So many times it would be nice that somebody I'm meeting can see what's happening as I make my way to them. FOUR) Okay, the Live Stickers are unnecessary, but awesome. FIVE) Yeah, AirDrop... right... DON'T ADD FEATURES, JUST FIX THE SHIT THAT'S BROKEN FIRST! I can't use AirDrop between my phone and my work Mac... or my MacBook Pro and my work Mac. I have even gone so far as to start over from scratch, but no joy. WHY?!?? FUCK!!! SIX) Oh joy. Apple will FINALLY STOP FUCKING AUTOCORRECTING WHEN I SAY "FUCK!!" So damn annoying. Your fucking phone shouldn't be gatekeeping how you express yourself and fuck Apple for screwing us over for so long. Craig being "so ducking cute" about it is rage-inducing.

• iPad OS 17! I really need to use my iPad more. I absolutely love the way it works, but my go-to device it my MacBook Pro. It's just easier to bounce in and out of work. ONE) Wallpapers and widgets are great, but Craig is going to be in hot water with the flat earthed crowd by showing a GLOBE EARTH (As an aside: there are very, very few people who can get away with saying "that's cool." Craig Federighi is one of them. He is cool). TWO) PDFs are a great thing, but a mess to deal with. Looking at the great advancements the iPad is getting to deal with them feels like this is how they should have been used all along. Very nice.

• macOS Sonoma! It seems weird to me that macOS just isn't advancing as it should. Where is the next revolution in desktop computing? The (needed) return of widgets, game mode, and this other shit are nice and all, but this is getting ridiculous. File handling? Sharing? FIXING THE FUCKING PILE OF SHIT KNOWN AS "APPLE MAIL"? Why are we still waiting? ONE) I wonder how many people can actually appreciate what a coup it is to have Hideo Kojima appear at your event? "Legendary" is completely underselling him. TWO) Video Conferencing is a huge part of my life. These new features while "fun" are actually kind of important to communication (especially when you are communicating in a language that's not native to either you or them). THREE) Passkeys are nice (anything which moves away from typing passwords is very nice), but they have so far to go yet. They don't work some of the time, and it's frustrating how many times I am repeatedly having to enter my account info over and over. FIX YOUR SHIT, APPLE!! FOUR) These new Profiles in Safari are a game changer for people who work while off work. Separating my work and private life are important, and every little bit helps.

• METAL CRAIG (audio and home)! I was sincerely hoping for an update to AirPods Pro with a price drop. No such luck. Though the adaptive audio is pretty darn cool. ONE) AirPlay in Hotels would have been fantastic... when I was traveling (assuming it worked in the hotels I frequent), but now? Meh. TWO) Jesus. TV OS is still isn't addressing what a steaming pile of shit that navigation is to deal with? I fucking hate having to slowly scroll through shitloads of media because there's no alphabet jump menu available... LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE HAS BEEN USING FOREVER! WHAT THE FUCK?!?

• WatchOS! I have an Apple Watch Series 6. And watched with disinterest as Apple has plodded through Series 7 and Series 8. ONE) Who the fuck selected this shitty, SHITTY "Rhythm is Our Business" song to intro this section? TWO) The widgets and other improvements are nice and all, but this is not going to revolutionize how I use my watch. THREE) I want that Snoopy watch face... but would rather have this kind of cool interactivity with Mickey Mouse.

• Apple Vision Pro! And heeeeere it is. The main event. ONE) All the AR/VR headsets to date have been shit (remember "Google Glass?"). Apple, being Apple, seems to have come up with something far more compelling. If it truly does work as advertised, this is a massive game changer. TWO) The interface is brilliantly realized. They reeeeeally put the time in to make sure that it's intuitive and easy. Once you get used to it, I have no doubt it will be as intuitive as any other device we're wed to. The depth and shadows must have been really tough to nail down. THREE) The minimal gestures required to interact with Vision Pro actually works better than the science fiction projected. Nice. FOUR) Look, these will never not look weird when worn, but I appreciate that Apple is doing to make it as less weird as possible. FIVE) Being able to bring your Mac into your AR/VR "world" is pretty amazing... but feels like it would be headache-inducing. Maybe once you get used to it, things would seem second-nature, but I wonder what the learning curve is to get there. SIX) WAIT A SECOND... people on FaceTime calls appear on tiles to you, but what do you look like to them? SEVEN) OKAY, THAT PANORAMA MODE IS FRICKIN' AMAZING! EIGHT) Boy, porn filmed in 3D, then displayed on Vision Pro in spatial video is going to be the real game changer experience! NINE) Now, see, this is what I'm really excited about. Having a 100-foot movie screen in your living room with no distractions! Sweet! And how many times have I dreamed about sitting on a plane and not having to experience being on a plane! TEN) Boy... gaming was really light in this presentation. Given how that's the cornerstone to so many of these things, that's weird. ELEVEN) Bob Iger appearing here for Disney has me thinking about how hilariously ridiculous it would have been to have Bob Chapek doing this. But anyway... Disney producing content for Vision Pro is about as big an endorsement as you could hope for. And what they're presenting seems as good a reason to buy into VR/AR than anything. TWELVE) The design of this thing makes every other VR/AR headset look like it's positively ancient. The new Quest 3 just announced by Meta looks like absolute dog shit by comparison. Though it will likely be affordable. I probably won't even be able to afford the corrective lenses I'd need to buy to even use Vision Pro. THIRTEEN) These don't debut until next year and it will feature the M2 and not the M3 chip? Yikes. Big yikes. FOURTEEN) And that's what's so weird. The unit is not transparent. The thing it 1000% opaque. But it fakes it by displaying your eyes on the face of it that people are looking at. SO WEIRD. FIFTEEN) Ah, in answer to my earlier question, what people see when chatting to you is an avatar ("digital persona") that's computer-generated. This will either be good enough... or slip right down the uncanny valley and look scary-awful. Probably somewhere in-between? SIXTEEN) I'll bet Zuckerberg and Meta, who failed spectacularly with their "MetaVerse," is shitting their pants after wasting billions of dollars and getting nowhere even close to what Apple has done. SEVENTEEN) TouchID -> FaceID -> OpticID. EIGHTEEN) At least Apple put some thought into the privacy of these things. Which is smart. By allowing people to know where you're looking while looking at them, you've opened a huge can of worms. Apple neatly sidesteps this. NINETEEN) Given how much this thing is going to cost, Apple's smartly leaning into all the hardware it will replace. Smart. TWENTY) THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?!?? BWAH HA HA HAAAAAA! Now, look, I get it. I know how it works. They have an absurd price tag to start, but eventually as they optimize manufacturing and such, the price falls. But starting THIS high is pretty disgusting. Who the fuck can afford to spend THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS on a VR/AR headset? Even one this good and feature-packed? Do I want one? Oh hell yeah. Will I buy one? WITH WHAT?!? Maybe if I can sell my organs or something. And yet, the allure of being able to escape from this shitty reality into something better does seem like it would be worth the fortune it casts to do so. I just wish it didn't have a big ol' cord dangling off of it for the battery... and the fact that you only get TWO MEASLY HOURS OF RUNTIME PER CHARGE? Wow. Hope you only take short flights!

And that's the end of WWDC 23. I've never felt so poor!

*Seriously. The fact that Messages regularly reports I have new messages when I don't (I'm guessing this is a flaw in syncing between devices) is absolutely infuriating. Quitting and restarting Messages doesn't fix it. YOU HAVE TO RESTART YOUR COMPUTER?!? WHAT THE FUCK?!??

Look, I know that I'm droning on about top-tier First World Problems, but it's infuriating just how bad things are getting with Apple and their bullshit.

I am perfectly willing to accept the blame when the fault is mine. A few days ago it was overcast and raining that day. All of a sudden all my lights came on. It took me a second to realize that when I wrote the automation which monitors light levels and turns on lights when it gets dark was fooled by the overcast weather. My bad. I should have included a time range so lights aren't turning on in the middle of the day.

That I can deal with because I can (probably) fix it.

What I cannot fix is the idiotic crap that pops up every damn day.

Like coming home and telling Siri on my Apple Watch to unlock the front door. Something I've done hundreds of times before. Only to get this...

No reason. It just happened out of the blue. And when I go to the Home app on my iPhone? No problem. The front door is unlocked post-haste.

The other day I was writing an email in a language I'm not terribly comfortable with and decided to ask Siri if the word I was using means what I thought it did. Siri didn't understand. So I thought... let's try a more popular foreign language here in the USA...

ME: "Hey Siri, what does the word 'mañana' mean in Spanish?"
SIRI: "In Spanish, mañana means" =insert pause= "mañana!"

AND SIRI SAID THE SECOND MAÑANA IN A SPANISH ACCENT!! Thanks a fucking heap. Remember last week when I was talking about how Apple is losing the AI digital assistant battle badly? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

But even something like that is not going to send me into a ballistic rage where I want to rip my little HomePod orb out of the wall and chuck it out the window. No, that's reserved for stupid, inexplicable bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with what Apple should be promising... but instead what they have actually been promising!

Like telling Siri to play a song I want to listen to. Have Siri tell me the song will play. Then have Siri tell me there's a problem with Apple Music. WHAT THE FUCK?!? I'm trying to listen to an Apple Service on an Apple Product. There's no disconnect here. And the solution I get from Apple Support Knowledgebase? Remove the HomePod from HomeKit. Reset it. Then reinstall it. Do you know what happens when I do that? THIS RIGHT HERE...

What a friendly error message! What the fuck does (300208) even mean? I tried three times. The fucker will not add back to HomeKit. And the KnowledgeBase isn't helping. I've wasted fucking hours of my life on this shit. So now I have a dead HomePod and I will have to try and get support out of Apple, whose support is so fucking shitty now-a-days that I am almost to the point where I want to throw this one away and get a new one.

For months the internet has been abuzz about how Apple is at the forefront of eliminating passwords forever so we can use biometric data (like a retinal scan or a fingerprint) to unlock our lives for us. Even when the story is about Google following Apple's lead! Which is so fucking laughable because Apple can't even get rid of passwords in their own fucking ecosystem! This is what I got when I went to remove my HomePod mini from my HomeKit so I could re-add it...

Apple asks me for my password ALL THE FUCKING TIME! And if Apple can't even get their shit to work for themselves, then what hope do they have trying to bring others along? Passkey barely works (when it works at all) on many sites which try to implement it (like this blog!).

This has disaster written all over it.

"Hey Siri! I can't breathe and I think I'm having a heart attack! Call 9-1-1!"

"Playing the song 'Every Breath You Take' on Apple Music." =insert pause= "Apple Music is not responding."

We're fucking doomed.

The Apple news of the day is how badly Siri (Apple's personal digital assistant) sucks, why it's not going to improve any time soon, and why this is a serious problem for Apple.

And the critics aren't wrong. Siri hasn't gotten much smarter in years. Maybe a decade. Marry this to the absolute fucking travesty that is HomeShit HomeKit (which is largely controlled by Siri) and Apple has fallen so far behind the curve that they can't even see the curve. It's all flat to them.

And, as I always do, I am going to blame this totally on Apple CEO Tim Cook. Apple needs a complete and total bastard like Steve Jobs in charge, and Cook isn't even close. Jobs was a ruthless taskmaster who obsessed over user experience and made absolutely sure that bugs got squashed and Apple was constantly moving forward. Cook seems to content to coast right off the racetrack and get lost in the woods.

Nope. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and everybody else is jumping on the AI bandwagon to make smart assistants... um... smart... and Apple, as usual, doesn't give a fucking shit. They do whatever the hell they want whether it benefits their customers or not... whether their customers want it or not... whether it makes sense or not.

I fucking hate it, but what's the alternative?

Look, I am not expecting the world here. I don't necessarily want (or need) for Siri to be as smart as HAL 9000 or the computer on Star Trek or whatever. But I would like it to actually fucking work for the things it advertises it can do. But I've lost track of the number of times it fails with even the simplest request... like playing a song I ask it to play. And not from some third party service... from Apple Music! It's like, that's the ultimate softball request. Play a song from a service YOU control. And yet... well... good luck with that.

More than a few pundits are saying that Apple's complete lack of interest in making Siri competetive could ultimately sink the company. This could be hyperbole. But it's not outside the realm of possibility that it's dead-on accurate. When everybody else allows you to have a smart assistant that's actually keeping up with the times and, you know, useful... when Apple is still banging rocks together, how can they possibly survive?

The weather can't make up its mind lately, but I'm not letting grey skies ruin my weekend... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Ghosty Mc Ghost Ghost! I was SO looking forward to Ghosted on Netflix. The film didn't disappoint. Ana de Armas is frickin amazing... and the fact that Chris Evans could play absolutely ANYTHING he wants, but chooses to play the damsel in distress in this movie just makes me love him all the more (he had already completely changed my mind about his career trajectory with Gifted, which I also loved)...

This is a great action flick, and the performances are everything you'd hope they'd be given how outrageous the story is. There's also some notable cameos to watch out for, if you're interested in giving it a shot.

   
• Mrs. Davis Loves You! There's a new show on Peacock called Mrs. Davis. I'm loving it, but am having a hardtime putting into words why I'm loving it. Maybe the trailer will help?

Jake McDorman (from Limitless) is in it, which doesn't hurt. Also in the series? A very cool edition of Bristish Knights shoes...

Alas, you can't actually buy these, which seems like a hugely missed opportunity.

   
• Edna! Comedian Barry Humphries died this past week. He is most known for playing a character which I obsessed over for the longest time...

In one of those sublime ironies, Humphries grew famous for a drag performance, but was a noted transphobe. I always looked at him differently after that. Fortunately most of the time I knew of Dame Edna was well before he outed himself as a bigot. But still...

   
• S'more! I won't go so far as to say that I hated The Menu... but I came very close. It was a film based on manipulation and shock value which had no value. At least not to me. It also dragged on to the point of tedium once the plot had been revealed. This was a painful conclusion for me to draw, because I loved the cast and the performances were amazing. THAT BEING SAID... the end game was brilliant. From Anya Taylor-Joy's little monologue to Ralph Fiennes's response to Anya's last request to the final shot of the film. It's flawless and haunting. I have fast-forwarded the movie to the end to watch it at least six times. Including just now today...

It makes me want to re-cut the movie down to a 15-20 minute short which is nothing but that which could have been a great flick.

   
• Pricey Taco! I swear before the pandemic that I was able to walk into Taco Bell and get my usual Two Chalupa Supremes (substitute rice for beef), a side of Fiesta Potatoes, and a bottle of water for under $10. But now? SEVENTEEN FIFTY-SEVEN?!??

WTF?!? And what's worse? NOBODY TAKES YOUR ORDER! YOU HAVE TO INPUT IT YOURSELF ON A BACTERIA-RIDDLED TOUCH-SCREEN! Good thing I travel with hand sanitizer!

   
• Hey Siri! The fact that Siri has become so fucking useless for home automation shouldn't really surprise me, but it totally does. Lately when I ask Siri to play a song, all I get is "There's a problem with Apple Music." Ask to unlock the door... The front door is not responding (though I can unlock through the app just fine). Even turning on a frickin' light is hit-or-miss. And when you call Apple they don't know shit. About a music service I PAY them for. And HomeKit has always been useless, so I don't even bother to try and get support for that. And so... no idea what I'm going to do. Amazon and Google are pulling resources from their digital assistants, so I don't know if they'll even be around to switch to. Thank heavens I made sure that all my new devices are Matter compatible. Maybe some enterprising company (or individual) will come up with a localized voice assistant for Matter that I can buy to run locally. Then I get a small computer and some kind of Matter-compatible microphones and call it a day. Why is it that companies have failed so miserably with a technology that's supposed to be our future? It started out so promising... now this.

   
• Taters! I bought a bag of luxury potatoes because I wanted to make potato salad this weekend. But when it came time to do it tonight... I looked at the bag... and thought "ZOMG! I WANT CRISPY-FRIED SPICY POTATOES FOR DINNERRRRR!!" I love them, but they take SO long to make properly. You have to cook them on low under a cover to get them softened. Then you have to add oil and fry at a higher temperature. Then you have to keep micro-dosing oil on them and turning not too early and not too long so they brown up nicely. Then you have to taste continuously so you can add just the right amount of freshly-ground black pepper, salt, harissa spice, cayenne, and Central Street blend. BUT OH SO WORTH IT! So crispy! So spicy! So hot!

Most restaurants won't put in the time and effort. But I'm patient and have very good flipping skills with a skillet.

   
Now it's time to eat those beautiful taters.

The point of this post is in the title... AppleTV is shit. But it's the best shit you can buy for streaming.

I'm not going to run through my many complaints. If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you've probably already heard it all. If you haven't heard it? The GUI (graphic user interface) is fucking horrendous. If you own more than twenty movies or television shows, scrolling through all of them is a nightmare. Apple provides no alphabetical index on the side so you can at least jump to the first letter of the title you're looking for. It's fucking stupid.

But anyway...

Since the quality of the picture is so radically better when viewed through the AppleTV device instead of the GoogleTV app for AppleTV, I decided to ditch my AppleTV 4K (2017 Revision 1) for the newer AppleTV 4K (2022 Revision 3). And because I want to be sure that I get the smoothest possible playback, I purchased the "better" version which has Ethernet and 128GB.

The difference between Rev. 1 and Rev. 3 are slight at the start. Both support 4K DolbyVision HDR10 UHD playback. Both support Dolby Atmos. You have to pay extra for Ethernet now, but my Rev. 1 had Ethernet as standard. But then there's the improvements which really count... my old AppleTV was a slow mess with its A10X chip. It's radically snappier with the new A15 Bionic chip. I'm also working with the 128GB vs. the 32GB I used to have. And then there's the fact that Apple finally future-proofed their tech by using the HDMI 2.1 standard instead of the old 2.0. I am using Ethernet instead of WiFi, but if I were to use wireless, the new model comes with WiFi 6. The new one is also smaller and feels lighter than the old one too. As if all that wasn't enough, it contains a Thread mesh networking radio to become a border router for your HomeKit shenanigans and Matter Smart Home devices.

But the most welcome change? The controller...

Apple ditched their shitty fucking touchpad controller for a new controller that has a good heft and actual directional buttons. Which means that navigation doesn't randomly jump all over the place like it used to. I have no idea why it took them this long to replace that technology FAIL. But look how long it took them to replace their heinously shitty "butterfly keyboard" on their laptops. And... oh yeah... you can charge with USB-C instead of the ten-year-old Lightning connector that nobody else in the industry is using. Yay. Alas no charging indicator... you have to look up the battery level on your AppleTV.

The navigation buttons surround a select button to form a "clickpad" that's also touch-enabled, which is very cool for whizzing through video. You also have a dedicated power button(!) and a mute button(!). It almost as if Apple is listening to what their customers want! Color me shocked. Regardless of why they did it, Apple has gone from my most hated remote ever to my favorite remote ever.

I dare say that the remote upgrade is reason enough to upgrade. Mostly because I am actually using it instead of avoiding it and using a 3rd party remote.

When compared to Amazon FireTV, Google Chromecast, and Roku, AppleTV is way ahead (except for the navigation GUI, which is still the absolute worst). The only competitor they have in this space is probably the NVIDIA Shield, which offers more flexibility and connectivity, but looks like absolute ass. I borrowed one from a friend who tested it and ended up preferring it to my old AppleTV, but not the new AppleTV Rev. 3.

So... yeah... my home theater setup is now complete.

Over the next couple of days I'll be talking about the DolbyVision and Dolby Atmos that I'm getting through my AppleTV box. If that's not for you... then I guess I'll see you on Thursday!