I “tweeted” my first impressions of my new phone and headphones last night after about an hour of use. It all holds up still today.

On the latest non-Pro AirPods:

My several-sentence review of the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (after about 60 minutes):

• They seem to fit well and are comfy! 🥳
• Sound is great! 🔊
• Noise Cancellation is quite good! 🔇
• Stem-squeeze controls aren’t so bad. 🤌
• Case is tiny! ◽️
• Contenders for Best AirPods Yet! 🥇

And on the big new phone:

My several-sentence iPhone 16 Pro review (after about 30 minutes):

• Screen is amazing! 🤩
• Device is so big and heavy! 🙁
• Rails are shinier than I expected/wanted. 😕
• But the rounded edges feel great. 🙂
• Action Button & Camera Control quick-access will be nice. 👍
• Undecided on white color. 🤷‍♂️

If I’m honest, though, I’ve been on the iPhone comparison page today, looking to see what I’d be missing by swapping to a regular iPhone 16. It’s a full ounce lighter (👍), but the same width (👎). I can’t type one-handed on this thing! I don’t think the always-on display is something I’d miss. The ProMotion 120Hz display sure makes everything feel snappy, but, again, probably not a dealbreaker. All the cameras are major upgrades from my 13 mini anyway, and I’m just not that much of a photographer that I need the 5x telephoto lens.

I think I’m talking myself out of the Pro phone. Stay tuned, I’ve got a two-week return window to try this out.

Reviews

Sometimes I feel like Simon & Garfunkel wrote this song precisely so that Disturbed could perform it.

Years (and many, many listens) later and it still gives me chills.

Music

My barging in (and not so subtle attempt to someday be a guest) on “the tech podcast where you can probably guess our favorite stock iPhone app…it’s the clock.”

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Dan Moren: How do you take pictures with your phone, and does the iPhone’s new Camera Control button appeal to you?

I’m a tried and true user of the side-swipe on the lock screen to quickly go from zero to camera on my iPhone. And when I’m already using my phone, I pull down the Control Center and use the icon there to open the camera. I don’t like the delay of using the lock screen button (I can’t wait to swap that one out), and I deleted the camera app icon from my home screen as soon as I could (why waste the icon space?). Between that swipe and the Control Center, I feel like I always have fast access to get those snaps.

However, I’m psyched for Camera Control button on the new iPhones. When considered what I’d do with the Action Button, I was conflicted. I wanted a hardware button to get to the camera, but there are so many other actions I’d also like a physical shortcut to. With the Camera Control, I don’t have to choose! And the UI/UX looks really good from afar. We’ll see how fiddly it is in person, but I’m pretty optimistic about the whole thing.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Aleen Simms: Will you be participating in any post-Apple Event spending?

The AirPods 4 were high on my wish list, so those got pre-ordered ASAP when the keynote concluded. I don’t think I even looked over the spec page first. (I was glad to see they gained even better water and dust resistance!)

A new iPhone took more consideration. As I noted recently, I’m extremely reluctant to give up my beloved iPhone 13 mini with it’s perfect size and incredible color. But it’s beginning to show its age with snappiness, battery life, and a mushy power button. Plus it certainly won’t be Apple Intelligence-capable. Enough improvements have stacked up, and with no relief in sight as far as a return of the iPhone mini size, I’m ready to upgrade. But I do so in protest of the again-increasing device sizes and weights.

But I hit a couple of snags. To get installment pricing with Apple Card or iPhone Upgrade Program pricing, you need to be connected with one of the major carriers in the U.S. I’m not. That means putting down a lot more money (as in full price) than I was intending.

In the end, I did order an iPhone 16 Pro with 128GB of storage in White Titanium. It’ll be my first white iPhone ever and, despite everything I said above, I’m pretty excited about it.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Mikah Sargent: What’s your take on the form factor of robotic components getting involved with a smart speaker?

My gut says that it’s going to end up being something like a HomePod smushed together with an iPad display, that runs something like tvOS smushed together with the iPhone’s Standby mode, and which can automatically move the screen around to face a nearby person so that they can see and interact with it more easily.

Is that a robot? I’m not so sure.

But it does sound appealing. I’d be glad to have a kitchen iPad that’s always plugged in and can be used more hands-free. That said, I’d be glad for it even with out the robotic arm thing, and I’m a little worried about the cost that such a component would add. But I’m sure if and when Apple shows it off, I think it’s cool. They have a good track record there.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Anže Tomić: What does the new hypothetical-not-gonna-happen-but-maybe third iPhone button do?

I’m gonna be kinda boring here and double up on Mikah’s suggestion of a physical flashlight button. I dislike needing to light up the front screen toward me, which ruins my night vision, in order to turn on the back torch. Give me a physical button there, and then I really wouldn’t be conflicted about what I’ll use the Action Button for.

As Mikah said, I also think that Apple could take a lot of the smarts it just introduced with the Camera Control button to make the Flashlight button a real winner. Capacitive sliding up and down the button for brightness control. Half and full presses for wide and focused beams. There are some cool things that could be done that would go great with the fancy new UI that Apple built into iOS 18 for the flashlight. I wonder if swapping flashlight control into the Camera Control button was ever in the cards…

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Bonus Topic: What’s your favorite mode of transportation?

You know, one mode of transportation doesn’t immediately spring to mind. I quite like plan travel, but not its carbon emission. I haven’t spent enough time on a train to know if that’s the best for me. Driving is fun and offers so much freedom. I’ve really started to enjoy riding my bike to work on the rail trail that opened in my area.

I’m going to be boring again and say that driving is my favorite, but I wish it wasn’t.

⏰⏰⏰

Overtime Topic: What is your means of completing or not completing tasks, and holding yourself responsible to them?

Oh, Mikah, what a fraught question. I’ll try to make this quick with bullet points.

• Things is my go-to task manager for most projects and long-term storage of tasks.
• Reminders holds my shared grocery list and other family reminders, as well as tasks that need more specific notifications like geolocation.
• Lots of ideas get stuck in Drafts because its the quickest and easiest way to get stuff out of my head, but I don’t always remember to send them where they need to go. This happens enough that I’ve considered configuring Drafts into a task manager.
• Events go to Fantastical, which are also sometimes kinda tasks.
• My Spark email inbox is also a task manager of sorts, and I do a pretty good job of keeping that tidy.

I’ll say that I was much better about task management when I worked a desk job and had more reasons to keep an eye on my tasks saved in those apps. I have fewer urgent “projects” these days, so more things slip through the cracks.

Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the stocks. Bye everybody!

Crashing Clockwise

A list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted weekly. Sometimes themed, but often not.

1️⃣ In the department of wildly talented people, beloved Tech YouTube megastar Marques Brownlee is also a (professional) world-class Ultimate player. He recently brought home the title of World Champs with the winning catch for Team USA. 🤯 [📷 @mkbhd // instagram.com]

2️⃣ David Smith shared some truly excellent screenshots from the watchOS 11 beta where the Photos face got really confused about where to mask and show the time. [🐘 @_Davidsmith // mastodon.social]

3️⃣ Jason Snell had the best Apple Event recap notes that I read, and made a bunch of the same puzzling observations that I did. [🔗 Jason Snell // sixcolors.com]

4️⃣ WTF is this home screen?! [🧵 @sdw // threads.net]

5️⃣ Scotty Jackson shared a quick post with the most sane way to determine what’s allowed notifications on your phone. [🔗 HeyScottyJ // heyscottyj.com]

6️⃣ Nick Offerman is a national treasure. He shared a song describing why he’s a Kamala Man. [▶️ youtube.com]

7️⃣ What the hell just happened? (Read this on its original webpage.) [🌐 modem.io]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

Before we get into how I feel about the new stuff, let’s review my top picks and Bingo board results:

✅ iPhone 16 Pro with a titanium matte frame, camera parity with the Pro Max, and a capture button (ideally the size is no bigger than the 15 Pro1)
❌ Apple Watch Ultra 3
✅ AirPods (4th gen) with a new shape that fit as well as AirPods (2nd gen) and (somehow) some noise cancelation magic (and ideally tap gestures make a return)
❌ AirPods Max that weigh notably less than the originals
✅ Apple Intelligence runs on all new iPhones, not just Pro models

3/5, or 60% correct. I’ll take it.

And I got a double win on my Bingo card! (Did you play along? Let me know!)

Okay, let’s get into what I think about the products introduced today.

Apple Watch

• Any year that the Apple Watch gets thinner and lighter without sacrificing features or battery life is a win in my books.
• They called it a major new design, but I kinda expected something more dramatic for the Series 10. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they made a big deal about it being 10 years (to the day!) since the Apple Watch’s first reveal.
• I’m puzzled by Apple completely neglecting to mention the smaller watch size sticking around during the keynote. I was convinced that they axed it until seeing it available on their website afterward.
• I’m disappointed but not surprised by Apple Watch Ultra skipping an upgrade this year. My Ultra 1 can probably hold out for another year. The new black color does look super sick, even though it’s probably not the color I would choose.

AirPods

• AirPods 4 (new naming scheme) looks just about exactly what I wanted, assuming they fit my ears. I don’t think I’m getting the tap gestures, but active noise cancelation without in-ear tips is magic.
• I’m disappointed and surprised by the AirPods Max only getting a color refresh and Lightning swapped for USB-C. Four years later, you can hardly call them “Max” without them having best in Adaptive Audio, head nod recognition, higher fidelity audio, or anything else that the AirPods Pro have gotten. I thought those would be table stakes — let alone materials and design improvements — and who knows now how long we’ll be waiting for them to get a real upgrade.
• AirPods Pro getting really substantial health features without having to buy new hardware is fantastic. People love their AirPods, so if they can use them as over-the-counter hearing aids too, I think a lot of people will suddenly have access much better hearing. I might need to borrow my wife’s AirPods Pro just to take the hearing test!

iPhone

• iPhone 16 looks like a really nice upgrade, especially for a non-Pro phone. Action Button, Camera Control, better camera lenses, Apple silicon jump, better thermals, and more.
• iPhone 16 Pro looks like about exactly what we expected, and I’d say a less exciting Pro release, unless you’re really into the camera/audio features. Faster chip, better cameras, Camera Control, bigger display, longer battery life — those seem to be the highlights. I’m actually going to have to do some contemplation on if want to go Pro this year. I figured if I was going to get the regular (non Mini) size, I might as well get the best phone I can. But the differences between the regular and the Pro phones aren’t really things that I have strong opinions about — at first glance. I’m still leaning toward Pro (I am a tech nerd, after all), but it’s a harder decision than normal. (Also, tying monthly installments — both through Apple Card and iPhone Upgrade Program — to only AT&T, Boost Mobile, Verizon, or T-Mobile might be a barrier to me making a purchase at all this year. I switched to Spectrum this year and the lack of financing options could throw a wrench into my upgrade plans.)
• I’m happy to see that the trend continues that last year’s Pro Max camera upgrades are now available in both sizes of Pro phones, and that they’re in lockstep this year.

Event Itself

• The keynote both moved very quickly (dense) and also felt super long (spent too long on some segments) overall.
• Apple Event days aren’t quite the same with everyone split off into different communities (Threads, Mastodon, etc.). It’s really only these days that I miss Twitter where I could see photos from the event and everyone’s hot takes all in flying in on one stream. Maybe we’ll get back there eventually when ActivityPub gets sorted out.
• Speaking of hot takes, you can read the rest of mine from my liveblog of the event right here.

Those Very Good Tweets™

If you have a drink every time they mention Apple Intelligence, you are already drunk. #AppleEvent

I am also 40% brighter when viewed from an angle. #AppleEvent

ROSE GOLD HAS RETURNED FROM WAR

“Apple Watch Ultra 2 remains a product in our lineup.”

AirPods Max remain a product in our lineup. #AppleEvent

Post by @charliemchapman

View on Threads

New Apple stuff is great and all, but hear me out… What if they integrated hardware, software, and services in a way that only Apple can do? 🤪

does the new camera button let us turn down that light wrap on that explosion

This is how Only Murders in the Building can record their podcasts entirely on phones.

Post by @mgsiegler

View on Threads

Not sure why they named this #AppleEvent “Glowjob” usually it makes sense after the event is over but not this time…

Apple Event

It’s Apple Event day, which means it’ll soon be time to score drafts, picks, and (for the first time here) Bingo cards! I’ve put together 24 things that I think could happen during today’s keynote video. You’ll notice, though, that some items are contradictory — I think they could go either way! 🤷‍♂️

Have some fun and play along with your own randomly generated Bingo cards made from my predictions below. And please take a screenshot to share with me at the end — I’d love to see how you did, and I’ll immortalize winning players in an update to this post. 😁 Good luck!

Bingo Winners

• Robert Silvernail
• Jarrod Blundy

My Top Picks

Here’s what I’m personally hoping to see today:

• iPhone 16 Pro with a titanium matte frame, camera parity with the Pro Max, and a capture button (ideally the size is no bigger than the 15 Pro¹)
• Apple Watch Ultra 3
• AirPods (4th gen) with a new shape that fit as well as AirPods (2nd gen) and (somehow) some noise cancelation magic (and ideally tap gestures make a return)
• AirPods Max that weigh notably less than the originals
• Apple Intelligence runs on all new iPhones, not just Pro models

[Read more of my (many) Apple wishes on my ongoing, dedicated list.]

Apple Events

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

1️⃣ Steve Ledlow makes the case for the Intentional Web with this manifesto. [🔗 tangiblelife.net]

2️⃣ Matt Birchler reviewed his year-ago review of the iPhone 15 Pro. Great idea! [🔗 birchtree.me]

3️⃣ I was always excited to see Becca Farsace feature at The Verge, so I’m doubly excited now that she’s doing her own YouTube channel. In her first solo video, she explains why she stayed at and why she left The Verge (sounds like some unfortunate corporate-ness has crept in, among other things), and why she’s jazzed to be doing her own thing now. [▶️ youtube.com]

4️⃣ I mentioned this Under The Radar episode in my post earlier this week, but I wanted to highlight it again here. Marco Arment and David Smith have a thoughtful conversation about the aftermath of Overcast’s 10th anniversary launch, dealing with the feedback from users, and fixing some mistakes. [🎙️ overcast.fm]

5️⃣ I also starred this episode of The Vergecast in which David Pierce talks to many of his colleagues about their productivity systems. Lots of great ideas and wonderful reminder about how differently we all tackle some of our common challenges. Some of my takeaways: write more things down, digital calendars are great, an ever-lengthening task list isn’t all that helpful, having just 2-3 must-do things per day is smart, and lots of people use TickTick. I think it’s well-worth adding to your podcast queue. [🎙️ overcast.fm]

6️⃣ This climb, Chloe’s Breakfast Special, was probably my favorite climb of the weekend at the Rumney Craggin’ Classic, put on by the American Alpine Club. Can’t wait to get back to Rumney for more sport climbing! [🔗 mountainproject.com]

7️⃣ Don’t forget, you can get a custom shortcut made for you by yours truly by donating to my campaign for the cancer-beating work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this month! [🎗️ heydingus.net/stjude]

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.

7 Things

I wanted to offer a quick follow-up to my post congratulating Marco Arment on the rewrite of Overcast, his podcast app. It’s hard to imagine you being in this corner of the blog-and-podcast-osphere and not hearing about Overcast’s 10th anniversary relaunch and how the removal and changing of specific features rubbed a lot of users the wrong way. It certainly tarnished (but I’d argue didn’t obviate) Overcast’s sterling reputation.

Being Overcast’s sole developer, Marco faced a lot of criticism for the way things went down. I was disappointed to hear that he received a bunch of personal attacks online. Stating what you don’t like about the update and choosing a different app is one thing, but we can do better than tearing people down.

All that said, one bit of criticism that stuck with me was when someone pointed out that Marco is often quick to point out the flaws in Apple’s software and to call for radical change in its direction, but then was not fond of being on the receiving end of similar criticism when it came to his own app. Having listened to Marco’s complaints about those complaints on ATP, I thought that was a fair bit of feedback.

Fast-forward to just a few days ago when I was listening to the latest episode of Marco’s other podcast, Under The Radar. It sounded like Marco had done some soul-searching, and realized that he is in a similar position where his many, many users have taken on a kind of co-ownership of the app alongside him. And that co-ownership meant it wasn’t super fair of him to make drastic changes to their workflows without notice or ready-made solutions:

(This is just a short clip, but if you’re an Overcast user, I recommend listening to the whole episode. It’s only 30 minutes long, and in it, Marco and David Smith have a really thoughtful conversation about dealing with the negative feedback and resolving the mistakes.)

It’s a realization that I wish Marco had made prior to the heartache, consternation, and damage to his business and reputation, but I’m glad that he got there in the end. Marco showed humility here, which takes courage and character. I think his app and his relationship with his users will be better off for it.

With the restoration and rethinking of several key features (streaming, easy sleep timer access, sorting options, downloads management…), it sounds like Overcast is back to being in most users’ good graces (mine included). If you stepped away from it during this bumpy landing, maybe give it another shot. Marco is listening and responding to feedback.

Apps

My barging in (and not so subtle attempt to someday be a guest) on “the tech podcast once again hosted by Dan Moren.”

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Mikah Sargent: What is your go-to external storage option?

This is an easy one. I really only have one external storage thing in use, and it’s a Samsung T-something SSD that’s always hanging off my Mac mini for Time Machine backups. I used to partition it off to have some “cold storage” for large media files, but I realized that I never went looking for them. So one day I simplified and now just have everything I want to keep on my Mac mini’s internal SSD, and therefore backed up to the external SSD with Time Machine.

That said, I am a heavy user of iCloud Drive for almost all my files. Plus a smattering of other cloud storage for random projects and archives I’ve picked up over the years.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Bryan Guffey: What’s your favorite collaboration tool?

If we’re talking realtime collaboration, I’ve never used anything as solid as the Google Docs and Co suite of web apps. They just seem to work with as many people editing live as you could want. Shared Apple Notes and Reminders come in at a close second, but I’m rarely dong live collaboration there. My wife and I just share a lot of stuff that way.

I recently had the opportunity to use Canva for putting together a legal document and, boy, it was like driving a F150 down an old English cobblestone street. Sure, it could be done, but it was way too much tool for the job at hand.

For asynchronous collaboration, I still have fond memories of using Basecamp. Its slower and more opinionated approach really worked for me. (Even if the opinions of the Basecamp founders really don’t work for me these days.)

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Dan Moren: What drives your smartphone upgrade cycle these years?

I used to be on the iPhone Upgrade Program and got a brand-new phone every years for three or four years in a row. Then I got my beloved iPhone 13 mini and said “No” to every upgrade since 2021, holding out hope that the mini size would make a return.

I’ve since given up that hope, and now the allure of Apple Intelligence, better battery life, satellite messaging, a fresh design (Dynamic Island!) and camera upgrades are all calling my name.

So, yeah, I’ll probably pick up a new phone this year. But I sure as hell won’t be trading in my 13 mini. That little guy is going into my Hall of Fame.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Owen JJ Stone: Do you think, in our lifetime, we’re going to have a Skynet scenario, and if we do, who do you think is going to do it?

Confession: I’ve never seen The Terminator and only have a vague sense of what Skynet really is. But no, I don’t think I’ll see an AI super-intelligence that “takes over” or threatens humanity in my lifetime. Possible eventually? Maybe, on an infinite timescale, but I’m not too worried about that eventuality, to be honest.

If I were to peg a company that would create a Skynet-like AI threat, I guess I would point to OpenAI’s weird behavior surrounding their Safety Team as a potential red flag. I wouldn’t put it past Google to go too far, too fast and have one of their Moonshot experiments get out of hand. They’ve got access to the most data, so Google is probably the biggest threat.

⏱️⏱️⏱️

Bonus Topic: What is the oldest piece of clothing that you still wear?

I have a pretty substantial collection of clothes from high school that still fit and are in the rotation. But to point out one article in particular, it’s probably a BSA Tiger Cub T-Shirt that I picked up secondhand to wear on Tiger Cub Tee Tuesdays while working at summer camp for many years. It’s in rough shape, but I love that shirt.

⏰⏰⏰

Overtime Topic: What sort of tech support do you think you might need as you get older?

I’m not so confident that I’ll never need tech support, although Mikah does make the solid point that we (the tech nerds) have developed the skill to look up answers on our own. So maybe I’ll continue to be stubborn and just figure things out myself. But I’m sure there will come a time where I just don’t have the interest or energy to figure out yet another new tech product, service, or computing paradigm and I’ll start to get left behind.

I’m already not super in-tune with the short-form video creation for TikTok and Instagram Reels that’s all the rage these days. I’ve not had to ask for help yet, but that does eventually comes for us all.

Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!

Crashing Clockwise Podcasts

Hey y’all! Our little corner of the internet, led by the fine folks at the Relay podcast network, is back at it again, raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There is so much to be said for the amazing work that St. Jude does to treat kids with cancer — at no cost to their families! — but suffice to say that their mission is for no child to die from cancer. No child. None. That’s a huge goal, and we can get there together.

Stephen Hackett has a very good blog post that kicked off this year’s campaign, and it explains why we rally behind Relay and St. Jude every year. Basically, St. Jude saved his kid’s life and countless more all over the world.

Yet again this year, I’m throwing my hat in the ring, trying to raise a few extra dollars. Our family will be making our own donation here, but I’d be touched and grateful if you were able to toss a dollar or two into the bucket. Literally, every single dollar helps.

This time, I’m doing a good old-fashioned pledge drive to earn your support for St. Jude. Here’s the deal: You get blog posts, and the kids get money. I invite/encourage/challenge you to pledge $5 for every blog post that I fill your feed with this month. Even though I just came off Blaugust, writing 31 posts in 31 days, I’ll continue to blog my heart out in September — for the kids (and for you).

Or if you like getting stuff for your donation, for $15+, I’ll build you a custom shortcut. You can also get some awesome screensavers and wallpapers ($60) or stickers + a digital bundle ($100) from the team at Relay. And if you want to absolve yourself of consumerism guilt during New iPhone Season, a donation using The Marco Offset (as explained on ATP) can ease your soul from spending a boatload of money on a phone that you probably don’t really need.

If you want to make a pledge based on the number of blog posts I deliver this month, first, THANK YOU — you fill my heart, and second, send me an email and I’ll add your name to the list below. 😁

Let’s cure childhood cancer together.

Donate here.

Blog Drive Pledgees

Carol Beck Blundy (Thanks Mom! 😘)