I Am the Great Glassholio! — Spyglass

Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses, which would let wearers identify people and get information about them via an AI assistant.

Meta being meta. Creepy.

If Apple does a “Snow Leopard”- style release with iOS 27 (and hopefully macOS 27), then I’m all in. Software quality has taken a nosedive in recent years, and it’s no longer aligned with Apple’s “It just works”. Apple needs to do something about this. I cannot count how many times people have come to me and said, “Apple’s hardware is top-notch, but the software is such crap.”

I bet Apple will use some level of AI to inspect code and apply AI-based suggestions and recommendations.

Margaret-Anne Storey introduces “cognitive debt” as a concept that may be more threatening than technical debt in AI-augmented development. Unlike technical debt (which lives in code), cognitive debt is the erosion of shared understanding that resides in developers’ minds. Drawing on Peter Naur’s concept of a program as a “theory” distributed across teams, the article argues that as AI and agentic tools push for development velocity, teams risk losing their collective understanding of why systems work the way they do. Continue reading →

When I was a teenager, programming languages like LOGO made computers and programming very accessible. In today’s world, I would argue that, to some degree, vibe coding does the same: it makes computer programming more accessible in a much more complex digital landscape.

Do we know if Apple upgraded the local Apple Intelligence model since its initial release? In case they didn’t, it’s no wonder why Apple is so far behind as others are releasing new models at a rapid pace, even those destined at being run locally.

I’m still tweaking my RSS Flow web app using Claude Code. It’s addictive and fun. It’s becoming the exact RSS reader I always wanted.

In what appears to be a mistake, Apple is moving away from the iWork branding for its productivity apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) by removing the dedicated iWork webpage and redirecting it to a new “apps” page featuring Creator Studio. The change suggests a shift in how Apple markets these apps, with a new focus on the Creator Studio subscription service, which offers premium features and additional creative tools for $12.99 per month.

Is Apple Phasing Out the iWork Brand? — MacRumors

I would pay to have a widget that shows an up-to-date view of Claude’s credit usage.

Apple’s apparent inaction on fixing Liquid Glass is very reminiscent of the dreaded butterfly keyboard fiasco. Apple appears stubborn until it takes bold action. And we are waiting for this bold move, probably not with OS 27, just like Apple introduced a “quick fix” in the 2018 MacBook Pro, then in 2019, both tweaks, which barely fixed the issues… just like the tweaks in 26.1. Since then, crickets.

One of my favourite things while flying is seeing a plane go in the opposite direction at a distance, ideally close enough to feel the raw speed of the plane added to mine. I loved Egypt, but the chaos of Cairo can be overwhelming and tiring. I prefer the relative calm of Jordan’s cities. I may be getting too old for some scenery. WhatsApp is a dominant communication platform worldwide, except in North America. Continue reading →

Now leaving Jordan to return home. Great vacation overall. More comments coming soon.

Better Siri is, yet again, a little farther off — BirchTree

Making a meaningfully better, LLM-enhanced Siri seems to be very tricky.

Well, probably but changing the software strategy over and over might prove to be the real culprit here.

Fact: airports aren’t created equal. 😩

Having a great time in Egypt so far. Internet connectivity is spotty which explains why I’m not posting more photos. You will be flooded in due time!

Anthropic cements its position as the not-OpenAI with no-ads pledge — The Register

Anthropic has committed to keeping its Claude AI model ad-free, emphasizing user trust and avoiding potential conflicts of interest that could arise from advertising. The company believes serving ads in chat sessions could introduce incentives that might compromise the AI’s helpfulness and neutrality, distinguishing itself from rivals like OpenAI who are exploring ad-supported models. This decision aligns with Anthropic’s principle-driven approach and focus on maintaining user privacy and genuine assistance.

How long will it last? In today’s tech world, cynicism prevails.

“Today, Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago and well above our expectations,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment, and Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago. We are also excited to announce that our installed base now has more than 2.5 billion active devices, which is a testament to incredible customer satisfaction for the very best products and services in the world.”

How can Apple think they are doing anything wrong with these numbers? You tell me.

The more I tweak my personal RSS reader, called “RSS Flow”, the more I like it. It wouldn’t scale to the level of Inoreader, though. But for a dozen of RSS feeds, it’s really nice.

Manton Reece on Aeronaut

Trying out Aeronaut for Bluesky. Very nice. I don’t actually visit Bluesky directly that often because I post to it and follow within Micro.blog. Good to have a dedicated app for things like feeds, though.

Tried it for five minutes on my Mac. Nice, indeed. Certainly better than Bluesky’s offering which is iPhone only. The only thing is that I never quite remember what to use as my Bluesky username.

Let’s Keep an Eye on Apple’s Own iOS Adoption Numbers — Daring Fireball

I presume, or at least hope, that they’ll update these numbers for iOS 26 any day now.

Apple will wait as long as the numbers look favorable. The longer it will take, the more we can assume that this year’s OSes adoption isn’t where it was in previous years.

Halide cofounder Sebastiaan de With joins Apple’s design team — 9to5Mac

Halide and Lux co-founder and designer Sebastiaan de With announced today that he is joining Apple’s human interface design team.

Woah! I’m happy for him, and I think it’s a big plus for Apple in general. I always admired his work, both in Halide and on his website.