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My Siri AI experience in iOS27
I think it’s fair to say Apple’s first few forays into the world of AI and LLMs have been far from smooth. The first iPhone marketed as “designed for Apple Intelligence” was the iPhone 16, released in September 2024. Quite a lot of the features demoed in that year’s WWDC were incomplete, and wouldn’t ship…
5–7 minutes -
A fresh coat of paint
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed there’s been a design refresh around here! Unless you’re seeing this in an RSS reader, in which case the image below might give you a bit of a clue what’s changed – you’ll have to come visit the site directly to see for yourself. When I originally migrated this blog…
4–5 minutes -
Liquid Glass and the end of flat design?
I’ve always been a huge fan of the skeuomorphic design of the earlier iPhones, they seemed so quirky, and full of character. I loved all the little details, like how the reflections on the chrome volume slider would react and shimmer, as if light were really reflecting off as you moved the phone around. Or…
3–5 minutes -
Visual Voicemail is actually pretty great
Yes, I know. I’m sure some of you will be thinking this is a bit of a random post, as you double-check your calendars to make sure that it is indeed the year 2025. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start talking about fax machines and record players, but I wanted to share some recent…
4–6 minutes -
Compact macOS menubar icons
When Apple released macOS 11.0 “Big Sur” back in 2020, one of the changes they made was to increase the gap between icons on the menubar. During development the gap was enormous, but it was eventually toned down for release, based on the negative feedback during testing. People with a lot of menubar apps found…
1–2 minutes -
Not so smart assistants?
I really like using Siri to get things done when I’m not able to use my phone normally. For example, when cooking I can quickly add things to my shopping list as I’m using them, so I’ll remember to buy more the next time I’m at the supermarket. Or if I’m driving somewhere, I can…
3–5 minutes -
The Sum of its Parts
I recently started a new job, and one of the upsides is that my computer isn’t locked down into oblivion, so I can actually use a lot of the features that make the Apple ecosystem so great to begin with! Universal Clipboard now works properly, so setting up things like my HR profile was as…
2–3 minutes -
Apple Spring Event 2021
Apple typically holds an event in Spring, and this year was no exception. Their Spring Loadedevent covered updates to existing products and announced some new ones too. The environmental report also looked good, with many of the products being made from 100% recycled aluminium, tin and rare earth metals. It’s good to see that Apple includes…
6–8 minutes -
My favourite Mac: restoring an iMac G4
I was drawn to the Mac for many years before I finally got my own. This post talks a bit about how I got into the platform. I’d poked about on display models in computer stores, and was blown away by the way they looked, both hardware and software. In the PC world, Windows XP…
9–14 minutes -
The Future of Mac
Hot on the heels of their iPhone announcement, Apple has returned with a special event all about the future of the Mac. Back in June, Apple announced they were migrating the Mac away from Intel processors to their own custom silicon. Though their A-series chips have long provided iPhones with industry-leading performance, until yesterday’s event we weren’t sure how…
4–6 minutes