Posts in Linked

Recording Video and Gaming: A Setup Update→

It’s been a couple of months since I updated my desk setup. In that time, I’ve concentrated on two areas: video recording and handheld gaming.

I wasn’t happy with the Elgato Facecam Pro 4K camera, so I switched to the iPhone 16e. The Facecam Pro is a great webcam, but the footage it shot for our podcasts was mediocre. In the few weeks that I’ve moved to the 16e, I’ve been very happy with it. My office is well lit, and the video I’ve shot with the 16e is clear, detailed, and vibrant.

The iPhone 16e sits behind an Elgato Prompter, a desktop teleprompter that can act as a second Mac display. That display can be used to read scripts, which I haven’t done much of yet, or for apps. I typically put my Zoom window on the Prompter’s display, so when I look at my co-hosts on Zoom, I am also looking into the camera.

The final piece of my video setup that I added since the beginning of the year is the Tourbox Elite Plus. It’s a funny looking contraption with lots of buttons and dials that fits comfortably in your hand. It’s a lot like a Stream Deck or Logitech MX Creative Console, but the many shapes and sizes of its buttons, dials, and knobs set it apart and make it easier to associate each with a certain action. Like similar devices, everything can be tied to keyboard shortcuts, macros, and automations, making it an excellent companion for audio and video editing.

On the gaming side of things, my biggest investment has been in a TP-Link Wi-Fi 7 Mesh System. Living in a three-story condo makes setting up good Wi-Fi coverage hard. With my previous system I decided to skip putting a router on the third floor, which was fine unless I wanted to play games in bed in the evening. With a new three-router system that supports Wi-Fi 7 I have better coverage and speed, which has already made game streaming noticeably better.

Ayn Odin 2 Portal Pro. Source: Ayn.

Ayn Odin 2 Portal Pro. Source: Ayn.

The other changes are the addition of the Ayn Odin 2 Portal Pro, which we’ve covered on NPC: Next Portable Console. I love its OLED screen and the fact that it runs Android, which makes streaming games and setting up emulators a breeze. It supports Wi-Fi 7, too, so it pairs nicely with my new Wi-Fi setup.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I often sit on my couch with a pillow in my lap to prop up my laptop or iPad Pro. That convinced me to add Mechanism’s Gaming Pillow to my setup, which I use in the evening from my couch or later in bed. Mechanism makes a bunch of brackets and other accessories to connect various devices to the pillow’s arm, which I plan to explore more in the coming weeks.

The 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller. Source: 8BitDo.

The 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller. Source: 8BitDo.

There are a handful of other changes that I’ve made to my setup that you can find along with everything else I’m currently using on our Setups page, but there are two other items I wanted to shout out here. The first is the JSAUX 16” FlipGo Pro Dual Monitor, which I recently reviewed. It’s two 16” stacked matte screens joined by a hinge. It’s a wonderfully weird and incredibly useful way to get a lot of screen real estate in a relatively small package. The second item is 8BitDo’s new Ultimate 2 Wireless Controller that works with Windows and Android. I was a fan of the original version of this controller, but this update preserves the original’s build quality and adds new features like L4 and R4 buttons, TMR joysticks that use less energy than Hall Effect joysticks, and 2.4G via a USB-C dongle and Bluetooth connection options.

That’s it for now. In the coming months, I hope to redo parts of my smart home setup, so stay tuned for another update later this summer or in the fall.

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Opening iOS Is Good News for Smartwatches→

Speaking of opening up iOS to more types of applications, I enjoyed this story by Victoria Song, writing at The Verge about the new EU-mandated interoperability requirements that include, among other things, smartwatches:

This is a big reason why it’s a good thing that the European Commission recently gave Apple marching orders to open up iOS interoperability to other gadget makers. You can read our explainer on the nitty gritty of what this means, but the gist is that it’s going to be harder for Apple to gatekeep iOS features to its own products. Specific to smartwatches, Apple will have to allow third-party smartwatch makers to display and interact with iOS notifications. I’m certain Garmin fans worldwide, who have long complained about the inability to send quick replies on iOS, erupted in cheers.

And this line, which is so true in its simplicity:

Some people just want the ability to choose how they use the products they buy.

Can you imagine if your expensive Mac desktop had, say, some latency if you decided to enter text with a non-Apple keyboard? Or if the USB-C port only worked with proprietary Apple accessories? Clearly, those restrictions would be absurd on computers that cost thousands of dollars. And yet, similar restrictions have long existed on iPhones and the iOS ecosystem, and it’s time to put an end to them.

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On Apple Allowing Third-Party Assistants on iOS→

This is an interesting idea by Parker Ortolani: what if Apple allowed users to change their default assistant from Siri to something else?

I do not want to harp on the Siri situation, but I do have one suggestion that I think Apple should listen to. Because I suspect it is going to take quite some time for the company to get the new Siri out the door properly, they should do what was previously unthinkable. That is, open up iOS to third-party assistants. I do not say this lightly. I am one of those folks who does not want iOS to be torn open like Android, but I am willing to sign on when it makes good common sense. Right now it does.

And:

I do not use Gemini as my primary LLM generally, I prefer to use ChatGPT and Claude most of the time for research, coding, and writing. But Gemini has proved to be the best assistant out of them all. So while we wait for Siri to get good, give us the ability to use custom assistants at the system level. It does not have to be available to everyone, heck create a special intent that Google and these companies need to apply for if you want. But these apps with proper system level overlays would be a massive improvement over the existing version of Siri. I do not want to have to launch the app every single time.

As a fan of the progressive opening up of iOS that’s been happening in Europe thanks to our laws, I can only welcome such a proposal – especially when I consider the fact that long-pressing the side button on my expensive phone defaults to an assistant that can’t even tell which month it is. If Apple truly thinks that Siri helps users “find what they need and get things done quickly”, they should create an Assistant API and allow other companies to compete with them. Let iPhone users decide which assistant they prefer in 2025.

Some people may argue that other assistants, unlike Siri, won’t be able to access key features such as sending messages or integrating with core iOS system frameworks. My reply would be: perhaps having a more prominent placement on iOS would actually push third-party companies to integrate with the iOS APIs that do exist. For instance, there is nothing stopping OpenAI from integrating ChatGPT with the Reminders app; they have done exactly that with MapKit, and if they wanted, they could plug into HomeKit, HealthKit, and the dozens of other frameworks available to developers. And for those iOS features that don’t have an API for other companies to support…well, that’s for Apple to fix.

From my perspective, it always goes back to the same idea: I should be able to freely swap out software on my Apple pocket computer just like I can thanks to a safe, established system on my Apple desktop computer. (Arguably, that is also the perspective of, you know, the law in Europe.) Even Google – a company that would have all the reasons not to let people swap the Gemini assistant for anything else – lets folks decide which assistant they want to use on Android. And, as you can imagine, competition there is producing some really interesting results.

I’m convinced that, at this point, a lot of people despise Siri and would simply prefer pressing their assistant button to talk to ChatGPT or Claude – even if that meant losing access to reminders, timers, and whatever it is that Siri can reliably accomplish these days. (I certainly wouldn’t mind putting Claude on my iPhone and leaving Siri on the Watch for timers and HomeKit.) Whether it’s because of superior world knowledge, proper multilingual abilities (something that Siri still doesn’t support!), or longer contextual conversations, hundreds of millions of people have clearly expressed their preference for new types of digital assistance and conversations that go beyond the antiquated skillset of Siri.

If a new version of Siri isn’t going to be ready for some time, and if Apple does indeed want to make the best computers for AI, maybe it’s time to open up that part of iOS in a way that goes beyond the (buggy) ChatGPT integration with Siri.

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App Store Vibes→

Bryan Irace has an interesting take on the new generation of developer tools that have lowered the barrier to entry for new developers (and sometimes not even developers) when it comes to creating apps:

Recent criticism of Apple’s AI efforts has been juicy to say the least, but this shouldn’t distract us from continuing to criticize one of Apple’s most deserving targets: App Review. Especially now that there’s a perfectly good AI lens through which to do so.

It’s one thing for Apple’s AI product offerings to be non-competitive. Perhaps even worse is that as Apple stands still, software development is moving forward faster than ever before. Like it or not, LLMs—both through general chat interfaces and purpose-built developer tools—have meaningfully increased the rate at which new software can be produced. And they’ve done so both by making skilled developers more productive while also lowering the bar for less-experienced participants.

And:

I recently built a small iOS app for myself. I can install it on my phone directly from Xcode but it expires after seven days because I’m using a free Apple Developer account. I’m not trying to avoid paying Apple, but there’s enough friction involved in switching to a paid account that I simply haven’t been bothered. And I used to wrangle provisioning profiles for a living! I can’t imagine that I’m alone here, or that others with less tribal iOS development knowledge are going to have a higher tolerance for this. A friend asked me to send the app to them but that’d involve creating a TestFlight group, submitting a build to Apple, waiting for them to approve it, etc. Compare this to simply pushing to Cloudflare or Netlify and automatically having a URL you can send to a friend or share via Twitter. Or using tools like v0 or Replit, where hosting/distribution are already baked in.

Again, this isn’t new—but being able to build this much software this fast is new. App distribution friction has stayed constant while friction in all other stages of software development has largely evaporated. It’s the difference between inconvenient and untenable.

Perhaps “vibe coding” is the extreme version of this concept, but I think there’s something here. Creating small, low-stakes apps for personal projects or that you want to share with a small group of people is, objectively, getting easier. After reading Bryan’s post – which rightfully focuses on the distribution side of apps – I’m also wondering: what happens when the first big service comes along and figures out a way to bypass the App Store altogether (perhaps via the web?) to allow “anyone” to create apps, completely cutting out Apple and its App Review from the process?

In a way, this reminds me of blogging. Those who wanted to have an online writing space 30 years ago had to know some of the basics of hosting and HTML if they wanted to publish something for other people to read. Then Blogger came along and allowed anyone – regardless of their skill level – to be read. What if the same happened to mobile software? Should Apple and Google be ready for this possibility within the next few years?

I could see Google spin up a “Build with Gemini” initiative to let anyone create Android apps without any coding knowledge. I’m also reminded of this old Vision Pro rumor that claimed Apple’s Vision team was exploring the idea of letting people create “apps” with Siri.

If only the person in charge of that team went anywhere, right?

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Bloomberg Reports that Apple Is Shaking up Siri Leadership→

Less than two weeks ago, Apple announced that it was delaying the launch of a more personalized Siri. Today, Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg, says the company is shuffling leadership of the project, too. According to Gurman:

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he’s moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven’t been announced.

Giannandrea isn’t leaving Apple. Instead, Gurman says Giannandrea will continue to oversee “research, testing and technologies related to AI” including a team investigating robotics. Rockwell, who led the development of the Vision Pro, will report to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software.

Rockwell has had a long and successful track record at Apple, so hopefully Siri is in good hands going forward. It’s clear that there’s a lot of work to be done, but the promise of a more personalized Siri and a system for apps to communicate with each other via Apple Intelligence is something I’m glad the company isn’t giving up on. Hopefully, we’ll see some progress from Rockwell’s team soon.

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Pebble’s Inherent Disadvantages on the iPhone→

It’s been just shy of one year since the U.S. Department of Justice and 15 states sued Apple for antitrust violations. It’s not clear what will become of that lawsuit given the change of administrations, but as it stands today, it’s still an active case.

One of the things that is hard about a case like the one filed against Apple is cutting through the legal arguments and economic jargon to understand the real-world issues underlying it. Earlier this week Eric Migicovsky one of the Pebble smartwatch founders who resuscitated the device this week, wrote an excellent post on his blog that explains the real world issues facing third-party smartwatch makers like Pebble.

Among other things:

It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying)….

It’s worth reading the post in its entirety for the other things third-party smartwatch makers can’t do on iOS, and as Migicovsky explains, things have gotten worse with time, not better. Since the Pebble’s time, the complaint against Apple adds that:

  • You must set notifications to display full content previews on your lockscreen for them to also be sent to a 3rd party watch (new restriction added in iOS 13).
  • Apple closed off the ability of smartwatches after Pebble to negotiate with carriers to provide messaging services, and now requires users to turn off iMessage (disabling iOS’s core messaging platform) if they want to take advantage of such contracts between a third-party smartwatch maker and cellular carriers.

The Apple Watch is great. There isn’t another smartwatch that I’ve even been tempted to try in recent years, but is that because no one has been able to make a good alternative or hasn’t because the disadvantages third-party wearables face are too great?

I’d like to see Apple focus on finding ways to better integrate other devices with the iPhone. There are undoubtedly security and privacy issues that need to be carefully considered, but figuring those things out should be a priority because choice and competition are better for Apple’s customers in the long run.

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Choosing Optimism About iOS 19→

I loved this post by David Smith on his decision to remain optimistic about Apple’s rumored iOS 19 redesign despite, well, you know, everything:

Optimism isn’t enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a feeling, optimism is a choice. I have much less of the enthusiastic feelings these days about my relationship to Apple and its technologies (discussed here on Under the Radar 312), but I can still choose to optimistically look for the positives in any situation. Something I’ve learned as I’ve aged is that pessimism feels better in the moment, but then slowly rots you over time. Whereas optimism feels foolish in the moment, but sustains you over time.

I’ve always disliked the word “enthusiast” (talk about a throwback), and I’ve been frequently criticized for choosing the more optimistic approach in covering Apple over the years. But David is right: pessimism feels better in the short term (and performs better if you’re good at writing headlines or designing YouTube thumbnails), but is not a good long-term investment. (Of course, when the optimism is also gone for good…well, that’s a different kind of problem.)

But back to David’s thoughts on the iOS 19 redesign. He lists this potential reason to be optimistic about having to redesign his apps:

It would provide a point of differentiation for my app against other apps who wouldn’t adopt the new design language right away (either large companies which have their own design system or laggards who wouldn’t prioritize it).

He’s correct: the last time Apple rolled out a major redesign of iOS, they launched a dedicated section on the App Store which, on day one, featured indie apps updated for iOS 7 such as OmniFocus, Twitterrific, Reeder 2, Pocket Casts 4, and Perfect Weather. It lasted for months. Twelve years later1, I doubt that bigger companies will be as slow as they were in 2013 to adopt Apple’s new design language, but more agile indie developers will undoubtedly have an advantage here.

He also writes:

Something I regularly remind myself as I look at new Apple announcements is that I never have the whole picture of what is to come for the platform, but Apple does. They know if things like foldable iPhones or HomeKit terminals are on the horizon and how a new design would fit in best with them. If you pay attention and try to read between the lines they often will provide the clues necessary to “skate where the puck is going” and be ready when new, exciting things get announced subsequently.

This is the key point for me going into this summer’s review season. Just like when Apple introduced size classes in iOS 8 at WWDC 2014 and launched Slide Over and Split View multitasking for the iPad (alongside the first iPad Pro) the next year, I have to imagine that changes in this year’s design language will pave the way for an iPhone that unfolds into a mini tablet, a convertible Mac laptop, App Intents on a dedicated screen, or more. So while I’m not enthusiastic about Apple’s performance in AI or developer relations, I choose to be optimistic about the idea that this year’s redesign may launch us into an exciting season of new hardware and apps for the next decade.

  1. Think about it this way: when iOS 7 was released, the App Store was only five years old. ↩︎
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Lux’s Sebastiaan de With on the iPhone 16e’s Essential Camera Experience→

As I read Sebastiaan de With’s review of the iPhone 16e’s camera, I found myself chuckling when I got to this part:

You can speculate what the ‘e’ in ‘16e’ stands for, but in my head it stands for ‘essential’. Some things that I consider particularly essential to the iPhone are all there: fantastic build quality, an OLED screen, iOS and all its apps, and Face ID. It even has satellite connectivity. Some other things I also consider essential are not here: MagSafe is very missed, for instance, but also multiple cameras. It be [sic] reasonable to look at Apple’s Camera app, then, and see what comprises the ‘essential’ iPhone camera experience according to Apple.

What amused me was that I initially planned to call my iPhone 16e review the ‘e’ Is for Essential, but I settled on ‘elemental’ instead. Whether the ‘e’ in iPhone 16e stands for either of our guesses or neither really doesn’t matter. Like Sebastiaan, I find what Apple chose to include and exclude from the 16e fascinating.

When it comes to the iPhone 16e’s camera, there are differences compared to the iPhone 16 Pro, which is the focus of Sebastiaan’s review. The 16e supports fewer features than the Pro and the photos it takes don’t reproduce quite as much detail, especially in low-light conditions. There are other differences, too, so it’s worth comparing the review’s side-by-side comparison shots of the 16e to the 16 Pro.

Overall, though, I think it’s fair to say Sebastiaan came away impressed with the 16e’s camera, which has been my experience, too. So far, I’ve only used it to shoot video for our podcasts, and with good lighting, the results are excellent. Despite some differences, the iPhone 16e combined with the wealth of photo and video apps, like Lux’s Halide and Kino, make it a great way to enjoy the essential iPhone photography experience.

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Where’s Swift Assist?→

Last June at WWDC, Apple announced Swift Assist, a way to generate Swift code using natural language prompts. However, as Tim Hardwick writes for MacRumors, Swift Assist hasn’t been heard from since then:

Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn’t announced that it’s been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it’s not even mentioned in the release notes.

Meanwhile, developers have moved on, adopting services like Cursor, which does much of what was promised with Swift Assist, if not more. A similar tool built specifically for Swift projects and Apple’s APIs would be a great addition to Xcode, but it’s been nine months, and developers haven’t heard anything more about Swift Assist. Apple owes them an update.

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