MyAppleMenu

The Interface-Regression Edition Tuesday, August 5, 2025

UI Ambiguity, Exhibit №917, by Riccardo Mori

‘A Mac’? Which Mac? If I don’t recognise this device (whose name you’re not telling me straight away), I can remove it in Settings. Yes, I can do the extra step of going to Settings > Apple ID (or Apple Account) and look through the — long, in my case — list of devices to see if some new device with a name I don’t recognise has perhaps appeared there.

There are, of course, far worse examples of bad or ambiguous UI; what’s annoying for me in this case is that this is yet another interface regression.

Slice of Tech Nostalgia

Ode To The EarPods, by Basic Apple Guy

If AirPods never seem to fit quite right, you might find the slimmer EarPods slip into your ears more comfortably than the plumper wireless AirPods.

[...]

They don't need charging, they work with just about anything, and they've quietly aged into a little slice of tech nostalgia.

‘I’m Just Telling You That’s A Little Bit More Secure’: Kamala Harris Says She Uses Wired Headphones Over Wireless As A Result Of What She Was Told In Senate Intelligence Committee Briefings, by Carrie Marshall, TechRadar

Everybody loves wireless headphones – but perhaps everyone shouldn't. That's what Kamala Harris suggests, and she knows more than most of us: speaking to Stephen Colbert last week, she explained why her preference for wired earbuds over wireless ones wasn't because she's old-fashioned.

"I know I've been teased about this," she said. "But I like these kinds of earpods that have [a cable] because I served on the Senate Intelligence Committee."

TV Didn't Kill Radio

Amazon Slashes Wondery Podcast Team As Focus Shifts To Video, Five Years After Apple’s $400M Interest, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

While it’s always sad to learn that people are losing their jobs, the story itself shows that the transition from paid audio to video-first podcasts is well underway.

What We Get Wrong About New Businesses Over And Over Again, by Lex Friedman, Your Intermittent Lex

It’s okay to focus on being great at what you do, and as the flipside of that, focus on doing the things you’re great at. If you built a team of audio professionals, don’t think one video hire is your path to pivoting to video. Video existed when podcasts were born. TV didn’t kill radio. Multiple things can exist.

Stuff

Sideloading Audiobooks To An iPhone, by Glenn Fleishman, Six Colors

Through some trial and error, as well as more careful reading, I uncovered some useful tidbits that helped me solve the problem, and I think they will be useful if you’re ever faced with an audiobook you want to load.

Castro Podcast App Launches On iPad For The First Time, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

Castro, the inbox and queue-based podcast app for iPhone, has just launched its first ever iPad app.

Time Flies Review – Existential Flight Game With A Bittersweet Buzz, by Sarah Thwaites, The Guardian

The death of a housefly is usually an unceremonious event. Within minutes of the insect’s appearance in our periphery, a tide of annoyance rises, and with the quick thwap of a swatter or rolled-up magazine, the bug is gone. Time Flies, a perception-warping bug puzzler, reimagines this inevitably short lifespan as an absurd tragedy – by providing the soon-to-perish pest with a bucket list.

Proton Fixes Authenticator Bug Leaking TOTP Secrets In Logs, by Lawrence Abrams, BleepingComputer

While this log data can't be exploited remotely, the concern was that if the logs were shared or posted anywhere to help diagnose an issue or bug, it would also expose the sensitive TOTP secret to a third party.

Spotify Raising Prices In Multiple Countries, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Spotify today said that it is raising prices for Premium subscriptions in multiple countries across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Develop

The Creative Tension Between Developer And Language, by Krishna's Blog

I think it's important to stay mindful of where the language is pushing you, and consciously decide whether to follow or resist.

Notes

Apple Wins US Court Ruling To Allow 'Reality' Software Trademarks, by Blake Brittain, Reuters

A Virginia federal judge has ordered the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to award Apple federal trademarks covering its augmented reality software-development tools "Reality Composer" and "Reality Converter."

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said on Friday that the two phrases were distinctive enough to merit trademark protection, reversing a USPTO decision that the phrases could not be trademarked.

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About, by Mike Masnick, TechDirt

This is what happens when politicians decide to regulate technology they don’t understand, targeting problems they can’t define, with solutions that don’t work. The UK has managed to create a law so poorly designed that it simultaneously violates privacy, restricts freedom, harms small businesses, and completely fails at its stated goal of protecting children.

Bottom of the Page

Speaking of pivoting to video podcasts… Here I am, using my audio podcast player to sideload videos from a certain video website so that I can just listen.

I am so glad that Castro has found a good home with its new (actually, not so new already) owner and developer.

~

Thanks for reading.