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The Original-DNA Edition Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Ben Stiller Wants To Make ‘Severance’ More Quickly—but First, He Needs To Get It Just Right, by David Canfield, Vanity Fair

The challenge and the scary thing of that is: You don’t want to lose the original DNA of what the show is, and what people like about it. But it’s interesting with this show,, because different people like different things in it. So we just try to stick to what we feel is the core of the show, but allow it to evolve into something that maybe we never even imagined.

Beta 5

Mail No Longer Buries The 'Select' Button In iOS 26 Beta 5, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

The issue? iOS 26 beta 1 through 4 required an additional tap before entering select mode to choose multiple emails to mark as read or archive. It doesn’t sound like a big deal when you put it like that, but the feedback was more about a general trend of burying primary controls behind “…” buttons.

RIP To The Macintosh HD Hard Drive Icon, 2000–2025, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

The old Macintosh HD hard drive icon, for years represented by a facsimile of an old spinning hard drive, has been replaced with something clearly intended to resemble a solid-state drive (the SSD in your Mac actually looks like a handful of chips soldered to a circuit board, but we'll forgive the creative license).

iOS 26 Beta Adds A Cute New Low Battery Animation, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

There is also a new low battery notification that shows a red circle animation that resembles a radar pulse.

Stuff

Apple Launches Early Preview Of ChatGPT-Like Support Assistant, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

In the Apple Support app, the Support Assistant early preview can be accessed by tapping on a dedicated "Chat" button that's been added to the navigation bar. Only a select number of ‌iPhone‌ users will see the chat option at this time.

Apple Planning ‘National Fitness Day’ Apple Watch Challenge In China, by Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac

As in previous years, Apple will challenge users in China to complete a 20-minute workout to unlock a custom animated sticker pack to be used in iMessage, FaceTime, and other messaging apps, as well as a special achievement in the Fitness app trophy gallery.

Notes

What Kids Told Us About How To Get Them Off Their Phones, by Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic

What we see in the data and from the stories parents send us is both simple and poignant: Kids being raised on screens long for real freedom. It’s like they’re homesick for a world they’ve never known.

Bottom of the Page

I finally did it. I have my iPhone Mirroring up on my laptop screen, and I lifted my finger, up in the air, ready to scroll the content on the mirrored iPhone window, with my finger, on my MacBook.

Something is not quite right, my brain was telling me at that moment.

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Yes, Apple has already added windowing and traffic-lights to iPadOS. Should we all expect touch-screen MacBooks, too, will be out soon?

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Thanks for reading.