randominternetperson

Apple's Phone app for macOS 26 means you don't need to pick up your iPhone to take a phone call while you're hard at work on your Mac.

This is already the case, isn't it?  I get that this new dedicated app offers a lot more functionality, but we've been able to make and receive calls on our Macs for years.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102405

Mike Wuerthele said:

randominternetperson said:

No offense, but are you a developer?  It's a developer conference where developers are introduced to new capabilities introduced in the new OSes.

You can't judge a conference by its keynote.

It's possible that the conference is ultimately "underwhelming," but its the conference attendees who will decide that.

And it's day 2 of a 5-day conference!

Like it or not, WWDC is public-facing, with investors, conventional media, and more, making their own takes about it. It's a very public demonstration to the user base as a whole, what's to come. If it was the developer-only club, they wouldn't be shilling F1 and Apple TV+ at the start of the keynote.

You are welcome to disagree, but gatekeeping that "Only developers get to have opinions" isn't right.

Amber has been at gig this longer than most developers have been on the platform. 12 years in April. She's qualified to judge.

Perhaps it's semantics, but the article didn't say "the WWDC keynote was lackluster." It's an assertion about the conference.

WWDC 2025 was certainly one of the more subdued I've personally seen. Granted, I am admittedly one of the newer Mac users to AppleInsider staff -- I made the switch in 2019.

But even in 2019, we had all the excitement of a new operating system: iPadOS. This change would ultimately cement the iPad as its own thing, and not just a larger iPhone.

So, my point still stands.

And, I have a theory for why this year wound up being so lackluster. So, please, feel free to obtain your own cork board, red string, and lovingly printed-out headshots of Apple Executives, while I map out what I feel like was an inevitably lackluster Worldwide Developers Conference.

Language matters. If you want to say that you weren't impressed by the presentation from a marketing perspective, then that's fine. But how about we wait until developers get a chance to digest the hundreds of hours of conference materials before we judge the conference. I watched a few hours of presentations yesterday, and I'm as impressed as I always am about the tools and technologies Apple puts in our hands, and in the thoughtfulness and care that went into it.

The original "fat" Mac was US$3,195 (equivalent to $9,670 in 2024)

If you are left handed, it is very important to try before you buy. Or at least this is the case with the Apple Pencil Pro.

One of the key features of the Pro is the ability to squeeze the barrel to bring up a arc-shaped palette of pens/tools. When it appears, it shows undo, redo, 3 pens, a color picker and the ... more options icon, as shown here.


For whatever reason, when holding the pencil with your left hand, it is difficult or impossible to select the first 2 and last 2 options. For example, trying to change colors by tapping on the color picker instead makes the palette disappear and start a mark on the screen.

Many lefties have reported this behavior but others have no problem, so it must depend on your hand position or something. Hence my advice to try before you buy.

No one knows why Apple hasn't fixed this. It's been reported repeatedly since July of last year. Do they have no lefties on the iPad team?

I wish it were a lot easier to understand the throughput capabilities of these darn things.

 Check out the description of the OWC enclosure linked in the article:

 Title: OWC 2TB Express 1M2 Portable NVMe Thunderbolt (USB-C) SSD USB4 Ultra Fast External SSD Drive with Aluminum Heat Sink Enclosure

 Yikes. (I like how "SSD" appears twice)

About this item:

• Ultra-fast: over 2x faster than Thunderbolt portable enclosures with up to 3151MB/s real-world performance
• Ultra-compatible: use with USB4, Thunderbolt, and USB-C computers and devices
• Ultra-reliable: aircraft grade aluminum offers rugged protection of your SSD while silently keeping drive cool for consistent top speed
• Flexible DIY: use your choice of NVMe M.2 2280, 2242, or 2230 SSD
• Portable: bus-powered and palm-sized for convenient use anywhere
• Complete: includes 40Gb/s USB-C cable and screwdriver for enclosure

Translating between megabytes and gigabits is left as an exercise for the reader.

Finally there is this helpful note:

Don't Get Fooled
Because we're widely considered the Thunderbolt experts, we must know all the little details that others purposefully overlook or hide. For a bus-powered enclosure to be Thunderbolt certified, it must meet Inter power specifications. As such, speeds are limited to 1500MB/s. While many no-name brands claim to be USB4, they are in fact Thunderbolt 3 solutions that do not follow Intel specifications. Unlike those budget brand pretenders that will leave you being fooled and disappointed in far lower speeds, the Express 1M2's true UBS4 connectivity assures you of an astounding doubling of Thunderbolt's speed.

Is Thunderbolt 4 the same as USB4 as the article implies or not? The "Thunderbolt experts" suggest otherwise.

How the heck is Joe Not-a-Nerd Public supposed to get this right?