Macworld Podcast: 2025 Apple software and services year in review

Macworld

It was a big year for Apple software and services. We talk about Liquid Glass, Apple Intelligence, Apple TV, and the other services and software that shaped the company’s year.

This is episode 963 with Michael Simon, Jason Cross,  and Roman Loyola.

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Click on the links below for more info on what was discussed on the show.

Code leak reveals A19 iPad, M4 Air with Apple’s N1 chip likely coming soon

Leaked code spills details of mystery Apple smart home accessory

Internal Apple code hints improved Siri will land next spring with ‘HomePad’ hub

Apple’s next HomePod mini and AirTag upgrades surface in leaked internal code

iOS 26 superguide

Can’t read notifications in iOS 26? Here’s how to reduce the Liquid Glass effect

macOS 26 Tahoe superguide

How to reduce the Liquid Glass transparency effect in macOS Tahoe

iPadOS 26 superguide

watchOS 26 superguide

This Week in Apple History 

On December 21, 1994, Bungie Software released Marathon, a first-person shooter exclusively for the Mac. The original Marathon game trilogy is now an open-source project and is available to download for free on the Mac, as well as Windows and Linux. Check it out on the Aleph One Marathon Open Source website.  iPhone versions are available in the App Store. A modern-day Marathon is in the works, but it does not include Mac development. 

Macworld Mailbag

All we seem to hear about nowadays is AI and how it’s going to make life easy. But will it?

Do we really need Al in our life? We don’t trust the experts and human skills anymore?
Ozzy Ruiz via YouTube

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Below is an AI-generated, uncorrected transcript of the podcast. The timecodes do not correspond to the published recording. Also, the text has not been edited or corrected, so it will contain improper grammar, misspellings, and other errors.

Roman Loyola (00:00.316)we are recording.

Michael Simon (00:12.534)Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld podcast. I’m Michael Simon and I’m joined as always by Jason Cross.

Jason Cross (00:20.123)Good morning.

Michael Simon (00:21.484)and our producer Roman Loyola.

Roman Loyola (00:23.819)Ahoy there!

Michael Simon (00:25.876)Hold on. lost my tab. Okay. There we go. this is episode number 963. Do I have the right script here? look, I, so I said it’s unscripted, but I totally write a script for the beginning. Cause if I know it, I’m never going to be able to get, to get to like the part of the show, right? Mostly. so yeah, this is, we, we’ve reached nearly the end of 2025. So our last two shows are going to focus on Apple in 2025. You’re in review type stuff.

Roman Loyola (00:31.819)three.

Jason Cross (00:40.322)Mostly unscripted.

Michael Simon (00:55.608)This one’s software and services and next week, which we’re also recording today. So we’re going to be probably a little bit tired after this one is going to be all about hardware. And, you know, we’ll go through what we got, what we didn’t get, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what it means all, you know, whatever, wherever the conversation takes us. But today is going to be software and, services, which is, you know, mainly Apple TV, but probably some, little, a few other things, maybe, then we’ll have a special year-end edition of what we’re watching on Apple TV this week in Apple history, which I’m actually somewhat excited about because I don’t even really know what Roman’s talking about and our reader mailbag Speaking of that you can contact us through.

Roman Loyola (01:39.511)That’s not the first time somebody said they didn’t know what I was talking about.

Michael Simon (01:44.174)I mean, it’s not you personally, it’s the thing, the thing that you’re talking about. other, not knowing what you’re talking about is a whole separate issue. If you want to talk to us, you can contact us through blue sky, Facebook threads, search for Mac world, look for the blue mouse logo, send an email to podcast.macworld.com, comment under a video, comment under a TikTok or real or wherever you find us Facebook. we, we scour all that stuff and we will talk about the most interesting and, don’t know, exciting comments in a future show. Cause it won’t be next week. All right, Roman, three minutes I got, this is actually Apple, Macworld related anyway. I just wanted to give a shout out to our contributor, Felipe Esposito last week. so he got, he, I’m, I’m kind of learning about all this stuff as well. He got access to a like an early build of iOS 26. He said it was actually, it was so early, it was actually called iOS 19. And so inside those, like, you know, we see the fancy stuff that’s all, you know, the code creates. Underneath that is a whole mess of text that to most people is, you know, just gibberish, but he knows enough about it where he can go through it and find what he calls feature flags and references to like code numbers, which pertain to product, which pertain to processors. And he’s able to kind of pour all over that. And he, you know, wrote a bunch of stories last week about products that Apple hasn’t released that are in development, AirTags, HomePod mini, Studio Display. There was some iPad stuff, some iOS 26 features that we haven’t gotten because Apple hasn’t really announced anything beyond what we have. And, I don’t know, I just found it really interesting. For one, it’s nice to break stuff, but for two, it’s just kind of fascinating how this whole thing works and how he’s able to dig up these scoops based on code.

Jason Cross (03:55.717)Yeah, some of the, from, from what I have read, and I didn’t get this from Philippe, but, is that somebody got a hold of an internal development device that from, from the spring, just a month or two before WWDC, they apparently changed the name to iOS 26, really last minute. but, they got a hold of that device and then they just made the software that was on it like public.

to people. They like released it. I don’t know where a torrent a dark web. I don’t know. But but then, you know, once you load that on a device, you can go through it. Like you said, there are most of the code is compiled code, but there are there are lots of sort of configuration files and reference files and scripts and stuff like that that are in plain text, but they just reference API names and stuff like that, you know, framework features.

Michael Simon (04:23.363)Right.

Jason Cross (04:52.803)And stuff and so you can just kind of pour like you said, you can go through that if you know what these things are and go, well, we haven’t seen that flag before. We’ve never seen the name for that API feature and all those sorts of things go through and find out what all those things are. And it was fascinating. A lot of this is stuff that had been rumored before, but there was never any evidence, right? It was just like some.

Michael Simon (05:01.155)Right.

Michael Simon (05:12.664)Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (05:16.687)Mark Erman or somebody else said, hey, they’re working on a new studio display. It’s nice to go through and say like, no, it’s got a reference number and it references like the resolution set of supports and the refresh rates of supports and stuff like that. It’s got the promotion flag. Now we have evidence that not only does this exist, but like what its features are. It’s really cool.

Michael Simon (05:18.006)Great.

Michael Simon (05:31.864)Right.

Michael Simon (05:36.322)Right, yeah, it’s all fascinating stuff. Again, this was months ago, so we don’t know if it’s actually going to come out, when it’s going to come out. It’s just stuff that Apple was working on. But it’s just kind of like a peek behind the curtain of what Apple was working on. And Jason’s right. It was on a pre-production iPhone that, yes, somebody, either an employee or an ex-employee or a friend of an ex-employee, I don’t know, somehow generated on some server.

Jason Cross (06:02.448)Right, yeah.

Michael Simon (06:09.01)So Roman, you can put a bunch of those links in the show notes. There’s a whole bunch of stories. He wrote, I don’t know, six, seven or six or seven or something. Just kind of going through, breaking out things. And based on that, know, 2026 is some interesting stuff coming out. Most notably that new Siri, you know, since we’re talking about software today. Finally, maybe, hopefully, the Siri that was promised in 2024, June of 2024 is when we first heard about it.

Jason Cross (06:30.651)You

Michael Simon (06:37.223)finally maybe hopefully going to get it in like March of next year.

Jason Cross (06:42.085)Yeah, we don’t want to talk too much about next year because we will have a whole entire podcast previewing 2026. but that’s, that’s a decent enough segue that the year kind of started out, but we’re talking about software and services. The year kind of started out really flat because the first, you know, a first iOS release is always in September. It’s got a couple more.

Michael Simon (06:47.982)That’s right.

Michael Simon (06:53.858)Right. Right.

Jason Cross (07:09.893)follow on releases where they release a couple of little features and stuff. And then there’s usually a spring update that’s bigger. we, last year, last year’s WWDC, June, like you said, June, 2024, they announced all this series stuff. They said it’s coming in an update and we kept waiting for it and waiting for it. And then by the time we were supposed to get that beta, they kind of slipped out through an interview and through this other thing that it’s just not going to happen.

Michael Simon (07:27.608)Right. This time.

Michael Simon (07:37.016)This, this time last year, like this show last year, I’m sure we can go back and watch it. Like we’re like, Hey, the new series coming because we thought it was happening in early 2025. Yeah. And Apple had, there were ads, there were commercials, like Apple was heavily promoting it this time last year. And yeah. And then in March, they, they kind of officially delayed it, but it wasn’t like a press release thing, but yeah.

Jason Cross (07:44.261)Yeah, exactly. Everyone did. Right. They really last minute.

Michael Simon (08:05.494)In March, we learned that it’s not coming. It’s probably not coming in Iowa’s 18. We didn’t know for sure. And it might not even come this year, which it didn’t. And now we’re hoping that it’s next year. But that kind of put a pall over all of Apple’s, like the first half of 2025 was like, wow, this is a disaster.

Jason Cross (08:26.907)Yep. Yeah. Until WWDC, there was just nothing positive about Apple’s software story going on and not much going on with services either. Like it was, you know, there were, there were the expected Apple TV releases that we had kind of knew about, but there wasn’t, there weren’t any new, great new features. There were no great new services coming. were none of that stuff. So we were really.

Michael Simon (08:34.774)Right.

Jason Cross (08:56.965)going into June and WWDC, we were looking for kind of a breath of fresh air out of Apple’s software and services. And we knew from rumors and stuff that they weren’t going to talk about new Siri at WWDC because they didn’t want to, they had kind of learned their lesson not to promise stuff that’s coming that you don’t know is coming. And so that’s what they did at WWDC.

Michael Simon (09:15.063)Right.

Michael Simon (09:19.266)They did briefly, they briefly mentioned it and kind of said like we’re getting it later. But like Jason said, like it was very quick. Like we, weren’t sure if maybe they would devote like a little bit of time to it, kind of demo something, but no, it was like, Hey, hear you had us come in and let’s go on to the topic.

Jason Cross (09:33.829)Right. There was no demo, no promised features, none of that. the same is just true of iOS 26 in general. They didn’t announce things that were coming after the release. At WWDC, they only announced the stuff coming in September. I think the only thing they announced really that came after the initial September release was the digital IDs.

Michael Simon (10:03.63)Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (10:04.411)the which basically the pat your passport in and that was everything else. Yeah.

Michael Simon (10:06.092)Right. Passports.

Michael Simon (10:10.55)And that wasn’t really even their fault. That was more like they have to clear it with regulatory bodies and everything else. Like that wasn’t necessarily an Apple delay.

Jason Cross (10:15.217)Yeah, yeah. Right. But they did. They had a whole section where they showed it off and talked about it and stuff and, and said it’s coming and everything else dropped in September. So it’s kind of nice this this year that every time there’s a new beta or something. Every time there’s a new iOS version, iOS 26.3, what’s going to be in it? We don’t know. We don’t have this whole list of like, stuff they announced and haven’t released yet. It’s just not there.

Michael Simon (10:41.742)Right. So did iOS 26, Mac OS 26. All right. So first thing we’re talking about 26 for the first time that we’ve been talking about this for, I don’t know how many years, Apple got all of its software on the same page instead of iOS 19 and Mac OS 16 and, and Metro was 12, whatever everything’s 26, which is great for, for people to understand, okay, this is the new one. It’s 2026. It’s going to change every year. I’m on the latest version and I’m like, look to see if things are up to date properly.

Jason Cross (10:55.781)Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (11:00.369)Yes.

Michael Simon (11:11.702)Mac OS still has a name, it’s Tahoe, but it’s Mac OS 26. It’s no longer separate from the other ones. So my question.

Jason Cross (11:19.695)Yeah. And I feel like they listened to us directly because that’s a, they did exactly what we always said they should do is just like,

Michael Simon (11:23.747)Sure. Right. Only us. We were the only one calling for this.

Jason Cross (11:30.545)Well, we everyone wanted it unified under some, you know, they wanted the same numbers and we would always say like, just name it after the year. That way, you know, which one that way when you call your parents and they said, well, it says 23, you can go, okay, so it’s been four years since you’ve stated her, right?

Michael Simon (11:38.84)to the year.

Ahem.

Michael Simon (11:46.83)Yeah. yeah. So that was, that was a good change, long overdue. And yeah, we’ll take a little bit of credit for it. Right. did, so did the launch of that stuff. So let’s go back to June for a moment. That keynote did that kind of overshadow or put to rest all of the

Jason Cross (11:51.067)So that’s what they did and it’s good.

Jason Cross (11:57.938)Hahaha

Michael Simon (12:13.398)negative stuff before that. did Apple give us what we wanted at WWDC this year in your opinion? If you can go back to June.

Jason Cross (12:20.689)I feel like, yeah, I feel like everybody that I feel like the whole Siri thing and AI in general really still hung over their heads because it’s it still does now and I don’t think they I don’t think any of the AI features they talked about really assuage to anybody that Apple is not way behind on all this stuff and has so much more to do.

Michael Simon (12:30.882)Yeah. It still does. Yeah, sure.

Jason Cross (12:47.949)Even if you don’t like AI, just like in an, in an analyzing the company’s sort of situation, it’s just like, well, boy, they sure didn’t make anybody think that they’re a leader in this important. But anytime you get like a huge visual overhaul, it’s kind of exciting just because it’s, it’s new and different. You know, I remember I was watching it and I was like, I saw, I saw the liquid glass stuff and I’m like, well, you know,

I like what they’re doing with the menus and stuff, but God, this is terrible. Like every time I see all this, I’m like, yeah, cause every time, cause we’ve been down, we’ve been here before. every Microsoft and Apple and everybody else went through all of this, like transparency interface stuff before and learned for all the way from back then that while it looks pretty, when you’re watching a video, when you’re trying to use your computer,

Michael Simon (13:22.606)Even before you got it on your phone, you could tell.

Michael Simon (13:38.04)Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (13:47.459)It creates contrast problems and it’s hard to read. and it’s it’s The interface stands out instead of the content you’re looking at. And it’s just, it’s always a problem. It’s always a problem. Transparent interfaces are always stink. And we know this from so many places. And so then they went and built one and just the fanciest, coolest looking transparent interface. But so what I have to use these devices. So yeah.

Michael Simon (14:08.056)Great.

Michael Simon (14:12.674)Yeah. So they like, that’s not just an iOS thing. I liquid. mean, everyone knows who’s listening to this liquid glasses, like Apple’s new design language across everything that was that started the keynote and WC that was like the first major thing they talked about. And yeah, we were like, wow, that, looks cool. And they showed like, you know, all the little glass things they use to get the, the, the prisms right. the reflection, right. And it, listen, it looks really cool. It’s impressive.

Jason Cross (14:38.256)Yeah.

Michael Simon (14:41.228)that they’re able to do this on a, to make your phone look like there’s a little panel of glass that you’re sliding up. It’s cool. But as Jason says, like there’s fundamental issues with it. So much so that the guy who designed it is gone now. Like maybe not related, but awfully coincidental that he’s no longer with the company.

Jason Cross (14:48.273)Yeah.

Jason Cross (15:00.581)Right. Yeah. The guy sort of the chief head of pushing all this stuff and interface is going to work for Metta and, and also sort of related every update sense has offered some way to make the glass less glassy. Like the interface changes are still the interface changes, but literally everyone, like they started off with like, like there’s an accessibility feature and then there was an official switch.

Michael Simon (15:16.856)Yeah.

Michael Simon (15:20.248)Mm-hmm. Laterally everyone. Yeah.

Jason Cross (15:30.309)this latest release like lets you adjust the glassiness of on your home screens, the clock, the lock screen, sorry, the lock screens clock, you know, at every point, if at every point you have to have to make an update that lets people make it less glassy, then making it so glassy was a mistake. Like you’ve got to admit that at some point. So I think that’s I think we’re going to see a change.

Michael Simon (15:36.428)The lock screen. The lock screen. Yeah.

Michael Simon (15:52.536)Right. It’s one of those times. Yeah, I think so too. It’s definitely going to evolve like majorly over the next year or two. It’s one of those times when you wonder like, what would Steve Jobs have done in the development process of liquid glass? How would he have a pro, cause he loved that stuff. Remember, you remember Aqua. Like he loved like fancy unnecessary software things, but.

Jason Cross (16:10.992)Yeah.

Jason Cross (16:17.489)Right.

Jason Cross (16:21.167)Hahaha.

Michael Simon (16:21.42)He was also very practical and very smart and like laser focused on user experience. And I wonder, you know, how he would have range it. He might’ve just scrapped the whole thing from the start. Like, we’re not doing this. You’re out of your mind. I don’t know.

Jason Cross (16:34.853)Well, and, especially after he had been around for Aqua and then after Aqua, the changes that came after that, where they made everything flat. And when they did Aqua, that’s what everyone was doing. Windows seven was all glassy and stuff like that. And then they changed and made it all flat. the whole industry trends kind of flow together. But yeah, I don’t think this, this one’s unique in that you don’t see everybody else in the computer industry.

Michael Simon (16:47.576)Sure. Sure.

Michael Simon (17:03.702)Right. Not at all. Apple stands alone with liquor glass. Yeah.

Jason Cross (17:04.913)just going around making transparent controls. Yeah. So a lot of the other principles are found all over the rest of the industry. Things like making menus big when you’re there, but as soon as you start scrolling through content that the menus shrink away and stuff like that kind of stuff, that those are relatively good things about liquid glass. But they’ve also messed up a few other things that I think they’re going to improve over time.

Like there are some relatively commonly used functions that are now hidden behind three dot menus and stuff that didn’t used to be. I think they’ll, you know, cause they’re trying to get rid of the buttons and stuff and get you to your content. But I think they may have gone a little too far, on some of that. So I think, I think they’ll come back around on it. So that, yeah, WWDC, it was, it’s always exciting when they change everything, but, especially in hindsight.

Michael Simon (17:40.514)Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Simon (17:54.744)Yeah, the-

Michael Simon (18:00.984)Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (18:04.347)just wasn’t a banner year for Apple’s sort of software when the biggest thing they did was make an interface change that they’re already backing away from.

Michael Simon (18:16.142)I don’t know of anyone who like truly likes it. Anyone in my life that has used it. Like no one said to me like, wow, this is great. Like they’ll be like, well, it’s okay. Or I don’t like this part, but I’ll deal with it. Or, you know, I hate this thing. And like I’ve never read or heard a comment of anyone that says like, it’s always, there’s always some kind of caveat. I like it, but, or it’s really pretty, but.

Jason Cross (18:37.41)Mm.

Michael Simon (18:46.298)And it’s, it’s, it’s a surprising move. First of all, when you’re dealing with billions of devices, it’s, it’s very surprising that Apple that this got through in its current or previous form without, you know, somebody raising their hand and be like, Hey, like, I don’t know about this guys. Maybe like re workshop this. Cause I don’t know if this is going to fly.

Jason Cross (19:13.969)think we mentioned before WWDC when we all the rumors said there’s a big visual change coming a big design. I think we all said that everyone always hates a change at first, like an interface change, because they got muscle memory. They’re used to it. You’re changing their muscle memory, but it’s been some time now, especially for people like us who are used to all the betas and stuff. And I feel like, I feel like it hasn’t been a hit.

Michael Simon (19:33.422)And this is different.

Jason Cross (19:40.107)And the other stuff at WWDC, they were relatively minor updates. Like for the most part, there was nothing sort of, this changes everything or gosh, this is some amazing new, you know, they added a games app. on.

Michael Simon (19:49.827)Well.

There was one.

Yeah, there’s small stuff. The Mac got a phone app. That’s cool. A couple of redesigns.

Jason Cross (19:58.94)yeah, there’s lots of good quality of life stuff.

Michael Simon (20:02.008)But the iPad update was huge. Like that one actually changed the identity of the iPad for better or worse. mean, you can quibble with it, but it’s the thing that we’ve been asking for since, I don’t know, since like the iPad got a screen bigger than like seven and a half inches. It was like, need this thing to be a multitasking productivity device. And Apple really gave it to us this year.

Jason Cross (20:19.909)Yeah.

Jason Cross (20:29.979)Yeah. A real windowing interface, not just Mac OS. It is different from Mac OS, but it does let you have layered windows, multiple windows. It works on more things than stage manager ever did and does more than stage manager ever did. they kind of went to. Yeah. You can choose. You, you, you choose which system you want to use. but,

Michael Simon (20:42.828)Yeah. Yeah.

Although stage manager still exists for whatever reason. Yeah.

Jason Cross (20:57.169)They went too far and took away slide over and they brought it back. Like, whoops. Some people like that. um, but other, you know, yeah, other than that, they made a big, it’s big changes to the iPad. And especially if you have a big iPad, if you have like a 12 inch iPads or something, where you it’s practically like a laptop. It’s great. Yeah. That’s a really good change.

Michael Simon (21:00.418)Yeah, another one that I changed,

Michael Simon (21:20.002)Yeah. And it’s kind of speaks to where Apple is bringing the iPad, I think. We’ll talk about hardware next week. the iPad has always been kind of caught between is it a big phone? Is it almost Mac? And it always felt like a big phone because it ran a modified version of iOS. They did split screen, but the true multitasking wasn’t really there. The Mac was always better. And this is floating windows, menus.

desktop quality, desktop caliber apps, all that stuff that we’ve wanted form from the iPad is there. The foundation finally is set or what hopefully Apple is going to bring to the iPad going.

Jason Cross (22:03.589)Yeah. You get persistent mouse cursors. get top menus full of things you get the files app, still isn’t finder, but it’s way closer and you can, and you can choose which apps you want to open a file and stuff, which gets you all. That’s like a huge issue that they’ve. So it’s getting much, much closer. We, every year we say the iPad hardware is so far ahead of its software. It’s the software holding it back.

Michael Simon (22:11.724)Yeah, but it’s close.

Michael Simon (22:20.739)Yep.

Michael Simon (22:30.241)Yeah.

Jason Cross (22:32.08)And I feel like this was the first year where we looked at what they did with the iPad, WWDC, and said like, finally, the software is catching up to what this hardware could do.

Michael Simon (22:43.042)Right now you can argue, maybe it should have been a pro feature. I don’t know. It’s not great on the mini. Like there are still some issues with it where Apple doesn’t know what to do with all of its iPads. But I bet it was 26. Too many iPads and too many ways to multitask on those iPads. Too many like uses, your use cases for each iPad. Like this is for this group and this is for this group. it, like the software is now there.

Jason Cross (22:49.401)Right. Yeah.

Jason Cross (22:54.053)does have too many iPads.

Michael Simon (23:12.406)Like the vision is fairly clear as to what the iPad is supposed to be.

Jason Cross (23:15.963)Yes.

Yeah, from, from here on out, it just needs a lot of like refinement and a few more sort of, don’t want to call them pro level, but like, you know, sort of enthusiast features for people who know what they’re doing, like kind of.

Michael Simon (23:22.734)Goodbye.

Michael Simon (23:31.894)Yeah, I would like to see, like, I know they don’t do this on the Mac, but it would be good to see, like, features just for the iPad Pro. Give me an iPad OS 27 feature that’s, like, you have to use a Pro to take advantage of it. I don’t know what that would be. I haven’t prepared for that, but something, something that’s, because right now, you know, the iPad Pro starts at 1300 bucks, it goes up to two grand, and the standard iPad starts at, you know, 350.

Jason Cross (23:47.089)Hmm. Yeah, I don’t know what that’d be.

Michael Simon (24:00.598)you know, that’s a thousand dollar difference. And we’re talking about a better chip and you know, cameras and face ID and stuff. like, I want to be able to feel like I could do more with the higher end iPads.

Jason Cross (24:13.339)Well, and you could just get an iPad Air and you already be in the series chips where you’re just, it’s not even the chip. You’re, what am I, I need all these cameras now? That’s what it is I’m buying with all that money. So yeah, I feel like the Pro doesn’t, the Pro doesn’t avail itself well unless it’s like, this is my video editing iPad. It just seems hard to justify.

Michael Simon (24:16.61)Yeah, that too.

Michael Simon (24:34.774)Right. Right. Which I wonder like, you know, that could be like the next, the next thing that they, they’re doing background processing with this new update and you know, so like all that is coming, I’m sure to make it more viable, but like at some point there just has to be a split in, in iPad OS 26 and it’s like, like a pro level version versus a standard level version. don’t

Jason Cross (24:59.857)Okay. I actually look at it. I look at it more like the Mac. There’s big difference between a high-end Mac and a $80,000 MacBook Air in price, but there’s no features exclusive to a MacBook Pro or anything like that. So I like it being that way. But they do need to…

Michael Simon (25:01.08)But yeah, bet I had a big year.

Michael Simon (25:08.46)No, I know.

Michael Simon (25:19.406)I know, I I know. I understand that.

but the extra processing.

Jason Cross (25:28.283)They do need to do more to justify that being there, yeah.

Michael Simon (25:28.856)The action.

So like on a Mac, we’re kind of in the weeds here, Roman, sorry. But like on a Mac, you’re like the actual, you buy an M4 Macs MacBook Pro, you’re using it for a different reason than somebody who buys a MacBook Air. I don’t think that that’s so obvious on an iPad. Maybe it’s because I don’t use it that way, but I don’t know what you could do on an iPad Pro, like literally.

Jason Cross (25:35.985)You

Jason Cross (25:53.765)Right.

Michael Simon (26:00.536)that you can’t do on an iPad Air. Like there are things on a, like people use the MacBook Pro for a high-end $3,000 MacBook Pro that they physically cannot do on a MacBook Air. Whatever needs to be done, like it would grind it to a halt. I don’t think that’s true of the iPad. Maybe I’m wrong.

Jason Cross (26:19.535)No, I agree. that’s again, it’s not a matter of like, well, the software just doesn’t even work or that feature is not even there. It’s just like, it’s a really high end thing they’re doing and it just need more muscle. And I like, I’d rather the iPad stay that way than them make features exclusive to the pro. They just need to make more software and work with more developers to make it so that there are things that you would want to do on the pro that

Michael Simon (26:48.418)You’re okay.

Jason Cross (26:48.677)you just need that extra muscle for the same as the Mac. You know, they just, you know, I don’t know what that would be other than video editing, which not everybody’s going to be a video editor other than making their Tik Tok shorts. Like there’s not, you don’t. So I don’t know where we go.

Michael Simon (27:01.186)Right. We, we still don’t have like, they don’t make X code for the iPad. Is that true? Still? They still don’t. don’t think. Roman, do you know that they know? Yeah. So like, yeah. Okay. Maybe that’s it. Maybe they just need to treat it more like a, like a Mac, which they started doing with iPad. was 26. So yeah. big, big year for. Yeah. Right. So yeah. iPad, big year. I’ve iOS was, you know,

Jason Cross (27:09.358)No.

Jason Cross (27:14.491)Yeah.

Jason Cross (27:20.389)Well, yeah, and they brought Final Cut and Logic, you know, so they’re getting there.

Michael Simon (27:30.092)If you take away liquid glass, you know, not a ton of stuff. iOS 26 is, you know, small, relatively small update compared to iOS 18. Right? Is that your assessment? Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Cross (27:43.097)Right, interface updates were the big thing.

Michael Simon (27:49.14)And Tahoe, Roman, Man, I hate Tahoe. Like it drives me crazy. you have a, like it, like, I get, like, so I wrote an article a couple weeks ago. I was having like, literal, like, like Sometimes, every couple of minutes, my Mac would freeze for like a second. I, like, I stopped that because I turned off Spotlight and that, that helped. But even like, like I still get like hangups. I still get like.

Roman Loyola (27:54.472)you

Jason Cross (27:55.063)Hahaha!

Michael Simon (28:18.286)I don’t know. Like I have a, I have an M3 Max, M2 Max. don’t know. I have a good enough MacBook where I shouldn’t have to worry about performance issues, but I swear to you, it’s like affecting me and like pages. So I talked to our Kelly, Karen uses pages all the time and she has the same that she has an M1. So like you could quibble with that, but like pages isn’t it? That’s an Apple app. And it’s like a major issue. If you leave a document open, it’ll like,

Jason Cross (28:42.521)Yeah.

Michael Simon (28:48.174)take up like, I don’t know, 12, 35 gigs of RAM or something.

Jason Cross (28:54.081)Yeah, she did some screenshot where it was she left it just up overnight not doing anything just left it on overnight and she came back and it’s pages is consuming 36 gigs of memory pressure. That’s like how’s that happening? Yeah, that I don’t use sheets or pages or anything very much numbers or pages or anything very much. I close it right away. I have not had problems with Tahoe. Like I’m running it on three different Macs.

Michael Simon (28:57.847)Yeah.

Michael Simon (29:04.488)Right. And that happens to me too.

Michael Simon (29:20.492)Okay, that’s good. Maybe it’s the way I use it.

Jason Cross (29:23.289)And it’s been fine. It also doesn’t drastically change. Like outside of things like they gave great things like they gave us the phone app and stuff. I love that. But but but other than that, like liquid glass doesn’t as dramatically change Tahoe as it does on the iPhone, because you’re running all these other Mac app windows, they’re layered there, you know, whatever. So it’s been it’s been for me, it’s just it’s been

Michael Simon (29:34.328)Yeah, but that’s cool.

Michael Simon (29:39.31)Great.

Jason Cross (29:51.185)kind of like every other Mac OS release. It’s like, this is fine. It’s not really changing how I use the Mac. It’s something sync better. I like that when a phone call comes through, I like that I have my call history and my phone app. They’re still missing some stuff I would want like the health app. Like I want that on my Mac, because that’s a lot of data to pour through. Yeah, I assume I would hope so. I would hope they need a they need a secure way to sync that but yeah.

Michael Simon (29:55.49)Yeah.

Michael Simon (30:09.238)Yeah, I assume that’s coming. Yeah.

Michael Simon (30:18.68)I don’t like the icons at all, any of them. I like the character of the older ones. The ones that are like gray with like the thing in the middle, they just, I don’t know why they did that. I’m not sure why they, yeah.

Jason Cross (30:30.343)yes. yeah. The ones where they’re like, if a developer hasn’t updated their app, and it’s kind of like the old icon with a gray around it or whatever. Yeah, that looks terrible. Yeah.

Michael Simon (30:39.764)Yeah, it’s ugly. But even like the ones that had been updated, like they were just, they had character and they came out of their boxes before, like it was good. I don’t know why they would change that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I guess like if you take away my performance issues, it’s fine. I just don’t feel like they changed anything for the better. Like settings is still annoying and things are behind menus that I don’t expect them to be.

Jason Cross (30:49.125)Ha.

Jason Cross (31:08.24)Yeah.

Michael Simon (31:08.782)Search doesn’t work the way I wanted to. you know, it’s spotlight is I’ve turned it off. Well, I didn’t turn it off, but I turned off like, like the newer stuff because it was, it was like literally using up like, I don’t know, like 400 % of my CPU and some it was nuts. So

Jason Cross (31:16.772)You

Jason Cross (31:26.683)Yeah, that’s again, that’s a particular thing. I haven’t used much of the new spotlight features and I really should start forcing myself to do that to just see if all the like the neat little automation stuff they have in there. I bet that could be handy. I just need to get used to it. I’m so used to using a Mac the way I use the Mac and I’m not used to that being there.

Michael Simon (31:50.296)That’s the problem with the Mac is that the people, a lot of people have been using it for 20 years. So like you have to train, right. You had to train yourself to use it a different way. And like, nobody wants to do that. another thing I don’t like is the corners. they’re like different, like the menus pop out and they’re like different radiuses. yeah. But they like the, the one below it is rounder than the one above it. it, I don’t know. They just made some weird changes. I don’t understand. And you know, my particular performance issues.

Jason Cross (31:54.991)Yeah, you get fast at it.

Jason Cross (32:04.945)They’re too round. Yeah.

Roman Loyola (32:19.479)Yeah, I haven’t had, I had one instance where my Tahoe Mac was like jittery and I just had to restart it and it was fine. I haven’t had any performance issues. It is the UI issues that have problem. I, you know, I wrote an article about how I missed launch pad. And I got a lot of re-response and it was kind of like.

Michael Simon (32:41.549)Yeah.

Roman Loyola (32:46.647)80 % of people agreed with me and the other 20 % were like, you used that thing? What is your problem? Yeah.

Michael Simon (32:54.318)I use use I use large bed. Yeah

Jason Cross (32:54.417)I’m in that one. I’m in that group. like what launch pad you just, you just hit command space and you start typing the thing you want to open and it’s right there and you press enter.

Roman Loyola (33:04.385)So yeah, and I’ve gotten used to not having Launchpad and I use command space. I just don’t like, when I hit command space, your previous query is still in the search section. And it’s a little thing, I just find it annoying because what happens then is that it then brings up the apps that are related to that query. So like if I typed in TA,

Michael Simon (33:19.234)Right? I agree. It’s annoying.

Jason Cross (33:22.403)right.

Michael Simon (33:24.387)Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cross (33:31.407)Right.

Roman Loyola (33:32.951)all the apps that start with TA show up and I don’t know, it’s just kind of annoying thing where I’m like, that’s not what I wanted, I have to start over. Even though it’s not, it’s an inconsequential thing, it’s just still kind of annoys me.

Michael Simon (33:45.11)I agree, I’m team lunch pad as well. I liked it. I used it.

Roman Loyola (33:47.831)And there are launchpad alternatives, but I just thought all right now I’ll just I’ll just see if I can get used to it. I’m getting used to it

Jason Cross (33:48.497)Ha ha.

Jason Cross (33:58.811)There’s some good spotlight alternatives too that are out there that are quite, there’s a couple of them that are quite good, but Apple’s making spotlight. I would say better technical problems notwithstanding. I would say they’re growing launchpad on it. But yeah, I think my overall vibe for the latest Mac OS is they certainly didn’t like add or change something that just changes the way I use my Mac. Like makes it so much better, you know.

Roman Loyola (34:03.391)Yeah.

Michael Simon (34:11.81)Yeah.

Michael Simon (34:25.778)Right. People would like show up at Apple park with pitchforks. Like they can’t, they can’t do that. Right.

Jason Cross (34:29.393)Or even for the better, like, I could finally do this or what, you know, it’s just not, it wasn’t that much of a change.

Michael Simon (34:41.09)For what it’s worth, did get several emails of people saying like, I have the same problem and thank you because it’s helped me. And like, was like my solution, which is a bandaid. Like it’s not a solution. It’s a, it’s a quick fix. right. Or, or limit, limit like, can’t really turn off stuff, but yeah, you let you like limit the usefulness of a core feature. Yeah. It’s it’s.

Jason Cross (34:43.823)Hmm

Jason Cross (34:52.965)Yeah, no. Well, and you have to turn off a core feature. Like that’s not, that’s, that’s not a solution. Yeah.

Michael Simon (35:09.198)I don’t quite understand how a machine that’s, you know, bare silicon, like I can see if I was using an Intel Mac, like, okay, fine. Like they don’t care, but they must have tested it on like a relatively new MacBook Pro.

So all right, what else? Roman, did you like the invites app? Because you’re big fan of Apple’s boutique apps, I know.

Jason Cross (35:29.297)You

Roman Loyola (35:32.905)Yeah, well, I was going to say, was going to say, you you haven’t talked about the biggest news that came out of Apple software wise, and that’s discontinuation of clips.

Michael Simon (35:44.13)That’s right. know you were a big fan. like my condolences.

Jason Cross (35:44.347)Right.

Roman Loyola (35:45.899)clips app.

Jason Cross (35:48.369)I think they just passed the baton to invites basically as the, as apples.

Roman Loyola (35:52.703)Right, that’s true. did kind of just like, yeah, I’m sorry.

Michael Simon (35:55.664)as the app that they make that no one uses.

Jason Cross (35:58.287)Nobody uses this right.

Roman Loyola (35:58.805)Yeah. Yeah, I think like I’ve tinkered around with invites and I’ve never used it.

Michael Simon (36:05.856)I, well, first of all, how many invitations are people sent to? Like I would use an app like that like once a year, maybe.

Jason Cross (36:09.391)I know, right?

Roman Loyola (36:14.461)Yeah, I think it appeals to, I guess, a certain generation of people that is very social and I’m anti-social, so to speak.

Michael Simon (36:24.718)I guess, I mean, I feel like my generation was like the last like truly social generation I sent out invitations to things and I wouldn’t do it.

Roman Loyola (36:29.655)So.

Jason Cross (36:32.049)I feel like there’s an older generation who sends out invites and stuff and they’re just going to use invites and there’s nothing about this that invites that makes them want to use this and stuff. I think if you send an invite to somebody who isn’t on an Apple machine, they get an email or something, but no, but there’s no reason to go to use this. And then the younger generation, they just group text. They’re not going to bother with any of this nonsense, right?

Michael Simon (36:34.894).

Michael Simon (36:39.555)Right.

Roman Loyola (36:39.743)Right, right.

Roman Loyola (36:49.942)Yeah.

Michael Simon (36:51.63)Thank you.

Michael Simon (36:58.888)Great.

Roman Loyola (37:00.064)Right.

Jason Cross (37:01.627)So.

Roman Loyola (37:03.201)Yeah.

Michael Simon (37:05.273)Someone wasted a lot of time developing. I mean, it’s fine. We all looked at it when they released it. I think that was March. That wasn’t even part of iOS 26. That was like it’s all in separate.

Jason Cross (37:08.913)I

Jason Cross (37:16.325)Yeah, I do want to know what how these decisions get made at Apple. Like how? Because I’m sure there’s a million.

Michael Simon (37:22.06)Right. I would love that. Please someone at Apple listens to this and invite me or Jason to your, to like a week. Like we won’t say anything. We won’t even report on it. I just want to know for my own personal curiosity.

Jason Cross (37:28.955)Ha

Jason Cross (37:35.153)Because I’m sure there’s like so many developers at Apple who have like a side project or just something they’re working on or want to do and they pitch their managers and stuff like that. But at some point this gets green lit and a reasonable amount of resources gets put behind it. And how did they choose this? What were the other things they’re choosing from? Why did they think this was particularly important to invest in? Like I get the games app is terrible, but I get why they make that.

Michael Simon (37:51.171)Right.

Michael Simon (38:02.848)Right. makes sense. Right.

Jason Cross (38:03.309)Like, I totally understand why and I can see the future vision of like, okay, as they expand this and they expand gaming better and stuff, like I get why there’s a games that the invites thing I just don’t get at all. Or clips.

Michael Simon (38:16.706)Yeah, Google used to have a whole division within their company where it was like, if you want to make something, go ahead and maybe like, we’ll go through a committee and maybe we’ll release it. I don’t know that Apple has that. This might have been commissioned by maybe Tim Cook had a bunch of birthday parties and he’s like, I need an invite that someone bake it for me.

Jason Cross (38:28.507)Yeah, what did they call that? There was like a

Jason Cross (38:35.409)They used to have a rule. was like, was it the 10 % rule or 20 % rule where like you just get to spend 10 % of your work time working on like whatever that personal project is that you’re excited about and stuff. And maybe it even never gets released, but I don’t know. Maybe that’s also why Google has a incredible reputation for killing after a year for launching and killing a new thing.

Michael Simon (38:57.262)All right, so what else watch OS Like really nothing like it was like the young the sleep score is okay The the hypertension stuff is fine, but liquid glass doesn’t really do much for the watch You know not much there

Jason Cross (39:09.307)Honestly.

Jason Cross (39:19.291)They made the workout app worse. like it’s yeah. The, thing when you start a workout, like the select a workout, it’s, it’s, it used to be like the overlapping little tabs, like kind of like a Rolodex, you know, now it’s just like these things you slide up, but you can’t really clearly see there’s other ones beneath it. And it’s just harder to use that way. And they ruined,

Michael Simon (39:22.617)yeah? I don’t use it that much.

Jason Cross (39:46.745)can’t, I’m not going to come to me, there’s a particular swimming function that they ruined, where you could make it easier to start and stop a workout while you were swimming, like a swimming workout. And that that’s gone now. And everybody who uses it for swimming is like, my god, I can’t, I have wet hands, I can’t do the thing I used to do to start my thing. And now I have to this new interface, it makes it impossible for me to start my stupid swim workout or whatever.

Michael Simon (39:57.24)Okay.

Michael Simon (40:14.296)So I just, quickly Googled it, Jason. It says the old side button pause shortcut is gone, replaced by needing to disable screenshots or use the digital crown side button combo, which takes a screenshot to pause resume. So why would they take that? Why would they take that? Why would they take that away? That’s insane.

Jason Cross (40:20.976)Right.

Jason Cross (40:28.741)Yeah, you have to take a screenshot to pause or I it was part of their whole kind of little redesign of the OS and stuff and changing the function of what the button does. But yeah, it’s for people doing certain workouts. It’s frustrating to have to use the screen to pause your workout or stop it without it just automatically stopping after you stop working out for a few minutes. So

Michael Simon (40:55.096)Yeah, so if you disable screenshots, you can use that, the screenshot button combo, which is the side button and the thing to start and stop the swimming. Okay. Right.

Jason Cross (41:07.141)Right. But who knows that like that’s not written anywhere. You’re never going to find that setting. Like that’s somebody’s got to come tell you the 12 steps that you need to go six menus deep to disable screenshots and then use a button combo. Yeah. Nobody wants that. So yeah, they, they, they did that. They added that. They added that workout buddy, which all that is, is an AI voice that tells you like great job doing three workouts this week. Yeah. You know,

Michael Simon (41:13.89)Yeah.

You

Michael Simon (41:21.314)Right. Right.

Michael Simon (41:28.064)Yeah.

Good job, keep going.

Jason Cross (41:35.291)So I’m just not excited about that. They got work to do to make Apple Watch interesting. I mean, the problem is it’s fine. Yeah.

Michael Simon (41:41.804)I mean, it’s fine. It’s still the best watch out there. Yeah. That’s the biggest issue is that no one’s looking for anything in Apple watch because it does everything that people want it to do. Basically they, you know, they did the sleep score thing, which, know, we don’t really like, I wouldn’t need it, but it’s nice. You know, it’s good to see a visual thing and a score. Sure. But the Apple watch is so far ahead of anything else out there. Like there’s really nothing that needs to be overhauled or really added.

We’ve said it before, they could skip a year and it would still sell like crazy.

Jason Cross (42:14.085)Yeah, they could start doing these every other year. Yeah. And from a software perspective, it’s really hard with a screen that small and such limited buttons and stuff to change the interface and then, but also make it better. everything’s going to be at least a side grade at some point. So I’m curious to see where things go.

Michael Simon (42:36.716)Yeah. what else? Apple TV, our TV OS. Yeah. Okay.

Jason Cross (42:41.199)Again, that’s the least changed thing, but yeah. They did a few changes around multi-user households that are kind of nice, that’s not out there anymore. I never use that.

Michael Simon (42:50.668)Yeah. Yeah. Although like maybe I’m missing the setting, but every time I turn on my Apple TV, I get the stupid screen and I got to click the person. I got to click me because I have like, is there a way to default to myself? There probably is. I just, I just had, I got to go look, I got to go look in my, in the settings. probably is a way to just say like, don’t ask me every time, my TV goes out or whatever.

Jason Cross (43:04.741)Yeah, I don’t I don’t I never pick. Yeah.

Michael Simon (43:17.358)But I get the stupid thing where I go like, like, no, that’s not my wife. It’s not me. got it. And then I have two because I have a iTunes one. I got to find out which is I have all sorts of issues with the, with the Iowa, the always 26s, um, vision pro Jason, anything that you, uh, cared about. Cause you’re the only one who actually has one of this group.

Jason Cross (43:25.515)Hahaha

Jason Cross (43:36.325)They’re…

They’re getting there. they still have this problem where by and large, all of the main apps that let you get anything done are floating iPad apps. It’s like, what if an iPad app was the size of a whiteboard floating in space? And that’s what I’m using. Even if they’re quote unquote vision perhaps there’s, there’s very few that take advantage of the sort of VR AR nature of it outside of

the handful of entertainment things they keep doing, like watch this live sport events, watch this concert, watch these things in VR, which is not what people are going to go buy a vision pro for like that. Some things had to be pretty cheap to be just, yeah, even then until it’s live and the headsets $800 because there’s like people aren’t buying these things for that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean they, they, kind of dip their toe in it. Like there’s

Michael Simon (44:12.088)Yeah.

Michael Simon (44:20.224)Until it’s live or close to live. the sports stuff is, is it really good? Well, yeah, that too. Yeah.

Jason Cross (44:38.415)I talk about how clock is a great example of the simplest. No, that’s bad. This is what I’m getting at. Like it’s the most simple basic app that should be an AR app. It should have been the first app you built in development where you said like, okay, people can hang clocks on their wall or have a virtual grandfather clock or all these other things. They didn’t do any of that. They made a clock. No, no. Clock is still an iPad app that just it’s in fact, it’s

Michael Simon (44:41.516)Right. Well, they fixed that, didn’t they? Yeah. thought they fixed that.

Michael Simon (45:00.908)I thought they fixed it.

Michael Simon (45:05.261)So what’s what they all the widgets they changed. yeah.

Jason Cross (45:08.227)It’s a widget and it’s a widget that does one particular thing. It’s one size and you can change the face to like two different faces or whatever. And you can adjust its depth so that to make it look deeper. And then you can like kind of finagle it by like pushing it into a wall or something, because you can place the widget where you want, but it’s just a widget. doesn’t do all the clock functions. It doesn’t become other clocks. It’s not resizable or reshapeable.

Michael Simon (45:32.908)Yeah, like you should be able to like open your thing and like click a stopwatch and then click it. Like that’s the stuff that we want to do.

Jason Cross (45:38.193)Exactly. You have a literal virtual stopwatch in your hand that you can click your thumb and do that. You should be able to have a grandfather clock with spatial audio that when it chimes on the hour, it sounds like it’s coming from the clock or, know, those, you know, those, just pay me a consulting fee. you know, those, those clocks that we had every classroom had

Michael Simon (45:42.892)I agree. I agree. Yeah.

Michael Simon (45:51.97)That’s good. Hey, hey, Apple, listen to these suggestions. Hire, hire Jason. Well, don’t hire him. Hire him part-time because we still need him too. That’s right.

Jason Cross (46:05.829)that white clock that has a particular font and face like, why can’t I write? It’s a thing, right? Why can’t I take a virtual one of those and put it on my wall wherever I want? And it’s there all the time. Like it does none of these things. They just made a widget that you can’t adjust very much, but you can place around. So it is a nice widget, but it’s, it’s lit very limited and, but it shows that they’re, kind of getting the whole point.

Michael Simon (46:07.36)Yeah, yeah, they still do. My son’s in high school.

Yeah.

Right.

Michael Simon (46:26.286)It’s a nice widget, right? Is it a nice? Like, is it nice? Yeah.

Jason Cross (46:35.675)that a floating iPad app isn’t what vision pro is for. I, just needs to be all the other things need to be that.

Michael Simon (46:38.198)Right.

Michael Simon (46:44.77)Yeah, I get it. I mean, we can talk for hours about Vision Pro and like what the plan is. But yeah, I agree with total everything you’re saying. You’re right.

Jason Cross (46:48.923)Yeah.

Jason Cross (46:53.307)When you look at a spatial photo, it’s really cool to look at a spatial photo, but when you’re looking through your photos, it’s the iPad app scrolling window. And it’s like, why don’t I have a photo album? Why don’t I have a virtual photo album that I flip with live moving, all my live images move like Harry Potter and stuff. Like this is so conceptually no-brainer and they didn’t do any of this. Anyway, so yeah.

Michael Simon (47:00.494)Just scrolling.

Michael Simon (47:13.56)Right. Right.

Michael Simon (47:19.959)Yeah, I’m with you.

Jason Cross (47:21.307)Vision Pro, it was fine. It’s not going to move the needle. We’re waiting on new hardware and a big, big change. And this isn’t it.

Michael Simon (47:31.054)Yeah. So like, so we, we, we have our segment about Apple TV, but even like Apple services, like 2026 was 2020. So 2025 was kind of like more of the same. Like they didn’t really blow the doors off of news. News got some stuff. My, my favorite emoji game came out and I think it was in June and they got some like reorganization stuff and

Jason Cross (47:51.195)Ha ha ha.

Michael Simon (47:54.798)Like news is like legitimately pretty good. I don’t know if it’s worth $13 a month if you don’t subscribe to other stuff and have like Apple one, but it’s good. Like I use news all the time. Probably I use, I probably use news more than like Apple TV at this point. It’s, good. Um, but

Jason Cross (48:10.193)I agree. It’s a good news app, but I don’t