2026-09-15 01:48:21
Today’s the day visionOS 27 rolls out officially worldwide – alongside, of course, its corresponding updates oniOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS. It’s a big day! Having lived with visionOS 27 all summer, I thought I’d share a handful of my favorite features in case you’re updating today or just curious about what’s new in spatial computing.
This is the major change across all of Apple’s platforms this year, and it’s good see visionOS getting not only the full Siri AI treatment, but a version of Siri AI custom-built for a spatial interface. Siri appears in your space as a white orb when invoked via voice or a new hand gesture where you pinch and hold the Home button. Of course, there’s also the Siri app, where conversations with the assistant from all of your devices are collected and synced.
Once Siri appears, you can pin it to a surface and leave it there to chat with anytime by simply looking at it. It’s kind of cool having a helpful orb in the room with me, always ready to jump in when needed. Being able to ask Siri about window contents and real-world surroundings with Visual Intelligence is nice, too, and it comes with a fantastic animation of Siri scanning your environment.
I’ve found the new version of Siri to be much more capable than its predecessor. It’s great for asking world knowledge questions as well as for digging up information buried in your own messages, emails, notes, events, and files. Now that visionOS 27 is out publicly, I look forward to seeing how developers integrate with the new and improved Siri. If I could ask Siri about old journal entries and day plans the way I can about messages, that would be amazing.
Siri is still meant to be an assistant, not a friend or a constant chat mate, and I think that’s as it should be. It’s just as present and helpful as it needs to be without getting in the way of the vast majority of things I want to do without any AI input. Apple did a good job.
I haven’t been a fan of the way visionOS handles notifications since its inception, but things have gotten a lot better this year thanks to glanceable, interactive notifications. Before, a notification would display nothing but the app’s icon, forcing you to open Notification Center or the full app to see any actual information. Now, you can peer into a notification to see what it says just by glancing at it.
I keep my notifications to a minimum – mostly just text messages, emails, and critical house alerts. Thanks to these new expanding notifications, I can now check who a message is from and decide whether it’s worth responding to before I leave the context of what I’m working on. And if a message just needs a quick reply, I can do that directly from the notification as well. Less time dealing with notifications is a big win in my book.
The immersive environments on Vision Pro are incredible, and Apple does a great job of selecting the perfect places to capture them. This year, it’s a spot in Thórsmörk, Iceland, featuring a slow-moving river, snow-topped mountains, and the Northern Lights at night. It’s mesmerizing and a fantastic place to focus or relax.
visionOS still doesn’t support third-party environments, but the addition of panoramas to the mix is a nice step in the right direction. The ability to immersive yourself in massive panoramas has long been one of the Vision Pro’s go-to selling points, and visionOS 27 makes that experience even better. Panoramas can now be converted to 3D spatial scenes, adding depth and perspective similar to what we saw with regular photos last year. And you can set your own panorama or one you download online as your environment. Panoramas don’t include movement, and they don’t cover your full field of view the way immersive environments do, but it’s still great to have the option to use your own favorite images as a backdrop for windows as you’re working.
Web developers can integrate 3D environments into their sites, offering visitors on the Vision Pro the ability to immerse themselves in unique spaces as they browse. Web environments can include special zones and screens for viewing embedded videos as well. It’s going to be a while before we see spatial web elements like environments be adopted on any sort of scale, but they’re fun to experience and could prove to be useful down the line when spatial browsing expands to more devices.
A few of Apple’s apps are now able to add curvature to windows. The TV app’s multiview feature, which can be used to watch multiple MLS, F1, and Friday Night Baseball feeds at once, now curves to make it easier to take in everything happening around you. Freeform windows curve at a certain width as well so you can see all of the content in a workspace. And Safari includes a new multi-tab view that curves around you so you can browse and navigate multiple pages at once without switching between tabs. I find this approach a lot easier than opening multiple Safari windows manually.
I hope that this limited rollout is a preview of what’s to come for visionOS windows in general. Sometimes, I want a window to be really big, and I’d like any app – from Apple or a third party – to have the ability to adapt as it grows for the sake of comfort.
Besides Siri AI, the big push in Apple’s OS updates this year is system improvements. Across the board, bugs are being squashed, and things are just getting smoother. visionOS hasn’t been left out of that, with notable improvements including a redesigned Control Center for better access to settings (including, for the first time, AirPlay settings right in Control Center!), full-quality screen captures and recordings, and much faster connection to Wi-Fi upon booting up. Restarting my Vision Pro used to feel like a chore because it took forever for the device to connect to the internet and start syncing data. Now, I literally can’t unlock the thing fast enough to see it connect to the network.
It’s a good year for visionOS. The platform was fully included in the big Siri AI push, it got some nice feature additions and day-to-day improvements, and developers now have access to new tools like Reality Composer Pro 3 to make building experiences for Vision Pro easier. The OS feels more settled and mature in some ways, but at the same time, it’s also experiencing changes in pretty fundamental areas, like notifications and Control Center. Spatial computing is still an exciting space to be a part of – or just to keep up with, if you’re still waiting for the right time to jump in.
Whichever group you fall into, thanks for reading, and enjoy all the great OS updates out today!
2026-09-15 01:05:57
Today, Apple is releasing major new versions of all of its operating systems, so if you use a supported iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or other Apple device, you’ve got an update waiting for you in the Settings app. I know that many people aren’t as enthusiastic about installing new software on their devices as I am, but I do think there’s one big reason everyone should push the Update button today. And no, it’s not an AI feature.
The reason you should update your Apple devices today is performance.
Having tested iOS 27 and its counterparts over the summer, I can say with confidence that my devices have never run better than they do now. From last year’s iPhone Air to my five-year-old iPad Pro, I’ve noticed improvements in speed and reliability across the board, and I’m thrilled about it.
When Apple announced this year’s software updates in June, it was clear that the big focus besides AI was going to be platform improvements. Engineers combed through the company’s operating systems looking for bugs, slowdowns, and pain points they could address to make using Apple devices more seamless, and they found a ton of them. Here are a few examples from my real-world use:
These are just a handful of examples of ways the software on all of my devices has been improved. (I didn’t test macOS Golden Gate or tvOS 27, but I look forward to seeing the performance gains there as well.)
Apple’s operating systems have always been best-in-class, but any software builds up cruft and paper cut issues over time, and I’m thankful the OS teams have taken the time to work through so many of them this year. It makes the day-to-day experience of using Apple devices better in small ways that really do add up.
So I encourage you to give today’s OS updates a chance. I think you’ll be happily surprised by how well your devices – even older ones – run on the latest software.
2026-09-11 06:25:12
Griffin Jones was kind enough to have me on the latest episode of his Friends of Griffin podcast. We talked about everything Apple announced yesterday: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, AirPods 5, and iPhone Duo. It was a great chat that I hope you’ll listen to. Happy to officially be a friend of Griffin!
2026-09-08 07:32:11
Lex Friedman, writing at Lex on Tech about streaks in apps and games:
A streak is a loss-aversion machine you carry in your pocket. Every day you extend it, it gets a little more painful to lose, which is exactly why day 500 is harder to skip than day five. Apps with streaks aren’t building habits. They’re building hostages.
As someone who’s addicted to checkmarks, I feel the pain of being bombarded by streaks acutely. They’re everywhere, and they’re alluring.
I play six short games as part of my daily morning routine (Wordle, the Apple News+ Mini Crossword, Good Sudoku, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and Family Feud), and each one of them has some kind of streak mechanic meant to keep you coming back every day. They’re built into social media (thanks, Snapchat), fitness apps, and habit trackers. At one point, even my banking app encouraged me to build a daily streak of checking my balance by literally paying me to do so. (Joke’s on them; I would do that anyway because I’m a budgeting maniac.)
I believe there are specific instances where streaks can be beneficial, such as when you’re just starting to build a new habit and need all the motivation you can get. But before long, the point of any streak becomes keeping the streak alive, not actually improving your life or having fun, and that’s when they become a problem.
This is yet another example of companies trying to hack our natural brain processes for financial gain. Using positive reinforcement, they shift our motivation away from the initial intent (such as learning a new language) to a goal that benefits them (opening the app every day to continue the streak, thus boosting usage metrics and company profits). On the surface, it seems like a fun mechanic, and maybe that really is the intention behind some who implement it, but the impact is detrimental to users in the long run.
It was a hard-fought battle, but I’ve gotten to a place where I actively choose not to care about streaks of any kind. (The one exception is my 2,300-day Snapchat streak with my spouse, which in my heart of hearts I wish would break so I could get out from under the weight of it.) I ignore them as much as I can, and if I ever notice that I’ve broken one, I just move on and let it go without even looking for a loophole to restore it. I’ve had to do this for my own mental health; otherwise, I’d spend my days obsessively extending streaks that do nothing to make my life better.
This dynamic has also led me to cut down on the tracking apps I use. Habit trackers are amazing for forming new habits from scratch, but after a certain amount of time, any good habit tracker should render itself obsolete. If an action is truly a habit, you don’t need any external signal to perform it. At that point, tracking becomes all about streaks, and that’s where I say, “Thank you, next.”
Streaks aren’t required to have a successful app or business. I’m grateful for developers like Rebecca Owen of Chronicling who purposefully exclude streaks so users don’t feel pressured or guilty when tracking events. And I also appreciate what Florian Grossmann has done with On This Day, where streaks are available but can be hidden completely with a single toggle. I turned streaks off the day I downloaded it and haven’t been bothered by them since.
The fewer streaks in my life, the better. May it be so for each of us.
My thanks to Lex for writing about this subject, which I obviously feel passionate about as well. If you haven’t yet, check out his new website, Lex on Tech, where he's doing some really interesting writing every day.
2026-09-08 02:29:57
It’s a busy time of year for Apple fans and commentators. If past is precedent, we’ve got a lot to look forward to over the next two weeks:
That’s a lot to pack into such a short time period, and it’s part of why I enjoy this time of year so much.
Normally, all of this excitement comes with a ton of work for me. In addition to new iPhones, early September has to come to mean event coverage, visionOS review writing, and editing other OS reviews under short time constraints that have the potential to change as quickly as Apple can publish a footnote in a press release. In short, September used to be a whirlwind.
This year, the winds have died down. I’m not furiously writing chapters, sending off editing notes, testing last-minute beta changes, or outlining which parts of Apple’s announcement video I’ll have to take extra-detailed notes on. I’m just… getting ready to watch and react along with everyone else. There’s no stress at all.
So why is it that I’m feeling stressed all the same? As I read about the rumors and count down the days to the big event, I find there’s a pressure building within me, a feeling of urgency with no real source or outlet. It’s like there’s a voice telling me, “You’re missing something!” but I check my to-do list, and there’s nothing there.
I’m a naturally anxious person, so I’ve experienced this sort of thing before, but it’s been a while. This time around, I’ve put a label on it that I’m finding helpful: phantom stress. There isn’t actually anything wrong, but I’m used to being under a lot of pressure this time of year, and the gap between expectation and reality gets filled with worry and distress.
Basically, I’m stressing myself out about not having anything to stress about. Productive, right?
Maybe you’ve experienced something like phantom stress before. If so, you’re not the only one. It’s bizarre, and it’s ultimately pointless, but it’s human, too.
Our brains are amazing things that are far more capable than we often realize, and sometimes, that capability can have unexpected consequences. In my case, my brain is so used to running in overdrive this time of year that it’s searching for something to latch onto, some external deadline or task to direct its energy towards. That practical motivation may be missing, but the habitual energy is still there, spinning in circles, waiting for me to redirect it.
I guess that’s what I’m doing right now, writing this and forcing you to come along with me on such a meandering mental journey. Maybe this is my way of turning phantom stress into something positive – for me, at the very least, and hopefully for somebody else. Investing more energy into this little online space lately has been great for me on a lot of levels, and if a story I publish here does end up helping someone out there, then it’ll certainly all have been worth it.
Besides channeling my creative energy in a different direction, the other thing I’m trying to do is just take it easy on myself. It would be easy to beat myself up for wasting time on worrying for no reason, but I’m not sure that anyone’s ever shamed their mind into working better. The best thing I can do is recognize this feeling for what it is, remind myself it’s temporary, and do what I can to make something positive out of it.
Eventually, my mind will adapt to a new schedule, the sting of realizing things are so different will wear off, and I’ll feel lighter. I look forward to it. But even as I’m working through it all, I’m not going to let phantom stress keep me from enjoying a time that I truly love. I’ll carry on and lean into the strangeness of going into an event day on the sidelines. After all, there’s no time to fold to the pressure when there are so many exciting things to focus on.
2026-09-05 00:48:00
I’ve spent a lot of time and effort making my devices work contextually, adjusting how they function based on whether I’m working, spending time with family, sleeping, writing, or doing something else entirely. Apple offers a robust set of features for this sort of thing:
These features can be activated and switched between based on a variety of triggers, including the time of day and your location. The feature set is truly comprehensive, giving users the ability to finely control every aspect of their devices to fit whatever context they’re in at the current moment. And despite the power of these features, they’re also easy to set up and intuitive to use.
I’ve used all of these options extensively over the years. I never went deep enough into the Focus system to create custom Home Screens and Lock Screens for every area of my life; after all, my core apps don’t really change from context to context. But when it comes to muting notifications, filtering information in apps, and switching between accounts in the browser, I’ve been all in.
My Work Focus mode would kick on as soon as I arrived at the building, allowing group chats with coworkers to notify me and switching to my Work Safari profile so I could access my Google and other accounts for work. When I left work, my devices would automatically switch to my Personal mode, muting work texts and emails. My Freelancing mode would grant access to other accounts and tab groups in Safari. My Writing mode would block out everything except texts from my wife and open my writing app automatically. Exercise, Mindfulness, and Sleep modes would automatically activate when I needed them, muting notifications altogether. And when it came time to record a podcast, my Podcasting mode would not only mute notifications from everyone except my co-host; it would also turn off my air conditioning and open my notes for recording.
I created modes for everything so that no matter what I was doing, my devices were always perfectly in sync with my needs and availability. It kind of felt like magic.
All of that changed recently, though, when I wiped out all of my Focus modes and Safari profiles across my devices. That’s right: I’ve gone modeless.
I want to stop for a moment to note that I am not being prescriptive here. I am not saying that these features are bad or that you shouldn’t use them. I’m not even saying that I’ll keep my devices this way forever. But it’s a new approach I’m trying after years of the same, so I thought I’d share it.
Several factors influenced my decision to de-contextualize my devices:
After realizing I was signed out of a website because I was in the wrong Safari profile (again), I thought to myself, “What if I didn’t have to switch? Could a more unified approach work?” After pondering that idea for a couple of days, I decided to give it a try.
I started by moving all of my Safari bookmarks into my Personal profile, trimming the ones I used the least to keep the list to a manageable size. I’m probably the only person in the world who cares about this, but I’ve found that having 12 favorite websites in Safari looks the best across devices because it divides evenly by the number of sites in a row on my iPhone (4), iPad mini (6), iPad Pro (12), Vision Pro (6), and Mac (12) with no blank spaces. Yes, this is the kind of thing I spend my time figuring out.
I also had one Safari tab group that I wanted to keep around for work, so I moved it over to the Personal profile as well. With everything consolidated, I was able to delete my Safari profiles, simplifying my setup into a single set of bookmarks, tab groups, and history.
Then, it was time to clean up my Focus modes. I was planning to delete every mode except for Do Not Disturb, giving myself a single option for muting notifications anytime I needed to, but I found out that detailed sleep tracking on the Apple Watch requires the Sleep mode to be active, so I left it on the list as well. I went from nine Focus modes down to two, though, so it was a major simplification. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t use the Driving mode because CarPlay blocks most notifications on its own, and I’ve never tried the Reduce Interruptions mode because I don’t want AI anywhere near my notifications. I’ll handle them myself, thanks.)
It’s been about a week since I made this change, and so far, I’m quite happy with it. I’m no longer spending time fiddling with settings or switching between modes to access the information I need, so ironically, removing Focus modes has meant I’m spending less time on my devices. I’m having to exercise more self-control, choosing to let some messages and notifications sit without being dealt with while I’m spending time with my family, but I think that’s a good thing. And I enjoy having a simple Do Not Disturb toggle when I need it. The all-or-nothing approach to notifications seems to be working for me.
The only real pain point I’ve run into is dealing with websites where I have multiple accounts, such as Google and Amazon. Their built-in account switchers help to a point, but they’re still not as elegant as using Safari profiles to keep things separated. If needing a couple of extra clicks to access my work’s YouTube Studio page is the worst of my problems, though, I’d say things are faring well.
When life changes come your way – whether you’re happy about them or not – they serve as opportunities to rethink things. This has been one of the results of rethinking things for me, and I believe it’s part of a positive trend. Less compartmentalization and more cohesiveness. Less tinkering and more living. No modes, just me. Yeah, I think that sounds pretty good.
At least, for now. Who knows if it’ll last forever? If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that none of us can predict what the future holds. But for the time being, the modeless life is the one for me, and I’m making the most of it.