2025-09-04 04:18:21
Google’s antitrust woes (or lack thereof), encounters with buggy apps in betas, camping tech, and how thin is too thin when it comes to technology.
2025-09-04 00:24:41
For more than a decade, we’ve all been wondering why Instagram doesn’t have an iPad app. I’m not sure we ever got a good answer—but earlier this year reports said one was coming, and here we are—on Wednesday Instagram released an app update that supports the iPad:
When designing Instagram for iPad, we wanted to take advantage of the bigger screen to give people more features with fewer taps, while keeping it simple. We’ve made it easier to catch up on your messages and notifications with layouts that display both tabs. When you watch reels, you can expand the comments while the reel stays at full size, making it easy to catch up on the best reactions without missing a moment. It’s the Instagram you love, now with more space to play.
The app update is rolling out globally and works on iPads that support iPadOS 15.1 and later. Instagram says the tablet design will also follow for Android tablets.
While messages, notifications, and reels do feel more expansive on the new app, the standard view still feels… pretty empty. I’m glad the app is fully iPad native now, but it would sure be nice if Instagram considered what might be an elevated tablet experience. (I guess we can stop waiting for the app and start waiting for it to be better instead!)
2025-09-04 00:16:07
Well, the good news is, all three hosts are here this time. Two of them are in Lex’s office. One of them is not a nickel.
2025-09-02 05:51:07
Jason and Myke preview what will happen at next week’s Apple event. What form might a thinner iPhone Air take? Will the AirPods Pro come roaring back? Is the Apple Watch Ultra in store for an upgrade? To the winner goes the glory.
2025-09-02 03:40:41
Craig Hockenberry of the Iconfactory on what troubles him about Liquid Glass in macOS Tahoe:
If you’re someone who’s only using email, a web browser, and some messaging apps to get stuff done, changes to your desktop appearance aren’t going to be disruptive. It’s also likely that you’ll appreciate changes that make it look like your phone.
If you’re doing anything more complex than that, your response to change will be much different.
Professionals on the Mac are like truck drivers. Drivers have a cockpit filled with specialized dials, knobs, switches, microwave ovens, refrigerators, and pillows that are absolutely necessary for hauling goods across country. Those of us who are making movies, producing hit songs, building apps, or doing scientific research have our own highly specialized cockpits.
And along comes Alan Dye with his standard cockpit, that is beautiful to look at and fun to use on curvy roads. But also completely wrong for the jobs we’re doing. There’s no air ride seat, microwave oven, or air brake release. His response will be to hide these things that we use all the time behind a hidden menu.
The iPhone has utterly changed Apple’s priorities as a company. It generates, directly or indirectly, most of Apple’s revenue and profit. But it’s also had knock-on effects: The popularity of the iPhone has driven more people to the Mac. The proportion of Mac users who are “using email, a web browser, and some messaging apps” has risen, probably markedly.
The problem, as Hockenberry points out, is that the Mac is also a professional tool designed for people with very specific, technical use cases that go beyond the email-web-messaging trifecta. And it feels to him like Apple’s lack of focus on those users is increasingly problematic for the platform.
So what happens now? In many ways, it makes good financial sense for Apple to steer the Mac in a direction that feels familiar to iPhone users and pleases those casual Mac users. They’re probably the majority of Mac users! But what about the Mac as a platform for professional users, who use the Mac as a truck, not a car?
I don’t know what the answer is, and Hockenberry’s suggestion that it might lead technical users like him to look for an exit from the Mac platform is deeply troubling. Can the Mac ever possibly be both a truck and a car? This year Apple’s introducing a second mode for iPad users who want to manage windowing like a Mac; is this the future fate of the Mac, too?
It would be a sad and darkly funny thing if the Mac becomes the most popular it’s ever been at the expense of the users who kept it alive over the last couple of decades. But what it wouldn’t be is surprising.
2025-09-02 00:00:40
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