Six Colors

Summing up Apple’s devil’s bargain when it comes to AI features; what TikTok says about the chaotic future of tech regulation; Apple TV+ in the era of “Severance” and “Silo.”…

Do you want to block all YouTube ads in Safari on your iPhone, iPad and Mac? Then download Magic Lasso Adblock – the ad blocker designed for you.…

Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that in the latest iOS 18.3 betas, Apple has changed how it handles summaries, presumably in response to criticism of inaccurate headline summaries:…

Sometimes a solution is simpler than you think it’s going to be. I was trying to figure out a way to write a shortcut to take a folder and have all of its sub-folders compressed into individual archives—i.e.,…

In the past couple of weeks, two different projects of mine have been released that were powered, at least in part, by a Python script that eliminated enormous amounts of labor from a process that used to take hours of drudgery.…

Sticking it to the man.…

Our use of CarPlay, Android Auto, or other systems for navigation; creative AI problem-solving cases we’ve encountered; thoughts on Sonos’s struggles and future as a customer; and whether we use TikTok amid its potential US shutdown.…

The Camera Control button control on the iPhone 16 family seemed like a good idea, but the devil’s always in the details, isn’t it? Apple made too many promises, all of them in conflict with one another because they all rely on using the same tiny hardware…

Truly, Apple’s rise from near-bankruptcy to being one of the most valuable companies in the world is a story for the business history books. But as legendary football coach John Madden frequently said, “winning is the best deodorant.”…

Bonnets off to the BBC, the trouble with headlines, Socrates on mountain skis, some slight existential dread about Mac software, irrational love of old computers, Apple’s smart home strategy for 2025, and the long wait for some AI features.…

The Verge’s Abigail Bassett profiles Watch Duty, the remarkable nonprofit app that’s become a must-download utility during the Los Angeles fires: Watch Duty is unique in the tech world in that it doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent, or ad sales.…

One of the consequences of switching to a laptop from a desktop is that my old method of cloning my disk daily has been thrown out of whack.…

Will Carroll joins for a mega Sports Corner: Fubo meets Hulu to enable Venu, Netflix goes full force into live sports, how football dominates American TV, NFL announcers, and our TV picks!…

If you hoped flipping the calendar over to a new year meant that we’d stop talking about AI, well, you better keep flipping for a while.…

Meta ditches third-party fact-checking, making unsightly TVs more attractive, the tyranny of always-on phone displays, and the robot vacuum of your nightmares.…

We’re not mad, Tim, we’re just disappointed. Also, we’re mad.…

Lex Friedman’s dual-desk setup, now (again) with treadmill.I’m writing this article at 2.6 miles per hour. Fifteen years ago(!), I wrote an article for Macworld about upgrading to a standing desk.…

I was literally using Script Debugger yesterday to inspect variables.Mark Alldritt & Shane Stanley of Late Night Software: We are announcing the retirement of Script Debugger as a product.…

On Monday I complained about Apple’s response to Apple Intelligence making mistaken summaries of news headlines. But here’s the funny thing: large-language models are actually pretty good at writing news headlines.…

The BBC, following up on two reports of Apple Intelligence summaries that transformed its own headlines into factually inaccurate text, got a public response from Apple:…

A new year dawns! We consider what it has in store for Apple and why the company’s A.I. features need to be judged critically. Then we turn back the clock to 2000 and consider the moment when Mac OS X changed everything.…

Twenty-five years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld Expo in San Francisco and unveiled Mac OS X, ushering in a new era for the Mac and the world of desktop computing at large.…

Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of the unveiling of Mac OS X, and yeah, I wrote the cover story for Macworld. While I was working on a forthcoming piece celebrating that anniversary, I asked my friend James Thomson if he had a good link about his time…

My thanks to Fat Cat Software’s PowerPhotos for sponsoring Six Colors this week. I spend a lot of time using and writing about Apple’s Photos app.…

AppleVis has announced its 13th Golden Apple Awards, recognizing apps and games designed for (or useful to) people who are blind or visually impaired. The awards also honored a developer and included a new award for ongoing achievement.…

I’ve recently switched from using two computers in two different offices (the hard-to-heat garage and my well-heated back bedroom) to using one computer (a MacBook Pro) docked in either location.…

Ars Technica’s senior security editor Dan Goodin breaks down where we are with passkeys going into 2025: The security benefits of passkeys at the moment are also undermined by an undeniable truth.…

An electric episode for the New Year.…

As a sports fan, I’m besieged with ads for gambling these days. Sports media is full of experts that are happy to claim they know who’s going to win and who’s going to lose, but of course, if they really had all the answers they’d be rich and not…

It’s time for the 11th Annual Upgradies! Myke and Jason discuss their favorites of 2024, take the input of many Upgradians, and hand out awards in numerous categories!…